How’s That Alternate Reality Working for Ya, GOP?
I ran across this piece from The Guardian¹. Apparently, the Guardian is a British newspaper. The story is about a Texan correctional officer who was 7 months pregnant at the time. She went in to work her shift one day and as she arrived at work she experienced sharp pains which she identified as contractions. She was not allowed to leave her post until something like two hours later. When she arrived at the hospital she delivered a stillborn baby. She sued the state of Texas for some variety of wrongful death of her stillborn. The twist to this story is that Texas doesn’t want to pay up and is arguing that the 14th Amendment does not confer the rights of citizenship to unborn humans. The irony is that the same Texas Attorney General is also arguing that life begins at conception. So in Texas, if a woman has an abortion she’s committing murder according to the state, but if she is denied medical care by the state and her baby is stillborn, then that baby does not qualify as a citizen and therefore the state can wash its hands of the matter of that stillborn’s death. I wonder if the fact that the woman in question here is a person of color is somehow important to the understanding of this seeming contradiction of right-wing morality?
This is actually an example of Republican governance. It is not merely a Texan phenomenon, either. A common Republican theme nationwide is to talk out of both sides of their mouths. One side can say something like, they’re for small government and a balanced budget. On the other side, they’re for reducing the tax burden on people with money to spare and want a poor tax-like punishment for people who don’t have a roof over their heads. One side of their mouth will tell you about how law and order is ever-so-important, yet from the other side, they’ll tell you that an insurrection is not really even illegal and who knows if the election was stolen or not. Believe this or not, but there is little doubt as to why the Brazilian drag queen who stole puppies from the Amish and now claims to be a Congressman, is a Republican. The Alternate Reality Party cannot discern fact from fiction and that guy is their poster child.
It would be hard to say that the guys and gals of the Republican Party Congressional contingent are wrong or thoughtless or even derelict in their duties, as they continued sans Speaker of the House for weeks, without considering how they could manage to accomplish such a feat. I don’t know this for sure, but I do suspect that telling themselves lies about all things political is affecting their concepts of things political to the point they may no longer have the ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Think about this. When Shirt Sleeve Jim was asked if the election was stolen he could not answer. He has to know that the election was fair, but because he’s lied to himself in order to curry favor with his Rabbi, he just very well may not have the circuitry available to even vocalize a rational answer.
Is it any wonder that the Republican congress cannot even keep a Speaker? If I didn’t know better, I’d have to think that they’re doing their best to shut the government down by hook or by crook. Even if that were really their agenda, they could not admit it for love nor money. Well, maybe for enough money. It’s money that seems to be the driving force of the Republican paralysis. Take the so-called drive to balance the budget. The Crazy Eight, as they are known, have pushed the idea that a government shutdown is a good thing, except for business. Politics is really about business, but those Congressional Crazy Eight just do not understand that.
Only ten percent of Congress were honest enough to punish the evil represented by Shirt Sleeve Jim, but that punishment then threw the rest of the Congressional sheep into a tizzy. The problem for the herd is that those 20 honest Congresspeople have not left the herd a lie to cover their sheepish ineptitude. Remember back in the day when all the pundits were praying to Allah and all the gods they could find to grant them the wish that 45 would mellow with time and then settle into the office? Yeah, like that happened, right?
45 did evil things. I don’t know if he did as many good things as he did evil things, but I fear he will be remembered for his evil deeds, as opposed to his human understanding and kindness. There is an argument which could be made that because his evil deeds were unpunished, there existed a de facto order or command that everyone who wanted to follow his footsteps to wealth and power would at the very least attempt to match his degree of evil. There would be no consequences for that degree of evil, obviously.
On the other side of this coin is the famed base. It would be fair to say the base represents a demographic of people who feel as though they are barely in control of their lives and someone like 45 represents to them the kind of lifestyle they’d like to experience. There are a great many people in that demographic who would love to be able to look their boss in the eye and tell him firmly, “You’re fired!” Alas, that wish will never come true for them, unless they can somehow express that feeling to someone to whom they are allowed to look down on. Someone like a recent immigrant or maybe a person of color.
There should be no surprise that the Republican dominated Texan government would show utter disdain for their own draconian control over half of the state’s population. Yet when it’s time to stand up for what the state claims to be God’s own law, that same government argues against the right to life for a fetus, that is denied life by that very same state. Nothing irrational in any of this, right? If this is an example of a prevalent Republican logic set where opposing issues can be considered as legal directives at the same time and for the same events, but the Attorney General applies the law arbitrarily.
But then the current Republican playbook calls for the etiquette of fawning over the Liar-in-Chief for fear of telling him that his evil representation of anything truthful does not clothe him in the adoration which he believes he’s due. Unfortunately, we can already begin to see the results of hypocritical adoration to which he has been subjected. Two of his most vociferous legal supporters have blocked him. In the meantime, the constant barrage of flim-flam bragging is beginning to garner more and more dislikes showing up on his feed. The moral of this story is don’t lie about things just because you want to get away with something. You won’t and it will eventually make people distrust you.
References
- Sainato, M. (2023, August 12). Texas questions rights of fetus in prison guard lawsuit despite arguing opposite on abortion. The Guardian. Retrieved October 30, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/12/texas-fetus-rights-prison-guard-lawsuit-abortion
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