We’re going to need it
With Roe on the chopping block, we’ll need it, says Dan Froomkin bluntly:
The Republican Party wants to usher in a new Dark Age in America.
For starters, its leaders want to roll the calendar back 50 years and more, to a time when pregnant women’s medical decisions were made by the government.
Other human and civil rights, especially for the LGBTQ community and people of color, would inevitably be next.
They want to wipe away decades of slow, painstaking progress toward becoming a more inclusive, tolerant and humane society.
They consistently use lies and conspiracy theories to mislead the public and the press. They thrive on disinformation and misinformation. They have their own propaganda outlets to incite hatred and division. They want to use the power of government to punish people and corporations who speak out against them or teach their children the truth.
The “party of radical reactionaries,” says Froomkin, has “no governing agenda beyond wanting to punish and rebuke and marginalize and demonize.”
The left has its authoritarians. Mostly young, black-and-white thinkers spun up on their own righteousness. Determined to remold the world as they see it, they stay angry at their inability to impose their will. Like libertarians that way. A lot of them read Ayn Rand in high school. Most grow up. Most of the left’s authoritarians mellow.
But the right’s authoritarians are raised from birth to see the world as hostile, Devil-occupied territory to be conquered. For Jesus. Or just to put snotty, overeducated, urban elites in their places. When the righteous come into their God-promised inheritance, the last (them, of course) shall be first, and the first last. Women shall remain silent and submit to their husbands. Every knee shall bow. To Jesus, to them, whatever.
Feeling persecuted is reflexive, a sign you’re doing their brand of Christianity right, and that ruling is just around the corner. If it takes 50 years, well, they are still waiting for Jesus to return after 2,000.
“We will govern over kings and judges and they will have to submit. … We’re called to rule! To change history! To be co-regents with God,” says “The Keys to Dominion.”
Although the anti-abortion movement began as a reaction to the collapse of segregation, today it is a key part of that right’s fight to put everyone not aligned with them in their places.
Ashton Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press cites Dr. Anthea Butler, author of “Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.” She teaches religion and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Pittman writes:
“What is hard for people to understand about Christian dominionism is that it is not just about being evangelical. It’s about a certain way of looking at the world and saying that Christians are supposed to rule in every area, sort of the ‘seven mountains’ of power,” Butler said, referring to the late NAR founder C. Peter Wagner’s ideas about Seven Mountains Dominionism, which says Christians must seize power in the realms of family, religion, education, business, government, media and the arts.
“What you’re looking at with dominionism is something very different. They’re not only talking about spiritual warfare, they’re talking about principalities and powers that rule over nations and places.”
Just as activism is a way of life for some on the left, for some on the right winning the power to dominate Others is all-consuming. Women’s rights, education, politics, culture. All will bow.
Take some advise about where they are headed from a guy who spent a few formative years in a WWII internment camp. In. This. Country:
My best, worst-case scenario right now is that the Supreme Court kills off Roe in June and Democrats in Congress (don’t ask me how) restore it with the Women’s Health Protection Act in July and save the republic in November. The choice for the majority of Americans could not be more black hat vs. white hat.
Read the tagline.
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