“A s societies grow decadent , the language grows decadent, too,” Gore Vidal wrote in 1986. “Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it.” In recent days, the Court’s conservatives have issued one ambitious opinion after another. They expanded President Trump’s powers to fire independent regulators, rescind deportation protections, and turn away asylum seekers; weakened state authority to enact gun control; narrowed the ability of religious