Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy – who has for more than a year been the sole impediment to total domination of the court by a cabal of 18th-century-worshiping jurists – announced last week that he’s retiring, leaving in limbo the highest tribunal in the land, the ultimate defender of our laws, our liberties and our way of life.
It was genuinely heart-breaking to many of us, because we know he will be replaced by someone whose major qualification will be – as the president always demands – loyalty to Donald Trump.
It will be the most recent move in an assault on genuine American values and principles that the government-of-by-and-for-Trump has been mounting for the last 17 months.
And it’s been a busy year and a half.
A steady stream of only marginally qualified – and at times utterly unqualified – people, chosen for their fealty to Trump, have been put in charge of vast vital agencies with billion-dollar budgets, and we’re seeing the results.
Gutting the EPA and innumerable laws protecting our air, land and water. Turning the Department of Energy into a caterer to fossil fuel industries while stifling alternative sources of power. Decimating Health and Human Services and putting it and the Education Department more and more under the control of political zealots and religious fundamentalists. Offering the rich natural resources hitherto safeguarded by the Interior Department to the depredations of those who would strip and destroy our irreplaceable assets.
And so it has gone internationally as well, with Trump treating our traditional allies in Europe, Asia and our own hemisphere as if they are little better than obnoxious and free-loading poor relatives while cozying up to despots and dictators, rulers who don’t hesitate to use power, violence and even cold-blooded murder of their own citizens to maintain their holds on their countries. And who would turn on our country in a heartbeat if it were to their advantage.
We are jettisoning friends who have unfailingly come to our side when we’ve needed them (and we to theirs) while we open our arms to those who would kill us in our sleep.
Now we’re sucked into a national “debate” about civility because a few presidential appointees – who happily promote and implement some of his outrageously uncivil policies – have been treated rudely in public.
Please. These are people who willingly parrot and defend the president’s decisions, even when those positions are inhumane and perhaps even illegal. Yeah, I’m talking about poor defenseless and persecuted Sarah Huckabee Sanders. We’ve all seen her treat working reporters doing their jobs as if they were something nasty she should step over on the sidewalk, and she doesn’t hesitate to repeat Trump’s lies.
Small wonder she and the rest are scorned. They willingly work for a man for whom belittling, denigrating, mocking and lying to people he doesn’t like or feels to be his inferiors is as natural – and frequent – as breathing.
And now, in the latest horror, small children are being taken, literally, from the arms of their mothers and fathers. Refugees – who historically have found shelter and safety on our shores – are being told at the border that there is no longer room for them here. If they persist, they’re taken into custody and their children taken away and housed God knows where.
All this because of a xenophobic – and temporary – Oval Office resident.
A friend, reflecting on it, said that perhaps Trump’s government – which is busy setting up places it calls, creepily, Tender Age Shelters for children taken from their parents – has a good idea. Maybe it could come up with safe harbors for older Americans who are stunned and horrified at what is going on. They could be dubbed Brittle Age Shelters.
Such is life now here in the (so far) land of the free and the brave.
But if this country has survived the last 242 years – filled with all manners of horror, from a variety of terrible wars, including a bloody national conflagration that threatened to dissolve our union, to any number of physical disasters and financial crises – we can survive four years of a power-happy and profoundly ignorant president.
Even if craven leaders of a once grand old party – whose name and reputation he has seriously tarnished – cynically abet and applaud him, his name will have a prominent place of disgrace in our country’s long history.
So keep that in mind, and remember those ordinary people who’ve made our lives here possible. Have a cookout this glorious national holiday, go on a long hike or relax on one of our wonderful lakes. Enjoy your family and friends.
Watch a parade brimming over with proud veterans, fire trucks and antique cars, high school bands and proudly marching Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Or even walk in one yourself, along with half the town.
Remember how we got here. And have a happy, carefree Fourth of July.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)