The hand-picked, “conservative” court has ruled on the abortion law that was in front of it.
Let’s be clear about this.
They could have overturned Roe v Wade. We were told in no uncertain terms that each of the five Republican appointees was going to do just that. If I remember correctly, we were basically told that we would all go to hell if we didn’t do everything in our power to get them confirmed, no matter their other problems because … well … because abortion
To paraphrase Scripture, I was young when Roe v Wade was handed down, and now I’m old, and I have heard this bullying claptrap for all the decades between then and now. What I haven’t seen is the overturn of Roe.
Not only did the Court not overturn Roe today, they handed down a decision which affirms Casey. For those of you pro life people who haven’t bothered in all this time to learn anything about the issue, Casey is the ruling that broadened the basic “right to privacy” that Roe created into a full-on Constitutional “right to abortion.” It did this by affirming that the Constitution had a positive interest in protecting the availability of legal abortion from any laws that create an “undue burden” on women who are seeking the procedure.
What the hand-picked, right-wing, Republican-appointed Court did today was uphold Casey. What that means, dear pro life brothers and sisters, is that we have torn this country apart by putting one extreme right-wing billionaire-owned incompetent in the White House after another culminating in the compulsive-lying, sexual pervert, racist, misogynist, corrupt, traitorous fool that we have there now, and we have done all of it for nothing.
Let’s think back on this.
It was pro life, “conservative” Christians who re-elected George Bush II after he had led us through one recession and gotten us into an entirely unnecessary war that created the quagmire that kept this country in a state of constant war for the next 20 years. That unnecessary war also cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and more than a few American, British and other soldiers, who, in my opinion were just as much innocent victims as the civilians.
In addition to that, this unnecessary war left scores of American and British soldiers with serious disabilities from their wounds and lifelong PTSD. Due to Republican budget cutting of anything that benefits the people who actually pay the taxes in this country, they have very little help from the government that got them wounded in the first place.
The Christian Right got Bush II re-elected, ostensibly to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade. What he gave us instead is the mess of Katrina and the economic crash that almost sucked the whole world into a depression of Old Testament proportions.
In spite of all that, I do believe that George Bush II cared about this country and that, when it came right down to it in 2008, he tossed aside his nonsensical right wing economic theories and bailed with both hands to save us. He also admitted straight up that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, thus admitting that he’d gotten us into an unnecessary war. I admire and respect that about him.
On the other hand, this guy we’ve got now lies when the truth would do him better. He has none of Bush II’s redeeming qualities, including, it is becoming increasingly obvious, the courage to jettison all of his claptrap and fight for this country when it is in trouble.
Bush II made himself incompetent by his fealty to nutso right wing theories. Trump is just incompetent, right out of the box.
We keep electing these guys because we’ve been told that if we don’t vote for them, we are — all evidence to the contrary — just as guilty of the sin of abortion as the doctors who hold the suction tube. We fear, on pain of our immortal souls, that if we don’t vote Republican, we will go to hell.
Why do we think this? We think it because our political-whore religious leaders pound it into us with every foaming-at-the-mouth raving sermon they fire at us.
But the truth is, we are not responsible for the actions of anyone other than our own selves. People who are elected to office are responsible for what they do. Not you. Not me. Not us.
If you go out and you vote for somebody, or you campaign for them, because you think they will support abortion, then, yes, you are supporting abortion yourself and you are responsible for that. But if you vote for someone who is pro abortion because the only other choice you have is a total crazy lying loon who is destroying your country and who anyone can see will end up causing the deaths of millions of people if he stays in office, you are not promoting or preserving abortion.
You are trying to save the greatest democracy the world has ever known from utter destruction. You are doing the only thing you can do to prevent the destruction of Western civilization in an undeclared war being waged against us while our traitor president sides with those who are attacking us. You are voting to prevent a world dominated by the corrupt gangster state that Russia has become and the atheist Communist dictatorship of China.
Add on top the plain, simple, OBVIOUS fact that these “pro life” politicians just can’t seem to figure out how to nominate a Supreme Court justice who will vote to overturn Roe. The pro choice people don’t seem to have any problem nominating and confirming justices who will vote to keep Roe. But the folks pro life people elect just can’t seem to get there.
What we’ve got after almost fifty years of pro life advocating is a steaming, stinking pot of corruption and political swill. We don’t have a legitimate, workable political tactic designed to save the lives of the babies. What we have is a bunch of religious leaders and others with their little ministries who are on the dole from money being funneled through foundations owned by the same billionaire boys’ and girls’ club that has taken over our government.
The move right now is all about giving the churches government money. That’s a move to buy our religious leaders out right and up front. It would put them directly under the thumb of their political benefactors.
These religious leaders are already political whores. They don’t have an independent thought in their heads. They are operatives who push the party line. They lie, obfuscate, slander and demonize on command from the people who pay their bills. There is nothing holy or righteous about them. Hooking them directly into the tax base would end any remaining bit of independence they might still have. It would destroy the prophetic and moral voice of Christianity in this country and it would do it outright and complete.
That’s why the right wing is pushing for it. As for their pet religious leaders, they don’t seem to care about being independent. They sold themselves so long ago they’ve forgotten what it is to walk and think free. All they want is the doh-rey-me.
Religious leaders who abuse the trust of their followers in the name of Christ in this manner will answer for what they’re doing. I have no doubt about that. But in the meantime, it’s up to us, in the words of Rev Al Sharpton, to be our own leaders, to be the leaders we want.
What we have accomplished with almost 50 long years of pro life activism is the empowerment of an ugly junta of extreme right wing ideologues who are funded and controlled by a hard knot of amoral unpatriotic billionaires who have used the pro life movement and their puppet politicians to destroy the balance of powers that keep us free and drain our national treasury into their pockets.
They are the wrench in the works that keeps Congress from doing its job. They are the reason we can’t deal with our national problems. They are why we have bad public schools, an aging infrastructure, an unresponsive government and religious leaders who preach Republicanism rather than the Gospels of Christ.
They’ve bought our elected officials and they’ve bought our religious leaders. The money they use to do this comes from us, from the invidious tax cuts that have drained the treasury into their pockets, heaped up the national debt, impoverished the rest of us and made them richer than all the dreams of avarice that were ever dreamed.
I saw a news story about how the talking heads at Fox News were discussing why Republican presidents were so bad at picking Supreme Court justices. That’s a ridiculous question, and I think the people who were asking it know it’s ridiculous.
In truth, these justices have destroyed the balance of powers in our government on behalf of the extreme right wing billionaires I am discussing. The lodestone decision was Citizens United vs FEC, which allowed the billionaire boys’ and girls’ club to put any amount of money they want into political campaigns. But there are a lot of other decisions which hand our government over to this crew. That — not abortion, not morality — was why they were nominated and why we were told we’d go to hell if we didn’t fight to get them confirmed.
They’re doing what they were put there to do. Overturning Roe would take away the moral club that has been used to beat Christians into submissive voting for decades. Without Roe, how would they bully us into voting for amoral idiots who any fool can see will damage our country and endanger our children’s future?
If we want to overturn Roe, we need to stop being stupid. We need to stop being blind followers of corrupt guides.
We can change this. But it requires a lot more brains and independent thought than we’ve been using so far.
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