The cruel abolition of the federal right to abortion in the only developed nation that lacks a public health care system and has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates is just the beginning of a long march backwards.
It paves the way for the dismantling of the legal framework that secures the minimal foundations of social justice in the United States. Along with the investigation into the Capitol invasion, which runs parallel to the Supreme Court’s offensive, the abortion restriction reveals the multidimensional character of what has been called “American decline.”
The increasingly evident defeat in his “battle for the soul of America” ​​also decisively weakens Joe Biden. If the Supreme Court’s decision is the result of decades of judicial activism by Republicans, Joe Biden seems incapable of channeling social outrage.
His predecessor Barack Obama at least masked the Democrats’ impotence with his rhetorical mastery. More importantly, the institutional setbacks undermine the key foreign policy promise of the Biden administration: “to lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”
Starting tomorrow, the US will be known for having a government that extols sexual and reproductive rights in international forums, while watching more conservative states vote on restrictions similar to those in place in Iran.
A government that sends the humanist John Kerry to travel the world in search of new climate agreements, but that is unable to implement any kind of measures in this matter because a Democratic senator is also a fossil industry baron.
A government that attacks Moscow for human rights violations in Ukraine but prepares to rehabilitate a Saudi autocrat known for ordering the dismemberment of a journalist. A government that loves to rate the behavior of Latin American democracies even though a growing part of the local political class is contesting the legitimacy of the last presidential election.
A government at the helm of a thriving military machine and a bankrupt social factory, which condemns its diplomats to promote a country that is ceasing to exist.
The disparity between what the US pretends to be and what it really is will become even clearer in the next two years. The midterm elections should confirm the perception that the country is experiencing a new “Carter moment”, in reference to the Democratic president who served as an interlude between two Republican eras, that of Richard Nixon and that of Ronald Reagan. With the difference that, if the republican radicalization in the 1980s took place in the economy, the attacks in the future will attack democracy and fundamental rights.
If the opening of this new conservative era is confirmed in the 2024 elections, it will potentially irreversibly call into question the place of American society as an ideal of progress in the global imagination.
