They Are Not The Same

The following post is a departure from my normal posts.

 

Both parties are not the same.  Not even close.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard in my life that both parties are the same.  Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t matter.  They’re both corrupt cheats.  This was a common claim that I’d hear from…. well, everyone.  For a long time, I’d hear this from everyone.  I’d hear it from those on the left, the right, the middle, the informed and the ignorant.

The last couple years have proven that this claim is total and utter bullshit.  I’ve seen this since the early Obama days, but ever since January 2017, the only ones that make try to make that claim are the ignorant or the guilty who are looking to shift the blame.  The blatant corruption, greed, and hypocrisy are on display for all to see.  But, every time a Republican gets caught in a lie, breaking the law, or abusing their power, someone has the audacity to say “both sides are the same.”

Bullshit.  Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Democrats didn’t order children to be separated from their parents and thrown into cages.

Democrats didn’t push to kill net neutrality.

Democrats didn’t ignore the threats to the upcoming elections.

Democrats didn’t work to kill the EPA.

And, most importantly, the Democrats didn’t work to put an (alleged) rapist on the Supreme Court.

At the time of this writing, the Republican Party is pulling out every dirty trick to install a  corrupt, entitled, blackmailable prick onto the Supreme Court.  The only thing that’s slowed down his nomination to this point is that Senators Jeff Flake and Lisa Murkowski aren’t comfortable voting for him unless the FBI investigates the sexual assault claims against Brett Kavanaugh.

Only 2 members of the Republican Party in the Senate, out of 51, have a problem with putting an alleged rapist on the Supreme Court.  If I’m doing my math right, that sounds like 49 are okay with it.

I’d like to say that I’m surprised and ashamed by this mentality, but I can’t.  I’m ashamed, but not surprised.  The Republican Party has long been the Anti-Woman party.  Now, they can add being Pro-Rape to their platform.

Hating women isn’t a recent development for the Republicans.  While they’ve never been the political party that’s catered to women, they didn’t openly advocate hating women until the Pro-Life movement began in the late 1970’s.  At that point, hating women was a side effect to hating black people.  The Pro-Life movement began in the years following the signing of the Civil Rights Act.  Since white people weren’t allowed to legally discriminate against black people in most businesses and actions, they had to go somewhere to spew their racism.  So, they went to the most racist places allowed in society: church.  I’m not saying that they weren’t God-Fearing Christians before, but now they had a place to go to practice their dog-whistling.  This was the rise of the Evangelicals and the genesis of the Religious Right.

The thing is, the Religious Right didn’t have another cause to help rally the troops until Roe v. Wade legalized abortion across the country.  Before then, fighting against abortion wasn’t a major tenet of any sect of Christianity, except for the Catholics.  And Evangelicals are about as far from Catholics are as possible.  But the Evangelicals jumped on the abortion bandwagon when they were able to create the message of the “irresponsible black woman” who used abortions because they “couldn’t keep their legs closed.”

The Religious Right and the Republican Party fed off of each other, amplifying their racist dog-whistles at every turn.  Welfare went from a way of providing for a poor white war widow and her family to the main method of lazy black women to get money.  Public education went from the bedrock of society to poorly funded and even worse performing  places that gave the Religious Right the excuse to push school vouchers, stripping even more money from those schools.

But the fight against women was their most insidious battles.  The same groups that didn’t want to pay for welfare for poor people also went out of their way to hurt women. And their messaging has gotten worse over time.  Back in the 90’s, the GOP started their long battle against the right to choose by trying to place more and more restrictions on when and how a woman could get an abortion.  But at least then, if a politician didn’t at least claim an exception for rape and incest, they were nuts.  Now, there is only a handful of Republicans left that even think that rape victims shouldn’t be forced to carry their rapists’ babies, let alone say these views.

Now, let me be clear, the Pro-Life movement isn’t actually about supporting life.  A real Pro-Life stance includes allowing exceptions for abortion in situations when the mother’s life is in danger, or the child cannot be cared for.  It includes providing health care for the pregnant women and helping women care for their new babies, or finding appropriate homes if the mothers are not able or willing to raise the children.  Pro-Life includes a realization that sometimes forcing a woman to have a child is the worst possible decision.

The people that label themselves “Pro-Life” aren’t Pro-Life.  They’re Anti-Woman.  They’re Pro-Suffering.  They only give a shit about the woman’s baby until the baby is born.  At that point, they disappear faster than a Trump when the bill comes due.  They don’t want to support the woman who has the baby when they can’t afford it, they don’t want to provide for the children’s education, and God help those women if the baby is black, because the Evangelicals sure as Hell won’t.

Want to know how disgusting the “Pro-Life” view is?  Imagine hearing a story about an 11-year-old girl that was raped and impregnated by her Uncle, or a family friend, or her pastor.  This girl, who has already been raped by someone she trusted, now has to fight to get an abortion.  Depending on where she lives in the United States, she has to travel to some distant city, stay overnight in some low-grade hotel because she has to go through two consultations with a medical professional, then fight through a line of holier-than-though protesters calling her a whore and a slut, because they think that she’s at fault.

If you’re first thought isn’t feeling terrible for this girl but saying that she’s a killer because you think the collection of cells inside of her is more important than her this girl’s life and future and she deserved all of the torment she went through and then some, then fuck you.  Learn some fucking empathy, morals, and ethics.

Up until 2016, the Republican Party kept sliding further and further into Anti-Woman policies, almost always using the excuse of “Religious Freedom.”  The most common example was getting state laws passed that allowed pharmacists to refuse to administer birth control.  But things got worse when Donald Trump became the nominee for the Republican Party.  A serial philanderer, when his “Grab’em by the pussy” tape came out, that should have been the end of his political career.

No, it wasn’t.  He somehow survived.  22 women have accused him of sexual assault, but the Republican Party lined up behind him.

It’s been two years since that tape dropped, and a year since the beginning of the #MeToo movement.  In that time, we’ve seen the largest protests since the Vietnam War, and they were led by women.  We’ve seen women speaking out against men in power.  Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Les Moonves, Bill O’Reily, Bill Shine, and Charlie Rose.  All of them lost their jobs because of their past treatment of women.  Harvey’s looking at losing his freedom, just like Bill Cosby.

Another man that lost his position and power was Al Franken.  Two women accused the Senator of inappropriate sexual behavior, and the Democrats forced him to resign.

Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh gets accused of sexual assault by three women so far, and the Republicans want to promote him to the Supreme Court.

Jim Jordan gets implicated in the cover-up of a rapist doctor’s actions at Ohio State, and the Republicans want to promote him to Speaker of the House.  Yes, that doctor abused women, too.

Roy Moore was accused of molesting young teen girls while he was in his 30’s.  The Republican Party tried to make him a Senator.

What’s made matters uglier is Trump’s actions against the women coming out with these allegations.  Here is the President of the United States, dismissing their accusations, attacking these women, and blaming them for the assaults.  And, since the Republican Party is completely beholden to Trump for everything now, his ideas now become official party policy.

Because of the this, the Republican Party is now the Pro-Rape Party.

If there is any good that has come from Trump being President, it’s that we’re finally having this conversation about how women are treated in our society.

Now, the next question is how far the Republican Party is willing to go in their alienation of women.  Are they willing to say goodbye to women for the next 40 years?  Because that’s the price of confirming Kavanaugh.  The fact that 49 Senators think it’s worth it shows how little they think of women, but if they go through with continuing their Anti-Woman platform, they need to know that they will lose the women’s vote for good.  If they’re willing to ignore, or worse silence these accusers, to put an (alleged) rapist on the Supreme Court that would make abortion illegal, then they need to know that that they will lose women for good, just like how the Democrats lost the racist vote with the Civil Rights Act.

So, we’re now at the point where if someone says “I’m a Republican”, asking them “Why do you hate women?” is no longer a cheap attack but a valid question.  The only question I have left is should their new name be the Rapepublican Party or Rape-Publican Party?  I’m not sure whether that should be hyphenated.

 

Note:  By the way, I’m only saying alleged for legal purposes.  Do I think that Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist?  Yes.  Has it been proven in a court of law?  No.  Do I have evidence against him? No.  Does he act like a lot of the frat boy asshole rapists I’ve met in my life? Absolutely.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.