Conservatives started forcing a talking point in the 80s and 90s that all the courts are liberal activists, despite that not being remotely true. So they spend 30 to 40 years building a strategy to stack the courts and hyper politicize them so they can force through undemocratic measures. I watched it happen and how it was constantly talked about, I grew up in a very politically active conservative family.
So they successfully stacked the courts, even outright lying to the American public to hold up Garlands nomination to the Supreme Court. As a result democrats have scrambled the past 4 years to confirm their own slew of judges, in order to prevent the courts from becoming a political wing of the republican party. So now we have hyper polarized courts. Judges have always had political biases, but this new wave of judges have well outlined partisan goals, like a politician running for office. It’s had a hugely negative effect on American law, like the conservative Supreme Court ignoring SB. 8 in Texas. An obviously corrupt and illegal use of the law that ignores a couple hundred years of jurisprudence.
Because Republicans long ago stopped campaigning on normal political issues and began fighting a culture war instead. The result is that a whole ton of things that shouldn’t be political issues at all somehow are.
They did the same with the so-called “liberal media”.
They repeated that phrase so much that they were able to discredit any claims the media made against Republicans and Republican interests. It’s pretty easy to just yell “oh, they’re biased, the story is a lie”.
Along with that grew right wing news media as a powerful entity. It really was a brilliant strategy where they could completely discredit the mass media when they stated a Republican did something, and then on the flip side the conservative press would simply not report on those events. Or they’d play them down. Or similar spin.
In effect they created two realities.
This is one of the reasons why when you meet a really hard core Republican they seem to be from an alternate universe because for literally decades now, they’ve been fed one lie or half-truth.
It doesn’t help either that much of the mass media is indeed garbage, but most of it has a pro-corporate vibe than ever really being pro-liberal. Even amongst the mass media, few are legitimately left of center.
But there you go, that’s what you get when you politicize things…
It is incredibly frustrating though to see this shit happening and in all that time, Democrats have never been able to build a way to attack the Right.
Conservatives started forcing a talking point in the 80s and 90s that all the courts are liberal activists, despite that not being remotely true. So they spend 30 to 40 years building a strategy to stack the courts and hyper politicize them so they can force through undemocratic measures. I watched it happen and how it was constantly talked about, I grew up in a very politically active conservative family.
So they successfully stacked the courts, even outright lying to the American public to hold up Garlands nomination to the Supreme Court. As a result democrats have scrambled the past 4 years to confirm their own slew of judges, in order to prevent the courts from becoming a political wing of the republican party. So now we have hyper polarized courts. Judges have always had political biases, but this new wave of judges have well outlined partisan goals, like a politician running for office. It’s had a hugely negative effect on American law, like the conservative Supreme Court ignoring SB. 8 in Texas. An obviously corrupt and illegal use of the law that ignores a couple hundred years of jurisprudence.
Damn, same strategy with school boards. Why the fuck do we care what political party they are aligned with?
If your goal is to conserve wealth and power, disenfranchising those who have the ability to hinder you is a solid strategy.
Because Republicans long ago stopped campaigning on normal political issues and began fighting a culture war instead. The result is that a whole ton of things that shouldn’t be political issues at all somehow are.
i.e., divide --> stir up chaos --> conquer
They did the same with the so-called “liberal media”.
They repeated that phrase so much that they were able to discredit any claims the media made against Republicans and Republican interests. It’s pretty easy to just yell “oh, they’re biased, the story is a lie”.
Along with that grew right wing news media as a powerful entity. It really was a brilliant strategy where they could completely discredit the mass media when they stated a Republican did something, and then on the flip side the conservative press would simply not report on those events. Or they’d play them down. Or similar spin.
In effect they created two realities.
This is one of the reasons why when you meet a really hard core Republican they seem to be from an alternate universe because for literally decades now, they’ve been fed one lie or half-truth.
It doesn’t help either that much of the mass media is indeed garbage, but most of it has a pro-corporate vibe than ever really being pro-liberal. Even amongst the mass media, few are legitimately left of center.
But there you go, that’s what you get when you politicize things…
It is incredibly frustrating though to see this shit happening and in all that time, Democrats have never been able to build a way to attack the Right.
I see, I would love to look into it more when I get the time. It seems quite a bad way to elect and ‘independent’ judiciary.