Juan Cole on Bush, the Schiavo case and the Religious Right

Juan Cole makes some excellent points today, here, about Bush, the Schiavo case, and, particularly, what the Religious Right pro-lifers are really after with the abortion rights fight. Juan Cole always make excellent points, though generally, his discussion is about the Middle East, which is where his expertise lies.

I've always thought that, yeah, abortion choice rights are about a woman having the right to choose what happens to her body and not have the government tell her what she can't do. But Mr. Cole points out that, not only is about this, it's also about a man using his ability to impregnate a woman to, if you have no choice, make her lose control of her body. It's an issue of men controlling women, which is, of course, what these "traditionalist" conservatives want because that's what happened in the Bible and, of course, the way it should be according to them.

Mr. Cole goes further and explains that our domination of countries like Iraq is similar to conservatives' anti-abortion stance. He says,

Powerful non-fundamentalist men and uppity Third World countries that won't do as they are told are ultimately no different from feminist women seeking an abortion. All must be subdued, in the view of the Christian Right.

It is about hierarchy, power and control. It is not about life. [my emphasis]

Couldn't have said it better. No matter what they say, it's not about life. It's about power and control. This is what the Republicans are all about. That can't be said enough times. If it were about life, they would be against wars, the death penalty, be for improved healthcare, improved air quality, reasonable gun control laws and many other items on the liberal/progressive agenda.

These fuckers want this country to be a Christian theocracy, because it will give them control over women, the middle class, the lower class, and anybody who stands in their way or disagrees with them in the slightest. In the name of God, they will own you and tell you what to do and, in the end, not give a shit about life.

From the Vault II: George Ryan, Commie Republican Traitor

From 1/15/03:

This morning, I was pondering why I hadn't heard more about Illinois' departing governor, George Ryan, and his commuting of all death sentences on his state's death row. Surely, this was a hot button topic, as the death penalty always is. Surely, this was another case of a bleeding-heart liberal wimp being soft on convicted murderers. That there had been some great flouting of the rule of law by a liberal who just doesn't get it. I had been waiting for John Ashcroft to step in and say this surely could not be allowed.

I was wondering about this situation, until I found out that Ryan was a Republican. Yep, a true conservative Republican commuted the death sentences of 150+ death row inmates. Now I understand why I hadn't heard much about this story. Admittedly, I don't have cable, so I don't know what the talking heads are saying. But between the major networks, and my local nightly news, there's always enough vitriol to go around. And this vitriol is--here's a news flash to you conservatives--all conservative. Conservatives dominate the media (another news flash--the media is not liberal). And they won't attack their own (unless they're forced to, as in the case of Trent Lott).

Just think if Ryan had been a Democrat. Even if I don't have cable, I would have heard cries of outrage from the likes of Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, Bill Frist (does Trent Lott dare speak to a camera these days?), George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer and more on the channels I do get. Ashcroft would be outraged also, and an investigation surely would've been called. Maybe even outraged "citizens" would've been flown into Illinois to protest and riot; perhaps it would be the same crew of "citizens" who went to Florida in 2000 to protest the recounting of votes. There would be massive media coverage of such a protest. Hell, even Ann Coulter or William Bennett would've published books about how this was such a travesty perpetrated by the liberal elite.

I'm on the fence with the death penalty. On one hand, I feel that no, the government has no right to take lives, even of murderers. On the other, I think murderers deserve to be put to death. I applaud Ryan for making a courageous decision. I deplore the media for allowing itself to be consumed by conservatives and for becoming another branch of the Bush administration.

RIP, Terri Schiavo; Now, Bring on the Ghouls, Bring on the War

As you probably know, Terri Schiavo has died. I hope she rests in peace, and everyone associated with her makes it through a time of mourning and moves on with their lives while never forgetting the person she was. While her situation became extraordinary, her brain death and now physical body passing boil down to an essential core fact--many of us deal with the horror of a family member/loved one passing away much too soon, and it's a terrible human tragedy whenever it happens and this tragedy is multiplied even further when surviving family members argue.

None of this, of course, will deter people (shameless ghouls) who will take advantage of her (those who have been taking advantage of her up until this point) to further their causes, to create more divisions in this country, to launch a war that they've been chomping at the bit to start for years, a war which many have already been fighting for years, and they don't care how small their numbers are, how many people actually are against them. As Hendrik Hertzberg states in this week's New Yorker, she will become an unwitting martyr, and it doesn't matter what her wishes were or what the laws say.

The war is now on--officially if it wasn't already--to turn this country into a Christian theocracy. Where abortion choice rights will be gone, where gay marriage will be banned and gays further ostracized, where stem cell research will be eliminated, where the right to die will be abolished, where the government will intervene to tell you what to do with your lives, where everyone will be subject to a religious litmus test. It doesn't matter if any of this is actually in the Bible; it doesn't matter that caring for the poor and sick and not judging others are equal if not more significant Christian principles.

The extremists--such as the right-to-lifers willing to risk harm to their own children in violating this nation's laws--don't care. Their brand of Christianity operates in much the same way that the Taliban's brand of Islam does, in that it's a perversion of the religion and something that most people don't follow. However, much like Muslims who don't follow an extreme form of their faith like that advocated by the Taliban and terrorists, Christians in this country who aren't extreme, who are willing to love others and not judge others even if what other people are doing might conflict with their beliefs, who are willing to be reasonable and who genuinely want to help people and who have a strong distaste in their mouths watching what other so-called Christians are doing in the name of God, are never heard from. He who shouts loudest is the one who is heard.

Many of these Christian "extremists" I'm referring to are honest, decent people who think they are doing the right thing. But I think they are very dangerous, because they don't examine anything--particularly their own faith--but just pick up their torches and jump in with the mob calling for blood because other Christians or Randall Terry or Tom DeLay or FoxNews tell them to do it. They will be out there fighting a "cultural war," for the "culture of life," for any number of heavily financed agendas, and not even sure why they are truly doing it other than feeling that it's what they are supposed to and what God wants them to do (how can you quantify, in any way, what God wants you to do). I stop short at calling such people gullible sheep, but they are severely misled. More and more people will jump on this "culture of life" horseshit bandwagon they are touting, as Republicans and media blurt out half-truths and blatant lies with no counterargument as they have been doing the last 20 years on just about every issue.

More and more people will be convinced that it is right to intervene in your private affairs and make you accountable. Look at what's happened to Michael Schiavo. It's the equivalent of a public stoning and I'm sure the rest of his life has been ruined by this sad charade. This is what they will do to people who run counter to their agenda.

The true details from this case that should matter to people--the devastating effects of eating orders such as bulimia, the necessity of having living wills, the ridiculous costs of healthcare, the necessity of exploring stem cell research to help people in brain death or persistent vegetative states--will be lost and it'll all be about this wedge issue--this simplistic "life" vs. "death" argument that encompasses conservative sideshows such as abortion, stem cell research, and the right to die but, of course, ignores war, torture, the death penalty, providing adequate healthcare to those who need it so they don't suffer, having sensible gun laws--further dividing this country and pitting citizen against citizen, which is, in my view, what the conservatives in power truly want, because they love war because it always benefits them and they can't roll tanks down the streets just yet because that doesn't poll well.

These people, while the whole-feeding-tube-reinsertion-court-appeals-ad-infinitum spectacle was happening, have been, I'm sure, planning their subsequent moves. The courts, a high profile player in this and one of this country's checks against right-wing dominance, will be targeted, which works perfectly into the hands of Republicans seeking the "nuclear option" to end filibustering in the Senate which will allow all of Bush's court nominess to skate through unsullied.

And, in the end, somehow all of this will require another round of tax cuts; passage of Patriot Acts II, III, and IV; the elimination of all bare skin and all bad language on all television programs; more legislation that benefits corporations and the wealthy over the middle class and the poor; and it will all somehow be related to terrorism, obstructionist Democrats, and 9-11.

From the Vault I: Compassion for Rush (10/10/03)

I'm posting some old posts I like from an old, now-defunct blog of mine and calling it my "From the Vault" series. When you see that in title, either strap yourself in for a trip down political memory lane or run like hell to a blog that is actually timely and not rehashing old shit. So here goes...

From 10/10/03:

There are people calling for liberals to show compassion for Rush Limbaugh who admitted he has a drug addiction. After all, we consider ourselves compassionate, let's stick to that and not play the other side's game. But would cons show compassion if, say, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, James Carville, Paul Krugman, Al Gore, Howard Dean, Tom Daschle, Jesse Jackson, or any other prominent liberal confessed a drug addiction? No, they'd have a field day with it, and in the end, the public would be convinced that all liberals are drug addicts.

I say f*ck the right and have fun with this and call Rush on his hypocrisy. That's right--f*ck Rush and his drug addicted blowhard racist self. Too long liberals have sat and taken abuse from the right (particularly from Rush) without fighting back. The problem is liberals are too compassionate, and conservatives never are. We wring our hands, make excuses for not attacking, while the other side never stops the attack on us. Turn on the tv, the radio, you'll see, day after day, night after night--they NEVER stop. We show mercy. They don't. And they win. Moral victories--which we have many of--are a euphemism for defeats.

If now is not the time to play "gotcha" politics, as some say, when is? It wasn't, apparently, in the recent California recall election either. I'm sure it won't be in 2004 either. When do liberals get their chance to fight back? Or will we just bitch and moan amongst ourselves when conservatives do it, as they surely will, and wonder why we lose yet another election?

Media control

I've been thinking--as I often do--about the myth of the so-called "liberal media," a myth that is so well-established in our society that no one really even debates it anymore or offers a counter-argument, except Eric Alterman maybe. An incident like the Dan Rather-Bush National Guard-memo nonsense is, I'm sure, somehow is indicative to conservatives about how the media is liberal and is out to sabotage conservatives everywhere. However, if the media is so liberal, wouldn't you think that Dan Rather would've kept his job, and the whole memo story would've been swept under the rug? If it would've involved John Kerry and not George Bush, would we have even heard anything about it after the first week (more accurately, would the rest of the media have kept analyzing paper and print type and bent over backwards to help John Kerry or would they have been pounding home the substance of the story regardless of whether or not it was true or there was a faked memo)? FoxNews lies and distorts all the time; where are the outcries, the investigations, the firings?

What I want to get at here is that, while the idea of the "liberal media" is prevalent, and you will often hear commentators and regular people talk about it, no one is talking about the possibility of the media being conservative. I mean, yeah, heads would explode if this were found to be true, and conservatives would be stripped of one of their key "we're just victims!" attacks that have been so succesful. I say, given the fact that FoxNews and MSNBC invented themselves to attack Bill Clinton and cover his sexual dalliances 24/7, that all of the networks went after every tiny little thing about Al Gore in 2000 ("Al Gore invented the internet" and other things he may or may not have said that are, at worst, verbal miscues--which ironically Bush is the undisputed king of and everyone thinks is so charming) while no one bothered to investigate Bush's National Guard or DUI records; that the Washington Post--that bastion of "liberal media"--has never offered a retraction for its continued chase of the Whitewater investigation that ultimately exonerated the Clintons; that the Washington Times, a staunchly conservative newspaper, is run by the Reverend Moon, a convicted tax evader and multiple felon, the leader of the Unification church cult, a self-proclaimed Messiah (something he has proclaimed before some "misled" Congressmen), and one of the stalwarts of the current conservative movement and loyal friend of the Bush family, and the Times has been running at a $50 million dollar a year deficit the last 25 years (who's subsidizing this effort?), and no one other than a few obscure websites ever mentions these sordid details that would be enough to cut the feet out from under anyone; that the major news outlets rah-rahed this nation into the Iraq war without once questioning the rationale and the evidence; that talk radio is completely conservative; that ABC is owned by Disney (disclaimer: Disney did donate more money to Democratic campaigns this election cycle than Republican), CBS is owned by Viacom, NBC is owned by General Electric--all three are major corporations that received generous tax incentives when the big tax plan was passed a few years back and are corporations that are interested in making profits, something which any conservative will tell you is antithetical to the beliefs of the evil unpatriotic Communist liberals who want to give all your money away and want to destroy God-fearing, pro-American corporations (so why would such corporations be liberal?); that George W. Bush, despite poll numbers that are bottoming out and a continual shameless political power grab that has killed the economy, killed tens of thousands of people, killed our reputation around the world, killed our Constitution and made him a dictator while marginalizing , and who is always given a pass and is still referred to in the media as a popular wartime President, a man of peace, a visionary, a great humanitarian, the savior of the world, a nice guy to have a beer with--I say, given all this and more, the media is conservative. But who dares mention it?

At most, I can give the media the benefit of the doubt and say they are corporate as opposed to conservative or liberal. Corporate, in that they are concerned with making money, and they know how to make the money--by shilling for conservative causes and giving the conservative angle equal play no matter if they are wrong (for example, interviewing anyone who says global warming is a myth), riding the wave of Rush Limbaugh and other talking heads who have big audiences and big book deals, and never ever substantially going after the Bush family on anything but always attacking Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, or Ted Kennedy.

I think that, at one point, the media could be considered "liberal," in the sense that they were advocates of the common person over the tyranny of corporations and government. Newspapers basically made their names in the early part of this century by going after corporations and moguls who were abusing workers and taking advantage of people. Necessary work, but, of course, this goes against conservatives who want corporations to be unaccountable because that means less wages to pay and less money to regulate things which means a stronger bottom line. The media as "liberal" culminated in the 1970s with the Watergate investigation and the downfall of Richard Nixon. When Reagan came, it was gone, and things like the Iran Contra scandal, our excursions into Central America, went largely unreported (Iran-Contra, while a big news item, should have been bigger than Watergate and taken down the entire administration), and Reagan was treated with kid gloves as a doddering old grandfatherly sage incapable of wrongdoing.

Conservatives control everything now. Quite an accomplishment, I say, if there's this vast liberal conspiracy in the media, as conservatives would have you believe.

Extremists in Our Midst

Paul Krugman, once again, hits a home run in his discussion about extremism in this country. I would go even further and say we've already seen this extremism hit our country with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. At that point in our history, we were deeply enmeshed in the anti-government (basically, anti-Clinton, in my opinion) movement that was perpetuated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy, and Timothy McVeigh's background and motives suggest that he was firmly anti-government (imagine for a second if McVeigh had been an extremist liberal--they'd still be talking about it on talk radio and cable tv). But, Krugman is right that the extremism we face now is religiously charged (and they can't be "anti-government" like they were before because, well, they are the government now).

The thing is, these extremists--namely, a good part of the conservative Christian right that has taken over this country--don't care about fair play, the rule of law, or logic. They care about acting in what they perceive to be what God wants, and all rules and the hypocrisies and contradictions that they themselves display can be damned. Liberals and moderates and even some conservatives have played nice with them, acknowledging their right to exist and believe what they want to and be a part of the political process; the problem is, they don't play nice with others, and they don't acknowledge anyone else's right to exist, believe what they want to, be a part of the political process. While the rest of us work to accomodate them, they work to destroy us. We work to consider where they're coming from; they work to make us come from where they're coming from or perish. It's truly a game of Chamberlain-Hitler like appeasement, and we know how that worked out, and we can see how it's working in our society.

They will never be sated now matter how much we give them. And when they finally have it all, they'll still need someone to fight (remember, they are always the oppressed, no matter how much power they have), so they turn against people that originally followed them. They'll find the conservatives who aren't Christian and do the same thing. They'll find the Christians who aren't Christians like they are and do the same thing.

Sounds alarmist? Well, there's plenty of world history to justify it. The way they're operating now justifies it as well.

When they have been repeatedly thwarted by the law and voters of this country, they will move on to more extreme tactics to further their cause. It will be done in the name of patriotism and God. If you don't think the likes of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and John Ashcroft won't resort to such tactics, then you haven't been paying attention.

The End of Discussion, or Exile in Regular World

It has probably been this way for awhile, and perhaps I'm just noticing it now that I'm firmly ensconced in the "normal" adult world as opposed to the academic world of my youth (late teens, early-to-mid 20s being "youth" here, which makes me feel real old saying it). But it seems that you just can't have discussions anymore with people who have views different from yours. The discussions devolve into shaking heads and bouncing about FoxNews talking points as if they were true indisputable fact. Perhaps it's just my fault for not acknowledging the inherent, Biblical-like truth from FoxNews and other conservative media scripts that have taken over any discussion of anything these days. Maybe it's that, being older, I now have more conservative friends than ever, and conservatives were always this way and I was just sheltered from it during my undergraduate days.

Case in point is a very brief discussion I recently had about what's happening in the Middle East. A conservative acquaintance said that, given the recent developments in Iraq and Lebanon, I had to admit that Bush was doing some great things there. My response was--and I admit I'm not good at such debate verbally--there are a lot of dead people in Iraq and there are many continually dying. It was a party and I was surrounded by other conservatives who jumped in and sort of hit me from all sides with things like, "how can you say that?," (um, because people are dying there and are continually dying there?) and "the military is supposed to fight wars--you should know that before you sign up!" (support the troops, indeed!). This sort of dissipated--it actually turned into the conservatives touting the greatness of Bush (which excludes me) and then into the horribleness of Michael Schiavo (the flavor-of-the-month whipping boy for the right). This discussion was mild compared to some other ones, but it spurred this diatribe I'm writing.

This sort of thing might happen because of my own laziness and lack of desire to waste precious air. In the old days, I would've gone into how it's way too early to tell what good the Iraq elections will do (and that prognosis doesn't get better if they never decide on a government) and go into the ethnic powder keg that the Kurds-Sunnis-Shiites form, much less the more recent history of, what about those WMD's we were after that weren't just in smaller numbers than we thought but didn't fucking exist at all? As far as Lebanon goes, we had nothing to do with what has happened there (remember, someone assassinated their former PM) and, after we hightailed it out of there after the 1983 embassy bombing that killed 241 marines, Lebanon hasn't been talked about since in this country, most likely because that incident is a big smudge mark on the record of St. Ronald Reagan and no one ever dares mention a bad word regarding him (and, quick, how many conservatives--newfound humanitarians concerned with the plights of people everywhere--knew that Syria basically has controlled Lebanon?), not to mention that more people demonstrated in the streets courtesy of Hezbollah (former terrorist scourge now our new political "friend") in favor of Syria than were opposed to it and they've had a form of democracy for decades.

I guess we could've gone even deeper and discussed the "democracy" movement in Egypt, which is just a sham that Mubarak--a long-time friend of the U.S. whose country receives money from us in amounts only less than Israel--has done before and no one really takes seriously now. And Libya too, which isn't really moving toward democracy but is seeking to normalize relations with the rest of the world, is often discussed by conservatives as a country that has reformed in the wake of Bush's war on terror (Khaddafi is afraid of the wrath of Bush!), but, if you analyze the history, you see that this has been a decade or so long process that has hinged on settlement of the Lockerbie case. And there's the recent upswing in Israel-Palestine relations, which has come only after Yassir Arafat's death (remember, the Palestinians supported and elected Arafat), and, since the beginning of forever in this situation, there have always been lulls and periods of promise that have proceeded disastrous times. I can point out things that I have learned through paying attention during college studies, researching to sate my own curiosity, and my own desire to keep up with the news since I was in high school, but it's fruitless if the other side is clueless and has no desire to learn new information.

I'm getting away from my main point here, which was that discussion back in the day was much more tempered, much more based in history, logic, and actually knowing something about something and willing to side on the side of the average human person and what they have endured and continue to endure under the rule of world leaders regardless of political bent and not blind support of a particular leader or government or believing everything on FoxNews because it's on FoxNews or holding firmly to one political view and refusing to acknowledge contradictions and wrongdoings on your side.

Half of the time, I feel like I'm sort of an exile in this regular, grownup world. It seems like the so-called grownup world is devoid of objectively considering both sides of a debate, having your own thoughts separate from what the fearless leader and his minions have, being a student of history and politics and just knowing something at all about anything and being willing to admit you're wrong. The college days of youth were like this; the grownup adult days aren't. Ah, irony--but they wouldn't get that either.