By Ruth A. Sheets
On this Independence Day, 2022, I find that I am in a turmoil regarding what independence even means for our nation now. I swing between hope and despair for our country and our people. We just received from the Supreme Court of the United States rulings that do not represent independence or freedom for a whole lot of people.
The first lets anyone who wants to carry a gun to do so because, well, the law shouldn’t keep anyone who wants to carry a gun from carrying a gun, pretty much wherever they want to carry it, or some other such BS, pulled out of nowhere claiming it is included in the 2nd amendment of the Constitution.
The second overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision letting states decide whether or not women have the right to an abortion, even though there was no clear compelling reason to do so.
The third said it was OK for a football coach and his players to pray on the 50 yard line after each game even though the school doesn’t want them to because of the religious overtones. My concern, what happens to a player who does not go along with this pseudo-religious crap. Do they get less time on the field? Do they get a less complimentary recommendation from Coach if they get one at all The fourth claimed, for no obvious reason that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has no right to regulate carbon emissions despite the fact that the EPA was set up to regulate air, water, and land pollution and carbon pollution is the most serious of all.?
In all four of these cases, personal and group freedoms are seriously impacted. When anyone can carry guns, when is it OK to use it? People who just happen to be near a person with a gun who decides using the gun against them is warranted gets to lose their life well, because the gun-toter “felt threatened.”
In the second instance above, women are now slaves to their pregnancies whether they want to be or not. Then they are slaves to a child if a live birth happens and they survive it. People who help women to live their lives in freedom can be imprisoned for years because a bunch of scared white men are afraid women are getting too uppity.
In the third case above, coaches have more authority than the school community to do whatever religious thing they want and possibly to expect the same of the team members. Those members will go along if they want to play the sport. Where is their freedom while Coach gets to use and abuse his (in this case, his) freedom.
When corporations are allowed to set their own standards for pollution of whatever kind, the people who suffer most are those who have been determined to be of less value than other people, the ones whose homes, schools, and businesses are located in the immediate vicinity of the polluter, mostly poor people of color. Where is their right to clean air. In this case, the whole world gets to suffer when carbon emissions are not regulated. It is pretty clear Republicans in the Senate care too little for the American people to expand the EPA’s authority to meet the Supreme Court’s requirements, even though the Court is supposed to have no legislative ability.
We the people have for generations allowed bad behavior on the part of mostly white men. We have allowed and even enabled those white men to deny freedom from nearly everyone who was not rich, white, straight, Christian, and male. Consider the following:
- Lynchings took place and very rarely was anyone even charged, let alone held accountable despite having postcards and other evidence of the crime sent all over the country. The victims’ freedom and lives were taken from them and those in power either went along or actually participated.
- Corporations, you know, the rich ones have perpetrated appalling destruction on communities causing massive live-altering health problems and unusable land and water. Those corporations rarely met successful prosecution yet they stole freedom from the people who suffered from their actions. Then, we the people had to pay to clean up their mess.
- Separate but Equal was sneeringly Okayed by the 1896 Supreme Court and was NEVER even attempted. Why? It was clear Black Americans and other people of color were being abused and denied freedoms white folks had, but our courts just couldn’t bring themselves to do anything until 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education which is still being ignored, nearly 70 years later.
- Women were not even considered in the smallest part when the Constitution was written. In those days, women had no legal rights and very few freedoms of any kind. Essentially, women belonged to their husbands or fathers. They lived a separate life from men. I suspect almost no men had a clue what women did every day except that he had clothes on his back, food in his belly, and a bunch of kids he could claim he fathered.
For me, the overturn of Roe v. Wade is the most critical of the 4 cases taking away American’s freedoms. Our current Court and its Republican managers are not only ignorant of women's lives today but beyond ignorant of women of the past, yet Roberts let Samuel Alito, one of the most ignorant misogynistic members (although Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are a close second), the right to define what was and was not happening in this country related to women at the time of the Constitution. Alito knows nothing, so either he or one of his "clerks" found ridiculous misogynistic diatribes against abortion by medieval woman-hating asses, who actually believed in witches! The other 4 of the worst on the Court went right along with the nonsense because they thought the ridiculous irrelevant quote was something they could use against women. They surrounded the Medieval nonsense with a bunch of stuff that means nothing but must sound good and reasonable to those who are ignorant of women. That doesn't say much for the Fantastic 5's intellectual or reasoning capacity, yet they made a ruling that will harm millions of women and girls and the people who support them. I suspect as usually happens, we the people will permit it. We will find work-arounds and do our best to get pregnant women the care they need, but not face head-on the real problem, white men and a few white women dictating what rights/freedoms they will permit women and people of color to have. Those will be based on pseudo-religious beliefs that they morph regularly to suit their own behavior and conservative pressures.
I can't help but wonder what Republicans get from this except more power over others on their way to some kind of warped insane autocracy they think they should be in charge of while they wave the American flag on July 4th and march in parades with the people they are harming, smiling and gloating that they won the victory over women’s right to bodily autonomy (probably toting their guns too).
Voting is probably our best option right now, but we need to do more. I admit I am not sure what that more is. Protesting is seen as just a quaint way to make some noise and police are usually free to stop them whenever they choose since they have all the weapons. Vigils outside the homes of the people who are causing the harm are no longer legal (even Democrats went for that one to "protect" Brett Kavanaugh who would have protected no one). Writing letters, signing petitions, and calling senators and representatives only have an impact on those who already agree with the letter-writer, petitioner, or caller. In the hundreds of letters and petitions I have sent to my Senator, Pat Toomey, nothing I or anyone I know have said, changed his mind on anything or caused him to vote to protect the interests of the majority of people in Pennsylvania. I am glad he is retiring this year, but if Dr. Oz takes his place, we will be no better and probably a whole lot worse off.
So, here we are at Independence Day again. I must admit that back at the bicentennial in 1976, I thought we would have moved on to a higher equality, a place where it wouldn’t matter one’s gender or race or LGBTQ status (I thought of it as sexual preference at the time). What we have is far less than that, a few steps backward in the area of personal freedom and privacy.
- White men are still in charge nearly everywhere even though they are a minority.
- Women are still second-class citizens even though we have made some progress. The white men in charge are still doing everything they can to control our lives and are still succeeding.
- Black Americans are still maligned, targeted by the police, and forced to live in poverty in many places in this “land of the free.”
- Indigenous peoples have lost some of their tribal autonomy since the Court ruled that they cannot fully police their own lands.
- Abortion is now or soon will be illegal in more than half of the states.
- The Confederacy has risen again and has recruited a whole bunch of other states (Confederate Wannabees) to its cause of white supremacy and toxic maleness.
- Christianity has decreased in the number of practitioners in this country, but the Christians who throw their weight around (mostly Catholics and Evangelicals) are rabid, spewing a faith I would not have recognized 50 years ago and still don’t recognize. They want to make this a Christian country of their own brand, despite the first amendment.
- Gun violence is up because guns are everywhere. There are more guns than people in this country while only about 35% of the people own guns. That’s pretty scary!
We must enjoy our 4th of July events but determine to fight for the freedom we celebrate today tomorrow and onward. It is our responsibility not to give up hope and to work for a better world.
