Democracy’s light flickers

Welcome to 2022 and the land of the free.

A group of unelected thaumaturges just decided that life is constitutionally protected from the moment of fertilization until a child’s old enough to go to school and get shot. Forget the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militia.” Forget individual rights, religious freedom, privacy, due process. The government can’t issue public health orders to keep people safe, but it can control a woman’s private reproductive and religious decisions, which affect only her. Some states are considering restricting the right to travel to a different state for an abortion. If people get shot it’s their own fault, barricaded doors and a “good guy with a gun” (except for Uvalde) are the answers. Turn those schools, churches and stores into armed fortresses.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring with the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, wrote that the court “should consider” that Obergefell, Griswold and Lawrence v. Texas were also “erroneous” and the court has “a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.” Obergefell and Lawrence affirmed rights of same-sex couples. Griswold affirmed marital privacy rights and said that states can’t ban birth control use by married couples.

Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 committee hearings are deconstructing the Republican effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. From debunking each detail of the conspiracy theories about the Big Lie; from Michigan’s Antrim County; tampering with voting machines; the role of anti-American, anti-government extremist groups; the collaboration by people at all levels; to crackpot media including the “2000 Mules” movie discredited by former Attorney General Bill Barr, a clear picture is emerging about this plan to overthrow an elected American government.

Michigan Republican candidates for governor, attorney general, secretary of state and many Republican candidates for office here are poster children for these seditious conspiracies. The Republican-connected group Stand Up Michigan, founded by the co-organizers of the spring 2020 protest at the Capitol in Lansing where armed thugs interrupted legislators in session, has county-level downlines promoting the same cultural paranoia and media, recruiting candidates to run for local offices so they can control elections and school boards so they can control curricula and policy.

Radicalized Christian churches acting as de facto political organizations sermonize dog whistles like religious liberty, sanctity of life, and marriage and family to advance their sects’ beliefs about abortion, health care, gender roles and equal rights by supporting extremist candidates who will rewrite our laws to match their dogma. Katherine Stewart writes about this extensively, most recently in her July 5 New York Times article, “Christian Nationalists are Excited about What Comes Next”.

This isn’t God, love, unity, religious freedom and patriotism. It's Christian-dominant extremist theocracy with lots of guns and a side of Michigan-style multilevel marketing. It’s their way, or else.

“First they came for the Socialists …,” Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller’s ageless quote, is displayed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Nazi rise to power was fueled by a world stuck in the aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression. Inflation was rampant, prices and demand were high while supplies were low. That’s happening now all over the world because of geopolitical events — the global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Italians and Germans were afraid and angry and wanted someone to blame, so they looked to populist strongmen like Mussolini and Hitler for solutions. People looked the other way once those “solutions” became apparent, as long as they weren’t the targets.

Gas prices in Lenawee County just dropped 30 cents in one week. I noticed yesterday in a drive around that most of the 50-plus oil wells located in this region aren’t pumping. Oil companies are exporting U.S. oil while they charge the highest price at the pump that consumers will pay. That’s capitalism. Inflation and shortages, even if they’re temporary, are painful.

Our world is changing. Replacing American democracy with fascism isn’t the way forward.

Pam Taylor is a retired Lenawee County teacher and an environmental activist. She can be reached at ptaylor001@msn.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Pam Taylor: Democracy’s light flickers