Democracy or Theocracy?

With Florida (because, Florida) leading even Texas, we seem to be heading toward a religious state.

Recently, US District Court Judge David Carter wrote in an opinion requiring disputed documents to be turned over the Congressional committee investigating the January 6th insurrection that,  “Their campaign was…a coup in search of a legal theory….  If [the] plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.” Let that sink in for second. Thank goodness it was initiated by a modern version of the Keystone Kops (ask your great grandparents.)

And like it or not, we’ve learned a lot in the last weeks about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni, and her antidemocratic desires. She was—and remains—knee-deep in the conspiracy nonsense that animates The Big Lie.

“This is a fight of good versus evil,” wrote White house Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. He was responding to numerous, wildly off the rails texts from Justice Thomas’s wife. Historian Heather Cox Richardson:  “Beginning November 24, 2020, in a text about overthrowing the will of the voters after Joe Biden had won the presidential election by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 votes in the Electoral College. Referring to Jesus Christ, Meadows continued: ‘Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues….’”

“Originalism” is what the far-right says they want out of our judicial branch. They say that if the courts move to originalism, that there would be no Constitutional guarantee of equal rights under the law. In addition to the obvious end of abortion rights, they’d also like to reinstate laws criminalizing interracial marriage (it hasn’t been that long that it’s been legal), contraception (same), and gone would be same sex marriage and all LGBTQ+ protections.

This, notwithstanding the fact 99% of women use birth control at some point in their lives, and huge majorities support equal voting rights and mixed marriage, while 59% want to guarantee a woman the right to control her own body.

Originalists say if it’s not in the Constitution, it’s not up for discussion.

Next stop, 1780, because back then there was no pharmaceutical birth control, let alone condoms. Gays were routinely preyed upon by violent and malevolent people, women sought back alley abortions, often with catastrophic results.

As far as that goes, electricity was a mystery yet to be unraveled, telecommunications were achieved by horseback, winged flight was the exclusive province of birds, and flush toilets had yet to supplant outhouses.

It’s no wonder so few of us are willing to surrender hard won rights, and technological innovations in society and medicine. Who is willing to undo 60 years of progress on the civil- women’s- and gay-rights fronts? Do you want to ban books from public schools and library shelves? Most people don’t, because they believe we’re smart enough and curious enough to let folks peruse controversial literary works. Can banishing films and artworks be far behind in a society that limits its citizens rights to read and watch what they want?

How does it still make sense that antiquated ideas like the Electoral College still prevail in our elections? Ever since elementary school when we voted for Student Council, the majority ruled. The person with the most votes won. Period.

And why does Wyoming with 600,000 people get the same number of senators as California with 35 million people? And while we’re on the subject of minority rule, why does the filibuster still exist? Senate structure, the Electoral College and the filibuster were all devised as compromises to keep the Slave States in the nascent union. Representatives from the slaveholding states knew that as the country expanded, they’d lose the right to own other human beings, so they insisted on those things.

Given the chance, senators like Hawley, Cruz, Grassley, and Blackburn would whisk us back to the 18th Century, where only White property owners had societal power in the form of money and the vote.

We’ll see where this supermajority conservative Supreme Court takes us. Whether we move forward or backward. Whether we continue this democratic experiment that grows and changes with both the times and technological innovation, where poor people have the same rights as the rich, landed gentry, and where the majority rules.

I encourage you to visit LetMajorityRule.org, a nonprofit I co-founded to protect majority rights in a time when a loud minority with the huge megaphones of talk radio, cable news and social media, seek to turn back time, and recast American society into something they call Christian Nationalism, but it doesn’t look even vaguely Christian to me. It just looks mean.

©2022 Jon Sinton