A retrograde majority in robes

In its leaked decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the majority on the Supreme Court demonstrates once again that the court, much like the Republican Party, is in the hooks of an authoritarian movement that is virulently misogynist and patriarchal, not to mention rabidly racist and xenophobic, proudly homo and trans phobic, relentlessly anti-democratic and anti-working class, increasingly irrational, angry, and messianic, and, yes, possessing no human decency.

While it portrays itself as populist, anti-elitist, and patriotic, standing up for American values, against “enemies at the gate,” nothing could be further from the truth. At its apex are billionaires, while occupying its base are angry white people – mostly male and Christian – who are inclined toward irrationalism, violence, retribution, and end times thinking.

Needless to say, they are ready, like the Supreme Court majority, to criminalize women and others with child bearing capacity for insisting on control over their own bodies.

If there are any historical antecedents to this retrograge movement that might give us a glimpse of the future if they were to seize power, it is the Southern Redeemers who with a prayer book in one hand and a gun in the another laid waste to the experiment in interracial democracy and substantive equality – first of all racial and gender equality – in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Most Americans and even more women want no part of such a future.