Monthly Archives: July 2018

The Blind Crusaders of the GOP

Leave a reply

Is the forlorn hope of getting a shot at having a Supreme Court that *might* overturn Roe v Wade worth selling out to the Russians?

We have to face facts, President Trump is not just a bull in a China shop – he’s a wild boar in a Kosher deli. So far, his foreign policy has been to antagonize the closest, most democratic allies of the USA and then cozy up to murderous dictators like they were teddy bears. His actions at the G7 and NATO meetings provided deep challenges to our allies’ resolve to ride out his presidency in the hope that he’s just a one-termer. His actions at the Singapore summit with North Korea’s fratricidal dictator were worse than Chamberlain’s at Munich. Trump didn’t even get one concession or formal commitment from North Korea to back up his “nuclear peace in our time” declaration.

When that anti-semitic, white supremacist, child molester was running for the GOP in the recent Alabama Senate race, the justification given for abandoning all moral principles and to vote for him was blunt realpolitik: He will be a vote in the Senate that will help nominate a judge to the Supreme Court who might tip the balance of the court to overturning the established precedent of Roe v Wade.

Given that the GOP majority of one (1) in the Senate is possible because of at least two senators that have said they will not nominate a justice that does not view Roe v Wade as established precedent, one can understand why the anti-reproductive rights base of the GOP was willing to go with an anti-semitic white supremacist child molester to build out that majority to where it would not depend upon those two moderates.

It also explains why they’re going with a blustering, gauche Trump who seems to be doing his level best to somehow become Vladimir Putin’s best friend in the whole wide world. While I argue that a US strategy that encircles Russia with military bases is needlessly antagonistic, I’ve never said that we should give Putin a free pass to do all the things that he’s done.

Trump asked for Putin to get back into the G7, completely glossing over the reasons Russia was ejected from the then-G8. Russia invaded Ukraine and sponsored rebels in the Donbass region. As if to remind us about how nasty a person Putin is, a British citizen recently passed away after unintentionally handling debris associated with Russia’s nerve gas attack against two dissidents in the UK.

Why is this not a big deal to the GOP? Is the long shot of overturning Roe such a goal that you would keep a leader in office that antagonizes our allies while ignoring actual foreign policy threats? There’s also the matter of the trade war with China (which war also takes shots at the aforementioned US allies), which could lead to a very real war.

Is the need to restrict women’s reproductive rights so overriding that you want to support leaders that are racist child molesters (the Alabama Senate candidate) or foreign policy disasters (the current President)?

If yes, I don’t need any more explanation. You’ve made a deal with the Devil, in spite of your professed love of God. You have to live with the psychological doubling that will destroy your soul, as surely as it did the souls of the German doctors that agreed to work in Nazi murder camps. Not saying you’re Nazis. I’m just saying that you’re going to wind up with the same mental problems that they had. I recommend Robert J. Lifton’s work “The Nazi Doctors” as an excellent read to help prepare you for the nightmares you’re going to experience in later life.

If no, then why aren’t there more people in the party doing something about it? I used to lean Republican, but I can’t any more. There is no way that I, or a lot of independent-undecided-Libertarian type voters can lean towards a party that puts forward the candidates it does simply because they might be a vote to get a judge through to the Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v Wade.

This blind crusade within the GOP is leaving it as a party that can not govern effectively, that can not conduct foreign policy in a way that will benefit the USA, and that can do no more than say “no”.

Don’t Demonize

Leave a reply
So I see this image from “We Love Donald J. Trump” on a friend’s page… It’s a mass of negative generalizations about the Democrat party and positive generalizations about the Republican party. I’m not going to post my response on my friend’s page because I’m going to post it here, where I’m free to have here what I want to have here.
 
It’s highly generalized, which makes it inaccurate. The “lower taxes” item considered in the Republican’s favor, for example, means more deficit spending, which is essentially taxing your children so you can party today. The GOP-associated “Small government” is more words than actual action. The reality is that a true small government would also mean significant dismantling of the military along with medicare and medicaid. I don’t know of many politicians of either party willing to reduce those things to the point where we would have a true pre-1900 sort of small government.
 
At the same time, I don’t know anyone that’s pro-abortion, which is used to label the Democrats. There are people who support allowing the freedom of choice, so it’s just as easy to say that Republicans are anti-freedom, if we use the same inaccurate generalization.
 
Wanting to make sure that police work is done accurately, fairly, and with respect to our Constitutional rights doesn’t make a person anti-police (which is pinned on the Democrats), and wanting immigration reform doesn’t make a person anti-ICE (also pinned on Democrats), or for open borders and/or illegal immigration (yes, also used to tag the Dems). Going with inaccurate generalizations would paint all Republicans as closet Nazis, just waiting for a police state and concentration camps. That’s as ludicrous as some of the generalizations being made here.
 
Point being that, yes, there are differences between the major political parties after several decades of them being pretty much the same. But a person is not a demon simply for making a conscientious choice to support one party or another. Language that demonizes the opposition only makes it easier for the group doing the demonizing to itself become more extreme in its views.