re: #18 Charles

I’m amazed that women in South Dakota (and some of the other states where these laws are being passed) aren’t out in the streets protesting. There’s a very serious right wing effort under way to roll back all the advances made in women’s rights over the past 40 years.

I had a rather enlightening conversation with a conservative (but not insane) attorney with whom I work. His view is that the fringe right is all talk and no walk, and that they won’t accomplish much in the way of enacting their stated goals, and thus, are not much a problem. He thinks it’s mostly just hyperbole on the part of the left. This is how he justifies voting republican year after year.

So, in the long run, this kind of thing has to happen, over and over again, until it gets to the point where it starts impacting the lives of significant numbers of conservatives directly. My co-worker won’t change his mind until someone in his immediate circle of friends dies from a back-alley abortion, or loses their life in an industrial accident, etc. In other words, i think the political atmosphere will just get increasingly crazy for another decade or two. This has a long way to go before it unravels, imo. We are nowhere near bottom yet.