There is no doubt going to be a backlash over the recently leaked Roe v Wade ruling, and Republicans are going to lose big in the next elections. Before you get excited, ask yourself this question: will electing Democrats and giving them bigger margins in the House and Senate do anything to restore reproductive rights?
Think long and hard before you answer.
You know what, screw it. Let me remind you of recent history given that our nation seems to have the attention span of a cocaine-addicted toddler.
Remember Black Lives Matter?
The Democratic party currently has control of the White House, House, and Senate in part because of public outrage over police brutality. Democrats rode a wave of public sentiment. They painted "Black Lives Matter" in huge letters on city streets. Some of them wore African clothes and prayed/knelt in public to show solidarity with police brutality victims. They sent out countless fundraising emails using public outrage to get campaign donations from people.
Granted, there was endless outrage over Trump that also drove their ride to victory, but we cannot ignore all the posturing Democratic politicians did with regard to the BLM issue and the BLM protests.
So now that Democrats got both houses and the White House, what did they do to reform police? What legislation did they pass to increase the likelihood that policemen who abuse their power face real criminal consequences for doing so? That's right, they did absolutely nothing to that end. Instead, they made the problem worse by expanding the police state and increasing the number of police, and increasing their budgets. They did exactly the opposite of what Democratic voters voted for.
This is merely the most recent example of Democrats doing exactly the opposite of what their voters wanted. It's a long list if you've been paying attention.
Oligarch Opinions Matter
Of course, Democrats gave all kinds of weak excuses as to why they did exactly the opposite of what they were elected to do. I'm not going to dignify any of their excuses by repeating them here. The fact is, it's not their job to do what voters want. It is their job to do what donors want.
I don't know if you noticed, but the American empire is falling apart, as is America. The wealth gap is expanding to such an extent that capitalism can no longer sustain itself. As the wealthy get wealthier, the disposable income of the population shrinks, and so the public has less and less money to spend on the items made by corporations. Wage suppression has been so wildly successful that the birth rate is plummeting because fewer and fewer young people can afford to keep a roof over their heads, much less pay the medical expenses of childbirth and raise children.
Trump was a symptom of a population that is getting so desperate that they will turn to any shouting populist maniac who promises to make things better. We've recreated the conditions of Nazi Germany, only this time, the economic misery wasn't caused by a poorly-considered peace treaty that punished Germany for honoring alliance treaties. This time, the economic misery was caused by the greed of American oligarchs, and they have made it clear that the obscene wealth they have is still not enough for their tastes.
The oligarchs know damn well that it's only a matter of time before there is a violent revolution. Our government and our economy are going to come crashing down unless the oligarchs reduce the wealth gap. They have decided that they would rather allow all the systems to come apart than stop stuffing their pockets. They are convinced that if the police are strong enough, they can simply slaughter us into submission just like the Syrian government did when its citizens got uppity during the Arab Spring.
If the police are numerous, highly militarized, and conditioned to deliver violence upon citizens for incredibly trivial reasons, then that should be enough to protect the oligarchs during whatever societal collapse happens in the near future. Or at least, I assume that's the thinking. I think they're wrong. I think a societal collapse will make all those pieces of paper that they worked so hard to accumulate worthless, but what do I know? I'm just a commoner. Besides, I think we're more likely to have a fascist takeover rather than anything like the French revolution. Once a fascist government replaces our current government, it's only a matter of time before that fascist government decides that oligarchs are a potential threat to their power and have them all killed.
The point I'm trying to make is that what you the voter want doesn't matter. Voters only get what we want when the oligarchs decide to give it to us, and they will never agree to police reform because they need the police to slaughter us when the inevitable uprising comes. Anyone who talks about "saving democracy" is deceiving you. We have been an oligarchy for some time now, and there is no democracy left to save. At most, our votes have a microscopic influence over which particular oligarchs have more influence over the government for a brief period of time.
Give Me A Campaign Donation So We Can Save Reproductive Rights!
No doubt the fundraising emails are already making their rounds. I hope you understand by now that voting for Democrats won't actually restore bodily autonomy or reproductive rights. The Democrats had control over both houses and the White House many times since the Roe v Wade ruling. They could have passed laws that codified the rights to privacy and rights to bodily autonomy spelled out in Roe v Wade. They could have, and they didn't.
The only way we get reproductive rights back is by convincing the oligarchs that it is in their best interests to restore reproductive rights. If that happens, it won't matter if Democrats or Republicans happen to be in office, nothing will be able to prevent the return of reproductive rights. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how much we expand the margins for Democrats in the House and Senate because they won't be able to do anything. Not without risking their political careers.
The job of elected politicians in DC is to pretend that America is still a democratic republic, rather than an oligarchy. They maintain the charade that your vote matters, so please give them money and please get your friends to vote for them.
Let's Stop Pretending
I think it's time to stop pretending that our votes matter and start thinking in terms of how to influence the decisions of the oligarchs.
Part of the problem is that the wealth gap got so large that fewer and fewer young people are choosing to have children because fewer and fewer of them can afford to. The oligarchs know that having fewer babies today means fewer employees to exploit in the future, so fewer babies means less wealth to extract in the future. I suspect that one or more oligarchs think banning abortion will help reduce the shrinking birth rate. They would never consider increasing wages enough until couples can afford to raise children, as that would mean giving up a lot of the wealth they worked so hard to redistribute from us. Banning abortion seems like the logical alternative to reducing the shrinking of the birth rate without actually allowing the worthless commoners to have more money.
I'm not going to pretend to know what is the best way to change the minds of the oligarchs on the abortion issue. We all know the kinds of horror stories that are coming because we saw the same thing happen in countless other nations that tried to ban abortion. Maybe outrage from the world over dead mothers and dead underage mothers will embarrass them into restoring reproductive rights. Maybe big enough protests will disrupt the economy enough to change the minds of oligarchs, although given how BLM turned out, I very much doubt this tactic will be effective.
Maybe nationwide stikes? A lot of employees died in the pandemic. A lot more employees quit in what they are causing the "Great Resignation." Unions are growing all over the country. It may be that coordinated, nationwide strikes are the only way to cause enough economic devastation to convince the oligarchs to change their minds about reproductive rights. Then again, maybe that would be too complex for Americans to organize such a thing on such a large scale.
I'll probably continue voting, but I'm doing it mostly as a gesture, not because I think it will change anything. I think it's time to stop thinking in terms of getting people to vote a certain way to change what our government does, and start thinking in terms of changing the minds of oligarchs in order to change what our government does.