Some people mock the idea that he could figure out the Biblical prophesy for the end of the world with such mathematical precision, or that there is such a hidden code. But it all begins with the idea that the Bible--whatever its translation--is the revealed word of God. It's not. It may be inspired, as many texts are. But it's a book--a selective anthology, very selectively interpreted, mostly for ideological, political and yes--very worldly reasons: money and power.
But while some fear this predicted apocalypse and some mock it, a real apocalyptic drama is being played across America--and no, for once I don't mean the Climate Crisis. Which is the likely apocalypse that circuses like today's are psychological displacements from. But that's a topic for another day.
Today's topic is the drama that I find frightening--the so far successful and obviously coordinated efforts by GOPer legislatures and governors to disenfranchise American voters. In the guise of fighting nonexistent voter fraud, new and complex conditions are being placed on voting that will discourage and disenfranchise literally millions of voters, enough to change the outcomes in states like Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin. The targets are minorities and young voters--most likely to vote Democratic-- but the victims also include older voters.
Think about it. People who have voted all their lives--for 40 or 50 years-- will have their right to vote taken away. Transfer that horror to people who have not yet voted. In Ohio the law is expected to disenfranchise almost a million voters. In Wisconsin, some 20% of the electorate. Millions of Americans become helpless. To change what you don't like and support what you do like is the fundamental right that defines the American--however illusory and limited that right is, it is at worst the last fantasy, or the last hope.
The right to vote is as sacred as America gets. But so far not a lot of national leaders seem all that upset about it. But what's going on in the states is where the GOPer version of a slow motion coup is happening, by elected officials using authoritarian means, installing totalitarian governments. Labor understands this--as AFL-CIO prez Trumka said on Friday--because that's where anti-union laws are being enacted as part of this coup. But does anyone else?
It used to be--in the America I grew up learning about and believing in--that there was a bulwark against such excesses--the courts, especially the Supreme Court, defender of the Constitution. But I don't hear anyone expressing outrage and demanding that the Court put a stop to these anti-American efforts.
Maybe because they don't believe the Court will. In the comments to this post lauding the recall elections likely to be scheduled this summer in Wisconsin (though with the new voting law, how many voters for recall will find they aren't permitted to vote?), it's noted that the Supreme Court decided 6-3 to uphold Indiana's requirement for a government-issued photo ID card in order to vote. The dissent by Stephen Breyer in Crawford v. Marion County was that such a requirement amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax. Though the Court's membership has changed since then, its apparent ideological distribution hasn't.
It is this kind of impression--that fundamental rights are being attacked with future consequences for all political rights, but no one much notices, no one much cares, no one is outraged, and nobody sees the Supreme Court as the defender of those rights, of essentially what the American system is--that I smell the whiff of decay, and sense the end is near.
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