Helpless and Hopeless

 I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it quite so quickly. Nor did I expect the palpable glee. 

Here's what I thought would happen this past Friday: the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) would amend Roe v. Wade to ban abortions after fifteen weeks. That would have been horrifying enough, but the measured incrementalism of the United States' drift towards extinction just turned into a headlong gallop. I will be utterly gobsmacked if at least one state hasn't seceded within the next four years; I think it a near-certainty many will. 

It's already on the table in Texas: their state Republicans included secession in their platform. The rest of that document goes far, far beyond utter lunacy and deep into farce. I will get to that in a bit. 

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All my life, I have been trying to loosen my thinking, to at least entertain positions that move me closer to the center of an issue. Sometimes it's only so I can understand my opponent in order that I might better defeat them. Often, though, it's more sincere than that. If your thinking becomes too extreme in any direction, it gets to be impossible to even see the other side.

There are a very few issues on which I am an absolutist and immovable. Abortion is one. I can not even begin to understand the people who call themselves "pro-life". I've excoriated them often enough and won't repeat it here (even though they deserve infinite repetition). I will only restate this, which sums up my absolutist position admirably:

I could not care less who I'm killing. Call it a clump of cells, call it a fetus, call it a baby, call it an ADULT if you want. Don't care. Here's why:

As a man, nobody may touch my body for any reason, not even to save another life, without my express permission. This is called autonomy. We grant it to men, living or dead. Yes, even if I am a corpse, you must obtain my pre-corpse permission to draw so much as a drop of blood. Thousands of people die every year on waiting lists for organs and marrow and blood; no matter. Without my permission, you are legally prohibited from using my body.

But if I were an American who got pregnant...

Well, start with the pregnancy itself. Pregnancy is dangerous. It's especially dangerous in the United States, which has the worst maternal mortality among all industrialized nations, ranking a pathetic 55th in the world. It's especially ESPECIALLY dangerous for people of colour, of course. There are a wide variety of possible complications the antidote to which is abortion -- and not all states even make any exception to save the life of the mother.

Eva and I tried for years to have children. Seven miscarriages, one of which was found dead at the three month mark. Carrying Peanut to term would likely have killed my wife, so you can perhaps understand how close this strikes to home. But even without that experience, all you need to do is talk to a single woman who has had an abortion to understand that a "woman's right to choose" means choosing her entire life path. 

Then, the forced birth, also dangerous...and ruinously expensive in the U.S. They fine you between $5000 and $11000 (probably more; those stats are from pre-covid and pre-inflation) to give birth in that benighted country, and that's if nothing goes wrong.  How many people can afford that? Not many. So if you're lucky enough not to die, you're caught in a massive debt trap. It costs more than $400,000 to raise a child from birth to age 18. How many people have THAT kind of money?

Yes, mothers could put their babies up for adoption -- more likely than not condemning the child to a miserable existence either way. But Republicans have indicated over and over and over again that they do not care for children once they're born. And they certainly do not care for mothers. The cruelty is the point. 

I'm especially amazed to see women weeping for joy, saying this is the answer to all their prayers. Lots of them.  Excuse me? You've been praying for a chance to consign your sisters into reproductive slavery and elevate all men over all women? 

Evidently so. I have seen more than one tweet from more than one woman exhorting mothers to teach their daughters not to be sluts. (Because only men get to have recreational sex without consequence.) I find myself wondering why so many women want, need, demand that ALL women to return to the 1950s.

"A woman's right to choose" is NOT about abortion. It's about the kind of life she wants to live. Does she want a career? Many women will no longer be able to have one, because there's no telling when she might become pregnant and be forced to drop everything. If that sounds extreme, check your privilege. 

We are at the beginning of the Handmaid's Tale. You'll recall that the first blow to womanhood in that book/series was the removal of a woman's right to  credit in her own name. I was alive when American women didn't have that right, so don't think it can't go away.

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You'd be amazed what they want to go away. About seventy years.

The Supreme Court has already indicated they are chomping at the bit to outlaw not just same sex marriages, but homosexual acts; also the right to access contraception; also segregation. That's right, folks, they are downright salivating at the chance to resurrect Jim Crow. Republican state governments will be sending cases to SCOTUS urgently: they've been asked to. 

But wait, there's more! LOTS more!

Look to Texas for a blueprint. All of this was just recently and enthusiastically baked into the Texas Republican party platform.  Look and fucking weep for what could be lost. Source

• The Equal Rights Act, which the Texas GOP maintains expired in 1979; 
• The complete and total  erasure of anyone who isn't male or female; 
• Mandatory prayer in schools, courts, and other government buildings;
• Absolutely no regulations on gun ownership or carriage, anywhere in the state;
• Total abortion ban from the moment of fertilization;
• The abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency and the repeal of the Endangered Species Act (so no environmental regulations whatsoever);
• Eliminate the minimum wage;
• Repeal Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley, which would remove most oversight from financial transactions;
• A total ban on collective bargaining; 
• Absolutely no sex ed in school. Not even abstinence. (But somehow they want to ensure all children learn about the 'Fundamental Dignity of the Unborn', so good luck with that);
• The education system must be focused on "American exceptionalism";
• Repeal of affirmative action;
• Make divorce much harder to obtain; eliminate legal recognition of common-law relationships;
• No  voting by mail under any circumstances;
• and believe it or not, I could keep going...they state that Biden is an "illegal occupant" of the White House!

Now, I'm not politically savvy enough to know how much of this Texas could pull off even if it wanted to.

But I for damn sure know that Washington could manage most of it...especially if when Republicans seize power in 2025. If by some miracle that is prevented -- and frankly, I don't see how -- it will still trigger the breakup of the country. 

I firmly believe that, and I'm not alone. The two sides of America are two different nations, virtually two different species at this point. I look at that list of priorities above and I see nothing but terror and misery in it. Republicans look at it and see their every dream come true. But a bigger reason is that the entire country is sinking deeper and deeper into a crisis of legitimacy that is, I believe, invariably fatal to societies. If you don't trust your government (few, even among Democrats, really do); if you don't trust your media (few do) and especially if you don't trust the national arbiter of your laws...you are not all that far removed from chaos.

Americans don't deserve this, but America, I'm sorry to say, does. The Democratic Party had a supermajority not all that long ago. They could have passed a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing reproductive rights for all, among so much else. Why didn't they do so? One big reason I can discern is that, strictly politically speaking, it's better to maintain the threat of what your opponent might do than to remove all chance of your opponent doing it. Well, guess what, Democrats. Forty years of inept bungling has made you weak and pathetic, and the GOP has done an end run to neuter you. 

Even now, I feel like there are so many things that could be done, but there's no interest in doing any of them. Make Puerto Rico and D.C. states. Presto: four more reliably Dem senators, rendering Manchin and Sinema as moot as they should have been all along. Impeach the three T---- SCOTUS appointees for lying in their confirmation hearings (all three either stated or heavily, heavily implied that they would not do what they just did). Establish SCOTUS term limits and mandate balance wherever realistically possible

Convince Murkowski and Collins, along with any other sane Republicans you can find, to switch parties. 

Abolish the filibuster (easy, they could do it tomorrow). Abolish the Electoral College (much much harder, but can be done sneakily at state level if enough states agree to a framework). Many things. 

I feel condemned to watch this unfold. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to live through.

As always, a warning that much of what is happening in the U.S. can and very likely will happen here. There is to be another mass "protest" in Ottawa starting Canada Day and supposedly going throughout the summer. I'll be shocked and infuriated if the police don't nip that in the bud right quick, but even so, any least restriction on these people's 'freedom' turns them into martyrs. There's a house a couple of blocks from me with a lawn sign: a picture of Justin Trudeau dripping blood with the word "TYRANNY" superimposed. Your first instinct is to laugh your guts out, and then you realize these people are very serious. My solution is exile. You don't like it here, we give you a plane ticket to your choice of alluring destinations. Russia. Eritrea. The High Arctic. 

Yeah, I know.

I'm scared, sad, angry, and tired. So tired. And it hasn't even really started yet. This is just the pre-show. I don't know what to do. I feel like I can't do anything. 

Helpless and hopeless.