SCOTUS Watching and Quidditch

They reduced workers' rights and gutted the Voting Rights Act.  Then they turned around and made it much easier for same-sex partners to marry.  Do they want us to forget that this is the court that brought us Citizens United, the court that believes money is speech?  I think the marriage equality cases, important as they are, should be seen as an aberration that is incidentally distracting us. In the same week they reduced workers' rights again, this time making it harder to sue over retaliation (as in, losing your job because you tried to form a union).

People have been quoting Theodore Parker about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice, but I don't see it.  It is worth noticing and celebrating that in one specific, really important way, something good is happening.  Still, from Miranda rights to abortion rights, the climate of this court is not inclining in the direction of what I would call justice.

I'm thinking less of Theodore Parker than of J.K.Rowling. Maybe it's like Quidditch, the game played by students at Hogwarts School of Wizardry.  It is played in the air, riding broomsticks. There are two normal-seeming goals, but there are several balls in play at once. There are the bludgers, which can be used for normal scoring, getting one to the appropriate goal.  And there's one special small,, golden, winged thing, the Snitch, whose capture brings so many points all at once that all the bludger goals are irrelevant.  So, say, Citizens United counts as a Snitch capture, making it impossible for normal folk to win elections without the help of billionaires.  Did Griffindor get the Snitch with the two marriage cases this season?  I think the tournament is far from over.

I worry that we might be a team of innocent losers, slogging along, making goals with the bludgers while someone else is catching the snitch.  It's the snitch that decides the game, in the end.  Do we have our eyes on all the balls?

Slytherin might have decided that we can win the culture wars while they complete their control of the wealth.