Second Class

Today the United States made approximately 52% of the population second class citizens. In doing so, it removed any doubt as to whether or not the US is a first world nation. Any nation that is so corrupt as to allow the system designed to keep different branches of the government both separate and in check to rot away completely is a failed state.

Overturning Roe isn’t just about the overweening hatred of women and pregnant people that is foundational to the Republican/Fundamentalist/Catholic/White Supremacist/Billionaire/Toxic Cis Hetero-normative hegemony in this nation. It’s about fear and control. It is not and has never been about the unborn. If it was, prenatal care would be both funded and required, and people who neglected pregnant people’s healthcare would actually suffer consequences. But they don’t.

There is no pro in the “pro-life” movement. The anti-choice movement was created as a political movement to unite historically opposed allies so Republicans could get elected. That’s it. That’s the “pro-life” movement. It’s a con, and a very successful one.

If you think you’re virtuous because you’re screaming at people going in and out of Planned Parenthood, the vast majority of whom are receiving basic medical care regardless of sex or gender, you’re just being a judgmental asshole. If you think it’s acceptable to tell people that “women just shouldn’t be able to kill babies” then you don’t understand science, and you’re still an asshole. If you think someone who has been raped should be required to carry their rapist’s potential offspring to term, you’re certainly not getting your advice on morality from Jesus, and you’re an asshole.

The truth is, abortion is not mentioned in the Christian Bible. Other faiths, such as Judaism and Islam, actually value the lives of their adherents and consider abortion to be necessary medical care to save the lives of the already born. You know, those of us in whom society has already invested. In other words, the lives of actual people.

But here in the United States a small group of very wealthy, very white nominally Christian people have hoodwinked many of you and outright fucked the rest of us. They play on your fears. They turn your basest instincts about in-groups, out-groups, skin color, and sex, into weapons and then use them against you. Really, to a large extent this isn’t even about Democrats or Republicans, this is about Oligarchs. Because at the end of the day, if you have a uterus and you’re rich, you’ll be able to get necessary medical care, like an abortion, no matter what.

It’s the ordinary people, the rest of us, that will suffer, as we do now. We suffer in a failed nation with no nationalized health care; institutionalized racism and sexism; homophobia and transphobia; ableism and systemic and cultural indifference to the disabled; and with a huge part of the population that genuinely believes that it is really OK to hate loudly and proudly. We suffer with the largest incarcerated population in the “civilized” world, and we have an epidemic of gun violence unlike any other country on earth.

Roe is the first, but it won’t be the last. While we’re all angry now, let us make today important not because of what we lost, but because of what we begin. Let today be the day that historians recognize as the beginning of the revolution. Oligarchs, we are coming for you. Everyone else needs to get on the correct side of history, or else fall with the Oligarchs. They are going to wish we only had torches and pitchforks.

I have to vote for Joe. So do you.

Joe Biden was not my first choice as the Democratic Presidential Nominee. He wasn’t even on the list to be honest. But I will vote for him and Kamala Harris on or before November 3rd with my last breath if necessary. Anyone who is a registered voter in the US who does otherwise is a fool.

There have been a lot of people writing think pieces both before and now after the DNC about how Joe is reaching the “middle of the party” and Kamala is reaching out to the “Black vote” and how that “will heal the party”. I’m also personally seeing a LOT of folks on twitter and elsewhere who are angry. They’re angry that out of a field of Democratic candidates that included LGBTQ and BIPOC candidates for the top of the ticket we ended up with yet another old white guy.

I get that. And yet I’m still going to do whatever I have to in order to make sure that my vote for Biden/Harris is counted for November 3rd. This isn’t quite a hold my nose a vote situation, but it isn’t far off.

Here’s the thing, our country is literally and figuratively on fire right now. We’ve got nearly 200,000 dead of COVID-19, a number that could have been So. Much. Smaller. had we a competent administration in office. And that number, which is likely wildly low thanks to intentional failures of reporting in lots of states, doesn’t including “unrelated” but absolutely caused by COVID deaths such as suicides, domestic violence, overdoses, and the like.

Millions are out of work, the rights of humans all across this country are being stripped away in myriad ways, people are marching in the streets to try and, as I saw someone say the other day, “Legalize Blackness” and yet actual Nazis walk free in this land that fought to bring down the Third Reich. We have white supremacists and Nazis in our highest offices in the government and they’re enriching themselves and their billionaire friends at unprecedented rates all at the cost of the rest of us.

And yet I hear people saying that they won’t vote for Biden/Harris because, “she’s a cop” “he’s a white man” “he wasn’t my top choice” “I would have preferred X” “I can’t vote for someone who put black people in jail” etc, etc.

Here’s the thing. Biden/Harris are not gonna save us, they’re not gonna fix it all. No administration in the history of ever has done that. Not in one term, not in two, not in three.

But another term with Trump will kill us. That’s a fact.

And sitting in a position where you put your personal distaste of Biden or Harris over the good of this nation is a position of extreme privilege. If we expect the Republicans to put country over party then we should expect the same of ourselves, especially right now.

I want ranked choice voting. I want more than 2 parties. I wish it wasn’t this way. But right now, this is how it is. Right now, is not the time to try and make those things happen. Right now we’re voting for our very survival. We’re voting for our lives.

People are dying. If you don’t know someone who has died of or been ill with COVID, just wait. You will. And another 4 years of looting the American public, deaths en mass, and a destroyed government infrastructure is going to be the least of our worries if Trump isn’t beaten in a landslide.

Trump and his cabal are the greatest danger to our country, to each of us individually, and to the world any of us has seen in our lifetime. Every vote for anyone other than Biden/Harris is a vote for Trump. Hold your nose and and do your job as a citizen of this Republic and vote to save it.

Then, let’s get to work on fixing it.

Kelly

 

Notes and Open Letters Regarding the Election

These are things that have been rattling around in my head since the horror began to reveal itself last night.  Some of them are fully formed letters, other are just too long to be tweets.  Read them, share them, do what you will (with credit of course).  Fair warning, I don’t have the tolerance or patience to argue with Trump supporters, anyone who opted out of voting yesterday or who voted 3rd party.  If you show up here spouting crap that in any way irritates or stresses me I’ll bring down the ban hammer so fast it won’t just be the door hitting you in the ass on the way out.

Oh, yeah, and I’m probably gonna break my own rules and swear.  It’s the apocalypse.  I think my mom will understand.

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Enough

Despite living on the very cusp of the middle class and constantly worrying that one slip will send us spinning into a void from which we won’t be able to return, Geoff and I enjoy a lot of privilege.  We’re white, we’re straight, we’re cis gendered, and, though we live in an expensive area of the country, we live in a fairly safe area of the country.  Gun ownership isn’t very high and health care is good here.  It’s isn’t nearly as hard to get good mental health care here as it is elsewhere in the US.

And yet, after what happened in Orlando yesterday, I’m angry.  I am angry that we live in a country that has wholly abdicated the promise of freedom upon which it was founded.  We are no longer free from tyranny and fear, you and I.

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I am a Second Class Citizen – This is what I am going to do about it

Today the Supreme Court decided to enshrine in law the idea that 1) if you are a rich, business owning, angry, ostensibly christian white man you are sexist special and 2) if you are a woman you’re not a real person.  God forbid you be a person of color, non-Christian, and female, war has just been declared on you.

Coupled with the unanimous decision from last week that killed the 35-foot buffer zones around women’s clinics that provide abortion, among other services, I’m ashamed to be an American right now.  Free speech, my ass.

Continue reading “I am a Second Class Citizen – This is what I am going to do about it”

The Internet tells me things

And today it has been telling me things with pictures.  And so, I am telling them to you.  A lot has been changing in the world and in our lives in the past few days, so you get pictures.

First, my favorite.

h/t to Teri for this one

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Recent news roundup- Political cartoon edition

These are mostly what has been popping up on my Google+ feed lately.  Some of them are doozies.  Enjoy.

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Poverty and the polar vortex

Today I read two very different but still related stories about things that happened in Hammond, Indiana due to the polar vortex.  Both stories emphasize the plight of the working poor in the United States, and how extreme cold affects them in ways that many people may not have even considered.

The first was about a house fire that claimed the lives of three small children and put two others and their father in the hospital.  The second was about a warehouse where workers were forced to continue working – without heat – even after the state had declared an emergency.

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Thanksgiving: A Guide

In the United States Thanksgiving is a holiday that is supposed to be about celebrating bounty.  The bounty of friends, family, togetherness, and food.  It’s about the end of summer and fall, the harvest, and making one last big get together before the coming winter.  (There are others who celebrate/mourn it differently, that’s not what this post is about.)  It is about giving thanks for what we have before we might lose it to the cold, the dark, and the winter.

While Thanksgiving might be about conspicuous consumption of the food variety, some people choose to celebrate it in other ways.  Some give back at churches, food pantries, and soup kitchens to those without a bounty to celebrate.  Some get together and play football, roast marshmallows around a bonfire, or prepare for Christmas.  Lots of people watch the parade or the dog show after eating too much.  While there may be a lot of conspicuous consumption going on, Thanksgiving is patently not about the shopping variety.  If you’re shopping on Thanksgiving, you’re doing it wrong.

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Happy Anniversary

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary.  Over the past week or so we’ve received cards, emails, voice mails, texts, and calls from family and friends wishing us a happy anniversary.

I suspect that some portion of this has to do with the fact that 1) Geoff was recently hospitalized and 2) our wedding is on Veteran’s Day weekend.  Be that as it may, I’ll take it.

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