The Most Dangerous Game

To me, and I’m sure to thousands of other people, this year has been fraught with countless gut punching news articles.

But despite the so called “leak” that occurred earlier this year, I never really imagined that I would see the headline that Roe vs Wade had been reversed by the Supreme Court, leaving the regulation of safe and legal abortion to the states.

Now I could launch into a diatribe as to why I think abortion should be legal and safe, but frankly, there are others who are much more learned than I who could speak on that topic. Women in healthcare especially.

What I want to devote this article to is not necessarily the argument for or against abortion itself. I want to devote this article to the dangerous game American politicians are playing not only with the future of the United States, but the future of the world.

Think that’s melodramatic? Consider this. After World War II the world was in a state of shambles and an uncertain future loomed. Britain, the former leader of the free world, had been devastated by the conflict.

The world turned to the United States for leadership. The world pegged their currency to the US dollar to stabilize their own currencies. And the US created several multilateral institutions including the UN, the IMF and the WHO to help govern the post war world.

And since then, while there has been conflict, we have had a world order. We’ve had relative stability with regular booms and busts common to capitalism.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we enjoyed an age of peace and prosperity that ended rather abruptly with the housing crisis of 2008.

And since then, we’ve experienced a downward trend as American politics, and by extension, the world, has become more and more divisive.

The more divisive American politics, the less effective American leadership. The less effective American leadership, the less American can project its power onto the world. And the less America can project its power onto the world, the more unstable it becomes.

Its not coincidence that first we had a mismanaged Covid response, then a fraught election that would have been controversial no matter who won. A run on the Capitol Building. Inflation. Then a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The more the world sees a divided America, the more it begins to crumble.

Now that Covid’s over we have mass shootings, what feels like every day. Inflation is higher than ever. The Fed mismanaged the economy and now has had to overcompensate with its basis points raises which will almost certainly lead to a recession.

Now these problems, as large and insurmountable as they may seem, would not be daunting if I had faith in the American electorate. We’ve dealt with worse problems before. We’ve put a man on the moon, we’ve built amazing machines and devastating weapons of war on hairpin deadlines. We’ve created a world in which a middle class American lives better than an Egyptian pharaoh.

And yet, I am concerned because the politicians we have in power, the “leaders” we have in place, are not interested in fixing problems. In fact, they seem dead set on exacerbating them.

And this is where we come back to Roe vs Wade. Things are falling part right now. American ascendancy, and by extension, world stability, hangs in the balance. And our politicians are concerned with petty party politics.

All I can say is thank God for Joe Manchin, holding true to his principles and refusing to pass the Build Back Better bill last January, because who knows what the state of the economy and inflation would be should that bill have passed. He went against his party and stood his ground for the constituents of his state.

We need more men and women, more politicians like him. Because right now all I see are overgrown children playing the most dangerous game of political ticky tacky.

And it’s not that I necessarily disagree with some of the things these politicians are doing, or the bills they are passing, or the stances they are taking. Its that they are actively choosing to play party politics, rather than work with their opposition to create a brighter future.

The whole point of a democracy is compromise. If we have only one vanguard party, we end up like China. And whatever your politics, I don’t think anyone wants to devolve into the political hellscape that China has become.

Not only are we lacking compromise right now, the parties are actively antagonizing each other, to the point where they are CREATING harm that wasn’t there before.

What am I talking about?

Let’s talk about Ron Desantis’ so called “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” I happen to agree that sexuality, of any kind, shouldn’t be taught in schools to children. It should be left to parents.

But because of the highly charged political landscape we live in, Disney employees put enough pressure on Bob Chapek to force him to take an official stance on the issue.

Now, normally this would have been perceived as typical political posturing. But in the highly charged political atmosphere we find ourselves in, not only did this not change anything about the “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” which of course passed, it also led Desantis repealing a decades old agreement which allowed Walt Disney World to operate as an independent government around its theme park complex.

Disney is Florida’s largest employer. It remains unclear if the actions will have financial implications for both Florida, and for Disney.

The point is, because of a political spat, Florida may lose money, Disney may lose money, and Disney employees may lose their jobs. And nothing was ever resolved.

In the fallout of this spat, and the less recent Dave Chapelle special, which was controversial over its handling of the transgender community, Netflix released an internal memo essentially letting their employees know that they won’t be allowing so called “rebellious employees” to affect company direction in a political way. The memo even goes so far as saying that if any of their employees are “offended” they can “leave.”

What Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos were doing with that memo, was putting an end to the political blackmailing of a certain group of employees who wanted to make a decision based strictly on political group think and not actual fact.

Which is exactly what the Supreme Court chose not to do. They chose to continue to ratchet up the dangerous political game of ticky tacky by making the political atmosphere more divisive. Not less.

What can possibly be accomplished by a reversal of Roe v Wade? It opens the door for states to make their own laws regarding aborting, including, but not limited to, a complete and total ban on abortion of any kind.

Now, as I’ve said, there are those in healthcare that could speak to why this is incredibly detrimental to our society. What I want to highlight is where we go from here.

Many might think that this is the end. The court reversed the decision, the House and Senate will probably flip Republican, and the White House shortly thereafter, since we have a hollow husk of a President in power right now.

But politics doesn’t work that way, and the Democrats aren’t simply going to go down without a fight, (nor should they, in my opinion.)

See there is a clause in Article VI of the Constitution known as the Supremacy Clause. Its very simply. It basically says that Federal Law trumps State Law. It's why you can’t take marijuana on an airplane even if you are traveling from, lets say, Massachusetts to California. Technically, its legal in both states, but when you are in the air, you are in federal airspace and are subject to federal jurisdiction. And in federal jurisdiction, marijuana is still illegal.

So all Biden would really have to do is sign into effect a flurry of executive orders making abortion legal on federal property. And then all the democrats would have to do is buy up land in the states that have “banned” abortion and set up abortion clinics. And they could do so, worse case, by way of eminent domain.

And once you have federal abortion clinics funded by federal dollars on federal land, federal law trumps state law, so anyone could still technically get a safe and legal abortion in any of the states that have effectively “banned” abortion.

Do I think this is a good idea? No. I think it's a terrible idea.

1. Because it's incredibly divisive and will cause further antagonism between the states and the federal government.

2. It will cause further division between those who support a woman’s right to choose and those who support the desire to see woman carry any baby to term.

3. It will be a tremendous waste of time and money as both the federal government and the state governments sue each other.

4. It will further traumatize any women trying to go into these abortion clinics as there will undoubtedly be protests by either side on a weekly if not daily basis outside these facilities.

But what choice do the Democrats have? It seems that both sides, not matter the issue, are determined to, rather the solve the issue through comprise, dig in further and deeper and attempt to antagonize the other side even further.

And it doesn’t help that on the same day Roe vs Wade was overturned, the court made clear that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right “to keep and bear arms” protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. Going forward, Justice Clarence Thomas explained, courts should uphold gun restrictions only if there is a tradition of such regulation in U.S. history.

While I find this to be an accurate ruling based on a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution, it is completely out of step with the problems that need to be solved in America today. This ruling comes less than 6 weeks after a gunman killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, and less than a month after 21 people – 19 children and two teachers – were shot to death at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

I’m not saying there are any easy answers to these questions and I’m not saying I agree with one side or the other.

What I am saying is we need to be having conversations about these issues, and by exacerbating an already divisive environment surrounding these inflammatory issues, the court has effectively made it more difficult to have those conversations as emotions flare and common ground becomes sparse.

To say I’m disappointed in my country is an understatement. But beyond that, I think we all need to recognize that we’re all in this together.

Regardless of what anyone might think, suffering only breeds more suffering. When you are acting from a place of integrity, when you make decisions for the right reasons, things can’t help but work out in the most miraculous of ways.

But when you make decisions based on ego, based on politics, based on the desire to antagonize someone, even someone you perceive as an enemy, all you do is perpetuate the cycles of suffering for everyone involved.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew better than anyone else that you can’t fight violence with violence. You can only fight violence with peace.

Similarly, you can’t fight partisan politics with partisan politics. You can’t solve problems by creating more that didn’t have to exist in the first place. And we can’t have an effective society if we can’t have civil discourse about the things that matter most.

This is a call to action to take a different mindset. To seek peace. To seek understanding.

In the words of the late great Ronald Regan:

‘The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits -- not animals. There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.’

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

We need to work together to create a brighter future. We need to preserve from them the last best hope for man here on earth. Or the cycles of suffering will continue. And the headlines will continue to gut punch us. And eventually, one morning, we’ll wake up and realize, what we had is gone. And we were too proud and in love with our own opinions to do anything about it.