We Are Now Barrow, Alaska

 

     We liberals already knew the Fourth Reich was coming. We knew it almost from the moment Trump came down that escalator over seven years ago. Right wingers said we were just hair-on-fire alarmists. Establishment Democrats said the same thing. The media said the same thing. That's why you hardly ever see liberals on news show panels, anymore, because when bad news comes out, it tends to be about Republicans so of course they have to put them on because of course the liberals are going to be biased against Republicans and we can't trust a single thing they say.

     This, despite the fact that liberals knew what the news would be even before it would be news. The one thing we underestimated was that the hurricane winds from this scaled-down Butterfly Effect would bring the worst after we vanquished Trump and sent him packing back to Mar a Lago.

     We're seeing this on fronts both politically and judicially. Let's talk about this fascist mission creep on the judicial front.

     By now we all know that last Thursday the Supreme Court put a concealed carry firearm in the hands of theoretically every American citizen that wants one. When the SCOTUS last ruled on the Second Amendment, the late Justice Antonin Scalia even said in his majority opinion that the 2nd amendment wasn't absolute and that Americans were entitled to keep a firearm in their homes for personal defense. Last Thursday's ruling essentially held down that opinion and engorged it with steroids. So, what would've happened if the Supreme Court had been able to rule on this, say, a year and a half ago?

     Well, a year and a half ago was right before the January 6th riots. As Amanda Marcotte had warned us in an article last week, Clarence Thomas' vote to gut virtually all gun laws in all 50 states, plus Washington, DC, threatens to make the next January 6th much bloodier than the original. Let's think about why Stewart Rhodes' Oath Keepers set up "Quick Reaction Forces" in Virginia area hotels.

     Rhodes, a trained lawyer, was all too well aware that Washington had some of the strictest gun control laws in the country and warned his people not to bring guns to the Capitol (until Trump invoked the Insurrection Act). But the weapons caches and ammo dumps in those Virginia hotels, surrounding the Capitol, were kept well away from the Capitol building because of those gun laws that likely will no longer exist.

     We know this because Rhodes' text messages, acquired by federal investigators, to his own people explicitly forbade his subordinates to bring weapons to the Capitol for the simple reason that, as Marcotte points out, "They didn't bring guns because they were afraid of being arrested before they had a chance to riot." The Proud Boys and Three Percenters followed suit.

     So, a lot of guns just got put in the hands of a lot of crazy males. Now, let's look at Friday's ruling:

     That was, of course, the day the SCOTUS coat-hangered Roe v Wade. Unlike the gun control ruling, Roe v Wade's rescission doesn't involve all 50 states but saying that makes it sound less horrible than it really is. Over half our states, 26, either have now or will surely have, some antiabortion laws on the books, with a full half of them having trigger laws that will ban abortion anytime between last week and the end of July.

     Since Roe was gutted, we've been hearing some pretty alarming eliminationist rhetoric from the "pro-life" crowd that the real violence in the debate over abortion access comes from the pro-choice crowd, not them. Forget the fact that virtually all the violence and murder comes from the "pro-life" bunch that visit violence, arson, harassment and even the murder of abortion providers.

      So, the SCOTUS just put guns in the hands of "pro-life" fetishists who are now free to completely terrorize those few abortion clinics that will be open in those states that still marginally have abortion access.

     Let's also talk about another wonderful SCOTUS ruling that says, for completely inane reasons and completely insane rationales, that no one living within 100 miles of a border has Fourth Amendment protections. The Fourth Amendment, in case your Constitutional law's a little rusty, is the one that prevents the government from illegally searching and seizing your person or private effects.

     It ought to be mentioned right now this affects at least 60% of Americans, and up to two thirds, including the entire states of Florida and Hawaii.

     This means the fascist Border Patrol, which was recently seen literally whipping Haitian migrants then making a commemorative "challenge" coin so they could keep reliving that glory, which is why serial killers take trophies, by the way, CAN ARREST AND BEAT YOU WITHOUT A WARRANT.

     Ergo, about two thirds of us don't have the protection of the Fourth Amendment, any more. Say bye bye, habeas corpus.

     So, let's take stock- Women have been denied agency and control over their own body and health choices, especially if it involves their uterus. Only Midwesterners, about a third of the nation, will have protection against illegal search, arrest and seizure. And if anyone has a problem with you, they'll have a gun without a conceal carry permit on their side to settle arguments.

     And then, there's January 6th, 2025 to worry about.

     As the saying goes, history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes. This isn't exactly the way fascism arrived in Nazi Germany 90 years ago but it's disturbingly close enough. We saw the subsumption of the media, the judiciary, of education as well as the government so that there was little else but Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.

     On the political front, thanks to Trump burying the bar that used to separate qualified from non-qualified candidates, during this primary cycle, about 100 to 120 election-deniers, Qanon high priests and priestesses and sundry and assorted right wing lunatics have won their primaries. These offices range from county clerks and elections officials to Secretary of State, state representative and senate offices and even the US House and Senate and gubernatorial races.

     And, long before this time, right wing legislatures in places like Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Missouri have passed voter restriction laws that severely curtail early voting, drive-in voting, ballot harvesting, poll availability and other measures obviously meant to keep "the wrong people" from voting. And then there's the vicious gerrymandering that Republicans were largely allowed to make after the 2020 census designed to make certain districts a lot less competitive.

     Politically and judicially, we're like Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in America that sees 40 days of nothing but night every winter. But then spring comes and the sun eventually gets higher and higher on the horizon.

     This political and judicial winter solstice is guaranteed to last a lot longer than 40 days. And no one can see a way out.

     But we liberals did warn you this endless night was coming.