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Monday
We’ve been so focused on Donald Trump’s coup attempt and his attacks on our election system that we’ve mostly missed a coup that has already made substantial progress. According to Asha Rangappa of the Substack blog Freedom Academy, our Trumpian Supreme Court has begun to (1) pave the way for Trump’s return to the presidency and (2) has revealed how it will support that presidency if Trump prevails. In making her case, the senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs makes powerful use of a Percy Shelley poem.
Shelley’s “Masque of Anarchy” was written in response to the so-called Peterloo Massacre, where calvary charged a demonstration of 60,000 people peacefully protesting high food prices and lack of freedom. Of those 18 died and nearly 700 were severely injured by saber cuts and trampling. Rangappa quotes the following two verses:
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a scepter shone;
On his brow this mark I saw –
‘I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!’
I won’t go into the intricacies of just how much the Supreme Court is proving itself to be in Trump’s corner, but Rangappa focuses on the Court’s ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution if they engage in official conduct and that, in determining whether the conduct is official or unofficial, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. As Rangappa points out,
This is an astonishing statement, because it effectively means that it does not matter if a President uses the official levers of power with corrupt intent, for personal gain, or as retribution. In other words, the Court engages a sleight of hand where a critical distinction between lawful and unlawful conduct — the heart of criminal law, which rests on whether a person acted with a specific state of mind, or mens rea — ceases to exist when it comes to the President. Once this distinction is erased, the office of the presidency is basically a get out of jail free card, enabling the President to do pretty much anything that could plausibly be characterized as “official.”
And who, in the end, would distinguish between whether an act is official or unofficial? Why, Trump’s Supreme Court. In their eyes, the Justice Department’s current prosecutions of Trump are “sham” (thus Trump needs immunity), but Trump, if reelected, would not be prohibited from coming up with “official” reasons for his own Justice Department to prosecute his enemies. As Rashagappa observes, the court “believes in a unitary [all powerful] executive, but only when a Republican is president.”
Shelley’s angry poem shows that judges and the executive authorities are working hand in glove, and to these he adds the church. Given how fundamentalist Christian are getting what they want from both Trump and this Supreme Court, the poem is even more relevant.
Shelley was in Italy when the Peterloo massacre occurred and so wrote,
As I lay asleep in Italy,
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
First he calls out Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, the repressive government minister largely associated with the Peterloo crackdown:
I met Murder on the way–
He had a mask like Castlereagh–
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him.
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew…
Next there’s the judiciary:
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
And then the church, with a side glance at Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth:
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
All of which culminates in the image of Anarchy riding in that Rangappa cites. And when Anarchy rides in on his white horse, he is embraced by many of the same types who are embracing Trump—which is to say, lawyers (the Federalist Society, responsible for stacking the Supreme Court) and priests (fundamentalist preachers):
For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
`Thou art God, and Law, and King.
We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.’
Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud,
Whispering — `Thou art Law and God.’ —
Then all cried with one accord,
`Thou art King, and God, and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!’
Shelley does manage to end his poem on an optimistic note. The Peterloo massacre was so horrific, he says, that those in power will be ashamed. Furthermore, they will lose the support of potential allies—members of the military who fought against Napoleon—who “will turn to those who would be free, “Ashamed of such base company.” Finally, the massacre will wake up and inspire those who have slumbered:
`And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.
`And these words shall then become
Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again — again — again–
`Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number–
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you–
Ye are many — they are few.’
Awaking to stop our own judges means voting in a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress since only by doing so can the rogue judiciary be stopped. And if judicial plotting is not enough to get you to the polls, check out the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” MAGA’s fascist plans should Trump regain the White House.
Plans which his Supreme Court appears to see as its mission to bring to fruition.
