We grew up in a time when people in the United States gained rights.  In our lifetimes, people gained the right to vote, the right to an abortion, the right to marry whomever they chose.  We grew to accept this as an ordained arc of our nation’s moral growth and destiny.  We’ve forgotten that our nation’s history is very different from this brief period of liberalization that we’ve enjoyed.  We’ve forgotten that, except for the brief period of the Warren court, the U.S. Supreme Court has been an instrument of reaction and oppression since the country was founded.

We’re about to return to that pre-Warren court era.

The constitution limits the powers of the president.  Our anti-democratic congress is controlled by a small, white, rural minority, and is unable to function as an actual legislature.  As a result, all important decisions on government and political issues are today made by the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court is now in the hands of a 6-3 very conservative majority.

The court has already reduced the number of people who can vote, and has signaled that it will go further in ending voting rights when given the chance.  It is about to take away the right to an abortion.  And the court will before long end the right to marry someone of your own sex.  A Republican senator from Indiana recently said that the states should be free to outlaw inter-racial marriage.  That question — whether to overturn Loving v. Virginia —  will also eventually make its way back to the court.

A hundred years from now, historians will look back on this era and recognize that the two most important political figures of our time were Newt Gingrich and Amy Coney Barrett.

It was fun while it lasted, but it’s over.