>Except haven't they given people like you the shovel to hit them over the
>head with? You've complained, quite rightly, that racial discrimination
>has been treated by the mainstream media as an unimportant sideshow. But
>citing the equal protection clause has suddenly made it central. And it
>provides a perfect political-legal citation for every grass-roots movement
>against it. I think they may have given huge momentum to precisely the
>movement they didn't want to.
That is the hope, although the actual decision is so ridiculously narrowly tailored that it's useless on its face, but you are right that the principle articulated beneath the hypocrisy is a powerful ideological weapon.
The point I was making is that the court made the decision to let power - ie. a 5-4 majority - trump ideological legitimacy. As long as they wield that power in this arbitrary way, it doesn't matter what the principled issue is about, since we will lose in the courts. This decision was a signal that raw power is the order of the day in holding back the rising hordes.
Which is why the struggle will have to be in the streets and at the ballot box and in the workplaces across the country and in alliances around the world.
As far as I'm concerned, this is an incredibly great result, with the legitimacy of the Right shredded and our folks mobilized with the taste of bile in their mouths. It's going to be rough and the Bush-Delay-Lott-Rehnquist hydra are going to impose some bad shit in the next two years, but I think we will be able to mobilize the most massive Fuck-You vote imaginable in 2002. And combined with mass action and hopefully big workplace struggles, we will seize the momentum for serious change.
-- Nathan Newman