Our World War II Dads, the Supreme Court and Our Collective Mental Health
Our World War II parents would be outraged and not rest till the courts’ presidential immunity decision was overturned, and so should we.
My father enlisted in the Army at age 16 to fight Nazi Germany in World War II. I remember him telling me that when he saw the beautiful and well-tended fields of Germany, he saw the people there were just from small farming families like his own, and he wondered how they could ever have fallen prey to a madman like Hitler. Although my beloved father died many years ago, I don’t have to wonder what he would say about the Supreme Court’s unconscionable ruling on presidential immunity from the law:
“Why, I can’t believe it: We’re laying the grounds to create our own power-mad dictator right here in our own country.”
Thinking about the Supreme Court, which years ago I trusted and held in high esteem, I feel paralyzed with fury and despair and unable to concentrate, as are many friends I’ve talked with. I think of my father on the ship to Europe, another poor boy from Georgia, alone and sick with fear in the midst of the sacrificial troops steaming toward Normandy. I think of my great-uncle shot down over the Pacific, my great-aunt in Alabama feeling an explosion in her head on the day it happened; the moss-covered headstones of so many distant World War II cousin-soldiers in the country cemetery. I think of co-editor Rob Waters’ father, who also enlisted to fight fascism in Europe and was in combat up and down France and Czechoslovakia.
This is what six members of the present Supreme Court have offered them for their sacrifice: Criminal immunity for U.S. presidents so those presidents can evolve into a home-grown Hitler, if they so choose, with no constraint or consequences.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it best:
“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity…makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law… This majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the Presidency and for our democracy.
“…The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune…. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
The only way to not give into despair and to care for our mental health is to let our voices be heard and to take action. The “greatest generation” would be outraged, and we should be, too.
–Diana Hembree
Mental health can't wait.
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