January 22, 2015 marked the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark case legalizing abortion.
And, to highlight this occasion, Right-wing Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted 242-179 to pass a bill to codify a ban on federal funding for abortions. The bill would:
- Restrict a woman’s ability to buy private insurance plans that include abortion coverage;
- Deny small businesses a business tax credit if they include abortion care in their health insurance plans;
- Prevent women from having their abortions covered by Medicaid; and
- Prevent the District of Columbia from using its own local funds to subsidize abortion care.
The bill’s vote was deliberately timed to coincide with the annual “Right to Life” march in Washington, D.C. by abortion protesters. So what’s responsible for all this fetus fanaticism? Several factors.
First, there is an energized constituency for politicians willing to wave this red flag. Almost every major Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has tapped into this voting bloc. And each has found plenty of votes to be gotten from it.
Second, many fetus fanatics simply dislike women. They fear and resent the women’s movement, which has given women the right to enter the workforce and compete directly with men.
They especially hate the legal right of a woman to avoid becoming pregnant via birth control–or to abort the result of a male’s sperm if they do. They see this as a personal rejection.
The Right is made up overwhelmingly of white males. Many of these men long for a Christianized version of the Taliban.
They crave a world where women meekly cater to their every demand and believe only what their male masters approve for them to believe.
Third, many fetus fanatics feel guilty about their own past sexual transgressions–especially if these resulted in pregnancy. And they want to prevent others from living the same life they did.
Some of these people are well-intentioned. Even so, they usurp unto themselves a God-like right to intrude on the most intimate decisions for others–regardless of what those people may need or want.
Fourth, many leaders of the fetus-fanatics movement are independently wealthy. Even if abortion were outlawed for the vast majority, these privileged caliphs could always bribe a willing doctor–here or abroad–to perform such an operation on their wife, daughter and/or mistress.
Fifth, many fetus fanatics are “pro-life” when it comes to fetuses, but hypocritically refuse to support the needs of children from low-income families. This includes refusing to provide funding for food and medical care.
Sixth, many fetus fanatics embrace contradictory goals. On one hand, most of them claim they want to “get government off the backs of the people.” That usually means allowing corporations to pollute, sell dangerous products and treat their employees as slaves.
On the other hand, they want to insert the government into the vagina of every woman. That means empowering State and Federal authorities to prevent women from getting an abortion–even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Seventh, many fetus fanatics are just as opposed to birth control as they are to abortion. Thus, when Georgia University law student Sandra Fluke asked Congress to require insurance companies to cover birth control, Rush Limbaugh branded her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
Eighth, many fetus fanatics are “family values” hypocrites. For example: Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), an anti-abortion, “family values” doctor, had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion.
He also supported two abortions by his then-wife, Susan. According to divorce records, the first was for “therapeutic reasons” and the second because “things were not going well.”
Scott DesJarlais and his current wife, Amy.
Ninth, many fetus fanatics are not truly “pro-life.” They totally oppose abortion under most–if not all–circumstances. But they also fully support:
- making military-style assault weapons available to nutcases;
- capital punishment;
- going to war for almost any reason;
- wholesale massacres of wildlife;
- despoiling of the environment; and
- even nuclear war.
And many of those who fanatically defend the right of a fetus to emerge from the womb just as fanatically oppose welfare for those mothers who can’t support that newborn.
Tenth, many fetus fanatics believe that since their religion teaches that abortion is wrong, they have a moral duty to enforce that belief on others.
This is especially true for evangelical Christians. These are the same people who condemn Muslims–such as those in Saudi Arabia–for segregating women, forbidding them to drive and forcing them to wear head scarfs or chadors–loose, usually black robes.
Taliban: Islam’s version of the “Right-to-Life” movement
But while they condemn Islamics for their general intolerance of others’ religious beliefs, they lust to impose their own upon those who belong to other churches. Or who belong to no church at all.
* * * * *
It’s time to face the blunt truth: A “Conservative Victory,” as Sean Hannity put it, would impose an anti-women Taliban on America.
A woman who seeks to control her own destiny would be insane to vote for a Right-wing candidate. Just as it would have been insane for a Jewish citizen to give his vote–and his life–to Adolf Hitler.
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TRUTHS ABOUT “AMERICAN SNIPER” AND THE MILITARY
In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 27, 2015 at 1:50 amClint Eastwood’s latest movie, American Sniper, has become the most controversial film now being considered for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars.
The Academy Awards telecast is scheduled for February 22.
Clint Eastwood
The criticism is coming from the Left, and this has triggered outrage on the Right. Some of this criticism is correct and fair, but some of it isn’t.
CHARGE: The film implies that the Iraq was was in response to 9/11.
There’s a scene where Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller) are watching TV as the World Tradd Center crashes. Then the scene cuts to him serving in Iraq.
FACT: The movie is a biography of Kyle, who became the deadliest sniper in American history, not a documentary on the Iraq war. And, in fact, Kyle did his service in Iraq.
Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle in American Sniper
CHARGE: The movie depicts a terrorist sniper who becomes Kyle’s nemesis.
Named “Mustafa,” he is portrayed as a Syrian Olympics champion marksman. In a furious mano-a-mano duel with Kyle, he almost nails the SEAL sniper. But in the climax of the movie, he meets his end with a well-placed bullet from Kyle’s rifle.
FACT: Mustafa is mentioned in a single–and short–paragraph in Kyle’s autobiography. Writes Kyle: “I never saw him, but the other snipers later killed an Iraqi sniper we thought was him.”
So the climatic duel never happened. But Eastwood clearly thought he needed the duel to make a dramatic and satisfying finish for his movie. This is what’s known as “dramatic license” in moviemaking.
CHARGE: The movie portrays Chris Kyle as tormented by his rising casualty rate among Iraqis.
During his fourth tour of duty in Iraq, as depicted in the film, he agonizes over his possible need to shoot a child who’s about to pick up a rocket launcher. “Don’t pick it up,” he mutters, and when the child drops it and runs off, Kyle is visibly relieved.
FACT: Throughout his autobiography–on which the film is based–he refers to Iraqis as “savages.” He brags of telling a military investigator: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”
And having been credited with 160 confirmed kills, he writes: “I only wish I had killed more….I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives.”
CHARGE: Chris Kyle was a hate-filled killer, but the movie turns him into a hero.
FACT: It’s entirely natural for soldiers to hate their enemies. They know that they–or their comrades–can be blown away at any moment. So they fear and hate those intent on their destruction.
The toughening-up process starts in boot camp, where the restraints of individuality and pacifism are shattered. The purpose of boot camp is to turn “boys” into “fighting men,” and this must be done in a matter of weeks. So the process is shockingly brutal.
Soldiers who aren’t toughened up in boot camp are by the battlefield. As General George S. Patton famously warned: “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”
General George S. Patton
During the Indian wars, soldiers called Indians “Red niggers.” In World War II–“the Good War”–America’s servicemen fought “Japs” and “Krauts.” During the Vietnam war, Vietnamese became “gooks” and “dinks.”
Today our servicemen and women refer (unofficially) to their Islamic enemies as “ragheads” and “sand niggers.”
CHARGE: “In Kyle’s version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who were good by virtue of being Americans, and fanatic Muslims, whose ‘savage, despicable evil’ led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christian.” –Laura Miller, in Salon
FACT: British military historian B.H. Liddell Hart noted in his introduction to the memoirs of World War II German General Heinz Guderian, the creator of the Blitzkreig theory:
Heinz Guderian
“[Guderian] did not question the cause which he and his troops were serving, or the duty of fighting for their country. It was sufficient for him that she was at war and thus in danger, however it had come about.
“As a dutiful soldier, he had to assume that his country’s cause was just, and that she was defending herself against would-be conquerors.”
What proved true for Guderian proved equally true for Kyle–and for soldiers in armies throughout the world.
Moreover, every great war movie tells its story from a given viewpoint–such as American, German, Russian or British. Audiences are invited to identify with the leading character.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator is a young, idealistic German soldier who becomes disallusioned with the horrors of war. When he dies at the end of the movie, we feel saddened by his loss, even though he served in the ranks of America’s adversaries.
Similarly, when we learn, at the end of American Sniper, that Chris Kyle was killed while trying to help a fellow veteran, we feel a similar loss.
In the end, a historical or biographical movie can tell only so much. Its audience must then decide its meaning–and whether to learn more about the subjec through their own researches.
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