Our Vicious Education

Given my proclivities for excess and my delusions of romantic adventure as a young man, it isn’t much of a surprise that I found myself often on the fringes of normalized society and in the company of horrible and dangerous people. I can remember drinking in bars, sometimes in third world countries, where the term pub might indicate a three-sided lean-to with a board stretched between two concrete blocks and stacked on pallets as a bar, where the patron next to you might be snorting a line of cocaine before downing a shot of Cuervo Gold, or a couple of psychotic  mercenaries might be chatting up the local pimp for a bargain girl who claimed to also be a virgin. These are places where the world can explode instantly and without notice.

This was by my own choice. The physical and emotional regrets that remind me of my character flaws now as an older man were well-earned and not forced upon me by circumstance. To say I have always been my own worst enemy is not an exaggeration. However, this litany of corrupt individuals who have passed through my youth has begun to pale beside the horrible, dangerous, and corrupt people sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States at this time. Even worse, their actions affect people who, unlike me, often have had no choice in the decisions that brought them into bad circumstances, or who have had their individual rights stripped away by these bullies of law.

For me, the degradation of the normally highly respected third element necessary for our democracy to be maintained began with the Citizens United decision that allowed corporations to be treated as people for the process of pouring polluted money into the coffers of already unethical politicians. This decision has been followed by more politically biased and harmful ones recently. And, the dog and pony show that used to stand for integrity and the ethical and just rule of law continues its slide into the cesspool of Republican fascism. Consider some egregious examples that have caused me an anxious evolution into my Golden Years as I consider the future of democracy for my children and future generations.

1. Citizens United Act allows corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns by saying basically that corporations are people and cannot be restricted form Freedom of Speech per the 1^st Amendment.
2. The gutting of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating federal oversight of election laws which had prohibited states, especially southern states from discriminating against voters based on race.
3. Erasing the ability of states and cities to restrict how and who can carry guns within their borders, especially within weeks of another horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
4. Weakening individual civil rights by disallowing that people who have been arrested may sue police if they have not been Mirandized before interrogation.
5. Weakening the ability of the State to remain separate from religion by its most recent decision. I have posted the URL below :

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-supreme-court-hands-the-religious-right-a-big-victory-by-lying-about-the-facts-of-a-case/ar-AAYVHgq?ocid=msnews

6. Most terrible of all is the blatant attack on individual human rights by overturning Roe vs. Wade. Not only does this decision allow a state government the right to control females who live within its borders by taking away their constitutional rights regarding bodily autonomy, but it opens a pathway for other human rights reversals such as the use of contraception and gay marriage.

I am not a lawyer or a public policy academic expert like my son. I mention these court decisions because common sense tells me that their results may very well provide the death knell for many of the freedoms most of us have enjoyed for the last fifty years. Not to mention the last time the Supreme Court decided a major question like Roe vs. Wade in favor of states rights over human rights. By deciding that individual states could make their own laws regarding owning human beings we ended up in the most terrible conflagration we’ve ever known in this country, the Civil War.

The hypocrisy and corruption of this Republican-dominated court should be neither underestimated nor ignored. The solution to many of these politically decided issues is simple. Many of these bad judgments can be reversed by codifying them in favor of human and civil rights through laws passed by Congress. Unfortunately, the solution to the solution is complex, requiring hard work. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It was designed and implemented based on the principle of an educated citizenry being involved at a very basic level. As individuals we must try to research, speak, demand action from Congress. Then, we must vote to replace the fools in office—to mention a few of the many, Louie Gohmert, Ron Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Bobert, Kevin McCarthy, Marsha Blackburn, Paul Gosar, Mike Lee, Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, Susan Collins, Mary Miller, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Mike Braun, Tommy Tuberville, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz—who spend taxpayer time and money encouraging our march toward a white dictatorship for their personal gain. We need to replace them with people of either party who see politics as a way to serve us and not themselves. We need to remember what our Founding Fathers really intended—that the halls of Congress be occupied by intelligent and compassionate statesmen, rather than greedy, idiotic politicians. It won’t be easy, but nobody has ever claimed maintaining freedom is.