America Is Sleepwalking Toward A Theocracy

With things shaping up to be an existential choice between Joe Biden and the continuation of democracy and Donald Trump and the end of democracy and the rise of a dictatorship heavily infused with right wing theocracy, far too many Americans seemingly remain blind to the stark choice that will likely be before them and instead whine about Biden's age or various single issues and cannot see the forest for the trees.  If they are unhappy about aspects of Biden's presidency, they ought to be outright terrified at the prospect of what a second Trump regime would usher in, including the imposition of a white "Christian" nationalism that will pander to the racism and hatred of others that are the defining elements of today's Republican Party base.  Personally, I am at a loss as to how any one black, Hispanic, non-Christian, or LGBT can be flirting with either supporting Republicans - who frankly would like to see them exterminated or at best made into second or third class citizens - or sitting out the election like some petulant child. This blindness to reality threatens all who support democracy and freedom of religion for all, not solely for right wing Christians.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ongoing slide towards theocracy even as the more and more Americans have walked away from religion.  Here are highlights:

If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.

The drumbeat of incidents moving us ever closer to the seemingly inescapable future is so steady and frequent that we’ve developed outrage fatigue — we’ve grown numb.

For instance, on Tuesday, the Alabama Supreme Court [pictured above] ruled that frozen embryos are children, and that destruction of those embryos, even by accident, is subject to the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In his concurring opinion, the chief justice of the court, Tom Parker, wrote, “Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

The ruling could mean less access to reproductive care in Alabama if specialists in the field of in vitro fertilization simply choose to practice in states that don’t threaten their efforts.

The idea is absurd and unscientific. It is instead tied to a religious crusade to downgrade the personhood of women by conferring personhood on frozen embryos.

I called Sean Tipton, the chief advocacy and policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who told me: “One of the points in the abortion debate is, ‘Is it really about abortion or is it about controlling women and controlling sex?’ And this clearly exposes the idea that it’s not just about abortion.”

Control of women’s bodies is the endgame. And some religious conservatives won’t stop until that goal is achieved. For that reason, intervening victories — like the overturning of Roe v. Wade — will never be seen as enough; they will only intensify a blinding sense of righteousness.

There is an array of reproductive rights cases percolating around the country that could make their way to the Supreme Court — the same court that Donald Trump brags about transforming, having appointed a third of its justices. The legal and political battles over these issues are far from over, and the preservation of women’s remaining rights is far from certain.

The only thing that seems to be temporarily stopping congressional Republicans from pushing for a national abortion ban — after years of arguing that their goal was merely to allow individual states to make their own laws — is that the issue of reproductive choice is an electoral loser for their party.

Abortion is just one front on which this religious fight is being waged. As of last week, the A.C.L.U. was tracking 437 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills being considered by state legislatures.

Then there’s the alarming effort by conservative groups to transform and reshape the federal government in ways that curtail American freedoms, but also, according to Politico, to bring Christian nationalist ideas into a second Trump administration.

To those advancing these ideas, the will of God counts more than the will of the American people, even when Americans object or disagree.

Reportedly, one idea among the various proposals is invoking the Insurrection Act on Trump’s first day back in office to facilitate deployment of the military against protesters.

We are perilously close to all this becoming a reality, potentially aided and abetted by disaffected Democratic voters.

I’m talking about many Democrats with single-issue objections to President Biden — whether it’s opposition to his position on the Israel-Hamas war, disappointments about the overall state of the economy or concerns about the president’s age — who haven’t committed to supporting his re-election, who don’t seem to see that in November the country faces one of the most existential electoral decisions it ever has faced.

If these Democrats decide to punish Biden by sitting it out, they could wind up performing one of the greatest acts of self-immolation in recent political history: abandoning an administration committed to the protection of democracy and possibly allowing the ascension of a theocracy intent on destroying the very freedoms that progressives cherish.