Samuel Alito: Most Tiresome Disney Princess Ever?
Always the hero and/or the victim. Never the villain.
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Several years back, Christian anti-racism writer, teacher and spiritual leader Erna Kim Hackett went deservedly viral when she wrote these words about what’s ailing white Christianity:
"White Christianity suffers from a bad case of Disney Princess theology. As each individual reads Scripture, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Xerxes or Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never Egypt. For the citizens of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved both Native and Black people, to see itself as Israel and not Egypt when it is studying Scripture, is a perfect example of Disney princess theology. And it means that as people in power, they have no lens for locating themselves rightly in Scripture or society -- and it has made them blind and utterly ill equipped to engage issues of power and injustice. It is some very weak Bible work."
Brilliant and incisive. And it was one of my foundational inspirations for starting this newsletter, which attempts to look at our culture and politics through the lens of the monumental temper tantrum white conservative MAGA Christians are having over their loss of influence, relevance and power, this tantrum that is doing its best to hold us all hostage and steal the country out from underneath us.
It’s not just white conservatives who have this issue, of course. (Let’s not forget to remove planks from our own eyes where we find them, should any of us be white people currently patting ourselves on the backs for how we’re so not like that.)
But you wanna talk about that white conservative MAGA Christian temper tantrum? That damn Cinderella slipper fits them like a charm.
The absurd cries of impending martyrdom, because they saw a gay couple on TV, because a professor is teaching a class that suggests white people may not have always been perfect, because a trans woman drank a beer, because a few of their leaders might actually go to prison for committing actual crimes?
They are the heroes, or they are the victims, of every story. Those are the only two choices. They have a remarkable ability to imagine they’re both at the same time. They, who have wielded so much unearned and stolen power, and who consistently use it to hurt millions upon millions of people. They are mentally, emotionally and spiritually incapable of seeing themselves as the villains in any story.
Which brings us to Supreme Court Justice and scorned Disney Princess Samuel Alito!
People are stressing right now over why Alito — who at this point appears to be nothing more than a Fox-News-afflicted airhead with a gavel and a Republican political operative — has apparently zero shame over anything he’s done lately, and by “lately” we mean ever since he lied his way onto the Supreme Court.
But let’s look at a few of Alitos’ greatest hits through the hero/victim, never a villain, pretty, pretty Disney princess lens and see if he fits the pattern:
HERO! He waved his magic wand and saved all the unborn babies in Dobbs! He didn’t really use any high quality legal analysis to do this, because he didn’t need to! He just doesn’t like abortion or letting people who aren’t straight white men make decisions! Sorry if you don’t like it or if you die because of it, that sucks!
VICTIM! You say his beloved extremist partisan hack Court is somehow not legitimate, because of this and many other rulings, and because of how a number of the conservative seats are stolen? Unfair! (Alito is the very first to start whining when the Court is criticized.)
HE WAS ALREADY THE HERO OF SPERMS! Remember when he ruled in 2014 that Hobby Lobby was allowed to deny its employees contraception coverage, on account of birth control upsets him? Heroic!
VICTIM RIGHT NOW! Of this newsletter calling him an absolute lunatic.
HERO PRETTY PRINCESS! He gets to go on fun vacations with conservative donors who have issues before the court, because they think he’s pretty! Cost to Alito? PRICELESS.
VICTIM! You criticize him for this and say mean things about his lack of ethics, and now he hates you!
VICTIM! You say he’s not allowed to fly “Stop The Steal” treason flags at his Virginia house or his beach house, especially while he’s trying to rule on cases over whether his main squeeze Donald Trump is allowed to incite terrorist attacks to overthrow the government? Unfair!
VICTIM! It was his wife who flew the flags anyway! Victim of uncontrollable wife Martha-Ann!
VICTIM! You want him to recuse from the special cases Jesus brings him on the Court over Trump’s insurrection? Unfair!
VICTIM OF PERSON CALLING DISOBEDIENT WIFE A DIRTY NAME! Did he mention the neighbor called his wife the C-word? Hurtful!
VICTIM! And now people are saying he’s lying about pretty much all the details of that whole situation! Including the neighbor, who admits she called his wife the C-word! She says Alito's lying! And it looks like he might have lied in his letter to Congress!
VICTIM! It is probably unfair to point out that oh my God, this SOB just lies as often as he breathes!
VICTIM! In 2015, when the Court made marriage equality the law of the land, Alito was the true victim of that ruling, as he explained in his dissent, and has been explaining ever since. If gay people have equal rights, then people might call people like him complete bigots! He whines about this a whole lot.
You get the gist. Of course, Alito’s opinions and dissents are almost uniformly garbage, because again, he’s really not a particularly bright guy. Alito is just a preening ideologue. Scalia, he is not.
But when Alito wins, his opinions hurt real people. It is not your place to criticize him, though! For shame!
His constant ethical lapses and defiant, foot-stomping partisanship? Abiding by rules and standards governing such things is for other, lesser people.
See how he is seamlessly the hero — the conservative Catholic, lib-vanquishing, abortion-stomping crusader! — and also the victim, who is above reproach?
As I explained in the post introducing this newsletter, these folks, of which Alito is certainly one, are 100 percent certain they possess the Moral High Ground, that they are on God’s side, that they have been chosen by God for this moment. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” it says in Romans 8:31.
(THE DEVIL, obviously, and all his woke gay friends.)
This is white conservative MAGA Republican Christianity in a nutshell, but we should know by now that while the Venn diagram between conservative Christians and MAGA Americans is heavily overlapping, it’s not two concentric circles. They all share their worst traits with each other, though.
There are MAGA dudes who don’t particularly care about religion, but by God, they still feel victimized — by immigrants and vaccines and God knows what — and they think Joe Rogan makes sense when he talks about all this “woke” shit, and boy howdy they long for a simpler time when people respected them just because they were white dudes.
Yet they are all oppressed, as they nourish their fantasies of the day they’re all going to rise up and take their country back, by destroying it. Some of them, like Alito, are in a unique position to do that.
(UPDATE 6/10/24: Well this newsletter ended up timely, with all the new audio of the Alitos that just came out. Y’all, Martha-Ann Alito made a “shame” flag in her mind, because she doesn’t like Pride flags! She and her husband are perfectly matched, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and maturity-level-wise.)
OK, we’ll start wrapping this up.
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After a lifetime of hearing that my family is made up of second class citizens who don't deserve rights, it's so refreshing to read this. Thank you Evan, your mother should be so insanely proud of you!
I have no doubt that Alito is truly a victim of his wife, Martha Ann. I’m sure he deserved it.
Has anyone checked to see if John Roberts is even alive?