A Narcissistic Disaster of a Supreme Court

The cruelty is the point

Deceased Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said that she used as a mnemonic device or rule of thumb, the question, “Does it ring true?” when assessing a case and rendering a judgment. As I digest the dishing out of Supreme Court judgments issued this week with wide ranging implications from affirmative action, to student loan forgiveness, to LGBTQ and likely beyond to other minority groups, I can't help but consider a gut instinct response along the lines of RBG’s blink insights to this judicial, upending avalanche: these judgments don’t ring true. There is a feeling of fallaciousness and false premise that rings hollow and suspect.

It doesn't help matters that 50 years of judicial precedent in Roe v. Wade was overturned by this Court in favor of Dobbs last summer, which awarded states’ rights over abortion, thus curtailing access to abortion significantly across America.

This ultra conservative and draconian “Supreme” Court’s approval rating is in the gutter, having plummeted after the disastrous Dobbs ruling on abortion in a time when institutional support is atrophying in general. Yet they can't help themselves in their nihilistic “suicide pact,” likely accelerating their own institutional demise by issuing decrees from on high that are wildly out of step with the nation’s cultural and legal precedents. Here they go attacking this week more marginalized community’s rights, taking a wrecking ball to the very pillars of our civilization on contentious matter after contentious matter that had been previously long fought for and settled.

First the MAGA Republican Fascists came for women in their war on women. Now this week, the next minority group in line to pick on is those minorities who would benefit from affirmative action, i.e., black and brown people. Then they came for LGBTQ by prioritizing non-LGBTQ individual’s rights over the collective when they determined that a straight, Christian website designer would not be compelled by law in a hypothetical scenario, no less, to design a wedding website for same-sex couples. We are in trouble culturally when we are laying real-life legal predicates based on hypotheticals, i.e., imagined scenarios.

These Supreme Court rulings are narcissistic in that they are judicially self-serving for each justice’s personal agenda and religious worldview that is at odds with the majority of secular or even moderately religious Americans. The Supreme Court is meant to reflect our collective values, not maliciously and contemptuously take a cudgel to them.

The Supreme Court is a microcosm of the American macrocosm, a small slice of life, yet this institution wields an inordinate influence on the contours of American life. Three of the nine justices were granted their lifetime appointment under the jurisdiction and direction of President Trump, whose narcissism continues to percolate and rear its head through society through the agency and directives of these judges, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett. Of course, Trump would choose justices painted after his own image. Women are dying, and routinely nearly dying, as a result of the disastrous Dobbs decision.

Narcissism is a fantasy defense writ large and gone awry and is existential by definition. The Supreme Court justices demonstrate no regard, allegiance or obligation to on the ground realities and societal cohesion. In fact, they seem hell-bent to distort and contort our society into their own narrow-minded and solipsistic (self-referential) vision. These rulings benefit select individuals rather than the public at large and demonstrate strong narcissistic leanings rather than the magnanimity that comes with thinking about what benefits the many over the few.

Individual rights do not trump collective rights. A harmonizing Supreme Court would not pit ordinary Americans against ordinary Americans on a case by case basis on whether or not a prospective customer is welcome in an established business. This court of supposed good and honorable judgment is (de)generating a downward spiral of maliciousness, which will coarse through the arteries of our society as business transactions will be dripping in culture wars, bigotry and hate.

None of us like everything about American life, yet we go along to get along for the most part. These rulings invite discord and thus, chaos with individual one-off arbitrations legitimizing bigotry, hatefulness and divisiveness all because of and ostensibly justified by a selfish libertarian ideology elevating individual rights under the banner of freedom of speech over social cohesion.

Freedom of speech used to emphasize freedom within bounds as long as no harm was done. These rulings sow discord and fractiousness, which is harming and harmful and goes against the grain of societal norms with a vicious stroke of the pen, detonating systematized backlash and thereby, revealing a lack of a stable core in the body politic.

Narcissists are amoral and also lack a stable core. Narcissists have what's called a schizoid empty core, where there’s nobody home, just howling winds of vicissitudes, in this case, ricocheting and reverberating throughout society. The goalposts shift, and there's capriciousness and arbitrariness.

Unfair and unjust societies are ripe for revolution and dismantling of civilization. When laws are architected based on imagined, fantasy-based, fraught scenarios, the building blocks of society are absent terra firma. The foundation of these legal building blocks is shifting sand with no anchoring to past precedents and no respect for how we arrived at these previously settled conclusions. We are losing our collective bearings. This is what it means to live in a narcissistic age.