To the editor:

The cruel paradox of a politicized judiciary is that justice can be swift indeed, but so can injustice. Can we not perceive this reality with a president who is incapable of vocal restraint and not unleashing heat-seeking tweets that reach far too many Americans not exactly knowledgeable about judges at any level? Can we not perceive that politicized laws and lawyers will inflame people all the more and, as a consequence, result – another cruel paradox – in more and more lawlessness?

Or is that the heartless and calculated intent of Trump and all his lawyers, that is, boot-licking and ethics-challenged loyalists?

I sure want to know, don’t you?

Somehow I think Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court justice (1937-1971), can jolt us into a refined understanding of how to interpret the Constitution: “Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.”

Especially, I might add, if that “political wind” blows in a storm that undermines democracy on a daily basis.

As for the superrich, I don’t believe for a heartbeat that economic growth can sustain itself without limit, accompanied by the speculative mania of especially billionaires (and, to a lesser extent, millionaires) without eventually destroying the lives of people near or below poverty levels or what I call the “lower middle class.” In fact, I wonder if a middle class even exists.

Runaway capitalism, not so-called “creeping socialism,” is a far bigger problem than what is generally acknowledged. Hence, in economic terms, a billionaire can be a “useful idiot,” whether a Democrat or a Republican, whether a Bloomberg or a Trump.

Even if Bernie earns the presidential nomination through legitimate means, don’t delude yourself into thinking the billionaires and, yes, even the millionaires, won’t demonize the man from every single angle one can imagine, and then some.

And don’t delude yourself into thinking that Trump, had he declared and won as a Democrat, wouldn’t have been tolerated (with ideological variations, of course) by the elite rich, as long as our casino economy can march on till the next inevitable downturn, panic, recession or crash comes along.

It can happen here, folks, and will if capitalism and money-managed politics persists. We can’t afford, ethically or economically, to deny that a Greater Depression than what occurred in 1929 is possible.

As Edward Abbey mused, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Richard Joel Holmes

Hays