As if we needed more shit piled on the heap of impossible problems confronting us - getting meaningful healthcare reform passed, addressing climate change, rebuilding American manufacturing, restoring the middle-class, re-regulating Wall Street and the financial industry, helping people keep their homes, rebuilding American infrastructure, creating a more progressive tax system, dealing with the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, keeping the dollar sound and stable, prosecuting the Bush regime, preparing for disasters and terrorist attacks, ending the Drug War, resurrecting American education, reforming the prison system, breaking media monopolies, etc. etc. - all progress this nation has ever made, and ever intends to make, is in imminent danger due to five people on the Supreme Court.
Before the Court is a narrow challenge to an FEC ruling against the corporate backers of a Republican smear campaign - backers whose involvement violated McCain-Feingold provisions against "soft money." But rather than treating the case narrowly, as has almost always been the practice with campaign finance law challenges, the apparent conservative majority of the Court - Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts - has decided to broadly address whether the century-long history of federal campaign finance law barring corporate money in elections, and all jurisprudence since then affirming its constitutionality, is valid.
The premise of this broadened focus? The doctrine, having precisely zero constitutional basis, that corporations - chartered businesses permitted to exist on the understanding that they serve the public interest - are in fact persons in themselves and entitled to 1st Amendment protections. The fact that "corporate personhood" is literally not true, and indeed absurd on its face, has been little obstacle to the promulgation of the doctrine in jurisprudence for nearly a century, but until now it has coexisted beside campaign finance laws drawing a strict line between citizens and corporations. Those laws, first precipitated by wanton corruption early in the 20th century, are now in danger due to this preposterous judicial fiction.
As has already been noted today on Daily Kos, and certainly throughout American politics for generations, the doctrine of corporate personhood goes beyond the absurdity of granting citizenship to an abstraction: It gives the individuals who own and operate corporations double rights, having the power to influence elections both as individuals and as constituents of a larger entity.
But beyond the immediate effect of flooding our electoral system with even more money, a Supreme Court affirmation of corporate personhood sets the stage for an outrage that, while it sounds far-fetched at the moment, would become increasingly realistic: If a corporation is indeed a person entitled to all the rights of citizenship, then they are ipso facto also entitled to vote. Every corporation you own or operate, whether it is a real business or just a name on a P.O. box, then becomes another vote you can cast - meaning individuals who can afford the fees and paperwork to proliferate front entities would be able to translate their money directly into votes.
Now, I don't believe the Supreme Court will affirm a corporate right to vote any time soon: The people would simply refuse to recognize it, and the states, who are responsible for conducting federal elections, would refuse to count such votes at this time. But thinking further ahead to a time when corporations are buying elections outright, and both state and federal governments are overwhelmingly under their control, it ceases to be an absurdity and takes on the hue of inevitability.
That, however, is not the imminent part of the threat. The most immediate danger, should SCOTUS strike down campaign finance law, is that corporations will instantly flood Washington with money on a level never before seen, before the ink is even dry on the decision, and annihilate the coalition for healthcare reform that President Obama is building. The Republican Party will suddenly have billions of dollars at its direct disposal, as will pro-corporate primary challengers to progressive incumbants, and the 2010 elections will be as good as decided. The propaganda lead-up to the Iraq War will be nothing beside what will follow a decision allowing corporations to spend freely on elections. However much we bemoan the media's presently estranged relationship with reality, the total divorce that will occur in the presence of unfettered corporate campaign spending is not to be imagined.
If they cannot immediately derail our agenda over the next two years, they would simply buy the next two elections and reverse every bit of it. If we succeeded in prosecuting and convicting Bush, Cheney, and their accomplices, the corporate selection for president in 2012 would simply pardon them. If we pass healthcare reform, the Congress they put in power in 2010 would either override a presidential veto of tweaks that neutralized it, or would just wait until 2012 to pass them. Every decision on every issue cited in the introductory paragraph and more will simply be wiped away as if the 2008 election never occurred, leaving us no obvious way to save our republic - and all because of five people.
Should this occur, President Obama cannot save us from this: The case is being heard right now, so even if he had the opportunity to appoint several more Justices in the future, this case would already be decided and the issue would take years to find its way back to the Court through a separate lawsuit. The strongest thing he could do - and I doubt he would do so - would be to declare the ruling illegitimate, and continue to enforce campaign finance laws regardless. Unfortunately, that would provoke a constitutional show-down giving Republicans a technical pretext for demanding impeachment, and though they would never get anywhere near to achieving it, the ensuing fight - both in Washington and between the American people at large - would eclipse all other issues and make progress impossible. What's worse is that provoking such a show-down is the best-case scenario following a pro-corporate decision, because some part of the government would be resisting.
Far more likely, however, is that the Democratic Party would freeze like a deer in headlights, and the Obama administration would begin searching (probably in vain) for ways to forestall and undermine the consequences of the decision without engaging in direct confrontation. They would be, figuratively speaking, limiting themselves to covert action in a situation that had already escalated to all-out war. I, being 100% supportive of this administration, am nonetheless cognizant of how it operates, and I do not believe it could mobilize quickly enough while attempting to form a maximally effective strategy. They would be overwhelmed and inundated, utterly and completely, making this past August's media propaganda campaign look like a pale shadow in comparison. And we, the citizenry, no matter how organized and committed, would not have the resources to come close to fighting it conventionally.
The Supreme Court is not influenced by protests or letters, and there are simply too many corporations - all of them, essentially - who would participate in such a free-for-all for consumer boycotts to be practical. Standing around with signs chanting, writing books, writing letters, making phone calls - none of it would matter. Even if we replicated the fundraising performance of the 2008 election on a regular basis, which comes close to being impossible, we would come nowhere near to matching the resources that would confront us. If the implications of this are not yet clear, allow me to be blunt: Civil war is highly likely if the Supreme Court strikes down America's campaign finance laws.
If five people, all of whom were appointed by Republicans, issue a ruling saying that a corporation is a person and has more rights than the American people; if that decision floods the Republican Party with money after the American people marginalized them at the ballot box, and hands them dominion over our government after We The People took it from them; if that decision dictates the outcome of the next election, and the voice of the people is drowned out by corporate propaganda; I do not see a way out of civil war. And if that occurred, it would not be the side-show "war" that mere right-wing militia terrorism would create: It would be the full-scale leveraging of the American media, financial institutions, significant elements of the military, private armies, and the teabaggers and militia nuts against the weakened republic.
Now, it would be an understatement to say that I am not a hothead, hysteric, or doomer. Those of you familiar with my writings can say this confidently, so you know that I am not saying any of this out of fear fetish or love of outrage. But sometimes events come out of the blue and change the picture radically - sometimes a single, seemingly minor event can change everything, and if the Supreme Court decides as it appears set to do, the republic will hang by a thread. Now, it is not certain the Supreme Court will issue such a ruling, but it seems likely, so we would be wise to begin thinking deep and hard about what to do, even as we continue our work for healthcare reform.
While we cannot affect the decisions of the Supreme Court, we can affect what follows from them, and I personally have no intention of allowing corporations to destroy our democracy. What influence they wield today is already a threat and a challenge to overcome, but I will not tolerate unleashing that madness full-force on the American republic. Think deep and hard about what could be done if these scenarios began to unfold. Please do not talk about fleeing the country or retreating from politics - I am not interested, and neither is any other serious citizen. We may need to mobilize lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and others at various levels of government to denounce the ruling and refuse to accept it as part of legitimate jurisprudence, at the very least.
In the meantime, however, continue the healthcare fight: A corporate blitzkrieg in the event of a favorable ruling would be much more expensive for them in the aftermath of an HCR victory, and would give the American people more of that most precious commodity - time. Time to think, time to mobilize, time to get institutions and political leaders to recognize the danger. If, of course, the ruling goes badly. We can still hope that one of The Five is more American than Republican.