As someone who has extensively studied American religion,
particularly American Protestant and American new religious movements,
over the years, I have long said that the nationalist Protestant
and Catholic religiious right are on a holy crusade to roll back things
that they think are unAmerican and damaging to what they think America
is and should be, images that are, of course, more fantasy than reality
but then most humans do generally construct their own realities. It has
been clear since the 1960s that this authoritarian if not totalitartian
ditto head theocratic often religious dominated right has no self-doubts about what they are doing
and has no qualms about using majority rule to their political, ideological, and religious advantage. After
all, they believe that they are god's chosen people and that they are on
a mission for this god to make America holy and, by extension, great again, as if imperial America needs any more help in this regard.
What is clear
is that these religious and predominantly Christian theocratic
nationalists control a number of state legislatures in the
US, that they increasingly control the legal apparatus of the nation,
something that, as the ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade makes clear,
matters, and that this nationalist faith lies deep in the hearts of
"souls" of many of its devotees, men and women, across the country and particularly in
certain parts of the nation. These American religious nationalists, in
other words, aren't going anywhere soon and if you expect them to
be raptured within the next week you might want to think again.
Given that this American religious nationalism isn't going anywhere soon and that these religious nationalists now basically control the courts of the nation it is time to think about what comes next. Justice Clarence Thomas urged the Court to revist the ruling making same sex marriage legal and to revisit its rulings on contraception in his assent in overturning Roe v Wade. He is, after all, a good right wing theocratic Catholic, at least selectively. At the moment there is little the American Congress can do to stop such revisitings from moving up the legal system ladder and potentially being overturned in the courts. Needless to say, the strategy of the nationalist right to use the courts, which they increasingly dominate, to chip away at rights and then, when the time is ripe, eliminate them has been around for some time now, has been successful as last weeks events show, and is likely to continue to be successful in the near future.
What to do? For those fearful of their rights being increasingly chipped away and undermined by the American courts and the US Supreme Court have, it seems to me, few options available to them. They can wait and hope that the Democrats gain enough power to protect them. The Democrats, or at least the saner elements amongst them, however, have proven again and again to be as weak as proverbial water when it comes to protecting the rights of Americans. They aren't even able to protect the reasonable regulation of guns or the right to an abortion, let alone enact them. They can follow the increasingly underground railroad to Canada (where I want to go) or Ireland, the latter which has moved from the stone age into the modern world recently while the US keeps moving in the other direction. That, however, is beyond the financial capabilities of many Americans including many American seniors like myself who are trapped in the American Medicare system and in the cage of their meagre pensions. Or they can urge their states to secede, which is what I think those states which continue to allow abortions need to think about. Or finally they can simply sit around hoping that it, whatever it is, never happens here.
No comments:
Post a Comment