Eric -
Roberts is the one I have to work harder to find words for. Not because it is hard to know what I think of him, but because it is hard to put the right terms together. It’s a kind of blandly presented disingenuousness, but so over-the-top disingenuous that that is where I run out of words. Like watching a smash-and-grab burglary and saying “nothing but routine shopping days here”. Putting up straw-men about things that aren’t happening, while explicitly refusing to acknowledge things that are.
Thanks for this. I've been having my own version of your challenge to describe (or understand in my case) Roberts for some time. When his role seemed to include breaking a tie between the two "wings" of the bench I felt he at least tried to appear to come down on the side of real law and constitutionality if not always justice, but since ACB's swearing in it feels acutely as if he had just been biding his time until he could use the "ratchet" game you describe to move things as far to the (Right? Authoritarian? Fundamentalist? ???) as he could. I made excuses for his lack of opinion, much less intervention as the likes of Thomas and Alito's fiscal misbehaviour rose up... <sigh>
More props on the remainder of the post but I won't belabor it... I'm very glad to have your voice in this conversation.
Life's dance on the edge of chaos seems to be happening at the collective (national and global socio-political group) level and we seem near a bifurcation or saddle point with only the vaguest idea of what might be in the "next" basin of attraction and how long a given trajectory will take to restabilize for each of us as individuals but more importantly I think for the "collective" whatever that unit actually is (pod, nation, broad cultural subgroup, first world, the noosphere, the biosphere?)
I have grandchildren (only 2 with my parther having 2 of her own) who I not only want to "protect" from the atrocities of our world as it seems to be spinning out of control or off the edge or tumbling it's gyros... but prepare them to be the "good citizens" my Boomer generation (mostly) aspired to (but failed in many ways) to be. It isn't easy and I don't want the hubris of imagining I can do more than give them a little bit of spin as they "leave the raquet" (or is it properly racket in this case?)... I did not do nearly enough to prepare my own children (40s) for this, much less for them to prepare their progeny. The non-prestateability, halting-problem makes that absurd in the absolute but hindsight suggests to me that I could have been more thoughtful/creative/imaginative in my ideations toward the collective evolution of humanity (both best and worst stylizations). I guess I have a few more years and a few more opportunities to apply my (apparent) free will to the most salient things within my jurisdiction, which blathering on here may not a good example of.
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