It’s now been four years since the six Republican toadies on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended safe legal abortion in a large swath of the United States.

It’s now been only a couple of weeks since those same six dolts eviscerated 60 years of progress in giving representation to Black people over pretty much the same territory.

Both of these rollbacks of justice were entirely predictable. They have been the goals of the folks pandering to white nationalism and evangelical excess. The people with privilege who say legislation should not help people of color who don’t share their privilege. The people who wail about freedom of religion because stores say “Happy Holidays!” but insist that everyone abide by their fundamentalist beliefs.

They will tell you they reaped their reward for putting their faith in God. What they did was reap their reward for putting their faith in Donald Trump.

The Preamble to our Constitution says we’re trying to form a more perfect union, establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility. That’s not what these folks want. They want the status quo – the great that they want America to be again – not from the recent past, but from the early 1800s.

They’ve been playing a long game ever since the first sprouts of progress in civil rights. Americans usually only vote every four years – for president. They can’t be bothered with votes on school boards, community boards, town councils, village trustees, lower court justices, highway superintendents. Then state legislatures and Congress.

Those are the elections on which they focused their attention. Once they had control, they shaped their constituencies to their benefit. AKA gerrymandering. 

That’s the mess we’re in now.

And if you think they’re done, if you think they’re content with blocking abortions and making sure cities with mostly non-white populations have no representation, you’re nuts.

The coalition of unbridled corporate greed and America-is-a-Christian-nationites has targets on several other things that have improved life in our countries in my 72 years. The kinds of things that other developed nations – Britain, France, Canada, et cetera – take for granted.

They are, in no particular order:

— Same-sex marriage: Other people’s happiness matters not a whit to these people. They’ve been trying to tee up the Obergefell decision since Anthony Kennedy wrote his brilliant opinion in 2015. 

They have the votes to overturn it. Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t like the decision when it came out. You know Alito and Thomas are chomping at the bit to eviscerate it. And Trump’s Three Stooges will do whatever the right wing that got them their robes asks.

Sane-sex marriages are marriages. Two people fall in love, commit their lives to one another, and are happy. That is all that matters. And that happiness is not to be judged by anyone else.

But, unchecked, the my-way-or-the-highway clowns will try to undo that happiness, no matter how much it hurts people and the legal mess it would create after 11 years.

— Interracial marriage: It’s probably hard for most young people to believe – in a world of Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, The Rock and Barack Obama. But in much of this country, interracial marriage was proscribed until the early 1960s, when the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia.

There are few things that stick in the craw of white supremacists as much as seeing black-and-white, Asian-and-white, indigenous-and=white and other racially mixed couples. Watching them walking hand-in-hand or, gasp, getting pulled by their two kids through Disneyland.

The term “racial purity” makes me want to throw up. But that’s what these people seek. If there’s a way to overturn it, they’ll try to find it – even if it means that Clarence Thomas will have to find an exception to allow him to keep his white wife.

— Birth control: Again, it would hard for young people to grasp that the idea of limiting procreation through drugs and medical devices is not a given. It was the Griswold v. Connecticut case in 1965 that permitted married couples to use contraception, and the Eisenstadt v. Baird (In this one, Baird is the good guy) case that extended that to unmarried couples.

In this administration, you’ve just heard the idiot known as Dr. Oz spew the idea that Americans are “underbabied.”  You’ve heard the nut case known as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bemoan what he says is a deficiency in teen sperm counts. 

These people want more children – actually, they want more white children. It would be a counterbalance to the fact that the U.S. is on track to become a majority-minority nation (Horrors!). 

— Family and childbirth leave: Since the mid-1990s, you’ve been able to take time off from work to care for a newborn or a sick family member. 

At first, it was mostly unpaid. But then companies looking for a competitive hiring advantage decided to start offering that leave as a paid benefit.

They hate doing that. It cuts into profits, no matter how obscene they are. Trump’s corporate enablers are looking for ways to end the Medical and Family Leave Act.

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Well, just don’t sit there. Do something.

First off, make sure you’re registered to vote. Right now. Don’t wait to check on it in the fall.

Because there are voting opportunities even before November. 

Here where I live, there’s a school board election next week. Voting in those elections is just as important as voting for Congress. If you want to stop the crazies in your area from book bans and enabling Turning Point USA propaganda, make sure they’re not in positions that allow them to use your tax dollars to support them.

There are also primaries. Pick the candidate who best represents your position on these matters. But make sure you vote – the bad guys have gotten where they are because of our complacency. That’s got to end.

That’s especially true in the way this country treats its Black citizens. These folks work as hard as everyone else. They pay their fair share in taxes – more than you can say about the billionaires Trump took on his junket to China.

They deserve representation. They deserve a voice. The states that legislated predominantly Black congressional districts out of existence obviously don’t care enough about what fair-minded people think of their actions. 

Don’t go there. There’s no reason to visit Tennessee. New Orleans can wait. You can make toasted ravioli without going to St. Louis. These people who have gerrymandered their states to achieve perfect whiteness don’t serve you to cast your dollar vote for them.

That also applies to businesses in their states. If you see products are made in Tennessee or Louisiana or Missouri, don’t buy them.

It is not enough to gird for the fights that are coming. It’s time to make the white Christian supremacists pay a price for their out-and-out evil.