Only voting can put an end to this depression

It’s easy to get discouraged by the events of the day. Once, you could count on Texas Republicans to at least be reliably against government involvement in private lives.

If anything, Republicans tilted toward libertarianism, believing that the government shouldn’t interfere in private lives in any way whatsoever.

Those were halcyon days, indeed. Now, Republicans have learned the power of government rules and regulations, and, by golly, they want to make the rest of us shape up or — else.

On a local level in East Texas, Republicans have always been in charge (Democrats were really Republicans until civil rights legislation passed). This is one reason why change has come slowly, slowly, slowly behind the Pine Curtain.

A story is told in Marshall that one of the matriarchs of that city — now long deceased — reacted to the passing of the voting rights bill that until that moment, “The South had really won the Civil War.” That might just be apocryphal, but it is at least a commonly told legend.

The instances of Blacks and other marginalized groups being told to “just wait,” in East Texas are more numerous than pinecones in a loblolly forest. As Dr. Martin Luther King observed, though, “wait,” almost always means, “never.”

What you want to change rarely does. What you hope to stay is as fleeting as a cool day in May.

There seems to be no end to the ways Republicans want to manage the minutiae of our lives. They want to tell women how pregnancies must be managed and how they cannot. They brook no challenges to their edicts. All who disobey will be punished and shunned.

Republicans are now talking openly about limiting the methods of birth control, giving women scant choices of having any way of controlling their own lives. It seems that the goal here is to be absolutely certain that women don’t have any choices, because, you know, if a woman has a choice she just might make one they don’t like.

Rape and incest will not stop men from successfully procreating their progeny. Some naively compare this to the fictional “Handmaid’s Tale,” but the reality is far worse.

If you happened to read the book by Margaret Atwood you will know that, at least the terrible leaders of Gilead had the pretext of the crisis of having only a few live births. Their actions were partly about survival, if utterly wrong-headed and evil.

Today’s machinations are occurring for no reason at all beyond the exercise of sheer power of men being able to control women. Disregard all you may hear about the “sanctity of life.” Children who are born receive scant attention from the state. Plus, the same legislators who oppose abortion rights have no trouble defending the right of the state to kill with executions.

Sanctity of life from birth would be a tremendous moral development. What we have — sanctity of power — is not so great.

For what it is worth, the Republicans have done a masterful job gathering and maintaining political support.

They have mustered fear about the survival of the Second Amendment, the old commie fears — not Russia, but China, this time — same-sex marriage, and the horror that boys may get sex change operations so they can win sports medals by competing against girls.

Then there is the fear that schools are trying to indoctrinate your children by…teaching them actual history! This is true, or at least it was until state legislators passed a bill mandating that schools not be allowed to teach the truth about racism in the United States.

There is even a move to pass as law not allowing teachers to mention anything about same-sex, uh, anything to children in K through third grade which solves a situation that doesn’t exist, as that is not done now in Texas.

Who knows what horrors the Republicans will turn up just in time for the November general elections? To the normal mind it would seem as if there must be a natural end to this campaign of fear and loathing.

Don’t count on it. Surely Democrats will be found to be the major source of really mean spiders, or perhaps pesky mosquitoes.

Whatever it is, we know that Republicans will need a good source of fear upon which to gin up some votes.

One wonders what might occur if a real reason for concern ever comes about. Will anyone listen to those politicians — Republicans or Democrats — who insist that the sky is falling?

“Really, it is! We were just kidding all those times before.”

We may already be seeing this is action with the very real problem of global warming which, so far as I can tell, is not really an issue to argue about anymore but one to act on.

Except Republicans have done a good job there, too. In convincing people that it was all a ruse not to be worried about.

It’s not so simple just to reverse course when you have told millions not to worry a bit, or when you’ve taken millions of dollars from corporations who still don’t want them to worry.

This is nonsense that needs to stop but it will not unless people vote. May the movement could start right here behind the Pine Curtain because, after all, if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.

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