Okay. I’ll confess that I really don’t have a great excuse for remaining mute on this platform for the past several months. I figured that once Trump slithered back to his (hopefully) final resting place in Florida we could all take a deep breath and relax, while his supporters concentrated on taking their brown shirts to the dry cleaners.
Wrong.
Recent events are making the depths of the pandemic look like the good old days.
Inflation…record high gasoline prices…an airline industry that can no longer get passengers from point A to point B (or anywhere in between)…mass murders in our schools, churches and grocery stores. To quote the great American philosopher Elaine from the TV show Seinfeld: Yada, Yada, Yada.
But what really has my shorts in a knot and my fingers reaching for the keyboard is the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn a woman’s federally guaranteed right to control their own health and body. And the decision to strike down Roe v. Wade is just the beginning. All of our rights involving privacy, same sex marriage, contraception and so forth are now on the chopping block.
I’m not thrilled about living in a country where conservative religious fanatics (and their elected representatives) care more about an unborn fetus than they do about children who are being slaughtered by high-power automatic weapons in the classroom. I digress.
Go figure.
Unfortunately members of the Supreme Court—who should be neutral arbitrators of the law and our constitution—are now just political operatives advancing their own agenda. And you really can’t believe a word they say during the confirmation process.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Oh, well. If there is a path out of this mess it has to begin at the ballot box. If we want the USA to remain the world’s shining example of democracy then we better start electing officials who share this vision.
As Prez Obama once told John McCain during the debate over health care: Elections have consequences.
That notion will be tested once again in November.
Register and vote.
Writing Above The Clouds 