Who is Paying for Dinner?

 

I think it's a gosh darn shame that the beer-loving scamp of the current SCOTUS line-up was forced to flee Morton's Steak House before dessert was served because of the outrage of nearby protesters, but as we all know, the word "restaurant" appears nowhere in the Constitution and after all, it's not like anyone has a right to privacy, right? Freedom of speech, check. Freedom to peaceably assemble--check. Freedom to eat a steak and not be reminded that you decided a case in a way that has doctors playing chicken with the reaper before being able to determine whether to render care to a miscarrying pregnant person in crisis because of the legal liability you helped impose on them? No. 

No. I don't see how Brett Kavanaugh has that right.  He has the privilege to make that kind of decision, and his nomination to the bench was financially backed by people who strongly expected that was exactly the kind of decision he would render, even if he did not say as much during his Senate hearing. All the same, he does not get to escape the world in which his decision has consequences. Any more than a pregnant 10 year old does. 

Now, a person who carried a grudge like a piece of shrapnel in their guts might wonder a lot of things about Kavanaugh--but I will just ask this blogpost's titular question: Who is paying for dinner? 

Because while I understand that there have been many people available to say grace with our conservative SCOTUS justices, that's a privilege they have extended to just a few--albeit people who had cases before the bench, which is most troubling. But it also appears that there has been a cadre of hard-right religious wealthy people who have been available to wine and dine the conservative justices as well. And leave them well-buttered-up to render decisions favorable to the hard, theocratic right, it definitely appears.  (Operation, Hire Court, more like.)

I don't know how many of my readers have worked in government service, but there are generally clear ethics guidelines regarding not just not taking outright bribes, but also avoiding the appearance of any impropriety regarding one's job, from refusing gifts, to even refusing discounts for goods and services and paying your own bill for restaurant meals and making damn sure you keep a receipt. Except for the SCOTUS: they don't have anyone holding them to those rules. 

I'm not a newborn child, so I know perfectly well such folks as "true-believers" exist, and it's damn possible that the justices that overturned Roe did so completely pure of heart and unswayed by any theocratic baksheesh. They may have engaged in a little pious misdirection to get on the Court in the first place, but that was only to follow their hearts' desire--overthrowing secular government and all the machinery thereof to form a more godly union. 

I mean, yeah, that's super messed up that we have a theocracy, and it looks like billionaire Bible-fetishists bought it so that We the People wouldn't have any say about it, but My! how organically it seems to have happened! You hardly notice all the filthy lucre and broken promises and bad faith that got us here. 

Except that it's impossible to forget once you realize it. And I think it's important that all of the conservative justices, and not just Brett Kavanaugh, understand that we too, understand. We also understand that deep in our founding lore is the concept of the consent of the governed, and without that, folks might become ungovernable. It happens when people lose faith in institutions. 

It's worth more than one dinner to see what's on the end of your fork. I suggest they take a long look at the menu and consider whether they are even in the right establishment.  And I also hope they consider whether it's the establishment of a certain church, or the state, that they care to serve.