Trump: What a long, strange trip it's been.

Not that the trip is anywhere close to being over. I was just thinking how, in 2016, when it was reported that the Russians were interfering in the election, it seemed an outlandish suggestion. In my office, a co-worker, who was a Trump admirer, scoffed at the notion. "No way! Come on!" Indeed, for those of us used to political business as usual, it seemed like a bit of spy fiction.

Well, you know where we've been since then. At the beginning of his administration, Trump was all chummy with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, revealing highly classified information to them during their White House visit.

Then, there was January 6 attempted coup.

And now, look where we've arrived. Trump is under investigation for his possession of top secret documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House. If we thought that the idea of Russian interference with the 2016 election was eye-popping, it now seems very mild stuff compared to what followed. As they say, if you wrote this as fiction, nobody'd believe it.

Religious fanatics are now running the country

The entire enterprise of conservatism is dedicated to enforcing what conservatives see as a natural hierarchy. When you add in the religious fanaticism now present on the Supreme Court, you see that natural hierarchy as established by God. The rich are rich because God favors them. God ordained that the poor be poor, and there's nothing to be done about it.

What makes this brand of fanaticism so interesting is that its adherents feel that they must enforce this natural order, and make sure the poor know that it's their natural lot, and that God's anointed are here, apparently, to make their condition worse. The irony here is that the fanatics believe that the Almighty needs their help in making the wretched more miserable. Why should any being called the Almighty need the help of us lowly humans? After all, there is plenty of misery in the world without our heaping it on on purpose.

It's our fellow humans who need our help, not the Almighty.

The Supreme Court's recent rulings have chipped away at the wall between church and state (Carson v. Makin); made it easier for people to get guns (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen); and made it impossible for women in many states to get an abortion (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization).

It's that final ruling I'm out concerned with today, but I'll say a little about the others, too.

In this second Gilded Age, the income gap between rich and poor has grown into a yawning chasm. The super-rich have started their own private space programs, while the poorest Americans are denied a minimum wage high enough to feed themselves. In light of this, the overturning of Roe v. Wade tells a poor woman that, no matter how she got pregnant, or whatever the condition of her fetus, she cannot abort it. She must accept the consequences of her actions.

The rich have their own discreet means of getting their wives and daughters out of trouble.

Imagine. Well, you don't have to imagine, because it's now reality.

God forbid that if a woman (of necessity helped by a man) makes a mistake and does not want a baby (perhaps because she's too young, or lives in grinding poverty), she be allowed to save her own future and not carry the burden of that child to adulthood.

God forbid that if a woman is raped, she be allowed to prevent that child from being brought into the world.

God forbid that a woman who is carrying a child with a serious birth defect be allowed to prevent a child's lifetime of misery by aborting it.

God forbid that any poor woman be allowed to ease her own burden. No, the poor must accept their lot and accept any increased burden life heaps on them. After all, it's their sinful behavior that got them pregnant in the first place.

Meanwhile, the rich are forgiven everything. They are allowed to misbehave because they can afford it.

The other two decisions (guns and religious "rights") make an interesting combination with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Making it easier for anyone to get a gun swells the ranks of the two opposing camps: bad guys with guns, and self-righteous assholes with guns.

The proliferation of guns makes life so much more interesting. Self-righteous assholes with guns (George Zimmerman) will be making their own mistakes and killing not necessarily bad guys with guns, but the unarmed (Trayvon Martin) at greater rates. Occasionally, they'll be mistaking their own family members for intruders.

Coupled with the tearing down the wall between church and state, the individual's right to carry military-grade weapons will make everyone ready for any future religious wars that living in a theocracy normally produces. After all, declaring ours a Christian country, while denying non-Christians their religious freedom, brings up the interesting question of who is a Christian and who isn't. When religion and politics are unmixed, such questions are matters of civilized theological discussion. But when religion confers political power, the question of who is a real Christian turns deadly. The experience of rival religious militias during the Lebanese Civil War provides a pattern for America's own future as a "Christian nation." Who is, and who isn't, a Christian? A Mormon? A Catholic? A Baptist? Which kind of Baptist? A Methodist? A Jehovah's Witness? A Seventh Day Adventist? Well, that can be sorted out in our AK 47-saturated country, no problem.

The religious fanatics in the Supreme Court are rushing us as fast as they can towards a society that is unlivable. A society no sane person would want to bring a child into. A society where a woman might want to have an abortion.

Clarence Thomas's comments on Roe v Wade protesters

Get Clarence Thomas, whose wife participated in the attempted overthrow of 2020's presidential election results. He sees no irony or hypocrisy in his criticism of people protesting peacefully and expressing their disapproval of the Court's upcoming overturning of Roe v Wade.

"We can't be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want," he said.

"We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with outcomes we don't like," he said. He should lay that last one on his wife.

That Roe v Wade will most probably be overturned is bad enough. That the arguments for overturning it are religious rather than legal are what make it scandalous. I cannot see how the decision, as written up by Samuel Alito, can possibly last very long, assuming that future Supreme Courts are composed of judges who revere the Constitution and the rule of law, rather than the current crop of religious fanatics who make decisions to get just the outcomes they want.

Our demon-haunted politics

 Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow has gone viral and become a hero in the battle against the hard-right Republican party's unhinged and cruel public statements. McMorrow's political opponent, Lana Theis, made ridiculous accusations in a campaign ad that McMorrow was "grooming" and "sexualizing" small children. It was an accusation that comes from a place of fear, and that was designed to trigger the fears of right-wing religious voters. McMorrow answered the accusations with a speech that highlighted her own down-to-earth and Christian values. In the context of today's politics, McMorrow's was an appropriate response.

But I have a problem with much political argument today: liberal Christians respond to right-wing fundamentalist Christians by arguing over who is a Christian and who isn't. The ongoing battle between right- and left-wing Christianity does little to address the subject the argument is about. Should we, on the basis of what we know about a given subject (in this case, LGBTQ rights), argue facts, or should we be arguing about what we think Jesus would have said about it?

"Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case." - Bertrand Russell

When Christians go church shopping, they try to find a church that suits their temperaments and their political leanings. There's a church for any pre-existing belief. Some choose hellfire and brimstone; others choose the lovingest God they can find. And there are passages in the Bible that support both camps. Historically, religious belief has, for example, been used both to support slavery and to call for abolition.

"The gods conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers." - Anatole France

The point to be made here, one that should be obvious but apparently isn't, is that more than two centuries have passed since the time of Jesus, and the things we have learned in the interim make using the Bible's teachings as a guide to life less than ideal. I will be plain: Jesus was a human, a man of his time, and in spite of all of his apparent fine qualities, we know more than he did. We know that homosexuality is not a choice, but a way that very many people are wired, and have been since before the dawn of history. We know that Blacks are human and not some subhuman beings to be ruled over by whites. We know that slavery was a cruel and monstrous practice. We should be trusting ourselves to make arguments about moral questions without having to refer to the moral conditions that existed more than two thousand years ago. Arguments over religion have gotten us nowhere, and will continue to get us nowhere, on questions of how we should treat each other.

If we need to believe in anything, let us believe in our own ability to decide what is right. Morality is not founded in religion.

“Every time the scientists take another fort from the theologians and the politicians there is genuine human progress.” - H.L. Mencken