Five or six of them are in a world where they have a very narrow set of social contacts with America, let alone the outside world.

Summary

Historian Timothy Snyder warns that the U.S. Supreme Court’s reliance on originalism and its detachment from “factuality” risk undermining its legitimacy, especially in a politically charged environment.

Speaking on the Amicus podcast, Snyder argues that the justices’ insular worldview may lead to decisions that disregard public sentiment and the rule of law, potentially provoking backlash against the Court.

He also critiques the Court’s approach to free speech, which he says prioritizes corporate rights over individual freedoms, distorting the First Amendment by equating corporate influence and dark money with free speech, rather than protecting the voices of ordinary citizens.

  • @GoofSchmoofer
    2•1 month ago

    Why all the hush-hush and meekness?

    My feeling on this is that once an American politician gets established, they have won a few elections back to back, they start to gain influence and power. This then changes their view of their job. While it may have been to make changes to a system for the betterment of the citizenry early on, the increase in power and influence weirdly changes them and they become scared of losing their job.

    With this change from “I’m here for my country” to “I’m here to have power and influence” they become more weak and more of a sycophant to those that have the money. If they start to rock the boat, speak out against the oligarchs, then there is a chance they will lose their seat of power and influence.

    • SkilurosEnglish
      1•1 month ago

      That’s true everywhere though. No one is expecting anyone to be some a superhuman. But there is a time and place for everything. Or otherwise you’re going to keep losing and there could potentially be disastrous outcomes (de facto loss of democracy is not off the table IMO, it is common for authoritarians who come to power by democratic means to solidify their rule in their second term - you don’t even need Trump to go for a 3rd term as long as the system remains).

      From my perspective (and I could be wrong), the democratic party has not had the initiative in almost quarter of a century. Last time was Obama, but he turned out to be a shallow oligarch shill. I lived in the US during Bush/Obama. If they wanted to they could have passed normal comprehensive government healthcare coverage. The US healthcare sector is deeply corrupt [*], they could have used that to their advantage by publicly pressuring individuals who were undermining this goal in a explicit. Or what about the fact that not a single finance executive went to jail during the Great Recession?

      Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to lecture people (our country has it’s own deep rooted issues), but inflection points don’t just happen without any action.

      And I will speculate that Trump’s second term will be a good opportunity to hit this inflection point.

      • When I lived in the US, I was curious why so many hospitals are “non-profit” and yet the system works didn’t seem to have any “non-profit” principles. From the research I did, it turns out the “non-profit” piece is a tax fraud scheme, many hospitals system only do nominal “non-profit” work. Another area is drug pricing; clearly captured by oligarch interests. I will speculate the health insurance industry is also rife with corruption and general malicious intent.