All Too Real by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

I’ve never had the experience of attending a Comic-Con, and I’ve never—except maybe for Halloween—engaged in cosplay, dressing up like a character from a movie or novel, but it is amazing to see the detail and craftmanship that goes into some of the cosplay costumes and accessories at these conventions. Some participants dress in groups of characters such as superheroes from The Avengers, or wizards from Harry Potter or crew members or aliens from Star Trek. It’s all very cool. However, since last week, I started to get a nagging feeling that the line between fantasy and reality has somehow been breached and that we are presently living an ugly cosplay from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

For the uninitiated (where on Middle-Earth have you been?), The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy series about a mythic land called Middle-Earth which is populated by hobbits, elves, dwarves, wizards, orcs, and (gasp) men. An evil entity, Sauron, is seeking to control the population of this land through the evil power embedded in a series of rings that he forged. Nine were given to men, seven to the Dwarves, three to the Elves, and nine to men. The rings were controlled by the one ring, owned by Sauron, and were designed to ultimately force those who wore them to do his evil bidding. The story unfolds as an epic power struggle between good and evil with the one ring of power at its center.

The nine humans who received the rings from Sauron were kings whose greed and lust for eternal life blinded them to the power that ultimately seduced them into evil. They became the Nazgul, or Ringwraiths, the most powerful of Sauron’s evil servants. Once good and just rulers, they were taken over by the power of the ring and become horrible ghostly apparitions striking terror into the hearts of all good people.

I started getting this feeling that we had been transported into a cosplay during the unveiling of the latest SCOTUS decisions. Here, as in Lord of the Rings, were nine servants dressed in black, originally appointed to serve the best interests of the people of their lands—and they had originally done a good job of it.

Over the years, these guardians of the law protected and extended the rights of the American people. In Roe -v- Wade, they secured the right for a woman to control her own body. In Harper -v- Virginia State Board of Elections, the SCOTUS protected the 1965 Voting Right Act by abolishing the poll tax and otherwise protecting the election processes. In the landmark Gideon -v- Wainwright and Miranda -v- Arizona cases, they protected due process rights granted to every American citizen afforded under the Constitution. In their Loving -v- Virginia judgement, they assured that interracial marriage was legal. Like the nine kings in The Lord of the Rings trilogy before accepting the rings of power, these were good and just arbiters of the law.

Then the institution of SCOTUS was seduced and perverted by the greed and avarice of those who would rule over all. Through years of careful stacking of Supreme Court justices (see Cavanaugh and Coney-Barrett), as well as the impediment of the Supreme Court justice nomination of the honorable Merrick Garland, they all but guaranteed that the SCOTUS majority would be under their thumbs. In all fairness (jumping back to the real world), it should be notes that not all the SCOTUS justices have been corrupted by those who would seek to roll back civil rights, but they are helpless facing a majority of those who will do anything to serve those in power.

Some, like Justice Clarence Thomas, have been accepting gifts and expensive vacations from conservative donor Harlan Crow for years. His wife Ginny has been linked to ultra-conservative political groups and was “secretly paid tens of thousands of dollars in 2012 by a political-advocacy group that not long after submitted a brief in a case that was before the Court.” (The New Yorker). That’s known as tilting the playing field. Neil Gorsuch failed to disclose a property sale to the chief executive of Greenburg Traurig, a law firm which has brought a number of cases before the high court.

Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife at one point worked as a legal recruiter, and happened to place candidates in some of the firms that had business before SCOTUS, raising ethical concerns. Add to this the Senate confirmation process of both Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Both candidates refused to opine on issues like climate change, the separation of families at the border, abortion, but Barrett had said she supported the doctrines of the Catholic Church and was non-committal about upholding Roe -v- Wade. According to FactCheck.org, both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were less than forthright about their intentions concerning the precedent. Clarence Thomas was confirmed in 1991 despite allegations of sexual harassment by law school professor Anita Hill.

While decrying the stacking of courts with liberal judges by Democrats, Republicans have been doing precisely that for years. Former president Donald Trump said openly (surprise on that one) that he wanted a Supreme Court that would overturn Obamacare. As of yet, that has not happened. Instead, he has, along with his cronies Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and others) established a court that has—for the first time in its history—taken away rights from its citizens. They have followed the conservative doctrine of the far right, ignoring legal precedent and constitutional guarantees in the process. Like the nine kings in The Lord of The Rings, they have turned to the allure of fame and fortune at the expense of the general welfare.

The conservative majority of SCOTUS consists of Justices Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch. To their credit, the liberal minority of Justices Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan are ethically sound, having not engaged in any questionable practices involving illicit gifts or conflicts of interest, but they are at the mercy of the conservative majority. While this is a departure from Black Riders analogy from The Lord of The Rings, other elements of this situation are consistent with that trope.

There is a vast evil looming over the land, much as there was in Middle Earth. A malignant being is still, even after his first defeat, still seeking to rule over all. He has already controlled the minds of millions of people, raised an army in a failed attempt to take over the crown, and is now in exile in mysterious land called Mar-a-Lago, biding his time and scoffing at those who would bring him to justice. Many, including the majority of SCOTUS, are still under his thrall. Somehow, for the Republican Party, he still holds the “one ring to rule them all.”

So, next time you’re attending a Comic Con, take a very close look at the Middle-Earth cosplayers, particularly the Nazgul. You may happen to catch a glimpse of one who bears a close resemblance to Brett Kavanaugh, or Amy Coney Barrett, or Neal Gorsuch. Look to the South, toward the land of Florida. You might catch a glimpse of the all-seeing Eye of Sauron.

As in The Lord of the Rings, the once noble, black-robed bastions of justice have turned to the dark side, but they—unlike those fictional kinds—may someday be held accountable. Maybe.

Perhaps, somehow, we have entered a realm like Middle Earth where good and evil are engaged in a fight to the death. Perhaps fantasy has become reality—all too dire a reality, but if that’s the case, if life imitates art, perhaps good will once again prevail. For now, however, it is all too real.

All Too Real

By Geoff Carter

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By Geoff Carter

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