By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on June 26, 2022
An Editorial Opinion
On Friday, June 24, 2022, America took a giant step toward Taliban rule in America. This was the day the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that gave American women the right to an abortion. It also marks the first time in history that the Supreme Court has taken away an established constitutional right from a protected group of Americans.
The victims of Friday's Taliban attack are American women. For the first time in nearly 50 years, women in the U.S. have less constitutionally-protected rights than their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed.
Once again, American women and their bodies are the "property" of misogynistic men, many of whom are supported in their subjugation of women by subservient females accomplices. For reasons I do not understand, these female accomplices seem to enjoy their status as "doormats' at the entryway of inequality for women.
Women Had No Rights Under the 1787 Constitution
In 1787, the U.S. constitution was written by 55 white men and ratified by white male voters in the thirteen original states. Women were the "property" of white men when the constitution was written.
At the time, white male dominance in America was strictly enforced through: (a) a husband's right to chastise (or beat) and rape his wife, (b) laws prohibiting a woman from owning real and/or personal property in her own name (including cash), (c) the wholesale disenfranchisement of women in the political arena, and (d) severe limitations on educational opportunities for women.
At no time since the constitution was ratified in 1787 have American women enjoyed the protection of an Equal Rights Amendment. All efforts to ratify the only Equal Rights Amendment for women that passed in Congress have failed. American women only gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
America's long, sustained, and unrelenting subjugation of women, from the cradle to the grave, is documented in my May 5, 2022 article titled, "Roe v. Wade is Gone; Women are 'Property' Once Again."
Today, American women have no constitutional right to an abortion, thanks to concerted domestic Taliban activities conducted by: (a) the "Gang of Five" justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) former President Donald J. Trump, (c) National Republican Party leaders in Washington, (d) local, state, and federal elected Republican officials across America, and (e) the complicity of women who enable America's domestic Taliban rulers.
The "Gang of Five"
With Friday's ruling, the "Gang of Five" (i.e., Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barret) fully embraced Donald Trump's condescending view of women when Trump bragged that he could grab women by the "pussy" anytime he wanted. Trump meant what he said. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court controls what a woman can and cannot do with her "pussy" when she is pregnant and desires an abortion.
During his term in office from January 2017 to January 2021, Trump packed the Supreme Court with three Taliban-like zealots -- Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett -- who hoodwinked Americans with their prestigious Ivy League academic credentials. They joined Samuel Alito, a longtime woman-hater and sophisticated racist on the Court and Clarence Thomas, America's premier "Uncle Tom."
This "Gang of Five" is a domestic version of a Taliban cell. Its base of operations is the U.S. Supreme Court. On Friday, this Taliban cell used sheer political muscle to blow-up Roe v. Wade.
Before long, this "Gang of Five" will clear the way for Republican-controlled states to resurrect a husband's right to rape and beat his wife. These rights were widely exercised by married men in America and were completely legal under state law for hundreds of years.
As nominees to vacancies on the Supreme Court, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied their way onto the Court. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) affirmed on Friday that these two Taliban members lied to them about respecting and preserving Rove v. Wade as established law. This lie duped both Senators into supporting their nominations, thereby clearing the way for them to take their seats on the Supreme Court.
We now know that Justice Amy Coney Barrett is to American women what Justice Clarence Thomas is to African-Americans -- a cultural enslaver of women (and minorities) for the purpose of redeeming and preserving white male privilege in America. Like her counterparts in Afghanistan, Barrett's vote to overturn Roe v. Wade was rooted in her strict adherence to her personal religious beliefs, rather than any respect she had for judicial precedence.
Barrett and Thomas should be proud of themselves. They have succeeded in ruining their family names for eternity and in joining Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the Supreme Court's Hall of Shame. Taney wrote the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision holding that blacks in America, whether freed or enslaved, had no rights that white men were bound to respect.
The Taliban cell on the Supreme Court is committed to forcefully shoving Taliban rule down the throats of a majority of Americans the same way the Taliban rules in Afghanistan. Friday's Court ruling was a hard gut-punch to American women that was written by Sam Alito, a lifelong misogynist. Alito wanted to show the world in grand fashion that white men still rule America and dominate its women with an iron fist.
Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Taliban cell on the Supreme Court is now hunting down the person who leaked a draft of Alito's opinion in May. Hopefully, they will not be successful in their effort to capture, torture, and destroy this leaker.
Justice Thomas, who has been a lifelong affirmative action hustler (for himself only), made it clear in his concurring opinion that contraception devices, the "morning after pill," and same-sex marriage are also on the Taliban's chopping block, as well. Thomas' list of Taliban targets come less than a week after the Texas Republican Party adopted a platform last weekend that declared homosexuality an "abnormal lifestyle choice" and opposed "all efforts to validate transgender identity."
The Texas Republican Party, which is a sanctuary for domestic Taliban activities, also called for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Act was enacted to prevent discrimination against black voters. In 2013, Thomas was a member of a different "Gang of Five" on the Supreme Court that gutted the Act. In January 2022, Republicans in Congress killed voting rights legislation that was designed to restore vitality to the Act.
Preparing for the Future
It is clear that women in America can no longer depend upon the U.S. Supreme Court, or Congress, or the presidency to protect them, their bodies, or their basic constitutional and human rights. What is more, President Joe Biden is too politically weak and mentally diminished to provide the kind of strong leadership and protection that Americans who are not privileged white males need and deserve.
Vice President Kamala Harris is not an effective political asset in the fight against America's rising Taliban dominance. Ms. Harris has not demonstrated any degree of success in handling the major White House initiatives that were assigned to her by Joe Biden (e.g. new voting rights legislation, solving the crisis at our southern border, leading the nation's transition to electric powered vehicles, etc.).
What is more, children in America have no advocate or protector in today's Republican Party. This is true whether they are white murder victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, or Mexican America murder victims at Robb Elementary School in Texas, or poor children of all races in America who desperately need adequate healthcare, decent housing, nutritional meals, daycare, and equal educational opportunities. America's Taliban has made it crystal clear that only "unborn children" have protected constitutional rights in the nation today. Children living "outside the womb" must fend for themselves.
In the span of ten years, the U.S. Supreme Court has transformed itself from a respected national institution into a Republican-controlled domestic Taliban cell. Today, only 14% of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court.
The "Gang of Five" is so out of step with the views of a majority of Americans on the issues of abortion and gun safety legislation that access to the Supreme Court building has been walled off from the public for security reasons and the justices must have personal security guards for themselves and their families. Taliban rulers in Afghanistan must protect themselves in the same way.
We Can and Must Defeat America's Domestic Taliban Cells
It will take strong, aggressive political leadership in the White House and Congress, together with a massive voter turnout in November's election, to reverse the adverse effects of Friday's Taliban decree. Those of us who believe in democracy and the rule of law must make it clear to the Taliban's "Gang of Five" on the Supreme Court and the National Republican Party that Taliban rule has no place in American society.
Today, the strongest and most capable pro-choice leader on the national political scene is Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-Michigan). She is fighting with vision, vigor, courage, and success against America's growing Taliban movement on (a) every initiative to suppress voting rights for women and minorities, (b) every concerted effort to take away a woman's right to control her body and her reproductive rights, and (c) every measure to eradicate the legal protections for LGBTQ citizens and their communities.
Gov. Whitmer is young, gifted, highly intelligent, hard-working, and experienced in governing an ethnically and politically diverse population. She is committed to the fight for equal rights and social justice for every American who was intentionally left out of the 1787 version of the constitution.
Gov. Whitmer is so effective in her fighting skills that "Trump patriots" recently plotted to kidnap and kill her.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice should launch an Immediate criminal investigation into Clarence Thomas and his reported pay-to-play scheme. The New York Times documented the fact that Thomas votes on the side of conservative advocacy groups (with cases pending before the Supreme Court) that hire his wife Ginni as a "consultant."
Thomas has always been an obstacle to equal rights for African-Americans. Today, he is a clear and present danger to the health, safety, and welfare of America women. Additionally, Thomas' adherence to judicial ethics has been lacking for decades. Yet, the "Gang of Five" uses Thomas as its spokesman for taking credit for its successful Taliban attacks on American democracy and women rights.
So that we are clear, I believe that a woman has an absolute constitutional right to (a) control her body and (b) determine her individual reproductive rights in consultation with her doctor. I will fight in the political arena with every breathe of life I have to make sure that we defeat Taliban strikes in America and restore the constitutional right to an abortion for American women. Working together, we must begin this national effort by defeating as many Taliban/Republican candidates for state and federal offices as we can in the November 2022 elections.
We must not waste our time by trying to convert voters who support Taliban/Republican candidates. We must register and educate new voters as Independents and turn out many more voters than the Taliban. They must be soundly defeated, plain and simple.
At this juncture, the side with the most to lose (white men) are more committed to Taliban rule than the side with the most to gain (everybody else). We must change this political paradigm, now.
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