This isn't your country anymore. You are now governed by a secretive an unaccountable junta in long black robes...
— Eugene Robinson, columnist, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/27/supreme-court-roe-abortion-christians/
Americans face a serious danger these days. Politics has become so heated and divisive and the rhetoric so overwrought, that otherwise sane, rational people are driven to write and say stupid things. Professional newspaper columnists are no exception. Consider Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. His latest opinion piece describes the Supreme Court as a “junta.” Why? Because he disagrees with several recent SC decisions – on guns, on prayer, and, of course, on abortion:
“I describe them with a term more commonly used for Latin American military regimes because, well, that’s what it feels like.”
Robinson was the Post’s South America correspondent from 1988 to 1992, so perhaps he knows something first-hand about Latin American-style juntas. And they’re just like the U.S. Supreme Court, right??? After all, “that’s what it feels like.”
Calling the Supreme Court a “junta” is the kind of obviously inaccurate attack people launch when they are angry or frustrated. And what could be more frustrating for a Washington Post liberal columnist than to realize that the Supreme Court now has a solid conservative majority? That’s gotta hurt!
I have a particular sensitivity to the misuse of the word “junta.” In 1987, two colleagues and I met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. During the meeting, Arafat called the Israeli government a “military junta.” I pointed out to him that, even though one or more ministers in the Israeli government were former generals, they serve in Israel’s government in a civilian capacity. I further mentioned that Israeli governments are established through Knesset elections, not through the violent seizure of power. But Arafat was not persuaded. “To me, it is [a] military junta,” he insisted.
And to Eugene Robinson, a Supreme Court which no longer votes the way he would like it to is now seen as a junta. Pointing out to him that the Supreme Court members are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by a vote of the Senate would make no difference. He already knows that. Our Supreme Court, after openly engaging with the parties’ attorneys during oral arguments, publicly issues lengthy majority and minority opinions. That’s not the way a junta operates. Robinson already knows that too, yet he still calls them “Our black-robed rulers.”
The danger in denigrating the Supreme Court itself, as distinct from criticizing a particular SC decision, is that it undermines respect for the institution. And we need that institution if we are to hold together as one nation.
jun·ta, noun:
a military or political group that rules a country after taking power by force. (Google)