Mourn on the Fourth of July

Most Americans weren’t feeling it on July 4th so they didn’t celebrate but the ones who did took their own lives into their hands by going to parades and firework shows as some of them got shot. People who ventured out to salute their pseudo freedom lost their lives, got really hurt, saw people blown to smithereens, or ran for their lives.

“July 4th this year feels like attending a birthday party for someone in hospice.” — Christian Finnegan

A 22 year old white male domestic terrorist Trump cult follower shot a bunch of people at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, the quintessential affluent suburban community where movies such as Home Alone, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Sixteen Candles were filmed. 6 people were killed and at least 30 were injured by 60 rounds fired in 22 seconds from an AR-15, the very gun that Republicans say everybody has the right to own. This was the 308th mass shooting this year.

Somebody shot into a big crowd at a concert that was watching fireworks in Philadelphia. 2 cops got shot.

The Nazi group, the Patriot Front, marched through Boston over the weekend. Young white men wearing khakis, navy blue polo shirts, caps and masks, carrying flags. These are the guys that were just arrested at a Pride parade in Idaho. They’re also the guys who carried torches in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”

True blue California Governor Gavin Newsom aired an ad on Fox News in Florida on July 4th, calling out Republicans for attacking freedom by banning books, restricting speech, suppressing voters, and attacking bodily autonomy.

America is slipping. Violence in the streets has become commonplace and expected. The radical right Supreme Court, in just one week, forced more guns into the street, is forcing women to give birth against their will, and forcing kids to pray to their God in public schools. Democracy is no longer dangling, it’s sliding.

Mississippi legislators are openly discussing using dogs that can tell if a woman is pregnant at airports by sniffing women as they leave the state.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office is looking into fining Texas based businesses over $100,000 every time they pay for an employee to go out of state to get an abortion.

Abortion providers in Alabama now face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Within one week of the Supreme Court outlawing abortion, a 22 year old pregnant woman in Dallas who had scheduled an abortion because the fetus she was carrying wasn’t developing normally and wouldn’t have any chance of a normal life after birth, shot herself in the head after her appointment got cancelled because the government intervened. She decided she’d rather be dead than live the rest of her life caring for a sub-human.

Last week a 10 year old in Ohio who was impregnated by an uncle had to be taken to Indiana for an abortion. Republicans view that pregnancy as a miracle and the 10 year old as a murderer.

A young woman who relied on a unique kind of birth control that not only kept her from getting pregnant but it kept her from getting deadly blood clots is living in fear now after she called her doctor to have the device in her arm changed and they had to tell her they could remove it but not replace it. Now she’s afraid she’ll die from blood clots in her brain.

All 5 Republican candidates running for governor in Michigan said in a debate that they wanted the Supreme Court to go after same-sex marriage next now that Roe is overturned.

Democracy is failing and needs saving. One party is working on taking civil rights away from everyone who isn’t white, male and Christian — at the federal, state and local levels, both legislatively and judicially, and the other party wants to not only protect those rights but they want to expand them but it has been weakened by Republicans who have gerryandered their districts so Democrats can’t win, are going to extreme lengths to keep Democrats from voting, and packing the courts with Republican judges who will rule in white supremacy’s favor.

An average of 3 kids get shot and killed every day now but the Republicans care nothing about those kids. They only care about the kids who haven’t been born yet or the blob of cells that haven’t even become kids yet. Republicans are “pro-life” but not after birth.

Abortion isn’t about babies or kids. It’s never been about babies. It’s about power and control.

When a society loses reproductive rights it makes room for a dictator to step in.