by John Walters

Of all the terrible 6-3 calls the Supreme Court has made in the past fortnight, two that should stand out as the worst are 1) the reversal of Roe v. Wade and 2) today’s decision that the EPA cannot regulate carbon dioxide emissions. And those two decisions should reveal to anyone who cares to keep score what Mitch McConnell’s race-baiting and all the “Take Back America” rallies and “They’re not sending their best people” rallies have always been about: the white money that runs this country was always about putting FEAR into white voters’ hearts about the Dems taking away white supremacy and GOD (read: Christian values) in order to elect Trump in order to gain control of the Supreme Court (three justices added during his term) in order to make decisions that will maintain the power structure of white males (the abortion ruling) and the oil companies (today’s).

Look at this list of the Top 10 market cap companies from 1980. What you’ll notice, and quickly, is that SIX of them are oil companies and two others are traditional fossil-fuel burning automobile manufacturers. These are the corporate monoliths that ruled the world when the septuagenarians and octogenarians who are now keeping their old, decrepit hands on the wheel of Congress and the Supreme Court were coming up in the world. These are the corporations to whom McConnell and company are beholden. And if you don’ believe this line of reasoning, just listen to Ned Beatty’s famous diatribe from 1976’s Network:

Alas, it is all true. Mitch and his cronies have never cared about the rights of the unborn (or of the past-born), much less Christian values (get a load of Donald Trump’s lifestyle, from Epstein parties on down). They only care about power. And they married Big Oil long ago. And the traditional White Male Power Structure. So you fast forward to a relatively recent period (not sure of the exact date), and you’ll see that SEVEN of the 10 largest companies are TECHNOLOGY companies, two are health, and one is basically a giant holding company. ZERO oil companies. And Mitch & Co. already have one mistress. He’s got no interest in courting tech companies run by brown people from Asia or woke progressives in hoodies. So they took their fight to Supreme Court nominations and ratifications, playing dirty in the last days of both Obama and Trump (using directly conflicting logic to validate their actions on each occasion; if A is true, B must be false, but Mitch & the boys just said, “F**k it. Try and stop us.”)

And so while insolent or ignorant Americans drone on about gun rights or Christian values or “they won’t replace us,” Mitch and his cronies chuckle. They’ve secured the six Supreme Court justices, who are either bought and paid for (Kavanaugh) or so backward (Barrett) or both (Thomas) that they can run/ruin this country from beyond the Oval Office. That’s all they ever cared about. They just used those shadow issues to manipulate voters into giving them the seats they needed in Congress (and the White House, for four years) to have their way. They basically slipped a date-rape drug into the conservative Christian American psyche.

Yesterday Clarence “Uncle” Thomas provided a sound byte about “north is north,” that right is right and it’s inalienable. But he wasn’t talking about legal matters. He was talking about values. Which, last we checked the Constitution, is not the Supreme Court’s bailiwick. Never was supposed to be. And here’s the funny thing. North is not necessarily north. It’s completely arbitrary. There’s no outside frame of reference that dictates that the northern hemisphere (where most of the white people are from) should be at the top of the map and the southern (mostly brown people or white colonists from England, Spain, Portugal, Holland) should be at the bottom.

Take four minutes if you have not already seen this clip from The West Wing and change your life/have your mind blown. Chances are that if you are a Democrat—or a centrist/exhausted majority member like me—you’ll be amazed or you’ve already seen it. Chances are that if you’re a conservative you won’t last the full four minutes or you’ll find some way to rebuff it because the last thing most conservatives ever want to do is have the truth alter their politics.