This fine article from THE ATLANTIC is a keeper and should grab everyone’s attention with this
headline that sets the scene:
“The Tennessee Expulsions Are Just the
Beginning”
Also, this related article from the LA TIMES with has this headline that also concerns FL Gov. DeSantis and his
one-man rule dream:
“Florida's anti-immigrant bill continues
DeSantis' campaign of cruelty”
The red-state drive to reverse the rights revolution of the past
six decades continues to intensify, triggering confrontations involving every
level of government for everyone. Just like here and here. What do we call that kind government?
Oh yeah, we call that
totalitarianism, which is: A form of government usually a one-man ruler that
asserts total control over the daily lives of its citizens. It is characterized
by a strong central cabal controlling and directing all aspects of any individual’s
daily life through coercion and repression or worse steps.
Current examples:
1. In
rapid succession, Republican-controlled states are applying unprecedented
tactics to shift social policy sharply to the right, not only within their
borders but across the nation.
2. Recently
the GOP-controlled TN House of Representatives voted to expel two young Black
Democratic representatives for peaceful protesting.
3. TX
Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, moved to nullify the verdict of a jury in
liberal Travis County and grant pardon to convicted killer who has not even
been sentenced yet.
4. The
single Republican-appointed federal judge, acting on a case brought by a
conservative legal group and 23 Republican state AG’s issued a decision that would impose a
nationwide ban on mifepristone, the principal safe drug used in medication
abortions for the last 23 years.
5. In
Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders asks applicants applying to serve on
state boards and commissions to write explanations of what they admire about
her leadership most on their application for employment answering this question:
“What is an accomplishment of the Governor’s that you admire the most?”
I note: Seems she will
only hire brown-nose applicants – how democratic is that? Not much I have to
say.
All of those actions plus the massive one-man rule changes
in FL by Gov. Ron DeSantis and in TX by Gov. Greg Abbott and now unfair hiring practices
in AR by Gov. Huckabee-Sanders show the power grabbing techniques of this “new”
GOP and it’s pitiful.
1. Banning speech (FL’s “Don’t Say Gay” law); 2. Banning
some school books; 3. Banning peaceful protesting after sundown; 4. Easing laws
on who can carry a concealed gun w/o a permit; 5. Banning abortions at 6-weeks
(FYI: Most women don’t even know they are pregnant at 6-weeks), and many other
aspects pending and forthcoming.
All of these actions right now are in GOP-run states, continuing an upsurge that began in 2021. They push forward
a torrent of bills restricting abortion, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, loosening
controls on gun ownership, censoring classroom discussion of race, gender, and
sexual orientation, or sex education in general, and preempting the authority
of their Democratic-leaning metropolitan cities and counties.
This flood of legislation has started to erase the long-term
trend of Congress and federal courts steadily nationalizing more rights and
reducing the freedom of states to constrict them — what legal scholars have
called the “right's revolution.”
Now, across all these different arenas and more, the United
States is hurtling back toward a pre-1960s world in which citizens’ basic
rights and liberties vary much more depending on where they live.
Janai Nelson, President
and Director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, wrote: “We are in the
middle of an existential crisis for the future of our burgeoning multicultural,
multiethnic democracy, and the extreme events unfolding in TN and other states are
the early manifestations of an abandonment of democratic norms. The events in TN
and TX, and the banning of mifepristone, extend strategies that red states have
employed since 2020 to influence national policy.
These latest moves show Republicans taking those strategies
to new extremes. Together these developments underscore how aggressively red
states are maneuvering to block the federal government and their own largest
metropolitan areas from resisting their systematic attempt to carve out what can be called nation within a nation operating
with its own constraints on civil rights and liberties.
Marissa Roy, the
legal team lead for the Local Solutions Support Center, a group opposing the
broad range of state preemption efforts said: “It shows there really is no
limit, no institution that is quote-unquote ‘sacred’ enough not to try to use
to their advantage.”
This multipronged offensive from red states seeks to reverse
one of the most powerful currents in modern American life since the 1960’s, on
issues including the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, banning discrimination
on grounds of race or gender, and decisions that the Supreme Court, Congress,
and Federal agencies have broadened the circle of rights guaranteed nationwide
and reduced the ability of states to limit those rights.
Over the past decade, Republican-controlled states have
stepped up their efforts to reverse all that and impose their own restrictions
on rights and liberties.
My 2 Cents: Both articles linked above show clearly the brutality, cruelty, and harshness of this “new” GOP for surely they are not the moderate Republicans of the past like Bob Dole and other Rockefeller types.
Today this “new” GOP is harsh, revengeful, mean, and nasty. They have given us 25-25 states that have now politically divided the nation, and that is damn sad to a great extent.
Thanks for
stopping by.
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