#1800

No matter it’s frequent pretensions, Acetylene Eyes is a Tumblr sex blog. A good amount of privilege allows it to exist: I am gainfully employed and have the time and resources to dedicate anywhere from 25 to 30 hours per week.

This is not something I take lightly. Also: being that sex transpires in the world of the real against an endlessly shifting backdrop of people and politics, I feel I have a responsibility to ground what I do here in the desert of the real. Thus, every 50th post is dedicated to drawing attention to current events.

This entry is going to be pretty damn dire, I’m afraid. And given how much horrifying news their is day in and day out, I can’t possibly deal with all of it. Instead, I am going to give you a glimpse at the perspective with which I consume news media.

First, I need to establish a caveat–namely: I was raised in a Xtian doomsday cult. Upon extricating myself from that situation, I continue to have friends from different spiritual traditions. I have friends that are Muslim, friends that are Buddhists and even one friend who is Hindu.

In other words, I’ve seen both the good and the bad of religiosity. No one tradition has either a corner on goodness or is fundamentally evil. I say this because increasingly there is a tendency in public discourse to generalize and generalizations tend to provide a little too easy of adaption to foment prejudicial ideas and/or bigotry.

I’m qualifying all of this because I am preparing to really take Evangelical Xtians to task. But I don’t want what I am saying to ever be seen as stoking anti-Christian sentiments. I am of a mind that folks can believe whatever the fuck they want. The issues I have with personal faith relate entirely to the public face of that belief–i.e. what you believe is wrong and given that it is wrong my belief is only as valid as the efforts I make to correct your wrongness, hypocritic inconsistencies, etc.

Also: I have had an influx of new followers lately and several have had insidiously hateful memes posted about Islam. If I see stuff like that on a blog, I will block you. There is good and bad in every religion. However, as a thought experiment consider how Daesh–whose ideology is in point of fact anti-Islam and vociferously condemned by the vast majority of the Islamic diaspora–are referred to in the western media as ‘militant Islamists’. Compare this to half-baked West Coast flavor Buddhism and the notion that Buddhism is a peaceful, non-violent religion, the little bit I know about the situation with the Rohingya in Myanmar relates to Buddhist violence against an Islamic minority. Hinduism has the caste system and the whole mess with Kashmir.

Anyway, given this preamble you’ll likely realize I am going to be focusing primarily on the announcement that US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring after a rash of conservative activist rulings. This has many people rightly worried. Kennedy, a flagrant racist (demonstrated by his record of supporting not only Dump’s Muslim ban but also voting rabidly to disenfranchise PoCs and minorities), has historically voted with the more liberal justices on decisions relating to marriage equality and Roe v. Wade. (Also, never forget Kennedy’s hand in Citizens United, one of the worst decisions in the history of the court.

Dump has been conducting a flattery campaign in an effort to get Kennedy to step down since before he took office. He has also promised his base that he will install a conservative, anti-abortion zealot. In practice, this means the long litigated challenges to Roe v. Wade will likely only last for another year (although SCOTUS hears cases earlier in the year, decisions are not published until mid-to-late June). Whereas the previous split was 5-4 in crucial cases, that is likely to know be 5 conservative votes to 4 centrist votes. (The terrifying thing is that if Dump were to get a 2nd term, he will almost certainly replace to more justices–making the count 7-2.)

But–I hear you interject–surely Bitch McConnell changed the Senate rules when Obama nominated Merrick Garland for a seat on the bench. With fevered conviction, he maintained that it was too close to an election and that the choice should be offered to the American people in November.

We are now closer to an election than we were when Garland was nominated but what does the constipated turdle (turtle + turd, two things McConnell could easily be mistaken for upon unconsidered first glance) have to say now: we will vote on and confirm the nominee before the mid-term elections.

A good number of folks have pointed out that the constipated turdle knows he’s being a hypocrite and that instead the focus should be on how there is an on-going investigation into the president that might end up in front of the Supreme Court–in front of a judge that Dump appointed. Given his demands from former FBI Director James “But Her Emails” Comey of a loyalty oath, it’s not difficult to see how any appointment right now would be deeply problematic.

That is, unless you watch only Fox News and believe that Mueller’s investigation is nothing more than a boondoggle that has accomplished nothing (oh, nevermind those 5 guilty pleas and 17 indictments: fake news!).

I think there’s arguably another lesson here: the GOP are a craven bunch of power drunk shitstains. They know they are being hypocritical. They want the focus to be on their hypocrisy because as long as that’s the focus the can continue to push through their agenda. (It’s when the focus is on the consequences of their ideological legislation is the topic that they have more trouble.)

Also: engaging on principle assumes your opponent is arguing in good faith. The GOP have shown very clearly that they are not. Arguing with them on principle means that they can whatabout instead of engaging with the argument, ignore you or instead paint you as an intractable activist. This leads to frustration with the discourse that leads to incivility.

As you’ll likely have heard by now Sarah Fuckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Northern Virginia restaurant because of her affiliation with the Dump administration. Conservatives actually have the audacity to decry this as un-American and a symptom of the decay of civility in our society. Again, you can engage on principle and point out Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Sean Hannity, Joe Wilson, not to mention the endless crassness of Dump. Or, instead of arguing in good faith, you can realize their bad faith and attempt to hold them to account by demonstrating to them that their ideas have real world consequences for everyone but themselves. Thus, publicly confronting them is a means of causing their actions to have consequences that directly effect them. They want civility because with civility they can continue to do whatever the hell they want without any sort of checks or balance.

And what do they want to do without checks or balances? Consider this proposed bill in Ohio as a model of what a good number of folks I grew up surrounded by would consider to be a centrist, mainstream piece of legislation: a bill that gives parents the right to abuse transgender kids.

The reason the GOP generally feels that they shouldn’t have to pay for welfare or other social programs is because they view that as the church’s sociological purpose. In practice that’s probably not such a bad notion–except that the Church can require concessions from the supplicant, i.e. conform or be cast out. Further: the anti-abortion movement is a direct off shoot of white supremacy. Abortion will never be completely illegal in this country–it will just only be available to those who are rich enough and white enough. The cost of raising a child makes people dependent upon work and the more dependent you are upon your employment, the less you can counter unreasonable demands placed upon you by your employer. In a vaccuum, capitalism dictates that business will always favor getting more for less.

But if you really want to see the degree to which white supremacy is backed in to the evangelical mindset, google you’re local planned parenthood and cruise by it. Note the anti-abortion protestors. Find someone with a sign that proclaims life is sacred and ask them if that’s true why the aren’t at the southern border advocating for children who are being kept in cages, some of whom have been separated from their parents for weeks. Focusing on the handful of people who might choose to end a pregnancy over children that very much could use support and advocacy…

From where I’m sitting, it appears that Dump will nominate an extremist judges. Senate Dems only need two votes to nix the nomination. However, at this point, I don’t think it’s going to matter. I’m not an expert but based on the polling I’ve seen, I see no indication of any so-called ‘blue wave’ in November. And make no mistake, short of Democrats re-taking both chambers, Dump will win a second term and install 4 justices on the court. The effects of this will be disastrous as that formulation will work to ensure that a consistently right leaning slant and we’ll never see a centrist, let alone progressive or leftist majority ever again.

I am of the opinion that it’s time for those of us who hold statuses the Evangelical right sees as abhorrent to very seriously begin to start laying the ground work to leave the country for our own safety. Yes, it is actually that bad already.