Imagining life in a post-democracy America
Exploring the haunting right wing visions of those who would overthrow the United States
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A Terrifying Fundamentalist Future is Upon Us if We Don’t Save America Now
We don’t have to wonder what life in America would be like had Trump’s Jan. 6 coup succeeded. One just has to look at the new Texas GOP platform to glimpse the future if the Republican “treason train” ends our beloved democracy. The Constitution will become the Bible and our nation will devolve into a primitive state run by men with medieval minds. Human rights, as currently understood, will cease to exist, LGBTQ people will retreat into the closet, while women would return to the kitchen. Given today’s shoe options, I doubt they would be barefoot, but with Roe v Wade on the cusp of being overturned, many will be victims of forced pregnancy.
More than 80-percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, despite the orange oaf proving himself to be the most immoral presidential candidate in American history. So why did they vote for a vulgar, sexual predator, thrice married congenital liar? Trump was embraced because he freed many white evangelicals to freely speak their minds and say what they truly believe. The core teachings of Jesus, about love and peace, were an annoying impediment to practicing their peculiar suburban strain of megachurch Christianity or rural right-wing fundamentalism.
It was quite a burden for these good Christians to have to pretend that they loved LGBTQ people, believed in racial equality, supported women’s rights or cared about the poor. Donald Trump replaced God and morphed into their golden idol who sat on a gold throne, er toilet. Their new Lord angrily told his followers that they were martyrs to “political correctness”, which mutated into “wokeness”. The Great Charlatan convinced his clan that white Christians were the real victims of discrimination in America. Since they were allegedly under attack, wasn’t it time to fight back and reclaim America?
These bitter, white evangelicals are the real power behind MAGA’s ascent. They are the base, and they will unequivocally be calling the shots if the American experiment is ended by force or fiat. The New America won’t be Trumpistan, but a Christian version of Afghanistan. Without democracy upholding the will of the majority, we will be under the tyrannical yoke of a fanatical religious minority.
The draconian Texas GOP platform will go from an aspirational right-wing document to a cruel legal code that will harshly punish “heretics” and “heathens”. My guess is that LGBTQ Pride will be outlawed and violently suppressed by police, as it is in “traditional values” dictatorships like Russia. Conversion therapy will be widely available to “change” gay people, so they won’t be involved in what the Texas Republican platform calls “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” Transgender people will cease to exist in public spaces and will be unable to receive the medical care they need.
New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow wisely identified the Republican’s goal of “building a gay ghetto”.
Make no mistake, this is all part of a renewed, broad-based attack on gay rights and gay culture, to stanch the rise of young people who are coming out. And if you think a right once established by the court can’t be rescinded by the court, look no further than the expected ruling coming from the court on abortion.
There is no finality in the battle for civil rights. Wins don’t stay won. They must be defended and can sometimes be reversed.
Republicans may not be able to push people back into the closet, but they can try to re-establish some stigma to prevent them from coming out in the first place and build them — us — cultural gay ghettos if we do.
At heart, the Texas Republican Party is a seditious cell that has planted the seeds for secession or Civil War. The state party passed a resolution embracing the Big Lie, that Donald Trump is the legitimate president and Joe Biden is only in the White House because he stole the election. Washington Post columnist, Greg Sargent, accurately describes the Texas GOP platform as:
A veritable piñata bursting with far-right extremist fantasies. It states that Texas retains the right to secede from the United States and urges the Texas legislature to reaffirm this.
It flatly declares that no validation of transgender identity is legitimate. It dismisses all gun regulations as a violation of “God given rights,” and sharply rebukes Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) for pursuing a bipartisan gun safety package that’s extraordinarily modest.
The GOP is already planning for a successful post-coup America, unveiling a psychotic new manifesto by the Edmond Burke Foundation. The dictatorial document is called “National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles”. If the insurrectionists get their way, it may soon form the basis of our new Constitution.
Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle warns that this right-wing rule book “sounds a lot like fascism.” It’s exclusionary and discriminatory ideology is identified as “National Conservatism”, which sounds a bit too much like the Nazi’s “National Socialism” for my liking. According to maniacal manifesto:
Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. In regions of a nation where the moral vision is corrupted by immorality … national government must intervene energetically to restore order.
So, this is the future if the ongoing coup against democracy succeeds. Rural areas will be run by hardcore fundamentalist religious councils. In the cities, the federal government will “intervene” to crush resistance and install Christian morality police bto “restore order”. It really smells like a Christian version of the Taliban or the totalitarian rule of Iran’s Ayatollahs. Do you want to live is such a deranged society? I sure don’t.
Of course, we don’t have to wait for the illegal capture of the White House for these zealots to enact their unpopular, radical agenda. They have already purloined the Supreme Court by acting in remarkably bad faith, denying Democratic presidential administrations their rightful turn to appoint Justices, while stacking the court with movement loyalists, including a fanatical cult member who once served as a handmaid. Let’s also not forget Clarence Thomas, whose “treason wife”, Ginni, was a lead cheerleader for the insurrection. Do you really think that Clarence Thomas believes in democracy?
The result of the court putsch is the impending end of legal abortion, the unlimited supply and transport of weapons of war to terrorize opponents, dark money to fund political smear campaigns, unlimited gerrymandering to upend fair elections and funneling public money to religious schools – as Pakistan did to extremist madrassas, which led to the Taliban.
Although these radical rulings are being handed down from the judiciary, the illegitimacy of the Republican installed justices, who are in audacious contravention of American majority opinion, have made these dictates, in a sense, extrajudicial.
These Justices are demanding that all Americans follow the rules of their personal right-wing churches, even though the vast majority of the people chose not to join these archaic institutions or follow their anachronistic rules.
But, now we all have membership cards from Opus Dei, People of Praise or Franklin Graham’s fundamentalist church whether we like it or not. Religious pluralism has apparently been replaced with religious nationalism and the First Amendment has been discarded for a front row pew in the First Baptist Church.
We must resolve ourselves to counter this onslaught while we still can raise our voices, because our voices will be stilled if these primitive fanatics complete their takeover of American society. There is no mystery what these retrograde elements plan to do, because they have already telegraphed their intentions. They are already jamming their insane views and medieval mandates down our throats.
If we don’t fight like hell now to reclaim our country, our lives will be pure hell in short order. Wake up America, because if we don’t become energized, our democracy will be euthanized. The choice is ours.