I am afraid it is going to be a long tedious election cycle now. Too bad that we have to suffer these fools but better to slog through it and be proud of our civility.
Bushwhacking
6/10/15
On January 15, 2015 Garry Trudeau laid claim to being the premier name in political cartooning with the title of “the most trusted name in bushwhacking”. He is referring to the whole Bush family, but now he can do some extra little sly pokes at Jeb.
I love Jeb. He is so sweet and innocent looking, but vows that if he is President, he will take advice from his bumbling brother, who was the mouthpiece for the arch nemesis of us all, Dick Cheney.
Now that Jeb’s old book has resurfaced, he just can’t waffle away the fact that he is a super arrogant politico who will say the most outrageous things about people and pass it off as good policy thinking.
It is bad enough that the religious nuts go after the sex lives of teen agers, with their guilt tripping and nosiness, now we have the presidential hopefuls weighing in on the subject of unwed mothers
Jeb wants to bring back the Puritan practice of public shaming. Well, he did in his book but may have changed his mind since the 1990’s.
We have several subsets of voters that have been insulted now.
First, The Donald takes off after Mexicans, and accuses them of all sorts of sins which are not applicable, and then the Jebster wants to insult the upcoming teen women voters by offering bad advice on their sex lives. How would he like the press going after his family in the same manner?
Well, that is what cartoonists are for, and they are doing a pretty good job.
It is odd that a whole family would provide so much fodder for political cartoonists, but that is the risk they take in being involved with politics.
Now there is a new factor in the fight to change America back to the Puritan days with evangelical preachers taking up political stances, and running for local offices. They were so incensed that the Supreme Court gave out the verdict that provided more rights to gays, that they thought they should fight back on the political level. I guess they have not learned their lesson yet. All that money fighting against rights of minorities and bloviating from pulpits all to see their efforts nullified by the Supreme Court ruling evidently has not made an impression that the country has moved on from its’ so called “Christian roots”.
These Evangelical politicos are in the minority, but they think that by holding a public office they can return us all to “Biblical values”. At least the Catholic Church forbids its’ clergy from running for any public office.
The clergy in Evangelical movements are incensed. They think they have the answers for everybody.
They take comfort from their Bible, one of the most anti female and violent books ever written and assembled by committee. They wish to make the country follow their version of reality, which constrains all in the most outdated kind of life.
Does anybody take the “Biblical” values and apply them to women of the upper classes? These little tin pot clergy like to rant and rave about sin, but the ones that get caught in the trap of unwed motherhood are the poor women.
Recently some trends have been hopeful to me. First, young people are falling away from going to church and believing in fairy tales out of the so called Good Book.
Then, a program was instituted in a low income district to provide long term contraceptive to teen girls who wished to finish with their education before starting a family. This has proved very successful in lowering the out of wedlock births and instances of abortion.
Instead of men prying into our sex lives, making pronouncements about how these women should be publicly shamed, let’s get the nosy men out of the equation, get these women educated and striving for meaningful lives.
Motherhood is not for everyone, public shaming helps no one in society, and clergymen who think they can run the country even from a city council position are clearly delusional.