The Sound Of Minds Closing

By the time I retired from my surgical practice, there was no operation I did exactly as taught during training. New studies are done. New technology happens. Because science is, by definition, skeptical, and because modern healthcare is science-based, it would be shocking if doctors weren’t always questioning their knowledge and open to change. (This is characteristic of no practitioners of homeopathy, by the way, or acupuncture, reiki, et woo, to whose followers the attraction is, evidently, that they’re unchanged over generations; no testing desired.)

I was taught by surgical innovators and pioneers. But time keeps happening; even their wisdom, it turned out, could be found wanting. I mention this because the sentinel characteristic of Trumpism and most of today’s Republican Party is the opposite. Once inculcated, Foxotrumpian lies are inlaid like a parquet floor. Nearly two years later, Trump still tells his adoring crowds he won by a landslide, making him either the most outrageous liar or the most delusional person ever placed in office by the Electoral College. Following suit, R candidates are calling fraud in their upcoming elections, even before the vote. 

In marginally more enlightened Washington State, thirty percent of Republicans believe Trump’s indisputably debunked Big Lie. Nationwide, the percentage is much higher. You know what, by electoral standards, WAS a landslide? The 57-43 vote to remove him from office in the second impeachment. Yet, at Trump rallies, his three-monkeyed drones still brandish signs saying he won, while chanting “lock her up.” 

Remember Arizona legislator Rusty Bowers, who famously refused Trump’s demands to break the law, later said he’d still vote for him, but more recently expressed reluctance? Confirming everything I’ve ever written about Trump’s no-longer conservative party, they expelled him; a leader in their legislature, a lifelong actual conservative. “Rusty has failed in his specific actions,” they said, “including co-sponsoring Democrat-led bills.” And declared him, “… no longer a Republican in good standing,”. Following the law, speaking truth, cooperating for the common good: unacceptable, in the eyes of the GOP.

I’ve had “conversations” with Trumpists who refused to watch the January 6 hearings. Not interested. Pre-dismissed. It was a peaceful protest, totally overblown. Right: we heard, and they didn’t, that Pence’s security detail were calling their loved ones to say goodbye. One-sided, they claim. Yet, as Vice-chair Cheney said and they’ll never see, “The case against Donald Trump is not made by his political enemies. It is instead by Donald Trump's own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family.” Like Rusty Bowers’, Ms. Cheney’s political career is likely over. A truth-telling, lie-rejecting, brave and ethical Republican. Oxymoron.

As a doctor, always aware I could be wrong and making sure as possible I wasn’t, I find Trumpists’ refusal to learn incomprehensible. And worrisome for our country. If my mind was similarly closed, I’d have still removed gallbladders through eight-inch incisions and kept victims hospitalized for a week. If I’d clung to the received wisdom that bowel surgery patients require a tube down their nose for days, ignoring later studies showing they retard recovery, I’d have had lots of miserable patients and, deservedly, lost my surgical privileges.

Among the reasons Trump didn’t want to call off the rioters, as we learned and the ignorers won’t, is that it would “give the media a win.” So much for duty to the Constitution and the rule of law. So much for thinking outside his own troubled head, a dereliction of duty and failure of leadership the hearings made clear as our air once was. After his “team normal” insisted, he gave a speech acknowledging Congress had certified the electoral votes. But refused to say the election was over.

A person who did watch is Rupert Murdoch, creator of the propaganda network dba Fox “news.” His New York Post editorialized, “Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again,” and his Wall Street Journal wrote, “Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.” No wonder Trumpists refused to watch.

Cynical as it gets, they’ve nominated, to be among only one-hundred senators, carpetbagging Dr. Oz, famous for selling phony cures and housing Turkish nationalists in a secret condo, and Hershel Walker, talented only in football and domestic abuse. They’ve invited Hungary’s dictatorial leader, whose top advisor just resigned over a disgusting, neo-Nazi speech, to speak at CPAC. When a “major” political party idolizes authoritarians, purges its few honest leaders, and keeps its members deliberately ignorant, there are consequences for us all. Until we no longer have it, voting remains our only means to resist. 

It's Who They Are

Someone is spending big money on nasty ads against Washington’s Democratic state senators. Someone, or some group, really, really wants to flip the majority in that body. Making the same out-of-context and misleading claims about the members’ votes, the ads are nearly word for word, but with differing targets.

What’s their agenda? Ending mail-in voting? Outlawing drop boxes? They’re already “surveilling” them, despite proof they’re completely safe, everywhere. Criminalizing abortion? Deputizing citizens, thought police, to report people considering it? Maybe it’s banning sex education or teaching America’s full history. CRT, nonexistent in our schools, for sure. How about restricting access to birth control? Not here? In Republican-controlled states, it’s all on the table. Because it’s who they are. 

Last week, the US House of Representatives voted on a bill addressing neo-Nazis in our military and police. Every Republican voted no. Nearly all of them voted against implementing an active shooter warning system. Why? To offset tax cuts for donors? It’s also who they are. Because Democrats still have a majority in the House, both bills passed, but there can be no more stark demonstration of why America needs that majority to remain.

Those bills, which would have benefitted all Americans save for Nazis and murderers, plus one protecting abortion rights, also receiving zero R votes, will probably be blocked by Republican senators. To them, politics are zero-sum. If Republicans become the majority there, neo-Nazis, corporate polluters, the ultra-wealthy, and religious extremists will have cause to rejoice. No one else. It’s who they are.

They’re also people who claimed the story of a ten-year-old fourth-grader, pregnant by rape, forced to travel to another state for an abortion, was a lie. Or said she should be forced to give birth, despite being too small to do so “naturally.” On another bill, protecting the right to cross state lines for abortion care, all Rs voted no. Small government. Isn’t that who they are?

Picture a ten-year-old girl’s body at full term. Bullied in school. Think of her being wheeled into an OR, awake, crying, frightened, surrounded by masked strangers, put to sleep. Awakening scarred, literally and figuratively, forever. Can you imagine what her life would be like afterward? Forced-birth Republicans can’t. It’s not who they are. 

When the rapist was arrested, Republican idols like Jim Jordan, Tucker Carlson, et awful, refused to apologize. Others went with the fact that the man is an illegal immigrant, as if that’s the story. D-list Foxer Jesse Waters claimed credit for the arrest, fantasizing that by calling the story a hoax he pressured law enforcement to do their job. Then he said the doctor who cared for the child, LEGALLY, should be charged as a criminal, siccing Indiana’s Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita on her.

Rokita obliged. With his party’s characteristic lack of empathy, he preached the Gospel according to Trump: “This is a horrible, horrible scene caused by Marxists and socialists and those in the White House who want lawlessness at the border… This girl was politicized—politicized for the gain of killing more babies.” “Politicized,” he said, politicizing. And lying. Mendacious hypocrisy is who they are.

What’s at stake if Republicans control the federal government is no mystery, as their just-released document makes clear. The “Blueprint to Save America,” 122 pages of heartlessness, summarized in Mother Jones, “…calls for significantly reducing the size of America’s social safety net, drastically limiting or outlawing abortion access nationwide, effectively throwing in the towel on combatting climate change, raising the age to receive full Social Security benefits, cracking down on transgender rights, and making it easier for Americans to carry concealed weapons.” 

There’s more. The EPA would be gutted, funds for Medicaid and food stamps would be cut drastically; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Labor Relations Board, entities that protect everyone but rich Republicans: gone. Corporations would be virtually unregulated. It’s who they are.

Famed economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” Anyone who doubts Professor Galbraith’s words need only read that radical document. The entire manifesto is here.

And now, this: it’s an unworkable system that allows a single senator, a participant in and funded by the fossil fuel industry, to block desperately-needed climate legislation, and to prevent raising taxes on his owners to pay for it and other needed spending. Manchin. It’s who he is. Rendering him powerless is another reason to elect more Democrats to the Senate. Democratic voters must turn out like never before. For my grandchildren, I donate money to Democratic candidates around the county. Maybe it helps.

The Webb Of Life

It’s impossible fully to grasp the images coming from the James Webb Space Telescope. Countless clusters of light: galaxies. Millions of them, each containing billions of stars. A Milky Way’s worth of Milky Ways. And it’s but a slice of the out-there, seeing branches on a single tree in a rain forest miles away and bigger than (what’s left of) Brazil’s. Only more.

No analogy captures it. Our Earth, in the vastness of the Universe, is a single grain of sand among the grains of all the beaches and deserts on our planet. Our brains are unequipped to make sense of it. Black holes and nebulae. Light years. Parsecs. Numbers so enormous, they shatter into meaninglessness.

The tidy nebula in Tuesday’s gorgeous image covers an unimaginably vast region of space and contains countless stars coming into and going out of existence. What hope do non-scientists have of wrapping around it; we can barely understand atoms.

After traveling for billions of years, the light in those images arrived, nearly from the beginning of the space-time in a tiny corner of which we happen to exist. It’s a wondrous scientific achievement, by people far smarter than anyone reading (or writing) this. People committed to learning about and understanding our universe, in ways that most of us never will. For the thrill of it, the wonder, expanding the mind. Curiosity and thirst for knowledge remain human characteristics, at least in people as yet unaffected by a political party’s attempts to erase them. And it’s still only a superficial scratch on the surface of the unknown.

Here we are, improbably alive on nothing more than a molecule, insignificant within the cosmos, while the birth and death of stars and galaxies continue as they have from before this time began. Through the Webb telescope, we see what happened billions of years ago. Happening still.

In such an unmeasurable expanse, how can our Earth be the only bearer of life, with billions and billions of places for a one in a billion-billion chance to occur? In whichever creation story one chooses to believe, it can’t be that everything out there, so far beyond what we can see or Bronze and Iron Age religious scribes could imagine, is only about us? That it’s for us, alone, that a creator, selected from among the planet’s cafeteria of religions and hundreds of gods, cares? Is suppressed insignificance the reason we’re carelessly destroying the home we’ve been gifted? Denying, as so many do, that it’s happening?

If we can’t grok the enormity, we ought at least be able to see how foolish, how petty and ungrateful we are to waste the flickering light of life we’re living, in a tiny speck of universal existence. Even if there’s another life awaiting (it can’t be comparable to earthly consciousness, because, you know, ATP and glycolysis), there’s no excuse to behave as selfishly and uncompassionately toward one another as we are in this one. To, using the scientific term, blow it.

State Senator and, I’m happy to say, friend, John Lovick recently shared a maxim he holds close: “You stand for what you tolerate.” Profound in its simplicity, it’s even more so in light of the lights shining light on the outermost reaches brought nearer by the Webb telescope. Paradoxically, life’s insignificance and brevity thus reflected demands we not waste the moment we’ve been given. We oughtn't misuse the opportunity to stand for something while we’re here, by tolerating the intolerable. If the immensity of the universe we’re seeing means what we do here matters little, in scale, the onus of significance is, therefore, on each of us.

Unwillingness to tolerate the destructiveness of Trumpism is part of what I’ll stand for in my remaining time. We applauded Arizona’s Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, whose faith and belief in the Constitution compelled him to refuse Trump’s criminal demands. Then we learned he’d vote for him again. Trump’s irrationality and lies, tolerated, presumably, to preserve tax cuts and deregulation are what he actually stands for. Unlike what we first thought, it’s dishonorable. 

The same for anyone who manages, for whatever self-serving excuses, to rationalize continued support for Trump, despite his perpetuating a democracy-destroying lie, trying to regain power by inciting hate, caring nothing for the impact. They stand for what they tolerate. What some see as hateful in my writing reflects, in fact, my unwillingness to tolerate, in silence, Trump’s dragging down of America. After seeing those magnificent images and contemplating their meaning, even less could I tolerate being seen to stand for it. There’s the meaning: we make our own. Christ-like acceptance of “otherness” would be a good start.

Courting Disaster

Let’s hope readers enjoyed Independence Day. It might be the last one to which the name applies.

In the same way that Trump discovered he could ignore the Constitution at will, the Federalist Society’s hand-picked, McConnell-stolen Supreme Court has come to realize they can rule however they wish, precedent and consistency be damned. On parchment anyway, there are restrictions on executive power; but there are practically none on them. Trump et mob ignored the quilled rules and did so with impunity; because there are few that apply to them, the Six Injustices realized that, in practice, they have nothing to ignore.

They’re the dog who caught the car. Except they know exactly what to do with it: chew it up, leaving a smoking (coal smoke) ruin. Why, for example, isn’t same-sex marriage covered under the Fourteenth Amendment? Because Clarence Thomas says so. There are five others.

The Constitution isn’t silent on SCOTUS overreach. Per Article III, Section 2: “[T]he Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” In other words, if it had the will, which it doesn't, Congress could limit what sort of cases the Court can hear; starting, perhaps, with obvious conflicts of interest, like Thomas protecting his insurrectionist wife, Barrett favoring “Americans for Prosperity,” which spent $1 million on her candidacy, Gorsuch siding with Penguin Random House, who’d published his book. The liberal justices aren’t squeaky clean, either. 

It’d be a start. And the rules should be unambiguous, unlike the meaning of separation in the First and militias in the Second Amendment, both of which the current Court seems bent on re-writing. Though impossible in the current climate (was that a pun?), what’s needed is reigning in such destructive decisions as removing EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Their rationale was made of thin, if polluted, air: Congress, they said, couldn’t possibly have meant to give it the authority it gave. It will apply to other agencies, too. The Justi are there because of money from polluters. Why else would they take the case? 

Equally ominous, because democracy is dying as fast as the planet, is their choice to hear a case, next session, involving state legislatures’ right to make their own rules for voting in national elections, not subject even to state judicial review. Who doubts the outcome? Equal voting access? One person, one vote? Not anymore. Meanwhile, honest election workers are quitting, under ugly threats from Trumpists, replaced with big-lie believers. Death’s door is wide open. 

That our democratic republic is now incapable of effective governance has become undeniable; what comes next, also undeniable, is frightening to contemplate. For the first two-hundred years, most Americans and their chosen representatives maintained some version of good faith, so the founding flaws hadn’t been fatal.

In particular, the minority-power-tilted Senate, where, because of Mitch McConnell and a couple of spineless Democrats, the non-constitutional filibuster has tilted that power even further; the Electoral College, which allows losers of the popular vote to become “president” and then to appoint judges hand-picked for their anti-democratic views. Compromises, the impact of which wasn’t foreseen. Our founders couldn’t have predicted millions of Foxotrumpified voters. Or modern weapons of war doled out to civilians like Mardi Gras beads.

Those now-outdated constructs had the potential, from conception, for abuse by politicians of ill will. Good fortune, if that’s what it was, kept it at bay till the era of Ronald Reagan. His grinning “government is the problem” and the people that followed -- Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Tom Delay – began the beginning of the end, hastened now by the current congressional crew of conspiratorial con-artists, too numerous to mention. And capo de tutti capo, Mitch McConnell. Trump is merely the final beneficiary of the fall; inevitable at the founding, irreversible since the 1970s.

Whether majority or minority leader after November’s midterms, Mitch McConnell will never allow constraints on the far-right, ideological court; his proudest achievement. To him and his party, the Constitution is an arcane museum piece, whose relevance is purely situational. When it comes to a national ban on abortion, if he’s in charge, the non-constitutional filibuster will evaporate like Donmikerudy’s proof of election fraud. And the Court will approve.

On his censorious, weirdly-named “Truth Social” website, Trump wrote, “We are truly a nation in decline;” the only truth he’s ever told. The reasons are his unending election lies and the unreachable people who continue to believe him, representatives of whom leave (fair warning) vile, obscene, NSFW messages on Republican January 6 committee-member Adam Kinzinger’s office phone, calling from the basket. 

Supremely Religious

Everything that can be said about the Supreme Court throwing out Roe v. Wade has been said. Nevertheless, some points ought to be reiterated, if for no other reason than to confirm that America is now a theocratic plutocracy. And whereas there are, in theory, things that can be done about it, in practical terms there really aren’t. Theocratic plutocrats have locked it in.

1) Of the six radical-right Justices, five were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. The one who wasn’t likely got there by lying (because why would Anita Hill risk it all by making it up). So did at least two others, who, in their hearings, said Roe was settled. And it was only by way of Mitch McConnell’s staggering hypocrisy that the most recent two were seated.

2) Until now, no constitutional right, adjudicated and reaffirmed over a period of fifty years or any time-span, had been rescinded. If that’s not judicial activism, nothing is. If the Sacred Six hadn’t had a bought-and-paid-for political/religious agenda, they could have refused to hear the case. But their agenda is why they’re there. (Grammar lesson.) 

3) If respectful discussion between people on opposite sides is impossible, both sides might agree that believing the “personhood” of a fertilized egg is indistinguishable from that of a twenty-week fetus is religious-based. Until now, there wasn’t a right to impose one’s religion on others.

4) At least one-third of pregnancies die in utero; some so early that the woman didn’t know she was pregnant; others at any time during pregnancy: miscarriages. And stillbirths. Not to mention babies dying from neonatal birth defects. If there’s an all-powerful God who knows us before we’re born and has a plan for us all, then He’s as guilty as people who provide or undergo abortion. Also, those who consider abortion at any stage murder, ought to be satisfied knowing that all participants will face celestial judgment. Given the preceding, though, they might as likely receive a heavenly high-five as a ticket to Hell.

4+) If, as many believe, the enwombed human lives ended by the hand of God make it to Heaven, so should innocent, humanly-aborted ones; which would be a reason to rejoice. (Question for another time: if fertilized eggs, fetuses, and babies go to heaven, do they become the people God knew before they were born? If so, why must the rest of us spend a comparative milli-micro-nano-second on Earth?)

5) Pro-choice demonstrations are useless. We can be sure at least three of the Supremes would drink liberal tears if they could, and Trumpists of the airwaves and in their homes love watching them.

6) Alito’s justifications for ending Roe were laughable. Foremost, that abortion isn’t mentioned in a document written on parchment by white, landed, mostly slave-owning men at a time when women and Blacks had no electoral voice. Second-most, that they merely returned the issue to “elected representatives” of the respective states. In which the will of the majority has lately been legislated away, aided and encouraged by the Court. Total cynicism. Proof: the same six just overruled a lower court that tossed Louisiana’s redistricting plan for violating the Voting Rights Act by eliminating a predominantly black district. They know the system is rigged: they’re the riggers.

7) The Sanctified Six don’t believe in religious separation. As shown by their decision favoring Bremerton’s most famous coach, who likes to make a show of praying, with his team, on the fifty-yard line, after games. Ignorant, evidently, of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:5-8.

Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch lied, saying he “offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.” He also wrote, “The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.” “Mutual respect” and “nonreligious views alike.” What audacious disingenuousness. Their decision is the opposite.

In any case, school prayer is back. Let’s see if the halleluiahs extend to a Muslim teacher unrolling a prayer rug at halftime. Or leading their class in salah.

8) Nor do the Sanctimonious Six accept the Fourteenth Amendment. Wrote Justice Thomas in his concurrence, referring to the decisions that affirmed the right to birth control, LGBT rights, and same-sex marriage, the objections to which are, again, religious-based: “[T]he purported right to abortion is not a form of ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause … we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process [decisions].” At this point, let’s take the final step and criminalize non-belief. It’s only a matter of time.

Meanwhile, anyone who thinks the January 6 Committee revelations are changing minds should watch this video.

Democracy, We Hardly Knew Ye

The Backfire Effect. Far more characteristic of self-described conservatives than liberals, it’s the demonstrated tendency of people who hold false notions to cling more tightly to them when presented with evidence proving them wrong. After five public hearings from the January 6 Committee, it’s particularly relevant. Why it’s mostly conservatives to whom facts are anathema is mysterious, but studies confirm it. In the US, those studies are superfluous: it’s undeniable. 

So much for the hope that the hearings might disabuse Trumpublicans of their belief in obvious falsehoods. That the election was stolen. Voter fraud is rampant. Mike Pence had the Constitutional authority to refuse to certify electoral votes. Because it’s who he is and what he does, it’s unsurprising that Trump still flagellates those expired equines; in fact, he’s backfiring even more loudly now, incriminating himself ever more deeply in the process.

If his party weren’t so irreversibly in his thrall, however, its leaders would have jumped ship after the first hearing and taken their voters with them. But the Backfire Effect is the territory in which they’ve pitched their tents, and there’s no out-house. Committee members have been assigned bodyguards because of death threats.

With the first three hearings still fresh, Texas Republicans approved a party platform that’s Dark-Ages-regressive and exuberantly nasty. First off, they declared Trump the rightful president from whom the election was stolen by fraud. Warmed up, they designated homosexuality a “lifestyle choice.” Sex education of any sort may not be taught at any level in public schools, other than – not kidding -- requiring students to listen to fetal ultrasounds. Beyond that, no sex, please. We’re Texan.

They were just getting started. Their legislature should be stripped of the power to regulate firearms in any way. The federal income tax should be abolished, along with the Federal Reserve. So, too, the Civil Rights Act. They "oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity," and would make gender-affirming care for trans children a crime. They support full parental control over educating their children; code for not teaching about slavery or racism or any other snowflake-melting facts. Christian prayer would be required. Unregulated home-schooling, privatization of Social Security, no future mask mandates or climate legislation. “Inappropriate or harmful” (undefined) reading materials removed from schools.

The document is testimony to how deeply Trumpists fear truth, science, and the prospect of educated, thoughtful citizens. It's not just Texas. Forced to resign as governor, now running for senate, Missouri’s Eric Greitens posted a campaign video of himself and paramilitary goons storming a home where non-MAGA people live, firing flash-bangs and assault weapons. In a New Mexico county, officials refused to certify an election, based on “gut feelings,” not “facts.” Notwithstanding a post-Uvalde Fox (!) poll showing overwhelming public support for tough gun regulation, including red flag laws, age limits, even banning semi-automatic rifles, elected Republicans are intransigently rejecting public opinion. Minority rules. America is a Venn diagram with non-intersecting circles.

Even before Trumpism, the US had become irreparably fractured. Breakup now seems inevitable. Serious thinkers are addressing it, seriously. That Texas platform demands a voter initiative on seceding from the Union. That, we mustn’t allow. We must require. Toss in another state or two to house all Trumpublicans, and facilitate moving there. Free passage on Amtrak, the last time it’d be available to them. Rational people, like those in Austin and elsewhere, would be welcome in places where reality also is. 

The hearings. Texas. The Trumpublican Party has fled the real world and burned the bridges. Has no interest in cooperation; shouts down and votes out those who do. Because we’re no longer a country in which majority opinions can find their way to legislation, our two-party system has become hopelessly dysfunctional. Exceptional America has become exceptionally unable to address complex problems. Good people, the majority, want to, but can’t. No democratic republic can long survive in today’s political environment.

For several decades, in fact, it hasn’t. Round-the-clock lying and hate-mongering from right-wing media have made it so. And from Trump, who belongs in Texas. After what he did to Lady Ruby and her daughter, a microcosm of what he’s done to America, he deserves much worse. 

The unreachable need a place of their own, where they can raise legally brainwashed, other-hating, scientifically illiterate, parched, pregnant, closeted, but well-armed children, without electricity. Where they can pray away climate change and diseases created by unregulated pollution, genuflect to Tucker, and elect Trumpic tyrants; while the libs to whom they stuck it, along with the few remaining honorable Republicans, like Rusty Bowers, will be up here being nice and raising empathetic kids capable of solving problems. 

Hearing The Truth. Also, Guns.

“The whole thing is insulting. In fact, it’s deranged,” whined whiney Tucker Carlson, during Fox’s counterprogramming to the truth presented by the January 6 committee. “… They are lying, and we’re not going to help them do it.” Not knowing what was being presented, but saying it anyway, tells us everything about him. Fox “news” so feared its viewers might break away for a few minutes and learn something that it carried no commercials. Which tells us everything about them, and how they’ve viewed viewers from the moment of fertilization of Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda egg.

There was no election fraud. Trump was fully aware. The hearings leave no doubt. So, is he a monumental liar or delusional? Both, probably. He knows he’s lying and is so pathologically unwell that he believes he, who claims to know everything about everything but knows nothing about anything, deserved to win. Lying, suborning violence, rejecting democracy, he justified anything required to retain the office to which he felt entitled. 

Having nothing with which to refute the committee’s laid-out facts, Foxing heads focused on denying January 6 was an insurrection. Or an attempted coup, or even a riot. Or on Ashli Babbitt, “martyred,” they’d say, when a good guy with a gun, sworn to safeguard members of Congress, facing a rampaging mob chanting for murder, shot her as she breached the final barrier protecting the members.

Does terminology even matter, though? By another name, let’s call it a rose. In fact, January 6 isn’t really the point, any more than whipped-up cream is the point of a banana split. It’s everything that preceded and followed the up-rosing. Launched long before the election and aided by his coterie of unprincipled enablers, it’s Trump’s willful deceit. It’s his intent to malign and silence the majority of voters who ejected him, soundly and legally. It’s his Putinesque plan to dismantle democracy in order to acquire permanent power, about which the hearings are removing all doubt.

Yet millions believed his transparent, discredited lies and still do. MAGA? Hardly. Playing his followers for gullible patsies, Trump’s vision of “greatness” is only his own. Inexplicably, his big-lie-pushers still win elections. Their voters weren’t watching, evidently. The need to believe is stronger than truth. 

Keeping belief alive is essential for Trump’s post-presidency grift. The “Election Defense Fund,” in the name of which he suckered hundreds of millions of dollars from small-dollar victims, never existed. The haul went to himself and to his protectors’ “charities,” rather than “election defense,” whatever that is. A scam more tasteless than Trump steaks, more flightless than Trump Air, more content-free than Trump University. Who’d have guessed? 

Still seditiously attacking a decisive, clean election, still bawling about a “landslide” win, Trump has undertaken his only well-conceived ruse in a lifetime of fraud: teasing another presidential run (yes, please!) as a way to escape indictment. Counting on Merrick Garland’s ethical standards, he’s betting the Attorney General won’t charge a clearly criminal, but front-running presidential candidate, lest it appear “political.” He might be right.

Or not. A Republican front-runner for governor of Michigan was just arrested by the FBI for his participation in the rose. Maybe enough of the hearing’s twenty million viewers, not counting who-knows-how-many online, have become convinced of Trump’s criminality to demand indictment. What would be worse for democracy: the inevitable Trump-encouraged violence, or letting a corrupt “president” off the hook? The answer is obvious.

Meanwhile, following the Texas massacre and decades of Republican obstruction, a bipartisan group of senators has agreed upon tweaks to gun laws. Quoting arch political blogger Charles P. Pierce, “The bill Is a good start like tying your shoes is a good way to start a marathon.”

They couldn’t agree, of course, to re-ban assault-style rifles, much less, God forbid, raise the purchase age, despite it already being twenty-one to obtain handguns. The bill increases background checks. For teenagers. It “encourages” states to create red-flag laws. Increases “mental health” funding; how the spending will reduce mass murders isn’t specified.

Will it pass? We’ll see. Many red-state governors refused Obamacare’s Medicaid funds, through which the money is likely to flow. If it passes, will they accept the dollars this time? Doesn’t matter. Per Senator Cornyn (R-TX), “We protected law-abiding Texans’ right to bear arms.” And that’s what counts.

A helpful letter-writer recently reminded Herald readers that AR-15s aren’t “assault rifles.” Okay. Let’s call them pool noodles. Powerful enough to pulverize children beyond recognition. Everyone, especially legislators, should be made to see full-color pictures of those victims. I’ve operated on people whose livers were literally exploded by less-powerful weapons; gruesome as that is, by comparison it’s nothing.

Those Who Don't Learn...

Ten years old during the “Army-McCarthy” hearings, I think I remember watching them live. Could have been reruns. Similar uncertainty applies to my recollection of watching Army counsel Joseph Welch, later to play the judge in the movie “Anatomy of a Murder,” demand of red-baiting, lying, fear-mongering (sound familiar?) Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI), “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

I hope the memory I have of McCarthy looking abashed is accurate. Maybe even Roy Cohn. When Mr. Welch finished, the audience cheered; thus beginning the end of the horror. Also dispositive was President Eisenhower calling out a member of his own party; in addition, several senators of that party joined the vote to censure him. Those were the days, now almost impossible to believe: two conscientious parties, recognizing the role of Congress and the importance of democracy, disinclined to lie. If memory serves. It might have been another country.

Memories of the Watergate hearings are firmer. Again, justice was served by the conscience of conservatives, including some working within the Nixon White House. Today's ethical reversal of that party is staggering.

This column had to be delivered to The Herald before the opening of the public January 6 Committee hearings, so comments thereon must wait. But if lying, grandstanding, allegedly alcoholic Joe McCarthy had the capacity for a modicum of shame, we know the same can’t be said for Trump and his cadre of collaborators in their coordinated cabal conspiring to cremate the Constitution. Including the current McCarthy. On the contrary: since televised hearings were announced, Trump and Republican leaders have been planning a counterattack based on smoke, mirrors, and Fox “news.” Given how easily they created acceptance of Trump’s Big Election Lie, they may well succeed, again, in suffocating truth in its crib. An attempt to distract from inflation, they’ll call it. A baseless, Soros-paid, partisan hit-job, they’ll say. Just like the unfair prosecution of Jeffrey Dahmer, bankrolled by big meat. 

The difference between then and now couldn’t be more dramatic. Lacking both shame and spine, elected Trumpublicans will be unmoved by the public hearings. How could it be otherwise? Eighteen months later, after countless investigations found nothing, the vast majority of Trumpists still believe the election was stolen, though not an iota of fraud has been demonstrated, other than the occasional Republican voting in a dead relative’s name. In that subset of humanity, minds won’t change, assuming they watch at all because why would they?

If Jesus Himself, whose teachings they’ve cast aside to support Trump, were to return to confirm the absence of fraud; and if Trump, whose professed faith is his second biggest lie, were to call Him a liar, is there any doubt whom they’d believe?

Impenetrable Trumpists are lost to reality, but perhaps enough minds remain open among his less hermetic voters that, when the hearings are live, they’ll tune in, turn on, and drop out of the cult. Become convinced that Trump must never hold office again; that Republican politicians who still push Trump’s big lie must be removed; and that Trumpist political newcomers, including snake-oil selling carpetbaggers and other unqualified liars, must never hold positions of power. Failure to do so harbings democracy’s end-times, which is neither speculation nor hyperbole. It’s as obvious as a brainwashed believer beating a capitol cop with a flagpole.

Unlikely as it is, and assuming enough not-fully-Foxified stumble upon other channels (Fox “news” won’t be broadcasting them), perhaps the hearings can open a few million pairs of eyes. (No offense to the blind or one-eyed.) Of course, enough is already known to convict the whole bunch of numerous crimes and literal sedition, from Trump’s top to Bannon’s bottom. Which portends that, absent previously unknown major revelations, only futility, not brains, will be exercised.

The penchant of so many millions of Americans for authoritarianism must be an evolutionary hangover from when danger was everywhere and compliantly following a leader had survival benefits. Now, though, like the vermiform appendix, its remnant produces nothing but sickness.

These hearings are necessary only because of those who fell under the spell of an amoral, lifetime liar and scammer. Defendant in thousands of business-related lawsuits. Forcer of non-disclosure agreements to bury his profligacy. Wielder of hate as a means to power. Also neither speculation nor hyperbole.

Trump’s pathological need for adulation is so great that he was willing to destroy democracy to maintain it. Aided by similarly amoral, anti-democracy members of his party and right-wing media, he almost accomplished it. He still could. It shouldn’t require hearings to convince people, but it sure would help.

Guns, Guns, Guns

Admittedly micturition into the mistral, it’s impossible not to write about America becoming the only country in the world where guns are the leading cause of childhood mortality, and being the world leader in mass murders.

Because we have more guns in circulation than there are people, the barn is out of the bag. Nevertheless, whatever legislation might become law, no one is “coming for your guns.” Kamala Harris won’t march up your driveway and wrestle away your AR. If assault-style weapons were outlawed again (unlikely), they’ll still be out there. On the other hand, the teenage Texas terrorist had just purchased his; if the legal age were twenty-one, he couldn’t have. Legally, anyway. And there were many “red flags” about his prior behavior.

Here’s a partial list, in order of decreasing likelihood of passage, of legislation that might reduce the number of children giving their lives to protect your Second Amendment freedoms:

Red flag laws; raising the age to purchase military-style weapons; universal background checks; banning gravity; licensing of owners; mandatory training; limiting magazine size; banning assault-style weapons; amending the Second Amendment to eliminate ambiguity regarding “well-regulated militia”; beating swords into plowshares.

But nothing will happen until the Senate is rid of its hypocritical, gaslighting, scourge of NRA-owned “conservatives.” Which will occur only if the generation that includes those nineteen now-dead Texas children outlives the many ways errant Republican lawmakers are trying to kill them. And survives long enough to elect reasonable people.

“Reasonable” means responsive to the 90% of Americans, including many of their own, who favor some form of gun-control legislation. “Reasonable” means senators who value their constituents more than NRA money. 

So, while we wait, let’s recount the worn-out excuses and ridiculous arguments produced by wholly-owned Republican enablers. Topping the list is the only cogent argument we’ve heard for keeping and bearing an AR-15. Offered by Senator Doctor Cassidy of Louisiana, it’s to kill feral pigs. Makes splendid sense. 

Not far behind is the faux (pronounced “Fox”) outrage over President Biden “politicizing” tragedy when he spoke about the Texas murders. This, from people for whom there’s never a right time, who’ve politicized gun rights above all, and who’ve evidently forgotten, because of a recent four-year exception, that a president’s job description includes moral leader.

Junior Trump blames massacres on “crazy teachers” indoctrinating our kids. Evidently, though, like most gunophilic Republicans, he’s fine with arming them. Senator Ron Johnson blames Critical Race Theory, wokeness, and “liberal indoctrination,” which “have been going on under the radar for quite some time.”

A favorite Republican “guns aren’t the problem” dodge is mental health. Right. The first bill Trump signed revoked Obama-era regulations making it harder for mentally ill people to obtain firearms. And, having signed several bills that loosened gun laws, Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, which ranks last among states in access to mental health care, cut $211 million of funding for it. It’s a diversional talking point, not an action item.

Schools ARE acting, but they need help. In blue Washington, the legislature provides mental health funds. Will red states follow suit? 

Insurrectionist Rep. Mo Brooks rejects gun safety laws because “we always have the right to take back our government should it become dictatorial.” Sure. Thousands of times over, our government outguns us. Should it become dictatorial, it’d unhesitatingly turn that firepower on us. Under Trump, it almost was and almost did.

We don’t need new laws, they say. We need to enforce the ones already in place. Because of Republican senatorial obstruction, the ATF hasn’t had a confirmed director for sixteen years.

After the Texas slaughter, Senate Republicans (the free speech party) blocked debate on a bill addressing domestic terrorism. Why? Do they consider domestic terrorists their base? After the bloodbath, Michigan’s legislative Republicans (the free speech party) blocked Democrats from speaking about it. So one of them spoke from home. Please listen to her. 

Speaking at the NRA convention in Houston, three days after the Constitutionally-protected carnage, Trump called gun control legislation “grotesque” and “cynical.” Weapons, per usual and unironically, were banned from the venue. And here’s more depressing Americana (warning: includes Ted Cruz offloading bovine-excrement).

Even more: Republicans have consistently blocked funding for research on gun violence. Perhaps it’s because of studies like the one finding no benefit from arming school employees.

Celebrated by both sides for crushing Trump’s pick for Georgia governor (Trump is claiming fraud, of course), Brian Kemp checks every gun-nut, hardcore, right-wing box. 

Will elected Republicans ever accept democracy and listen to the ninety percent? When and if I regain breath, I won’t be holding it.

Saint Ronald And The Death Of Democracy

Other than Trump’s election lies, America’s most damaging, anti-democracy presidential utterance exited the face of Ronald Reagan on the occasion of his inauguration: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem,” said he, thus igniting the incremental incineration of democracy that’s inflamed our country ever since.

But WE are the government. We choose it, we empower it, we -- when we’re dutiful -- direct and limit it. If government is the problem, therefore, the problem is us. 

JFK spoke, intimately, inspiringly, at my very small college only a month before his assassination. But one might question his inaugural admonition, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Because “doing for us” is what democracies are about. What we can do for our country is to put competent people in charge who are committed to good governance; rather than Trumpiloids, committed to big donors, big lies, and power for its own sake.

LBJ wanted his “Great Society” to promote “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community … a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods… [T]he Great Society is … a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the products of our labor.” That’s the “do for you.” Later, in a graduation speech, he defined “do for your country.” “Will you join in the battle,” he asked, “to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?” How unlike Reagan!

Therein is the immutable difference between Democrats and today’s Republicans. Democratic presidents and Congresses have aimed to help all Americans, while Republicans, echoing Saint Ronnie, have worked to keep it from happening. Convincing the convincible that a government that’s “here to help” is their enemy, they claim social programs create laziness, that regulations choke capitalism. Why? Because they cost money, which means higher taxes and safety constraints on their donors. So, instead of Democrats’ vision of government serving its people, we get Reaganite Republicans serving only the wealthy. And themselves.

We get Trump, whose “renegotiating” NAFTA was a major factor in the current baby formula shortage. We get 192 Republicans voting against a solution because they’d rather see babies go hungry than help President Biden fix it.  

We get every Republican voting against a bill cracking down on gasoline price-gouging, in order to hurt Biden (and us) and help their fossil-fuelers enrich themselves. Fifteen years ago, when a barrel of crude cost seventy-five dollars higher than it is now, gas cost about $1.50 less per gallon. But gouge away, say Republicans. You keep the donations coming and we’ll keep blaming Biden. (Fact: prices are higher in many other countries. President Biden’s fault, too?)

We get this year’s CPAC meeting in Hungary, home of Trumpists’ second-favorite tyrant, whose list of speakers featured hate-fomenting liar Tucker Carlson and a Hungarian journalist who’d called Jews “stinking excrement,” Gypsies “animals,” and Blacks even worse. And, completing the trifecta, Trump. It’s now who they are, and, through indifference by some voters and intent by others, that’s what we get.

We get a Republican party determined to reject healthcare for all Americans, spiking Democratic proposals while offering none. A party committed to creating distrust in our electoral system by perpetuating transparent lies about fraud, to justify disenfranchising voters most likely to vote against them; wanting to hand presidential choices to their state legislatures rather than voters. A party to blame for the anti-science beliefs, conspiracy theories, and distrust, as well as incompetent and inattentive management, that led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid-19.

We get Mitch McConnell’s 6-3 “pro-life” SCOTUS, ready to ban abortion, simultaneously ruling that innocence isn’t enough to keep a state from executing someone. 

We’ve gotten a party that chooses an evolution-denying, “Trump never said the election was stolen,” domestic-abusing, self-described mentally ill, unintelligible football player and a clueless coach as Senators, as long as they’ll beat qualified, honorable Democrats; and which is itching to remake America as a puritanical Christian theocracy. 

Whether or not it’d have prevented any of America’s almost daily, heartbreaking massacres, we get fifty, backboneless senators afraid of even the most minimal gun control legislation. Whose stars are still scheduled to speak at a NRA convention in Houston. But we do get thoughts and prayers.  

And, because enough people believed Reagan, we got January 6, too.

Replacement Reality

“False flag.” It’s among the preferred excuses offered by the don’t-blame-us right, to defend the indefensible. After the murders of Black Americans in Buffalo, by an admitted white supremacist, racist antisemite bedeviled by bogus “replacement theory,” it took only a day for it to be applied, Alex Jones/Sandy Hook style. Jones, himself, dredged it up again. Republican candidates and legislators, too. 

Guns are now so deeply embedded in America, it won’t ever change. Shortly before the massacre, two Trump-appointed judges struck down a California law banning sales of military-style weapons to people under twenty-one, like the Buffalo assassin, calling it a violation of the Second Amendment. Maybe it was. But the judge who wrote the opinion offered this bit of Trumpismic illogic: "America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army," Judge Ryan Nelson wrote. "Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms."

Right. Because youngsters joined the Revolution keeping and bearing muskets, we must allow modern killing machines to be purchased by everyone of any age. McConnell-selected, Trump-appointed. Nothing more needs saying.

“Consider your man card reissued,” creeps an ad for the Bushmaster war-weapon clone the murderer used. “If it’s good enough for the professional, it’s good enough for you.” That's a testicle-tanning-Tucker two-fer. BTW: studies show shooting accuracy of professionals drops by 40%, in pressure situations. And amateurs? 

In Ohio, you can now carry a concealed weapon without a permit or training. You no longer have to tell a cop who stops you that you’re armed. Lying about it is now a misdemeanor instead of a felony. So guns will only become more available and less regulated. By now, blaming gun laws for Buffalo is like blaming water for drownings.

Innocent lambs, Foxian talkers blame mental health issues. It’s no excuse: knowing mentally ill and impressionable people are out there, they pound their lies anyway. Any sentient human – which, setting the bar low enough, includes Carlson and fellow promoters of “replacement theory” – recognizes the deadly combination and its inevitable tragedies: guns for the having, plus disturbed people vulnerable to fear- and hate-mongering. Violence in response is entirely predictable. It's happened many times before.

If a tinder-dry forest catches fire, you don’t exculpate the person who walked through it with a flame-thrower. Because America will do nothing about the tinder, the only hope for change is confronting the people who, knowing the forest is a firebox, keep firing flames into it. If it’s impossible to rid ourselves of guns and mentally fragile people, it’s possible, theoretically, to do something about the harm people like Tucker are doing.

Our constitution gives them the right to spread their lies, though it’s homicidally close to shouting “fire” in a packed theater. We’re blameless, they insist. But they know who’s out there, on whom their words are falling, and they keep doing it. Lacking morality, they won't stop. Pressuring their sponsors might be the only option. That, and less “bothsiderism” from “liberal” media.

So let’s consider the “replacement theory” they’re pushing, convincing armed and fragile people and everyone else there’s a plot to “replace” them with people unlike them. (We can hope.) Deniers of most reality, Trumpicists have correctly noticed that American demographics are changing. Behind which, they see a dastardly liberal plot. Which is ironic, as it’s their party’s policies that ensure the birth, among others, of more people of the sort they abhor. Who, if they are voting, are Americans, enjoying the same freedom as they. But Trumpophiles reject all Americans’ freedoms except their own.

Then what about immigrants? If it’s true, which it isn’t, that America-hating liberal groomers of innocent children are opening floodgates to create more voters, it’d be the flipside of Republican lawmakers doing everything they can to ensure only their voters vote. Lacking the most minimal empathy, ignoring the fact that, except for Native Americans, we’re all immigrants, they can’t imagine the possibility that it’s BECAUSE we're descendants of immigrants, that liberals welcome them. And because immigrants aspire to the “American dream” far more than those who didn’t have to fight to get here.

As Republicans insist on mis-educating their own, America counts on immigrants, not just to become voters, but to keep the dream alive. Quoting NYT's Brett Stephens, "What the far right calls "replacement" is better described as renewal." (tinyurl.com/nytbrett)

Replacement theory is just another time-tested, dishonest scare tactic to secure votes from people about whom they’ve never cared, for whom they haven’t had helpful policies for decades.

Arthur Of The Missing Stomach

There’s lots to say about Mike Esper’s book, with its too-tardy revelations of Trump’s lunatic, despotic inclinations. But it’s too depressing, because, rather than reflecting on our narrow escape, Trumpists don't care. Their ideal of a “great” America is Saudi Arabia. So, for a needed mental health break, here’s a surgical diversion:

High on my list of favorite operations was surgery on the stomach: the anatomy is neat, the re-plumbing alternatives clever, technical challenges rewarding, and, because it’s well-supplied with blood, complication-free healing is pretty predictable. Also, several procedures were conceived by and named for history’s pioneer surgeons, and it’s nice to feel the connection, heir to the discoveries and invention of the greats. Herewith, the story of a recipient of one of my favorite operations.

Already slight and small, Arthur A. had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, located where removing his entire stomach was necessary. He was a "whatever-you-say-Doc" sort of guy, but his wife was literally beside herself. Vibrating in such a way as to appear to be two people must be how the "beside herself" expression came to be. That's what she was doing. "How can he live like that? He'll starve to death!! Look at him!! How can I feed him? What can he eat? I can't cook like that. What'll I do? What'll I do?"

It's entirely reasonable, of course, to be shocked by the idea of an absent stomach, but she was letting my words bounce off without sticking, like tennis balls off a wall. I was telling her that most people, especially older folks, get along surprisingly well without a stomach, that he'd probably be able to eat whatever he wanted, but in smaller portions. There’d be no special diet. No absolute restrictions. He should try whatever sounds good to him, and we can see what works, modify if necessary.

Boing, boing, my words ricocheted, un-received. But there wasn't much choice; it’s what he needed, and as our meetings continued, I managed -- calling upon my fabulous communication skills -- to lower the vibratory amplitude. Relative calm prevailed.

The operation went fine, despite finding that the tumor had grown directly into the left lobe of Mr. A’s liver, requiring that I take a pie-shaped slice of it along with the whole stomach. The reconstruction techniques are part of why surgeons like being surgeons. The way I did it for him and most other candidates involves fashioning a sort-of neo-reservoir for food at the bottom of the esophagus, along with some fancy intestinal rearrangement to restore continuity. It’s somewhat of a big deal, but it works. Lacking a particular hormone it makes, people missing their entire stomach need monthly B-12 shots, but that’s the only certain nutritional requirement.

Arthur made an uneventful recovery and was ready for discharge in a quick few days. Stopping by his room for a final goodbye, I found his wife -- who'd relaxed a bit as she watched him sailing smooth -- wide-eyed and pale-faced, vibrating anew as a dietician instructed her on a "gastrectomy diet." For which, because of my prior efforts with the wife, trying to preserve the peace, I specifically hadn’t asked.

Delicately as possible, I invited the dietician to join me in the hall, where I explained that this was exactly what the woman did NOT need; that I'd take care of the dietary management myself. Had anyone requested the visit? No, she said. She'd just noted that the man had had a gastrectomy, and had taken it upon herself -- per some protocol or other -- to make the connection. I explained the peculiarity of the situation while she nodded nicely; then returned to the room, taking up where she'd left off, as Mrs. A. levitated to the ceiling.

This sat unwell with me, and there were subsequent, uh, communications. It's my parenthetical opinion that there are many extremely useful services provided by many excellent professionals attached to a hospital. And they should be used. When invited. Carved-in-stone protocols can, on occasion, be counterproductive. But I digress.

After the dietician left, I managed to restore trust that he’d be okay at home, and off they went. At subsequent post-op visits, Mr. A. continued his uncomplicated recovery. His wife, too. And how did he do with his extensive cancer and complex surgery? Two answers: first, about ten years later he dropped by to have his gallbladder removed. Second: around a year after the gastrectomy, my wife and I were eating at a local steak joint. Couple of tables away was Arthur, doing justice to a New York strip and a baked potato, as his wife, calm and cool, did likewise.

They had dessert, too.

No Surprise

So Justice Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade has been leaked. Inevitable since Mitch McConnell embarked on court-packing during President Obama’s terms and, therefore, no surprise, leaking it was unhelpful. Like the dog who caught the car, anxious to change the subject, Republicans are calling the leak the “real insurrection.” 

But it won’t impact the decision, assuming Alito’s philippic is the final product. And everyone except Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski saw it coming when McConnell blocked Merrick Garland for the flimsiest of reasons, then did an extraordinarily hypocritical (even for him) one-eighty for Amy Coney Barrett.

I happen to agree that, ideally, the right to abortion should be legislated rather than adjudicated. Which is what Mr. Justice implied, knowing his court had previously made sure it would never happen, butter not melting in his mouth. Nevertheless, butter dripped from his lips like MAGmA when he insisted the decision is no threat to other SCOTUS rulings; and when he specifically eschewed caring about its impact. What happens to babies force-born into poverty, when Republicans, as always, refuse to pay for help? And women who’ll die? Irrelevant. Abortion is a “profound moral issue,” Alito wrote; but those, evidently, aren’t.

His rationale – that abortion isn’t mentioned in the Constitution -- can be applied to virtually every non-enumerated right the court has previously sanctified: access to birth control, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, integrated schools, fair housing, even the very right to privacy. The system is now so perfectly rigged in favor of disfavored, minority preferences that there’s practically no way Congress will enact legislation to guarantee any of those things, despite the fact that a majority of Americans support them all, not just the right to abortion (with widely-accepted restrictions).

Blatantly unfair gerrymandering; voter suppression laws precisely aimed at Democratic constituencies; wildly disparate numbers of polling and registration places between white and minority districts, “legal” since Roberts’ gutting of the Voting Rights Act; the “Citizens United” decision allowing unlimited political bribery by the nameless super-rich; attacking public education; Trump’s Big Lie. All serving their ultimate goal: turning the United States into a theocratic oligarchy, run by powerful corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals, based on a “Christianity” that’s as far from Christ-like as a drug cartel. Tweet it!

Americans consider voting the ultimate defense of democracy, placing our country’s direction in the hands of its citizens. While still theoretically true, the ability to maintain small-“el” liberal democracy via the ballot box is under relentless attack from the right. Kept distracted and disinformed by their anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian media, the people most adversely affected by the agenda of today’s Republican Party, which includes the majority of Trump voters, are being convinced to vote against their own interests. In order to save their children from being “groomed.” Or eaten. Or taught empathy. Or American history. To save themselves from the One World Order, the Great Replacement. Or George Soros.

It’s self-perpetuating. As people like Margorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and depressingly more are welcomed to center stage of their party (let’s not forget Trump), good people are leaving. Any ethical Republican, a term rapidly becoming oxymoronic, will be primaried by Trumpists and endorsed (assuming he can remember their names) by Trump. The more deplorable, the better. Name nearly forgotten by Trump, J.D. Vance accused President Biden of deliberately letting fentanyl through the southern border in order to kill MAGA voters. And won the Ohio Republican senate primary. (MAGA voters are addicts? Explains a lot.) In fact, interdiction of drugs by the Biden administration has increased tenfold over Trump’s time. But lies and liars win, yet again.

If it hadn’t yet been obvious to everyone, now there’s no denying America is a country whose policies are decided by a minority of its citizens. Proving the point, four of SCOTUS’ hard-right, Roe-ending ideologues were appointed by “presidents” who lost the popular vote. Able to block nearly all legislation, including the rights-restoring Women’s Health Protection Act, Republican Senators represent forty million fewer voters than the Democrats. That’s not democracy. But it’s America now.

Perhaps the elimination of abortion rights will awaken voters to the precarious standing of all protected personal decisions. Maybe it’ll be the long-overdue catalyst for enlightening the “They’re all the same,” “I’m voting third-party,” “Why bother to vote,” “It doesn’t affect me” people who’ve repeatedly ceded elections to those who’ve facilitated appointing a court bent on returning us to the eighteenth century and a former “president” eager to preside over a kleptocratic plutocracy. Preventing all that will take an unprecedented turnout of caring voters, now, this year, against massive efforts from the other side to keep it from happening. In Trump’s America, it seems increasingly unlikely.