Reproductive Health Issues Have Nothing to Do with Children

 

Ever listen to pundits yammer on about a topic and totally miss the significance?  I feel that way about the melding of the topics of reproductive medical care with children who live or die through school shootings.

 

The stance of Vance and every head-bobbing MAGA rally attendee has nothing whatsoever to do with children.  I mean, the media steps right up to it but doesn’t seem to understand the significance.

 

They say that the MAGA stance toward women and their reproductive lives is not in alignment with their response to school shootings.  MAGA says that any fertilized egg should be treated as a person.  But when kids are killed by shooters at a school, their response is, “eh, shit happens.”  It doesn’t make sense, they say.  How can they be so hard-assed about women and pregnancy but so callus about children dying in school shootings?

 

Absolutely.  When looking at these two things, it doesn’t make any sense.  These two things do not make sense because the fight to remove women’s reproductive rights has nothing to do with children. 

 

I want to say this again, because it’s’ killing me that everyone’s missing this.  The rules around reproductive freedom have nothing to do with children.  Nada.  Not one thing.  This whole mess, all of it, is revenge for all the years that Roe v. Wade gave women 100% control over their bodies.  Men couldn’t decide if a woman was going to keep or abort a fetus.  If she decided to run a pregnancy to term and become a single mother, the guy couldn’t force her to abort.  He could even be nailed for child support, and there was nothing he could do about it.  But say he wanted a baby, and she decides to abort.  It simply wasn’t his decision to make. 

 

This is the only situation that has ever existed giving women 100% say over something, men be damned.  I believe that all of the effort of this largely white-male movement to regain control of women’s reproductive decisions is a temper tantrum.  We must be put in our place, and that place is where white men are in control.   It has nothing to do with children.

 

Of course, lots of unwanted babies will be born.  Men have never been very good at taking responsibility for unwanted children.  Why would that change?  It’s no skin off their noses. 

 

What about women who spew support for losing their bodily autonomy?  I’m talking about women who stand with these white men.  Women who are complicit are almost worse.  I know these women.  I grew up in a family of rednecks, where the only good woman was one who followed her husband’s lead.  These women are utterly convinced that they need a man by their side in order to be safe in the world.  If they have any thoughts of their own, they keep them deeply buried. 

 

Has anyone ever wondered how big this group of women is?  I’m talking about women who are enslaved in their belief that they can’t survive without their white male counterparts, who understand that, by opposing these white men, they could be thrown out onto the streets to be consumed by the countless dangers awaiting them.   “Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.  Hard to get by just upon a smile.” 

 

I belong to a Facebook group of women over 50 who love to travel solo.  It’s a great group, with women sharing their plans, adventures and sometimes mishaps.  But I see posts, daily, from women who are intrigued but terrified at the prospect of doing anything alone.  They think that going to a restaurant and asking for a table for one will bring down all kinds of judgement.  Everyone will stare.  The serving staff will resent having to serve a table of one.  So many women firmly believe that going to a public place without a man by their side will make them the subject of ridicule and scorn.  I find this to be profoundly sad. 

 

Is everyone assuming that these women, who have been misinformed their entire lives can’t be reached?  Or is it that no one is thinking of these women at all?  What if someone told them that they are, indeed, allowed to think for themselves.  Cast their own votes, not just what their husbands would do.  In my travel group, we sort of do that…we coax women into facing their fears and going out into the world.  Most of these women are the ones left behind.  Either their husbands of 30 years have died or left them for a younger model.  They’re left spinning inside their own heads, wondering whether they can figure it all out or if it’s just time to die.

 

So, I see in the news that there are efforts to bring in Black voters, especially black women, latino voters, LGBTQ+ voters, young voters.  I want to see some new targets.  Women who are married to MAGA white men.  Women who are learning to use their voices for the first time, mostly older women who find themselves alone at a later stage of life.

 

I tried joining a group called Red Wine and Blue.  It’s a group of suburban women who are claiming their voices in the political landscape.  They are a vibrant, strong group.  But they are not my tribe.  When I offered comments regarding older women, they were not only not interested.  They refused to include me in their discussions.  I know I am very opinionated, and it has to be difficult to moderate a group with tens of thousands of members, but it was clear that their mission statement differed from my own.  And I am certain that these women are not the ones I speak of who are married to MAGA white men. 

 

This demographic of white women, married to and enslaved by MAGA white men, and those who formerly were, is all but invisible.  But they’re ripe.  Waiting to be plucked from the tree and saved from themselves. 

 

Dreamcatchers and Black Jobs

 In The Dreamcatcher by Stephen King, there is a scene where aliens, disguised as humans, go into a convenience store to get something to eat. They’re trying really hard to fool the real humans, so they ponder what humans like to eat.

 

Bacon! They think…humans love bacon. So, they find the bacon in the store, rip open the packages and chow down on the raw bacon. “Mmmm, this is good,” they mutter, greasy blobs dripping from the corners of their full mouths.

 

Pretty disgusting, huh? Of all the things written by Stephen King, it’s snippets like this that really gross me out.

 

This is what I imagine Trump and his crew will look like as they attempt to stop looking so weird and try to seem like…whatever they think the majority of us look like. I can’t wait to see it. Or maybe they’ve already started trying to look less weird. 

 

Here I am, just grateful that I retired from my black job before some immigrant came along and took it.

Another Trump Rant

 

This quote came up on my Facebook feed today and set me on a rant:

 

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. ~Noam Chomsky

 

So, I thought, what would I see if I step away from the minutiae? By minutiae I’m referring to some friggin big things, like women’s healthcare, LGBTQ+ issues, Jan6, the upcoming election, all of it, all of the things being pointed and counterpointed in the news every day.  Referencing the above quote, are all of these things examples of ways the spectrum of acceptable opinion has been strictly limited?

 

I’ve been embroiled in my nation’s politics since the 2020 election.  So much is at stake.  So many moving parts.  But are there?  What would I see if I could beam myself up to a satellite station and look down on all of this from a distance?  Is there a pattern to this chaos? 

 

I see that we have a mission to save democracy in the United States of America.  It hit me that democracy will not be saved by a super hero in tights and a cape.  Democracy will be saved by we the people working together to bring light and shine it all of those dark corners.  Our theme song should be This Little Light of Mine. 

 

I get the sense that all of these weighty, important issues at hand are distracting us from the real issue.  All of these matters, every single one, stems from Donald Trump.  Throw in his puppetry over the Republican Party in Congress, and it is evident that he has taken over control of us all.  He’s stirred so many pots, and we’re all in those pots, spinning.

 

If we’re, all of us, the collective hero, we’re really only up against one man.  All of those angry voices out there, they’re all really him shouting, disrespecting, demeaning.  Trump made that normal.  He made it acceptable.  He made millions of Americans extensions of his bullhorn.  So, what needs to happen is for that bullhorn to be taken away.  If he were to be silenced, lots of people would snap out of it, until only a few diehard fanatics would be occasionally seen. 

 

The only way to silence him is to treat him like any other criminal.  Could you imagine being arrested for armed robbery, but being released by the court because you don’t have time to go to jail.  You’re up for a promotion.  Treat him like the criminal that he is, and throw him in the pokey…without bail.  That’s what he deserves, and that’s what we deserve.  Treat him like any other prisoner.  Fuck his secret service detail.  He lost his status as a free American when he was charged.

 

Putting him in prison would castrate their strategy of delay.  How fast would they go from tortoise to hare if he couldn’t campaign from prison?  Then we’d have a trial.  And he will be found guilty.  And he will go to prison for the rest of his whiney little life. 

 

And his goon squad…all of those who’ve been manipulated and hypnotized by his seething hate…we will see, won’t we, what they’re made of.  I think that Jan6 was a wake up call for his base.  Until that day, they never dreamed that there could be consequences for anything that they did in Trump’s name.  Somewhere in their deluded minds, they know that Trump calling the convicted insurrectionists hostages changes nothing.  The institution of our court system looms over them.  Trump can say anything he wants, and they can cheer for it all, but now they will hit a wall if summoned to go to battle for him ever again. 

 

So, instead, his cultists shrink into their lairs and seek out Trump’s targets to threaten, demean, terrorize on his behalf.  And as they sneer with pride when they send this hatefulness to another human being, they must certainly know on some level that they’ve descended into complete cowardice. 

 

Take away his bullhorn.  Throw him in the clink.  Put him in a cell by himself so that he can’t hurt anyone.  We’re wasting time.  The courts need to stop coddling this grifting, self-aggrandizing, hateful, manipulative man.  Every day he stays out of jail, he’s winning.  They say that there is no such thing as bad publicity.  All of the news is about him.  There isn’t a shred of anything going on where we don’t have his stupid input.  Whether part of his base or not, left, right, any label you want, the news is about him.  He’s in control, and it needs to stop.

 

 

The Saboteur

 

In computer parlance, it’s called an infinite loop.  An infinite loop goes like this:

 

If blah is true

Do blabbity blah

Sleep 20

Done  

 

As long as the blah remains true, the program will repeat the blabbity blah command every 20 seconds…forever, until you hit CTRL+C to manually exit. 

 

I have an infinite loop in my head, and it holds me in a paralytic twilight as it plays and plays and plays.  My biggest challenge is to find a way to hit CTRL+C.  The loop resides in a deep groove inside my head, so finding the exit keys is difficult. 

 

I retired this year, so the loop presents an array of conditions related to that adjustment:

 

• Will I be able to live on so little money?
• Will I be able to keep my home?
• Will I have to avoid all social activity to save money?
• Will anyone want to buy my jewelry?
• Will my jewelry business ever supplement my income?
• Will my 401k run out?
• Will I become too isolated?
• Will I become sick?
• Will I die soon?
• Blabbity blah blah blah…

 

Retirement is a challenge in all kinds of ways I never anticipated.  Fear of the future has encased my life in a putrid fog of self-doubt.  Sometimes, the fog lifts, and a radiant blue sky buoys  me up just enough to see outside of the groove. 

 

Extra light draws me and I am able to step out, or as John Muir would say, step in.  Only outside of the loop can I access my creative self.  I jump on it.  I write.  I design and execute many pieces of jewelry.  I read a ton of books.  I attend to life’s business, clear away wreckage.  Eventually, I’ll get too close to the edge and fall back into the groove, where the loop waits.

 

The loop is a trickster, not intending good or bad, simply performing it’s imperative.  It never stops, even when I am outside of the groove.  I’ve never been able to find the CTRL+C.  So, until I do, my job is to get out of earshot.  Slip out the back, Jack.  Make a new plan, Stan…

 

Such is the rhythm of my life.  The rhythm holds a stark reality.  I cannot immerse myself in any creative endeavor if any part of me is thinking about how I will make money from it.  Thinking along those lines is the surest way to make the creativity fairy bid me a fond fuck you.  What I want her to do, wish I could train her to do, is scream, “Stay away from that groove, you fool!”  And call me back into her bosom.