Elayne Clift (elayne-clift.com) has written this column about women, politics, and social issues for two decades.
BRATTLEBORO-There is a new urgency in the air, and it’s palpable: grounded in collective anxiety and a plea for a return to a civil society free of fear, oppression, oligarchs, and megalomaniacs who defy laws and ignore the Constitution.
We’ve had enough of the dystopian nightmare propagated by an authoritarian regime rife with abuse and massive corruption. The threat of creeping totalitarianism is glaringly obvious, and we are waking up to what that means.
The difference between civil societies and our governance today couldn’t be starker.
Civil societies don’t have their highest court tilt so far right that they treat their country’s highest leader like a king with absolute power. They have humane policies grounded in social justice so that people have basic human rights. They pass laws to provide housing, universal healthcare, childcare, quality education, and other issues that are poverty driven.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made this clear in her compelling dissent in the 2025 SCOTUS decision for Trump v. Slaughter, which gave our president outrageous power in what is supposedly a democracy. She noted that the president and the policy-making people behind him disregard the Constitution along with settled precedent.
(It should be noted that three Supreme Court justices appointed by the current president committed perjury in their confirmation hearings when they said they would adhere to precedent and then proceeded to ignore or reverse it.)
Here is part of what Justice Sotomayor wrote:
“The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted[.] [...] “It also means respecting precedent — not as a wooden exercise, but out of a recognition that, whatever our confidence in the theories of the present moment, the wisdom of our founding document does not belong to today’s Justices alone.”
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One example of precedent that has been battered is the overturning of Roe v. Wade. What civilized nation arrests and jails women who have suffered a miscarriage or lets them die for lack of urgently needed medical care? What parliamentarian would think that women who have abortions should be jailed or executed, sentiments which some right-wing legislators in the U.S have expressed?
According to Pregnancy Justice, over 400 prosecutions of women have taken place since the fall of Roe v. Wade. Charges include child neglect, endangerment, violation of abuse laws, and substance abuse during pregnancy. Every one of those charged suffered arrest and trauma (both physical and psychological) instead of receiving the care they needed.
Eugenics is also making a comeback here. The basis of eugenics in the early 20th century was Hitler’s desire to have a completely Aryan race, based on discrimination against people he thought were inferior and shouldn’t be allowed to procreate.
Followers believed in “planned breeding and racial improvement.” It resulted in involuntary sterilization, segregation, isolation, poverty, and the Holocaust — the “final solution.”
The idea led to baby breeding among German women, who were rewarded for having lots of pregnancies.
Today, we are seeing pro-natalist propaganda fostered by politicians, white supremacists, and Christian nationalists. A group of right-wing women recently held an annual “Leadership Summit” in which they proclaimed that all women need to “normalize liking your husband.”
Their playbook is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
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How did we become a country that terrorizes and arrests thousands of innocent immigrants, legal residents, and citizens and physically, sexually, and emotionally abuses them, deports them, and incarcerates them in our version of concentration camps, where they are separated from their children, denied healthcare, decent food, access to family, lawyers, or Congressional oversight? How civilized is that?
These people have been called “vermin” and other ugly invectives by this administration, which fails to understand how much immigrants contribute to our lives, our economy, and our cultural diversity. I suggest that those who are troubled by vermin need to look in their own closets.
Then there’s the issue of gun violence, which just keeps on growing and shocking people who live in civil societies. In June, the Supreme Court struck down a law in Hawaii that barred gun owners from carrying handguns in public places. On June 30, the court also agreed to hear arguments in its next term in a case that will determine whether assault-style weapons like AR-15s can be banned in response to mass shootings.
Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Gifford, who was shot in the head while campaigning for her seat several years ago, has declared gun violence an American crisis. Her organization’s website reports that 46,000 Americans die annually from gun violence. That’s 125 a day.
What civilized nation would have people advocating for guns on the streets and in public places?
Her organization, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, puts it this way: “Gun violence has become an inescapable facet of American life. While families and communities across the country are regularly torn apart by bullets, the burden isn’t spread equally, particularly when it comes to the daily drumbeat of gun violence.”
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All of this, and more, is why we must reclaim our time and treasure and rejoin the civilized countries of the world whose values and policies are commendable, achievable, humane, and compassionate — before it’s too late.
The time has come for us to recapture our better selves and to restore our values that are demonstrated in personal acts, and our policies that bring back the history, meaning, and brilliance of the Constitution.
We know what we must do come November.
This Voices column was submitted to The Commons.
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