Writes Dahlia Lithwick in one of the "8 Predictions for What the World Will Look Like in 20 Years" (NY Magazine). She says "By 2039, the Supreme Court basically doesn’t matter anymore," but I guess it all depends on what "doesn't matter" means. Maybe it means it shouldn't matter when it's not doing what I want. That is, Lithwick and the people she likes won't channel their political aspirations into litigation. But I don't see how that makes the Court "just wallpaper," because if it's so bad at doing what you want, it's maybe good at doing what the other guy wants.
By the way, I love the phrase "I didn’t see anybody thinking about it." Maybe by 2039, we will be able to see what people are thinking.
Anyway, what are the other 8 predictions?, you might wonder. Is anything else as scintillating as the incipient wall-paperization of the Supreme Court?
Well, according to Kate Julian, "There Will Be a Lot Less Sex and a Lot More Masturbation":
Masturbation and other varieties of solo sex will continue to be more prevalent than they were before; porn aficionados will enjoy VR sex and sex robots. Like many other aspects of our world in the decades to come, the gap between the haves and have-nots will continue to grow. Those who have many advantages already will be disproportionately likely to find romantic and sexual partners if they desire them and to have fulfilling sex lives. There will be good parts of this: Nonconsensual sex will be far less common than it is today. There will be little to no social stigma attached to being unattached. Those who approach singledom with psychological and financial advantages will flourish. It will be the best time in human history to be single. But there will be less unambiguously positive developments as well: For better and for worse, the birth rate will continue to fall, and those who are less suited to solo life will suffer from profound loneliness....
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83 comments:
“We had a 4-4 Court for a year, and I didn’t see Americans going to the polls over it. I didn’t see anybody thinking about it."
Unimportant: whatever doesn’t drive minorities, single women, and college kids to the polls.
Masturbation on the court was not considered.
We had a 4-4 Court for a year, and I didn’t see Americans going to the polls over it
A lot of people on the right went to the polls over that 4-4 court. I'm not surprised Lithwick doesn't see anybody on the right.
As a boy, I would read Science Fiction, and first encountered the term dystopian.The world I lived in was nothing like the fictional worlds portrayed by the writers of the time. It's not fiction anymore. The Professors topics this morning seem to highlight what has been a rapid descent into crazyness.
The world will pretty much crash in 2038 anyway owing to 32-bit time rolling over to zero.
So your sex robot will crash then too unless it uses 64 bit time internally.
I read the article. Apparently the future is a liberal dystopian fantasy. We will all be having sex with ourselves under Chinese rule in a hateful, lawless world coming apart due to climate change.
It doesn't matter anymore seems to be the prediction of a conservative court.
Voter ID apparently prohibits free and fair elections.
Miles Monroe: Perform sex? Uh, uh, I don't think I'm up to a performance, but I'll rehearse with you, if you like.
Luna Schlosser: Okay. I just thought you might want to; they have a machine here.
Miles Monroe: Machine? I'm not getting into that thing. I, I'm strictly a hand operator; you know, I, I... I don't like anything with moving parts that are not my own.
“But actually, we’ve lost everything, including the right to free and fair elections.” All because Hillary lost in 2016.
As to sex, Libs can speak for themselves.
And by 2039, won’t we all be burnt up due to CAGW?
Nothing about the bankruptcy of the Fed Govt caused by entitlements and the starving old people dying in the streets?
SCOTUS won't matter because the Democrats will get rid of The US Constitution.
We'll pledge allegiance to the NWO and have sex in the back seat of our flying cars. Simultaneously, I suspect.
2019 — the year that served as a setting, you may remember, for Blade Runner, Akira, and Running Man, three of the most iconic future-casting movies ever made...
Blade Runner? Sure.
Akira? Never heard of it.
Running Man? Absolute crap. ( The book was quite good )
“For the most part, the richest people in the world aren’t the ones questioning the science. They recognize that we need to get on with decarbonizing the global economy. The problem is how to do that collectively and fast.”
The authors submit that CAGW will destroy the nation-state and the world will become united to stop are certain destruction.
They are right about one thing. The rich are pushing CAGW. They own Tesla or worked at Solyndra. Gore has become quite wealthy working this scam.
I know it has already been said but...
"We had a 4-4 Court for a year, and I didn’t see Americans going to the polls over it. I didn’t see anybody thinking about it."
Lots of people went to the polls because of the 4-4 court. I dare say that Trump would have lost the election if the people that came out because of the 4-4 court stayed home instead.
The fact that this narrativist at the does not know any of those people speaks more about the Supreme Court and Presidential politics than what they actually wrote.
good catch
do anything you want
as long as what you want
is not micro aggressive or expresses privilege
tall men oppressing short women, we recently discovered a U MO...
a progressive, PC utopia and masturbation
go hand in hand
“... it's may good at doing what the other guy wants.” Or it may be trying to do what is right and just, regardless or whose ox is getting gored.
...
No, that wasn’t meant as a joke.
Dystopian fantasies are the best.
Blogger Ralph L said...
Voter ID apparently prohibits free and fair elections.
Except in Puerto Rico where Puerto Ricans are too dumb to figure out how to get an electoral ID card and come to the polls in person in the 4 hours they are open every 4 years.
It's why we have such low turnout.
Buncha racists.
John Henry
I remember liberals like Lithwick in 2016. They were all set to take over the Court and use it to enforce their will.
The despair of one's enemies, that is what is good in life.
Kate Julian's article included the following, " Like many other aspects of our world in the decades to come, the gap between the haves and have-nots will continue to grow."
This is about the most ignorant statement I've read. In the past century, the gap between the haves and have nots has shrunk - dramatically. There are less poor, less hungry, and far more of the world enjoys major capabilities including low cost transportation, free education, free communication, and free information access than ever before. Groups of people with very limited funds can stage major country-level upheavals using low cost weaponry and gear - thereby enabling them to effect change with less resources than ever before.
I could go on. It's stupid to think the gap between the poor and rich has gotten larger.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has been a pretty good Justice, is not long for the bench. PDJT will probably get to replace her. Then there is Clarence Thomas. He has been talking about retiring.
Will PDJT get 4 justices in his first term? Maybe 2-3 more in his second.
So maybe an overwhelming majority. All young so they will be there a long, long time.
I can see why DL hopes the court becomes irrelevant.
John Henry
Where is Phillip Drew when we need him?
Come back, Phillip. All is forgiven.
John Henry
Doremus Jessup, we need you, too.
Help us get rid of this orange Berzelious Windrip.
John Henry
Global cooling caused by natural variations in the Sun's output will be all the rage in 2039.
We haven’t had a Court... that didn’t have a swing justice on it. The new one... will be the first. Because, guess what: John Roberts is not a swing justice... We are going to have enshrined in stone a 5-4 Court. Nobody’s ever going to put up a centrist again. Nobody’s ever going to put up anyone who’s in play again.
Is she honestly this stupid, or is she just counting on her readers to be this stupid? Roberts is not a swing justice? Why don't we ask the Affordable Care Act, since it is still available for comment.
Of course there is, and will always be, a swing vote. All that has changed is that the swing vote has moved a bit to the right.
Here's a chart of "Extreme Poverty" in the world 1981-2008. Several different lines but all show about a 50% reduction.
Numbers are from the World Bank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold#/media/File:Extreme_poverty_1981-2008.svg
John Henry
E Warren is a poster child for Masturbation...
Far left liberals are mentally ill and dangerous. They are true fascists at heart.
"By 2039, the Supreme Court basically doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just wallpaper."
A bit of wishful thinking here, but honest. Progs would prefer to control the Court, make the Constitution come alive for real, and go Brennan 2.0, but they realize that it might not happen for a generation. They also want to get rid of the Constitution but realize that for the next generation that's an amendment too far. Next best is finding ways to sidestep legal constraints altogether. It has been the prog MO for more than a century, at least since Wilson's attack on the Constitution, and the administrative state was built in part to make the Court and the Constitution "wallpaper." Of course, they maneuvered to have the wallpaper make their constitutional monstrosity all nice and pretty. Now they just have to get a little more creative. Job #1 is to grab the presidency--Mueller and "impeachment" are laying he groundwork
"There will be little to no social stigma attached to being unattached. Those who approach singledom with psychological and financial advantages will flourish. It will be the best time in human history to be single."
The advantages remain to be seen, but the devastation of marriage will proceed and the political consequences will be big: single women will boost the prog project, needing Big Brother to compensate for missing Significant Others. Even married women are already being groomed, witness Althouse's receptivity to the "women's bodies" spiel, and this will take off in the next generation. The only question is how the left-over single men will respond.
If AOC gets her way, the court will be packed with 17 Leftist Collectivist judges and Lithwick will be correct.
The constitutionally and historically stupid, are busy lecturing the deplorable.
SCOTUS was a nothing branch until FDR came in and decided the constitution was a huge road block to his socialist agenda. Until then, there was no prestige because the power of the federal govt was limited to the, enumerated powers delegated to it by the people. States had all the power.
As noted up thread, Under what power does the federal govt have any say in elections? There is no such thing as a federal election. As with a lot of things, SCOTUS grabbed power they dont have, and congress is fine to avoid their responsibility, and hide behind the black robs of SCOTUS. Because SCOTUS is without review by the people.
Our elections cannot be free and fair if Russians are able to buy Facebook ads showing Jesus arm-wrestling with Hillary Clinton.
AA: "Maybe it means it shouldn't matter when it's not doing what I want."
I think you can lose that "maybe".
In the future we will have pornosexuals.
Here is MY prediction. I feel confident in making this prediction because of what I've seen in politics and the newspapers over the last 60 years:
The news headlines in 2039 will be all about the political mess in Washington, which candidates are running for various political offices, threats of war here or there in the world, crime, accidents, sports, and the weather.
Because those were the news headlines in 2018,
and in 1998,
and in 1978,
and in 1968,
and in 1948,
and in 1928,...
And in 2039, we'll be told that the future of our Republic is at stake if this or that presidential candidate wins (or doesn't win) the next election.
Because that's what we're being told now,
and in 2015,
and in 2011,
and in 2007,
and in 2005,
and in 2001,
and...
In short, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
It's good to remember: Most of America is boring. As it should be. The real excitement ought to come from your own life and your own family.
In 20 years, Lithwick will still be obsesssing over the Supreme Court.
cronus titan: I read the article. Apparently the future is a liberal dystopian fantasy. We will all be having sex with ourselves under Chinese rule in a hateful, lawless world coming apart due to climate change.
That's OK, as long as I'm still be able to get 2-day delivery of cheap crap with my Amazon Prime subscription.
That's the quality-of-life metric that matters.
When you wear horse blinders, it's hard to see on the periphery, or behind. You can see only in front of you, up, or down. All the degrees in the world won't help your sight if you're wearing blinders.
And, I have to say...and she should know this. The Supreme Court is not there to save you. You are supposed to save you.
Jim said...
As a boy, I would read Science Fiction, It's not fiction anymore
Jim, do you remember Robert Heinlein's The_Year_of_the_Jackpot?
IF 2019 is the year of the jackpot, NO ONE will notice
E Warren is a poster child for Masturbation...
Only with your eyes closed.
When did people start expecting the future to be worse than the present?
So the prediction is that I will finally find a partner who wants sex exactly as much as I do.
Lithwick's first sentence for her essay is really good. Dark, pointed, funny. Even her first couple of paragraphs are good. Unfortunately, she then gets out of the moving car and it careens into a nearby swamp.
"We are living in the future
I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper
Fifteen years ago
We're all driving rocket ships
And talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry
And standing in soup lines
We are standing in soup lines" John Prine, Living in the Future (1980)
By 2039, Texas will have gone blue and with it the end of the United States as we all know it. There will be a permanent, unchecked leftist bureaucratic state. An authoritarian leftist will have been elected president and Congress will have voted to ban ownership of most forms of private property. Democratically of course. Everything you do will be watched and tracked and monitored by the state. You will be penalized for doing unapproved things. Free speech will have been outlawed. Gun ownership banned. Payment processors will only allow leftist approved purchases. Conservatives and conservative ideas will have been ousted from civil society. Straight, white males will have less than full legal status and there will be strict limits on the number that can attend college with some criteria based on parents and grand parents voting records. There will be gaining momentum for succession in the southern states (likely to play out in the 2040s and ultimately lead to the break up of the union). MLB will have a team in Mexico City and the NFL will have a team in London.
I have three white sons under the age of seven. I really fear for their future. The left has completely lost their minds. When Texas goes blue and they get true unchecked power its going to get very, very ugly. Buy as much Bitcoin as you possibly can while its still relatively affordable.
Maybe in the future we will all dictate comments. Then “said” will make sense.
Same re Alrhouse calling comments “talk.”
IMHO
Between 1998 and 2018 politics didn't change.
Smart phones happened.
Democrats are all saying that they want the filibuster reestablished really soon. I think everybody has come to realize that confirming people by 50-48 margins is not good for anyone.
And how many of the Democrats saying that would change their tune if there was a Democrat President and 50 Democrat Senators?
It is astonishing to me how dull the prediction game is.
Everything that is predicted in this article about politics in this article would have been predicted 20 years ago. Everyone was bitter about the Supreme Court. The global warming industry was already in motion. China was already imposing.
Blah.
Scintillating must be the word of the day. Do we get a word deep study, at no extra cost?
For the most part, the richest people in the world aren’t the ones questioning the science.
There's a bit of confusion here between questioning the science and questioning crap policies without basis in any of sciences.
BTW, what is the science? The stuff I see is a mixed bag at best and there's lots of outright lies about the science coming from the political left...
Wallpaper is a Russian thing. The US abandoned the decor in the 50s.
I've never been attracted to men. I've only had sex with women. Quite frankly, it hasn't gone all that well. I've got an open mind on robots and VR and golden retrievers.
If Ocasio Cortez-Castro climbs the red lipstick media power tower, America will look a lot like Venezuela.
2039 will be more like 2019 than all the predictions. The big difference will be better electronics and sillier clothes
I can predict with a high degree of probability that in twenty years I'll be dead. This is especially distressing because just now they've developed not only high definition television but also, what with Netflix and Amazon Prime, a way to watch television without commercials. These are some of the happiest days of my life. I take some consolidation in the fact that in the near future global warming will make human habitation of the earth impossible. I'm almost certainly the last generation of Homo sapiens to have arrived at old age. Most people under the age of fifty will die unimaginably horrible deaths in the coming collapse of civilization that is the inevitable consequence of AGW and the Trump Presidency. . Many will say that it's kind of mean spirited to rejoice in the death of humanity, but someone has to win the lottery and some generation had to be the last generation, so tough luck, bitches.
Blogger dda6ga dda6ga said...
E Warren is a poster child for Masturbation...
EW...
Or should it be EWWWWW...?
That is NOT the image I want to have in mind when I am waxing my rocket.
I watched her beer video. Or tried to. It was really painful and I could not get through the whole thing. I felt sorry for her. Someone said Hilary without the charm and I agree. Without Hilary's glamour and beauty either.
John Henry
the Court was protecting monied business interests at the expense of minorities.
Aren't monied business people a pretty small minority? Perhaps "at the expense of minorities" is just a modern Tourette's. Everything you don't like will be labeled "at the expense of minorities"
I thought the individual was not to be celebrated?
Those who approach singledom with psychological and financial advantages will flourish. It will be the best time in human history to be single. But there will be less unambiguously positive developments as well: For better and for worse, the birth rate will continue to fall, and those who are less suited to solo life will suffer from profound loneliness....
More cats, depression and suicide.
Who is better adapted to go solo? Men or women?
I predict some people will think the little they know at any given moment can be easily projected into the future, mostly as an exercise for pageviews.
Conviction tends to increase with the risk, acquisition and novelty associated with one’s knowledge, but conviction and righteousness are the province of morons, too.
We’re all morons from time to time, but I find chatterati morons, making a club of people mosty in order to beat other clubs of people, especially hard to bear.
Nobody mentioned the economic crash caused by runaway debt in "developed nations".
the debt is in fiat money, so there will be no reckoning... it will be papered over.
"But actually, we’ve lost everything, including the right to free and fair elections. "
Because an election is only "free" if non-Citizens can vote, and only "fair" if Democrats are allowed to commit as much vote fraud as they need to steal the election, right Dalia?
If Congress did its job properly, there would be a whole lot less for the Supreme Court to do.
Now William, it couldn’t be that one of the ways you’re dealing with your own impending death is by trying to live on through ideas like global warming?
Either by doom or by salvation, it’s probably better to think something will be here after you than the nothing which might await.
What are you hoping? What do you actually know? How have you been treating the ones you love most?
If RBG dies and is replaced by Trump's selection, the Democrats will, at the first opportunity that benefits them, expand the court to 11 or 13.
"But actually, we’ve lost everything, including the right to free and fair elections. "
For example, the 2016 Democrat Primaries.
AA, I love your Blog, and some of your well thought out missives. But one piece of advice,you keep giving out stories originating largely from the Northeastern media establishments. Such a habit kinda jades ones opinion and has a corrosive effect on ones own thinking. Try to get some decedent offsets to the NY Times and NY magazines. There are great thinkers in other geographic locations. Try it AA you might like it (paraphrasing "Mikey")!
rhhardin said...
Wallpaper is a Russian thing. The US abandoned the decor in the 50s.
Hardly. The 70's retro wallpaper look is yuge right now.
Walls were lined with cloth before the advent of wallpaper and the mid-18th Century Toile de Jouy pattern is still going strong in wallpaper and fabric.
The popular YT design channel & blog Quintessence currently hawks 2000+ patterns of luxurious, expensive custom wallpaper.
Target, and other retailers, has a peppy how-to wallpaper video, and the HGTV designers use it in almost every reno.
Wallpaper is not to my liking, but it can amp up the style as a feature wall or in a small space such as a powder room for a relatively modest outlay and a few hours work.
Surely you have the power of mind to resist Northeastern brainwashing. Personally, I’m most interested in what people who don’t think like me think — I already know what I think.
Nobody thinks about the Supreme Court? Then what was the whole Kavanaugh thing about? Likely Supreme Court nominations are one of the top criteria I use when choosing who to vote for in Presidential elections, because that's one of the constitutional roles of the President.
Does Lithwick matter? Has she ever?
Her analysis - at least the little I've ever seen of it, since the Times is poison and I won't pay them for content - has never been compelling or interesting.
Is it just that only her fumbles are worth linking to, or is it all fumble, all the time?
"the debt is in fiat money, so there will be no reckoning... it will be papered over."
Too easy to predict. Except, instead of fiat money, alfa romeo money. Fiat money will be so utterly worthless as to be used for wallpapering the Supreme Court chamber.
Also easy to predict: President Ocasio-Cortez will raise and then break through the glass debt ceiling — in 2039 somewhere around $76 trillion — before finally pushing the self-driving convertible POTUS limousine over the fiscal cliff for good. Girl power. Sorry. I should've bought and left you farm land in Alberta back when $2,500 per acre seemed pricey — well before President AOC built that wall across the northern border to stem the never-ending caravans of racist white males seeking amnesty from being forced to speak, with perfect pronunciation, French and only French.
I am leaving you this old iPhone and electric scooter and an unopened bottle of CBD oil. Message: I cared.
Bugatti yours, soon le Deluge. Old people will fight over their lancias, some will go hungary.
So you'd better renault your Hispano or Suiza in case you need to MiG rate.
E Warren is a poster child for Masturbation...
"Only with your eyes closed."
In 2039, the sighted will envy the blinded by masturbationites.
By 2039, I'll be calling Mrs. Meade "Mrs. Droid." That's right — Ann Droid.
We had a 4-4 Court for a year, and I didn’t see Americans going to the polls over it. I didn’t see anybody thinking about it."
Ignorance is Bliss got it up above. He's living in a liberal thought bubble. There's an awful lot of people who voted for Trump because we didn't want Hillary picking SC justices. Well, to be honest, didn't want Hillary running anything at all, but not picking judges, SC or otherwise was a big part of vote for Trump decision making process.
And it was openly discussed on many blogs. On Facebook. Maybe even on Twitter, though I don't tweet. But he didn't see anybody thinking about it. It's pretty obviously true that conservatives know more about what liberals are thinking and talking about than liberals know about conservatives. Just look at the defriending process on Facebook or anywhere else. <None of my conservative friends nor I have ever defriended anyone over politics. I have one, exactly one, liberal friend left on Facebook. His political posts are completely ignorant and consist largely of Democrat talking points- but I read them. As do all our formerly mutual liberal friends. He reads (and sometimes replies to) my conservative political posts. But none of our formerly mutual liberal friends ever see anything challenging their narrow views. And if they've defriended me- they've defriended every conservative former friend of theirs. Over politics.
If I live til 2030 it will be in a little log cabin by the side of the road to help god's children along life's way, life's way. Not in mansions of silver and gold.
Kate Julian is such a jerk-off.
John Henry,
That poverty chart is pointless.
The improved circumstance of those poor billions means nothing to them--nothing at all--as long as they know, or even suspect, that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and some damn Saudi prince or two has way more than they do.
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