We are on the precipice of seeing our democracy disappear, to be replaced by a version of America that is dominated by those on the far right who embrace Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again policies.
They are threatening to enact an agenda that is the antithesis of what the Founding Fathers intended. They include corporate-friendly deregulation, suppression of voter’s rights, demonizing the LBGTQ population, stripping women of their healthcare decisions and making racism the norm while promoting religious bigotry.
This is what could happen in MAGAmerica.
And nothing has been more consequential than the Supreme Court in shaping MAGAmerica. With each decision, the three Trump-appointed justices, along with the old guard Conservatives, are reshaping the nation into a dystopian nightmare.
Abortion Rights
Without Mitch McConnell, the Dobbs decision that took away access to abortion in many states may never have happened. When McConnell invoked the heretofore unheard of “Biden Rule” to prevent Merrick Garland from being appointed to the Supreme Court, he opened the door to an unprecedented three justices being elevated to the court by the corrupt Trump administration.
McConnell conveniently ignored his own precedent, which he claimed stated that a Supreme Court pick couldn’t be made during an election year, when he allowed Amy Coney Barrett to be named to the court, replacing Liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a far right justice with questionable religious connections.
Despite declaring that Roe was “established law” and “precedent” during their confirmation hearings, the three Trump-appointed justices quickly lined up with their ultra-Conservative colleagues in voting to overturn the very protections they swore to uphold. As a result, women are being forced to take part in a modern Underground Railroad, as they risk arrest in order to get the healthcare they need that was legal days earlier.
In a move more reminiscent of totalitarian governments, lawmakers are proposing tracking apps that monitor a woman’s menstrual cycle as well as web searches. They see these as ways to prevent violations of their state’s anti-abortion laws. Women are being encouraged to delete these apps as they seek more sophisticated methods to ensure their privacy.
In a true slap in the face of the Founding Fathers, who demanded a separation of church and state, an evangelical leader confessed to praying with certain Supreme Court justices inside the court, prior to issuing their decision to overturn Roe. This outlandish violation of the principles established in the Constitution shows just how much the religious right has overtaken the Republican Party.
MAGAmerica has turned the clock back 50 years and dealt a major blow to women’s rights. It’s a move that may backfire if it could motivate more women to vote in the midterm elections.
Education
In a move surely to go down as earth shattering as water is wet, Republicans will certainly crow about how they eliminated Critical Race Theory from public schools. Except, it was never taught at that level, so they are creating an issue out of thin air just to stoke controversy and claim that the current state of education is dominated by a “woke Liberal agenda”. No doubt they will use these false claims to upend public education in order to control the message in what children are taught in school.
It’s a move straight out of the Totalitarian playbook. Vilify the educators to control the flow of information being presented.
Conservatives already are crying out to ban certain books because they allegedly contain passages that make reference to sexuality. They make the horrific accusation that teachers are “grooming” their students through these books, making them more susceptible to sexual abuse.
The backwards State of Texas is leading the way in rewriting history. For 10 years, they allowed schools to use a textbook that claimed not all slaves were unhappy and referred to slaves as workers who emigrated from Africa. While the use of this textbook has been discontinued, a group of Texas educators recently proposed teaching about slavery by calling it involuntary relocation.
No doubt efforts to reshape the curriculum, such as with Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, will continue. After all, Republicans have already recast the January 6th insurrection as “legitimate political discourse”. Who knows what else is in store should MAGAmerica become a reality?
LBGTQ Rights
MAGAmerica has created the unholy alliance of the religious right (AKA The American Taliban) and QAnon as they orchestrate coordinated attacks on the LBGTQ population with the aim of driving them back into the closet. They want to return to the days when having an alternative lifestyle led to being blackmailed, blackballed and even fired.
It began with QAnon reigniting fears by resurrecting the antisemitic trope about blood libel, which is the centuries old falsehood that Jews were involved in Satanic rituals whereupon they used the blood of Christian children to perform ungodly acts. The modern version was called Pizzagate, where prominent Democrats were accused of conducting their atrocities in the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza shop.
Now those on the right are reverting to form by making the false claims that children of gay couples are more likely to be sexually abused and that drag queens are more prone to be pedophiles. These baseless accusations have long been echoed by the religious right who have been known to brandish signs stating “God Hates” homosexuals, and declaring their lifestyle is an abomination that will damn them to Hell.
With the success of Dobbs, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas hinted that the decision could be used to strip same sex couples of their rights, since such protections were established under the very right to privacy protections used to justify Roe. Thomas has declared no such right exists, therefore any cases decided by this means are invalid. He conveniently fails to include the decision that permits his own biracial marriage to be legal.
The Economy
The stock market is taking a nosedive and inflation is soaring. All the more reason for MAGAettes to crow. After all, didn’t Donald Trump predict this would happen?
If only it was that easy. Whatever the reason, there was no way Trump could have predicted the multiple calamities that have damaged our economy. His “prediction” was nothing more than the typical scare tactics he’s used to influence his gullible base.
Supply chain issues, the war in Ukraine, and an abundance of disposable income due to the economic stimulus funds given by the Biden administration have resulted in an economy on steroids.
But the real “boogeyman” behind a struggling economy may be none of these. Instead, it may be Big Business sabotaging the Biden agenda due to its attempts to introduce new regulations aimed at protecting the environment. After all, there is nothing businesses hate more than anything than any effort by the government to make more regulations. They can be costly and cut into their profits, resulting in the need to increase prices.
We experienced four years of a MAGAmerica economy under Trump. It was pro-business and anti-environment. He withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accords and issued no less than 125 Executive Orders that stripped away measures to protect the environment.
Like every Republican leader since Reagan, Trump promised the savings these businesses would realize would eventually “trickle down” to the American consumer. Maybe in Wonderland, but this falsehood has duped Conservatives for years, and they will no doubt fall for it again, given the chance.
And of course, Conservatives on the Supreme Court are only too willing to back this pro-business agenda. In yet another controversial ruling, the court declared that the Environmental Protection Agency couldn’t enforce laws meant to regulate carbon emissions. So, yeah, the EPA can’t protect the environment.
MAGAmerica will certainly return to these practices.
Guns
“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people” is a familiar refrain from those who have a distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment. After every mass casualty shooting they offer “thoughts and prayers” while blaming mental illness rather than access to weapons.
The mental illness angle goes back to what has been considered the first mass casualty shooting, when Charles Whitman went on a 96-minute shooting spree from atop a University of Texas tower. An autopsy later revealed that Whitman had a brain tumor that ignited his violent outburst.
As a result, Republicans have claimed every mass murderer must be suffering from some form of mental illness that does not afflict “responsible gun owners”.
And so their answer to gun violence is more guns. Their “good guy with a gun” theory has been used to defend gun ownership, even as heavily armed members of law enforcement waited outside the classroom in Uvalde, TX as innocent children were being slaughtered.
Once again, enter the Supreme Court. If this is sounding like an all-to-familiar refrain, it’s because when Mitch McConnell allowed the appointment of the three Trump-chosen justices, he forever damaged the political landscape that the Founding Fathers intended.
In yet another right wing ruling, the court decided to weaken protections regarding public display of firearms. This is nothing less than an intimidation tactic by the right to discourage any opposing views.
MAGAmerica will be a far more dangerous place as more deadly shootings are bound to occur. The watered-down “gun safety law” is evidence that Republicans will never take the issue seriously, and so we all await the next horrific incident.
There will be blood. And it will more than likely be the blood of innocent children. Such is life in MAGAmerica.
Voting Rights
Even before the last vote was cast, there were cries of a stolen election. As numerous mail-in ballots were added to the vote totals, states where Donald Trump enjoyed a tenuous lead saw the pendulum swing to Joe Biden. The ensuing chaos that followed led to the first time in American history that there was not a peaceful transition of power. It culminated in the January 6th insurrection and continues to plague the political landscape as we approach the midterms.
Candidates are being measured by how loyal they are to Donald Trump and how willing they are to declare he was the actual winner of the 2020 presidential election. Many are running for positions that would make it possible for them to overturn the election results.
But the Republican-led legislatures aren’t waiting for the midterms. Even as Joe Biden was being inaugurated, they were proposing stricter election laws aimed at disenfranchising millions of voters, presumably those who voted for Democrats.
But even that wasn’t enough. So, of course Republicans are going to the Supreme Court to demand that state legislatures have the power to oversee congressional and presidential elections. This would mean the very institutions that enacted restrictive voting regulations would also have the power to nullify election results it deemed unfavorable.
Called the independent state legislature theory, this radical approach asserts that they would be allowed to determine the rules as to how federal elections are held without the benefit of appealing to the courts.
They would determine how electors are chosen and eventually, the inevitable outcome of the election, ensuring the party in power remains in power. This is the antithesis of the democratic process. Conservative Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas already have indicated they would support Republicans in this case when they issued dissenting opinions when the case was brought before the court last March as lawmakers sought an emergency injunction.
Now that they have declared their intention to hear the full case, it appears we are coming even closer to the end of democracy in America, and nearing the precipice of MAGAmerica.
Numerous investigations by the January 6th committee, the Department of Justice and the State of Georgia already may have doomed Donald Trump’s efforts at re-election. Sadly, the damage he caused will continue to plague America for generations. With Conservative control of the Supreme Court, the influence he exerted promises to forever change the vision of the Founding Fathers.
Welcome to MAGAmerica.