Only time for a couple quick links.
We told you so.
Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 13 May 2022: The fall of Roe v. Wade will only embolden the fascists: How will America respond?, subtitled, “This decision signals that ‘democratic norms’ are gone, and old-style politics is useless. So what can we do?”
We warned the American people that electing Donald Trump would be a disaster. Unfortunately, too many Americans — from the political and media classes to everyday people — chose to ignore those warnings.
Our warnings were specific: Trump and his fake populist movement are a form of poison in the American body politic. Today’s Republican Party and the larger “conservative” movement do not believe in democracy. They are authoritarians, trying to impose an apartheid Christian fascist plutocratic state on the American people.
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NYT, Maureen Dowd, 14 May 2022: Too Much Church in the State
During her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett tried to reassure Democrats who were leery of her role as a “handmaid” in a Christian group called “People of Praise.”
The group has a male-dominated hierarchy and a rigid view of sexuality reflecting conservative gender norms and rejecting openly gay men and women. Men, the group’s decision makers, “headed” their wives.
Justice Barrett said then that she would not impose her personal beliefs on the country. “Judges can’t just wake up one day and say ‘I have an agenda — I like guns, I hate guns, I like abortion, I hate abortion’ — and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world,” she said amicably. “It’s not the law of Amy. It’s the law of the American people.”
Yet that’s what seems to be coming. Like a royal queen, she will impose her will on the world. It will be the law of Amy. And Sam. And Clarence. And Neil. And Brett.
The Christians don’t understand this to be a problem. They *know* the truth, so why shouldn’t they impose it on everyone else? The idea of religious plurality is an abstract non-sequitur, because how could other people understand different truths, when they know there’s only one? (And that one is not subject to logic or the accountability of evidence.)
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Alternet, David Badash, 13 May 2022: ‘Pro-life’ right-wingers call for executions and civil war over abortion rights
Comment: Of course “pro-lifers” routinely support capital punishment, so I’m sure this makes clear sense to them. (They’re not pro-life; they’re pro-birth.)
