Time For the Other Half Rule, Colltalers

There are an estimated 2.5 million homeless children living in the streets of America today. Many once belonged to the thousands of families with no place to crash. They may be joined by millions of immigrant kids and babies born each year out of teen moms.
And yet, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court may add even more, given the two main tasks he was assigned to handle as a Justice. To scratch Roe v Wade, arguably the biggest deterrent against child pregnancy, may be the first one of them.
The other, of course, is to help pardon in the near or far future a possibly indicted, or impeached, president. The GOP and Co. have decided that only an accused rapist and ill-tempered drunk is fit to tackle such dirty work and, by the looks of it, he’s fully up to it.
We can’t say that his being all but shoved down the throat of the American people, to rule on matters great and small of their lives, was a rude awakening about the limitations of the power of protesting and moral indignation. That old gang of angry, rich, white misogynistic men, has shown once and again what they’re mainly after: more power. And now, to look good to the president too.
That they did it, assuring that another one of their very own got endowed with the powers of the country’s highest court to fulfill their agenda. Which includes keeping a tight grip on women’s reproductive organs and insulating Trump from any crime probes.
But for millions of women, rattled by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s courageous and heart-breaking public testimony about her worst private moment, the Kavanaugh confirmation was indeed a nauseating theater of horrors, capped by a big sucker punch in the gut.
The sight of a sprawling tent city growing in some isolated patch of America may not be easily associated with that staged drama broadcast from Capitol Hill though. But such a Draconian approach to immigration is a defining component of the Trump regime.
Morality and reason are certainly not. Because

ultimately, how can anyone defend a set of policies designed to outlaw abortions, while at the same time, demonizing welfare programs and building yet more jails to lock up those the system deems unworthy?
There’s no moral, or constitutional basis for that matter, in reversing over a century of chaotic but generally effective immigration laws, which have made the U.S. the world’s most powerful nation, its biggest economy, and most sought after workforce. And there’s no sense in conditioning personal choice by religion dictates, while spending billions on keeping people in jail. Or poverty.
The risk that regular Americans seeking addressing of wrongs by a Supreme now stocked with judges as flawed as Kavanaugh is that they simply won’t be heard. Just like what happened to Dr. Ford, their pleas for justice won’t even register on their radar.
The world saw someone ill-fit to hold such a crucial job, as he wouldn’t take responsibility or even acknowledge past mistakes, and lied and became belligerent at any hint of evidence used to confront him. Which, to be sure, was in short supply at these hearings. On top of that, for a future justice to invoke by name an ex-president he tried to impeach is, well, highly inappropriate and partisan.
Seeing migrant children boarding unmarked buses, from shelters in Kansas, New York, and other sites, to newly built tent cities in remote Texas lands, is itself bone chilling. It’s so un-American as to remind us of similar refugee camps near war zones around the world. But there’s no war in the U.S. for them to be evacuated from, just a fight against allowing hate to dictate immigration policy.
Now, if you’re wondering like millions, whether there’s a point of rupture, of when the ‘enough is enough’ motto takes hold, we’ve got good and bad news to you. The good in all of that is that, yes, there is: it’s scheduled to Nov. 6, and it may change everything.
The bad news, however, is that only 40% of U.S. eligible voters is expected to show up at the polls. Gerrymandering, new voting restrictions, general apathy towards politics, and above all, a lot of money, the truth is, we may not make it. And that does ruin it.
It’s been a few gut-wrenching weeks in America, and fewer seem determined not to let the bad, the ugly, and the despicable get too comfortably numb in power. But there’s also been plenty of reasons for half of the population to be very angry indeed. The ‘Women for Trump’ notwithstanding, the demographics that marked its resistance to the new regime from day one may be up to do it again.
It’s an imprecise exercise to try to gauge the depth and breadth of the new women’s lib in the world, and the U.S. election may just offer new arguments either way. It’s also been a challenge to harness the power of 3.250 million constituents into a common, actionable agenda for change. But just about now, the world could do well with a new generation of progressive, female leaders.
While we angst over the fate of Democracy in the nation that for a century has been more closely linked to it, in Brazil as expected, a Nazi sympathizer, Jair #ELENÃO Bolsonaro, and a nameplate for former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Fernando Haddad, won the presidential election’s first round. They head to a run off that may turn alright as long as the pro-Trump side is defeated.
Because, we hate to point that out, his side is undoubtedly winning these days. Not the victory we’d rally for, that of human dignity, spirit of tolerance, and compassion towards those fleeing tyranny. No, winning they are in what they’re really good at: power consolidation. On that path, chips are falling just into their ‘right’ places, and it won’t take long to infamy to come together.
But if millions of women have suffered the worst trauma that there is, having their bodies invaded by violence and subjugation, and have survived, and thrived into accomplished human beings, bent into doing the right thing, by the power and resilience of all Indigenous Peoples in the world, we’ll survive and thrive too. This time, 60% or more of voters must be at the polls saying Enough. WC

MORE CURTAIN RAISERS