Thanks to the Supremely Partisan Hacks overturning Roe v Wade, a lot of Republicans are revealing their true colors. When a 10-year-old girl in Indiana was raped and got an abortion, some Republicans said she should have carried the child to term. In other words, a child should give birth to a child, no matter how traumatizing and physically dangerous it might be.
In the same way after every gun massacre, Republicans say their "thoughts and prayers" and then do everything possible to make sure no meaningful reforms are enacted. And people (and bots) on Twitter scream "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!" in reference to their precious 2nd Amendment that they've only partially read because they always overlook that part about a "well-maintained militia" which really in no interpretation should mean some asshole carrying an AR-15 to the grocery store.
The problem is that on these issues Republicans are so dug in, they won't give a single inch of ground. It's this slippery slope logic of if we give in and make exceptions for the most extreme cases, like pregnant 10-year-olds or women who face serious complications or women who have fetuses already dead inside of them, then eventually we'll have to make more compromises until we lose everything. The same is true about guns: if we ban AR-15s or high-volume clips or armor-piercing bullets then you'll eventually give in more and more until there are actually sensible laws on the books.
And unfortunately voters support this shit because if a Republican gives an inch on gun laws or abortion or doesn't say the 2020 election was rigged and Trump won in a landslide, they'll be attacked and attacked and quite probably voted out for some lunatic who will spew those lies and hold the farthest right position. Encouraging people who hold far-right positions and support lies then only encourages even more of that.
And then someone will say, "Both sides!" It's true that some "progressive" Democrats can hold too strongly to a far-left position. But there are a lot fewer of them than far-right Republicans. Then you get the "moderates" like Joe Manchin who are deathly afraid to support anything that might be anti-gun or pro-abortion because even though he claims to be a Democrat, he's really not; he's basically a pre-1994 Republican.
The truth is if we had this kind of thinking in 1776, there would not be a United States today. The whole country was founded on compromises. The Constitution Republicans claim to love was filled with compromises like the three-fifths compromise that counted slaves as less than full people--and also allowed states to keep slavery. By today's standards it was abhorrent and so some on the far left say we should cancel the Founding Fathers. But you'd probably still be a subject of the British crown otherwise--which in some ways might not be so bad.
We need to move back to where we can compromise, but I don't think we will. Social media makes it easier than ever to just parse everything into sound bytes and now with things like deepfake and "fake news," it's easier than ever to just make up a bunch of shit and spread it around to people who don't know better. Eventually I think we're just going to implode. It's still hard for me to imagine an actual civil war, because what happens in Michigan where you have a large number of Democrats in cities and Republicans in the rural areas? It's a lot more difficult than the 1860s where you could pretty much draw the line at slave states vs non-slave states.
Thanks to the Supremely Partisan Hacks, what we have instead is a return to the Bad Old Days of the Articles of Confederation, where it was every state for itself. That system completely failed and gave rise to the Constitution with the Bill of Rights, like that precious, poorly-worded Second Amendment. What we found is that we can't be "United" States if everyone is just doing their own thing. Unfortunately, corrupt judges and an unwillingness to make sensible compromises is dragging us back in time. You know what they say: those who don't pay attention to history are bound to repeat it.
2 comments:
I know you don't want to hear both sides, but I find both sides are stubborn when it comes to gun control and abortion. Democrats support abortion in the last trimester, even when the baby can live outside the womb. Perhaps some will say this is not true, but that is how it comes across to people who are against abortion. In 2021, there were 629,898 abortions in the United States. Not all of these can be from underage girls or health of the mother issues. Regardless, underage victims should not have to have a baby. Then you have Republicans who want no restrictions on guns in fear of needing them some day for whatever reason. On these issues, people have that "if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile" mentality. I totally agree compromise is necessary. We need more unity and compromise on many issues before it's too late.
I don't think politicians--mostly old white males--should be drawing arbitrary lines in the sand on this. It should be between a woman, a doctor, and maybe a social worker for those not of age.
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