THE DAY FASCISM APPEARED IN THE SUPREME COURT

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2024

April 26, 2024

Little Rock, Arkansas

  

Yesterday a lawyer stood in the well of the Supreme Court of the United States and boldly declared that a President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution if he/she commits murder, bribery, sedition, conspiracy to overthrow the government, or any other crimes as an “official act.”

The lawyer argued to Justices who refused to focus on the allegations in the indictment issued by a federal grand jury against Donald Trump for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election result, including allegedly suborning false sworn statements about baseless claims that the election was fraudulent.

And he made that argument as the senior Justice, Clarence Thomas, looked down from the bench despite the fact that Virginia “Ginny” Thomas, his wife, was allied with the movement that tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of office in January 2021.

He made that argument before several Justices who have professed to base their rulings on the original intent of the actual words in the U.S. Constitution but who did not challenge him. 

Presidential immunity is nowhere in that document.

The Constitution of the United States prescribes the powers of the President at Article II. Article VI states that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land.

Yet no member of the Supreme Court confronted Trump’s lawyer with those realities. A fascist movement threatens the United States. It is operating in plain sight. Yesterday, it was represented in the Supreme Court. And no Justice, not even those considered “liberal,” said the F word.

This is analogous to frogs sitting in a kettle of water as it furiously boils.

Meanwhile, students in colleges and universities across the nation are being arrested, violently removed from campuses where they live and study, and threatened with suspension or expulsion for peacefully protesting U.S. support for the Israeli fascist apartheid regime that is committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and land theft in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.

I’ve been trying for years to get people to use the F word - fascism - to describe what is happening in this nation. If we cannot see that fascism is growing like a flood in this society we are blind. If we will not say that fascism is growing we are already its captives. 

Prophetic people are supposed to serve like sentries, as moral guides in society. Sentries who will not and do not sound alarms in the face of enemy forces are useless. Eventually, the people whose lives and freedom depend on the faithfulness, valor, and vigilance of those sentries will ask whether the sentries have become allies with invaders.

I want to be known as a faithful sentry. Time will tell whether others show up, sound the alarm, and help defend the society and world from the homegrown fascism that announced its presence in the Supreme Court of the United States, without being challenged by name.

That time is now.