US District Judge John Barker, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump
Shit like this is why completely dismissing electoral politics is a terrible idea. Understand the limits of it, work on avenues to power that exist outside of it, but don't write it off as meaningless. If we do, people will see stories like this and think "those leftists make some OK points, but ultimately they're living in fantasy land."
This case was going to end up with way regardless. It's such a basic attack on capital that I genuinely believe if it wasn't some Trump judge it would have been some other judge. The constitution was written to protect landowners.
I genuinely believe if it wasn’t some Trump judge it would have been some other judge.
The fact that there are hundreds of other federal judges who didn't make this ruling is evidence to the contrary. It's also no secret that big Supreme Court decisions often come down to which justices are liberal or conservative, even though they're all capitalists. That's the problem with flattening politics to "everyone who isn't a leftist is basically the same." Yeah, at a high enough level they're all serving the interests of capital, but there are more immediate differences between Republicans and Democrats.
The leftist take shouldn't be that both parties are equally bad; it should be that they're both sufficiently bad that we need an alternative.
Shit like this is why completely dismissing electoral politics is a terrible idea. Understand the limits of it, work on avenues to power that exist outside of it, but don't write it off as meaningless. If we do, people will see stories like this and think "those leftists make some OK points, but ultimately they're living in fantasy land."
This case was going to end up with way regardless. It's such a basic attack on capital that I genuinely believe if it wasn't some Trump judge it would have been some other judge. The constitution was written to protect landowners.
The fact that there are hundreds of other federal judges who didn't make this ruling is evidence to the contrary. It's also no secret that big Supreme Court decisions often come down to which justices are liberal or conservative, even though they're all capitalists. That's the problem with flattening politics to "everyone who isn't a leftist is basically the same." Yeah, at a high enough level they're all serving the interests of capital, but there are more immediate differences between Republicans and Democrats.
The leftist take shouldn't be that both parties are equally bad; it should be that they're both sufficiently bad that we need an alternative.