It took images of police clubs, dogs and firehoses turned on peaceful civil rights marchers in the 1960s to prick the conscience of the country. In 2021, it is not clear the country has any conscience left to prick. Almost half of the country has rejected democracy itself. Those who throw the loudest tantrums will have their way or else. They have become the mob the founders feared.
In a sane world, in a mature world, men and women would be too humiliated to be seen behaving in public as we see angry conservatives behave at school board meetings, in grocery stores, in parking lots, and on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. But this world is neither sane nor mature. At least, not theirs.
Dana Milbank writes at the Washington Post that Texas has become the bellwether state for what the collapse of the American system of laws will look like.
“My body, my choice” shout angry antivaxxers in a state that allows women no choice over theirs. The state’s Rube Goldberg-esque ban on abortions after six weeks went into effect on Wednesday with no Supreme Court standing up to defend women’s rights.
On Wednesday as well, the state’s permitless carry law took effect, allowing all Texans to own guns and “to carry them in public, without a license and without training.” As if red-faced Covid spreaders needed more to signal what they’ll do if they don’t get their way. Twenty states now have similar laws, Milbank adds:
And on Tuesday, the Texas legislature passed the final version of the Republican voting bill that bans drive-through and 24-hour voting, both used disproportionately by voters of color; imposes new limits on voting by mail, blocks election officials from distributing mail-ballot applications unless specifically requested; gives partisan poll watchers more leeway to influence vote counting; and places new rules and paperwork requirements that deter people from helping others to vote or to register. At least 17 states have adopted similar restrictions.
Polling indicates majorities of Texans oppose the abortion ban and open carry. Pluralities —especially among Black and Latino voters — oppose the restrictions on drive-through voting and voting hours. But serving the needs of the majority of citizens is not the conservative program, if ever it was. Texas is said not to be red state, but a nonvoting state. That’s the way White voters in this “majority minority” state like it. And they mean to keep it that way.
The usually ironic Milbank declares that “unless we mobilize to arrest the Republicans’ destruction of democracy,” Texas is what lies ahead for us all.
But the looming question is who is “we”? Civil rights marchers mobilized by SNCC, Martin Luther King, and others, many of them people of faith and young people, had the fortitude and conviction to face down police dogs and firehoses to demand their share of the American Dream. Today, that dream lies in tatters or has evaporated like the illusion always it was for so many. Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II carries on King’s tradition, but there are too few people of faith these days to join him. “Faith” as practiced by the right amounts to white Christian nationalism. The young people of King’s generation are now pensioners and for most the fire in their bellies has gone out. The young today have little reason to fight for an America that, as the Supreme Court just demonstrated, will not fight for them.
The American right is driven by grievance. Does the American left have the stomach left to oppose them?