As the New Dark Ages Begin

With three decisive, deeply penetrating rulings last week, the reactionary wing of the Supreme Court embarked us upon the new Dark Ages of America. We will now descend into a dystopia that we all saw coming, but were helpless to prevent.

Once with their hands on the mechanisms of access to power, the Republican Party threw off all pretenses of legitimacy as a harbinger of a certain kind of democracy. It is now angry at everything, desirous of everything, and ravenous in its intensity. It does not believe in democracy. It does not care.

People like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the ones with rational heads on their shoulders once connected with the Republican core, have seen and removed themselves from this horrible mentality of authoritarian bullying. But they are on the edges, the periphery. Yes, people once solid behind this cultishness are becoming somewhat shaky, but the 1/6 hearings will soon remove themselves from notoriety, and that will soon fade from view as having relative significance--that is, assuming the Justice Department does little to follow up. 

We don't know that yet, of course, and that is now our only hope--to rely on the last vestige of genuine detachment from partisanship. But that was arranged only by the victory of the last vestige of genuine interest in a just conclusion, run by an aging president who is being attacked from all sides, including his own, mostly for being a decent person and making decent decisions within a chaotic milieu foisted upon us by the deep and abiding corruption of the immediate ex-president, which continues unabated.

As he fades from view, the Democrats have little to replace him with. In the meantime, he must deal with three horrible mistakes that the Supreme Court reactionaries have dropped on his desk:

• Roe v. Wade's destruction--an absolutist's Garden of Eden. A feminist's nightmare.
• Strolling around with weapons if you want--Exactly the wrong stance at the wrong time.
• Open prayer to connect with religion on publicly-paid land--The ultimate twisting of freedom of religion to favor Christians alone, as if they were ever victims of anything.

He must also deal with the results of a horribly divided Congress, led by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a tease if there ever was one. He never wanted to do what Democrats do; he just wanted it all to go away. Finally, confronted with options that made perfect sense but which provided him no place to hide (an important component of much legislation for many legislators), he had to come out and say no. That he waited so long to do so can be hidden by posturing about knowing all options with the vagaries of the dance of legislation, but someone with his experience and knowledge knew very well what options he had to choose from. He just didn't want to do it.

So we sit here with crippled methods of dealing with climate change, because Joe Manchin thinks he'll be re-elected if he stands like a rock and continues to promote his West Virginia constituents drilling into the rock for coal--a mineral we need to walk away from, and quickly. He won't. That won't do it. He figures to campaign as a moderate Republican, but that won't even do it, either.

But that is the detritus of the result of an evenly-split Senate and a nearly evenly-split House, of trying to get something accomplished when there are so many opposing forces about. It makes one wonder why Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, edging up on perhaps their last go-rounds as chamber leaders, don't just pack it up early and keep going right on vacation after the August recess.

Because it appears as if the forces of backwardness, of disingenuous "originalism," which is nothing more than an excuse to make laws and rulings that propel us into an abandoned past, are succeeding enough to grind everything to a screeching halt. That may be the best we can hope for--that things don't get worse.

But inflation is still with us. Ukraine hangs on with hope but fewer soldiers who need more advanced weapons, about which we can see more brinksmanship with a twisted, depraved Putin monster. And we sit in an increasingly hot summer with only hopes that things will get hotter. And, of course, we are only starting to see the awful results of the above awful rulings.

Going backwards isn't going to work. Trying to wish things would settle down isn't, either. Not now. Not in the new Dark Ages.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark