NFL
There are certain jobs where favoritism is disaster. Ask an NFL referee. Even the appearance of favoritism, of “having a side”; and teams, coaches, and fans all pile on. The smiling joke with Joe Burrows, the admiring handshake with Tom Brady, the flag thrown directly at the helmet of Cleveland Brown receiver Orlando Brown: all are “evidence” of bias. We don’t want those in stripes to be biased, we want them to be cold, calculated, enforcers of the rules. “Call it both ways” is the battle cry from the sidelines.
WWE (entertainment ‘wrestling’) has referees, but we know they are part of “the show”, scripted to “call” the match in a particular way. What’s the difference? We know the outcome of WWE is pre-determined. It’s a planned show for our entertainment. We believe the NFL is an open competition. Even the Bengals might beat the Bills (but not the Chiefs?).
And if you think that’s true for NFL referees, how do you feel about two of America’s most important institutions: the Supreme Court, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Supremes
Federal Judges (not the “Supremes”) are required to follow a strict code of behavior when it comes to bias. They have to not take a side, financially, ideologically, or socially. And the code goes even farther: Judges are not supposed to even have “an appearance” of bias. To use a worn analogy, those holding the scales of Justice need to be blind to those that appear before them. They must judge on the law, and nothing more.
At least, that what’s it supposed to be.
But like much else in our society today, we now know way too much about what’s under the Judicial robes. No longer are many judges simply interpreters of the law, they seem to be drivers of ideology. In today’s news, judges aren’t listed by seniority, but by who appointed them: “…the case will be heard by two Trump appointees and a Bush appointee, not a good panel for the pro-choice litigants…”. Or, “All of those Obama appointed Judges on the DC Federal Court means that Trump will never get a ‘fair’ hearing…”.
Bias
And even if all those judges are the paragon of Judicial fairness: equitable, impartial, unbiased, dispassionate, objective; it doesn’t matter. Our society today predetermines outcomes based on our own preconceptions. Obama, or Trump, or GW Bush would never have put a “fair” judge on the bench. Ask the Post, or the Journal, or Newsmax.
The obvious improprieties of Clarence Thomas don’t help one bit. He has taken a side, and a lot of money, from one particular billionaire. They are “friends”; they travel together, smoke cigars together, and the billionaire buys Thomas’s property but lets him (or his mother) stay there, and pays for Thomas’s grand-nephew’s expensive private schooling. “Appearance of impropriety” of bias, is a fact, no matter what Thomas says, or even how he rules.
Appearance
It’s one thing to see the partisan Congress or the President as biased – we know they are. They’re supposed to be. But we aren’t so used to thinking of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court in the same way. Even the “Great Friends” of the Court, Ginsburg and Scalia; were on opposite sides of the legal spectrum, but seemed to be impartial on the law. And they were balanced by Kennedy in the “middle”, and even Chief Justice Roberts from time to time, worried that the Court might be “appear” to be biased.
And when it comes to the FBI, I have to chuckle. The FBI has always represented the most conservative institution in America’s panoply of Federal agencies. Is the FBI investigating Black Lives Matter and the non-organized ANTIFA movement? Of course they are, that’s what the FBI has always done. They’ve “met” expectations, both of conservative Americans, and frankly, of the members of BLM and those anti-fascists.
Tradition, dating back to the 1920’s, shows the FBI with a bias against any “leftist” group. Ask the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1950’s and 60’s, or the Black Panthers, or the Weather Underground. But we also knew that the FBI was infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, and other right-wing “crazies”. So while there was a conservative bias in the Bureau, it was also protecting the “right flank” against the crazies with torches and bombs.
Merging on the Right
But what happens when the “crazies” and the “mainstream” seem to merge onto the same “highway to Hell”? What happens when the Congress defends conspiracy theories and Insurrectionists? Even if the FBI “called it both ways”, the House of Representatives seems dead set on protecting one team. Many Republicans in the House are calling for “defunding” the FBI; kind of funny from a group that took such great umbrage at BLM use of the term.
The “right” will take the failed Durham investigation of rehashed information and use it to beat the FBI down. And when they’re done, there will be about as much trust in the FBI as there is in Homeland Security’s ICE – none.
If the Judges are irretrievably biased, and so are the investigators what will America do? Who’s left to call the game? Where can our Justice system go to get their integrity “back”? Or is it now just another new version of WWE – a pre-determined outcome from start to finish? And, if Americans believe that – then why would the even play?
