My thoughts on democracy in our country on its 248th birthday

It was almost comical when – on Dr. Phil’s program trashing cancel culture that included support for antivaxxers – at the end of the program, Dr. Phil and his wife suggested that people “talk to each other” in a divided America.

America isn’t a divided country. What’s happening is that the far right is trying to take over the country and make everyone live according to its fundamentalist “values.”

Before Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan, the political parties worked together to pass legislation to benefit the country. Remember, Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act and gave a speech on its value.

Gingrich, with his “Contract With America” that turned out to be a Contract on America, instituted the political tactic that Republicans wouldn’t work with Democrats when they were in power. They’d obstruct instead.

During his two decades in Congress, Gingrich pioneered a style of partisan combat – replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism – that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction, according to an article in The Atlantic.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings last week – striking down the Biden administration plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student loan debt, outlawing affirmative action in college admissions, and allowing a web designer to refuse to create sites for same-sex weddings – show that six conservative judges are grasping at straws to impose their views on all Americans.

Add these to last year’s transformative conservative decisions in June on abortion, guns, religion, and climate change and the court’s agenda becomes clear.

While it’s a frightening prospect that America will become a right-wing country based on hate that appears to be the Supreme Court and the far right’s objective, there is hope.

About 45 percent of the country are Democrats and 45 percent are Republicans. That leaves the 10 percent of Independents in the middle that decide elections.

These decisions by the Supreme Court are losing votes for Republicans. And, they’re losing them votes in the millions.

That’s the hope I have on July Fourth 2023, the 248^th birthday of our nation. That our bright and beautiful country with so much potential can fight off these attacks by the far right. It would be a disaster for so many of us if the right-wing’s march further and further to the right isn’t stopped.