Note on the Supreme Court decision

["Lou Paulsen" <wwchi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been making bad predictions for the last month, beginning with a post
entitled "The Election is Over" which was typed during the one-hour period
on November 8 when this seemed to be the case.<p>
My most recent bad prediction was last Saturday, when I told someone, "I
can't possibly believe that the Supreme Court will intervene to stop the
recount.  It's an elegant solution, it's grounded in Florida, Bush can't
show irreparable harm .. this is going to be it."

I confess to being very much surprised when they voted to brazenly steal the
election from Gore on completely flimsy grounds.  Not because I think
Supreme Court justices are incapable of acting dishonestly, making
groundless rulings, flouting their own precedents, etc.  But because I
didn't see WHY they would so obviously, so openly, steal an election which
objectively means comparatively little to the ruling class.  It's not as if
they were stealing the election from a socialist.  It's not as if Gore
stands for any policies which will materially injure the ruling class.

They have ripped in shreds the idea of the 'non-partisan Supreme Court'.
This has been a very useful illusion for them over the years, and I had not
thought that they would discard it now.  The only conclusion I can draw is
that their short-sighted contempt for the masses has reached an
unprecedented height.  They do not believe they have to condescend to fool
us.  They believe that the masses are so weak, so impotent, so disorganized,
so much without alternatives to their rule - and will ALWAYS be so much so -
that they can discard their pretenses.  They steal the presidential election
for the lightest of motives, in the most shameless fashion, just because
they can ... and because they don't believe they will suffer any negative
consequences.

This is rather insulting, but on the other hand it's a very helpful and
important thing that they are as overconfident as this.  They really are
going to pay for it.  The difficulty of explaining the concept of the
"dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," and the implausibility of the dictum
"political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," have declined by about
75%.  All month whenever I have been discussing the election with workers I
have been saying things like "In the end it all comes down to whoever the
police and the generals will side with".  At first people laughed, but not
lately.

L. Paulsen