The Reality of the Third Rail and Why 45 Turns Out to be an Exceptional Thief

As a country we've finally arrived at the definitive third rail and the reason we have had to endure the worse example of America to emerge in decades.  It's not that he's a common criminal.  It's not that he's a sexist or a racist.  He is, of course, all of the above.  Not discounting the fact that he could be just a common thief (cue Hans Gruber).  And I don't hate Trump, though I'm sure I will be labeled a hater.  I actually like his political incorrectness...he's just dangerous and not an asset to our country.  And I want to qualify that with regard to his supporters, the criminal, sexist, and racist elements are in the small minority.  That means very low in number.  All together this small basket of deplorables could not have elected him on their own. There are not enough deplorables despite Hillary's math.  But they did vote for him.  But so did a much larger and more important group. That larger group of American's voted for him for a single reason.  They are the fabled one issue voter.  They voted for him hoping he would appoint enough conservative justices to the Supreme Court to  finally have a shot at over-turning Roe v Wade.  Despite the fact that the evidence is clear, his position on abortion is only as truthful as any number of his other half-baked positions.  When you see his lips moving you know he is lying.  And his lying depends on whether or not he needs your vote. It has been through this thick curtain of lies that he has accomplished his ultimate magic trick and misdirection of the voting public with regard to Roe v Wade...and subsequently won the election. Again, in the words of Hans Gruber, "...by the time they figure out what went wrong we'll be sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent."

I get it.  Those who support the sanctity of human life place that position above all others.  I can see that the one issue vote has merit.  On it's surface it's so easy to get behind that position.  Who, in their right mind, supports killing babies?  No one can support that to your face.  It is perhaps the easiest lie for anyone to tell...including Trump.  But the reality, as stark and perhaps shameful as it may be, is somewhat different.  Someone has to be lying.  To suggest for a second that the 25 senators from Alabama are so far above reproach, righteous to the core in their mind, heart, and soul is so terribly discordant from what we actually know it befuddles credulity.  I am not saying we have 25 Trumps in Alabama. As individuals they are good men.  They have their political positions, their integrity, and their religious views.  They are also good servants of the public.  As a whole, however, they represent something altogether different.  They are a white faced sham representing the "Moral Majority" in America.  It reminds me of the bumper stickers from the 70's.  And of course the counter-bumper stickers that emerged shortly there-after.  "The Moral Majority is Neither".  They clearly do not, and cannot, represent the United States.  It's laughable that they seemingly represent the Great State of Alabama.  Something is terribly wrong in Montgomery.  Maybe some good will come out of this revelation.  But that's a longer story.

With regard to the issue of Roe v Wade, I am certainly not the legal scholar who will argue any of this in front of a judicial bench.  I can barely argue these issues at the dinner table.  And who touches this third rail at the family dinner? It's more emotionally charged than bringing up gun control or climate change (And when did climate change become a third rail at family dinners?  Answer: Trump).  The problem with Roe v Wade isn't the morality of the decision, which I personally believe belongs strictly with those involved, it is with trying to govern a country where a single issue drives the agenda.  When single issues drive the agenda bad things will happen.  Skin-headed slugs will crawl out from under white rocks. Misogynist rats will slip in through cracks in the doors of sexism.  And corrupt snakes will show up to sell you marsh-land rather than trying to drain the swamp. All this is happening in the name of making America great again.  I don't think that was the intent.  I certainly hope my MAGA friends didn't believe bad things would happen.  I think, rather, they believed in a single issue goodness not realizing that they would be paying tuition at Trump University.  They would be buying the entire farm of bad behaviors.  Again, that is a longer story.

The governance of our Country is complex.  It its, perhaps, the most complex of any artificially created endeavor.  If we are still Number # 1 at something on planet earth, it still has to be getting democracy right, as well as the governance of an economy and a union of states that can stay together.  That includes every single federal institution that leads the world in science, in defense, in policy, in peace, and in prosperity.  Those institutions did not spring up over-night.  They were built brick by brick, dollar by dollar, argument by argument, over the course of two centuries. The debates will continue and I thought the institutions would stand.  Until now.  The dismantling of our government is the dismantling of our way of life.  Reducing the complexity of their creation with the politics of corruption threatens our core belief's.  Not simply the legal right to to make a privacy decision as given by Roe v Wade.  When you disregard the institutions of government.  When you act above the law.  When you create a crises within country that takes a jack-hammer to our foundation the  ends cannot justify the means regardless of what is individually at stake.

News flash, a women's right to choose, under the constitution, cannot be mandated by the Federal government.  It is a privacy issue protected by the 14th Amendment.  That is the legal precedence for Roe v Wade.  Thus, delegating the right, or lack of right,  to the States does not change the constitutionality of the dilemma.  Believing the states can decide for a women is a position that misses the forest for the trees. A state's attempt, Texas in this case, is why we have a Roe v Wade to begin with.  The constitution is silent on abortion but it is not silent on the right to privacy.  It is fundamental. This is why states also cannot decide what is good or bad when it comes to a women's body, or a man's body, regardless. When we start down that slope, when the government can legislate these types of invasions related to our body we stop being unique, we stop being sentient, we are no longer human.  We can kill the economy, we can kill the environment, we can kill our standing within the world order.  But when we kill the essence of what makes us human, our mind and our bodies, we become a sub-class of living things that can be externally controlled.  I will not fill the pages here with the analogies that emerge from this type of legislation because they tend to trifle with the serious nature of a decision to abort a pregnancy.  Yet still (think eugenics) each one makes my skin crawl should a government, any government, begin to legislate those things for us.

Roe v Wade will stand, should it make it to the Supreme Court.  And I believe it is on it's way.  The challenge will fail and Alabama will be forced to capitulate.  Short of that, the dismantlement of our government will be complete.  And why?  Because we elected an exceptional thief to the White House...he squeezed through the cracks with the support of a single issue constituency who were duped on a single issue.  Maybe those one issue supporters don't care if he was lying, so long as he put a conservative on the Supreme Court.  They were duped because Roe v Wade cannot be over-turned.  Why?  Because the issue or our privacy is a universal, and for now, an unalienable right. Those who oppose abortion are fighting an issue that isn't actually on the ballot. Whereas the country may be divided on the right to choose, we are far less divided on our right to privacy. And on that front, in the words of the Brett Kavanaugh, our most recent Supreme Court Justice, this right is "settled and a precedent of the Supreme Court".  Should he change his mind the very definition of integrity must also change.  That will be the true judgement day for our country. Not because Roe v Wade fell, but because the Commander-in-Thief duped a constituency on one issue to enrich himself through the process of his destruction politics on every other.