RIP Roe (Death God Rising, Three.)

The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man's eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel's heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan's first shot missed. His did not.

The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn't he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath. "Allah Akbar!" God is great 

Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it. "Are you there?" the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashto, but the answer was delivered in Russian. "It is all finished here," 

~Closing moments of the battle of the Soviet laser installation, From the novel Cardinal Of The Kremlin, by Tom Clancy.

Today, the right-wing dominated SCOTUS voted to repeal Roe Vs. Wade.

This is almost certain to throw our entire legal and political system into chaos, and balkanize and break the United States of America...which is of course the entire goddamned point.

California isn't going to do what Idaho says, Alabama isn't going to follow New York's lead...almost no matter what, because of cultural differences and regionalism. Federal laws, the Federal government as a neutral arbiter and the basic concept of liberal democracy (small "L" small "D") are all that holds this shit together. Hell, the only reason Clarence and Ginni Thomas could get married was because of Federal and SCOTUS court decisions!

Somebody has to govern for all, to keep everyone's interests in mind and things balanced, or things stop working and the whole thing starts to fall apart. As soon as someone actually starts governing zero-sum and taking away other people's rights, shit is going to fall apart and the United States is going to cease to be United, period.

Hell, Texas is already threatening to secede, and one hell of a lot of people (mostly liberals) said "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." 

Not one word about the millions of people in Texas who won't want to live under some variant of nominally-Christian-Fascism. 

And that's a problem. Americans are already not a unified culture or people and the only people to even try to address this has been the Right, and they've done so in the worst possible way, by simply trying to impose some version of "White" culture on everybody...but since nobody can even agree what that is, it didn't work. We are a nation of laws, and not men, for this very reason.

Take that away, as SCOTUS "Conservatives" have now done...in the service of ideologies none dare expound on in public...and the central thing that binds us all together goes away.

Republicans have, at least since the mid-1990's, acted as if they only answered to the 20% of the population that always votes (R) no matter what. Conservatives...both the original kind and the current version...have been on the losing end of all this "Culture War" shit basically forever, because conservatism simply isn't popular. It was never intended to be, it's conservatism.

Or at least, it used to be.

This whole current mess is about two things:

#1 Have you noticed how the pace of all this crap has gone into lightspeed since the 1/6 Hearings started? "Conservatives" are absolutely terrified that they might be held to account for insurrection against our government...and since they made sure to have at least one SCOTUS Justice...more probably two, balls deep in the whole damn thing (Because they're Republicans and fuck you, that's why) they've got to grab what they can, while they can, now. That gets a lot harder if Alito and Thomas get arrested for sedition and/or treason.

It's not really about Trump, it's about the fact that Republicans, at all levels nationwide, were involved in 1/6. If he, or even some of the people involved go down...likely the whole criminal enterprise comes crashing down.

#2, See #1 and it's all...from all the crazy gun shit lately to the Roe SCOTUS ruling to the whole Trump thing...about breaking America in two in order to create a safe space for These Fucking People's bigotry. That's all it is, nothing more, nothing less.

And this is absolutely a subject over which many parts of the country and even parts of different states will have literally irreconcilable differences...and not necessarily where you might think, either.

I've lived in some part of Northern Michigan or another for 35 years, with relatively brief interruptions for military service or work. I mean, fuck, it is utterly impossible to explain to anyone who has not lived here for 35 years the sheer White-bread Caucasity of Northern Michigan in 1987 or 1992, just for example. If you ran into a Black person at the mall here back in 1992...there was a 90% or greater chance that they either were an Airman stationed at Wurtsmith Air Force Base (or an Air Guardsman deployed to our local Air National Guard station) or married to somebody who was.

Now there's damned little difference between here and Mount Pleasant where I lived for 18 years...or Saginaw, for that matter. There might not be quite as many Black people or Latinos here as down there, but there's a lot of them and they're sure not going anywhere.

And nobody, I mean nobody, wants to go back to the way things were in 1972, much less 1963. It's the 21st goddamned century, and the only fucking reason that a third of this goddamned country has any trouble with that is because people keep coddling or tolerating these fucking people's prejudice.

And that holds true whether it's relatives merely rolling their eyes at their racist aunt on holidays instead of telling her to shut the fuck up, or Congressmen and political leaders who refuse to call this shit out because then so-and-so might not talk to them at tonight's Elysium (Sorry, couldn't resist the Vampire: The Masquerade reference.)

Too many of us White people value comity with others who happen to be assholes, over the rights of our fellow citizens or even members of our own families. But as far as those people are concerned there is no "Us." There's no comity or consensus to uphold, And they have repaid us with nothing but bad faith and continually trying to rip this country apart.

Which is a thing they have now established a legal framework for doing, by simply ensuring that Constitutional rights and legal precedent don't mean shit, and that anything not specifically enumerated in a law somewhere is technically fair game for some asshole to just kick over for no greater purpose than simply being an asshole because they think it's funny.

Yes, that is exactly what this "Own The Libs" bullshit is, same with all these other infinitely goalpost-movable right-wing catch phrases, and absolutely nothing is safe. In fact, it's simply a matter of how you phrase things. 

If the Right, for example, decides they want to ban civilian ownership of firearms all that a Right-wing US-Successor-State government would need to say is "We need your guns to fight the Black people, Democrats, and Liberals!" 

And the motherfuckers would likely gladly hand them the fuck over. 

If the cynical manipulators running this whole mess wanted to bring back slavery all they'd have to do would be run a slick ad campaign telling their followers they can "Own The Libs" by being slaves, and offer some vague promise of something something Gazpacho for it. I guarantee you, some people would do it.

Some people's entire identity is wrapped up in all this Republican shit. But I'm here to tell you if you pull the thread a little bit with such people, 60% of the time they're not somebody who's ideologically or by natural inclination a conservative (in any "small c" sense.) They're usually somebody who two generations ago would have been a Segregationist Democrat...or who would have valued comity with the same.

But historically this shit tends to get away from the people who started it, and it ends up eating them, too. The Republican Party of Goldwater or Nixon, who authored the "Southern Strategy" is dead, as is that of Ronald Reagan. The Republican Party as reorganized around MAGA and Trump is already trending the same way. 

It can and will get worse. Look for ideas being literally marketed that will do exactly that.

Our founders set up our system the way they did for a reason, to try to prevent that kind of shit.

If you want to know what the importance of our Constitution, the ideas of Precedent and Rule of Law, and the entire idea of a baseline of Truth mean to civilization...it's that they prevent exactly that kind of crap.

And that's why the right wing wants to get rid of all that stuff, and if they can't do it legally they'll just overthrow or sunder America, start a civil war or a right-wing insurgency and make sure everything literally comes down to a fight, because they'll win some of them, even though they lose others. 

If they get their asses kicked they'll just cry persecution, manipulate global public opinion and try to get the rest of the world to force a settlement so they get some of what they wanted. With Russia in their corner it'll at least partially work.

And if it does, if these fucking people break off a piece of America for themselves, it will never stop because these sons of bitches always have to be at war with somebody. Putin will have the bipolar world of the Cold War back...and whatever part of America these motherfuckers control will be taking orders from Moscow...because that's who their patron is. 

And more to the point, with Putin and his oligarchs and thugs otherwise cut off from the West, if they want that taste of Western life that they really crave...because even they don't really want to live in Russia...they have to break off a piece of the US and the plan has to succeed. It's all they have.

But SCOTUS and the Catholic Radical Right just handed them the key and we've left a lot of shit laying around in the open...I've already seen a lot of obvious Russian bots beating the "Blame Democrats" dead horse when it's plainly obvious who actually did this shit.

The Right and the Russians would gladly feed us all to their death god, just because they think it's funny and "Fuck Democrats and/or 'RINO's."

And if they can break the USA even a little bit, that increases proportionally the amount of damage they can do to the rest of the world, an America at say 75% capability can only help Ukraine 75% as much and likely not without straining itself in so doing.

The modern Right is a global movement, dedicated to forcing its own shitty vision on the entire planet. If we go down, the rest of the system balkanizes. If we collapse completely, no one else is safe at all.

 Do you get it now? Do you see what the stakes are?

This can't continue, and We The People have to be the ones to step up and do something about it.

That spell it out for you?

It's not just about Abortion and it never was, it was never about Life.

It was always about Power, for the very few.

Part Two

Слава Україна!

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan