Category: Politics

Right-Wing Utopia

While some aspects of the American conservative agenda might be attractive to some people some of the time, I doubt that most people have taken conservative positions to their logical conclusions. If they did, I think many fewer Americans would be willing to sign on.

Here’s an outline of America if the conservatives had their way:

Abortion illegal in all cases. Women getting abortions and the doctors who perform them are charged with first degree murder; women who attempt them are charged with attempted murder.
Birth control outlawed.
Anti-sodomy laws reinstated.
Gay people banned by constitutional amendment from marriage, by federal law from military service, and by state laws from adoption, teaching, and any profession involving children.
All environmental regulation repealed.
Public education abolished, along with government funding of any education at any level: early childhood, student loans, etc.
No government funding for the arts, under any circumstances.
Islam not recognized as a religion, and thus stripped of all religious protections.
Muslims banned from elected office, government employment and military service.
America officially declared “a Christian nation.”
Employers, landlords and public businesses allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, sexual orientation, or anything else.
Child labor laws abolished.
Government surveillance on any person for any reason legal.
English declared official language, and governments forbidden from printing materials in any other language.
Unions outlawed.

I could go on and on like this. But even with just these few (real life, not exaggerated) examples, is this the nation we want to live in?

Maybe we should think about that.

Politics

I have hazel eyes.

I don’t base my identity on my eye color. Having hazel eyes is just a part of me. I’m certainly not proud of having hazel eyes, but I’m not ashamed, either. Most of the time, I don’t even think about it.

But if the government told me I couldn’t get married to someone else with hazel eyes, or that I couldn’t be in the military unless I wore blue contact lenses, or if people stood outside my eye doctor’s office with signs that read “Hazel-Eyed Go To Hell!,” I might start to think that my hazel eyes were pretty important. I might start to resent people who disliked me just because of my eye color. I might start spending more time than is necessarily healthy wondering what it was about my eye color that got certain people so riled up.

I might get angry when people said absurd or bizarre things, like that I shouldn’t be able to teach children unless I wore sunglasses to hide my “condition.”

But that would never happen, right?

Politics

Happy to have a job

“Brain drain? Perhaps, in the short run. But maybe Wisconsin will see new infusion of brains as younger workers step up and take those positions, happy to have the jobs even without the lavish pensions of yore.”

-comment on “The Costly Brain Drain in Wisconsin,” by Ruth Conniff, The Progressive

One of the phrases that has “angered up my blood” the most during this Wisconsin war on the middle class has been the line: “You should be happy to have a job at all.” Often followed up with some variation on “Suck it up, you lazy parasite.”

This is so disturbing to me because it means that the right-wing crapweasel propaganda has seeped so deep into the psyche of the lower and middle classes that they are willing to throw their lot in with the employer and say, in effect, “I am only worth what my employer says I am. I only deserve what my employer is willing to provide, however meager. Not only am I content with ceding power to my employer, but I demand it.”

That attitude is sick and wrong, and resembles nothing so much as an abused spouse telling a friend, “He wouldn’t have hit me if I had just put dinner on the table on time.”

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” This isn’t just about taking our government back – it’s about taking ourselves back. We better start now, before it’s too late.

Politics

Taking a break

My outrage meter is broken. Six years in the red will do that. I just can’t dedicate any more energy right now to the insanity that surrounds us.

Based on past experience, I’ll probably be back at some point. Maybe not.

Politics

Editing

“Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.”

So begins Ann Coulter’s latest column on how the Libby prosecution is (surprise!) a terrible miscarriage of justice, and how Bush just must absolutely pardon Libby, now.

Ann, sweetie, let me just suggest a minor edit to your lead paragraph:

“~~Lewis Libby~~ Bill Clinton has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.”

There. Much better – and more accurate!