“American Society Hijacked” could be a political slogan of almost any party or group within the United States at the moment. It doesn’t depend on your beliefs, it is equally appropriate to all parties, cults, fanatics, normal people and, certainly, to every politician.
Those two sentences are essentially true across the board. What follows is tinged with my bias.
Newt Gingrich, the former U.S. Senator, is generally recognized as the person who awakened what used to be called “The Silent Majority”. However, I think this gives him too much rational and comprehensive credit. What he actually ignited was the fervor of the “Religious Right”. Having been ignited they first entered the Republican Party platform, then they hijacked the entire Party structure and philosophy and, more recently, started a national war headed by the fanatical wing of that movement. I am sure that most lifelong Republicans, who are patriotic, conservative and the historical backbone of American Society are wondering “what the hell happened”.
No political party in its right mind, as I have said before, would ever bring religion into politics. It’s far too divisive, and politics is all about getting as many votes as possible so you get elected and re-elected.
In a way, the Silent Majority is still the silent majority, only now they are silent about the excesses of their own party as well as what they perceive as the excesses of the Democratic Party. They are the “Doubly-Silent” majority.
The Gingrich-inspired “Tea Party” movement has morphed into a religious crusade that now threatens the very basis of American society. It is almost certain that the Congressional mid-term elections will be dominated by religious fanatics using abortion as their battle cry.
However, I think this is actually a great opportunity for the Democrats, strange as that may sound. Women are a majority in the U.S. population, as they are in most countries and cultures. Abortion is predominantly a woman’s issue, obviously. It doesn’t matter if you are white, black, yellow, brown, or green, it is a woman’s issue and, therein lies an enormous amount of power.
If I was in charge of Democratic Party national policy going into the congressional mid-term elections in November 2022, I would embrace this Republican-generated war cry of abortion. I would rally the majority of the population in a fight against the attempt to deny women their fundamental rights as American citizens. Kamala Harris said this week that abortion was the main issue facing American women. All’s fair in love and war. Democrats, take this Republican-generated battle cry and use it against them. You’ve got a significant proportion of the majority of the U.S. electorate behind you.
I realize that such an idea is a pipe dream. There is no Democratic national policy, there is no cohesion in the Democratic Party, and the main claim to fame of the Democratic leaders across the board seems to be an innate ability to destroy their own colleagues, rather than to concentrate on the health of the nation or the antics of the Republican fanatics. Meanwhile, the doubly-silent majority just sit on their hands, on the fence, and says nothing, as usual.
I don’t want to bring Donald Trump into this discuss except to put to bed the idea that his contribution to this religious war, or anything else for that matter, is anything other than pure opportunism for self-promotion. His beliefs, if he has any beyond his own aggrandizement, are not relevant to this war.
Do we really want to encourage a regressive society where a fanatical religious right starts controlling what we do in our lives, and enforcing that control with criminal prosecution?
One of the many state proposals for banning abortions includes the provision of criminal charges against women who go out of state to get one, and criminal charges against anyone who helps them.
Are they going to post religious police at gas stations so women filling up with enough gas to get them out of state can be arrested? Time to put the religious fanatics back in the box where they came from, forcefully, if necessary. They will be the destruction of America if we don’t.
