We no longer joke about "epistemic closure," but that does not mean the phenomenon has ceased to govern the conservative mind.
From Jan Crawford's July 1 behind-the-scenes report from the Supreme Court:
The conservatives refused to join any aspect of [the Roberts majority] opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.
Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.
Shoving fingers into the ears and chanting "nah, nah, I can't hear you" is a bizarre way to go about the judicial enterprise. Yet there is a comic as well as a depressing aspect to this latest expression of the conservative refusal to acknowledge unwelcome realities. The particular unwelcome reality that the Court minority refused to engage is a majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court—the highest law of the land. It doesn't go away just because you hold your breath until you turn blue.
As an old story goes:
The New England transcendentalist Margaret Fuller was given to exclaiming, “I accept the universe!” The British writer Thomas Carlyle, upon hearing this, commented: “Gad! She’d better.”
