It is sad, very, very sad, that I won't live to see the eventual victory of liberalism in America. That, now, is evident. The conservatives doubled down on their nonsense, favoring disinformation and lies, and won. It took them about six decades. Truth has mattered, but no longer does.
We will go backwards faster than we already have, making America stupid and stodgy again. Not only will Roe v. Wade be rewritten, but perhaps the Affordable Care Act as well, pandering to the corporate interests that are already drowning in new money.
The RAND Corporation, no liberals they, just came out with a report about that (h/t Steve Herzog). They are aghast at what dozens of writers have already said the last few years: The inequality of income is devastatingly unfair. Expect more of that. Expect those interests, like those of right-wing crazies, to be more and more obvious and brazen.
Voting rights will be shredded, and gerrymandering will be an accepted part of our culture. The Republicans have concocted an iron cage into which, for at least a decade, we will be trapped.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death guaranteed that. 45 will now nominate a proven right-wing radical to the Supreme Court, who will live for thirty years or so. But others will not, and therein lies hope.
The first need is to elect Joe Biden. He will nominate a safe justice to replace Stephen Breyer, who is over 80 and probably will choose to leave the Court for reasons of futility (Think he hasn't thought about it?). But Biden might be able to convince someone else to hang on for a decade or two while this group of grouches holds sway.
Time stands against the radical right-wingers, too. They can't hold onto power forever, even with lifetime terms. But Biden, and a Democratic Senate, must re-start the moderate-to-liberal engine immediately. We cannot continue down this road of absolutist, crusty backwardness any longer. We must stop the damage.
If he's smart, McConnell will wait until after the election, until the time of lame duck, to put the new Supreme Court justice in. He is in a tough race. It would be his, and 45's, final snub at liberals to leave them hanging with little legal backing for their new agenda, even if they should both lose the essences of their power.
Against the backdrop of a challenged election, the nomination and approval might turn the public against Biden's victory. It might also solidify it. Either way, Biden must win, and Democratic lawyers can't take the passive-aggressive stance that David Boies did in Bush v. Gore in 2000. They have to get into the trenches and fight like hell. So must we.
But at least, with a Biden presidency, the Cabinet departments wouldn't operate against themselves, with their leaders working to undermine their very existence. Don't forget that enormous fact. Something akin to normality would be a relief to everyone. Something close to a proven, functioning national government would make many exhale for the first time in four years.
That is as crucial a factor in the future of our country than what can be salvaged of a woman's right to choose, sad though it may be to say. People genuinely serving the public cannot base their judgment on loyalty to an individual, which the Cabinet members did from the moment 45 held that sycophantic, open meeting back in 2017, when each member needed to declare their fawning fealty, whether they actually meant to do so at the time, whether they thought they could get away with a fake comment and then operate as if they could ignore it.
This awful person won't let you do that. He demands absolute adherence. That's what the Republican Senators don't get. They had a chance to declare the independence of their branch of government by ejecting him a year ago, but shambled through legalistic or practical excuses to let him slide, when they knew it was the wrong thing to do.
Now they, too, are caught (except Mitt Romney, who has buckled this time, so he's out from under), and can ignore anything they said four years ago approximating an effort to ameliorate concerns that they had sold out. They have reduced their prestige to nearly nothing back then, and it will now be on display.
Women of independence will pay the price. They will pay it secretly, with money they may have to borrow, to get abortions they should have had by right. They will pay it by the humiliation of hiding a process they shouldn't have to because someone feels better that such rulings exist. They will pay it in their reluctant, but necessary, participation in subterfuge and "criminal" behavior that will obey state lines and a hypocritical need for "morality." They will pay with doctor--and, worse, pseudo-doctors--who must now linger in the shadows to allow women the ability to control their bodies.
They will pay it because the president doesn't care about them one single bit, nor does anyone reasonably calling themselves Republican--except it if happens within their own household, or to someone they happen to know or have impregnated. Then they will move heaven and earth to "get things fixed."
The Republican Senators don't get this, either, but it's a long way back from the moment we are about to experience. Absolutism doesn't budge. We have been drifting toward two different countries, pretending that it's not really happening or that it really doesn't matter. Now we will have it, in a different but clearly palpable sense for the first time since 1861. Some will try to smooth it over with consoling words that will come out as unavoidably condescending. They will be inadequately temporary and insincere, and they know it.
Moderation, and the domestic peace that comes with it, will disappear because it's been allowed to. You can't unleash people's attitudes like this without a blowback. Bullying has hit its peak, and there will be retribution that no one can now measure.
The Resistance will have to form up again. It will have to get even more serious than it has been. It will have to make Black Lives Matter, and all that has happened, look like it's in the minor leagues. It will have to get out on the streets and stay there, making Portland, Oregon look not like the exception but a forerunner. Either that, or we will dissipate into a dystopia that no one could have predicted even ten years ago. We will truly go farther backwards than we could ever imagined.
Either that, or I have been wrong about women accepting their subservient fate. Some still can, but too many can no longer do so. Too much has been declared, by the late RBG and others.
Political repression is coming. Intolerance will have license. This will not be pretty. It will not be the nation we used to have. Part One of this tragedy is about to begin.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
This is a very bleak picture of an American dystopia that has not yet happened, Mark. Right now, American liberals need hope and a willingness to toughen up. Even Neal Katyal has proposed expanding the Supreme Court to more members and the new justices nominated by Biden. We need good ideas like this one but we also need to embrace them and put them into action. Once, long ago, an immigrant Irish community faced cross burnings very near their homes. Quickly this Irish community went out to meet the KKK and told them if they burnt crosses anywhere but the hills, the next day the Irish would burn down each and every one of their homes. The Irish were believed. Like early immigrants, we need to develop our own grit.
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