Who Will Protect Us From the Supreme Court?

12/06/23 • 63 min

1 Listener

The Supreme Court is at it again! This current season of the American Hunger Games, also known as a Supreme Court session, could be as disastrous for the American people and great for the far-right donor class since Citizens United.

Here to help us make sense of the firehose of corruption coming out of the nation’s highest court is Jesse Eisinger, a senior editor and investigative reporter for ProPublica and author of "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives." Eisinger edited and led the team of journalists who produced several investigations exposing the massive bribes— we mean, the totally unethical and impeachable financial entanglements of Republican-appointed justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The discussion includes why Republicans build war chests to capture our courts for generations and why Democrats continue to have no strategy in response; why the DOJ let Wall Street off the hook for tanking our global economy and what that means for whether Trump and his co-conspirators will also get away with their crimes and corruption, and how to push back against elite criminal impunity in a time of historic income inequality—worse than the Gilded Age.

This week’s bonus episode will answer questions from listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher on Patreon. Andrea will also share some colorful insights from someone who had to work with Russian oligarchs back in the car bomb 1990s in Russia. For our Patreon community, Mark your calendar for the January 18th, 8 pm ET social media workshop to help us get in gear for raising our voices as we head into another make-it-or-break-it election year for our democracy and, therefore, the world

Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to join our community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit

Show Notes:

Urgent call-to-action from Razom for Ukraine: Call your representative and ask them to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine. More info for taking quick action here: https://www.votervoice.net/RAZOMFORUKRAINE/Campaigns/107413/Respond

How to Volunteer in Ukraine https://www.volunteeringukraine.com/

How to Visit Ukraine https://visitukraine.today/

Make a tax deductible donation to the Berliner Odessa Express https://www.we-aid.org/en/initiatives/berlinodessaexpress/

Short film by Rick Minnich on the Berliner Odessa Express: “We Are Here” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjzAsCG--6I

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-other-billionaires-sokol-huizenga-novelly-supreme-court

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-secretly-attended-koch-brothers-donor-events-scotus

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority

The Parallax View (Journalistic thriller recommended by Jesse Eisinger)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View

Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court

https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court

It’s Not Personal: Why Clarence Thomas’ Trip to the Koch Summit Undermines His Ethics Defense

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-koch-network-trips-disclosure-law-scotus

Citizens for Ethics: “Republicans are promising to unleash a whirlwind of 150 subpoenas on allies of Democrats if Senator Durbin moves forward with a subpoena of Harlan Crow in his Supreme Court ethics investigation. That threat just shows how powerful Harlan Crow really is.”

https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1730195116663394757?t=-epurOECtmwyOyu6rjyEgQ&s=19

New Supreme Court Ethics Code Is Designed to Fail

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-supreme-court-ethics-code-designed-fail

...

Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to join our community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit

Show Notes:

How to Volunteer in Ukraine https://www.volunteeringukraine.com/

How to Visit Ukraine https://visitukraine.today/

Make a tax deductible donation to the Berliner Odessa Express https://www.we-aid.org/en/initiatives/berlinodessaexpress/

Short film by Rick Minnich on the Berliner Odessa Express: “We Are Here” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjzAsCG--6I

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-secretly-attended-koch-brothers-donor-events-scotus

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority

The Parallax View (Journalistic thriller recommended by Jesse Eisinger)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View

Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court

https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court

It’s Not Personal: Why Clarence Thomas’ Trip to the Koch Summit Undermines His Ethics Defense

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-koch-network-trips-disclosure-law-scotus

https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1730195116663394757?t=-epurOECtmwyOyu6rjyEgQ&s=19

New Supreme Court Ethics Code Is Designed to Fail

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-supreme-court-ethics-code-designed-fail

...

Previous Episode

Kissinger Kaput: A Gaslit Nation Celebration [TEASER]

Putin lost a longtime friend and confidant, the only American statesman he respected and admired. Why might these two have hit if off? War criminal Henry Kissinger, like Putin, was responsible for millions of deaths and backing some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The foreign policy establishment here in the U.S. and in Europe have blood on their hands for normalizing Kissinger, like Putin, for far too long.

For a refresher on Kissinger’s legacy, which was revealed to be even worse than previously known, listen to the Gaslit Nation spring 2023 interview with investigative journalist Nick Turse on his reporting for The Intercept into the generational trauma of Kissinger in Cambodia. Not content to prolong the Vietnam war, Kissinger spread the conflict to formally neutral Cambodia, helping bring to power the repressive Khmer Rouge. Add to that his enabling of genocides in East Timor and Bangladesh, as well as backing dictators and murder squads in Latin America. It’s obvious why he was also a fan of Trump. All this is to say, where were you when you first heard the news that Kissinger will no longer be advising other war criminals, and how did you celebrate?

Andrea shares a story of spotting Kissinger at a party while holding a throwable glass of wine in her hand, and why it’s important to celebrate the demise of war criminals–that’s how you build a culture to prevent future war criminals. The Patreon-only portion of this week’s bonus episode features comments and questions from our listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher. Topics range from turning our current rollercoaster of living history into the next Nineteen Eighty-Four, celebrating our acts of civil resistance, books to read to find your voice in the world, and more! To join the conversation, sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit.

Show Notes:

Henry Kissinger, responsible for millions of deaths, dies at 100 https://theintercept.com/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-death/

Henry Kissinger: ‘If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic.’ https://forward.com/culture/470300/kissinger-at-100-if-it-were-not-for-the-accident-of-my-birth-i-would-be/

Alex Gibney Documentary: The Trials of Henry Kissinger https://www.amazon.com/Trials-Henry-Kissinger-Eugene-Jarecki/dp/B00A9IFSBY

Kissinger on the Nixon tapes https://youtu.be/OKoqIqQ0E08?si=vV7uM8nNwyPiHoMI

Kissinger, a longtime Putin confidant, sidles up to Trump https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-kissinger-russia-putin-232925

Andrea’s celebratory tweet: What is the first thing Satan said to Kissinger? https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa/status/1730055040985874722?t=UftX3tgzsaT9HQzlkzYbMw&s=19

Monty Python song “Henry Kissinger”: https://youtu.be/ABeGhyAD_DM?si=3t1FR3jsar78sqKv

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ck0.uBQX.Rdb-cCaQzu18&hpgrp=k-abar&smid=url-share

Next Episode

Weapons of Mass Distraction [TEASER]

This experiment brings to mind more recent ones in Russia, where there were deliberate efforts to breed both aggressive and docile rats. One Gaslit Nation listener wondered if Russian botfarms are deliberately "engineering" (inciting) aggressive Americans and also docile ones in their disinformation warfare to further divide us. The theory suggests that docile and distracted Americans would be less likely to resist against the aggressive ones. Research into hybrid warfare points to distraction as a powerful tool of disinformation waged by foreign adversaries. (The West has its own history of this, using CIA-funded art and culture to directly challenge Soviet ideology. There's a great book that captures that time called The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters.)

All that and more, including Venezuela’s threats to annex an oil-rich region of Guyana, which would worsen the refugee crisis on our southern border, is discussed in this week’s bonus episode. If you didn’t hear your question answered this week, look out for it next week as the Gaslit Nation Q&A continues! Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!

Under Stalin, in their quest to build a Soviet utopia, the Bolsheviks turned to eugenics. With the goal of breeding humans with apes, they aimed to successfully prove Darwin was right and that religion was indeed the "opium of the masses." Their human-ape hybrids would be engineered to be a super species—communally driven, designed with positive traits to build a flourishing communist society. Needless to say, the experiment failed, and many chimpanzees kidnapped from Africa died in the process.

Join the conversation by signing up at Patreon.com/Gaslit

Show Notes:

Get your ‘Tis the Season to Prosecute Treason T-shirt featuring an original design by Hamish Smyth! http://tee.pub/lic/_vLBHBoWkeg

Nice Rats, Nasty Rats: Maybe It’s All in the Genes https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/nice-rats-nasty-rats-maybe-its-all-in-the-genes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Israel and Palestine: A Political Solution https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2023/10/18/israel-palestine-political-solution

Kremlin says Putin is healthy, laughs off body double rumours https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-rejects-speculation-that-putin-is-ill-uses-body-doubles-2023-10-24/

The Russian Government Once Funded a Scientist’s Quest To Make an Ape-Human Hybrid In 1926, a famed Russian biologist was “hell-bent” on creating an ape-human hybrid https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-russian-government-once-funded-a-scientists-quest-to-make-an-ape-human-hybrid-5043859/

Venezuela’s threats to annex most of Guyana draw international concern https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/07/venezuela-guyana-esequibo-map-border-dispute/

Distraction Helps Misinformation Spread. Thinking About Accuracy Can Reduce it. https://medium.com/jigsaw/distraction-helps-misinformation-spread-thinking-about-accuracy-can-reduce-it-a4e5d8371a85

Weapons of Mass Distraction https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Weapons-of-Mass-Distraction-Foreign-State-Sponsored-Disinformation-in-the-Digital-Age.pdf