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.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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