David French, social conservative and never Trumper, has said for quite a while and reiterated his stance in the wake of the leak from SCOTUS, that overturning the precedent of Roe v Wade and its associated constitutional rights is far less consequential than most people assume. His argument is built upon three core legs and in each of these I think it is likely events will prove him wrong.

The three premises of his arguments are as thus:

1. Few voters actually value the abortion issues highly
2. The nation is already divided by the states into stable abortion zones.
3. With the issues delegitimized as a right and returned to politics the compromise nature of politics will cool the waters and finalize into an agreed upon solution.

To support his premises that few voters actually care about the issues French often cites recent election data and he is particularly fond of Youngkin’s victory this year in Virginia. Exit polls do indeed show that few voters listed abortion as a driving factor in their decisions. However, this follows on decades of the issues being ‘settled law’ and if you are under 50 your entire life had been one in which this was a right. It is true that the storm has been gathering for some time and with the 3 justices appointed to SCOTUS by the previous administration this outcome was highly predicable. But I would contend that there is a vast emotional gulf between what is predicted and an event happening. A live example of this is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For months we have been warned that Russian was likely to invade it democratic neighbor. For weeks the US warned that the invasion was coming soon, not likely, not possible, but actually coming. The American electorate cared very little. Ukraine was not pressing political issue. And now it is. That seems very odd, we have quite clear polling that people really didn’t consider Ukraine very important, so they shouldn’t now when the easily predictable thing came to pass. But they do. Because it a very different thing to speak of possibilities and another to have reality come crashing into the consciousness. Being told smoking causes cancer and being told you have cancer are emotionally quite different in their impact and I think the same mechanism will be at work here. For decades people have been warned their rights are in danger and now those rights are gone. It is quite likely there will be a political firestorm.

Yes, the nation is already divided into states with abortion freedoms and those without. Far more abortions, even controlling for population, in California than Mississippi, but there is no reason to believe that will hold after the destruction of the right. Already liberal at the national level are scrambling in search of a way, probably in vain, to pass national legislation on this issue. I have no doubts that future government with the GOP in control will also attempt to pass laws criminalizing abortion nationally. After all, if you sincerely believe that this ‘murders children,’ a premise I do not accept, then how can you do nothing to stop it once you have cleared the barricade that has barred you from doing so? No, once Roe is dealt with the next objective will be a national legal movement. I am sure French would argue that it is against conservative principle to overrule the states with a national law. I will point out that there is no ‘conservative principle’ that held the GOP back from embracing and literally idolizing Trump. No ‘principle’ will stay their hand here.

And now we come to the most delusional and wish-casting section of his argument, that political compromise will be found.

We have a repeat of the trouble from the second premise, if someone believes that abortion is murder what possible compromise can that person make? How could they say, you may ‘murder these babies but not these?’ It’s preposterous but set that aside for the moment, either because it is untrue, the political movers and shakers do not hold this belief dear to their hearts or because it is impractical the third legs still collapses. Because of physical sorting and gerrymandering fewer and fewer political areas are competitive between the two camps, California is not going to compromises and give ground to the powerless GOP within the state and Mississippi will behave the same toward the Democrats there. As with every other issue before us there is absolutely no incentive for any political party to compromise. It only opens you up to attack from your more dedicated factions and wins you nothing in the contest. The battle has now crossed no man’s land and the two factions are going to be in hand-to-hand knifing fighting.

Of course, this will not stop with abortion. Yes, the leaked said that this reasoning doesn’t apply to anything else at all, but this is from the same liars who proclaimed Roe as ‘settled law.’ Sadly, the war only grows.

Among the political reading and podcasts, I follow there has been a debate concerning if Trump is losing his grip upon the Republican party. For those assessing the environment and concluding that his influence is waning a key item of evidence is that Trump endorsed candidates are doing poorly in the GOP primaries and his win/loss record when the primaries are completed may be negative.

I think these people are wish-casting, seeing the outcomes as indicative of a political environment that want to be true not the reality that is before them.

Yes, many, perhaps even most, Trump endorsed candidates in the current Republican primaries are faring poorly and may be likely to lose. But they are not losing to candidates that repudiate Trump’s administrations, who plainly and cleanly recognize that the 2020 election was fair, free of any result altering fraud or corruption. The winning candidates from coast to coast all repeat the core conspiracy-ridden Trump approved accounts of the election and the mythical fraud. None stand athwart the conservative tide and shout STOP! None endorse Cheney and her election. They are all, with or without his endorsement, Trump’s people.

But if Trump backs losers, puts his finger on the scale and it matters not, doesn’t that prove his influence is not that great?

Here is rule one for Trump and politics, ignore it at your peril.

Objective reality does not matter to Trump and his political fortunes.

Hundreds of thousands dead from a pandemic he denied and dismissed? Inconsequential.

Massive Tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy when he campaigned otherwise? Meaningless.

Disparaging and disrupting alliances in favor of geopolitical enemies? Irrelevant.

Issuing directives against LGBTQ when he had promised to be their best friend? Trivial

What Trump does, as long as it does not directly contradict a white supremist narrative, is without any weight or meaning. Trump’s political power is not generated by policy, principle, position, or actions but solely from emotion. And that emotion is anger. Anger at the ‘other,’ anger at the ‘elite,’ anger at the world not catering to his voters’ whims. So what if Mandel wins the primary in Ohio over Vance, they are both stoking the anger, they are both bending the knee to the Orange God-King, they are both Trump’s men and he wins if either does.

I have friend that collect firearms and I have friends that trade in curio and collectable firearms to supplement their income. I understand that domination of the federal government, enough to expand the courts, kill the filibuster, and admit new states to the union, would also bring draconian and in all likelihood ineffective gun bans. But I must still work for and hope for that Democratic party achieves such a dominate position.

I must take this stand because I also have friends who are trans, who are gay, who are black, who are female, and the GOP has made it crystal clear for some time now that individuals of such categories value far less to them than tax breaks, deregulation, and cultural hegemony.

Categorically I classify as a cis white male, free from the GOP’s insidious targeting, so why should I really care?

Beyond the dear friends in the above-mentioned classifications, I have more than a gram of empathy and imagination. I can see and foresee what cruelty this is even if I myself am untouched directly by such wanton malice. It is also philosophically consistent with my world view that unless they are harming others should be free to live their lives, their one and only life, in the matter that brings them the most satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment and that they are the sole judge of what meets those needs.

But aren’t I turning a back on the friends for whom happiness and fulfillment comes from a diverse and interesting collection of firearms?

I cannot politically help both. I must choose one side or the other and while the firearm issue may be important to some it is not a core component of one’s identity. You are not born a firearm fan you choose to become one but for all these others there was no choice, no option, and that crushing their rights in my opinion is a greater crime. When these people are free and secure then I can turn my attention elsewhere.

Man, the entire world seems to be a massive trash fire.

Russia, desiring to rebuild the former ‘glory’ of the Soviet Empire, more accurately Vladimir Putin, invaded the Ukraine. It is open, ugly, and deadly war. The West needs to be smart, cautious, and resolute if this is to have anything approaching a good ending with a free Ukraine and Baltic States.

It is looking more and more likely that the Supreme Court of the United States, with a conservative majority more than willing to tarnish the institution as an arm of one of the major political parties, will later this year overturn Roe v Wade marking what I think it the first time in American history that a recognized right will be repealed. There have been many rights that state and federal governments have failed to recognize but I think this is the first to be respected and then repealed.

Vast swaths of the Republican Party are now openly anti-democratic viewing elections not as the will of the populace but procedures to the hacked, manipulated, and subverted for their own benefit.

The Texas governor, not content with his citizens freezing to death while his senator evacuates to sunny Mexico, now wishes for the parents of trans children, and their existence is reality if you like or not, should possibly be investigated for child abuse if they support their child’s identity. As always with these people it is parental rights for me but not for thee.

There is a tendency to lay at the feet of the Former President all the ills of the current GOP ignoring the fact that pre-existing rot is what allowed the charlatan to leap to the front of the GOP field in 2015 and take command of the party.

With the COVID-19 pandemic killing over 800,000 Americans a time-travelers from a mere decade ago would be shocked at how virulent the GOP bases is in resisting this literally lifesaving vaccine, but that time traveler would be ignoring the GOP’s history with an anti-vaccine stance.

Human Papillomavirus is responsible for a number of cancers found primarily in women. HPV is often transmitted via sexual intercourse and can lay dormant in a person for decades. In 2006 the first vaccines against HPV reached the market with the promise to save thousands of lives. For the vaccine to be most effective it is best to administer it before any HPV infection dictating the best course is to vaccinate before sexual activity.

Conservatives rebelled. Ignoring the danger to the lives of thousands of women their only concern, and an utterly unfounded one, was vaccinating against a virus that was principally transmitted sexually would encourage promiscuity. To date legislation merely recommending the vaccination has been defeated by GOP forces.

In 2015 as candidates jostled for the GOP presidential nomination, Senator Paul Rand, a doctor for god’s sake, tied vaccination to autism, a thoroughly discredited position. When confronted with video of his statement Paul insisted his words did not mean what they meant suggesting that people should believe him over their lying eyes.

We’re all familiar with the fable of the boy who cried wolf. How charged with guarding the flock at night he falsely twice cried out alarm of the wolf, turned out the adults and laughed at them then on the third alarm when the wolf has actually appeared no one came and, the way it was told to me, he was eaten by the wolf. A cautionary tale against telling lies for when you will need to be believed you won’t be.

But what happened the day after the wolf?

No doubt with the boy killed and the flock in danger the adult sprang into action, formed hunting parties, beat the wood and either drove off or killed the wolf.

It is the follow up that interests me as next year it appears more than likely that our 6 person majority court will strike down Roe v Wade and take back a right from Americans. For years, literally for decades, we have heard the alarms that this was the goal of the right. The cry went up in every campaign that this danger was approaching and following the campaigns the ruling wasn’t overturned. Now those who raised these warnings were not the boy who cried wolf for they were not lying, they saw clearly the looming threat, but the length of time required for the right to gain the power to achieve their goals dulled the alarm and reduced the warning to background radiation of our nuclear war politics. But now it appears the boy will be eaten and what will the response be?

I have heard voices on the right dismissing any political blowback as alarmism. They point to exits polls and how few people voted on the abortion issue alone, but this may very well be a poor extrapolation. There is a very real difference between a hypothetical event, be warned that a danger may exist, and a real event that crashes into the political landscape like an asteroid. Nearly three generations of people have lived with the accepted knowledge that this right existed, its sudden extinction may very well be a shocking, traumatic, and mobilizing event just months before a national election.

Maybe.

We have not been in the situation before. Until this case the progress has been expanding rights of the individual not eliminating them and the past gives us very little upon which to see the future.