#just because some people act like theyre fucking allergic to even implying that rbg may have made a non optimal decision at some point Tumblr posts

[anotherpapercut]

tell me more about rbg

my main thing with rbg is that like. undeniably she had an incredible and positive impact on our jurisprudence. I really cant overstate the importance of even some of her dissents, where her opinion was not in the majority. that said

1. her jurisprudence is far from perfect. she had an iffy track record on things like incarceration probably in part due to the particular privilege that comes with being a wealthy white woman and it's weird to act like she was perfect and never made any mistakes because like she was a human person

2. the girlbossification of rbg seems to have created a sort of feedback loop that ended in her having an ego so large that she genuinely seemed to think no one could do her job as well as or better than her? which is weird bc Sotomayor was already on the court and already kicking ass but w/e. she literally said in interviews when people asked her about retirement that she didn't think anyone could take her place

3. this absolutely fucked us and if you think it didn't you're fucking kidding yourself. if she had retired, oh I don't know maybe in 2009 when there was a democratic president and democratic Senate supermajority, she would've been promptly replaced by another liberal judge. even if we assume the Republicans would still block Obama from filling Scalia's seat in 2016, that would leave the court at 5-4 in favor of conservatives instead of the 6-3 we have now and w the way the supreme court works that could mean it could have taken DECADES less to claw back to a democratic majority

people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about will look at that and say "well either way it's a conservative majority so it doesn't matter" this argument completely falls apart the second you actually inspect the voting records of these people over the past few terms. there have been many occasions where one or more conservative justices have sided with the liberals. with a 5-4 court MANY of the extremely shitty decisions that have come down recently would've gone the other way

again people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about may say "well roe would've still been overturned" and to that I say how fucking selfish and shortsighted do you have to be to think that just because ONE case would've gone the same way nothing else is important? do you guys have any idea about any of the other cases they've taken in the past few years??? this argument is just so idiotic I can barely even entertain it long enough to respond

okay anyway TL;DR rbg was obviously important and obviously affected great positive change in this country. but she knew when she accepted this job that the entire fucking country was depending on her. she chose not to retire knowing there was a significant chance she could die under a Republican administration and leave us with an extremely fucked up court and she did it anyway out of sheer egoism and that disgusts me! ultimately she doomed us to a court that's going to be impossible to come back from for decades without major reform. she did this knowingly. she knowingly endangered the country out of vanity. and she should absolutely be fucking held accountable for that shit