It is usual at the end of another calendar year to
look hopefully at the New Year, but at this point, and judging by the
events of 2014, there is very little to look forward to in America in
2015. In fact, it is getting extremely difficult to look ahead at the
coming year with anything other than dread and despair as America
devolves into a theocratic, racist, and fascist police state that the
government cannot, and apparently will not, even attempt to stop. It is
not that 2014 was devoid of good news; quite the contrary. But no
amount of jobs, Wall Street profits, economic growth, or falling gas
prices can counterbalance the distress Republicans, racists, and
religious Supreme Court justices have wrought on this sad nation with no
end, or hope, in sight.
First, it is noteworthy that the only good
developments of 2014 were at the hands of President Obama and his
executive actions; particularly acting on the existential issue of
“global” climate change and his landmark agreement with China. The
President’s action on immigration enforcement was long overdue, but in
his defense he did wait patiently for House Republicans to adopt, or at
least consider, the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill to no
avail. What his action did was reveal why 2015, like the past six years,
will be depressing for Americans who will watch a Republican-controlled
Congress waste taxpayer time and money in a crusade to undo a valid
executive order the GOP has deemed unconstitutional; despite the
conservative Roberts Court already ruled the President was well within
his constitutional authority like every Republican president since
Dwight D. Eisenhower. But that is the price Americans have to pay for
living in a nation with a party so steeped in racial animus for a Black
President that they have deemed his entire Presidency is
unconstitutional.
Maybe more than anything, seeing the U.S.
Constitution treated like an afterthought, if not a worthless comic
book, by conservatives, evangelicals, law enforcement, Republicans, and
the Supreme Court is all the proof a reasonable human being needs to
realize America is doomed. Republicans claim anything President Obama
does in unconstitutional at the same time they attempted to pass
legislation authorizing approval to build a foreign corporation’s tar
sand pipeline across America. That decision is the exclusive right of
the Executive Department and yet, one of the first actions a Republican
Congress will undertake to repay their Koch debt will be patently
unconstitutional and no-one will dare utter a complaint any more than
they will over the Republican drive to enforce Vatican rules banning all
forms of birth control with personhood legislation; more on that in
another article.
Republicans in state after state were hastily
passing legislation abolishing other Americans’ 14th Amendment rights
due to their adherence to bastardized American Christianity and
empowerment by the Vatican contingent on the Supreme Court. History will
show that it was in 2014 that 5 conservative Catholics on the Highest
Court in the land deconstructed the religious clauses in the 1st
Amendment to the Constitution to expedite evangelical Christians and the
United States Council of Catholic Bishops’ ascendance to wield ironclad
authority over the religious freedom of the rest of the population.
Through it all, not one politician had the courage or conviction to
inform the American people that every dirty attempt to deny women the
right to make their own health choices, or gays to marry the person they
love, was founded in an archaic religious text because they were, and
still are, terrified of committing the mortal sin of speaking out
against or opposing theocracy. Speaking of mortal sins, the past six
months have revealed that there is no greater sin than speaking out
against out-of-control and murderous law enforcement officials doing
their due diligence to eviscerate the Constitutional protections
afforded all Americans.
If racist police officers were not gunning down
unarmed African Americans with impunity ending their Constitutional
right to life with approval of the judicial system, they were
threatening Americans opposed to fascist police tactics complete with
battlefield gear. Instead of supporting and defending the U.S.
Constitution, they took great pleasure in denying Americans their First
Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly. All, by the way, with
approval and support of Republicans and conservatives as blatantly
racist as the police abusing African Americans whether civilians or
fellow police officers. Law enforcement was also complicit in aiding
and abetting, through direct support, a seditious white man and his
well-armed Oath Keeper, Constitutional Sheriffs and Police Officers
Association (CSPOA) militia intent on initiating a second revolution;
with impunity and ardent support of conservative media and Republicans
with no more regard for the Constitution as they do African Americans,
poor people, elderly Americans, Veterans, or children.
America may have been an exceptional nation at one
time, but the country began its downward spiral thirty years ago when
Republicans and conservatives decided, and convinced many Americans,
their mortal enemy was the federal government; a federal government
created by the U.S. Constitution. Now, that very Constitution has all
but been rendered null-and-void either by government fear of opposing
sedition, or an all-powerful evangelical movement with avid support of
the conservative Catholics on the Supreme Court.
Throughout history, other peoples have sat idly by
and watched their freedoms eroded, and finally abolished, by fascist
religious, corporate, and military-style enforcers, and America is
rapidly heading in the same direction with the same results. One would
like to say this country is at a crossroads, or nearing a tipping point,
of which there is no return, but according to what this nation has
suffered throughout 2014 at the hands of fascist police, armed militias,
evangelical fanatics, and a theocratic Supreme Court, the scales are
tipped. America is on the same course as 1930s Nazi Germany and the Koch
brothers are more than happy to fund this country into oblivion. If
2014 is any indication, 2015 is not going to be a Happy New Year.