Week of 04/09/2012

Women, It’s Not Just You
– by David Matthews 2

One of the weasel-like ways we try to let other people down gently is to say “It’s not you; it’s me.” This is especially true when the person you’re letting down is desperate to do or try anything to stay within favor while you’re just looking for a quick escape.

Of course, even when we say “It’s not you; it’s me”, that doesn’t mean it’s the truth. Sometimes we’re saying it to be kind. Sometimes we’re saying it to avoid admitting the real reason why we’re looking for the exit. Maybe there is something wrong with that other person but we just don’t want to admit to it. Maybe they have bad breath or a grating laugh. Maybe they have some personality flaw or bad relatives. Either way, you want out and you want it to be relatively painless for someone.

Having said that, let’s turn our thoughts over to the GOP’s master crusade, referred to by the pundits and politicians as the GOP’s “War on Women”. In true douchebag politics, the GOP has decided to suck up to their theo-conservative base by doing everything in their power to make life unbearable for women in various ways.

They have managed to maliciously demagogue the subject of birth control, a subject that should have been resolved fifty years ago. Fifteen years after whining about wanting insurance companies to cover erectile dysfunction medicine, my fellow men (and I use that term loosely) have mercilessly attacked women who tried to defend legitimate uses of birth control.

Remember abortion? The GOP never forgot. Now they’re outlawing it one state at a time, mirroring the efforts of liberal to legalize same-sex marriages.

GOP Presidential wannabe Mitt Romney made it clear that he would personally end Planned Parenthood. Not just de-fund. End. Terminate with extreme prejudice. Sure, he later would claim that he would only “strip it of federal funding”, but even if he could be taken at his word (which is subject to revision at a moment’s notice), there are still plenty in his party that have made it their mission in life to do just that.

The social safety net isn’t just collapsing; the GOP is overseeing its dismantling. At a time when the economy is still abysmal, when millions of Americans are still being systematically forsaken by Big Business, when the misery is not only continuing but is slowly getting worse, the GOP has decided to turn those Americans into third-class citizens (behind corporations and now the pre-born), leaving them to suffer at the mercy of their sponsors in Corporate America. The party that believes that they have the right to wage war at any time and any where against any enemy they choose, and at any cost, now claims that we can’t afford to help our fellow Americans. Gee, I wonder where that money went. Isn’t it funny how “9/11” can be used to justify every government expense, except for the programs that actually help people?

So let’s see… no birth control, no help for those with children, no prospects getting a job, and if you speak up about it then you’re branded a “slut” and a “whore”.

Yeah, I can see how women could see this as being a crusade against them.

Well I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news for those women who feel like the GOP are ganging up on them.

The good news is that you’re not crazy. The GOP do have it in for you. If you have a uterus and you’re not sucking up to any of the conservative special interest groups, then you are the enemy as far as they’re concerned. They have clearly made it their mission in life to see you suffer for no other reason than because you’re not submissive to their will. And here we thought that kind of thinking was only reserved for the Middle East!

But here’s the bad news, ladies… it’s not just you!

Let’s get brutally honest here… the GOP have not just been waging a war on women. They have been waging a war on freedom itself! And perversely enough, they’ve been doing so under the banner of freedom.

Never forget that it was the GOP that spearheaded efforts to censor the Internet as part of their “Contract With America”. Never forget that they pushed to re-censor radio and television through the Federal Communications Commission. Never forget that they tried to push through censorship by corporation through the SOPA and PIPA legislation. Yes, some of these efforts were sponsored by Democrats, but their efforts would have no traction in a GOP-dominated legislature unless they were supporting them as well.

And all the while, they claim to support “freedom” and they have their myrmidons dress up like America’s Founding Fathers, as if they knew anything about what the Founding Fathers truly stood for.

The party that claimed to be about “jobs, jobs, jobs” have spent the past year in control of the House doing anything but dealing with “jobs, jobs, jobs”. Instead, they’ve been reaffirming the national flower and declaring their love for a McCarthy-era fear-mongering crusade and nit-picking every second syllable uttered by the President of the United States.

Don’t get me wrong; I am no supporter of the Democrats, and I have sixteen years of posted commentaries to back that up. I’m just as pissed off at the Dems for their political impotence as I am with the GOP for their blatant and dishonorable hypocrisy. When the whole matter of birth control and the slander of Sandra Fluke started to manifest, what did the Democrats do? They essentially said “we’re sorry to hear this… now give us some money and maybe we can do something about it after the elections.” Do they even understand why they lost control of the House in 2010? I’m guessing they still don’t have a clue on that one.

In fact, I’m sure the GOP would like you think of it as only being a “War on Women”, because it keeps you focused on a singular issue, separate from any other cause that they are working on, and it keeps you isolated from working with other groups that could help yours out. It’s about divide-and-conquer.

The GOP have an inherent flaw as a party. They talk about freedom while they move to sabotage it. They talk about ethics when their actions show a lack of ethics. They scream about wasteful spending and yet still demand a blank check for warfare. And their ego does not allow them to admit that this hypocrisy even exists, much less address it.

I understand that there are certain key issues that ring the alarm bell for people. Censorship and theocracies are mine. But just because the GOP pushed your outrage button doesn’t mean that they have it in specifically for your gender. To borrow from that weasel-line: It’s not you, ladies. It’s them.