In the United States, 2022 was a tense election year, characterized by increasing backlash from the right.
There was backlash against the public health protections put in place in the pandemic, such as mask and vaccination requirements. Against women’s rights. Against the teaching of “critical race theory”. Against the visibility of LGBTIQ people in schools, as well as LGBTIQ rights in general, particularly those of transgender people and their family members who support them.
However, most Americans oppose this hate and fear agenda pushed by the Republican Party and its activist base. And this year, despite a political system designed to keep us down, we pro-democratic Americans made our voices heard in powerful ways, including in general and special elections, most notably in protecting abortion rights in Kansas. , even as the federal right to abortion was struck down by an increasingly distrustful Supreme Court.
Mass shootings and trans rights
The year was marred by many notable incidents of political intimidation and violence, including a physical attack on Paul Pelosi in October. The attack, which left Pelosi with a fractured skull, was allegedly carried out by a misogynistic conspiracy theorist, targeting Pelosi’s wife, Nancy, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.
There have also been more than 600 mass shootings, including the senseless school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May, in which police shamefully failed to intervene in a timely or effective manner.
In November, five people were killed and 17 injured at Club Q, one of the few queer havens in the largely conservative city of Colorado Springs, Colorado, known for its large population of evangelical Christians. The devastating death toll was much lower than it could have been, thanks to the club’s brave patrons who did what the Uvalde police couldn’t: disarm and contain the shooter.
The mass shooting at Club Q is not a surprising twist in the current climate, as reporter Will Carless points out in USA Today. The attack took place the night before Transgender Remembrance Day, for which the club had prepared a variety of programming focused on drag and gender identity.
Such events have been regularly attacked by Fox News and the rest of the US right-wing media this year. Drag performances have been conflated with being transgender, and efforts have been made to cause a moral panic around the notion that drag performances, as well as queer people, pose a danger to children.
2022 has been a record year for state bills seeking to restrict LGBTIQ rights, most of which have focused on trans rights. Right-wing Americans have also been openly spreading the falsehood that queer people are likely to be pedophiles — labeling members of the LGBTQ community as “hairdressers” — at a level of intensity not seen since the 1980s.
The prohibition of abortion and partial exams
This was also the year that the Supreme Court struck down its previous ruling in Roe v Wade, and with it, the US constitutional right to abortion.
This triggered a wave of statewide abortion bans, destroying not only reproductive rights, but also the broader right to privacy on which many subsequent decisions regarding women’s rights and rights rested, at least in part. LGBTQ.
In fact, Justice Samuel Alito’s infamous decision hinted at the desire of the Supreme Court’s radical conservative majority to strike down other civil rights, such as the right of same-sex couples to marry. The rights of all marginalized groups remain under serious threat as long as the balance of the illegitimately stacked right-wing supreme court remains the same.
Any chance the Democrats might have had to restore fairness through legislation adding judges to the court is gone for the foreseeable future, as Republicans will control the House of Representatives (one of the two houses of Congress) in the next year.
Some observers will be tempted to look back at 2022 and see that the results of the midterm elections averted the crisis of democracy in the US.
The party that controls the presidency usually loses Congress in the midterms, but this year the Democrats did surprisingly well, managing to hold on to the Senate and defeat many Trump-backed Republican candidates who promoted the so-called “big lie” about the alleged 2020 “stolen” presidential election.
This is a good thing, and a reason for hope, but it would be extremely naive to assume that it means that the crisis of democracy in the United States is over.
Trump’s return?
Ever since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene in 2011 as a “birther” (making false and conspiratorial claims that Barack Obama was born outside the US and therefore ineligible to be president), he has always embodied the deep disease of the American right. .
This disease does so much damage to our country through the disproportionate power white conservative Christians receive from the electoral college, voter rigging and suppression, all decidedly undemocratic aspects of the American political system.
While it is important to remember that Trump is a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself, it is symbolically significant that a recent poll shows him easily defeating his main rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the Republican primary. The virulently anti-trans DeSantis is no less authoritarian than Trump, but lacks the latter’s charisma with a hate-filled Republican base.
If Republicans were to choose their 2024 presidential candidate today, they would again choose Trump, the man largely responsible for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, who has been illegally withholding confidential government documents at his private residence in Mar-a. -Lake.
Last month he dined there with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who was seen wearing a ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt in October, and Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist.
It’s hard to see a clear path to a functional democratic American future.
Racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTIQ hostility continue to animate a political right characterized by a willingness to cling to power by any means available. There remains an acute danger of more hate-fuelled violence against members of marginalized groups and high-profile political targets.
That said, surviving, itself a powerful act of defiance, and resisting injustice are long-term endeavors. There are more decent Americans than hateful ones, and at some point the latter’s dominance over so many of our institutions must become untenable.
One way or another, as the late great singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen said, “Democracy is coming to America.”
This is an edited version of an article first published by open democracy.
Chrissy Stroop is a senior correspondent for religion dispatchesand his work has also appeared in Foreign policy, The Boston Globe, Playboy and other outlets. Stroop has a PhD and is a Senior Research Associate in the Postsecular Conflicts project at the University of Innsbruck.
