I hate to say it, but I think we all need to come to terms with the fact that we are about to live in a country where abortion will not be legal for the majority of American women. I don’t want to admit it, but this, I fear, is the country we are about to live in for the next 50 years.
And it will be a domino effect. See, if the 14th Amendment was used to as the rational for Roe in the first place, then it just stands to reason that every ruling after Roe that used the same reasoning of the 14th Amendment is also in jeopardy. As we have seen in American history, the Supreme Court can throw out precedent anytime they want; for good or for ill, but it is the Courts prerogative to do that.
What is more depressing than losing all of these hard-fought rights, is that Liberal and Democratic leadership is letting it happen. I’m sorry but holding a vote in the Senate that we all knew was doomed, and produced nothing is not a symbolic win; it’s meaningless. I won’t go as far as to say that Democrats show up to the gun fight with a knife, they show up with a guitar wanting to sing songs. All of these rights are doomed because Liberal leaders don’t know how to fight and win. They just know how to complain and hope someone else closes the deal. That is why the Democrats will lose huge in the midterms even though they have been given this gift of a rallying cry to motivate their base and independent votes. They could win this thing if they try to do things different, but they won’t. They will fuck it up by doing the same old stuff that doesn’t work.
The only thing giving me hope, that maybe things can still change for the better is Chris Smalls, leader of the Amazon Labor Union, and the workers at that facility on Staten Island. Chris and his team were able to beat Amazon at their own game. How? By talking to workers, having a cookout, finding common ground, and focusing on the issue at hand. He and his team created a sense of unity and shared experience, and it got everyone to work together. If you haven’t been to Staten Island, it’s the Trump Country of NYC. There aren’t fire brand liberals out there, it’s conservative working-class people. If Smalls can get that group of people to unionize, then he knows something just about every Democrat politician doesn’t know.
It’s close to the same point that Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward try to make in their book Dirt Road Revival, which is about liberal Democrats in Maine going out and winning rural conservative voters back. They wrote an essay about it, and Chloe Maxmin was on Bill Mahar last week talking about her experience. In a nut shell, Maxmin’s point is that Democrats have to engage and listen to conservatives, and stand up for common values first, issues second. In other words; get ‘em to care, then you get ‘em to think.
And the issue to care about is rights. This is all about rights. Women’s right, reproductive rights, healthcare rights, privacy rights, the right to live free. One party grantees rights, the other party takes them away. Which side are you on?
Besides, in the whole history of the world, have you ever known a regime that took away a right from the people, and then stopped taking away rights?
