Whelp here we are. What now?

[Image description: people dressed in red garb, white bonnets, and red masks, like the Handmaids from A Handmaid’s Tale. Source/credit]

Whelp here we are. It’s one week until the election, 66,000,000 Americans have already voted, and Amy Coney Barrett has been fully ramrod confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice. Mitch McConnell and his ilk are dancing on the ashes of any last vestiges of the US “democracy.” ABC is already acting like the fascist appointee she is, in lock step with a man trying to be a dictator, showing up with clear political allegiances and sycophantic gusto.

As I said yesterday, if you care about basically any basic rights, you should be beyond concerned. We’re in trouble, y’all. 

The good (ha) news is that Democrats do have a path forward for addressing this. (Side note: needing to depend on Democrats for big actions like this makes me...........................even more scared, but trying to deal w/ what the truth is and what we must stare in the face.) We’ve got a lifetime appointed 6/9 fundie conservative supermajority sitting on the bench. But again, the powers that be are invested in you and I NOT KNOWING how the political structures work, so we MUST know how the political structures work.

You’ve undoubtedly heard that the only way to ensure that the fundie supermajority doesn’t strip away dozens of basic fundamental rights, is to “pack the court.”  This is both correct and a false framing. The TRUTH is that the legislature/presidency DO have the power to correct the unethical court packing that Republicans have been doing for years. The false framing that is occurring is acting like *this* act would be a threat to our “democracy.” That’s bullshit. Learn about this so that you can help people who don’t have good information learn the truth.  Here are some resources that I hope will help.

1. Republicans ‘Packed’ The Courts; Democrats Must ‘Unpack’ The Courts

2. Boom! Lawyered: Amy Coney Barrett Is Confirmed. Does the Law Even Matter Anymore?

3. Republicans have already pack state supreme courts

4. The Democrats’ Supreme Court Hail Mary: This is the progressive case for court packing in a nutshell: “If your wallet is stolen, you don’t forgo efforts to recover it just because it might be stolen again.”

5. The Supreme Court as an institution

6. US Supreme Court is headed for a dramatic 2021. Here are 5 things that could change 

The moral of the story is this...we don’t have to be victim to the tyranny that Republicans have codified in the court systems. There ARE powers afforded to the other 2 branches to balance this shit out. They are not extreme or unjust, they are EXACTLY what is needed to correct the egregious wrongs that have been done to the system.