Today's steaming pile of JoePa writing, titled The Gaslighting of Stephen Breyer, is a prime example of two of the things that occur at GLAWKER that really piss me off.
First, they seem to have no idea what the term "gaslighting" means. Gaslighting is "an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim-having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused and less able to trust their own memory and perception." However, GLAWKER seems to use a far different definition. Their definition of gaslighting appears to be "when someone we don't like says something that we don't like."
Second, I can't fucking stand seeing people like JoePa and KKRR who have accomplished exactly jack shit in the legal field attacking Supreme Court justices. Whether you agree with their judicial philosophy or not, every one of them has an impressive list of accomplishments in the legal field.
Last week when Justices Barrett and Thomas both gave speeches where they stated that Supreme Court justices aren't partisan hacks, the folks at GLAWKER completely lost their shit. They're still complaining about it this week. Now JoePa claims that all of this is a sophisticated effort by the conservative justices to gaslight Stephen Breyer, who apparently JoePa views as some sort of Faulkerian idiot manchild.
As Justice Breyer traipses across the media trying to sell his actually pretty terrible book, the slice of America worried about pedestrian concerns like “voting rights” and “women’s autonomy” seems more than a little irate. That an 83-year-old man closing in on 30 years of service on the Supreme Court would refuse to retire to allow his successor to be chosen by a generally centrist president backed by a slim and certainly fleeting Senate majority would push the definition of hubris to new heights had we not just watched an 87-year-old cancer survivor do the exact same thing with tragic results.
Or maybe Breyer does reach a new benchmark of hubris because, unlike Justice Ginsburg, he has the benefit of having watched what happened to her and he still elects to do nothing.
Those two paragraphs are pretty unhinged. I could do several posts regarding everything that JoePa said. However, the only thing I'll say about it is that the only hubris that I see is a man(?) who was a failure in the practice of law personally attacking one of the most accomplished jurists of his generation because Breyer doesn't do what JoePa wants. Here's some reality for you Joe: Justice Breyer doesn't owe you or any of your buddies in the chattering classes A FUCKING THING. He can retire whenever the hell he wants.
Of course, it couldn't be as simple as Breyer not being much of a political animal and wanting to retire when he thinks he's ready. It must be those mean old conservative justices.
How could someone who drapes himself in accolades as a “pragmatist” get so disconnected from reality? It’s a question a lot of folks have asked, but the last couple of weeks may have uncovered an answer. It’s not that he “lives in a bubble,” so much as that bubble is aggressively gaslighting him.
It’s not an accident that as soon as Breyer kicked off his book tour, Justice Amy Coney Barrett publicly declared that the Court is not “a bunch of partisan hacks." That she clumsily did so while standing next to Mitch McConnell instead of waiting for a less comical opportunity is a testament to the fact that no one else is going to give her a speaking engagement. Not wanting to be left out, Justice Thomas told Notre Dame students that he’s shocked and saddened that anyone thinks the Supreme Court might be partisan. He told the audience that, for the justices, “you do your job and you go cry alone.” Astoundingly, not a single person appears to have asked the obvious follow-up: “name one instance in your entire judicial career where you’ve made a decision that made you cry.”
Why are these justices pounding the pavement with this message? Because that’s how you keep scales from leaving a fellow justice’s eyes. Make sure that every day, when he shows up at work with the only other eight people who have his job, he’s seeing that they spent their weekend talking about how brilliant his conclusions are. Breyer’s most cynical coworkers are going to great pains to publicly parrot his rhetoric and he’s just lapping it up.
First, I can't imagine any way that you could call what Barrett and Thomas said "gaslighting." I think that they do truly believe that they are applying the law in a way that is non-partisan. People may or may not agree with the way they apply the law, but I've seen them join far more opinions where the outcome wasn't what a "Republican judge" would want than I've seen Kagan or Sotomayor join opinions where the outcomes are contrary to what the woke crowd would want. And even Kagan and Sotomayor piss off the progressives from time to time.
Second, it's really amazing what a low opinion JoePa has for Breyer. JoePa seems to think that Breyer is some sort of simpleton who doesn't understand how the Supreme Court works (after over 30 years there) or how justices are appointed. Obviously he knows what will happen if he dies or retires and the Democrats don't have the whitehouse and a majority in the Senate. I think he also knows that bowing to political pressure to resign would set a terrible precedent and weaken the Supreme Court for future generations. Kudos to him for that.
Finally, and ironically, JoePa's piece of shit article really illustrates the importance of an independent judiciary. Folks like JoePa and KKRR want the Supreme Court to be some sort of Guardian Council. An unelected super-legislature that rights any wrongs (from a progressive perspective only, of course) that may arise through the totally unfair democratic process. Thankfully our Supreme Court justices seem to view their jobs a little differently.
