by Don Hall

There are a host of issues I have with Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointments (and it is a given that Amy Barrett is going to be confirmed before January regardless of the Left’s spitting and gnashing of teeth). The conservative lean, the fact that Kavanaugh was on the impeachment team of Bill Clinton (yeah, he was a horn dog but I still maintain he was a pretty damn fine president), the whole Let’s overturn Roe v. Wade and plunge women into a hole of subservience to the whims of the Evangelical Christians! thing.

There’s the pro-corporation, anti-regulation thing. The white nationalism thing. The rolling back of civil rights and safety nets thing. The thing, though, that really chaps my ass is the first name thing.

Brett? Amy?

These are just not the names of Supreme Court justices. These are the names of college Greeks. The names of soft intellect. These are not serious names to attach vast legal precedents.

John. Henry. William. Levi. Thurgood. Samuel. Ruth. Sandra. Lucius. Oliver. Sonia. Pierce. Stephen. Robert. Earl. Clarence. Bushrod.

Wait. What? Bushrod? Yeah. 1762 - 1789. Bushrod Washington. Holy shit, Mable. 

Even Bushrod carries more gravitas than Brett or Amy.

When contemplating the historical documents that will be read by those handful of survivors huddled in the last 200 square mile island habitable by humans in the year 2120, it seems fitting that the end of all good things in western civilization be heralded in by Thanos. Or Gozer the Gozerian. If Trump could find a blindly religious zealot with a pathological disdain for women and blacks to put on the court named Bushrod, I’d be more OK with it.

Brett? Amy?

No one says “Hey, Amy. Would you write the majority opinion of the decision to roll back environmental protections?” “Hey, Brett. Could you write a brief defending your position on why women should sew their vaginas shut except to have babies?”

Everyone says “Hey, Amy. I love your craft doilies on Etsy.” and “Yo, Brett. Maybe you shouldn’t shotgun that fifteenth PBR because I think you might’ve shit yourself.”

I suppose I should just suck it up and recognize that by the time I’m in my seventies, the Supreme Court of the United States will be Brett, Amy, Tiffany, Britney, Chad, Lyle, Courtney, Jo Jo, and Bushrod.

Thank god for Bushrod, right?