The always excellent Adam Serwer:
Last month, Justice Samuel Alito insisted that the Supreme Court’s critics are wrong. The Court is not “a dangerous cabal” that is “deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way, in the middle of the night, hidden from public view,” he said. Reading aloud from a piece I wrote in the aftermath of the Court’s recent ruling on an abortion law, Alito insisted that it was “false and inflammatory” to say that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision had been nullified in Texas.
Alito’s speech perfectly encapsulated the new imperious attitude of the Court’s right-wing majority, which wants to act politically without being seen as political, and expects the public to silently acquiesce to its every directive without scrutiny, criticism, or protest. (As if oblivious to the irony, Alito’s office set ground rules barring media outlets from transcribing or broadcasting in full the speech at the University of Notre Dame, in which he delivered his complaint.)
Last month, that conservative majority allowed Texas’s most recent restrictions on abortion to go into effect. Without exceptions for rape and incest, the Texas law bars abortions after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant, and deputizes citizens to sue those who “enable” abortions after that period for a $10,000 bounty. At midnight on the day after the law took effect, the Republican appointees on the Court, except for Chief Justice John Roberts, insisted that a procedural scheme adopted by anti-abortion activists for the precise purpose of avoiding judicial review had tied their hands.
At some point people will see what the court is doing and revolt, right? Or are we that far into the creation of our very American Reich that it is too late? At any rate, in case there are still idiots out there who think all of this is just about saving the babies, here’s the Guvna of Texas spilling the beans:
EXCLUSIVE: Last night I told Governor Greg Abbott I was concerned about birth control and the morning after pill incentivizing women to be promiscuous.
Abbott appeared to support outlawing both contraceptives, and said that “basically, we’ve outlawed abortion in Texas.” pic.twitter.com/cWWnnIP9wz
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) October 12, 2021
It’s not about abortion. It never was. The Christianist right didn’t even care about abortion until the 80’s when St. Ronnie decided it was good electoral politics. It’s about control. They are coming for birth control, same sex marriage, anything that the bible thumpers want.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve been saying that to myself for nearly twenty years now
RaflW
So now the fight is going to be over “promiscuity”?
They are well beyond high on their own supply.
Omnes Omnibus
What do you think the marches, election results, and fundraising since 2017 are?
Sure Lurkalot
@RaflW: A chicken in every pot, a Karen in every bedroom.
Baud
No, there doesn’t have to be.
debbie
I’ll say it again: If it wasn’t about control — if it really was about protecting life — those fuckers would be prosecuting the bastards who couldn’t keep their damn pants zipped.
Steeplejack
Need a blockquote somewhere up top?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Pretty much this
And this is blatant overreach that ordinary people will not stand for. Who the fuck, in this day and age, thinks birth control pills should be illegal? Nobody in the mainstream, that’s for damn sure. It’s easier to sell abortion as something evil; it’s much harder to sell contraception as the same.
Cole, you see the Justices’ defenses of their decisions as them being imperious; I see it as them attempting damage control
Cermet
Like AGW, the slow (but accelerating) turn to fascism by the thugs is gaining strength; if the dems somehow hold onto the house or senate it will delay but not stop that train. King rump, unless he dies, is gonna be crowned by the house in 2024 one way or another thanks to certain senate members – hopefully one or both die of natural causes very soon. Not optimistic at all – sorry.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: I went to a March on Saturday and there was my Catholic pro-life sister-in-law, chanting along with the rest of us.
Annie
“At some point people will see what the court is doing and revolt, right? ”
Gee, there were nationwide marches 10 days or so ago . . .
And have we all forgotten all the women who got into politics due to sheer fury about Dolt 45?
Omnes Omnibus
@sab: That’s what I am saying.
lowtechcyclist
You can’t be pro-life and oppose all attempts to control a pandemic that’s killed >700,000 Americans, and millions around the world.
They don’t mean a word of it. It’s always been about punishing those women and girls they regard as sluts, and controlling women in general.
E.
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe he means the kind of backlash that results in us doing better in elections than we have been.
MomSense
Without the electoral college and the geographic advantage Republicans have, there would not be a serious threat to reproductive rights and access. There’s also the reality that for decades the progressiver than thou and the normies have rejected the pleas to vote in every election specifically for the courts including the SCOTUS.
Too many sympathetic people couldn’t be arsed to vote to protect women’s autonomy. I’ve been working on this for more than 30 years. I’m fucking sick to death of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@E.: Big holes can take a little while to dig out of. But if I am spoiling the zeitgeist, I can walk away.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: HRC warned us in so many words.
Kay
Agreed. I loved it. Especially this:
I don’t know why they wouldn’t link to his article. That’s just basic fairness.
TEL
Man the amount of doom mongering on BJ has gone through the roof lately! Yes the Republicans are insane, yes we have to fight for what we believe in, but it’s not over – not even close. The tactics the repubs are using are those of a political party in decline – as they lose voters, they move to illegitimate methods to try and maintain control. Gerrymandering, relying on the supreme court, passing laws to overturn electors and make it more difficult to vote – all of this points at a party that can no longer get enough votes to stay in power. We need to remember that we have a lot of strength as well, even if it seems never ending.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Maybe somebody ought to ask them why
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
She did. Same in 2000 2004 2010… the courts are always on the ballot.
zhena gogolia
@TEL: Thank you.
Bex
Kinder Kuche Kirche: The new Nazi plan for women, same as the old Nazi plan for women.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It may be damage control, but that doesn’t mean they will stop doing the damage.
Elizabelle
@Cermet: Oh fuck you. (Your comment 9.)
Elizabelle
@TEL: I know. This blog is off the rails.
Not to say we are not in dangerous times. But these Eeyores who want to lie down on the tracks. We’re always going to looooooose.
Just fuck ’em, as a very good man would say.
Nancy Pelosi has more balls than any of the Eeyores here.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I just think it’s odd. A US Supreme Court Justice (bizarrely) and angrily calls out a writer specifically and they don’t link to the article in question? What else can that be but excessive deference?
I joked that after Roberts was confirmed they would run out of ways to say “smart” when describing Right wing justices but I was wrong- there were new levels of embarrassing fawning that were possible.
Elizabelle
We don’t need insipid content, but today’s progression of posts was:
the media sucks (OK, it does, but…)
election tampering (yes, there is indeed …)
the Taliban, for light relief
Greg Abbot is coming for your birth control.
Eugene Robinson should come here and flog a few of you with a wet noodle.
mrmoshpotato
@lowtechcyclist:
Not in a logical world you can’t, but in the world of hypocritical, controlling sacks of shit…
JoyceH
Some state legislature in a blue state needs to do a companion piece to the Texas law, authorizing bounty hunters to sue people who buy or sell AR-15s. Just kind of to make a point.
Mike G
Alito’s office set ground rules barring media outlets from transcribing or broadcasting in full the speech at the University of Notre Dame
“I’m not part of a secretive cabal, and you’re forbidden from transcribing this speech.”
Kay
@JoyceH:
I’d just take the birth control dialogue with Abbott and scream it from the rooftops. Do they support outlawing contraceptives? Without Roe, what does the legality of contraceptives rest on? Why couldn’t a state legislature outlaw them?
Omnes Omnibus
Griswold.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Which rests on the penumbras that create a right to privacy. If there’s no privacy right, there’s no Griswold either.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought he was carefully avoiding agreeing with the woman in the video. I assume she’s masquerading as someone who wants to ban birth control in order to trick him into agreeing, which he avoids.
Not to say that isn’t his goal, but the video doesn’t prove it. And I don’t approve of those tactics. We know who Abbott is, for God’s sakes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: But Griswold is literally the case about contraception.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Republicans aren’t dumb enough to come out against contraception right now. They know how to proceed incrementally.
Karen
@TEL:
No offense @TEL but it’s happening in Virginia between McAuliffe and Younkin. Younkin had to hide his anti-abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood views a secret before he was caught saying he’d lose Independent votes if he told them. However at the last of two debates, Younkin admitted that he wanted to defund PP and didn’t think the right to abortion should be in the Constitution. Dead heat. Virginia is one vote away from becoming Texas.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
But do the “normies” aka “independents”? And those tactics seem to work for the right-wing well enough. I don’t know, this seems like an existential battle
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Omnes, where did the right in Griswold come from? The conservative judges are going to retain the right to privacy as but exclude abortion? You know this is a line of cases. Is it a given that the prior cases stand if challenged? Why would they?
RaflW
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Houston Chronicle had a piece up about a TX state agency that removed their LGBTQ youth suicide prevention webpage. Because of course.
The talibangelicals are on the move in multiple states. They’ve probably not any more popular than the Taliban in Afghanistan, the question John asks at top is key: will the US public get fed up and sideline our version? Will ruthlessness work for the GQP?
Mai Naem mobile
Speaking of the USSC I still would like to know what went down with Anthony Kennedy/Kennedy Jr/Donnie and Donnie’s loans and Kemnedy’s resignation. Oh, and how Kavanaugh’s pretty huge credit card debts were paid off right before his nomination.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I still think that’s a bridge too far. That’s too out of sync with the broader public, no matter how incremental they try to do it. Like I said up above, it’s easy to demagogue abortion; the morning after pill? I don’t think so
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Normies ≠ independents.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Roe was an extension of Griswold. Overturning Roe doesn’t overturn Griswold automatically.
Ksmiami
@RaflW: we’ll I’m ready to burn them to the ground…
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just don’t see them getting into narrowing “the zone of privacy” because they don’t believe it exists.
RaflW
@Kay: You answered your own question, tho. Elite journalism isn’t about fairness. It’s about elite access.
Ksmiami
@RaflW: they are not the only ones with guns…
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know it doesn’t overturn it automatically. I asked what Griswold rests on if they take out the right to privacy expanded in Roe. They joke about the “penumbras”. They don’t think Griswold is any more valid than Roe.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
It would be gross overreach of them if they try it. A lot of men like the fact that their SOs have birth control pills
I don’t know what to tell you, Kay. If the SCOTUS does what you fear above and the Republicans steal the 2022/2024 elections, the only solution is to violently overthrow them. That’s literally all we would have at that point
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: You may be right that they decide to shoot the moon on this. OTOH, that has not been the way the right has approached this issue. But, you know what, I am not going to argue with you. Neither of us knows.
Chetan Murthy
@Kay:
We think they’ve started saying the quiet parts out loud. We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet: when they get their “starter theocracy”, they’ll start saying other things out loud, stuff we know they think, but they don’t yet speak.
Yeah: they’re gonna gun for Griswold, alright.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I didn’t ask if they would. I asked if they could. It’s why I think asking them about contraception is absolutely fair. They should have to say what it rests on. The Fourteenth Amendment, perhaps? Or is just like any other state law they could or could not put in? People should know the full extent of what they’re losing and the risk they’re running. Overturning Roe is profound. It’s radical. There will be consequences.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t doubt that they are interested in going after Griswold. I am just disagreeing that they are going to try to do it all in one step while taking out Roe.
mrmoshpotato
@Mai Naem mobile:
Same here. That was all shady as hell.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@RaflW:
Ugh, seriously? To answer your questions, I think Dems are going to need to get a lot more aggressive and ruthless to counter the GQP
Kay
@Chetan Murthy:
Young women who are raised in fundie churches absolutely equate birth control with abortion. It’s why they don’t use it.
RaflW
@Ksmiami: I agree. And as I hope I intimated at 2 above, ratcheting up to go after birth control would be a total wipeout for the Rs. I see no ethical reason not to be making the argument that this is an end goal of theirs.
See if a reporter can even get a GOPer to go on the record affirming the right to buy rubbers or self-pay for the pill. (Health ins they all dodge to “nuns having to pay for contraceptive coverage” which is, let’s face it, like 1/100000th of a ‘problem’ so just sidestep that distraction).
Things are so bonkers even the ‘pro-choice’ (cough, gaaak) Susan Collins would clutch her pearls and claim it’s a gotcha and refuse to answer.
sab
@Kay: Thank you for pointing this out. Not everyone has studied constitutional law.
Adam L Silverman
Americans did not revolt and attempt to overthrow the government at any point during the Great Depression. The closest thing that existed to a mass movement against the Hoover administration was the Bonus Army, also known as the Bonus Expeditionary Army orthe Bonus Marchers. A group of WW I veterans who were trying to get the bonus payment they’d been promised disbursed to them. During May and June of 1932 they marched, often with their families, hitching rides on trucks and trains, from all over the continental US to DC where they set up camp on the Anacostia flats. They tried to get a meeting with Hoover, who refused. Congress rushed through enabling legislation, for the second or third time, to give them their $500 bonus ahead of the scheduled payment, which was still a decade off. The closest they got to meeting with a senior leader was when Major General Smedley Darlington Butler went to their camp and spent hours talking to each of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines who wanted to speak to him. For his efforts in trying to get their suffering alleviated, Hoover passed him over for his next assignment – Commandant of the Marine Corps – and threatened him with false charges of insubordination. Butler retired.
As for the Bonus Army, they didn’t get their bonuses. They also, desperate as they were, didn’t try to overthrow the US government or even just the Hoover administration. They just quietly kept doing what they were doing: camping in DC, accepting what charity in terms of food aid was offered, and quietly pressuring the Hoover administration to give them what they were owed. For this, Hoover put MacArthur in charge of clearing them out as they were irritating him. MacArthur, because he was MacArthur and because the infiltrators he’d put into the camps told him that 1/3 of the marchers were Jews and 1/3 were black and all of them were communists, which was reinforced by J. Edgar Hoover who was already undertaking his plans to turn the Bureau of Investigation into the FBI, ordered the 20,000 Bonus marchers and their families cleared out. Five tanks, 200 cavalry, and several hundred infantry cleared out the marchers who were trying to evacuate peacefully on foot. Tear gas grenades were used on the Bonus marchers and their families. Some were run down by the cavalry and beaten with the flats of their sabres. Eisenhower told MacArthur he was an idiot and refused to participate. Patton, being Patton, clicked his heels and carried out MacArthur’s orders. The irony is the sergeant who led the Bonus marchers, Walter Waters, was the Soldier who pulled Patton to safety on the battlefield in France, thereby saving his life.
Through all of this – the Depression, Hoover’s and MacArthur’s violent attack on peaceful veterans who merely wanted the bonus payment they’d been promised repeatedly, Hoover’s continued mishandling of the Depression through the election and the inauguration of FDR – Americans did not rise up and revolt. There was no backlash.
Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a backlash, to the election of FDR. And it wasn’t led by those who had been so brutalized by the Depression or Hoover’s failures as president or by MacArthur on the Anacostia flats in July of 1932. It was led by the wealthiest of the wealthy. The men who had actually made money during the Depression. The men who had picked America’s bones almost clean.
In 1933 a group of wealthy financiers and corporate owners decided that the US could not continue as a self governing democratic-republic if they and their peers were going to continue to profit. They decided that the US should instead become a fascistic oligarchy with a democratic facade. After sending a trusted agent to meet with the emerging fascist leaders in Italy, France, and Germany they determined that the easiest way to accomplish their goals in the US was to encourage and promote street level violence and disorder, culminating in widespread attacks in DC to pressure FDR and force him to accept their hand picked co-president. A co-president who would rule the US on their behalf from the shadows while FDR continued on the face of a faux democracy.
In order to achieve these objectives these wealthy financiers and captains of industry and investment determined that the remnants of the Bonus Army of WW I veterans would make the perfect foot soldiers in their campaign of disruption. They approached MajGen Smedley Darlington Butler, who was beloved by these veterans, to lead them. Fortunately, Butler recognized exactly what game was being played, gathered as much information as possible, and then took it to Congress and the news media. While Butler’s actions successfully stymied what we now call the Business Plot, Congress and the news media largely covered it up. As a result it is unclear even today exactly which, if any, elected or appointed officials might have been involved. The known coup organizers and plotters, however, were not some fly by night, nouveau riche group of amateurs. Their leaders included George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush Sr. The grandfather and father of one president and great-grandfather and grandfather of a second.
They did this despite FDR winning 90% or so of the Electoral College vote and having gigantic majorities in both the House and the Senate. If I recall correctly the Democratic congressional majorities were something like 68 out of 98 senators and upwards of 300 members of the House. FDR’s electoral mandate was enormous and yet they still attempted a coup…
Here’s the Universal Newsreel of MajGen Butler calling out the plotters in an attempt to force Congress and the news media to actually take this seriously and do something about it.
https://archive.org/details/UniversalNewsreel-Gen.ButlerBaresplotByFascists
For all of our vaunted lip service and fealty to our revolutionary past, Americans have consistently shown for the past 100 years that there is nothing you can do to them that will make them push back. Let me clarify that: white Americans have consistently shown the past 100 years that there is nothing you can do to them that will make them push back. Hell, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the past 100 years, a significant portion of them will actually be actively involved in creating and perpetuating the problem while another significant chunk will just stand on the sides and tut tut all of the upheaval. And those of good conscience, like all of you (and I mean that sincerely, whatever our disagreements, you’re all good people), will, of course, be willing to put themselves on the line for positive change.
You can’t out organize an extreme gerrymander. Nor extreme voter suppression. If just the Florida and Texas redistricting maps are allowed to stand, it won’t matter what happens in any other state, the Republicans will retake the House. The Senate map, while favorable to the Democrats for the 2022 elections, is still going to be a huge lift. And this is the last favorable Senate map for the Democrats. From 2024 on it gets worse and worse for them.
Those of us that keep beating this drum aren’t telling you all this because we want to be mean. Or because we want to upset you. We’re telling you this because we want everyone to understand just how dangerous this moment is. Just how precarious things are right now. And, as with the history lesson at the beginning of this comment, just how absolutely normal it is in America for extremely wealthy conservative interests to seek to overthrow the constitutional order and establish a fascist system running behind a facade of democracy.
Time will tell if I and the others sounding the alarms are right or wrong. I’d love to be wrong. I’d love for all of you to spend weeks and months dunking on me after the 2022 elections are over and, again, after the 2024 elections are over. Goku got started a bit prematurely in last night’s comments…
But until then, I will beat this drum until we are out of danger.
RaflW
@Kay: Fundies are having a really tough time recruiting more young adherents in the US, tho. The fundie voting block is rigid, but shrinking – hence the GOPs rising histrionics.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle:
We’re not zoned for that. It requires a cabaret license.
bbleh
It’s about fear. It’s reactionary authoritarianism in response to fear. Fear of the unfamiliar, of people and ways they don’t recognize, and of issues and events they don’t have the information or training to understand. Fear that is amplified by a constant and deliberate barrage of selections, distortions, and outright lies, and that is manipulated by a thin stratum of sociopaths for profit and power.
In the end, a lot of them really DO believe in “live and let live,” but they have become so frightened that they’ve lost their bearings — informational and moral — and they’re desperately trying to lock things down in a way they think they can cope with.
The problem is, they can’t lock things down, because the world really can’t be fenced out, and because the sociopaths who depend on keeping them in a permanent state of panic keep dumping more monsters over the fence.
Quite a pickle …
schrodingers_cat
White women voted for Trump in larger numbers than 2016 in 2020. Whiteness trumped gender solidarity for them.
Kay
They all know passing voting rights isn’t just important as a substantive protection, it’s important because they promised an absolutely essential part of their base, African Americans, that they would get it done.
Sherrod Brown said at a local event if he had to guess what would be a carve out or kill the filibuster it would be voting rights. Said it immediately in response to a question. “Voting rights”. Not even a 5 second delay. Even dopey Manchin knows it.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
This post is a statement of the facts of a situation. That’s not being an Eeyore. Pointing out facts is not doomsaying.
Adam L Silverman
@Chetan Murthy: They’re gunning for Loving. Roe and Griswold are merely stops along the way.
sab
@Adam L Silverman: Can you frontpage this? My spouse doesn’t read comments but he needs to read this about FDR and Butler.
Karen
@Adam L Silverman:
Am I right in thinking that you’re saying they want to bring back the ban on interracial couples?
Soprano2
The activists have never been about saving lives; they’re all about power over young women’s sex lives. I truly believe that if Roe is overturned, in states that outlaw abortion they’ll come after certain forms of birth control under the theory that they cause abortions. It’s bullshit, but that’s what they’ll do. They’ve been saying it for years. They’ll say “we don’t want to get rid of all birth control – you’ll still have condoms and diaphragms and foam and other barrier methods. We just want to stop abortions. Why aren’t those methods good enough for you?” I’m not saying it’ll be successful, but that’s what they’ll try. They want people’s sex lives to be like they were in the ’50’s when single women had to always be afraid of pregnancy. They don’t seem to think married women want to avoid pregnancy that badly. I think they count on the idea that people with means will still be able to get reliable birth control.
Another Scott
We’ve been here before. They’re using the same tactics as before.
As with abortion, it’s not about what they say it’s about. Abortion isn’t about “protecting the unborn”. It’s about creating a political wedge issue to weaken Democratic coalitions and keep reactionaries in power.
Americans United (from 2012):
(Emphasis added.)
Yup.
They want Democrats to be in the position of leaving their churches (which is very difficult to do and traumatic for many), or accepting their reactionary worldview and all that goes with it. When you control someone’s religious views, you control their political views.
So, it doesn’t matter that 90+% think this is ridiculous. People like Santorum will continue to run on it, and get money from reactionary billionaires to push it. And reactionary judges will find ways to go along with it. These monsters are always with us. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another world war to take down this generation’s Charles Coughlin…
Yes, we have the majority on this issue – but it’s not enough. We need to recognize what this is about – political power – and fight it appropriately.
tl;dr – Don’t let them set the terms of the debate. They’re not arguing in good faith. Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Doesn’t Big Pharma make money off contraceptives? As long as they continue to wet their beak it will remain.
As long as money is involved, Arthur Jensen will haul Alito and the other cultists in and remind them who really runs the country; that “the world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
Making contraception illegal would be a fantasy move, sort of like making it illegal to eat sugar. You can outlaw it all you want. People will ignore you
Mike in NC
“Shaming Sluts” has always been a right wing crowd pleaser.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: I appreciate that you didn’t use the word “war” this time.
And how do you propose that we get out of danger?
I’m working to win elections.
You?
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, Adam, I was totally ignorant of the Business Plot.
Arclite
Example 1034 on how radical Republicans have become: conservatives Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin over at WaPo have basically become Democrats in response to GOP behavior and policies.
mvr
Damage control as the imperious would practice it in defense of their imperium.
Adam L Silverman
@sab: I can. I’ll do it after I walk the dogs if that’s okay. Also, I highly recommend Sally Denton’s The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation In Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right:
https://www.amazon.com/Plots-Against-President-Nation-American/dp/1608190897
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, Adam, contra your contention in your first paragraph, (and very nice summation, btw, I wish I were teaching an American history class right now, I’d print it out for my students posthaste!), you obviously believe that *some* Americans are capable of at least *wanting* to violently overthrow the government – your own historical precis highlights the attempt foiled by Smedley Butler. And you’ve been beating the drum (your words) about the January 6 insurrectionists being part of a larger plan. So your point is…that it’s not “the people” that follow their revolutionary/violent impulses, but rather forces aligned with the authoritarian plutocracy?
Sure Lurkalot
@bbleh: The thing is who gutted their wealth with 40 years of supply side economics? Who sells them the zero sum game and the fear of their place and the other?
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: Sadly, whiteness almost always trumps gender when it comes to white women’s voting patterns. We are monstrously unreliable allies, I fear. And I for one am truly sorry about that.
Ruckus
@TEL:
Sure rethuglicans do not control everything. But the senate is on thin ice with the 2 malcontents, the SC is controlled by the rethuglicans, a number of states, like TX are pulling crap out of their asses and flinging it against the wall, we had an attempted overthrow of the federal government and many of the major news corporations have their heads up their asses….. Now is the end tomorrow, likely no. Is there an end on the horizon? Quite possibly yes there is. Sure somedays it seems like nothing but tears and hand wringing, but it’s not as if this is all a TV show or movie that is just about finished. This shit storm is real, it is possibly fatal for the country and we should at least be worried about it. Sure we discuss it to death, it is after all a blog. But one never knows where a good idea or rallying cry may come from.
Arclite
@lowtechcyclist:
Yup, if they were the “freedom” absolutists they claim they are where there is no freedom without risk of life and limb, they’d support abortion rights.
geg6
@Omnes Omnibus:
And if you don’t think that’s next, I have a bridge for sale.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
They don’t have to make it illegal. They just have to make it inaccessible. Pass conscience laws that allow pharmacists and pharmacy chains not to fill prescriptions. Allow employers to remove contraceptive coverage from their health plans. You get the gist.
Raven
Freddie!!!!!!
mvr
@zhena gogolia:
What’s wrong with the tactic? It involves some deception but deception isn’t always wrong, so I need more help here.
Adam L Silverman
@Karen: Yes. Cole kind of mangled the history of opposition to abortion and Roe. Prior to the mid 1970s the only real coordinated opposition was from traditionalist Catholics. Foremost among them a doctor known as C Everett Koop. They didn’t have a lot of traction because they were mostly speaking to themselves. White evangelicals however, were very upset over Brown, Loving, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and integration. But they couldn’t get much national traction because they were perceived as being racist. Which is not surprising. Unfortunately someone put the idea in the heads of Francis Schaeffer Sr and Jerry Falwell to make common cause with Koop and the Catholic anti-abortion and anti-contraception advocates to form a coalition. The public facing common goal was to overturn Roe. The private common goal was also to overturn Griswold. But the White evangelicals had additional private goals: overturning all the elements of the Civil Rights era: Loving, Brown, the Voting Rights Act, and, if possible, the Civil Rights Act. This is still the goal for over half of this political alliance.
Omnes Omnibus
Well, that is always the question that arises. I know what I think, but a number of others disagree and I don’t want to close down any discussion.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: We are at war. A low intensity revolutionary one. Just because using the term offends your feelings, doesn’t make it less true.
As for my actual activities, I’m engaged on several initiatives.
Kay
@Arclite:
I like Rubin’s happy warrior. She completely enjoys attacking them :)
The other Never Trumpers are sort of mopey and wistful, “what could have been…”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Raven
@Another Scott: Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
mvr
@Kay:
FWIW, that summary of the “zone of privacy” being about “marriage, procreation and family” is what the conservative majority in Bowers said it was about. The dissenters thought that was too narrow. Bowers was overturned, implicitly by Roemer vs Evans and more explicitly in several cases since, including Lawrence vs. Texas.
Kay
One of the comments under Serwers article wrote that it will make Alito crazy, because he’ll read it and won’t have a way to respond. I wonder if Alito has some lacky who looks for his name and brings him articles where he’s mentioned. Why else would he ever have encountered the original piece?
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Yes. There has always been and there always will be a mass of Americans that will scream that they are patriots protecting freedom while willingly following authoritarians that have no interest in preserving or promoting liberty, rights, or democratic self government. They have repeatedly been involved in attempts to overthrow the constitutional order going back to the earliest days of the Republic. Just like we have a business cycle, we also seem to have both a political extremism cycle and a religious revivalism that ultimately turns extremist cycle too. And right now we’ve got both going at the same time.
People forget that the KKK controlled all levels of government in Indiana and a number of other states in the 1920s. This stuff has happened here. And there is no guarantee it cannot happen again. I would suggest it is even easier now because of 24/7/365 digital and social media and the Internet.
Arclite
@Elizabelle:
It’s hard not to despair when you see Republicans at the state level introducing 100s of pieces of legislation to cement minority rule and the Dems basically not playing hardball in response. HR1 would remedy that to a large extent, but can’t get Manchin on board and can’t end the filibuster.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: What you think is one possible way out. I hope it is the way that actually happens. But it isn’t guaranteed.
Kay
@mvr:
So a right to contraception use would have to rest on equal protection? I wonder how that would work.
Expatchad
@Omnes Omnibus:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
ETA: deleted by me
zhena gogolia
@mvr: We don’t like it when right-wingers do it. We call them con men.
Raven
Go Braves!!!
Another Scott
I remember those olden days, also too…
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
THANK YOU!
I think that is a huge part of the problem, a lot of the actual governing still goes on in what used to be smoke filled rooms. Those of us who are or were working people have been getting fucked for a long time by the upper business/political cabal in this country, bypassing or getting laws changed to protect their precious dollars and power. FDR did wonders for this country and it’s actual democracy, every since there has been an upper level run around to control and steal more and more. If we want an actual democracy there are things that need changing. The house needs to grow to reflect the population. The supreme court needs to grow to reflect the population. There needs to be a term limit for the court. It can be longer than some of the other federal term limits but it needs to be there. We need to take back our democracy, the one that works for all of us, not just the obscenely wealthy.
Adam L Silverman
@sab: I just put it up as a front page post. I’m going to walk my dogs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve never said it was guaranteed, but it sure as fuck won’t happen if people don’t try. The GOP does not have all the advantages, and, as frustrating as it is for everyone who is waiting now, passing the currently stalled legislation would change a lot. I think that there is a good chance that once the filibuster gets solved for anything, that it will be like a dam breaking in terms of legislation. That would change the ground completely.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
The problem with this, of course, is that you make it sound like it’s a fait accompli and we’re all doomed no matter what we do. That’s incredibly demoralizing. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people don’t want to hear how we’re going to lose and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. It’s fine to talk about the problems we’re facing but I don’t want hand-wringing
ETA: And yes I realize I’m one to talk
bbleh
@Sure Lurkalot: obviously it was the Democrats and their uppity foreigner “president” who raised taxes on hard-working Heartland Americans™ and gave all the money to their lazy Urban supporters and the illegal immigrants. Or so Fox news tells them every night. And they are willing to hear it, because it confirms what they suspected all along.
It’s pretty much impossible to fight this kind of fear with facts. You can lead a horse to water, etc …
Kay
@mvr:
Olde Timey Republicans, like George HW Bush, used to see contraception as a way to avoid creating single parents. An actual proponent of widely available contraceptives, he was. My how far they’ve come, just running backwards at top speed.
What was so hard for me about Roe is how little has happened since for womens rights. I’m all for marching forward resolutely or whatever but it is hard to realize you’re going backwards. It was like violence against women act then.. “that’s enough! We stopped killing them! WTF else do they want?”
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m not hand wringing. I’m telling you, in detail, what the problem set actually is.
But you go right ahead and keep asking if I’m actually the same opinion writer at WaPo who is an apologist for torture.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I do not think the filibuster problem is going to be solved. It is a wicked problem not because we don’t know how to solve it, but because the solution is highly unlikely to be implemented.
mvr
@Kay:
I’d have to do some research, I’m not a lawyer, though long ago I ghost wrote for one on occasion. But my reading of the penumbra cases was that they originally set up a broad right to privacy to partly explain what united the first ten amendments. So it included many of the enumerated rights in its penumbra (search and seizure, quartering of soldiers) as well as some unenumerated rights like birth control and eventually abortion. In some sense, the list offered by the right wing in Bowers was always dicta – stuff justices say in defending their ruling – but not part of the ruling itself which was only that “homosexual sodomy” was not covered by the right to privacy. So I think when the case is overturned the modification it made to the law reverts back to its prior state. What that state was is of course legally controversial. But I’d say a broad right to privacy was that prior state.
As with all legal theorizing the rules of interpretation are nearly as controversial as the first level rules. But this strikes me as the most coherent way to think about this particular issue.
That said, I completely agree with you that asking about what they plan to do about Eisenstadt and Griswold is perfectly fair and needed, even if they don’t ever answer.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay:
The other Never Trumpers want to turn the Democratic Party into a replica of the nascent monster they created.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Well, there is a big difference of opinion. I hope I am right.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Sure, and then you’re saying nothing is going to be solved. That’s demoralizing and incredibly negative
I apologize for that one. I didn’t know who the guy was. I’m sorry, Adam. It was some dumb snark
Another Scott
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My understanding is that Adam is saying that good people have to be willing to go to the streets and make demands and be willing to back them up.
Kinda like the Green Revolution in Iran. And Tahrir Square in Egypt. And the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. And the People Power Revolution in the Philippines. And…
And the ones that worked out well and actually improved things were, I dunno… Is there a relevant successful example that is instructive for us (richest country in history; tens of millions of firearms; nuclear weapons; etc.)?
“Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”
The problem with deciding that the system is broken and cannot be fixed except by working outside it is – it takes a very long time to get a functioning government (and often society) working again. Giving up on the political system in the USA should be a very last resort, and I’m not willing to seriously consider going there yet.
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@mvr:
Thanks. I know they’ll take it as an outrageous question and we’ll get their usual huffy outrage but I don’t think it is. Rights are a guarantee. If someone takes one away they should be forced to explain the scope and strength of the new scheme. You can’t just be pulling out Jenga blocks on my rights. To me it’s the frame of a house I live in.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope you are right too!
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: No, the color revolutions have all been abject failures.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Occupy Wall Street didn’t have too many successes, either.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cameron
A lot of people on this blog are obviously very (even passionately) politically involved. Anybody considering running or actually running for local/state offices? Just asking to satisfy my own curiosity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cameron: It is not something for which I am suited.
James E Powell
@Kay:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Shouldn’t both of you be citing authorities with properly formatted footnotes on the same page?
Cameron
@Omnes Omnibus: Neither am I, and even if I were and had political talent, I couldn’t get elected Assistant Animal Control Officer in Manatee County,
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
I do not believe there is any such thing as gender solidarity.
Ksmiami
@RaflW: oh they can taste it and they’re fucking theocratic psychos but they’re going to find people don’t want to go back to the crusades and will fight them to the death on this… that is if they don’t drop from Covid first
Ruckus
@Cameron:
I was a while back but no longer. I’m recently on the retirement ramp, I hope it’s a long one but I’ve been working for 60 yrs and I’m tired. I’d like to at least attempt to try to enjoy the next part of my life. We do have a number of fairly new house members, it’s the senate that either old farts or youngish, conservative, SFBs. We need fresh blood of the progressive end of the scale, who don’t think that good government ended with the signing of the constitution but is an ongoing bit that needs constant attention.
In agreeing with Adam, I’ll add, as long as we can make it work without having to start over. The basis for this is still here but there are a number of people trying pretty hard to screw up what’s supposed to be a democracy. Nothing he’s said is out of line.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: I would prefer not to.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cameron: I think I am far more of a extrovert than most of the crowd here, but I still need down time. And I have some history.
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: I want to defund the rural white areas that comprise most of our problems- just cut them off from any federal largesse and end their subsidized medical care. Just balls to the wall since they want to rule over the majority- then no money, no Advil…
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus:
No, he hasn’t said anything that is out of line, but he has made some calls that aren’t sure things. And that’s fine, as long as we recognizes that it is hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
Ksmiami
@Adam L Silverman: then we break the country up. Because if the Rt wing gets it’s way, the usa won’t be worth saving anyway
Another Scott
@Cameron: There was a Juicer a few cycles ago who ran for the US House from somewhere out west.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Ksmiami:
Oh, it makes some of them nervous. The chaos, how insane the Trumpsters are, how they’re actually fairly liberal but just don’t want to pay taxes. But they don’t seem to get that if they keep voting for Republicans their nuanced objections don’t matter a bit. They get the whole package.
My husband got confronted at the hardware store by a rabid Righty, just for being a public Democrat – he’s sometimes in the newspaper w/the Bd of Elections. He’s a tough person but a “normie” – he doesn’t follow politics obsessively- and he was rattled by what he described as “the atmosphere”. He just didn’t realize it had gotten to that point. I think you have to see it before you “get” it.
Cameron
@Ruckus: Enjoy retirement. I’ve been retired (unwillingly) for about five years. Different from what I had expected.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
They’ve decided they don’t have enough enemies so are going after the Pope, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cameron
@Another Scott: Might be an interesting trend here, for those with time and inclination.
Ksmiami
@Kay: Rt.. they are clinical at this point. I guess the only good news is once people are so rabid, it makes it easier to fight them.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Other than contributing to Andrew Breitbart’s coronary.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Occupy got us to finally remove all of our business from our bank, and move everything to our Credit Union. Not all CUs are created equal, but this one is very good.
evodevo
@Kay:
Yep…not just Catholics any more…my DIL is an example
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
So the party of Lewandowski, Trump, Gaetz, Noem and a bunch of other pervs who apparently run around fucking anything that moves is supposed to be the one against promiscuity? They think people won’t see through that? Because it doesn’t take 20/20 vision.
Chris Johnson
That is not good news when legislating, governmenting, operating in a society is NOT about openly fighting. It is only good news when your end goal is establishing constant fighting as a baseline.
See, this shit is why I can’t trust you as a poster. You gotta let go of this idea that fighting the bad guys is the end goal. The end goal is stopping the bad guys, and fighting is one of many possible tools for doing that, and it’s not at all the most desirable one because it gets them all excited and they’re already way more excited about doing the fighting than we are. They LIKE it, and when you also love it so dearly I get suspicious.
It’s like murder. The goal of civilization is not to make it so you have maximum freedom to go and kill murderers as soon as you see them. The goal is to establish that one does NOT murder, because you get your ass locked up. There’s lots of this stuff going on where the ‘that’s against the rules, wtf’ is slipping. It’s not about physically attacking those who are doing it, it’s about establishing those rules again. Then, attacking ’em is only one path towards making them honor those rules (and one of the least helpful paths)