REPUBLICANS: WE'RE AMERICANS AND THE PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH US AREN'T

Here are three stories sending the same message: If you're a Republican, or at least avoid doing things Republicans don't like, you're an American. If you challenge Republicans, you're not an American, and you have only as many rights as Republicans are willing to grant you.

First story:

The North Carolina Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public for health reasons, following an emotional debate about the wisdom of the proposal.

Republican supporters of the ban said it would help police crack down on protesters who wear masks....

It passed 30-15, with every Republican in favor and every Democrat opposed.

The bill is likely to be approved in the House, which, like the Senate, is 60% Republican, even though Democrats win or nearly win many statewide races. (The legislature is deeply gerrymandered.) I expect the Democratic governor to veto the bill, but those GOP legislative majorities are supermajorities, so the veto can be overriden.

Here are the consequences:

Sen. Sydney Batch, D-Wake, is a cancer survivor. She spoke about how her husband and children wore masks to protect her while she was undergoing treatment and had a weakened immune system because of it.

"This bill criminalizes their behavior, and mine," she said. "... We talk a lot about freedoms in this chamber. I hear it all the time. I should have the freedom — my children and my husband should have the freedom — to wear masks in order to protect and save my life, without fear of being arrested and charged."

Sorry, Senator Batch -- you and your family only have the freedom to do things that don't annoy Republicans.

Now, here's story #2:

More than a year after a Travis County jury convicted Daniel Perry of murdering a protester in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry, 37, on Thursday shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a full pardon.

A Texas state district court judge sentenced Perry in May 2023 to 25 years in prison for shooting and killing U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster during a 2020 demonstration protesting police brutality against people of color.

More:

Perry, who is white, was working as a ride-share driver when his car approached a demonstration in Austin. Prosecutors said he could have driven away from the confrontation with Foster, a white Air Force veteran who witnesses said never raised his gun.

A gun he was legally entitled to carry because this was in Terxas.

A jury convicted Perry of murder, but Abbott called it a case of self-defense.

“Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney,” Abbott said.

Sorry, jurors, you might believe that you were making a decision based on the facts and the law, but you're not allowed to do that in Texas if your decision offends Republicans.

Perry is a bad person:

Shortly after Perry’s conviction, unsealed court documents revealed he had made a slew of racist, threatening comments about protesters in text messages and social media posts. Days after George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer prompted nationwide protests, Perry sent a text message saying, “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” ...

Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, also sent racist and anti-Muslim messages before and after Floyd’s death. In April 2020, he sent a meme, which included a photo of a woman holding her child’s head under water in the bath, with the text, “WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY,” according to the state’s filing.

The court documents also revealed that Perry sent inappropriate messages to someone who claimed to be 16 years old through Kik Messenger, a communication platform that has been used to share child pornography.

"Also promise me no nudes until you are old enough to be of age,” Perry wrote, the same month he shot and killed Foster.

Before signing off, Perry wrote, “I am going to bed come up with a reason why I should be your boyfriend before I wake up.”

And the killing was premeditated:

"I might have to kill a few people on my way to work, they are rioting outside my apartment complex," Perry wrote to a friend in June of 2020. "I might go to Dallas to shoot looters," he wrote on another occasion. Perry also encouraged violence in a variety of social media posts.

And deliberate:

According to multiple witnesses, Perry ran a red light, then accelerated directly toward a group of protesters.

Adam Serwer wrote last year,

Put simply, some conservatives believe that Perry’s conviction was unjust because they do not believe that it should be a crime to kill a Black Lives Matter “rioter,” a description that in the right-wing imagination applies to any and all BLM protesters regardless of their actions.

That's the law in Texas now, apparently.

And now Story #3:

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed. President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the Capitol a little over a week before. Mr. Biden’s inauguration was three days away....

In coming weeks, the justices will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, including whether Mr. Trump has immunity for his actions. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances for re-election in the upcoming one....

Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.

This isn't state-sanctioned murder or direct endangerment of the lives of immunocompromised people. But it's smoking-gun evidence that Alito is a far-right Republican legislator in a robe and shouldn't be serving on the Supreme Court.

Alito shifts the blame to his wife, even though, presumably, he co-owns the house and lives in it, and is therefore jointly responsible for what takes place there:

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

... Around the 2020 election, a family on the block displayed an anti-Trump sign with an expletive. It apparently offended Mrs. Alito and led to an escalating clash between her and the family, according to interviews.

According to the U.S. Code, the American flag "should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property." To the Alitos, the "extreme danger" was the impending inauguration of a Democratic president -- because only Republicans are full citizens with the right to run the government.

Alito himself is not biased because, in his view and in the view of millions of Republicans, Republicanism is Americanism. Liberals, progressives, and Democrats simply aren't American, and therefore they're entitled to only as many rights and as much consideration as Republicans feel like giving them. And that increasingly looks like America's future.