Looking For a Hero

It is going to take a long time for constitutional lawyers to work through the 6-3 Supreme Court judgement handed down yesterday, but one thing is sure: the decision of the six judges giving the President of the United States, regardless of who it may be, immunity from many actions otherwise illegal, will have far-reaching consequences. Those consequences do not remain within the borders of the United States, but have far wider implications: if the President cannot be prosecute for actions taken which might be loosely termed as National Security, the ramifications for other high officials and their countries disagreeing with the corporate, capitalist, nationalist values of the USA becomes fair game.

Further, and this has been coursing through social media for a few weeks now: a President of the United States could, in the course of his duties, and to protect the national interests of the United States, have any other leader – democratically elected or otherwise – assassinated. Or any opposition spokesperson, candidate or politician, as happens in the Russian Federation, simply arrested and incarcerated until they mysteriously die in prison, or fall out of a window. The present President of the United States, it could be argued, perhaps even now has the power to arrest the members of the Supreme Court who voted against the best democratic interests of the United States, as well as their godlike leader, Donald J. Trump, and remove them and their followers from the face of the Earth. (That said, President Joe Biden, at his age, could probably attempt it with no worries of being prosecuted in his own lifetime anyway.)

They might be waiting in the sidelines, but Batman, and all the other super heroes who have done so on paper and celluloid countless times in the last decades, cannot save democracy in the United States of America this time.