Sobering Up the Drunk-with-Power

 

Showing up in their thousands outside the state house in Nashville, young people are taking a necessary first step -- the stirring of the pulse. The second will be registering to vote and getting their butts to the polls for the next time. Not just in Tennessee (of all unlikely places!) but in Wisconsin, where I'm persuaded the young people voted down that man for their Supreme Court, Daniel Kelly, who was first appointed to the Court by Gov. Scott Walker. Kelly had a record as an anti-abortion rights judicial activist, and young people turned out like never before to say no to him.

 

Now that House Speaker Tim Moore has former Democrat Tricia Cotham in his pocket, you can certainly expect more persecution of abortion rights in North Carolina -- maybe not the total ban that some of that Republican caucus want, but certainly new hobble-skirts for women, especially young women.

 

Whether or not a rolling tide of young voters breaks on North Carolina's sandy shore, it'll all depend on how relentlessly and smartly the Democrats raise the rights of women as not just a campaign theme but as the blazing torch of a movement to light the nighttime (i.e.,extreme Republican rule).

 

Yes, many a Republican local government is either already drunk with power, or they're hitting that bottle hard and regularly. And what happens when state legislators get shit-faced on their own ability to order people around?

 

*State of Missouri passed a law that allows for deadly force by “occupants” of “private property"— conditions written so loosely that occupants could refer to a diner or a baseball game attendee or someone watching a movie, while invasion could mean anybody they feel intruding on whatever property they happen to be on.

 

*Oklahoma has banned individual cities from even considering raising the minimum wage on their own.

 

*Texas is justifiably famous for SB 8, signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last year. It not only bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy but also deputizes citizens to enforce it, allowing any person to bring a civil lawsuit against an entity who “aid or abets” in an abortion procedure for damages of at least $10,000. 

 

*Idaho lawmakers, copying Texas, pushed a bill that not only bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy but uses a similar bounty-style component that would allow family members of rapists to sue medical providers who perform an abortion on the rapist’s victim. 

 

More examples abound, especially in states with a Republican super-majority (like in North Carolina, now), and every day we witness the bravado of bullies -- "Just how cruel can we get? Just how much can we make lives unbearable?"

 

If young people registered and voted, this excrement would be greatly curtailed. It can happen in North Carolina.