Category Archives: Women’s Rights

The GOP’s Clown Car To Autocracy.

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No, that’s not hyperbole. And, no, Donald Trump, the narcissistic and wannabe autocrat, is not on the ballot. But, across the nation, many equally seditious and treason-adjacent candidates are. They call themselves Republicans. And some of them make the conspiracy-loving Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the gun-toting Lauren Boebert, the insurrectionist Paul Gosar, and the alleged child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz seem almost moderate.

For example, in Arizona, Trump acolyte Mark Finchem will carry the Trump banner forward as the Republican nominee for Arizona Secretary of State. If he wins, he will be in control of the state’s elections. What makes this prospect frightening is that he is still a firm believer in the Big Lie – that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Not surprisingly, he was also in Washington, DC for the January 6th insurrection. If elected, he plans to ban electronic voting machines and ban early voting making it far more difficult for low-paid workers to cast their ballots. And, given his past, imagine what he might do if, once again, the vote totals were not in favor of his preferred candidate.

In the race for Arizona governor, the GOP will offer one of two horrific choices: the Trump-endorsed bat-crap crazy Kari Lake who says she would have overturned Biden’s victory in Arizona, or the Pence-endorsed theocratic Karrin Taylor Robson. Both are legitimate threats to democracy. And, in the race for US Senate, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly will face off against Blake Masters, a libertarian, Big Lie-embracing, billionaire-funded venture capitalist. Masters believes that our history of slavery and racism should not be taught in schools. He blames gun violence on black people. He supports a national abortion ban and the privatization of Social Security. He also reportedly compared requirements that political candidates disclose financial donations to Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht. And he supported some views of the Unabomber.

In Georgia, former NFL running back, Herschel Walker is the GOP nominee for the US Senate. Walker, who always refers to himself in third person, has a Trump-like aversion to the truth. Indeed, his own campaign staff has called him a pathological liar. To wit: he falsely claimed to be a former FBI agent and a valedictorian graduate of the University of Georgia (his only degree is in carrying a football). And though he claims to stand for Christian values, he has a history of domestic violence, and he seemingly can’t remember how many children he has fathered. Moreover, if forced to take the most simplistic sixth grade level civics test, he unquestionably would fail. Yet he hopes to win one of the most powerful seats in government.

In Missouri, Trump-loving Eric Schmitt is the favorite for Roy Blunt’s open Senate seat. A theocrat and 2020 election denier, Schmitt worked to help overturn Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He is also an enemy of women’s reproductive rights.

In Pennsylvania, Hillbilly Elegy author and wingnut, J.D. Vance is also running for the US Senate funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance is running a campaign of fear based on all of the wacko hot button social issues, such as banning Critical Race Theory in public schools (it’s only taught in law schools). He also believes women should risk staying in abusive relationships “for the sake of the children.” And like most Republicans, he believes in regulating women’s uteruses. Not guns.

Yet, as dangerous as all those candidates seem, they pale in comparison to Republican incumbent and longtime wackadoodle, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Johnson, you may remember, was a participant in the attempt to decertify Biden’s electoral votes on January 6. Not only is he a supporter of the Big Lie, if Republicans gain control of Congress again, he wants to end mandatory funding of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, he proposes that the funding be made discretionary, which would mean Congress would have to vote to approve funding annually.

The list of such anti-government, anti-American, and anti-democracy candidates is long. And, if Republicans take control of Congress, they promise to impeach Biden (in retaliation for the twice impeached Trump), to investigate members of the January 6 select committee, and to ban all abortions. They will also do everything in their power to privatize education, to privatize or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, to eliminate affirmative action…their ugly, hateful list is long. But the even greater threat to the future of our nation is the departure of competent and trustworthy election officials.

In states and counties across this nation, election officials have resigned or been pushed out of office under threat of violence. They have been doxed – their personal information made public to Trump’s heavily armed insurgent militias who have harassed the officials by phone, staked out their homes, and threatened their lives along with the lives of their families. Many have been replaced by inexperienced and unqualified individuals who believe the 2020 election was rigged and who plan to make sure Trump and his allies never lose again.

If the MAGAts are able to take control of more statehouses, governorships, and secretary of state offices, future elections will be elections in name only. It will be officials who decide the “winners.” Not the voters.

We May Have Already Lost Our Democracy.

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If you believe we dodged a bullet on January 6, 2020, you are most certainly correct. But the outcome of the insurrection is still very much in doubt. Forget Trump 2024. He will likely already be in prison by that time. At very least, he will be banned from holding office.

The real threat is the five-vote radical majority in the Supreme Court.

Flexing their newfound muscle, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas have already agreed to hear a case that could give state legislatures the power to choose the winners of elections. All they need is to convince the Trump-appointed Coney-Barrett to help them further gut our Constitution.

In the most extreme Republikkkan-controlled states, that would mean legislatures could overturn the will of the people if they don’t like the election outcome. Given such power in 2020, states like Arizona would have almost certainly handed the presidency to Trump. And, given that a majority of the states are currently GOP-controlled, that could ensure a never-ending chain of Republikkkan presidents, regardless of the popular vote.

Unfortunately, we have precious few ways of preventing such an outcome. We can call for the four justices who perjured themselves during their Senate confirmation hearings to be impeached, so that a new court majority can overturn the most egregious of this court’s decisions. But impeachment convictions are unlikely to pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

That leaves us with only the ballot box at our disposal. In the coming mid-term election, everyone who wants to preserve our democracy must repudiate the radical right by voting for solid Democrat majorities in both the US House of Representatives and in the US Senate. Congress can then go about the process to codify reproductive rights, privacy rights, and same-sex marriage rights, as well as strengthening voting rights for all Americans.

This is the only means certain to prevent our nation from becoming a failed democracy further controlled by theocrats, autocrats, and plutocrats. (If you don’t know the definition of these terms, I suggest you look them up. Because no matter your political or theological beliefs, if they gain even more control, you will wind up holding the short end of the stick.)

What Happens When Those Unwanted Fetuses Become Unwanted Children?

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As the theocrats and pro-birthers are celebrating the court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, I can’t help but focus on the consequences of that decision. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are approximately 630,000 abortions in the United States each year. Many are for medical reasons to save the life of the woman. Many are because the fetus was not viable and could not live if brought to term. Presumably, the rest could have become living, breathing children. Children who, for a variety of reasons, were unwanted by the women who conceived them.

What if all of those fetuses were born? Certainly, though an economic and emotional burden to their mothers, some would be cared for and loved. Some would be given up for adoption to loving families. But more than you can imagine will live in poverty or worse – many victimized, abused, or abandoned. And tens of thousands would be placed in foster care, a system that is already overwhelmed and underfunded. (The foster system currently contributes, on average, less than 50 percent of what it costs a family to raise a foster child.)

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there were 407,000 children in the foster care system at the end of 2020. These kids face a daunting future. Many blame themselves for having been removed from their birth parents. Many want to return to their birth parents, even if those parents have abused them. Some are similarly abused by their foster parents.

Many foster kids feel lost and helpless. Those who are waiting for adoption feel unwanted. Many are shuttled from one foster family to another. Most feel insecure and uncertain about their futures, as well they should. That’s because, each year, 23,000 of foster kids age out of the system without finding permanent families. Approximately 45 percent of those kids will become homeless within a year. A significant percentage will end up jobless and on public assistance. And at least a quarter of them face a disproportionate risk of becoming incarcerated within two years of leaving foster care. In fact, nearly 20 percent of our prison population spent time in the foster care system.

Not surprisingly, the children of color who will be born as a result of the “Supreme” Court’s forced birth decision will face more challenges than whites. According to the Juvenile Law Center, “Black children are around twice as likely to be placed in foster care as white kids. Because black kids are already subject to disproportionate rates of school discipline and criminalization, being a foster youth compounds this risk. Foster youth, particularly girls, are targeted by sex traffickers, and the criminalization of sex work can funnel these victims of modern-day slavery into the criminal justice system.”

So, when all of you pro-birthers are done celebrating, get ready to open your homes and your bank accounts. Thanks to your efforts to overturn Roe v Wade, there are going to be a hell of a lot of kids who will be counting on you.

We Have Entered The Realm Of Theocracy.

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For some people, churches are a blessing. They feel the need for pastors to guide them, to minister to their emotional needs, to provide hope, to tell them how to behave, and they look to congregations for support. But, in my opinion, having once considered becoming a pastor myself, organized religions are little more than social clubs. Like all clubs, they have clubhouses, they perform initiations, and they collect dues (tithes).

Most use symbols (crosses, fish, stars, crescents, etc.) to make it easy to identify one another. Some push a form of exclusivity, encouraging their members to do business with one another, to date one another, and to marry one another. Implicit in all of this is either a conscious or subconscious belief that the followers of their particular club are superior to others. That only through following the path of their club can people reach heaven and everlasting happiness.

Some of these clubs have made celebrities of their leaders, showering them with obscene wealth and submitting to their every wish.

Throughout history, these clubs have inevitably ventured into local, national, and international politics. They have not only gone to great lengths to recruit new members, often sending recruiters (missionaries) around the globe. Too often, they have forcibly pushed their beliefs onto others. They have relied upon their feelings of spiritual superiority to justify the torture and exclusion of anyone who strays from the path of righteousness, to excuse the rape of children and women, to justify the subjugation of others, the taking of land, and the taking of slaves.

They have labeled non-believers as heretics and, by implication or direct order (ostensibly from God), encouraged their members to kill those who refuse to submit. Indeed, many wars, genocides, and ethnic cleansings have resulted from the notion that one club’s beliefs are superior to those of others – the heathens and infidels.

Today, despite the 1st Amendment of the Constitution stating, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion,” many Christian club members demand that the U.S. be declared a Christian nation. They demand that symbols and scriptures of their beliefs be displayed on public taxpayer-provided property. Ignoring the law that prohibits churches from engaging in political activity, they openly campaign for candidates that will empower them. Despite our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion (and, by implication, freedom from religion), they demand that all taxpayers help pay for their children’s’ religious education in club-approved schools. And the most extreme are willing to force others to comply with their demands under threat of violence.

Yet, in Matthew 6:6 of the Christian Bible, Jesus is said to have admonished his followers to avoid being like the hypocrites. “For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.” To, instead, communicate with God in private. “…to enter into a closet and pray to thy Father; and thy Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Though it’s obvious that anyone can engage in silent prayer anywhere and at any time, many of Jesus’s supposed followers now demand that their children be allowed to display their faith in state-sanctioned prayers at public schools, on the football field and elsewhere.

And now, having engaged in a decades-long effort to seize the levers of power, the most extreme of these religious clubs have used that power to, once again, claim control of women’s bodies – more specifically, their uteruses. We must not allow this to stand. We cannot permit one or more of these clubs to control our government, to decide which of us are worthy of enjoying the rights and freedoms enumerated in our Constitution, to decide what a woman can do with her own body in the privacy of her own home or in her doctor’s office, to decide who can marry, to decide when, where, how, and who to worship.

There was a reason why our nation’s founders included the Establishment Clause in the Constitution’s 1st Amendment. Many of the original colonies had anointed certain religions to give them supremacy over all others. In Massachusetts, Puritans persecuted Quakers and anyone else who refused to submit to their strict beliefs. In much of the rest of New England, Congregationalists prevailed. Maryland was originally Catholic. And in many southern colonies, the Church of England was supreme. Colonial governments not only provided direct aid to these established churches through taxes. Their officeholders were often required to take oaths to support the tenets of the established faith.

Recognizing the injustice of such demands and remembering that their own families escaped religious persecution by coming to America, the constitutional framers created the Establishment Clause as a virtual wall separating church from state. We must jealously guard that separation. As churches have become larger and more powerful, we must rein in their political activities. We should tax them like the social clubs they really are, only providing tax write-offs for truly charitable activities. We must no longer allow them to divide us. We must hold those who use their pulpits to preach discrimination and hate accountable. We must reject their attempts to wrest individual rights from others.

We must take back our federal and state governments from the theocrats and the wannabe autocrats.

An Open Letter To The Once Supreme Court Of The United States

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I know that I speak for many Americans when I say that I no longer respect the court that I once believed supreme in regard to the wisdom of its legal rulings and interpretation of the Constitution.

In recent years, the conservative majority has ruled that money equals free speech, that corporations have the rights of people (giving executives and boards of directors both individual and corporate rights), that free speech does not include the right to boycott, that the separation of church and state does not extend to taxpayer funding of religious schools and, as the leaked document indicates, that a woman no longer has the right to privacy concerning her medical treatment and conversations with a physician.

The court’s most recent ruling seems to be based on an originalist reading of the 2nd Amendment, noting that its wording gives citizens the right to “keep and bear arms.” But what about the rest of the Amendment’s wording: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”?

If the majority so strongly believes in the Framers’ original intent, why not rule that all males of a certain age must provide their own arms and order them to muster at designated times for training as my colonial ancestors were required to do?

I can only assume that it is because that reading does not fit the political ideology of the conservative majority.

Therein lies the problem. Many of us can no longer hold the court supreme because it has become utterly and hopelessly political. Unlike every other court in the land, this once supreme court has no code of ethics. A number of the justices have taken speaking engagements with highly partisan groups. Some have refused to recuse themselves from decisions in which they have a conflict of interest. And the wife of one justice has deeply engaged in a seditious attempt to overturn the results of an election.

In virtually every nation that has become a failed democracy, it has done so with the complicity of its judicial system. I now fear, with this court’s aid, that will be the future of the United States.

The Frightening Descent Of The Court We Once Held Supreme.

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Many of us grew up with great respect for the highest court in the land. We did not always agree with its rulings. But we always respected them because we knew they were considered judgments based on the law.

The current version of the Court is different. Very different.

Contrary to the protestations of Alito, Roberts, and Thomas, the Court has been made highly partisan. Certainly, there have been periods of partisanship in the past. But none quite like this. It began when Republicans were enraged that Robert Bork was not confirmed by a Democrat-led Senate due to his role in firing the Special Prosecutor assigned to the Watergate investigation. Never mind that the Senate’s refusal to confirm Bork was justified, Republicans threw an absolute hissy fit that continues to this day.

Republicans became further incensed when Democrats contested the nomination of Clarence Thomas based on Anita Hill’s credible allegations of sexual impropriety. The fact that the ethically challenged Thomas was married to and influenced by a far-right extremist and activist was lost in the controversy. And we’ve been paying for that oversight ever since.

As it became clear that the Court’s rulings dramatically lurched to the right, Thomas, Scalia, and Alito all portrayed themselves as “originalists.” They seem to view the Constitution as a static document that should be viewed from the perspective of 1788 when it was ratified by the original 13 states.

Yet these “justices” always seem willing to reinterpret the Constitution to benefit Republicans.

In recent years, Republicans have accelerated the Court’s descent into blatant partisanship. The GOP-controlled Senate blocked hearings on Garland’s nomination to replace Scalia for purely partisan reasons claiming that, since it was eleven months before a presidential election, the decision to fill the Court’s vacancy should be left to the next president. Then, when Trump won, the GOP began searching for judicial nominees who would be willing to bend the rule of law to benefit the Party and to overturn Roe v Wade. They rammed through three Supreme Court nominees, the last just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

Such choices were a payback to evangelicals – people who can’t tell a zygote from an embryo from a fetus – for supporting the GOP’s ever-present culture wars against school integration, against interracial marriage, against contraception, against gay rights, against gay marriage, against sex education, against racial equity and, of course, against abortion.

Despite angrily denying their obvious partisanship, conservatives on the Court have made their partisan views public as featured speakers at numerous Republican and conservative “Christian” gatherings. And the leaked opinion by the Court’s five conservatives as expressed by Alito is the most obvious display of partisanship yet. They have gone out of their way to impose the beliefs of evangelicals and the GOP on all American women. Further, Alito’s draft opinion sets the stage for taking away other rights, including all of those at the heart of the GOP culture wars.

His opinion, if adopted as is, would enable his cult (aka the Republican Party) to transform the nation in ways unlike any previously experienced in American history.

For example, prior to Roe v Wade, women were seldom prosecuted for having an abortion. Those women who could afford it, would ask their doctors for a procedure called a D&C to terminate their pregnancies. Those who couldn’t afford such niceties would either seek a dangerous abortion in some back alley or take things into their own hands by employing coat hangers or acid. Or they might simply throw themselves down a flight of stairs. Apparently, that was seen as punishment enough by the Puritan crowd, since only the abortionists themselves were charged with crimes.

But, in this era of theological and ideological vengeance, it seems that no punishment for women is draconian enough. According to the current GOP anti-abortion bills, women will be arrested and jailed for terminating a pregnancy. So, too, will anyone who advised or enabled them. And every woman who has a miscarriage will be under suspicion.

What’s next on the GOP agenda? Burning women at the stake?

Why You Should Take Tyrants At Their Word.

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In the 1970s and 80s, after looking at the nation’s changing demographics, Republicans embraced southern racists still angry at having lost the Civil War and furious with forced integration of schools. Around the same time, they also crafted a deal with far-right evangelicals – people like Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Copeland, Jim Baker, John Hagee, and Pat Richardson. The deal was that this so-called “Moral Majority” would deliver votes in exchange for the GOP embracing their cruel and hateful ideas, including a ban on abortion.

This unholy alliance resulted in the daily picketing of clinics, harassment of women seeking abortions, distribution of home addresses and license plates of clinic personnel, the bombing of clinics, and the murder of abortion providers.

Through it all, the GOP platform and most GOP candidates called for an end to abortion. They began stacking the courts with anti-abortion judges and they prayed for the deaths of liberal and moderate Supreme Court justices. They passed draconian laws in GOP-led states like Texass that would imprison women for having an abortion, even if they traveled to another state where abortion is legal or if they ordered abortion pills online.

Most of the GOP’s current or pending laws make no exception for victims of rape and incest. They have made it clear that they will not help feed the children of forced births. They will not provide them with healthcare. They will not even agree to pay for improvements to our already over-stretched and disastrous foster care system.

In reality, the GOP is pro-birth. Not pro-life.

And given the fact that a significant majority of Americans, including Republicans, favor reproductive freedom, this is truly tyranny by a minority. Yet many of you, much like the cancer stricken notorious RBG who refused to resign when a Democratic president could appoint her successor, failed to act. You simply assumed they couldn’t take away a woman’s reproductive freedom.

It took them 50 years but, through a combination of legislative tricks to steal a SCOTUS seat and to hypocritically fill another one, they have apparently succeeded. You didn’t need a crystal ball to see it coming. They told you what they would do if they gained control of the Court.

And if you take these same people at their word, they won’t stop there.

They have openly talked about banning contraception, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, LBGTQ rights, and affirmative action. They have tried to take away public school funding, Social Security, and Medicare. Even the freedom to practice religions other than Christianity, the right to assemble, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the rights of certain minorities to vote are on the line.

It doesn’t matter that most Americans disagree with Republicans and evangelicals on these issues. They have a plan to seize permanent control of our government. They may have failed on January 6, 2021, but, if you listen to them, they haven’t given up. The only way to stop them is to vote while you still can – in the midterms and beyond. To end this pending nightmare and the collapse of our democracy, they must be convincingly and overwhelmingly repudiated.

Preaching Evil And Hate.

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Preaching Evil is the title of a new Peacock documentary about FLDS leader, Warren Jeffs. But the title could well be applied to hundreds of televangelists and evangelical Christian pastors, as well as fundamentalist Imams, Rabbis, and leaders of various other religions and sects who use their platforms to preach hate against others. There are no better examples than the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has blessed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the white conservative “Christians” who encourage their followers to discriminate against people of differing faiths, races, and sexual preference.

Of course, none of this is new.

Most of the world’s violence has long been based on religious differences and misunderstandings. The Roman Catholic Church ordered the torture and murder of millions during the Inquisition. It ordered the slaughter of the Templars, the Cathars and the Huguenots. And its desire to conquer and convert “heathens” was behind the genocide of indigenous Americans.

Religious discrimination led European Christians to tolerate the imprisonment of Jews and the resulting death camps of the Holocaust. Southern Christians condoned the KKK with the Christian symbol of the cross integral to the terrorists’ gatherings and lynchings. More recently, religious differences are at the heart of the on-going conflicts in the Middle East, in India, Pakistan, and Myanmar.

Even when religions haven’t encouraged and committed genocide, they have dismissed others’ creation beliefs as myth. And they declared those they didn’t understand as infidels, witches, or demons.

To be clear, I believe that all people have a right to worship however, whatever, and whoever they please, as long as their worship does not encroach on the rights of others. As long as they respect the beliefs and customs of others.

And I do believe that organized religion can be positive.

I was raised in a small-town church where I was taught the Golden Rule and where most members tried to follow it. The church was a gathering place of joy for weddings, anniversaries, and other celebrations. It was a place where anyone could go to seek aid and guidance. It was also a place where locals gathered in support of those mourning a loss. Those kinds of churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques still exist. But they are being overwhelmed by the political and the crazies.

Surveys have shown that the number of people who attend church is declining in the US and elsewhere – likely the result of the crimes and excesses of religions: the violence, the sexual abuses of children, the hateful discrimination of the LGBTQ community, the misogyny which has led to attacks on a woman’s right to abortion, and the belief that you can still go to heaven despite your sins as long as you confess them and proclaim your faith in Christ.

Yet, somehow, evangelical Christians and megachurches are exerting more power than ever. They captured the Republican Party and celebrated one of history’s worst philanderers and conmen in order to force their beliefs onto others. In effect, many US churches have become little more than political clubs. And because they are tax exempt, we are all helping to pay for their clubhouses and their efforts to spread hate.

The Internal Revenue Service has a long-standing rule prohibiting churches and charities from engaging in politics by defining a 501(c)(3) organization as one “which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” It’s long past time that the IRS enforced it. Indeed, it also should be applied to campaigning on behalf of the GOP’s continuous culture wars.

That won’t solve all of the problems with organized religions. But it would be a start.

Why It’s Entirely Appropriate To Call Republicans Fascists.

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The ideology of today’s Republican Party not only meets the original definition of fascism (government by the corporate right), but Republicans have also embraced many of the bullying actions of some of history’s most notorious fascists.

Cloaked in nationalism and a veneer of religion, they are well on their way to diminishing many of our constitutional rights. For example, they are focused on making it more difficult for blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Democrats to vote. They have labeled Black Lives Matter protests as terrorism. They are determined to take away the right of women to control their own bodies. In their attempts to block immigration, they have demanded unlawful arrests and unlawful searches and seizure of property. They have passed laws to undermine protections for minority groups. And they seem fixated on taking away freedom of religion and freedom from religion by naming the US a Christian nation.

More worryingly, despite all evidence to the contrary, a super majority of Republicans actually believe that Joe Biden, our 46th president who was duly elected by a large margin of popular and electoral votes, is illegitimately in office. And a significant number of Republicans believe that violence is an acceptable way to deal with losing an election. Indeed, many Republicans – including those in Congress – have condoned, justified and excused the violent insurrection of January 6.

Moreover, a recent study published by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden (an independent research institute that measures the stability of the world’s democracies) shows that the Republican Party in the US is flouting democratic norms and is becoming more akin to authoritarian parties in Turkey and Hungary. As proof, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many Republican leaders and pundits, including the former Republican president of the United States and MotherTucker Carlson, embraced the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin, calling him a “genius” and “a better leader than Joe Biden.” In fact, it’s no secret that the twice-impeached former president openly admired Putin, bragged about accepting Russian funds for his companies, tried to delay sanctions against Russia, and held military shipments to Ukraine hostage for political purposes. In addition, many in Trump’s 2016 campaign had multiple contacts with Russian operatives. And the NRA has admitted to taking money from 23 Russian sources and it’s suspected of illegally funneling much of that money to Republican political campaigns.

Having thus enabled and encouraged Putin, Republicans are now crying crocodile tears over Russia’s war crimes while, at the same time, blaming President Biden for being “weak” and not doing enough to defend Ukraine.

None of this should come as a surprise to any casual political observer given that the Party has elected and supported such notables as Sarah Palin, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Lauren Boebert – people who are more suited to occupy a mental ward than a congressional seat. Much of the rest of the party, people like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Kevin McCarthy, and Ron Johnson, are cynical opportunists who are far more concerned about winning office and staying in office than they are about maintaining our democracy.

If you want more evidence of the Republican Party’s decline into fascism, think back to the summer of 2020 when the Republicans most hated bogeymen was a loosely-knit group of counter-protesters calling themselves Antifa, which – wait for it – stands for anti-fascists.

Stop Calling Senator Joe Manchin A Centrist!

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For more than 40 years, the Republican Party has moved further and further to the right until 2020 when it dived right off the political spectrum into a delusional abyss. What once was a political party that believed in free markets and fiscal restraint has, over time, become anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, white nationalist, pro-gun, pro-violence, and pro-fascist. And, since 2016, it has become a cult of Trump – the willing accomplices of a conman and crime boss.

By contrast, since the 1950’s, the Democratic Party has experienced relatively little change. It has long believed in the power of government to do good. To help people by providing safety nets, retirement funds, healthcare access, and social justice. Unlike the GQP, it believes in protecting working people from predatory corporations and the wealthy. It promotes worker safety, living wages, freedom, human rights, and democracy. And it holds fast to the principles of the Constitution. (The real Constitution. Not some 18th Century interpretation conflating the Constitution with the Articles of Confederation.)

As you can see, there really is no middle ground.

With such a gaping canyon between the two parties, what is there to negotiate? What is the compromise between fascism and democracy? Between discrimination and compassion? Between dying and living?

How then can anyone, like Manchin, claim to be a centrist? Clearly, what Manchin has become is a self-serving obstructionist. A pawn the GQP can use to stop any form of progress. By refusing to consider ending, or even modifying, the filibuster, Manchin and his sidekick, Kyrsten Sinema, stand in opposition to voting rights, racial justice, gender equality, a thriving economy, a healthy environment, and a healthy climate.

If you want a term that more accurately describes Manchin, I’d recommend “opportunist” because he’s relishing his newfound attention and power. Or, if you’d prefer a term that describes his political ideology, I’d suggest “conservative.” He more accurately fits in that category than the GQP politicians who long ago abandoned it.