I wonder if all those folks who chided others as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), are getting what they bargained for. Did they really want a country where the government crawls in bed with them at night? A government that has the right to pick your sexual partners. Maybe they thought suppression would apply only to others and not to them?
They denied all the downsides of lying, manipulating the system, and skirting the law, but now that the downsides have landed as laws—are they getting what they wanted? I am not asking about those benefitting financially from it all, I was wondering about just folks.
In the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, the court said that nothing in its decision “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” However, Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, said the precedent should also be used to overturn cases establishing rights to contraception, same-sex consensual relations, and same-sex marriage.
I grew up in a world where there were sex-police. They arrested homosexuals on college campuses. For what, you ask? For fraud. Homosexuals did not qualify for state-aided education even including the in-state reduction in tuition. If you were a homosexual student, you were defrauding the taxpayers of Florida, if you accepted that lesser amount or if you accepted any other form of aid. Okay with you?
I grew up in a world of strange fruit, that is, Black people hanging from trees. Is that what you want? I grew up in a world where women, even children, were blamed for rape and pedophilia. It was their fault because that woman and that child “asked for it”; they seduced or tempted the nice white man. That child and that woman wanted sexual relations to the eternal shame of that nice white man. Have you ever met a rape victim or a child who wanted it?
Thomas omitted laws against interracial marriage that were in place at the same time that Roe v. Wade was considered in the high court. The illegality of interracial marriage was successfully challenged using the same Constitutional amendment. Thomas does not mention all private acts that could now be challenged—not the one that applies to him.
It is the definition of fascism: make everything illegal but enforce the law selectively. Define what your political supporters do as legal and what your political enemies do is illegal—that is the law of men after the rule of law is abandoned. Is it what you wanted for you, your children, and grandchildren? Are you still denying? No matter, accept or deny, it is all coming your way.
Getting what you wanted are you? Swallowed a lie so Trump could make $250 million? Swallowed the earlier lies and buried your parents? Watched a million people die? How’s it going so far? Do you like what you see, or still denying what is in front of your eyes?
Just after a man—who will follow Trump over the cliff denying the detriment even to himself—cornered me and called me names, another man approached me.
The second man said, “I’m a conservative Republican and always have been. I never got involved with the abortion issue. I really didn’t think it had anything to do with me. Yesterday this passed, and this morning I woke with a dark feeling.”
I asked him if he knew why he had a dark feeling, and he said no. I suggested that he is witnessing a drastic change in what America is and what Americans can be. He said he hadn’t gotten that far, he just felt a darkness, “and had to tell someone.”
Okay help him out. June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States decided:
- it cannot be left to the states, gun owners need federal protection; rights granted under the Constitution
- it can be left to the states, pregnant women do not need federal protection; they do not have rights under the Constitution.
Why feel the darkness? Are we sad witnessing judicial activism? Perversion of the rule of law? Governing by the minority? Passing laws that control citizen behavior—protect and prohibit actions to fashion a world only a few want? Was he feeling the darkness unsure of where it leaves us as a country? Are we now a country of first-class gunslingers and second-class pregnant women?
Help me out. Tell me, why do fascists, autocrats, dictators—pick the word that least offends you—in forming an autocracy, always go out of their way to suppress women? Idi Amin, Mussolini, Hitler, the Taliban—pick your historic period and pick your country. Why?
Our rights as citizens are unraveling before our eyes—I wonder if that is what those folks who followed Trump wanted. Did they or did they think the suppression would just apply to others?
On the other hand, maybe they are catching on and they do not like what they are catching onto. There are a couple of things everyone can do. First: vote. Don’t excuse them or misunderstand them, or rationalize their autocratic tendencies, kick ‘em out.
Secondly, remember Merritt Garland and President Obama? Okay Mitch McConnell is a bully with a single agenda, and sure, he knows how to game the system. That does not mean there was nothing anyone could do. That does not mean that the Democrats had to stand around for a year looking dazed and asking the voters to save them. Push the Democrats to start pushing back. They should stop denying, hoping the other team will see it their way, and start fighting. Start strategizing for war not the family picnic. Use every tool available—stop whining and stop shrugging and stop speechifying—act against tyranny.
