Saturday, June 25, 2022

The inconsistency is the point: On the Supreme Court's gun and abortion rulings

Yesterday, after the publication of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted that "[t]he implausible inconsistency of the guns and abortion rulings is both sickening and revealing." I would add that, to paraphrase Adam Serwer, the inconsistency is the point. The contradiction between governmental intervention in the case of abortion and the denial of governmental intervention in the case of guns makes clear that the point is not to provide a consistent ideological position but rather to assert power without any need for justification. The contradictions between (and even within) the rulings further the straightforward seizure of unlimited power by white, male, heterosexual, Christian, cisgender supremacy. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 25 June 2022)


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