Is it just me, or does it seem the Right is on the edge of a catastrophic meltdown?
They’re starting to remind me of Hal, the Computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the end, as Dave takes Hal apart, his knowledge base degrades back to his first programming. Similarly, as Republicans lose ownership of what had been their strongest issues — national security and business — all the ugly muck at the depths of their ids is rising to the surface. Finally, there is nothing left but the primordial concern gnawing at their bones all these years — sex.
I started to say “sex and God,” but if you think about it, mostly God exists for them as a bulwark against sexual chaos. So it really is just about sex.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychiatry to recognize that James Poulos (“What Are Women For?“), for example, is massively bleeped up about sex and frantic to find something to protect him from women and their frightening, alien bodies. And what is the Virginia ultrasound law but a means to keep women in their place through state-sanctioned rape?
And the answer to the question “What are Republicans thinking?” is, what thinking?
They’re going back to their Puritan roots.
God and sex are separate, and have nothing to do with one another.
People scream “Oh, GOD!” while having sex all the time – but no one ever yells out “Oh, SEX!” while praying.
So, you see, sex is something dirty – and you only do it when God isn’t watching.
Besides, God chose your little lady for you – to love, to marry, to hold, to cherish, to have your children, to raise them, to cook for you, to abuse, and to cheat on when you want a good time.
Maha:
I read the Poulos piece, and it is truly disturbing. The topic of the “essay” itself is insulting — What are women for? — as if they are nothing more than tools, animals to be made use of. The vileness of the question is made more apparant by substituting “women” for any other minority (though, technically speaking, women are not a minority) — What are Mexicans for? What are lesbians for? What are Jews for?
Going on to the essay (though in substance it more closely resembles the cartoon scribblings of a child), I must be frank — I had a hard time understanding what the author was trying to say. It was a word-salad that would make Sarah Palin proud.
Finally, I really do enjoy reading your blog. Keep up the good work.
Sounds like a job for Donald Wildmon… If thine eye offend thee..pluck it out! No pun intended, Donnie.
“Daisy, Daaaiseee, giiiive meeeee yyyorrrr annnnn….”
Yup, that’s exactly how they sound, all right. Like the year 1900 is melting all around them, and getting ready to pull them all right down the drain.
Hmm, just read the Poulos piece and threw up my lunch a little. I’m reminded of Jamie Lee Curtis’s immortal words to Kevin Kline: “Sure, Otto, apes read philosophy… they just don’t understand it!”
Mr. Poulos uses an awful lot of big words meaninglessly, although I suppose that’s not surprising for a piece on a website so brain-dead it actually has a tab labeled “Guns and Gear.”
We Americans have a really peculiar attitude toward sex, period. Some of us want to regain our sexual ‘innocence,’ back to Colonial times maybe? (In those times, 75% of all marriages produced a baby much less than 9 months later So much for ‘innocence’.)
Fast forward to when sex education was introduced into the elementary school curriculum (fifth grade.) The burning question became who could teach it. Certainly not men. Certainly not married women. Certainly single females, the thought being, I guess, that they were sexually pure, had never had sex, blah, blah, blah. Result? Because the kids could anonymously ask ‘sex’ questions written on a little piece of paper which they turned in at the end of the period, and because the ‘single’ teacher had no idea what the questions were even about, the single men and married women on the faculty had to ‘answer’ the questions.
I will say that it made for a jolly, laugh-filled lunch in the teacher’s lounge. Still, one had to wonder just exactly what the kids were learning in the classroom about sex – nothing they didn’t all ready know, for sure, and probably a lot of misinformation in general. (One of my best friends taught the ‘course’ and confided to me that she was never so ill-prepared in her life to teach a class.)
Gulag,
It seems to me that since sex is so fun and enjoyable, that if we ARE created by God, he (or she) wanted sex to be fun and enjoyable (hence the “magic button”, etc.).
Therefore, when having really good sex, and one (usually the female, in my experience) cries out OH GOD!!, do we get “bonus points”?
I sure hope so, since my belief system is a bit lacking in what I’m told I need for salvation.
Mostly God exists for them as an excuse to boss around the sex lives of others. Because they can’t stand the idea of anyone not being as miserable as they are.
I just read “what are women for?”, and I’m now totally confused.
My contract with Mrs. Erinyes is very specific; she MUST have two “bingos” per week, unless she is ill or “not in the mood”.
In return, she prepares the evening meal (unless I get home early), makes out the checks and pays the bills, and tries to sell insurance 5 days per week.
She also has an equal ( yeah right, she owns the place) say in what happens on the domestic front.
In other words, she is pretty much the boss, I am the pack mule.
I think this is the rule, except in cases of spouse abuse.
Regarding the cost of birth control, I took the pill in my youth. My first prescription was for problems I had with my period. Also, this was in the first years of the BCP; thus, I was effectively a guinea pig for the next generation of the pill. Nevertheless, I would like to add that the cost of the pill was extraordinary in that day. I earned around $200-$250 a month and the pill cost me $15 a month, which usually came out of my food money for the month. Therefore, I understand the financial hardship it causes today; and, having it covered by insurance would have really been great. But, it never was. The Virginia ultrasound law is criminal in itself. I hope someone sues the state on behalf of all women who will potentially be raped by the state. I agree with BLD on the Poulos piece. What a piece of garbage.
‘I started to say “sex and God,†but if you think about it, mostly God exists for them as a bulwark against sexual chaos.’
Yes it’s been a long time since I read a serious conservative discussion of the implications of Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies and do good to them that hate you. A very long time.
It strikes me that the law won’t last long; it will be voided by the first judge to note that the procedure is not medically necessary. Moreover, since it is against medical ethics to perform invasive unnecessary procedures, I would not expect any cooperation from physicians. That said, the thing CLEARLY demonstrates the enormous enmity these GOP thugs feel towards women.
I’m glad someone besides me saw the “state as rapist” in the Virginia law. Of course, if you add just one little space, “therapist” has a completely different meaning…
I liken it a bit more to Sterling Hayden’s magnificently unhinged speech as General Jack D. Ripper, over the cool and emotionless Hal 9000’s system shutdown:
Well, try this on for size.
They want to excite their base. So, they bring up an issue that helps with their pro-life and ultra-religious following.
Then, they frame it as “religious freedom”.
Now, if you’re a member of the Republican faithful, maybe you aren’t all that hot about the birth control bullshit, but wow, those awful, nasty, lying liberals are all trying to make this noble defense of religious freedom about *sex*, and it’s not! It’s clearly about *religious freedom*, and these lying, scum-sucking liberals are slandering the noble and decent Republicans again, all for standing up for such a noble principle!
I can’t prove anything, but I think that’s how they hope to play it.
They just can’t come to grips with what’s happening. There was a point at which they had a base and they could get a few more into the fold only by becoming a more distilled, crazier version of what they’d been. They believed their own press and tried to be everything to 3 distinct wings : 1. libertarian (i.e. Ron Paul et al) 2. Christian Conservatives (Rick Sanitarium) and 3. Tradtional and Corporate wingers. They got in so deep and never were very versatile so they doubled down at every opportunity.
Now people are waking up. The GOP factions are too diverse to appease and be coherent. It’s as if the last 60 years are unraveling before their eyes and they don’t know what to do.
“We Americans have a really peculiar attitude towards sex, period.”
Boy, you got that right.
Have sex with a consenting adult and you get impeached;
bomb the crap out of a country that never attacked you, and retire in comfort.
A cop left a note on a woman’s car telling her how attractive she is and gets fired;
the same cop could tackle, taze, and pepper spray a teen age girl and get a few vacation days “pending investigation”.
Uncledad could greet a visitor at his door with a pistol in hand, no problem.
If he did that with his penis in hand, he’s off to jail.
I remember years ago hearing a story about a female doctor who had placed her 2 children in hiding from the reach of the court in a custody battle to prevent what she claimed was sexual molestations occuring at the hands of the children’s father. She was jailed for contempt of court. As part of the court’s effort to make her divulge the location of her children she was subjected to repeated full body cavity searches on every occassion in which she left her cell. The cavity searches were conducted under the guise of a security safety measure, but the reality was the body searches were intended as a tool to break her down and dehumanise her. Subject her to the maximum humiliation to force compliance.
It’s the same dynamic we saw at Abu ghraib, and we see in the Virginia ultrasound law. Using sexual humiliation to punish those who dare to challenge the authority of the white male dominated state. I don’t see a difference between shoving a baton in some guy’s rectum and probing a women’s vagina with some object that doesn’t need to be there..no valid medical reason. Just designed to intimidate women.
Uncledad could greet a visitor at his door with a pistol in hand, no problem.
If he did that with his penis in hand, he’s off to jail.
Wasn’t Uncledad wearing an old pair of strectched out BVD’s and sporting a morning woody when he greeted his Jehova visitor? “If you think the Lord hardened Pharoah’s heart,baby..get a load of this!”
“There was a point at which they had a base and they could get a few more into the fold only by becoming a more distilled, crazier version of what they’d been.”
The GOP is still coming to grips with the internet and social media. Their lies and deceptions become revealed much faster. And, as for the cultists, it’s like insulin resistance– they need more and more craziness to stimulate the same result.
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