The Fall of Roe v. Wade Will Only Embolden The Fascists: How Will America Respond? [View all]

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Last edited Fri May 13, 2022, 05:33 PM - Edit history (1)

- 'The fall of Roe v. Wade will only embolden the fascists: How will America respond?' Salon, May 13, 2022. Ed.

- This decision signals that "democratic norms" are gone, and old-style politics is useless. So what can we do?

We warned the American people that electing Donald Trump would be a disaster. Unfortunately, too many Americans — from the political and media classes to everyday people — chose to ignore those warnings. Our warnings were specific: Trump and his fake populist movement are a form of poison in the American body politic. Today's Republican Party and the larger "conservative" movement do not believe in democracy. They are authoritarians, trying to impose an apartheid Christian fascist plutocratic state on the American people.

If Trump were elected president, we warned, he would set into motion a series of events that would create an existential crisis for American democracy and society. He was mentally unwell, perhaps sociopathic. The civil rights and human rights of Black and brown people — and other vulnerable and marginalized groups — would be imperiled. Women's reproductive rights and freedoms, including the right to abortion enshrined in the Roe v. Wade decision, would be taken away. All those predictions, and many others, have come true. At first, those of us who sounded the alarm about the coming American nightmare were called crazy, hyperbolic, reactionary or irrational. We were "haters," desperate for attention, who suffered from "Trump derangement syndrome."

- We were the voices in the wilderness. We were not selling wolf tickets. We were trying to save the American people by telling them the truth about the Age of Trump and American fascism and the nightmare that in many ways was already here and is now only getting worse. As we now know from the draft Supreme Court opinion recently published by Politico, the end of Roe v. Wade is upon us, and abortion rights as a matter of constitutional law will no longer exist in the U.S. The fall of Roe is a huge step forward in the much larger attack on human and civil rights in America by the Republican fascists, the "conservative" movement and the larger white right. Many Americans now find themselves trapped in the very nightmare whose existence they spent years denying.

Sometimes the ground moves beneath our feet. That is true for both societies and individuals. The challenge then becomes how to reorient ourselves.

How did people who believe in democracy greatly underestimate the danger? "Normalcy bias," intellectual laziness & a culture of distraction played a role. Trumpism, like other forms of fascism, is nothing new. People are exhausted from a pandemic that has now killed more than one million people in the U.S. alone. A decades-long attack on the American Dream & what remains of social democracy has left many of us in a state of vulnerability. There is also the American myth & our belief that we are an "exceptional" nation.. In a functioning democracy, public opinion is supposed to serve as a barometer & guide for elected officials & their policymaking. Marches, mobilization & social movements are forms of pressure on elected officials & other elites. But the GOP-fascist movement is creating a political system that allows them to advance their agenda without being limited or otherwise restrained by public pressure or democratic will...

- More, https://www.salon.com/2022/05/13/the-fall-of-roe-v-wade-will-only-embolden-the-fascists-how-will-america-respond/
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- 'Prepare for McCarthy-era crackdowns on pro-choice protesters,' The Guardian, May 13. Conservatives & corporate media pundits want to use a Red Scare statute to arrest people demonstrating against the looming anti-abortion victory, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/13/abortion-pro-choice-joseph-mccarthy-red-scare