Editorial rights purchased from iStock. Photo by Halfpoint.
We are at a tipping point in America. In every area of our society, we are suffering from the mistakes of the ruling class. Rather than correct those mistakes, men like Justices Alito and Thomas think they can turn back the clock, but they are wrong.
Alito and Thomas are not the leaders of our future — they are the misguided and ignorant champions of the past — a past where human rights were regularly violated to keep wealthy men in power. We can no longer allow such backward thinkers to have undue influence on our country. There is no place in our government for those who prefer denial or gaslighting to problem-solving.
One thing I learned while studying psychology is that facing the truth is the first step in healing. Our country needs to heal, but our leaders haven’t been willing to face the truth about the most significant and controversial aspects of our history: slavery/racism, women’s rights/abortion, religious freedom/tolerance, gun control, or the war crimes that fellow Americans have committed.
We must also acknowledge that, as a nation, we are no better than any other. We have an unusually robust and ingenious system of government designed by better men than you or I. But we are human. And when we fail, we should admit it and do what’s necessary to correct it. We have the same responsibility as a nation that each of us has as a person — and currently, we are failing.
We also need to face the truth about democracy — and the truth is we are quickly losing what is left of ours. If we continue to elect politicians who prefer denial and gaslighting to problem-solving, we will forfeit any chance of keeping our democracy — which may be imperfect — but it’s all we’ve got.
The Price of Freedom is Responsibility
We’ve all heard the phrase, “The price of freedom is responsibility.” Republicans are drunk with freedom yet take no responsibility. They seem to believe we are free to say anything, even if we slander others. They call it freedom of speech — but freedom of speech is supposed to allow us to express our opinions, not to spread lies about others for our benefit.
Republicans want us to be free to buy assault weapons even if we use them to murder schoolchildren. They want us to be free to accuse women of murder, even when those women require an abortion to save their own lives. And they believe we should be free to elect a sociopath to the office of the presidency even if he threatens our democracy.
Republicans are eager to promote broad freedoms yet refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of exercising them.
It is no accident that the driving force behind the January 6th Committee is a woman. It is no accident that the chairman of the committee is a Black man. It is also no accident that the one person who is most likely to hold former president Trump accountable is a Black woman. These people are capable of facing the truth — the only thing that will allow us to hold the guilty accountable and heal as a nation. These are the people who represent the future of our country, and we need to find and elect people like them to prominent positions — as many of them as we can.
If we want to change things, we have to elect different people.
A handful of courageous and honorable men and women will not be enough to save us. The American people also need to be brave and honest. We must stop allowing our leaders to lie to us. It’s up to us to elect representatives with the courage and decency to live up to our standards.
We must elect people who will not use propaganda to cover their lies but who will instead take responsibility for where we are now and work with us to create a real democracy, where every vote counts and every person shares the same rights as every other.
We Need to Talk
The truth about abortion
Laws governing healthcare that apply to everyone, without regard to specific circumstances or the patient’s will, are inexcusable and preclude the ability to provide appropriate healthcare.
To provide appropriate healthcare, the physical and emotional welfare of the patient must be the top priority. The overturning of Roe v. Wade means that in some states, doctors can no longer even consider the physical and emotional interests of the patient when refusing to perform abortions. Many states already have the power to force doctors to watch women suffer or die for someone else’s religious beliefs.
It is no accident that the SCOTUS decision overturning this fundamental human right never mentions its effect on the women it’s meant to control. This decision can only be constitutional if we no longer believe women are human beings; therefore, we no longer feel they deserve fundamental human rights.
If Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress in 2022, all they will need to ban abortion in every state will be a Republican president in 2024.
The truth about slavery
Before the Civil War, the economy of the southern states depended upon slavery. Agrarian societies globally have relied upon slavery throughout history. The industrial revolution was the main reason for reduced slave populations because machines could do the work of many people.
Slavery has always been an abomination, but it has been made palatable by the lies the ruling class has told itself. In every slaveholding society, the ruling class has supported and perpetuated the lie that the slave class was an inferior type of human. This was how people used to deal with cognitive dissonance: they told themselves lies to avoid it. (It’s still how Republicans deal with it.)
How do we reconcile what we know, based on irrefutable evidence: white people are not superior to people of color? How do we reconcile that fact with our history of enslaving Black people in America? The answer is simple: we admit we were wrong.
Granted, admitting we were wrong is just the beginning. But if we don’t take that first step, we can never take the second or the third step in the right direction.
The truth about gun control
We’ve all heard the saying, “Guns don’t kill people; people do.” That’s true. People kill people with guns.
Republicans are fond of saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In Uvalde, at the time of the shooting, there were 91 good men with guns inside the school. If you include the police officers reported to have been on site, nearly 400 police officers were available to stop a single shooter—but none of them did.
Video footage of the hallway outside the classroom where the massacre occurred has been repeatedly shown on TV over the past few days. Men with guns and shields are shown standing still; none of them attempted to enter the classroom where children were being murdered.
When Lawrence O’Donnell played the footage on his show “The Last Word,” he said he was glad they removed the sound of the children screaming from the tape before he saw it. He said he didn’t think he could have watched the video if they hadn’t. But the police officers standing in the hallway with their guns and shields to protect them heard the screams. And still, they did nothing. Why?
O’Donnell thinks they were afraid. He believes they were fearful because they knew the shooter had an assault weapon, and if they walked into the classroom where an active shooter was murdering children, they would die.
Yet every Republican politician will tell you the shooter had a right to own an assault weapon. They say the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees that right. But they are wrong.
The Constitution’s Second Amendment provides for a “well regulated militia” for the express purpose of providing security to the State. Was the Uvalde school shooter part of a militia? No, he was not. Were his actions in any way well regulated? No, they were not. Were his actions designed to protect the State? No, they were not.
The Second Amendment says nothing about allowing individuals to procure assault weapons. The Second Amendment argument for refusing to take responsibility for gun safety legislation is a ruse. It is designed to confuse and mislead. No responsible politician would ever use it as an excuse for allowing an 18-year-old to access an assault weapon.
The truth about American war crimes
George W. Bush claimed the invasion of Iraq was necessary to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s WMD, but that was a lie. Have you heard of the PNAC report?
The PNAC Report was a secret document written before George W. Bush became president. It was at the heart of the Bush agenda. Here is how one British politician described it.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons, and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq said: ‘This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
This is a blueprint for US world domination — a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. ’
The George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq under false pretenses. Some of us knew it at the time, but nobody in mainstream media listened to us. I volunteered as a reporter for a local radio station during the lead-up to the war. We knew Saddam Hussein did not have WMD — but our leadership invaded Iraq anyway and, in the process, destroyed the lives of an estimated half a million people. (Of course, we never worry too much about dead people if they’re not Americans — every president in my lifetime has made that clear.)
America has never taken responsibility for this invasion of a sovereign nation. We have never apologized for murdering Saddam Hussein. We continue to allow our leaders to pretend we did this in good faith, believing we had no choice if we wished to safeguard our country, but that is a lie.
We invaded Iraq because a group of Republicans who wanted to promote American imperialism and spread Christianity throughout the Middle East lied to us. They told us we weren’t safe unless we did something about Saddam Hussein. They told us Iraq was a threat to our safety. But none of it was true.
Today, we accuse Putin of war crimes — and he is guilty of them. But what about George W. Bush and the men in his administration who pushed their version of the Big Lie? Only Scooter Libby went to jail, and it wasn’t for invading Iraq; it was for “outing” a covert CIA agent.
In addition to the war in Iraq, we committed torture using extreme methods of interrogation euphemistically referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
While they will defend their actions to this day, the men who ran this program had no credentials or experience to back their theory that torture, just short of death, was the best way to achieve actionable intelligence. Two educated white men made a claim and it was assumed to be true.
When the CIA reported on this in 2014, they concluded that no actionable intelligence was ever gained by torturing these men and, in some cases, killing them. The brutal and inhumane attempts to obtain intelligence did not have the desired effect. Instead, they fostered fear and hatred of Americans.
There is no question that Americans committed war crimes. We may have sent prisoners to other countries to do it, but Americans made that nightmare happen. And we should admit it, apologize for it, and vow never to do it again.
We should have a war crimes tribunal to address the crimes committed by the Bush Administration in Iraq. If we ever hope to hold other countries accountable for their war crimes, we must be accountable for ours.
The truth about religious freedom
The Constitution guarantees us freedom of religion. Are the conservative justices on the Supreme Court today incapable of understanding what that means? It would appear so. It is not my religious belief that life begins at conception — it is theirs. Practically speaking, it is a ridiculous position to take. Until a fetus has been born and becomes a child, it is still part of its mother’s body. It is impossible to treat a fetus as a separate human being because it’s not a separate human being — not until it is born.
It is ridiculous to assume that our government must fight for the rights of a fetus that cannot live outside its mother’s body. It is also impossible to do so without violating the Constitution’s other tenants, which include a right to privacy and bodily autonomy — for all people — not just men.
The blatant stupidity of this ruling has been made evident by recent cases in which doctors, hospital administrators, and lawyers have found it impossible to know which actions might land them in legal trouble.
Confusion lingers after abortion trigger law
This confusion and chaos is unnecessary and unacceptable and demonstrates the importance of maintaining the constitutionally required separation of church and state.
What’s Next?
It’s easy to become frustrated, but it’s important not to give up. The only thing that can save our democracy and our Constitution is the will of the voters. It will be up to us to ensure that Congress maintains a majority of Democrats in both houses while Joe Biden is still president. Anything else will have tragic consequences for our country and the institution of democracy.
Once we get a clear majority in the House and Senate (let’s not even count Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema anymore because they might as well be Republicans) and can bypass the filibuster, there will be hope for a brighter future.
But if we fail to do this, we will get what we deserve. We will lose our democracy, women’s rights will be history, and our entire planet will be in peril due to our inability to pass meaningful climate change legislation.
The time is now.