Tag Republicans

On the Sixth Day of Blogging, Just Dusty Blogged for Me . . .

Dusty 1 Comment

A political post; his specialtyyyyy!

Here’s the truth: we all know what’s coming.

The Republicans are coming.

It’s like watching a storm coming in: the clouds roll out across the sky like a cloth unfurling; first they are white, then grey, then black. The color leaches out of the world. The wind turns cold and biting, and then the first drops arrive: if it is a summer storm, then the big, fat splashes are refreshing, though the tang of ozone in the air is alarming.

But I don’t think this is a summer storm. It feels like winter. Those drops are cold. We are shivering.

When the storm hits in winter, it brings quiet. The wind may howl, but after it goes, everything is still. Frozen. Asleep, or dead.

That’s what I think this feels like. Like the storm is coming, and we need to get into shelter, and cover everything. Anything left out will freeze solid, will turn black, will die. We have to cover ourselves, we have to batten down the hatches. And ride it out.

But hang on: winter storms don’t kill everything. Yes, there will be some death: the EPA seems doomed, and Obamacare will be lobotomized, dissected, cut down into pieces too small to sustain itself any longer. Maybe the Department of Education, too, since the nominee for Education Secretary is against public education. Irrevocable harm will be done to the environment as new oil leases are sold, new mining contracts offered, coal dug and burned at will. Internationally, the day of the strong man is on the rise: the new administration will be a friend to Putin, and Netanyahu, and probably Assad and a dozen others who hold an iron grip with their right hand. America will no longer be the defender of freedom around the world. But then, we haven’t actually been that for a long time: we have defended our interests, and little else. That will continue, to the joy of the exceptionalists. Surely we will no longer fight against genocide or oppression: pity is the most delicate flower, and will be the first to freeze.

But not everything will freeze. It will get deathly cold, but our shelters run deep, and are well-protected. And though the storm will be bad, it will not last long. That’s the truth: it will not last long. At some point, perhaps in four years, perhaps in only two when the new Congress is elected, the storm will break, and the skies will clear.

Then we will have to see if there is another storm behind this one. It is possible, you know. This storm may last eight years. If it does, we’re going to have a lot of frostbite.

But think of this. No party has won three elections in a row since Bush followed Reagan. Before that, not since Truman followed Roosevelt. Twice in almost a century have we had a Democratic president after a Democrat, or a Republican after a Republican – Johnson following Kennedy and Ford following Nixon notwithstanding, for obvious reasons. Which means that things will change. The storm will end. Believe it.

Here’s what we hope for, between now and then.

Hope that the storm does some good. Storms do, you know. They wash things clean, they break away dead branches and scour away debris. I am a progressive, and I believe in the power of government to do good things; but the truth is that our government has a lot of debris stuck in its branches. And some dead branches, I think. It is entirely possible that, even while it harms and breaks good things, the storm will also clear away some of the bad. We have to hope so. Maybe there will be some positive effects.

The key for us – for all of us – is going to be objectivity. We must be dispassionate, and we must be rational. Reasonable people can agree, can compromise, and what was most noticeably absent from this last election was reason — and therefore agreement, and therefore compromise. To keep the weather metaphor: some people like cold weather, like storms, like the rain; other people prefer warm sunshine. But only unreasonable people claim that there is nothing good about cold, that only warm sunshine can ever be acceptable; only unreasonable people claim to hate it when the sky clears and the sun comes out, at least once in a while. Reasonable people realize that Arizona summers are too freaking hot, that New England winters are too freaking cold, that the Pacific Northwest is too overcast and rainy, and the Southeast is too muggy.

We have to be reasonable. If the Republican control of the government leads to some good things, leads to some reductions in unnecessary regulations (and there are such), leads to some reversal of government overreach and invasion into private lives (and there is such), then we must be happy that good things are happening. We must not make the same mistake that unreasonable people have made when they have claimed that, for instance, President Obama has been bad for the economy. Or that the First Family has been an embarrassment to the country. Hate Obamacare all you want, but the economy has turned around since the recession. (And I say Fie to anyone who claims that the economy would have grown faster had the president for the last eight years been Republican. Fie. Prove it. Show me where economic predictions have ever been reliable. If a simple cause and effect were provably true, the argument would be over. It ain’t. So fie.) The Obama family are a model of dignity and grace.

So let’s not make the same mistake. Let us be reasonable. Let us take the long view and see: if a thing is broken or taken away, was that thing actually necessary? Perhaps not. Perhaps when Obamacare is destroyed by the storm, we will come out of our shelters when the sky clears and build something even better.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, when Miss Maudie’s house burns down during the winter freeze, she simply says this:

Miss Maudie looked around, and the shadow of her old grin crossed her face. ‘Always wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch. Gives me more yard. Just think, I’ll have more room for my azaleas now!’ 

‘You ain’t grievin’, Miss Maudie?’ I asked, surprised. Atticus said her house was nearly all she had. 

‘Grieving, child? Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin’ fire to it a hundred times myself, except they’d lock me up.’

‘But—’ 

‘Don’t you worry about me, Jean Louise Finch. There are ways of doing things you don’t know about. Why, I’ll build me a little house and take me a couple of roomers and – gracious, I’ll have the finest yard in Alabama. Those Bellingraths’ll look plain puny when I get started!’

There are ways of doing things. That’s how we have to see this. Like the burning down of an old house. It’s dangerous and damaging – and we have to try to fight the fire, and we have to try to save what we can from its flames – but we have to remember that after the storm, after the fire, life goes on. And maybe the new day will dawn even brighter. Anything that is destroyed that shouldn’t be, we can rebuild. Maybe we can even make it better.

Now: that is me being reasonable, because we should be, about Republican control of government. Republicans are not fools, and are not evil; though I think political parties are harmful to this country, it is certainly true that two parties are necessary, that one party alone, even my party, would be doomed. I think of when Frodo offers the One Ring to Galadriel, and she refuses it because she would become a queen, awesome and terrible — “All will worship me and despair,” she says, as she’s imagining it. Gandalf turns it down, too, for the same reason: nobody can use it safely, even if they mean to do good. The federal government is, in some ways, the Ring. The key to using it safely is in numbers: no one person can hold it for too long; no person can go it alone. Frodo never makes it to Mt. Doom without Samwise. Realize that, while we seem to have handed the Ring to Denethor, the madman on the throne of Gondor, it wouldn’t be any better if we hung on to it ourselves: we’d go mad like Frodo does, and decide to keep the Ring for ourselves. That is a fate to be feared no less because progressives have, I think, the right idea. I may write more about this another time.

For now, let’s talk about the other part of the winter storm scene from To Kill a Mockingbird: let’s talk about the Morphodite.

You remember the Morphodite, right? The snowman that Jem and Scout build, that is actually only a coating of clean snow over a big ball of mud? Right. Jem turns him into a caricature of their loud, obnoxious neighbor Mr. Avery, but at Atticus’s request, he changes it into a more innocent imitation of Miss Maudie, dressing it with her sun hat and hedge clippers. She, of course, takes it as an insult (though she doesn’t mind too much) and names it a morphodite, meaning a thing that changes its shape. The Morphodite melts in the heat of the burning house, and Scout and Jem have to clean up the muddy, filthy, sticky mess.

I think we all know what I’m talking about. I don’t, in theory, have a problem with the Republican party taking control of the government — though I am extremely nervous that, after they push through a conservative Justice for the Supreme Court, they will control all three branches of the Federal government — but we’re not just talking about conservatives or Republicans, are we? We’re talking about this guy:

You know — the Morphodite. See? Clean and white on the outside, nothing but sticky brown nastiness underneath. (And I’m not making a racial reference here, just using the symbolism of white snow=purity, and mud=shit=corruption.)

So here’s the thing with the Morphodite. He was picked largely as an alternative to a lot of bad choices, mostly (but not solely) on the Republican side. I still believe, absolutely, that he entered the race solely to increase his name recognition and give himself a veneer of patriotism; maybe to make some political connections he could use to his advantage for his business. I think nobody was more shocked than he when he started winning, and that state of shock continued all the way through the final victory. I mean, he’s been unprepared the whole way; it’s no less true now. And he’s filling his cabinet with people who are likely to support him and his ideas personally, with their own selfish interests in mind, rather than people who are civic-minded, or who will likely consider what is best for the American people before considering what is best for themselves. Just like him.

The man’s a narcissist, that much is clear. He acts like a spoiled child: and he seems happiest when he breaks things and gets attention, which he then turns into more attention as he mocks the people who chastise him for breaking things. He thrives on attention. It is why he entered the race, why he ran so hard and why he has acted the way he has since his election.

So what do you do with a spoiled child who acts out for attention?

You ignore him. Don’t give him the satisfaction. Don’t give him what he wants, because it is the only thing he wants, and he doesn’t care in the least if it is good attention or bad attention. All he wants is for people to talk about him.

So stop. Stop using his name. Fortunately there are a thousand alternatives, from John Oliver’s call to make Donald Drumpf again, to the various versions of orange-themed insults that plaster the internet. Any of those are fine; he wants to see his name, his actual name. I think he prefers The D_____, actually, though clearly the last name, associated with the business, is the #1 priority. But there are so many others, too: Rump. Dump. Chump. Chimp! Lump, Slump, Gump, Hump (Wait — not that one. Too close to home.), Bump, Thump, Clump. So many possibilities, and not a one of them will give him what he wants.

If you feel a call to protest, please do. But address your concerns to the part of the government that is actually still a government. And when the reality TV guy comes on stage — change the channel. Or better yet, just turn him off.

Let him melt back into a puddle of goo. Then we can have a couple of kids rake him up and throw him away.

The Party’s Over

Dusty 1 Comment

“Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That’s why I did this: to protect you from yourselves. –Sideshow Bob, “Sideshow Bob Roberts”

(This is the third installment of my political corruption series, and the last. For now.)

Let’s be clear (If you read my stuff, it’s probably already clear): I am a lifelong Democrat. I am the child of two lifelong Democrats: my parents voted for John F. Kennedy, for William McGovern, for Walter Mondale, for Michael Dukakis; I voted for Clinton, for Gore, for Kerry, and for Barack Obama, twice. I don’t understand why people can vote Republican: the wealthy, for whom it makes personal sense, have to be callous, I feel, in order to refuse to maintain the social safety net for those less fortunate than they, or unbelievably greedy in order to agree to destroy the regulatory state so that they can make even more money at the expense of our very world; the poor and middle class are voting for social causes, not for personal gain (Unless they believe in trickle-down economics, but in that case they are deluded), but I see two problems with that: first, they are on the wrong side of most social issues – anti-choice, anti-equality, xenophobic, and parochial – and their candidates don’t ever deliver on their promises. So if you’re wealthy, how can you stand to vote Republican? And if you’re not, why would you ever think to vote Republican?

I read an excellent book by Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas, in which Frank examines how Kansas, his home state and, through the 1800’s and early 1900’s, one of the most radical and progressive states, became so very staunchly, unflaggingly, self-destructively conservative. What happened was that Republican candidates around the early 90’s started pushing a pro-life agenda as the only issue that mattered – you know, the usual “40,000,000 murders,” “Culture of life” stuff – and when elected, every Republican proceeded to lower taxes, kill social services, remove regulations on business, make sweetheart deals with corporations, and basically ruin life for the average person; and then go back to election yelling “We have to end the scourge of abortion!” Which got them re-elected, into majority after majority — and yet they continued to fail to do anything about abortion, simply pushing their pro-business agenda on the state to its steadily growing detriment. But the pro-life agenda, whipped into a frenzy every new election cycle, was so compelling that nothing else seemed to matter to the voters, who kept voting Republican until it put their state where it is now – essentially hollowed out, unable to provide even the most basic elements we expect of our governments, like schools – not that Kansas schools teach anything other than creationism and abstinence, according to the campaign promises of the Republican candidates.

That’s how I see Republicans: selfish, deluded, misguided, and absurdly optimistic– or, less kindly, willfully blind to the fact that their politicians don’t ever deliver on the things they promise that won their constituents’ votes: on the national scene, we still have Obamacare, we are still giving foreign aid to dozens of other countries, our veterans are still dying on the streets, abortion is still legal, gay marriage is now legal as well, and there still isn’t a wall between the US and Mexico. So why would anyone vote Republican?

Here’s the thing, though: why do I continue to vote Democratic? It was Clinton who ended the Glass-Steagall Act, which, more than anything else, precipitated the economic crash that happened ten years later, under George Bush but not – I repeat, not — because of him. It was Bush’s fault that our government wasn’t in a better position to help after the crash, because he gave away Clinton’s surplus in tax breaks and war spending; but the crash was because of the Democrats. Democrats who I voted for. And of all of my other causes, the most important to me is the reduction of violence and misery, and the improvement of equal opportunity for everyone; the largest obstacle to all of that is income inequality. Which Democrats conveniently ignore, not wishing to appear – gasp – Socialist. (I know, I know – Bernie Sanders. But he’s also pro-gun.) We have Obamacare, but without the public option, it is more of a burden than anything useful; my costs for health care are still going up, every year, while my wages are going down: I make less now than I did ten years ago. Unions are still dying, and women still don’t make the same wages that men do, and Guantanamo is still open and still incarcerating prisoners of war who have never been to trial, and guns remain unregulated, and schools remain unfunded, and everyone is still driving Hummers while we drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

So who’s really the fool, here?

I think the answer’s pretty obvious: we all are. We have all been sold a bill of goods that doesn’t match what the grinning faces behind the counter are putting into our baskets.

This is the last form of political corruption I want to write about, and that I think I have a solution for: this one is the corruption of the entire system, through partisanship and self-serving deception. This political corruption is the two-party system.

I would love to go back now to when the two-party system made sense and worked well for Americans; but in all honesty, the two-party system has always been about helping itself. Having a clearly defined and well-known political party makes it easier for candidates affiliated with that party to get elected: the party label offers a certain legitimacy, and even loyalty, in that people often vote the “straight ticket,” picking the candidates affiliated with their party without knowing anything about them. The party also offers a political apparatus that makes it easier to get heard and therefore elected; you need staff, you need volunteers, you need access to media and to debates and the like, you need a platform that people can hear and understand and support. The political party that exists before and beyond one’s own candidacy offers all of that; unless you’re a billionaire loon like H. Ross Perot, bless his wrinkly, big-eared heart, you wouldn’t want to form your own party just for your candidacy, and you almost certainly couldn’t afford to. So political parties are useful, and they aren’t going away – more’s the pity; because by far the easiest solution here is just to ban them entirely. But then it would be too hard for anyone not an incumbent to mount a national political campaign, or even a serious state-wide one, and that would not be any better, as those in power – who already have political staff, legitimacy, and access to media – would get re-elected even more often than they do now. So okay, we’ll keep political parties.

Now, if that party represents a certain set of values that the voter supports, then well and good: but because there are only two parties with any real legitimacy in this country, those two parties become too large and unwieldy, their umbrellas too wide and encompassing such extremes, that voting for the party doesn’t really mean supporting one’s specific causes: is this Republican candidate an evangelical Christian who wants to put the Ten Commandments on the American flag and mandate both creationism and prayer in schools? Or is he a Libertarian seeking the end of the income tax and government reduced to only two services, international commerce and the military? Is this Democrat in favor of a path to citizenship, but also supports private prisons, or is she looking to legalize marijuana and strengthen the Second Amendment at the same time? We can’t tell based on party affiliation.

Now, the two-party system theoretically serves the middle: because the two parties have to have such broad appeal, they tend towards the center. And thirty or forty years ago, I think that was probably true: but it isn’t now. And before that – say, eighty or a hundred years ago – it also wasn’t true. Way back when it was formed, the Republican party was single-mindedly abolitionist, which was an extreme (albeit correct) position; the Democratic party, in response, was for decades staunchly segregationist and pro-states’-rights. Also not moderate positions. Today, we have one party – I’ll let the reader guess which one – that has discovered that it can motivate its base through extreme and inflexible positions on social issues; in other words, the more extreme and zealous and inflammatory the party gets, the more votes they turn out. The entire party is moving away from the center, and at the same time, becoming more successful, because of it. More successful, that is, at winning elections: they are certainly not more successful at governing, a profession they seem to have cast aside in favor of demogoguery. Meanwhile, the opposition party is trying to maintain its foothold in the middle; but as the other party keeps going farther and farther to one side, the middle drags in that direction – and rather than hold their ground and make the extremists come back, the moderate party is moving with them, and thus also becoming less moderate: while surrendering entirely the side of the political spectrum they were supposed to be watching. I feel like, any minute now, the Democrats are going to turn around and see that a Republican has captured their flag while they were all on the other side, trying to keep an eye on the Republican team – who were having a dance party around their own flag, completely ignoring the Democrats and the entire game, but subtly distracting their whole team so that no one was left to play defense. And somehow, Vince Lombardi was behind it all. Or Ronald Reagan.

The two-party system is also supposed to provide stability: because the parties are predictable, and centrist, and inclusive, and effectively share the electorate, they are forced to compromise, which isn’t terribly hard because their positions aren’t far apart, and so they can respect and agree with each other on most things; any one politician also realizes that his opposition is not going away, and so he has to work with them. Except our parties aren’t providing that, either: instead we get hatred and bile and petty partisanship that blocks everything useful, even stuff that shouldn’t ever be a question, like raising the debt ceiling, or providing for the 9/11 First Responders. Honestly, any government that can’t give those guys health care and a pension that would choke a horse is no kind of government at all.

So that’s what we have: no kind of government at all. The parties have lost their way: rather than improving our democracy, they are hurting it; because their goal is no longer to represent the will of the people, but rather to maintain and expand the power of their party. As long as their party wins, nothing else matters. Politics is become a team sport. The propagandists (You know – the cheerleaders. Though I can’t think of anyone on this Earth who looks less like a cheerleader than Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove.) have taken over, and they have realized that they don’t need to steer their parties towards what the people want; they can make the tail wag the dog, and the party can tell the people what they want. As long as they say they are in favor of what the people are in favor of – this side will ban abortion, that side will close Guantanamo and ensure that women make equal pay for equal work – they don’t actually have to do those things in order to maintain power. And as long as the person says they are a Democrat or a Republican, that’s a win, even if they don’t actually act like it: and so the Republican party will support Donald Trump if he wins the nomination, and the Democratic party will support Bernie Sanders, even though he is a Socialist independent.

I don’t even have to argue that the political system is broken: the race for President – which has already been going on for a full year – will likely come down to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Bernie Sanders will likely not be in the running. (And I have to say: in that scenario, I almost wish that Ted Cruz would win, so that Mitch McConnell could stand up in the Senate and say that his first goal is to ensure that Ted Cruz is a one-term president. I want to see how well Mr. Cruz can do when he can’t blame things on Obama. Although of course he’d keep blaming Obama for everything, anyway.) If the system worked, then Sanders would run as a Socialist, Trump as the head of the shiny new Trump-Solid-Gold Party, Hillary Clinton as a Democrat, Ted Cruz as a member of the Inquisition, and probably Marco Rubio as the Republican. And then we’d have a race, by God. You’d have two actual centrists, Rubio and Clinton, one on the left in Sanders, one on the far right in Cruz, and Trump off on a tangent, somewhere far out in Nutsville.

So how do we change things to achieve that glorious outcome in the future? Well, there are a couple of ways. The first thing is we can bring back the Fairness Doctrine, which required opposing viewpoints to be presented on any television station that aired political views; that, with a certain minimum percentage of votes – say, 5% of the popular vote in any one election cycle – required to gain status as an opposing viewpoint, would allow alternate parties to gain media access, publicity, and a voice in the system. That would be the best thing: allow parties a chance to gain their own foothold, and stop this nonsense where everyone other than a Democrat or Republican is a “third-party candidate,” which is seen almost universally as a wasted vote.

We could also eliminate the one-winner-takes-all election system, and the single-representative system with it. Depending on whether we want more representatives in Congress, it could look like this: the Congress members from a certain state would all run in one general election, with up to as many candidates as there are seats from each party – so in a state with ten Congress seats, there would be ten Republicans, ten Democrats, ten Socialists, etc. – and the popular vote would be divided by percentage. So if 50% of the state voted Republican, 30% Democrat and 20% Socialist, then the state would get five Republican congresspeople, three Democrats, and two Socialists; you could either have the parties choose their reps by caucus, or have a run-off within the party for which candidates get the slots. Alternately, you could run the same system but with multiple candidates from the various parties winning a single “seat,” that is made up of several actual members; though that would greatly increase the number of Congresspeople, and still allow for districts to be gerrymandered. I like the state-by-state bloc voting, personally.

And one other thing is critical: term limits. It is absurd that we don’t already have these in Congress when we have them almost everywhere else, including the Presidency. I’d suggest about a decade for each seat: four two-year terms in Congress, two six-year terms in the Senate. Maximum twenty years in the legislature. And anyone currently past that is out at the next election.

All of us are unhappy with the partisan politics. I have seen this meme several times of late, and I expect to see it even more between now and November.

Screw the Demopublicrats

We need to fix the system, because the people who are breaking it aren’t going to turn around and fix it, and breaking it even further is not going to magically bring it back around to a good place. Too be specific: Donald Trump will not make America great again. No Republican and no Democrat will.

We the people can. We will. We just have to do it. Now, please.

Free To Be . . . You And Me

Dusty 1 Comment

So I was trying to figure out what to write about tonight. My dog, Sammy? Who is adorable, sweet, quirky, and entirely mystifying in terms of his breed? How about the sulcata tortoise we got recently, whom we named Neo? Or I could continue with the book reviews, as I also recently read “Stiff,” by Mary Roach, which is about what happens to the bodies of people who donate themselves to science?

I could write about school, of course. About the observation I recently had. Or the news stories I’ve been seeing about the problems with teachers and with schools. I had an idea for an essay analyzing King Lear (I’ve been grading those recently), and blaming Cordelia instead of the usual  villains, Goneril and Regan or Lear himself: after all, why the hell couldn’t she just tell her aged, semi-demented father what he wanted to hear? Is it so wrong that he wanted her to say how much she loved him, and lie a little?  Who doesn’t lie to their parents? Who doesn’t pretend to feel more affection for family members than they actually feel? How the hell is it virtuous to enrage your 80-year-old father in order to — what, protect your honor?

I could write about Trevor Noah taking over for Jon Stewart. Maybe about the breakup of One Direction. Or about the infuriating way that Cox refuses to put the new episodes of The Amazing Race on demand in any kind of rational way. I could talk about everything that’s wrong with The Voice, which should be an excellent show, and instead is just okay.

So many possibilities. But see, I have been wanting to follow the 2016 Presidential campaign, especially the Republicans. I want to understand the conservative stance. I want it to be rational. My wife, who is perfect in all ways, tends to see Republicans as dangerously stupid lunatics whenever she and I discuss politics, which we do pretty regularly. And hey — considering that the GOP is represented by people like George Bush and Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and Mitt Romney and John Boehner — and people in our own new state like Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey, and the people who tried to mandate that everyone join a church or tried to gag teachers and school officials who disagree with them — Toni has a valid point.

And in the interests of pursuing this conservative campaign project, I really should write about Ted Cruz. The first Republican to officially declare his intention to run for President, despite being grossly unqualified, grossly unsuited, and basically just gross. I’m sorry: I don’t mean to rip on Republicans just because they’re Republicans, or conservatives; I’m serious about wanting to understand why people believe what they do and why they vote the way they do. But this guy? This guy?? THIS GUY?!?

How am I to take this man seriously?

I will try. I promise. But while I was looking through Ted Cruz’s website tonight, looking for information and an angle I can take on him, I checked out the Cruz News! link. And found this:

CRUZ: I’m proud to stand with Gov. Mike Pence, and I urge Americans to do the same

03/30/15

Issues Statement on Religious Freedom Restoration Act

HOUSTON, Texas — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued the following statement today in support of Governor Mike Pence’s effort to defend religious liberty and protect against the government forcing individuals to violate their deeply held beliefs:

“I want to commend Governor Mike Pence for his support of religious freedom, especially in the face of fierce opposition. There was a time, not too long ago, when defending religious liberty enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Alas, today we are facing a concerted assault on the First Amendment, on the right of every American to seek out and worship God according to the dictates of his or her conscience. Governor Pence is holding the line to protect religious liberty in the Hoosier State. Indiana is giving voice to millions of courageous conservatives across this country who are deeply concerned about the ongoing attacks upon our personal liberties. I’m proud to stand with Mike, and I urge Americans to do the same.”

source

There we go. Something at least for tonight’s blog.

Let’s start with Indiana and the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” First, you can’t restore a religious freedom that didn’t exist in  the first place. And while religious folk do have the right to think what they want about anyone they wish, and the right to say whatever they want that isn’t directly defamatory or libelous (the same right we all have, with the same restrictions), they do not have the right to treat people differently because of a religious disagreement. That’s called discrimination, and it is a violation of civil liberties. In other words, my right to freely patronize your restaurant overrides your right to throw me out of it, barring dangerous or harmful actions on my part — a category which does not, unfortunately for religious bigots, include thinking sexy thoughts about Charlie Hunnam.

(Sorry if  the reference is obscure — we’ve been watching Sons of Anarchy. Allow me just to say this: Mmhm.

)

The moment a business — or a church –opens its doors to the public, it grants the public the right to come through those doors. The minute you offer a service to that public — including sermons and ceremonies — the public has a right to make use of those services, if their use falls within the same guidelines offered to other people. So if you let a Christian man use your bathroom, you have to let a Muslim man use your bathroom. Or a gay one.

Them’s the breaks. That’s the way America works. I do understand the objection, honestly: there are students that I would much rather throw right the hell out of my classroom, and sometimes it has been because I disagree so strongly with their views — particularly, in my case, religious ones. (Especially some of the self-righteous holier-than-thou pro-life zealots I have been sorry to come across in the last fifteen years of teaching persuasive essays) But I don’t have that right, and I wouldn’t even if I weren’t a public school teacher. You know what I do with those people? I argue with them, when I can; I hate them on the inside — and I treat them like my other students, and I grade them fairly. I gave an A to the guy who argued that white people really were better than blacks or Latinos. Because he wrote a decent essay. No — I think I gave him a B. He didn’t cite sufficient evidence. Probably because he was full of crap.  But it really was a pretty good piece of (disgusting, appalling, and downright distasteful) writing.

Patronizing a place of business is not, in any way, by any stretch of the imagination, an imposition on the proprietor. You are offering money in exchange for goods or services; this is not asking something unreasonable, and it is not an infringement on private space: the business owner invited the public in. But refusing services, for a reason that is based on a personal opinion, most definitely is an imposition, especially if this must be done publicly, by asking the person to leave or refusing to serve them. Someone being gay in your vicinity is not a harmful act, and therefore you have no reason to throw them out of the restaurant.

Therefore, this act is not protecting the freedom of the business owners. It is protecting their opinions. I do not think anyone has the right to have the government protect their opinions, other than keeping someone from wrongfully stealing and profiting from those opinions, through plagiarism or copyright infringement. And I do not believe that a lot of people are going to steal “We don’t serve homos” from some deep-fried pork rind joint in Indianapolis and put it on a T-shirt. The government should protect the right to express those opinions, and any business owner who wants to write a letter to the editor saying that they don’t like homosexuals is welcome to do so. They deserve what they get.

They just don’t get to tell people they can’t buy a cup of coffee.

On a final note, let me address this specific piece of the Senator’s statement:

There was a time, not too long ago, when defending religious liberty enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Alas, today we are facing a concerted assault on the First Amendment, on the right of every American to seek out and worship God according to the dictates of his or her conscience.

When, Mr. Cruz? When did defending religious liberty enjoy strong bipartisan support? When has religious liberty ever been threatened — genuinely threatened — in this country? As for the “concerted assault” on the First Amendment, what the hell are you talking about? Concerted by whom? Who is calling the shots, coordinating the efforts, to — what? Force bigots to look homosexuals in the eye and say “You want fries with that?” Allow me to point out that the freedom to “seek out and worship God” is in no way threatened by insisting that people treat others fairly, and with dignity. Not unless you belong to the church of Don’t Sell Gel-Sole Shoe Inserts To Homosexuals.

Which, in this genuinely wonderful country of ours, is totally a church you could found yourself. And you can even become a reverend through the Universal Life Church, and gain tax-exempt status for yourself. No shit.