Nothing like having a bunch of Raging Grannies break down legitimate rape for us. It’s the weekend, so it doesn’t matter that it’s not safe for the work place (except for those of us who work on the weekends…)
Nobody but nobody in the presidential campaigns is counting on the 4 undecided independent voters left in the country to vault them to the 270 electoral votes required to win. There has been no shift to the middle this summer, no “pivot and pander.” We are now in “whipping up the enthusiasm of the base” mode. Republicans are going to do everything they can to get angry white people, particularly angry old insecure white men, to show up at the polls. And Republicans are going to do everything they can to suppress the vote of everyone else.
Whipping up the base comes in many flavors- there are economic issues and there are social issues. Despite talk of deficits and the usual paeans to laissez faire capitalism, it is the social issues that appear to engender the most frenzied tribal allegiance within the Republican party. Even though the Romney campaign wants to talk economy, Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, billed as a budget wonk, has hurled red meat to the base on social issues throughout his decades in Congress with the best (or worst) of them, including Todd Akin.
Paul Ryan has said that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life. Which is to say that there is no method of conception that ever justifies abortion. Who knew that rape is merely a “method of conception” no different than conception that occurs in the context of consensual sex between adults? What do you think about that, and please, ask your grannie about that one–and your mother, too.
It is an astounding act of ignorance and cruelty to require a woman to give birth to her rapist’s child and couch that requirement in the metaphor of making lemonade when God gives you lemons. Bring on the Happy Faces! The ignorance and cruelty is compounded when the very definition of rape undergoes a grotesque recalibration that distinguishes between forcible rape and …what precisely–just joshin’ you fun loving rape?
The Republican mainstream, via their party platform and vice presidential pick, has a very special message for women. Actually, there is no message for women and that IS the message. Women are incidental to the almighty fertilized egg and the fetus–God’s precious lemonade.
Perhaps the Republican party’s devotion to medieval science and their zealotry in purging the unworthy from the voter registries will provide them with a whole new voting bloc- The Unborn Vote. The unborn can vote via a trans-vaginal ultrasound! It is a party after all which has become Prufrock- like as it gauges a future in which they are doomed by their own hand to be left behind.
“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.” The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
Anna Daniels
Latest posts by Anna Daniels (see all)
- Bob Dorn: Rest in Power! - December 3, 2018
- The Urgency of Transgender Safety, Legal Protections - November 27, 2018
- Chaos and Cruelty at the Border - November 26, 2018
Fantastic!
Paul Ryan sez that “forcible rape” is just a “stock term used in lots of bills.” So the term forcible rape is like the stock term used in a letter- Sincerely yours? Does Ryan think we are buying this one?
Thanks for Ferrera Taylor…never heard of her…a new find in world of socio-political truth-telling en”light”enment!