Eric Zuesse
Covid isn't just a matter of private health, but it is especially a raging matter of public health; but, if Americans don't care about the health of anyone but themselves, then what else can this be but an insane country?
On the one hand, America's Supreme Court is so concerned about the alleged 'right to life' of non-conscious early-stage human fetuses as to dictate to any woman in whose body such an object is being formed, "That is state property and you have no right to terminate it." But, on the other hand, America's public are so little concerned about their own and actual "right to [conscious] life" as to allow (and to accept their Government's allowing) - at a time of one of the deadliest and most intensely communicable pandemics in global history - unmasked people to mass together in crowds of strangers to entertain themselves and so to catch the sometimes deadly disease and pass it on to others (after the event), and they thereby produce vast numbers of entirely preventable deaths throughout the entire U.S. population, despite America's claimed 'right to life'. Americans, obviously, care more about protecting the lives of pre-conscious fetuses than about protecting the lives of themselves and all of the strangers whom they meet - conscious beings. Is that sane?
On September 3rd, NPR's Nina Totenberg headlined "The Supreme Court Heads Toward Reversing Abortion Rights", and reported:
The Supreme Court's conservative majority tossed a legal bomb into the abortion debate late Wednesday night.
By a vote of 5-to-4, the court's most conservative members upheld, for now, a Texas law that, in effect, bans abortions after about six weeks. But almost as important as the result was how the court reached its decision - without full briefing and arguments before any court.
The court majority, including its three Trump appointees, emphasized that it was not ruling on the issues presented in the case. Still, it refused to block the law from going into effect for procedural reasons. The unsigned court order was just one long paragraph in length. And within a day, state legislators in Florida and elsewhere announced plans to introduce copycat legislation in their states.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who has dissented from almost every decision upholding expansive abortion rights, disagreed this time. He called the Texas law unprecedented because it not only bans abortions after roughly six weeks, but delegates enforcement powers not to state officials but to the general "populace at large." Roberts noted that the law appears to be deliberately structured to prevent courts from being able to promptly consider the constitutionality of the law....
Specifically, the law confers on any individual the right to file suit for money damages against a clinic, or any person who aids or abets an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
This is now the Trump Court; and, whereas, previously, signed 5-to-4 conservative U.S. Supreme Court rulings were common, this was an unsigned 5-to-4 theocratic ruling by all 5 of the U.S. Supreme Court's fundamentalist Christians: four Roman Catholic fundamentalists (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh), and the only Protestant fundamentalist) (Barrett), ruling that the new Texas law, which places $10,000 bounties on the heads of anyone who participates or assists, or "intends" to, an abortion in Texas, should maybe be allowed to be enforced by this bounty-system, and should temporarily be allowed to be enforced, though "this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law," but the ruling instead invites all states to consider passing similar laws so that the U.S. Supreme Court itself maybe won't need to act in order to outlaw abortions, and thus this matter might simply go back to being a state instead of federal matter. Interestingly, the billionaires-controlled U.S. 'news'-media report, and generally praise, details of each of the two (signed) dissenting opinions, but not of the one (and far more important but unsigned) five theocrats' majority decision, so that the public won't understand what's happening (which that majority decision is preparing to impose).
Among the very few public commentaries on that majority (5-to-4) decision was one by the lawyer Luppe Luppen, who headlined "The Supreme Court Guts Roe and Opens a New Era of Nullification", and he summed up by saying "If state legislatures can effectively turn off constitutionally protected rights by inventing or copying procedures that flummox these five Justices, they may well try to do it." He pointed out the legislative chaos which that will cause. However, his assumption, there, that the five theocrats were simply "flummoxed," instead of carrying out a very systematic and carefully thought-out pro-theocracy restoration of the coathanger-abortion era in America, wasn't backed by him citing any evidence, because it is simply false. These theocratic 'Justices' are respected by the public, though they are carrying out the commands in the Bible, instead of in the U.S. Constitution, and it's achieved by their own, and by the 'news'-media's, deceits, and, especially, by 'news'-media refusing to call lies "lies." Though, during Trump's Presidency, Democratic Party 'news'-media were starting to call his lies "lies," none of the American media call lies "lies" generally. For example, Obama's hefty serial-lying is still generally ignored, instead of noted.
As regards Americans being "so little concerned about their own and actual right-to-life as to allow (and to accept their Government's allowing) - at a time of one of the deadliest and most intensely communicable pandemics in global history - unmasked people to mass together in crowds," RT headlined on September 5th, "'Not a mask in sight': Fans return to U.S. college football in a BIG way - to the delight of many, but the horror of others (VIDEO)", and posted numerous photos of huge crowd-scenes of Americans at sporting events and other entertainments, in which no one was wearing a mask. Covid isn't just a matter of private health, but it is especially a raging matter of public health; but, if Americans don't care about the health of anyone but themselves, and if they are stupid enough to believe that by attending such events they are not endangering both themselves and others, then what else can this be but an insane country, where such dangerous behavior is legal? It might be common for many countries - France, for example - but still it is, quite simply, insane.
Is insanity normal? Is it good? Or is it bad? Is there any doubt about that?