By David K. Shipler
It’s too
bad that Supreme Court justices and other government leaders aren’t required to
live for two or three years in some dictatorship before they take office in the
United States. Better yet, in one of the countries that have used democracy to
undermine democracy. Then perhaps they would recognize the signs of a gathering
storm, when the friction of the air seems to change and the wind turns ominous.
The
Supreme Court and the Republican Party are laying the ground for autocracy.
They are corrupting the constitutional interplay among the three branches of
government, among the shared and competing interests in a complex society, and
therefore among the rulers and the ruled.
The Republicans have abdicated the key role that political parties must play in every free society—filtering out extremist demagogues. And the radical right on the Supreme Court has now granted broad immunity to presidents who commit crimes with “official acts.” This junction of political and judicial mischief could not come at a more perilous time, with a Republican authoritarian poised to return to the presidency carrying a coherent ideological blueprint he did not have in hand his first time around. He would commit felonies against democracy virtually unfettered. This is the perfect storm.
