The Laughter of Sycophants

While diversity is overruled and crimes are committed, the laugh track plays on

Did you hear the laughter on that tape? The sick, nervous laughter of sycophants as Donald Trump showed off the classified material he took involving a plan to attack Iran? “These are the papers,” said the criminal, heard in a two-minute recording obtained by CNN and released on Tuesday. “It’s so cool…It’s incredible, right?”

For Special Counsel Jack Smith and everyone who cares about the assertion of justice and the rule of law, it’s what Trump did that matters most and lays the groundwork for his eventual conviction. But ever since the tape was made public, it’s the laughter that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.

It’s the laughter by enablers for a man no longer in power—a laugh track that reminds me of the millions who have never taken his criminality seriously and have relished his racist behavior, ever since he descended from his golden elevator and began his campaign to take power and occupy our Oval Office by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals.

I had planned to stay focused on this tape, this laughter, the behavior of enablers that have fueled the nightmare of the Trump era and his continuing belief that the presidency is a dictator’s ticket to get out of jail free and pursue retribution against all his enemies, real and perceived, without consequence.

Then we learned yesterday morning that in a 6-3 ruling involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina the Supreme Court decided to end affirmative action—an admissions policy that has been pursued since 1978 and the Bakke decision, has meaningfully opened doors to higher education for Black, Latino and Native students, has increased social and economic mobility for a diverse population of Americans, and has worked to address the reality of systemic racism and the reality of white privilege.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted in her fierce dissent to the conservative super-majority:

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all' by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country's actual past and present experiences, the court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America's real-world problems.”

President Joe Biden concurred in his remarks delivered in the Roosevelt Room, emphasizing the continuing need to increase diversity. “Because the truth is, we all know it: Discrimination still exists in America,” he told reporters, obviously frustrated. “Discrimination still exists in America. Discrimination still exists in America. Today’s decision does not change that. It’s a simple fact.”

And, in a final response to a reporter as he was leaving the room, he said, “This is not a normal court.”

At first blush, the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling and Trump’s recorded criminality with a sycophantic soundtrack might seem to have little in common. But as this day unfolded and I began to think more, the connections began to emerge.

We are living in a time when an angry minority is bent on moving the country backwards, where their hostility and fear toward our increasingly diverse country makes clear their failure to see the opportunity for all and to instead presume anyone else’s progress will undermine their power and position. (“They will not replace us,” chanted the Charlottesville marchers.)

An increasingly extreme Supreme Court rejecting affirmative action—a complicated and legitimately controversial policy intended to create greater racial equity—is a good day for the MAGA mob. Donald Trump thumbing his nose at the rule of law—to take power from the liberal elites by any means necessary—is also a good day for them. The sycophants’ laughter is their pleasure.

Meanwhile, the angry Sam Alito and the angry Clarence Thomas thumb their noses at legal precedents and the will of the people as they arrogantly engage in corruption, cavort with billionaires, and exploit their untouchable lifetime appointments to remake the country into an oligarch’s dream. This is a time to sing “glory, glory hallelujah” as their truth marches on—a world in which the powerful make the rules, anti-democracy autocrats are free to despise diversity and relish retribution, and ethics on the highest court and risks to national security don’t concern them as long as they get theirs.

And if there’s damage to the men and women who are sacrificing around the world to guard the nation’s safety? If there’s a significant decline in opportunity for many disadvantaged applicants as the end of affirmative action causes colleges and universities to put aside the hard work of creating a more diverse student body and a more equitable nation? If the true quality and benefit of education declines because schools drop their commitment to creating a society (within academia and beyond) where diverse questions are asked and diverse voices are heard?

Listen to the laughter of sycophants: They are telling their angry leaders to just keep going. They are telling them they know better. Savor your power. Sustain your indifference to the suffering of others. Forget the American Dream. Time to make the most of the Oligarch’s Dream.

"No one benefits from ignorance,” insisted Justice Jackson. “Although formal race linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today's ruling makes things worse, not better."

“Entrenched racial inequality remains a reality today,” added Justice Sonya Sotomayor, who praised affirmative action for its impact on her education and career. “Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal.”

Can the oligarchs hear it? Doubtful. They’re too busy listening to the delightful laughter of their enablers, egging them on.

One final note on the Court’s decision yesterday: It was 20 years ago that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in Grutter v. Bolinger, deciding on the University of Michigan law school’s admissions policy that included race as a factor in its decisions to encourage educational diversity.

“Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civil life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized,” Justice O’Connor wrote, adding, “Access to legal education (and thus the legal profession) must be inclusive of talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity so that all members of our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational institutions that provide the training and education necessary to succeed in America.”

In a New York Times article written Thursday by Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak, entitled “The Supreme Court effectively overruled a landmark affirmative action precedent,” he quoted Justice Thomas in his gleeful concurring opinion to the Court’s ruling. The majority opinion, he wrote, “rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled.”

Explaining later his description of this Court as “not normal,” President Biden said, “It’s done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.”

And the laughter of the aggrieved, desperate to cling to power, goes on.

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