The PARC division of the Trumpublican Party is in the news. The Supreme Court has kept faith with imperialism and colonialism. Justice Kavnaugh tells us, and seven other justices agree, that Puerto Ricans and residents of other U.S. territories need not be extended the same federal benefits as other citizens of the United States. This should come as no surprise if one realizes that the current legal and moral ethos of the Supreme Court is stuck in 1900 or 1857 or 1776 or 1526.

In a lower court that is also a Trumpublican creation, the recently appointed (2020) federal District Judge Kathryn Kimbell Mizelle has struck a blow for absurdity in her ruling against the mask mandate for interstate passengers. Judge Mizelle’s background in jurisprudence is so slight that the American Bar Association rated her as “Not Qualified” to serve as a federal trial court judge. But that did not matter at all to the Trumpublicans who forced her confirmation through the Senate. Why? Whatever the Trumpublicans actually believe (if believe they do), their image is fiercely anti-intellectual and reactionary, and so they maintain their appeal to the ignorant, reactionary, and resentful voters of their base.

So, you see, Judge Mizelle, like Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is their kind of gal. Judge Mizelle does not come from a reactionary Catholic background, like Justice Barrett, but from an Evangelical background. She is a graduate of Covenant College in Lookout Mountain GA whose website proudly declares: “Our motto, ‘In all things, Christ preeminent,’ says it all: We exist to glorify and make known the name of Jesus Christ.” Covenant College asserts its devotion to what they call “Reformed Theology,” stating: “Reformed Theology: We are committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, and everything we do is grounded in our Reformed theology.” Covenant’s motto should be inoffensive to the sympathetically minded. However, while a belief system that is founded on biblical inerrancy may be a fine guide to life, it must not guide the rulings of federal judges. 

The American polity is in part based on the delusion that one’s religion can be a wholly personal matter, separated as if by a firewall from political life. This is a big topic, and all I will say about it now is this: How much of a stretch is it to go from a shared belief in the doctrine that God created the universe in six days to a shared belief in the doctrine that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election?