Petition volunteers: "Stop the Tyranny."

     

     "Do the research. The doctors and medical staff and personnel--a high percentage of them are not taking the shot.  The shot is very dangerous."

     "Government has to stay out of it. We don't want somebody coming here and saying you have to wear a mask or show a vaccination record to shop here."

              Volunteers at the petition booth

Costco has a new policy in Oregon. 

They asked to see your Costco card, then asked "Are you vaccinated?" If you said you were, you need not have a mask to enter.

I shopped at Costco yesterday. The man at the entrance door enforced people showing a Costco card and everyone flashed a card. It was the honor system on whether one had been vaccinated. Ninety percent of the people in the store had no mask, and no employees that I saw wore one. Local statistics show that just under half of adults in Jackson County have been vaccinated. About 36% of all residents are vaccinated.

This implies what I suspected. People who aren't vaccinated say they are. People who don't care to be vaccinated don't want masks either. They feel little or no social obligation to wear a mask. 

Saturday, in front of Costco

Three people staffed a booth on the public sidewalk in front of Costco. They were gathering petitions to bring to local city councils and county commissions.  While I visited with them, many cars passed by and gave friendly waves. Two pickup truck drivers waved and adjusted their exhausts so that they billowed huge plumes of black soot. (It is an act of defiance against the tyranny of pollution rules, and a sign of approval of the petition.) The petitioners' location required many shoppers to make a long trek across a lot to get to them, but they had many pages of signatures.

The petitioners disagreed with vaccinations themselves; with mask-wearing having any value; with the invasion of privacy of a store asking if people had been vaccinated; with the implied expectation that people should be vaccinated; with the government policy of encouraging voluntary vaccinations; with the mandates over the past year to wear a mask; with the current policy of requiring masks in stores if one was unvaccinated; and with Governor Kate Brown's making any mandates by executive order instead of an act of the legislature.

The petition itself was to be delivered to local government. It asked them to object to the Governor's order on constitutional grounds. The petition asked them to resolve:

 1. All employees and agencies of this (County or City) shall not assist in the enforcement of business closure, school closure or stay-at-home directives under the Executive Orders of the Governor relating to the Coronavirus pandemic. . ..

  2. All employees and agencies of this (County or City) shall recognize the protections provided by the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Oregon in carrying out their duties.

The petitioners wanted me to "do the research" and realize how dangerous vaccines were. They said they got their best information from a website news group, Telegraph. It is a weekly pay site and people on the site describe it as a "Patriot app" and "unbiased social media." It  does not censor "our President Trump." The petition volunteers urged me to get the real information about COVID and the world from the unbiased information passed around by fellow newsgroup users. Fellow citizens, not journalists, are credible.

Recommended App

Takeaway One: These petition volunteers are not "vaccine hesitant." They are opponents of the vaccine. They think it is dangerous. The fact that it was developed under the Trump administration at "warp speed" does not mitigate this. "It hasn't been approved by the FDA. It was an emergency approval, that's all."

Takeaway Two: The petition volunteers resent the idea of being disadvantaged by their refusal to be vaccinated. They feel picked on and shamed.

Takeaway Three: Appeals to community benefit or public health will fall on deaf ears. Their motivation is individual rights, individual body autonomy, personal choice. They have the spirit of the Gadsden flag--don't tread on me. All three petitioners said they disapproved of abortion but that abortion wasn't their fight, and government should not intervene on the woman's decision. It is between the woman and God, one volunteer told me. "Our bodies, our choice. Nobody tells us what to do with our bodies."

Takeaway Four: They are information-siloed, and more deeply and narrowly than just Fox. They trust newsgroups from like-minded people. Efforts to change their minds or give them alternative information coming from politicians, health authorities, physicians, or from any mainstream news source will be worse than pointless. They will perceive it as lies pushed on them by a tyrant--an attack on them.

Takeaway Five: The petitioners seemed sincere, dedicated, and engaged. They were not there on a Saturday afternoon dutifully carrying out an obligation. They are committed. 

Takeaway Six: Based on the response by passing vehicles, a great many people agree with them. They may be in a minority, but they are not outliers.

"Lock down Kate Brown"

Pay workers more

Capitalism has a solution to the labor shortage.

Supply and Demand.

Government stopped people from working.  They broke it, so they owned it--they paid people not to work. 

Job Posting: Harry and David

That raised the wage floor.

America had a public health crisis. A great many people who wanted to work were told they could not. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed to enhanced unemployment benefits and income supplements. After all, it was the government telling people not to work.

The underlying premise of the American labor market had been that hard working taxpayers should not have to support laziness. Unemployment insurance gave temporary income support of less than what people would earn if working.  

Medford Parks: Riding Lawn Mower

COVID rules reversed the practice and moral premise. It was virtuous to stay home.  Between state and federal unemployment checks and other direct payments, people in low and moderate paying jobs could get by without working. A critical mass of people dropped out of the labor market.

This took place at a time of heighten consciousness of income disparities, voiced by leftist "progressives" like Sanders, and right-populism from Trump. Ten years ago GOP politicians spoke of the virtue of "trickle down" and the virtue of wealthy job-creating "makers" over "takers." Not anymore. 

Medford cable operator: will train

The American economy has been slowly skewing toward owning rather than working. George W. Bush gave it a name--the "ownership society." The idea was that people would succeed financially by owning things--their own small business and their own home--and that workers get an increasing part of their income by owning a bit of the stock market in their retirement accounts. People would be both labor and capital. 

Wealth wasn't trickling down because employees did not make enough money to become owners. The benefits of ownership went to the richest Americans. They are the "takers" now. This idea has become commonplace thinking among both Democrats and Republicans.

St. Louis Fed: Share of national income going to wages and salaries

That resets the labor market and political environment for America as we come out of the COVID era. Employers want to go back to pre-COVID normal, and they cannot. They don't have the workers they need. Traditionally, minimum wage jobs allowed people to survive on a mix of wages and public benefits. Extra unemployment benefits during COVID give some employees another option: Stay home. 

America is in the midst of an experiment. Can businesses raise the incomes of lower-paid employees enough to entice people back to work, and if so, will the market adjust to keep those higher wages permanent?  As consumers, taxpayers, and voters, Americans may decide we would rather pay higher costs for certain items generally provided by low-wage personnel--elderly care, hospitality, agricultural products, delivery--than pay in taxes for public subsidy of health, food, and housing  that allow minimum wage workers to survive.  

Americans would not normally do this by intention. Conventional political thinking locks Republicans into opposition to minimum wage laws, thereby protecting the subsidy given their business constituency by essentially topping-up the wages they pay with public benefits. Democratic policy normally points toward government programs to alleviate injury points. Republicans fight these as "giveaways." That is the push and pull of current politics.

Click: USA Today

COVID benefits push "reset," and allow Americans to experience a new paradigm for helping the working poor. Possibly the solution to the desperation of the working poor is for them to make enough money not to be desperately poor. 

Southern Oregon provides a pilot program test.  We are a long way from metropolitan areas and are an archetypal low-wage area. We experience our own worker shortage thanks to the local cannabis economy. People who might have looked for jobs at Walmart or fast food employers or agricultural work at or near minimum wage have another option--growing or trimming cannabis. That work pays $15/hour, minimum and often much more, with add-on bonuses "at the back end" when crops were sold. Growers can not use banks, so they pay employees in cash. This raises the wage floor.

The net result was not disaster. Instead, more people have more money to spend. Workers can afford to pay for cars and car insurance, pay off student loans, pay their landlords, buy stuff. Businesses made adjustments in how things are produced and what things cost the consumer. The costs of producing things (including having workers who can eat, sleep, wash, have children, stay healthy, live) transfers to the consumer. 

Democrats benefit when people are paid more. The erosion of Blacks and Hispanics votes in 2020 surprised Democrats, but should not have. Apparently many in those groups would rather be treated as "regular Americans" like everyone else, earning their way, than as special beneficiaries of Democratic programs. Republicans will benefit. They think government programs are bribes to voters. Better a paycheck than a food stamp card.

COVID benefits created a temporary labor shortage and thereby a wage floor. Americans are aware that the American economy has been skewed against workers. America has had meaningful wage floors in the past, including during the 1950s period that Trump suggests to be the "Great Again" golden age when America was at its best. Possibly we will experience a wage floor period long enough for people to decide they like it.

I worked for minimum wage in my youth. Darned right I liked a pay raise.

Portland unrest had long term consequences for America.

Oregon swung a national election Democrats should have won handily. 

Democrats blew it.

Portland changed the context of Donald Trump's pugnaciousness and divisiveness. Instead of looking like an outlier, he looked like a counterweight. 

Readers of this blog from around the country have inquired of me why Portland saw such prolonged civil unrest and what I thought were the consequences. Here is how I explained it to out-of-state people. I invite Portland-area readers to correct the record, if they think I erred. 

Oregon is blue because Portland is dark blue. It has a Democratic mayor, its county has a very liberal District Attorney, the Oregon Governor and statewide officials are Democrats. At least one City Council member was openly critical of "police violence."

A group of people within the liberal-activist-progressive-social justice community voiced and acted on the idea that “violence is the language of the oppressed.” It created a moral gray area in the minds of some political activists, whose voices were heard by Democratic leadership. The idea was out there that, maybe, people throwing rocks and setting fires and destroying  statues of George Washington had the same moral standing as did authorities in trying to stop them. We had seen how police used force on George Floyd, so force used to stop arson and looting was morally suspect. People were hyper-alert for misconduct by the police in their use of force against demonstrators and people associated with them.  People who protested in George Floyd/BLM protests were joined by people I consider mostly nihilistic hooligans and vandals, some of whom branded themselves as "Antifa" and others as not Antifa, but anarchists. Those anarchist vandals hid out within the George Floyd and BLM protests, took advantage of the nighttime darkness and general unrest, and co-opted the protests. They stole the show. 

May, 2021

The result was night after night of largely unchecked hooliganism, sometimes describing their actions as work to destroy a system of racial or economic oppression. It took place under the watch of Democratic officeholders who seemed unwilling or unable to do anything consequential. The fact that the vandals attacked the Democratic HQ along with courthouses and police stations, and were against all authority, didn’t change the story: It was Democratic failure to control their own partisan tribe. It looked terrible on state and national media, and Trump-oriented media focused on it before the election and still today. The vandals did not mind that it looked terrible for Democrats and gave Trump and Fox a rich target. They were doing a big F. U. to all authority and Democrats were in authority and no better than Republicans. 

The violence shifted public opinion in Oregon and nationally. It gave energy to Trump’s attacks on Democrats and it changed the frame of Trump’s brutality and pugilism. Trump was unlovely, but in the context of Portland’s apparently uncontrollable violence it gave validity to the idea that maybe law-and-order brutality was necessary. After all, squishy Democratic permissiveness was the alternative and it wasn't working. Trump's divisiveness and pugnaciousness seemed like a plausible counter-weight  to stop unrest in a violent world.

Democrats did far worse in the 2020 election than people expected. Trump tried to link Biden with socialism, but my own sense is that this was a hard sell. After all, Biden was the centrist who defeated Bernie. He was the non-Bernie. Biden looks like an "old school" ethnic Catholic, not a firebrand.  But Trump also said Biden and Democrats were weak and allowed social unrest. To my mind, that had political traction. Biden was bunkered down in Delaware because of COVID, and he looks slender and frail in comparison to Trump, and whatever he was doing to lead his party to stop urban unrest wasn't effective. The proof of that was that the Democratic city of Portland endured nightly violence. 

The 2020 election should have been a slam dunk for Democrats. Four thousand people a day were dying from COVID on election day and the economy was in shambles and Trump’s approval rating was about 43%. Far more people disliked him than liked him, yet he still nearly won re-election. I consider this evidence of how thoroughly the public was rejecting Democrats, too. 

Trump was just one or two notches too abrasive for his own good, so Biden won, but Biden had no coattails in the House, Senate, and states. The public wanted rid of Trump, but did not want more of what they were seeing in Portland. The weakness in the states, combined with the Supreme Court  deciding that partisan gerrymandering is a political decision to be resolved in elections, not by the courts, means partisan gerrymandering has legal permission to continue and get worse. In Florida, Texas, and Georgia, where Republicans have complete state control, lines will be drawn that will assure a few more Republican seats. Democrats already need to win some 53% of the Congressional vote to have a majority and this will get worse.

The Portland unrest set the stage for complicated optics on the January 6 insurrection and GOP willingness to use what Giuliani called "trial by combat" to replace democratic government. Republicans point to Portland and say Democrats closed their eyes to violence. Democrats want to show that Trump-led Republicans are minimizing insurrection and violent overthrow of an election, in contrast to themselves, who are defending laws of peaceful transfer of power. The Portland violence changes that frame, allowing people to view both parties having their own partisan hooligans they pretend to object to, while secretly allowing and protecting. It gives cover for Republicans to say they are just mirroring Democrats.

Oregon is usually an inconsequential backwater in US politics. We have a late primary. But this time Oregon really made a difference. We were used as the poster child for Democratic incompetence to stop civic unrest. We helped swing an election from a landslide to a squeaker.

 

Trump has not gone away.

The past is never dead. It's not even past. The GOP is more Trump-tied than ever.

     “I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes. So we’re going to watch that very closely. And after that, you’ll watch Pennsylvania and you’ll watch Georgia and you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin. You’re watching New Hampshire. Because this was a rigged election. Everybody knows it.”

         Trump, to a crowd in Mara Lago

The GOP is closing ranks. Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are whipping GOP votes to stop a bi-partisan investigation of the January 6 event.

Trump is busy in Mar-a-Lago. He has endorsed the primary opponent to the Georgia Secretary of State. He has condemned the election officials and governors of Arizona and Georgia. He condemned Liz Cheney and praised Elise Stefanik. He holds the key to Republican primary elections, and he is vigilant and active. He knows who has been naughty and nice. To be a Republican, you need to be on board with Trump. Liz Cheney is the cautionary tale nationally. In Oregon, Knute Buehler is the cautionary tale. Be with Trump or you aren't a real Republican.

MSNBC news hosts have chortled over Trump's current outreach medium, www.donaldjtrump.com. Why it's just a blog, they say, proof he is a has-been. GOP officeholders who want to keep support of Trump and his base, but don't want Trump's negatives, have their own workaround. They don't disagree with Trump, and they actively or tacitly validate Trump's position, but they pivot and say to "move on" because Trump is the past. That is how they negotiated the ousting of Liz Cheney. She was paying attention to Trump. We pay attention to Trump, but pretend we don't. 

It is wishful thinking. Trump himself, his positions and personality and influence, isn't dead and isn't past.

Trump's tweets had been angry, prolific, and short. Trump's blog posts are angry, prolific, and long. I read them because it is clear that Republican officeholders and candidates care about what is in them. I was startled by the one he posted yesterday in response to getting notice that the investigation by the New York Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney had now become criminal, not simply civil.  

We are properly skeptical of "amateur psychology," and yet every adult draws impressions about other people's manner and mental state. It is essential social behavior. We ask, "how are you?" Is the person we are interacting with healthy or unhealthy; happy or sad; serene or angry; rational or crazed. We need to read other people state of being. I read the post below and alarm bells went off. I have some third-party experience with bi-polar behavior, both the depressed stage and the manic stage. I have observed instances of "pressured speech," when rushed, frantic, disconnected thoughts erupt. I will say no more, lest I inappropriately prejudice readers. But I ask you to imagine this kind of comment coming from a work colleague, a friend, a family member. Would anything seem weird to you?  "How is he?"

The comment below is verbatim and in full, paragraphed exactly as Trump did.

Donald J. Trump:

I have just learned, through leaks in the mainstream media, that after being under investigation from the time I came down the escalator 5 ½ years ago, including the fake Russia Russia Russia Hoax, the 2 year, $48M, No Collusion Mueller Witch Hunt, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and others, that the Democrat New York Attorney General has “informed” my organization that their “investigation” is no longer just a civil matter but also potentially a “criminal” investigation working with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. There is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime. But, make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here. The Attorney General of New York literally campaigned on prosecuting Donald Trump even before she knew anything about me. She said that if elected, she would use her office to look into “every aspect” of my real estate dealings. She swore that she would “definitely sue” me. She boasted on video that she would be, and I quote, “a real pain in the ass.” She declared, “just wait until I’m in the Attorney General’s office,” and, ”I’ve got my eyes on Trump Tower.” She also promised that, if elected, she would “join with law enforcement and other Attorney Generals across this nation in removing this President from office,” and, “It’s important that everyone understand that the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.”The Attorney General made each of these statements, not after having had an opportunity to actually look at the facts, but BEFORE she was even elected, BEFORE she had seen even a shred of evidence. This is something that happens in failed third world countries, not the United States. If you can run for a prosecutor’s office pledging to take out your enemies, and be elected to that job by partisan voters who wish to enact political retribution, then we are no longer a free constitutional democracy. Likewise, the District Attorney’s office has been going after me for years based on a lying, discredited low life, who was not listened to or given credibility by other prosecutorial offices, and sentenced to 3 years in prison for lying and other events unrelated to me. These investigations have also been going on for years with members and associates of the Trump Organization being viciously attacked, harassed, and threatened, in order to say anything bad about the 45th President of the United States. This would include having to make up false stories. Numerous documents, all prepared by large and prestigious law and accounting firms, have been examined, and many hours of testimony have been taken from many people, some of whom I have not seen in years. These Democrat offices are consumed with this political and partisan Witch Hunt at a time when crime is up big in New York City, shootings are up 97%, murders are up 45%, a rate not seen in 40 years, drugs and criminals are pouring into our Country in record numbers from our now unprotected Southern Border, and people are fleeing New York for other much safer locations to live. But the District Attorney and Attorney General are possessed, at an unprecedented level, with destroying the political fortunes of President Donald J. Trump and the almost 75 million people who voted for him, by far the highest number ever received by a sitting President. That is what these investigations are all about—a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States. Working in conjunction with Washington, these Democrats want to silence and cancel millions of voters because they don’t want “Trump” to run again. As people are being killed on the sidewalks of New York at an unprecedented rate, as drugs and crime of all kinds are flowing through New York City at record levels, with absolutely nothing being done about it, all they care about is taking down Trump. Our movement, which started with the Great Election Win of 2016, is perhaps the biggest and most powerful in the history of our Country. But the Democrats want to cancel the Make America Great Again movement, not by Making America First, but by Making America Last. No President has been treated the way I have. With all of the crime and corruption you read about with others, nothing happens, they only go after Donald Trump. After prosecutorial efforts the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, they failed to stop me in Washington, so they turned it over to New York to do their dirty work. This is what I have been going through for years. It’s a very sad and dangerous tale for our Country, but it is what it is, and we will overcome together. I have built a great company, employed thousands of people, and all I do is get unfairly attacked and abused by a corrupt political system. It would be so wonderful if the effort used against President Donald J. Trump, who lowered taxes and regulations, rebuilt our military, took care of our Veterans, created Space Force, fixed our border, produced our vaccine in record-setting time (years ahead of what was anticipated), and made our Country great and respected again, and so much more, would be focused on the ever more dangerous sidewalks and streets of New York. If these prosecutors focused on real issues, crime would be obliterated, and New York would be great and free again!

Abortion: Don't forget to say grace.

 About a quarter of American women have had abortions--that we know of. 

About 900,000 abortions happen every year in America--that we know of. 

There are surely more.

Some states don't report abortions. Some doctors quietly do them for established patients. "Plan B" medical abortions happen when a heavy hormone dose taken early in pregnancies causes a fertilized egg to fail to implant, and a woman experiences a heavy menstrual flow. Done.

Ralph Bowman sent a comment to yesterday's blog post. Ralph is well into his 80s, and he sends me occasional "rants," some of which I publish because they remind me of an angry Walt Whitman or a non-musical Bob Dylan. Readers my age will recall "protest songs" of the 1960s. Ralph creates a version of those. His comment yesterday reminded me of Barry McGuire singing "Eve of Destruction."  It is still current. It begins with the Middle East:

Barry McGuire, 1965: "Eve of Destruction"

The Eastern world, it is explodin'
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'

and then legislative gridlock and the filibuster--also still current:

I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of Senators don't pass legislation

and Selma, Alabama, then and again in 2013 the location of the Shelby County v. Holder lawsuit that ended federal oversight of voter suppression efforts: 

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
Ah, you may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place

And then the lines that got the song banned from broadcast radio: 

Hate your next door neighbor but don't forget to say grace
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend
You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

Ralph Bowman comment yesterday, repeated here today,  could have been about masks, about loving one's neighbor, and about vaccination refusal. He lives in Josephine County, Oregon. It is archetypal Trump Country: Rural, conservative, anti-government. It has an economy based on logging and cannabis. Right-populists who live there hate taxes to pay for police, fire, libraries, or another services; Leftist hippy-leftovers who live there don't want police-types monitoring their crops. Put the two together and it is a place that wants less government and it voted nearly to disband its sheriff department. They defunded the police, for real, and it is a warning. It did not create paradise. It created a place where people carry guns to defend their homes and cannabis crops. Blue Portland, blue Hood River, blue Oregon State University-dominated Benton County have 65% vaccinations. Josephine County and the rest of rural Oregon are well below 50%. The vaccination rates are a proxy for the Biden vote.

Don't forget to say grace.

Ralph Bowman's comment was about church and those 900,000 babies born to women who said they couldn't handle them. Theoretically, an abortion ban would trigger a major cultural shift and sense of social obligation in America. After all, those babies are our babies now, Americans' babies. We put the mother into a jam so we have an obligation to her, too. We broke it, we own it.

That won't happen, Bowman says. The impulse to ban abortion is about lack of empathy, not empathy. It is about punishing the woman, not caring for the child. It isn't about loving one's neighbor; it is a chance to cast a stone. Here is Ralph's protest song. Or poem. Or rant.

I have never been to a church service where so called “Christians” who believe in LIFE pass the collection plate in a Sunday service to help an expectant mother pay for the birth and raising of an unwanted child let alone a wanted child. Their hypocrisy is beyond belief. They also do not support a “good” woman’s right to make her own decision regarding her body. No one wants to have an abortion. Women are emotionally shredded and carry the guilt for life. They can never forget that event unless they are psychotic. How about having a tubal ligation or an hysterectomy? How about having a vasectomy? People do it for the fun of it? I hope Amy Coney Barrett does a lot of speaking in tongues before she and her buddy god ax Roe Vs. Wade. Everyone knows someone who has had an abortion. Ask them all about it. I am sure, it was the highlight of their life and their husband’s life. Who will throw the first stone, apparently many good preachers and a lot of great politicians? 

The Supreme Court may end Roe v. Wade

The anti-abortion dog may catch the car. 

The anti-abortion team played the long, long game. It worked. Victory is in sight. The Supreme Court may reverse Roe v. Wade.

The dog has longed to bite that tire. It will end badly for the dog.

In 1973 the Supreme Court announced a decision in Roe v. Wade. It established a constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and a qualified right in the second trimester. States with majorities that wanted to ban abortions in that period could not do so. 

A long process to reverse Roe v. Wade began. The process required networking and promoting law students, law professors, law clerks, and judges. It required making opposition to abortion a litmus test for Republican candidates. It required Republican presidents to appoint anti-abortion judges. It required the politicization and mobilization of White Evangelical Christians in league with the post-Goldwater GOP. It required Mitch McConnell to refuse to fill a court vacancy. It required Ruth Bader Ginzburg to die and for her to be replaced by a judge appointed by a Republican president when there was a Republican-majority senate. It took states to prepare legislation designed to probe the potential cracks in the logic of Roe v. Wade and the state of Mississippi to set up a case banning abortions beginning at the 15th week of pregnancy.

All that was the dog chasing the car. 

Abortion has been a very good issue politically for Republicans. It linked Christian faith to opposition to abortion, making Evangelical Christians the largest constituency in the GOP tent.

Republican majorities in states in the American South and Midwest have nibbled at the edges of abortion bans, and have found success. Rules regarding waiting periods, mandatory counseling, design requirements for places doing abortions have mad abortion clinics expensive, hard to access, and limited in number. There is only one abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi.

Anti- abortion ad

If Mississippi wins its case, some legal analysts predict that fifteen or twenty states would be prepared to make abortion essentially unavailable in their states. 

Prediction: People will like the idea of an abortion ban better than the reality of one. This will backfire on Republicans.

Some people desperately want an abortion because they very much did not want to get pregnant. The reasons might be economic, social, legal, or something else. For better or worse, traditional values notwithstanding, the Pope notwithstanding, most Americans have de-linked sex and childbearing. Most Americans want to plan parenthood and they want to limit the size of their families. Sometimes unplanned pregnancies happen.

The age of first birth in the USA is now 26 for women and 31 for men. There is little cultural sanction against unmarried twenty-and-thirty-year-olds having sex. We assume it. They are having more sex than babies. In modern American society, children need to be "fit in" to multi-faceted lives. Married women get abortions. A woman with two children may not think she can handle a third or fourth.

Women have their reasons for abortions. The Guttmacher Institute polled 1,200 women post-abortion and asked why they chose to abort. 

  25%--not ready for a child or another child. The timing was wrong.

  23%--cannot afford a baby

  19%--have completed childbearing/have other children depending on her

   8%--don't want to be a  single mother/relationship problems

   7%--not ready/too young

   4%--would interfere with education or career plans

   4%--physical/health problems

   3%--health of the fetus

Anti-abortion ad

It is easier to have a sentimental and protective view toward a potential baby and to ignore the wishes of the woman herself when the woman is invisible. Anti-abortion messaging focuses on the baby that isn't created, not the woman. In a locality where women can quietly disappear and have a procedure, there is a safety valve. Abortion is personal and private. Were abortions not allowed, more of those women would emerge from the shadows. About 900,000 abortions are recorded every year, although abortion numbers are under-reported because several states, including California, do not report them. About 85% of those abortions are done by unmarried women. 

The current abortion access situation, where it is legal everywhere, easily available in some areas but difficult in others, is a federalist process. It essentially fits the current cultural and moral climate because our thinking, like abortion access itself, is complicated and hypocritical. A great many people want abortion to be rare and discouraged. They consider it wrong on principle but also something that is necessary in practice when the woman herself and her situation is considered. 

This hypocrisy and mental compartmentalization are not unusual. It is how Americans handle defecation; we know it happens but our mental branding of other people leaves out that private reality. It is how Christian supporters of Trump handle his adulteries; the "real" Trump is the guy holding up the Bible, not the one having sex with Stormy Daniels. It is how Democrats handled Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; move on, they said.

If popular majorities in a state manage to ban abortion they will upset this hypocritical equilibrium. The woman in a jam will become visible. The politics of anti-abortion will change, at least on the margins because the government will have become the tyrant telling the woman what she must do. Some people will be OK with that, but there is middle ground on this issue. There are people who want abortion to be legal, safe, and rare, not illegal, unsafe, and more-rare. 

In an evenly divided partisan country, the surest way for Republicans to lose on this is to win.

U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz supported Liz Cheney's ouster.

     "We'll either hasten down a poisonous path where only the winners of an election actually accept the results, or show we can still muster the patriotic courage that our forebears showed, not only in victory, but in defeat. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral."

            Mitch McConnell, January 7, 2021

Allegations raise questions, making them, by definition, "questionable." Questionable things become doubtful things. Doubts solidify into a certitude of opposition. 

Certitude becomes doctrine. Doctrine shapes leadership and the future.

It is a death spiral. Cliff Bentz is a foot soldier in that process.

Cliff Bentz was elected to Congress in the bright red Oregon Second Congressional District. Bentz is invisible in the national news but emerged in Oregon's news when questioned about Liz Cheney's ousting from leadership. He praised it. 

Liz Cheney is saying what Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy each said briefly in the aftermath of January 6 attack on the Capitol to "stop the steal." She said that the Republican Party has lost its way. It is no longer a conservative party. It is a party loyal to Trump, and Trump insists on a dangerous lie. It is doctrine in the GOP. That doctrine shapes leadership and the future. 

Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy stopped talking. Liz Cheney did not.

Liz Cheney was an embarrassment to the House GOP. She observed the obvious, not just about Trump, but about the GOP rank and file. They were aiding and abetting Trump by their silence and by their rhetorical sleight of hand. They worked out a way to let Trump be Trump, to profiting from Trump without being Trump.

Trump said mailed-in ballots caused fraudulent elections--except in Florida, where Trump himself would vote by mail. Otherwise the elections were entirely fraudulent.  Bentz was silent about vote by mail in Oregon, which has universal vote-by-mail, even though his own election took place that way.

Bentz went to Congress saying he planned to vote against accepting the vote in Pennsylvania, a state Biden won by 80,000 votes, and on the evening of January 6 he cast that vote. In a press release written on January 7 Bentz said he was "committed to listening to the opinions of my constituents." He said he "heard many speak of distrust in the elections."  The truth of a fair election was questionable, but there was certainty that voters believed Trump. Note he did not say Biden won the election and deserves to be president. Instead he passively acknowledges Biden would be installed. He acknowledges loss, not legitimacy.

[W]e can accept that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States. I am committed to a peaceful transfer of power, but I continue to empathize with those whose frustrations with the electoral system remain unresolved. I share their frustrations, and as the Representative of Oregon’s Second District, I will do my best to address their concerns.

Bentz told an Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter that Trump was not responsible for the violent effort to Stop the Steal. "I don’t think he ever would have wanted it to turn violent. The protesters are responsible, the people who decided to take it upon themselves to damage things."

The GOP and Cliff Bentz are still stuck today defending the lie and minimizing the effort to overthrow the election because Trump is still insisting on the election being stolen. On May 15 he wrote 

The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED! This is illegal and the Arizona State Senate, who is leading the Forensic Audit, is up in arms. Additionally, seals were broken on the boxes that hold the votes, ballots are missing, and worse. Mark Brnovich, the Attorney General of Arizona, will now be forced to look into this unbelievable Election crime.

The Republican Arizona Elections Recorder said this was utterly false, and said the accusation was "unhinged" and "insane."

Yesterday, May 16, Trump wrote that a CBS poll showed he had a "strong hold" on the Republican Party.

80% of Republicans agree with the removal of Liz Cheney from GOP Leadership and only 20% disagree. The poll also showed that 67% of Republicans said that they do not consider Sleepy Joe Biden to be the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. I agree with them 100%, just look at the facts and the data—there is no way he won the 2020 Presidential Election!

Liz Cheney is not just calling out Trump. She is calling out Republican officeholders like Cliff Bentz, whose silence gives the lie room to grow. Bentz is part of the "go along" group, not directly contradicting Trump and riding on his coattails. Silent officeholders tacitly validate Trump. They are accomplices and cheerleaders. 

Doctrine seeks its own perpetuation and it chooses leaders who are faithful. Bentz was on board, ousting Cheney and replacing her with Elise Stefanik. Like Bentz, Stefanik signed onto the December brief that urged the Supreme Court to throw out the 2020 election. Like Bentz, she voted to throw out the votes of Pennsylvania. Like Bentz, she contests the election's legitimacy by saying "tens of millions of Americans are rightly concerned that the 2020 election featured unprecedented voting irregularities." 

Cliff Bentz is part of the momentum of the death spiral. He himself may do just fine. It may not be a death spiral for the GOP either. Republicans may well win back the House.

The death spiral is the American republic. Ambitious politicians have watched and learned. Partisans care more about keeping power than keeping a republic. Now we know.