It is a decidedly uncomfortable time right now if you are either a vulnerable member of society or a believer in fairness to everyone. Six on the nine people pictured above have lost their minds, and their way, about the Constitution and rule of law. And they are not only thrilled by that, but they can't stop boasting about it.
Since the worst President in our country's history was somehow in the right place at the right time to pack the Supreme Court with unqualified, far right, extreme white Christian nationalist leaning judges, the court has systematically been tearing down everything that the far right deems as anti Christian.
They first gutted the voting rights act. This, unsurprisingly, led to GOP leaning states to rewrite voting laws that made it harder for people of color to actually not only get to a place to vote, but when they got there they had nobody to choose from that represented their views. Gerrymandering, invented by the Democrats and used widely in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York for years, has now become the wave in many red states. This was bad policy when the Democrats were doing it and it is still bad policy today.
Then the court set it's sights on, once and for all, shutting down the right of women to decide if they wanted to keep an unwanted pregnancy or not by deciding that Roe v. Wade was a false law that should not be allowed. Once again the GOP pounced on this ruling and now women in most states south of Illinois cannot get an abortion in their states. In fact the number of states where they can get an abortion is shrinking weekly and eventually there will be ten to twelve states that will allow it.
The far right is not done on this topic as they are hell bent on getting Congress to pass laws making it illegal in the entire US to get one. Right now the only things standing in their way is the Senate and the President, but another bad election cycle could change that quickly.
This week the Supremes struck again by first eliminating Affirmative Action. This was deemed discriminatory because it allowed schools and businesses to select people of color over white people to reach hiring quotas. The judges ruled that discrimination was bad and so Affirmative Action had to go.
The very next day they then ruled that it was perfectly fine to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community if their lifestyle didn't fit into your religious beliefs by agreeing with a business that doesn't exist, that serving customers who are LGBTQ+, that didn't ask to be served, shouldn't be forced to serve these people who never asked for any service from a business that doesn't exist. Makes sense, right?
So what the court ruled in back to back decisions was that discrimination against white people was wrong unless those white people were women or gay. An interesting view of the law.
If you think the far right Christian Nationalist Movement is done then you haven't been paying attention for the past forty years. This has been a long term strategy of theirs that is finally paying off. They are next coming after same sex marriages, contraception, no fault divorce, and many other laws that they deem as in violation of their twisted beliefs.
Here is the ironic part of all this. They have been screaming for years that it is unfair that the liberal elite are forcing their beliefs and way of life on them and yet they are perfectly OK with shoving their ideals down the throats of the rest of us. Every poll on these issues shows that a huge majority of this country disagrees with their position and yet six lunatics on the Supreme Court are showing fealty to this group by striking down everything that remotely looks fair and just.
It is time to wake up America. We are being forced into becoming a nation like so many others around the world we see and laugh at. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to name just a few where their laws are based on religion and not rule of law or fairness. This movement has become rock solid in their quest to turn us into a church state, and not the church of your choosing, but their church only because they believe it is the only right church.
We have the means to turn this around and it starts at the ballot boxes in 2024. We need to vote out the Republican party, the far right, and any other group and person who is running for any office in the country that puts the church ahead of the country.
I have a friend from high school that posted this morning on Facebook that she was struggling to feel patriotic this Fourth of July after what the Court has done this week. It is easy to understand her frustration but it needs to be short lived. What we need to do is to take these set backs as a rallying call to arms and get out the vote starting now.
Get people registered, figure out how to get them to voting locations, get states to pass mail in voting laws, but mostly turn the pressure on these extremists by telling anyone who will listen that they are dangerous and do not meet the values we as a nation feel. We can defeat them by being unified as one voice and one goal and it needs to start today.
If you are interested in more information there is a great story in the Rolling Stone magazine by Jay Michaelson titled, "The Supreme Court Sold Its Soul To The Christian Right"
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