Kicking and Screaming, Republican Adaptation
I have a lot of trouble understanding Republicans. I always said I was an independent, but that hasn’t been true for years, and not because my political views have changed all that much. More because of what’s going on with the Republican party. A hairpin turn to the right.
I want to talk about politics. I usually want to talk about politics. I don’t know of any harder discussion to have with most people.
If I say “I hate 85 percent of the republican platform,” which I do, many Republicans will instantly brand me as a liberal, which I suppose isn’t a hard argument to make.
My problem comes when I see two people have a conversation about any political issue. The two talk passed each other, not to each other.
The larger problem is that republicans as a group confuse me. And I would like to express that confusion as inoffensively as possible for a change, because at a certain point, reached about thirty years ago, the jokes become too obvious to make.
What gets me screaming mad about republicans?
Well first its the gays. All these republicans opposing gay marriage. To me this is the civil rights movement with fewer people being beaten and somewhat less at steak because gays today aren’t treated as badly as blacks were in the fifties.
If you are a republican and want to know why I support the right of gays to get married its because I’m allowed to get married already and I think denying anyone a right you have is exactly how to live as a bigot.
I try and get into the Republican headspace and find it hard. God hates gays, or at least gay marriage, so you must hate gays, or at least gay marriage, because you and god are like this. (close.) All other reasons Republicans give for being against two men or two women getting married are clear smokescreens to hide the true issue, religious conviction.
The next thing I would like to point out because it bothers me is the lack of racial and ethnic and religious diversity in the republican party verses the democratic party. If you guys want to be the white very conservative Christian party I’m ok with that, but maybe you should make some type of official statement above and beyond the nomination of Sarah paylin as John Mc Cain’s running mate in 2008 and the entirety of last years republican presidential primaries. Did I say I wasn’t going to make jokes?
My logic goes like this. If republicans and democrats treated race as a nonissue then the racial split between republicans and democrats would be close to even when its anything but.
And here’s something else I don’t comprehend. The appeal of someone like Sarah Paylin. I don’t know what Paylin is qualified for but I do know what she isn’t qualified for. National office of every kind.
I’m not being sarcastic, or a dick. She’s too stupid to be in national politics. The McCain campaign has admitted on record that they found it necessary to brief Sarah paylin on history and politics and political history with index cards because she knew nothing. This is on record, its not me delighting in some Internet conspiracy theory.
My point is this. I see Sarah Paylin as a pretty woman who may have been qualified to run the state of Alaska, because all you need to run Alaska well is knowledge of Alaska and the political skills possessed by all good mayors. Paylin very well might know a lot about Alaska, and it looks to me like she does have good political instincts.
Yet when she took the national stage all I kept thinking was, “ok, you know nothing at all. Every time you are interviewed or speak uncoached my sense that you know none of what I think you need to know in order to averagely govern increases! You irritate me beyond words because so many people love you for reasons I don’t understand.”
Do Republicans and I want the same things out of our leaders? I’m not sure. I want my elected officials to be smart and looking out for the interests of whomever they are representing and to treat those interests like gold or children. I don’t care about their personal lives as long as their conduct at work is excellent. I don’t care where they worship but the less the better. When I listen to people in office or running for office I want to be comforted by the idea that these people know more than me most especially about the issues they are being paid to deal with.
Much has been made of the republicans loss in 2012 both because when the economy is bad the currently sitting president tends to lose and he won, and because the only demographic the republicans won was white men. And thank god they didn’t win white men under thirty because that’s my demographic.
Since the election republicans have been making noises about making some changes, and now something awful to watch has taken place.
Because the changes aren’t being made willingly. As a direct result of their abysmal performance with Hispanics republicans are embracing immigration reform in a whorish display of begging for votes.
And the anti-gay anti-abortion stuff has quieted because I’m sure the outwardly sane and inwardly crazy had a talk with the outwardly and inwardly crazy to keep the toxic speechifying turned down until the senate’s back in republican hands.
Republicans keep talking about changing their messaging. But the reason I am angry at republicans isn’t the messaging, which is sneaky already and doesn’t need to be made more sneaky, but the message.
I don’t understand! Democrats spend way too much money, readily I admit it! But they spend it trying to feed poor people and they spend it to try and clear out all the shit we’ve pumped into rivers and oceans and into the air. They spend it on things like universal healthcare, our public schools, alternative energy, jobs training programs for dumb adults with no skills, whereas republicans spend their money on our military which already outclasses every other in the world. Republicans fight for the rich to pay less because helping the poor with money from the rich is socialism even though today’s helped poor person is tomorrows mother of a middle class worker.
I do not agree with even two thirds of each democratic budget, but I can’t say the democrats don’t have their hearts or heads in the right place, but I do say this about republicans loudly and often.
My problem is that if I had to join a side like this was a war for our country, which more and more I think it is, but its cool because its just like the civil war, we have more men, better technology and half your troops are eighty, that’s new, I’d have to side with democrats and while I wouldn’t be happy with the choice it would be one of the easiest I’ve ever made.
Its rare I get “racist” vibes from a democrat. All the time I see southern and western republicans saying things that went down great in 1880 and 1950 but today, well, they only play well with the racist grandpa set. And I’m confused because apparently no one in the south and Midwest has any problem with this or else the republicans down there wouldn’t be such ass holes.
And I think this is what it comes down to, especially with my generation which Obama won by 63 percent. We see the GOP as old confused ass holes, emphasis on the ass hole. When something untrue and funnily antiquated has to be said about women a republican is there to say its not rape if she had a pair of pants on or that women can’t get pregnant unless they’re enjoying the sex or whatever it will be next time. Whenever a politicians caught calling someone a dothead or a spic or a monkey its a republican from a two car town in hicksville. Again, no surprises. When republicans discuss immigration what I feel strongly is a subtext which is saying if you were white we wouldn’t get real riled about this.
Republicans hate Obama, and I think they hate Obama more than Clinton. The word socialist gets thrown around a lot when dumb people describe Obama. So first things first. We’re all socialists. Food stamps, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, farm subsidies, oil subsidies, welfare, student loans, progressive taxation, reduced or free school lunch, unemployment benefits and a hundred other programs are textbook socialism, if you’d asked socialists for a wish list in the 1880’s, it would be a shorter list today.
And, yes, this expansion of our government from go fuck yourself to here’s a bagel was a democratic victory, but with essential republican backing for much of the way, we’ve made ourselves this way. If you are a republican and you think the governments gone socialist send back your benefits, cancel all your government handouts and live off the land. Or is it other peoples government benefits and not your own government benefits you have a problem with? Its only black women who shouldn’t be able to collect welfare? Everyone in hitching post Texas can keep on keepin on? Did I say I wasn’t going to make jokes?
One final point on the socialism thing. We’re socialist because we have things like public schools, we don’t let our broke people die from lack of food, etc. Places with no socialism don’t look like your picturing.
They look like slum dog millionaire. Dirty because no government program exists to ensure clean water. The poor starve or not as the markets dictate. That’s straight up capitalism baby, can’t you smell the money?
the places where there is no socialism look like the places featured on those commercials where some dude tries to guilt trip you into paying just fourteen sent’s a day to take little insert impossible to pronounce name here out of poverty.
Religions obviously super important to republicans. I figured that out all on my own. And to all republicans, sincerely, you can believe whatever helps you get to sleep at night and if it makes you feel better to picture your dead parents and grandparents sitting on clouds with nothing better to do than watch your stupid ass do what they did with a better phone, ok, you believe whatever crazy tract of bullshit you want. Bible, Koran, something else, its all the same to me, but its two-thousand thirteen now, not 1500. I want you to pretend from now on that your goofy religion is exactly like your junk, keep it out of my face. But more importantly keep it out of the countries face. There are great reasons to do lots of things but religious motivation is never ever ever one of them.
See this is where I feel like we start talking past each other. Or we’ve been talking passed each other all this time. If republicans care about god, and I think they might as well say I’m doing this because the tooth fairy told me I should, what’s to be done? Taking all the polite language off the table you think I’m a heathen and I readily agree, and I think your fucknuts.
In fact, I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m not the smartest person I know and my morality isn’t based off extremely complex logical arguments, but feeling. How would I feel if legally I couldn’t get married. How would I feel if people made lots of racist comments about white people? How would I feel if I could get pregnant from rape and a national party didn’t want me to be able to get an abortion? How would I feel if when I was five my parents brought me to this country and twenty years later I have a college degree but can’t use it for fear of being deported back to the shithole I left before I started first grade? The answer to all of those questions by the way is “I would feel very sad and undervalued and ignored and like I wasn’t part of society.”
Half of government benefits, unemployment, welfare, food stamps, heat assistance, half these programs are used by republicans, it isn’t as though more democrats are on welfare than republicans, we all use the programs only the GOP keeps pushing in cuts which it gets its flock to support while lots of those people are using the benefits they say they want cut.
There is one silver lining to all this which makes me think its almost not worth bitching about republicans ever again.
You guys are done. Every year some old white people die and every year some young white people are born. The young white people wonder what’s wrong with the old white people who really do in all honesty act way more racist than I’ve seen anyone my age act. Lots of white dudes say racist things with an understanding that we’re sooooo tolerant we can say “yo nigga” like, um, ironically or whatever. Old people just come out with a “those goddamned niggers,” and its like, ok, so it really was like that back when you guys had the power.
As old people die and young people are born, the share of the white electorate shrinks. This only matters because now all the republican racism of the last fifty years and the sense gotten by many that modern efforts by republicans to be less racist are instead efforts to seem less racist further erodes the share of minority demographics republicans can win in a given election.
I want to point out republicans also lost women to Obama this election cycle and last election cycle. Women are another group turning democrat. I wonder why. The answers abortion and other sex stuff. I didn’t want to leave you hanging.
The truth is that the republican party is dying, literally. There may be a republican party in four years, but in those four years approximately six percent of America will have died, the overwhelming amount of that six percent being old, conservative voters. In this time fourteen year olds will grow up and turn eighteen, and this cycle isn’t going to stop. If anything its accelerating.
So its worth being said. I’m not going to compromise because all your yelling scares me. Your going to adapt. If you don’t your kids will. I’m going to sit here and wait until you all drop dead.
The funny part is I’m sure I’d like at least half of you republicans if we met through some nonpolitical thing. And being put into a position where it excites you to know old people are dying is weird because who wants to be happy about death, the worst thing in the world? But its time to grow up and have an adult conversation about the issues, and Republican views have become too childish for the discussion. Plus if we had more than one sane party in this country I could stop voting democrat.
Pages & Rages 
A Few Thoughts on Religious Liberty
Recently the Obama administration through executive order decreed that private insurance plans funded by religious entities must provide birth control pills to women who request them. Until this decision unlike all other private insurers, religious groups were able to deny women this specific type of contraception because they believe that contraception is a sin and will send a woman to hell where she will burn forever.
When the decision was announced, the Catholic Church run hospitals and universities threw a collective hissy fit.
There argument is that the Obama administration has struck a blow against religious liberty because it is forcing a catholic institution to go against its founding principles which are designed to keep as few people as possible from using contraception of any type.
The church’s objections aren’t just to the pill, but also to all other methods of birth control, including diaphragms, condoms, sponges, intrauterine injections and all other birth control devices. Of course the two methods they don’t object to are the rhythm method, where two people who are having sex guess about a woman’s fertility, and, of course, pull and pray.
The point everyone has lost sight of, however, is the most important point in the entire argument.
The Obama administration is not telling all catholic girls attending catholic colleges, hospitals, and universities that they must now get on the birth control pill, they have simply made it so that those who wish to use the birth control pill while attending a catholic college, hospital or university now cannot be refused when they ask for it.
Which brings us back to the issue of religious liberty.
In the last six hundred years, Christianity has been gelded.
The catholic church used to be able to drag you from your home and tie you to a stake and burn you if they thought you were a Witch or Wizard. There was a trial by ordeal, which translated into modern English means, “a trial you have no chance of ever ever winning” This practice did not stop until the early seventeen hundreds.
The church used to have the power to make kings crawl to Rome and beg to be allowed continued membership in the church.
Now, however, in the twenty-first century, the problem the catholic church and other religious groups of all denominations face is that they are no longer taken very seriously by those who are members.
The church’s birth control policy is ignored by between ninety-eight and ninety-five percent of catholic women. That is all but two to five percent, depending on the survey have confessed to using birth control methods the church claims one will go to hell for using.
If all Catholics were “good Catholics,” this decision would not matter. The pope has told women that all contraception is hellish and a killer of the unborn, and if these women took there religion seriously, the decision would be as relevant to the catholic church as who wins the super bowl next week because its adherents wouldn’t act on it.
But they will act on it because in the twenty-first century, the popes words to American Catholics are not infallible. Otherwise none of the Catholics in this country would be using condoms, the pill, or all the rest of it.
In the deep south there are people who believe the bible is literally true, no ifs, ands or buts. They believe the world was created from nothing about six thousand years ago. Dinosaurs either lived concurrently with Adam and eve, or are a hoxe perpetrated by secularists. These people don’t use condoms or birth control, which is why lots of them have many children, and also have higher rates of sexually transmitted disease than the rest of the American populous.
These people are stupid, but I respect them in the same way I respect a boxer whose getting his ass kicked and keeps getting up to take more punches to the face. The worlds rapidly changing and through an insane effort of will they are not changing with it.
But liberal interpreters of scripture have been much more open to change. They have mostly forced there religions to change with them, and in the same way the Arab Spring was somewhat motivated by poor arabs able to see the lifestyle of the democratic west, Catholic peritioners watching the relitively stricture free life lived by mainline prodistants are ignoring Catholic teaching. And only Mother Church can be blamed for its own lack of clout.
The problem is that the pope and the religion he is supreme leader of has become feckless. It isn’t just this pope. The institution has lacked testicular fortitude for a long time now.
Your probably getting almost upset enough to stop reading at this paragraph, but give me one more to prove my point.
Picture this. Tomorrow the pope issues a papal bull, (a decree from on high, its all official,) which says everyone using birth control will be excommunicated. What would happen? Would condom use stop? Would birth control use stop? No. Neither would stop.
People would instead leave the church. The catholic hiarky is doing all it can do in 2012 begging its flock to stay. It might not look like its begging, but it is.
Ninety-eight percent of its current female flock will now burn in the fires of hell for ever and ever because they’ve used contraception. Sure, some will repent, but some will lie in confession and thus will burn. But does the church do anything to stop this? No! Because it knows that it lacks the power to stop anything.
Its become reactionary. It used to declare how the world would be, and people would listen. Now it harps because the world is ignoring it, and only a few listen.
Even Newt Gingrich lived for six years in sin with his third wife. I’m not knocking the guy, at least for this. He and his current wife had a getting to know you phase. Ignoring for now that this phase began while Gingrich was still married, what the couple was doing is what the huge majority of modern couples do. They were dating. Odds are they slept together before they were married. I have no problem with this, you probably have no problem with this, lets just assume his second mairage wasn’t going well. The church, however, views two consenting adults who are sleeping together without being married as some type of abomination, and, like everyone else, Gingrich and his wife flouted church doctrine.
This is technically an ex communicable offense. Keep in mind a hundred years ago Gingrich would not have been able to do this openly. He would have been ostracized by everybody that mattered, both within his church and within the larger Christian community. But the world has moved on so that now, not only was he not ostracized for sleeping with a woman he wasn’t married too, calling him on this point would not upset most of us.
When the Obama administration announced its decision, the Church did not quickly tell its congregation not to request contraception because most Catholics already use contraception of one form or another. They simply don’t go to catholic institutions to get there birth control.
The catholic church did not make this entreaty because they knew it would go largely unheeded by the so called faithful that fill its ranks.
The point everyone is ignoring is that the Obama administration hasn’t denied anyone religious liberty. The choice between taking birth control and not taking birth control exists unchanged. The catholic Church is upset because its followers, despite its wishes have already made there choice, which is counter to catholic doctrine.
On Sunday, catholic priests across the nation asked there flocks to complain to there local congressman in hopes of getting the ruling overturned through legislation. The alternative would have been to tell there followers to abandon contraception. But if they had asked this, and it was then ignored, the loss of credibility would have been crippling, so they did not.
In the coming weeks, the Church will spend its time railing against Obama’s liberal secularist agenda. An agenda that its followers in small to medium degrees are already embracing. It can’t yell at its followers, because the vast majority will not care. They are catholic only as long as it is convenient to be catholic and most of them would drop there faith like a hot coal as soon as it asked too much of them. So it doesn’t. Instead it postures.
The catholic church is authoritarian. This authoritarianism is why you see so many people who used to be catholic but are now Episcopalian. The Episcopals let women be priests, let there priests marry, allow homosexual bishops and don’t bitch too much about abortion. The Catholics innocuously bitch about everything they see as a sin, are ignored, but still drive followers away because they don’t want to hear the constant bitching, even when its quiet.
A doctor at a catholic hospital is free to tell her patients that taking birth control is like popping the Matrix’s blue pill, except instead of leaving the matrix its a one way trip to hell, and the patients are free to not care about this and take the pills anyway.
A person who is really catholic will not use condoms, will not take birth control, will not eat meat on Fridays, (a point the catholic church voluntarily conceded as not mattering much in the second Vatican counsel,) and do all the other things the church insists upon.
The Obama administration has expanded actual liberty, which makes it harder for any church to enforce religious liberty. But this issue should properly be between catholic leaders and catholic followers, not Catholic leaders and the Obama administration. Good catholic girls shouldn’t even be asking for the pill, and if they are its due to a failure of the catholic church to properly educate them. Let me do it. I think I can summarize this bullshit in a paragraph.
Life begins at conception. This means that if you have sex and have a miscarriage three days later even though the odds are you won’t ever know, you just had a kid. It was eight sells big and three days old and thought no thoughts, dreamed no dreams, took no breaths, had no limbs or head or bones even, but it had a little soul. Every time you tell your boyfriend to put a condom on, your preventing the unborn and enjoying sex for pleasure. This is bad because pleasure is a sin unless your married and even then pleasure is only a side affect of the sexual process because sex is about having children and pleasure is only a manifestation of humanaties sinful nature .
Have I convinced you of anything? Have they? Probably not.
Fresh press
political commentary
catholic church
Liberty
Obama
politics
religion
secularism