The 2024 Presidential election is over. I find the result to be a frightening indictment of the American electorate's profound lack of critical thinking skills, but not a shocking one. President Donald Trump, a convicted felon, acknowledged rapist and liar, who also tried to overthrow the 2020 election results by leading an insurrection at the Capitol of the United States, defeated the former Vice President, Kamala Harris by a wide margin. Some might call the election close with narrow margins in swing states across the Great Lakes and Southwest but, truly, this was not a close election no matter what the corporate media and their pollsters wanted to sell you during this exhausting, twisted and tumultuous campaign. The propagandists just wanted lots of advertising dollars to hoard and to ensure no woman was going to get elected President of the United States of America.
James Brown sang, “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” back in 1966. The lyrics of the song were written by a woman, Betty Jean Newsome. The words ring truer today than they have since 1966. That was the first year after a landmark court case (Griswold v Connecticut) which allowed full distribution of the FDA approved oral contraceptive (The Pill) throughout the United States. This was almost a decade after it had been developed. Seven years later the medical procedure of aborting unplanned pregnancies were guaranteed through the nation with the landmark 7-2 SCOTUS decision in Roe v Wade. Women had finally found a sense of sexual freedom and couples now had choice when to conceive. During that period most of us living then thought these issues were resolved and tried to move on to other matters.
During this charged late 1960s to mid 1970s period the term “Politically Correct” emerged. Initially it was used to describe civility and respect when engaged in conversations between the sexes or to power. Conservatives then set about demeaning the term while describing it as a sign of male weakness and dishonesty. It became a bully term to humiliate those working for compromise and cooperation. Today, because “Politically Correct” sounds a bit dated and wordy, a new term had to be created and so we now have “Woke” to describe both weakness in gender/power conversations, but also those who get screwed and tell.
Here we are in 2025, and the above referenced cases of settled law have now been completely unsettled and undone by the Roberts Supreme Court. A SCOTUS now comprised of five conservative men and four women. Of the associate justice member women, there are three liberals and one ultra conservative catholic who clerked for a previous catholic SCOTUS member in the 1990s and then worked for the Bush people in Gore v Bush to decide the 2000 election before her Trump appointment in 2020. This SCOTUS has become the most conservative Court in over a century.
This is a court where a third if its membership was appointed by President Donald Trump. A Supreme Court currently made up of eight Harvard and Yale graduates with a Notre Dame outlier. A court that today thumbs its nose at precedent and twists language to suit its mood to further religious extremism in government while currying favor with the conservative business elite. While promoting the bizarre concept of “Originalism” in regards to the US Constitution, it turns the US the founding fathers documents and explicit meanings of separating the government from religion into a snake twisted knot of deceit promoting religion at levels never seen in American history.
Until the last few months of the 2024 election I thought that the surprising election of 2016 was an aberration, and simply a likely repudiation of Hilary Clinton’s persona. How could the person who so bungled an international health crisis, drove the nation into one ugly violent scene after another over racial profiling with hate filled rants against all minorities and denied the 2020 election results be electable? How do women vote for the man responsible for wiping away their social and medical progress of the past 50 years?
What I failed to realize until November 6, 2024 is that President Donald Trump epitomizes the American fantasy of being able to do what he wants when he wants, to speak exactly, and as profanely, as he wishes at any occasion without any regard for facts or truth. No correctness necessary or wanted. He is THE hero for the hopeless, hapless and helpless mass of the US population who are so upset at their current situation for absolutely no reason, other than the ones a right wing media feeds them 24/7 to divide and antagonize a nation. He is the perfect front man to assault women, minorities, the working class and the curious here in the United States.
President Trump remains no friend to most white working class men in the US today, either, but he is the Ringmaster of the Testosterone Circus that parades through American culture every day to bamboozle them. You witness this male hormone carnival every day through male-dominance-messaging of fear through all media platforms, through sporting events that cannot proceed without a tribute to US military might, through endless shows and movies promoting physical and weapons violence on all manner of humanity, through news streams locally and nationally of daily murders, auto accidents and natural or manmade disasters in every media market of the land.
Welcome to one Wild World of Courts 2025!
No comments:
Post a Comment