Soapbox

Oh baby, hold me tight~
I can’t take the news tonight.

It’s terrifying to think how many Americans went out and risked their health to cast their vote to drive the car off the cliff.
I got home from the polls a little before 9:00. I took a long shower to try to scrub the 450+ people we processed at my precinct off my skin and went down to the basement, where I plan to basically stay for the next 10 days until I know I haven’t contracted Covid.
It was my intent to curl up and sleep and not look at any news results until tomorrow. After all, there were no longer and letters I could write, phone calls to make or donations to send that could influence what was happening. However what little sleep I got was filled with people making cryptic remarks that were intended to offer me clues as to what the results were but told me nothing, so a little after 1 AM, frustrated and exhausted and wide awake, I picked up my phone and swiped to the news page.

And now my hands are shaking.

The election has not been called yet, which in a way is a crushing defeat, given how far ahead Biden was in most polls. But even if he pulls it out when absentee ballots are counted, the “Blue Wave” did not happen. The whole middle of the country is solid red. Texas looked pretty blue when I got home but it’s now red, as is Ohio.
WTF Ohio??

How could that many people vote for death? What the hell does that madman have to do to convince you that he’s- well, a madman? Because if anything is clear, it’s that many, many people are going to die as a result of a Trump second term. So many people worked so hard to keep it from happening, but clearly, as many also worked to destroy American democracy, civil rights, human rights and lives.
Donald Trump’s Covid-19 policy has been “Ignore It” and a quarter-million of us have paid the price. And his response to that has been to simply shout that “We’ve rounded the corner” Covid has been eliminated, doctors are lying, there will be a vaccine any day— come to my rally and DIE FOR ME.

And people did. Every single day we got more news that proved that his campaign rallies were literally killing people… and still they came.
And, apparently, they voted.

4 years ago, when it became clear that Clinton was going to lose to Trump, Steve came to me and put his arms around me and after a minute whispered, “I’m scared”. And I was too. I knew it would be bad, but it was so so much worse than I had feared. I had hoped it would be George W Bush-level bad, but was far worse. (Hell, George Bush is against Donald Trump!)
And unless a miracle happens, it is going to get exponentially worse still.

Trump’s hideous Supreme Court majority is going to vote to end the Affordable Care Act… in the middle of a pandemic. When the Republicans, after a decade, still have *nothing* with which to replace it. Millions will lose health care coverage and be unable to afford hospital treatment for Covid that might save their lives.
If there still are hospital beds available to be treated in, which there already are not in some areas that have resorted to make-shift field hospitals in fairground buildings.

The Trump Thugs: armed bands of MAGA red-hat wearers ranging from mere entitled idiots to violent white-supremacists plotting serious domestic terrorism, will feel empowered as never before to harass and attack minorities- oh, and their own governors if they dare have the temerity to institute public freaking health policies to limit the spread of a killer disease.
Because they want to go back to drinking beer in bars and how dare anyone tell them not to?
The Brownshirts of Hitler’s Germany have become the Red-hats of America.

And the utterly sociopathic Republican congress who as a body stood back and watched as their own constituents suffer and die, have already violated every principle they ever claimed to have held. Collude with Russia as they hack the US election systems and even our power grid?
Sure. Whatever.
Call our military “losers” and “suckers” while simultaneously using them as props and photo ops?
Ho hum.
Lock children in cages- including 500 kids, some just toddlers, separated from their immigrant parents never to be returned because DHS didn’t bother to keep a record of whose children they were?
They’re not our kids, so…
Grift hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by playing golf almost weekly at your own golf clubs, overbilling the Secret Service and others for the rooms they must book, golf carts they must use, etc just to take care of you?
Well at least he’s not Obama in a tan suit.

God almighty. I can’t even keep writing the crimes against justice, the Constitution, and the People which  Republicans have aided and abetted Trump in committing. There is literal blood on their hands but, thanks to a bunch of dark money donors, it looks like even the worst of them will keep their senate seats.

And looming over it all is Covid. A disease we COULD be managing, but we’re not. Because freedom matters more than lives to the pro-life party.

Things Donald Trump has blamed ~So far~ for the ridiculous infection and death rate in America:
* Masks. Wearing masks doesn’t help. No, it actually makes it worse. Only democrat America haters wear masks.
* Testing. We don’t have skyrocketing infection rates- we just have the best testing in the world! If we didn’t test so many people, we wouldn’t have so many cases. He actually said that.
* Nurses. It wasn’t that his federal task force (headed by Jared Kushner) totally failed to ramp up national production of PPE’s (personal protective equipment) despite knowing we would need them. No no, he hadn’t diverted shipments away from hospitals (particularly in states with Democratic governors) and even sold them overseas. No. The reason hospitals and nursing homes had to dress staff in frickin’ garbage bags because they had no gowns and re-use gloves is that nurses were stealing the supplies and selling them. (Because you know nurses: always in it for the big bucks)
* Military families. The reason Covid blew through the White House like a tornado and he got infected himself wasn’t his terrible policy of not wearing masks and having large group events. It was military and their families and police officers who insisted on hugging and kissing him because they just love him so much.
* The Wind. Wind blows Covid around and that, not the lack of masks, infected people.
* The Media. Turns out we don’t have escalating infection and a quarter-million people dead- it’s just that the lying Fake News media keeps talk-talk-talking about Covid and making us think we do.
* Doctors. Because blaming nurses wasn’t repugnant enough, now Trump says the high death rate is just doctors ~saying~ that people who died of something else actually died from Covid FOR MONEY. Because doctors get paid more for Covid patients, see? So if  you die from emphysema but you also happen to get Covid, those unethical, money-grubbing doctors (who have been risking their own lives daily for almost a year now treating Covid patients) are putting “Covid-19” as the cause of death when it wasn’t. See?

Who are you going to believe: every doctor and virologist and public health expert on the planet… or Donald J Trump, con-artist, grifter of tax money, who steals from charities and puts babies in cages?

And by the 10’s of millions… people chose to believe him. Even as they watch friends and co-workers and family members sicken, they believe him.

It’s after 3 AM now and whatever purging I hoped writing would help accomplish has not happened. I’m exhausted, and heart-sick, and flat-out terrified. I could pick up my phone and see if anything has changed in the past 2 hours but I’m not going to sleep either way. The not-knowing isn’t enough better than the knowing to let me sleep.

Did anybody have the same dream as I?
Did anybody have the same dream last night?

Dear Ohio Attorney General DeWine,

    On behalf of my husband and myself, I would like to express our abiding gratitude for your tireless efforts to keep us together as man and wife. 
     As my daughter plans her wedding to the woman she loves so dearly, I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that you are on the job, spending my tax dollars to keep them legally apart, so that her father and I can retain the sanctity of our own marriage.

    I know that some today think it is ignorant and undemocratic to cling to primative prejudices and deny some citizens equal rights simply because they think and feel differently than the majority.  But without you to defend marriage from people like her who want to get married, who knows what the future might hold?
    Thanks in no small part to you and your courageous actions before the courts, we may never have to know the horror of these two young people being able to have the full protections of matrimony as they save to purchase their first home, build their careers and plan their family. Why even unto death, you are vigilant, making sure that they will have to move to some other state if they want to call each 'spouse' on a death certificate. Because what greater threat could there be to the stability of our beloved Ohio than that?

    It is a relief to know that, if her partner becomes the biological mother of their children, my lovely daughter will never be able to have legal custody rights to the family they raise and sacrifice for together. And my husband and I will never, in the eyes of the state, be the grandparents of the beautiful babies we bounce on our knees.

    And so, for these and all the other special things you have done to for us, I would like to extend to you an invitation to the ceremony they are planning. Please come and see the flowers, hear the music, witness their trembling hands and flushed faces at the altar and gaze into the misty, joyful eyes of their loving family and friends, so that you can fully appreciate in your heart just what it is that you have protected us from.

    Because without your efforts to defend us, when the big day arrrives and we all throw rice and cheer, those two happy young people might walk back down the aisle- not just together in their hearts but also united in wedlock. 

    So f**k you for saving us from all of that. Yes, f**k you so much from the very bottom of our broken hearts.

    Sincerely-
          A lot of Ohio parents, who wouldn't vote for you if you were the last candidate on earth.

Dear  National Organization for Marriage,

    Since the 6th circuit has been hearing arguments about overturning gay marriage bans in several states (including my own) I wanted to address your most recent attempt at justifying your bigotry.
   The main thrust of your argument was to quote G.K. Chesterton and say that if a chair is different than other chairs then it isn't really a chair.  From this devastatingly brilliant remark  we are to understand that since a same sex marriage is not fundamentally  like a heterosexual marriage,  it isn't really a marriage. Sure,  same-sex couples can get something called a marriage license in some misguided states, but that will never make it a true marriage, because it doesn't conform to what society defines a marriage as being.
     You gay folks can call your horse a dog, too, but good luck getting it housebroken.
     Chairs. OK.
 
     Well, I would argue that in all of the important ways, same sex chairs ARE like heterosexual chairs. (Chairs? Really?)  The only way the two cannot be considered fundamentally the same is if you  believe that the single, salient, can't-be-changed-without- calling-a-bed-a-chair characteristic of marriage that makes it a true marriage is heterosexual intercourse.
    And that definition presupposes that the point of marriage is procreation by the married couple, with each other. And that isn't true. Look around! Millions of infertile couples,  middle-aged  newlyweds  and childless-by-choice couples would vigorously argue that procreation is not why they married at all.
   You insist that marriage is all about sex.
   The rest of us think marriage is about love.

   Except you don't really think that marriage is about sex, or about procreation either, as your next point makes clear.
   You go on to say that banning same-sex marriage is not at all discriminatory, because gay people can still get married any time they want to. They just have to marry someone of the opposite sex.  
   Think about what you just said:  the legal  union of a man and a woman who have no physical attraction to each other, who may be fond of each other but will never be in love and may never have sex…  THIS fits your definition of 'marriage' .
    But two people of the same sex who pledge to love each other, support and shelter each other, who wish to be a family together until their death- THIS does not? A Brittney Spears quickie marriage in Vegas with someone you barely know is 'a chair' but lifelong companions who adopt and raise children together is Soooo different that it's a bookcase?
    If you are seriously saying that  a loveless, sexless marriage is acceptable in your eyes as long as it involves a man and a woman, then marriage, to be a marriage, does not require love, procreation or even intercourse- just gender! But if marriage doesn't require sex- why do the parties have to be of different genders?

    When you remove God (which you have to do, because atheists can marry) and love, kids and sex from the requirement for a 'real' marriage,  what remains of marriage is a social and legal contract pertaining to joint ownership of property, custody and financial responsibility for children, insurance coverage and inheritance of estate after death.
    What is there in the above definition that precludes the contract from being made between 2 women or two men?
    Nothing. If two men can enter into a legal contract to form a company, file taxes, hire employees and provide goods and services,  then they can sign a marriage contract.
   Sorry, but the way your own arguments keep turning back on themselves it really does seem that. by your own definition. the gay marriage chair really IS just a slightly different chair. 

      Your final argument against same-sex marriage leaves furniture behind and ventures into musical theatre, since it is basically just Reb Tevye standing with his milk cow, shaking his fist and singing,
                     Tradition! Marriage should be arranged by the Papas!!
    We have never had same-sex marriage in America before, you say, so we can never have it.

    Ok, but we never had free public education for all children… until we did. Never had interracial marriage… but when we changed that, the country did not fall apart. Cats and dogs did not start living together- people didn't forget how to use a chair.
    We used to have slavery- and then we changed that. Women were not allowed to own property or to vote, but time went by and ideas and laws changed… and yet fundamentally things stayed the same. The sun still comes up in the east every day, even though women can vote and even run for office.
    And so it will be when Americans are allowed to marry the person they love the most, whether it be a man or woman. Tradition, after all,  is not necessarily good thing- it's just a thing.

    I'm sorry that you NOM types want society to stay frozen in place in 1776… or maybe 1576.. but society doesn't work that way. That which does not change eventually ceases to exist. Society adapts and evolves, just like everything else on the planet. I'm sure you don't like hearing me toss around ideas like 'evolution'- a lot of you probably think Noah had dinosaurs on the ark. And you can believe that if you want to. Isn't that great? But you cannot make me  believe it, or force me to live as if I do.
    So sure, you can believe that a same sex marriage is not an actual marriage because a horse is not a dog and a bed is not a chair, if that makes you feel safer. But marriage is a social and governmental contract- that's why it requires a license. It's a law, and new laws are being written and old laws are being amended every single day. It's called 'progress', you see?

    Earlier I compared you guys to Reb Tevye, crying for his tradition- but that's not really fair. In time Tevye came to see that what mattered more than 'the way things have always been' was the love and happiness of his children.
    He was a much wiser man than you.

The other day I saw a letter in the paper from a man responding to some letter from another reader who apparently had argued that 'good' people should not have to pay for the sexual activity of bad ones in the form of insurance-provided contraception. The second man presented a nice argument about why it is Ok for the government to pay for contraception and pointed out that we all pay for things we don't want, like war. It was a well-written letter, and it missed the point entirely, as most people in this ridiculous and Puritanical fuss over birth control do.

I respond to the "Contraception avoids high costs" letter of March 11th. Mr. Miller sets out well-reasoned arguments, unfortunately, he defeats a straw man and proves that Rush Limbaugh has accomplished exactly what he set out to do.

This is not about the government paying for anything. This is about insurance. Say it with me: Insurance insurance insurance.

Our president is not proposing that the government hand out free birth control pills on streetcorners to wayward college students. He simply says that your health insurance, something you pay for, should cover certain basic health needs. He believes that a woman whose doctor says she needs hormonal treatment for an ovarian condition should not end up having to have that ovary cut out of her body because a group of men believe that their religion should get to control her body. Mr Limbaugh wants you to think about sex videos of coeds instead of women being denied needed medical treatment because of the misogynist rantings of someone's religion.

This was never about how much sex liberals have, or protecting freedom of religion. Rush Limbaugh judged that the battle could be won if he got people to think about it in that way, however, the same way he and others have sucessfully convinced so many that  if their child is able to get treatment for a painful pre-existing (and so formerly excluded) condition… this is somehow evil.
These red herrings are being thrown in our path to drive wedges into society: between left and right, men and women, rich and poor. Because rest assured, the rich will always be able to buy hormonal birth control whether insurance pays for it or not, just as they will be able to get abortions without waiting periods and transvaginal ultrasounds.

This new policy is simply about guaranteeing poor, often married, working-class women the right to get the medication their doctor prescribes them, regardless of their bosses interpretation of the Bible.

Say it one more time, with feeling: Insurance!

    We get it: some people really don't like the new Health Care bill. Fine. There's plenty not to like. Let's talk about it.
 
    But first- can we get off the hyperbole express? Can we agree that, unless the earth is actually going to end in fire and smoke tomorrow directly as a result of children no longer being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions- we will NOT call passage of this bill "Armageddon"? Can we just stipulate that a bill, however flawed, that provides babies with health care, which will, you know, keep them alive is NOT a "baby killer"? Is that too much common sense for people today?
    And "death panels"? Come on! If you don't have any fact-based arguments against the bill, maybe you should shut your mouth and let the people who do speak up.

   Though I agreed with their position, I did not approve of the Code Pink women who shouted at Bush Administration officials in hearings and confronted them with bloody hands- and I told them so. Now we see not just the empty talking heads on FOX News but even Republican members of congress encouraging even worse behavior, actually cheering a man who was removed from the House chamber for screaming "Kill the Bill!". They whip crowds of the ignorant and angry into a frenzy with rhetoric like "lock and load", talk of the impending end of our nation and a Communist take-over… and all this because  my unemployed son can now be covered by my health insurance until he is 26, if I choose to pay for it.
   Wow. Yeah. That does sound like Armageddon.

   People, we need to put down the pitchforks, stop trying to storm the castle gates and just ring the doorbell and ask to talk! Because when Frankenstein answers the bell, you'll find that he's just a guy with bad hair and a limp, and not a monster at all.

    America should be working on the important details of how to craft a better piece of legislation. Instead, we act like this is a hockey game, cheering when "our side" draws blood.
     At the risk of sounding like a communist, Nazi, baby-killing America-hater: shouldn't we all be on the side of helping people who can't get the care they need, either because they can't afford it or because their insurance company is in the business of finding ways not to pay for care? Is that too much to ask?
  
I