Forward to the Past

 

“Prophet’s take risks and speak out in righteous indignation against society’s treatment of the poor.” James H. Cone

I’m not surprised at all by the vehemence of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito’s recently leaked opinion. Alito was writing for the majority -- on behalf of the infamous political operatives in robes -- Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett “Spring Break” Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett. How the draft became public is irrelevant. Alito made very clear where this is going, the repeal of Roe V. Wade and what will mark the beginning of a gradual, but steady, erosion of other fundamental human rights most of us take for granted. What’s going to change between now and when the decision is handed down except maybe the addition of another line of fencing around the Supreme Court building? We know the outcome. John Roberts might insist on watering down some of Alito’s more obnoxious phrases, citations and inferences, but the outcome will not change.  

What happens when this illegitimate, unaccountable, and reactionary Supreme Court delivers its anticipated opinion?

The crusaders are going to find the magic cup they have chased since I was a boy -- the repeal of a woman’s Constitutional right to abortion health services. Health services for women, many of them working-class or poor, the ones for whom life is already difficult enough. The crusaders will lift the cup like the winners of a European Champions League football final.  And then the unholy alliance of the GOP/Evangelical Christian right will move to the next target. Their odds of success are good. They’ve got tons of unaccountable money, FOX News, and a network of evangelical churches that enjoy tax-free status while they preach a vile form of theocracy. In the short run, before they start feeding on each other (a hazard of amassing too much unaccountable power), they will wield power like a hammer. And then, if the GOP regains control of Congress and the White House, watch out. 

America isn’t immune to the consequences of Empire Rot, a terminal condition. The example Trump sent the political class during his disastrous single term was that norms don’t matter, laws against political corruption and ethical violations are tepid and easy to evade by simply ignoring them, and telling  extreme and outlandish lies is a viable and effective tactic. In fact, the more outlandish the lie the greater the likelihood it will become the truth, and for some small percentage of the population, gospel. 

What happens when this illegitimate, unaccountable, and reactionary Supreme Court delivers its anticipated opinion? Will we stage another massive Women’s March, feel the rush of solidarity and purpose and tolerance, and then retreat to our separate silos waiting for someone else to do the work of educating, organizing, and channeling the energy and outrage and determination into a coherent, focused political direction? That’s one of the tallest orders there is, yet it’s the only way social change is made. Ground up, slow, painstaking, and, yes, incremental. In contrast, when hard-won rights are diluted, narrowed, or stripped away, it’s usually a top down process, opportunistic, cynical, and cruel. We forget so many elemental lessons, or perhaps we never learned to begin with. Rights won are not forever; they can be lost. Rights must be defended with vigilance, like liberty itself. We will soon be a country where abortion is legal in some states and a crime in others, not unlike the years leading to the Civil War when half the states permitted and perpetuated chattel slavery, and the other half forbade it. 

Serfs in Russia did not have pension plans or social insurance. They depended on their master, from birth to death. When Alito and his noxious cabal put Roe down for good, they will set their sights on other rights they find objectionable: birth control, same-sex marriage, other privacy rights, and then, one day they will come for the last prize of the New Deal era, the big one, Social Security. It will happen in stages, by a cut here, a scratch there. But once they get going more will come, more impetus for unaccountable power to go further, take more, control more. Only a credible, focused and organized people’s movement or coalition of movements that pushes back whenever it detects a threat can stymie these radicals. The demise of Roe isn’t a women’s issue alone, it must be part of a broader coalition focused on securing human rights. Losing Roe is a major setback, an insult to women, essentially a white man’s declaration of sovereignty over women and their bodies; it could be the centerpiece of a mass movement, perhaps it will, but to be transformative a movement needs size and depth. And staying power, which is where the tax-free Evangelical church network has been so lethal. 

The Democratic Party isn’t the vessel, let’s establish that from the jump. The Democrats have not done much to enshrine the right to abortion health services in law since the time abortion became a wedge issue more than 40 years ago. In 1976, a young Senator from Delaware named Joseph Biden voted for the Hyde Amendment, legislation that banned federal funding of abortion health services. Both parties have used abortion as a moblizing tool. The Democrats will talk-the-talk but fail to muster the support to pass legislation protecting the right to abortion health services. They’ll mount one of their patented doomed-from-the-outset initiatives that will have zero chance of being enacted in anything resembling its original form. 

So, what are We the People going to do?