Chris Hedges: Fascists in Our Midst | Hacker News Reader

Chris Hedges: Fascists in Our Midst

scheerpost.com

7 pointsjules-jules8 comments

I gave it a minute or so but stopped here "Outlawing contraception, same-sex marriage and same-sex consensual relations are probably next."

A quick scan of the rest confirms a good decision. The point might be valid but the piece blows it with obvious overdramaticization.

I think there is nothing tech here, it does not belong on HN.

Your interpretation of what HN is about is narrow at best.

Furthermore, the justices explicitly called out Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell as cases that could potentially be revisited.

Where's the [sic] overdramaticization?

Outlawing contraception is next?

You don't think that's melodramatic?

When conservatives say they seek to stand athwart history, yelling stop, when do you imagine they mean? That's a pretty well known saying taken from the mission statement of the National Review from 1955, before the rulings cited.

Not at all. Most methods of contraception can technically fit under the definition of abortion. The Pill and IUDs, for example, prevent implantation of fertilized ovum. If human life begins at conception, those are both murder.

Banning contraceptives has been a stated goal of at least part of the anti-abortion movement.

Thomas intentionally targeted contraception and same-sex marriages in his opinion. It's not a matter of debate - he stated that the rulings that allow contraception and same-sex relationships/marriage should be revisited. There's no room for interpretation here.

"In his concurring opinion, Thomas — an appointee of President George H.W. Bush — wrote that the justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” — referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights."

- https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitution...

"Griswold v Connecticut established a married couple’s right to use contraception without government interference in 1965. The court ruled in the 2003 case of Lawrence v Texas that states could not criminalize sodomy, and Obergefell v Hodges established the right for same-sex couples to marry in 2015."

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/24/clarence-thoma...

"Justice Clarence Thomas took a broader view. In his opinion concurring with the majority, he wrote that if the legal underpinnings of Roe v. Wade were wrong, then so were the underpinnings of other rights not enumerated in the Constitution that the court recognized in recent decades. They include the right of married couples to use contraception, the right to same-sex romantic relationships and, in 2015, the right to same-sex marriage."

- https://www.wsj.com/articles/clarence-thomass-abortion-opini...

"Thomas speculated that the overturning of Roe would provide a blueprint for revisiting years' worth of decisions that he says are "demonstrably erroneous."

"After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated," Thomas wrote."

- https://www.foxnews.com/politics/clarence-thomas-supreme-cou...

I don’t understand why the use of the term fascist is used so loosely here.

I think there is a silver lining that people are squandering on outrage. We could be pushing awareness of the 9th amendment. The courts have almost never used it. If you’re not familiar with it, look it up.

This sounds pretty frightening. Non-American here, so can't really judge how realistic this is, but I'll take it at face value.

The thing that strikes me when I read articles like this are quotes like:

> What the ideology demands is law. What the ideology opposes is a crime. Once a legal system is subservient to dogma an open society is impossible.

> “There is no dialogue with those who deny your legitimate right to be,” I said, looking pointedly at the LGBTQ students. “At that point it is a fight for survival.”

It feels like these indicate a sentiment for a type of war that simply cannot be won. It's a rallying cry of "hey everyone who already agree with me, our opponents' mob is wrong and we should shout louder that we are right". Note I'm not at all commenting on who's right (if the article isn't overly alarmist, I'd say it's the author), but rather that this method just cannot be productive. The "opponents' mob" is well-organised and totally convinced they are right. And even worse, they can completely mirror your arguments and shout them to their mob. Aren't the "lefties" leading with an LGBT / gender / whatnot ideology that bypasses, dunno, "common sense" or "natural law", or something else that cannot be productively argued about? Again, I'm not trying to give such arguments merit, merely saying that in a (more and more heated) debate, it's pointless to throw arguments at your opponent that are basically unparsable to them.

In short, it's fighting polarisation with more polarisation.

The immediate problem is clear - creeping illiberalisation. But it seems like the root cause is a total breakdown of communication. Like it or not, "lefties" and "righties" live in one country and either have to get on with each other somehow, or you'll have permanent fights like this. Over time, maybe some Democratic Supreme Court justices will be elected, undo all this Christian stuff, and the "Christian Fascists", as the article calls them, will be just as outraged as the "Liberals" are now. We will be lucky if human casualties are low.

Compromises suck to everyone, but the alternative is even worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com