I think it may be said that the bad guys here are winning a long game, but going to lose the longest. A glimmer of hope, though they’ve ensured needless suffering in the meantime.
I’m not referring to the oft-misued MLK quote “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Unfortunately (at least, taken like this in its stripped-down version), that’s nonsense. Rather it’s what “Beau of the Fifth Column” said: to change the law, first you change thought.
Here’s Beau in one of the many videos in which he said this and its related argument:
Regarding the latest rush of SCOTUS insanity, these fucked-up rulings and their enabled fucked-up laws are popular among assholes currently in power, but they are overwhelmingly unpopular country-… culture-… wide.
The minds have been changed. There is backsliding, but that trend remains overall in the right direction.
The unexpected (to me) reaction, is that small and mid-size corporations are starting to nail their colors and their money to the mast in favor of reproductive and queer rights. This is the biggest indicator of minds changing.
Corporations have no souls, no conscience; they do what they believe will make their brands popular and palatable to the most customers. Nothing else. So if corps are trending progressive, even if it’s pink- and rainbow-washing… that’s the bellwether that the people have gone hard far more progressive than that. In the longest run, the laws must follow the people, or the people will no longer consent to those laws.
Very well said. Thank you for this ray of hope amongst all the gloom.
I really hope you are right, that the public can eventually pull it off. Unfortunately there are so many anti-democratic elements in the US system that support conservative (actually reactionary) minority rule. Josh Hawley hopes liberals will migrate out of red and purple states, thus entrenching the reactionary hold there. (And of course if they end up with 2/3 of the states, even if significantly depopulated, they get to call a constitutional convention. That is my biggest fear.) How do we hold on to purple states and turn them blue so that the majority of this country gets to live by laws that reflect their beliefs?
Maybe take advantage of red states claiming to be good for retirees? Cis-het liberals who are past child-bearing strategically retire to red and purple states and spend their free time organizing?
Sadly, I don’t buy it. Many people claim to be progressive, they might even believe it, but in practice they really aren’t. Not Americans at least, that’s for sure. The race was lost a long time ago, fascists gained the upper hand too fast. They will eventually trip, oh how spectacularly they will trip, but they’ll take us all in their fall. The cancer is there, you can’t cure it, you can only, nay must, keep it at bay with any kind of “social chemo” you can come up with.
I like “to change the law, first you change thought”, because clearly thought has been changing. I also know that the demographics of the United States are not favoring the right.
I first thought that the current reactionary politics was the last gasp of a dying past. But that only makes sense if we continue to be a democracy, and that is no longer something we can take for granted.
Truth.
^ The OP and esp the final paagrpah here. I think. Hopefully.
But also what SchreiberBike note dintheir last paragph above too. Almost nothing inevitable or for granted.