Posts Tagged ‘War on Women’
Rant with links, or Doug’s Darkworld meets Donnie Darko
For those who don’t get the reference, Donnie Darko is a kid in a movie who has a series of increasingly bizarre and creepy adventures only to discover at the end that he was killed at the very beginning of the movie. Sort of. As the news, especially the Republican’s War on Women, gets weirder and creepier, I wonder sometimes if I didn’t survive my stroke, and this is just some bizarre afterlife. That, or some evil force has taken control of the body politic in the USA. It all ties together, the war on women, the war on terror, and our overseas adventures … all driven by a cult that has infiltrated our government and apparently the minds of many Americans.
First, the War on Women or whatever one wants to call the increasingly harsh laws being proposed to, well, put women in their place. And to turn back the clock to an era where there was no birth control. In the seventies we had Bobby Riggs spewing misogynistic nonsense, and the media and most people considered him a joke and a throwback. Now we have leading pundits calling women sluts and laws designed to force women to have children if they get pregnant. All the name of saving babies, but since the only method they are proposing is making their religious code public law, this is about religion, not saving babies.
And this segues neatly into the Kony 2012 thing. This is a slick You Tube movie telling about the atrocities committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and surrounding countries. And it’s very much pro US intervention in the region, yes, the US army is going to go in and catch or kill this terrible man. Aside from the fact that the film wildly simplifies a horrible mess that the Ugandan army and government played a big role in creating, it’s predicated on the colonial assumption that the poor Africans need our help. And since an Evangelical organization created this movie, this is about crusading and conversion, all in the name of saving babies of course. Here’s what Africans say about it. I particularly liked: ” … once again Africans are being made to look like they need saving by yet another White person with a saviour-narcissist complex.”
Like all the children we saved in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some lovely stuff going on now, kids who dare wear western dress are apparently being stoned to death in Iraq now. Yeah, we turned Iraq into a fundamentalist Iran aligned mess, and seemed to have learned absolutely nothing from the situation and are going ahead and doing the same in Libya and Syria. And with our heads completely in the sand with what is going on In Afghanistan. Yes, the forgotten war, project number one in our post 9/11 cowardly violent ongoing spasm of re-shaping the world to prevent anything bad from ever happening to the USA again. It was our Christian duty, how could it have gone wrong?
The truth though is that many or most Americans completely swallow the “We’re there to help those poor brown people” line. And the beauty of the crusading colonial mind set is that when ti fails, as it almost invariably does, why it was because they were too stupid and primitive to learn our clearly superior ways, hamstrung by a 7th century religion. Said the people hamstrung by a 1st century religion. It’s a war on the truth. And that goes hand in hand with a war on science. The people making huge sums of money off the current situation, and the religious right, both hate science and are doing their best to suppress it. Using the power of modern technology and advertising, they are doing a good job of it. And going at it from both ends, science education is under attack across the USA, as evangelicals get their corrosively anti-science teachings into the classroom, one way or the other.
And of course while all this is going on, the rich are making out like bandits. Yes, the economy has been recovering the past two years … except virtually all of the recovery has gone to the top 1%. That still blows my mind, Obama bailed out the rich, and there’s still people who think he’s a man of the people? I could go into his enthusiastic endorsement of assassinating Americans or outlawing protest, but I guess believing in Obama is no more insane than believing the Earth is 6,000 years old or that “intelligent design” is a scientific theory. Hell, I guess compared to Rush Limbaugh calling the women of America sluts, Obama must look damn good to many people.
Basically evangelists and the rich have hijacked America and aren’t even hiding where they are going anymore. Two thousand years after Christ’s ministry, global misery is still being perpetrated in his name. A war on women, a war on science, a war on truth, a war on the non-Christian people of the world. And of course a lot of oil and money to be made on the side while we are saving all those souls, I mean babies. Is it all my stroke damaged brain’s imagination? I wish. Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is the rabbit from the movie Donnie Darko. It’s a low resolution grey scale copy of the original, and I’m basically plugging the movie, so I think I am safe claiming it as Fair Use. It’s not being used for profit, yadda, yadda, yadda. I chose it because that’s the sort of mood I’m in. My Muslim neighbours are having a party downstairs, I think I’ll go join them.)
Through Thick and Thin: Sure Happy It’s Thursday
I was planning posting a post about the Iraq War today, but alas it’s not finished. And it’s a post I want to be fairly polished before publishing, a war only ends once so I have to get it right. So … quick random burblings about whatever comes to mind in the hour before I have to head out into the rain to fix people’s plumbing. It’s going to be easy, becasue the world is going to hell in a hand basket, lots of bad news to choose from.
Things are going from bad to worse in Afghanistan. Hard to decide what is more disturbing, the media and government completely misrepresenting the situation, or the republicans almost gleefully using it to score political points against Obama. If chortling over American deaths can really be called scoring points, the republican party didn’t lose their moral compass, they are using it backwards. We may be forced to leave soon, it’s becoming clear that they all hate us, we didn’t have South Vietnamese troops turning their guns on Americans in Vietnam (not that I recall at least,) but it’s almost a daily occurrence in Afghanistan now.
Moving right along, the Republicans as part of their “abandon all morals ye who enter here campaign,” have more or less declared war on women, introducing new and increasingly misogynistic laws on almost a daily basis now. It’s about putting women back where they belong, in the homes breeding and raising children. Newt even just came out and said that women who use birth control are sluts. Same ol same ol, a guy who sleeps around is a stud, a gal who sleeps around is a slut. There’s even a holocaust denier and former American Nazi Party member trying to get on the Republican ticket in one state, though at least so far the Republicans aren’t going that far. Small comfort.
North Korea has agreed to stop enriching Uranium, allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities, and stop missile testing in exchange for food aid. It’s a good sign. I suspect the USA will put so many other preconditions on the deal that nothing will come of it, but who knows. I keep thinking that maybe somewhere in the primitive lizard brain that is now Washington is the dim perception that we can’t afford to police the whole world and that we need to actually dial back some of our overseas confrontations. What can I say, I’m the eternal optimist.
Syria is basically close to civil war at this point, peaceful demonstrations having given way to armed insurrection. Again as in Afghanistan, what a mess. Like all dictatorships in nations that don’t have a real national identity yet (it takes more than just drawing a line on a map to make a nation,) the rulers are very much all from the same religious and ethnic faction. So it’s as much a fight for the majority trying to get their share of the pie as it is a fight for freedom and democracy. I’m not even going to guess as to how it’s going to end, but I think it’s safe to say it isn’t going to be pretty.
And I’m pleased to end on a good note. All those bailouts and the stimulus plan have worked. Yes, the stock market is back to where it was before the crash! Isn’t that great, the people who destroyed the economy by accumulating ever higher piles of funny money at the top of the pyramid have all gotten their money back. And of course with the rich being super rich again, surely the trickle down theory will finally kick in and they will re-invest this wealth in America and we will all have good paying jobs again soon! Yes, the American dream still lives.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s all over Facebook so I think I’m good. I don’t know who holds the copyright but the speaker is Anne Hathaway at the 2008 Human Rights Campaign Dinner. YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZuIdQVEVY0. I posted it because it illustrates a point about the gay marriage “debate” that numerous judges have now based their rulings on, the only objections people have to gay marriage are predicated on Biblical teachings. Prejudice is not a valid reason to deny people their rights. If gay weddings bother you, don’t go to them when invited.)
Supreme Court Rules “National Unborn Persons with Disabilities Act” Constitutional in a 5-4 Decision
Today the Supreme Court ruled against the Obama Administration and declared that the Unborn Persons with Disabilities Act, passed by both houses of Congress over President Obama’s veto, is now the law of the land. The controversial law declares that an unfertilized human egg cell is simply a person with a disability, and is guaranteed the same rights and protections as any other person under the constitution. America’s pro-life groups and religious leaders praised the decision.
The lame duck president, less than a month from the end of his second term, gave a press conference where he announced the administration’s hands were now tied, and that he was instructing all relevant federal agencies to immediately begin implementing the various provisions of the law. All forms of birth control and abortion are now illegal under federal law, and even providing information about birth control or family planning is now retroactively a federal crime. Planned Parenthood and other similar now banned groups have 72 hours to both disband, and turn all their records over to the newly created “Protection of the Rights of the Unborn Agency.”
World leaders were mixed in their response to the decision. Most were very guarded in their remarks, no doubt in part because the incoming Gingrich/Palin Administration has threatened to use “all available options” against any country they deem a “hostile nation.” In contrast, the Pope, and the leaders of the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Talibanistan (formerly Afghanistan,) were effusive in their praise of the decision.
The most controversial aspect of the act, the womb monitoring provision, will be implemented on a state by state basis. This is the provision where the state will monitor the conditions in all fertile wombs to make sure no egg is endangered by birth control, drug use, or other egg life endangering activity. And to make sure that all pregnancies are reported to authorities in a timely fashion so that further protections for the unborn person can be implemented. Numerous states have already announced that womb monitors will be surgically implanted in all females of child bearing age. California’s governor Baldwin was one of the few to opt for the less intrusive monthly blood tests and random home health and welfare spot checks, however the act’s sponsors have already announced they will amend the act to make surgically installed womb monitors mandatory under federal law for all women over age ten.
Some small groups vowed to fight implementation of the act, foremost among them being the banned terrorist group Occupy Wall Street, but with thousands of the country’s leftist activist leaders already in Guantanamo II on Diego Garcia, little actual opposition is expected. Violence has been reported at numerous abortion clinics and planned parenthood centres around the country as crowds of pro-lifers stormed them to prevent the destruction of any records they might be holding that could be used to identify pregnant women, as well as records that might implicate people for illegally providing birth control or abortion services. Local authorities have reportedly done little to prevent these acts, and in some states reportedly had joined the pro-life crowds in their actions.
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Could never happen, right? I’m not sure, the GOP has thrown caution to the wind and is proposing laws all over the country that are very much along these lines. Redefining rape victims as “accusers.” Forcing women to have a medical device shoved into their vaginas for a completely unnecessary medical procedure as a condition for getting an abortion. An all male Congressional hearing to discuss access to female contraception. Efforts to destroy Planned Parenthood, among other cuts to funding for services for poor women and children. Attacks on the Girl Scouts! This has been going on for years, but recently it’s ratcheted up to whole new level of offensive and dangerous.
On the plus side, it’s reached such ridiculous extremes that people are starting to notice. The intrusive ultrasound bill was withdrawn because the outcry against it was so loud. These people, and we’re talking Evangelicals, won’t stop though. By catering to the Evangelicals to get votes, the Republicans have created a monster, a huge political force determined to roll back a century of progress and get women back into the homes raising children where they belong. I don’t know how this is going to end up, but I don’t want to live in The Handmaid’s Tale world, so I am going to speak out against this trend. If Evangelicals want to live in such a world, they are free to do so, but they have no business trying to force it on the rest of us. And if the mere sight of say a gay couple holding hands on the streets offends them, there is a solution: Avert your gaze.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. Frankly I’m not quite sure whose side Obama is really on, but for the purposes of this post I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. So coming soon, fun posts about abortion, birth control, and the whole Evangelical war on women.)
Doug's Darkworld 