Freedom's Cost

Americans are a strange and contradictory lot, to put it mildly. They claim (not unlike a certain candidate running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada) to love freedom, yet that love of freedom clearly has its limits. For example, many of them exult in the recent decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, claiming a victory for the unborn and the sanctity of life. Yet that same reverence for life apparently ends at birth, if you consider even one of several metrics, not the least being the fact that they have the highest incarceration rate in the world. If that isn't an indictment of an uncaring society, I don't know what is. And don't get me started about gun rights vs. the killing of school children.

But instances of their hypocrisy/contradictions abound. Another is the the crazed right-wing, of which America seems to have an unusual concentration, and its hatred of regulations or, as they view it, government intrusion in their lives (see the above for a glaring exception). The latest example is reflected in the Supreme Court decision to neuter the Environmental Protection Agency.

... the court released a ruling in West Virginia v EPA limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, in a major environmental case with far-reaching impacts. This has been classified a “devastating” outcome by environmental lawyers, climate scientists and activists alike. One with far-reaching implications for the future of the country, and world.

Despite Americans' professed reverence for life, this ruling will have the opposite effect:

“At this point, for those in positions of high power to deny the urgency and the stakes of the climate crisis is to condemn everyone alive today and generations to come to life in a sick and impoverished world,” said Ginger Cassady, executive director of Rainforest Action Network.

Distilled to its essence, the Court decision removes much of the EPA's regulatory power to limit pollution, the argument being that only Congress has such power. Given the partisan dysfunction of Congress, this means a major brake on greenhouse gas emissions has been removed. leaving it up to states to determine their own rules. It would therefore appear that any national climate goals Joe Biden has are now impossible to achieve.

Regulating emissions from power plants is a vital piece of climate mitigation, as the power sector is the second largest planet-warming polluter in the US, making up about 25% of national emissions. 

In the meantime, experts noted the domino effect of not rapidly eliminating national greenhouse-gas emissions will disproportionately fall to Black, brown and Indigenous communities, as worsening climate crisis deepens racial and social divides.

“There are so many paths to climate justice still, but what we’re seeing is a supreme court that is, I would call them ‘Supreme Climate Deniers’, that are trying to put themselves in a decision-making position,” said US Climate Action Network’s executive director, Keya Chatterjee. “That sends a signal that they will want to make it hard for the federal government to protect people in communities where right now the fossil fuel industry is running the show.”

“Decisions like WV v EPA make it clear just how much the system is rigged against us. A supreme court that sides with the fossil fuel industry over the health and safety of its people is anti-life and illegitimate,” wrote the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate organization.

I sometimes think that the Ugly American would be far more tolerable were they to cast aside their cloak of self-righteousness, false piety, hubris, over-the-top patriotism and jingoism and admit to themselves and the world exactly what they really are.

But a capacity for self-reflection and honesty really isn't the American way, is it?

 

 

The Power To Shock

I readily admit that most days, almost nothing fazes me, having come to the same conclusion as George Carlin that we are going away. Looking at all of the existential threats we face, it is clear they have one thing in common: a deeply flawed humanity with no prospect of remediation. 

Despite that,  I am not so disengaged from the world that I look upon events with Buddha-like serenity. The stupidity of people, the rise of the ignorant right and their passionate intensity, still has the power to offend me. And sometimes I even have the capacity to feel shocked.

Which was how I felt while reading Edward Keenan's column on the consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. The part that shocked me I will get to in a moment, but first, a little bit about his article, which discusses the fallout of the abortion decision: a growing distrust in government and its institutions as evidenced by the ongoing demonstrations of those vehemently opposed to the that decision:

The overwhelmingly pro-choice crowd chanted “Abortion is health care!” and many demonstrators carried signs reading things like “Her body, her choice” and “Keep your laws out of my uterus.” But among them were a prominent number of signs with a less issue-specific sentiment: “F— SCOTUS,” for example, and “Abort the Court.”

These sentiments that didn’t just object to a decision but crudely questioned the legitimacy of the court itself were in line with a growing strain of opinion in the U.S. in which trust and support for the court are at all-time lows, and its decisions are seen more widely as based not in law, but in naked political partisanship.

The polls show that 59% of Americans are opposed to the decision, but confidence in the Court itself has dropped to an all-time low of 25%. And when institutions that play a vital role in people's lives take such a hit, you can be sure of trouble ahead:

“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in December when the court was hearing oral arguments in the abortion case it ruled on this month. 

It is hard to see the Court in any other way. The increasingly emboldened pack of politically-appointed hacks is clearly just getting started.

On Monday, the court threw out the long-standing “Lemon test” of church-state separation in a case involving school prayer; a week ago, it similarly ruled a state might be compelled to fund religious private schools; in a New York gun control case last week, the court ruled the 110-year-old requirements for permits to carry handguns did not align with history enough to be an allowable restriction of the right to bear arms.

Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving hack, has suggested much more is in store; the part I have italicized and bolded is the part that shocked me:

...in his own concurring opinion in the abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly said the court should revisit the cases that protected access to birth control, legalized same-sex intimacy, and allowed for same-sex marriages.

Many may not remember the sodomy laws that once held sway in the United States and still exist in some jurisdictions, making homosexual activity between consenting adults illegal and punishable by prison terms. Indeed, there are still many countries that prescribe the death penalty for such activity. That these kinds of retrograde laws may return to the U.S. would have been unthinkable not too long ago.

Life today has become increasingly bleak, the aura of the dystopian nightmare undeniably pervasive. An outsize part of that nightmare is the fact that America is unquestionably being remade into a theocracy, of the same ilk and infamy as those who rule Iran and Afghanistan. It seems very unlikely that its democracy can survive. 

There are elements in the U.S. that want to bring back 'the good old days." Go back far enough and those days included the burning of witches at the stake and putting people in stocks, both of which I have little doubt still hold strong appeal for some of our southern neigbours. A significant portion, in fact, the majority, on the other hand, finds returning to a 'simpler time' both horrifying and abhorrent. 

How to reconcile the two polarities? Without the institutions of government to mediate and moderate and be the voice of the people, there is no resolution other than civil war, something many argue has already begun, its bloody conclusion somewhere off in a future that will be anything but rosy.