With the Supreme Court leaving in place a Texas law that is literally a Taliban-style outrage that allows your neighbor to put a bounty on your head if you are a woman who might have an abortion, this compromised court deserves expansion.
Stare decisis, a Latin phrase meaning, ‘let the decision stand’ was the foundation of the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court, and was the only remaining fig-leaf masking it as a purely political institution.
This decision casts the tradition of stare decisis to the wind. The Roberts Court has earned a concomitant response.
Incidentally, several members of this court came close to perjuring themselves in their confirmation hearings by saying they recognized Roe versus Wade as binding precedent. My level of surprise? Zero.
” It’s worth noting that many of the same people attacking the Biden Administration for leaving women’s rights behind in Afghanistan are eager to control women’s bodies and choices in the United States.” Dan Rather
Some here have criticized me for characterizing today’s GOP as the “American Taliban”.
I offer the Texas law that went into effect today as Exhibit A.
On the money, Somerville Tom.
Apparently we haven’t done enough to turn Americans against each other. Now we will have copycat laws all over the country that are going to be having neighbors report on each other about having an abortion.
Unbelievable.
A Republican government legal system in action.
Support Democratic House candidates in swing districts around the country, or lose your personal freedoms.
Period.
” I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Admiral Yamamoto, planner of Pearl Harbor attack on 12/7/41
Watch the backlash from middle America in the upcoming midterm elections!
I do hope you are correct, but I don’t think this is enough to get significant backlash. If anything, it is empowering the American Taliban, AKA the Republican Party to get out the vote.
Let’s not forget its primary purpose — to persuade the marks to empty their pockets.
Yup. When I watch Fox, I see endless ads promoting buying “GOLD” as a hedge against the oncoming financial crisis. I see ads for all sorts of miracle potions to boost mental ability! My favorite was when Fox Business guy Charles Payne was hawking his book “Unstoppable Prosperity” for “free”…just pay $8.95 shipping cost. The US Post Office charges $3.19 to mail a book. Let’s assume the printing cots is $2.50 and packaging is 45¢.
Yes sir, finding an group of marks willing to pay $8.95 for a “free book” is indeed, unlimited prosperity.
What was the Court supposed to do here? My understanding is that this law takes effect today, which means there has been no time for anyone to violate it. Therefore, no case or controversy has yet to work its way up to the point where the Court has jurisdiction.
I don’t own a uterus, and that means I and other cis white dudes shouldn’t make the calls for those that own one. Also, can we stop with the “taliban” reference? This is toxic white patriarchy…and we need to call it that. While I understand the parallels, this references a brown take on this when this is purely a white set of laws being applied.
When the white supremacists attempting to impose their version of sharia law on America stop behaving like the Taliban, I’ll stop calling them the American Taliban.
I passionately agree with you that this is toxic white patriarchy. I reject your purity test — this is about MUCH more than just white and black, and even the color references are themselves toxic.
This is about bullying, violence, rape, and brutality. Patriarchy and misanthropy are rampant within the black community — some credible researchers argue even more so than in other demographics.
The passionate enthusiasm for subjugating women, for viewing women ONLY as sex objects (and not even really that!) or as “breeders” — this is a characteristic of toxic superstitious “religious” beliefs for as long as we’ve had toxic superstitious beliefs. The Abrahamic faith traditions are particularly egregious in this regard.
I do share one aspect of your objection to calling them “American Taliban” — the phrase hides the fundamentalist Christian origins of this toxic ideology by obscuring them with a Muslim connotation. The issue I have with this is that the extreme fringes of these faith traditions are indistinguishable in terms of their most toxic elements — the specific faith tradition is irrelevant. I therefore invite you (or anyone else) to offer a better phrase that captures the evil toxicity of this movement.
I’m wondering about “Christian Terrorist”, for example.
This isn’t a purity test…we need to hold ourselves as progressives and especially as DEMOCRATS to a higher standard. Call them the Ku Klux Klan, call them Proud Boys, call them White Christian Fundamentalists (edited to conform to site standards). I like using White Domestic Terrorists. But every Muslim ally I know cringes at the comparison because they know that it will come back to them and that weakens us as a movement (and some decide not to vote because white people are sometimes unintentionally being thoughtless, and a few intentionally). We need to be better allies, especially to our black and brown allies and consider every word we use. So please, this is not a purity test, this is making sure we don’t alienate votes and voters we need.
I’m good with “White Domestic Terrorists”.
I also like “White Seditionists”
As long as you use the term White-supremacist, preferably hyphenated like I just did. Otherwise you now run the risk of indicting everyone who happens to share a skin tone.
Excuse me? I quite intentionally intend to indict every domestic terrorist and every seditionist.
The fact is that these thugs are overwhelmingly white, and overwhelmingly Christian. The dogma they promote is overwhelmingly sexist — the fact that some of them are female is irrelevant.
I’m also reminded of “Deplorable”. Ms. Clinton was exactly correct and prescient when she used that term — even though she was excoriated for it.
I think it’s time we take the rhetorical gloves off and name these thugs for what they are.
Jesse Jackson once said
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then (I) look around and see someone white and feel relieved.”
I can relate, but in an updated version.
When I am driving my Prius and I am being followed by a jacked up pickup truck driven by a white man with a large American flag flying from a pole in the rear bed, I get quite nervous, usually pull over, and hope he passes me without incident.
Yes, even as a “white male” in the USA, the sight of a white male waving a American flag makes gives me an uneasy feeling. That is the USA I live in. It’s not so much painful as it’s sad and embarrassing.
I do wish we could take our nation back, take our flag back. Being nice to the thugs is not going to do it.
I’m fine with indicting every domestic terrorist and seditionist. I just urge you to be careful about using descriptors which apply to many more people than that and suggest that anyone who shares those descriptors are somehow implicated in their attitudes and actions.
Please not Christian Terrorist. That paints a whole faith with too broad a brush just as Muslim Terrorist does. I’ve let it go as a rhetorical devise you’ve decided to use so as to not slap back every time you do, but I’m also not a big fan of the Taliban parallel. I don’t see anything in this country close to the evil of that regime and to claim it does seems a bit too Godwin-esque for my tastes.
I’m fine with “Religious Terrorist”.
I’m still tempted to put “Religious” in huge scare quotes. Whether “Christian” or “Muslim” any person who uses his religious background to justify what we are discussing is nothing more than a religious fraud as far as I’m concerned.
There are several million — and perhaps several tens of millions — of evangelical Protestants driving this movement.
I strongly suspect that they will say that YOU are the fraud if asked.
There are certainly NOT several million terrorists or supporters of terrorists of either the “Christian” or “Muslim variety. The vast majority are as outraged as anyone about those who would commit such acts in the name of God. This includes the vast majority of those who hold a fundamentalist theology I am sure.
I fear you’re living in La La Land.
I hope that enough civilized people show up at the polls in 2022 to roll back the assault from the Religious Terrorists.
To pick the first poll that Google provided — from May 21, 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/53-republicans-view-trump-true-us-president-reutersipsos-2021-05-24/), SIXTY ONE PERCENT of self-identified Republicans either “strongly agreed” (39%) or “agreed” (22%) that “The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump”.
Similarly, FIFTY THREE PERCENT of self-identified Republicans feel that Donald Trump is “the true President right now”.
Even more compelling is a recent (Aug 30, 2021) PEW Research Topic (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/30/most-white-americans-who-regularly-attend-worship-services-voted-for-trump-in-2020/)
From the PEW piece (emphasis mine):
Anyone who still, after the January 6 attack, supports Donald Trump, asserts that the 2020 election was “rigged”, or asserts that Donald Trump is the “real” President is either a terrorist or a terrorist supporter — and for the sake of this discussion, the distinction is moot.
Something on the order of 74 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020. It was not possible to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 without accepting or endorsing his tyranny, his lies, and his brazen corruption.
That “seven-in-ten White, Non-Hispanic” figure translates to tens of millions of Religious Terrorists.
I stand by my characterization. Your comment is whistling past the graveyard.
The data strongly suggests that “the vast majority of those who hold a fundamentalist theology” embrace the lies, tyranny, and corruption of today’s GOP and of Donald Trump.
It isn’t possible for that many fundamentalists to feel so strongly without a significant number of them — extremists to be sure — believing themselves “called” to kill the “infidels” who stand in their way.
You’re a historian. You know that the dark stain of this kind of wholesale blood-letting in the name of “converting non-believers” is a much a part of Christianity as any of the soft and gentle aspects we liberals and progressives like to emphasize.
We are seeing the resurgence of Jim Crow, of the Ku Klux Klan, and of the Lost Cause throughout America. All of those were driven in no small part by religious passion of those who proclaimed themselves to be Christians.
Perhaps if you had spent more of your youth in the south and deep south, you might have a more realistic perspective of what evangelical Christianity really is.
Look out the window!! There are 74MILLION TERRORISTS OUT THERE!!!
Quick, let’s try to out vote them.
I don’t think it’s Christopher who’s living in La La Land.
In November of 2020, 74 million voters chose Donald Trump — because or in spite of his lies, racism, sexism, corruption, will ignorance, and vicious cruelty. A significant number of them were white male church-goers. Millions of these white Americans support the white supremacist lies that now dominate today’s GOP.
The leaders of this insurrection should be investigated, prosecuted, convicted, and punished. That’s what a nation governed by the rule of law does when people — even its leaders — break the law.
I certainly hope that doing this will reduce the number of people who vote for the Religious Terrorist party in 2022. I certainly hope that the values that have been the foundation of America for centuries will win out in the voting booth over those whose seek to dismantle it.
These religious terrorists WERE outvoted in 2016 and 2020. If the political party they’ve taken over has its way, then a similar result in 2022 or 2024 will be overturned by this new spate of Whites-Only laws passed by these religious terrorists.
If you want to call these deplorable people something else, feel free. I certainly hope that civilized people out vote them.
I certainly hope that you agree that they should not be allowed to overturn the elections results when that happens again in 2022 and 2024 — just like it did in 2016 and 2020..
While I agree with your post, Tom, it is important (and somewhat consoling) to realize that actual membership in the Republican Party and membership in organized religions have both gone down over the past twenty years. In 1999, 70% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque. Today that number is 47%.
Recently about 4600 Republicans changed their party status in Colorado in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riots.
So while the percentage of MAGA Trump cult members in these demographics are trending up, part of that is due to the exodus of those opposed to that cult.
Absolutely correct. The under-reporting of this is one way that mainstream media — especially MSNBC and CNN — overstate the threat from the American Stasi.
A dilemma created by the extremist takeover of the GOP is that the public stances needed to win a GOP primary hurt the winning candidate in the subsequent general election.
My understanding is that this is one motivator for the laws that allow Republican majorities of state legislatures (often preserved by carefully gerrymandered district boundaries) to overturn election results that reflect the actual majority vote.
Party leaders — even at the local level — know full well they do not have the support of a majority of their electorate. They therefore choose to suppress the resulting election results rather than adjust their policy to reflect the will of the electorate.
As Paul Krugman has written several times — it is all about protecting or asserting white male privilege. Nothing else matters.
This effect is another reason why those who remain affiliated with the GOP today are accurately characterized as religious terrorists or as enablers of religious terrorism.
BTW, “American Stasi” works well for those states who are scurrying to pass laws that copy the abomination of the Texas anti-abortion statutes.
The very concept of creating a financial incentive for people to spy on and harass their neighbors is strikingly reminiscent of the tactics of the East German Stasi.
I spend a lot of time on Reddit, probably too much, and the conservative board are comprised of well-to-do young white males. Think of it as a Tucker Carlson convention.
The alarming aspect of this is, yes, the Republican uncle at the Thanksgiving table that makes us all anxious with his racist and misogynist rants is not long for this world, but there is a fresh crop of wanna be cousins in his wake (or at his wake, no pun intended)
Perhaps it’s some small consolation that, like the Shakers, today’s GOP is forcing policy decisions that cause their own younger generation to sicken and die. Whether climate denial, covid denial, or any of the other bizarre stances they take, the common thread is that their own followers will be the first to sicken and die.
Moderate and swing voters can easily put a stop to this. We always talk about how in primaries candidates have to play to the base because that is who votes. If those in the middle want healthier politics THEY should be voting in primaries too. They shouldn’t cede the primaries to the respective bases then complain in November that the parties have gotten too extreme leaving them nobody to vote for.
As much as I don’t get Trump supporters I’m still not comfortable assuming every one of them favors either a violent overthrow of the government or wants anything to do with the KKK or similar organizations. The breakdown of numbers you cite for Biden vs. Trump I believe pretty well matches voting patterns along party lines during my lifetime. Also recall that your denominators, such as Republicans and church-goers, are also shrinking. What is the percentage of Americans overall, or even Christians overall, that believe that nonsense? When you consider that such is not the position of the Orthodox Churches, the Catholic Church, any Protestant denomination of notable size, or LDS as far as I can tell, which accounts for almost all Christians and the vast majority of Americans, I’m not sure what’s left.
I have not said that “every single one of them” favors a violent overthrow of the government.
I have offered strong evidence that 61% of current Republicans believe the lie that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump, and 53% of them believe that Mr. Trump is the “true” president.
The entire focus of the GOP since the January 6 attack has been to deny the legitimacy of the elected government, to deny that the attack even happened, and to aggressively strive to give themselves the power to overturn any and every election whose outcome they dislike.
The Gallup organization says that in early August, 28% of respondents self-identify as Republicans. When independents who “lean Republicans” are included, the figure is 43%. The poll is at https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx.
A combined total of 155,508,985 people voted in the last election. That suggest that about 67 million Americans STILL support these lies.
I’m not saying that 67 million Americans are terrorists. I am, however, saying that at least a few million — and likely a few tens of millions — of those people ARE deplorable, even if not actual terrorists.
The rest of them — ANYBODY who supports the GOP today — most certainly are aiding and abetting the intentional overthrow of the legitimate American government.
That’s sedition, pure and simple. The boundary between “seditionist” and “terrorist” is gray indeed.
FWIW, I believe to this day the 2000 election was stolen. I may have even called Bush illegitimate a time or two on account of those circumstances. Yet I never for even a second considered violently preventing him from being certified. It is certainly possible to strongly believe an election didn’t pass the smell test (though I see no basis for that in 2020), but not sympathize with extreme direct action.
Oh sure, it’s possible.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t storm the U.S. Capitol carrying weapons and threatening to assassinate elected officials.
If the GOP had, at any time between January 6, 2021 and today, called on their followers to avoid violence and respect the rule of law then your argument might be more persuasive.
It is not possible to support today’s GOP and not sympathize with extreme direct action — extreme direct action is the very hallmark of today’s GOP.
Of course I did not storm the Capitol, etc. That is exactly my point. Belief that something didn’t add up about the election does not automatically entail violent tendencies.
If the Gallup organization had asked you in early August of 2001 who was the “true President”, would you have answered “Al Gore”? Really?
You’re attempting to excuse the inexcusable, and by doing so normalizing the outrageous behavior of the GOP since the 2020 election — and CERTAINLY since the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Slightly tangential, but I want to put here a quote from President George W. Bush’s remarks today in Shanksville, and yes, he’s looking at you, insurrectionists!
I saw that as well, good catch.
Too little too late, sadly. It’s a little rich coming from the president who shattered the illusion that America did not commit crimes against humanity.
Perhaps Mr. Bush has gained wisdom in his years since leaving office.
In this case the point is he knows anti-Americanism when he sees it whatever the source.
September 11 might be a good day to consider the downside of labeling millions of people terrorists.
How about “American Stasi”?
When millions of people seek to injure, kill and abuse others, I’m not sure that anything is gained by pretending otherwise.
The Stasi served the party in power–they didn’t see themselves as insurgents. How about less labeling?
The Stasi recruited and paid East Germans to spy on their neighbors. What party do you think is in power in Texas?
How about more realism about what is happening in our Red States?
Are you planning “millions” of indictments? 74 million? Or just the white males? Or just the “white males” in “Our Red States”?
Or maybe you endorse Fred’s strategy of making up new words?
Labels,self pity and self righteousness combine with each other pretty well, but none of them mix well with reality.
Every person who plotted to violently overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States should be investigated, prosecuted, convicted if guilty, and punished if convicted. Every person who contributes to an organization that explicitly strives to violently overthrow the government of the United States should be treated similarly.
More than 500 people have already been arrested for the January 6 attack. I don’t care whether the final number is counted in hundreds or millions — the insurrection should be put down.
I’m not “planning” anything. Since white males are the predominant demographic agitating for the insurrection, then white males are likely to dominate those who are ultimately indicted — not because they are white, but because they are promoting the violent overthrow of the government. The Republican legislature of Georgia has just enacted laws to encourage GOP “Poll Watchers” to “observe” polling places. What do YOU think those racist thugs intend to do to black Georgia voters?
I’m pretty sure that the Ku Klux Klan had and has very few black members. Those prosecuted under the existing KKK laws (and there are many) were predominantly white males. Do you have a problem with that?
Your own commentary leaves me with the distinct impression that you have little or no first-hand knowledge of what good-old boys do to blacks in the south. I wonder if you’ve ever set foot outside the lily-white Massachusetts suburb from which you write your hostile and self-righteous commentary.
“. I wonder if you’ve ever set foot outside the lily-white Massachusetts suburb from which you write your hostile and self-righteous commentary.”
Hilarious and deluded. Another personal attack. Is all this just a trick to get me to reveal my frequent trips to Moscow to get my instructions from Putin?
My my. Hit a nerve, did I?
You write this:
and then complain of a personal attack?
Here’s what a “personal attack” from me sounds like:
“Bob, your breath could knock a buzzard off a turd-wagon” (George Carlin).
Well, I guess that makes as much sense as anything else you’ve posted lately. We can always use more people on the internet safeguarding oral hygiene and our precious bodily fluids.