Ever have someone say something so baffling, or so stupid, you're still thinking about it days later? Not thinking about it because the actual words were bothersome, because we all know how much I care about other people's opinions of me. More just completely being stymied by the thought process behind the words.
The other day certainly wasn't the first time, won't be the last time, and it wasn't even the worst. The other day, I posted this article on Facebook, in anger, about the information leaked by the New York Times, that the Trump administration wants to define gender as biological, immutable, determined by genitalia at birth, which would roll back all kinds of protections for transgender community. I did call Trump an orange douchebag. I used choice words for the old white politicians who do his dirty work.
Then I was called a hypocrite and a bigot. How can I preach all this love everyone then have all this hate "for our nation's president". And I think toward those who support him too. I'm not sure since the ranting in question left a lot to be desired in terms of spelling, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, etc. I may write with slang, or write how I speak, but coherence has never been an issue.
I was dumbstruck. Not just because I don't even know how that's the conclusion that comes from my posting, but that after talking to B, he feels that could be the thought process of many on the "other side".
I just don't know how there's ever going to be any healing of the divide when there's no understanding. I don't know how it's possible not to see these things as clear as day. I'm not talking about fiscal issues, even though those are tied to social issues as well. But I have acquaintances in finance who only seem to see things in terms of the stock market. If the stock market is okay and their lives are status quo, they're happy. They don't much care about the social issues. They don't think any of it affects them (even though they have children it will affect) so they're all MAGA for now. While selfish and short sighted, it's not quite the same as the people who only vote on social issues, AGAINST other people's rights.
PEOPLE'S RIGHTS. EQUALITY. Ideals we're supposed to have founded this country on. These are actual people we're talking about. Not just nameless, faceless people. Friends, family, friends of friends and family of family. I personally know two transgender kids and one transgender adult. Then there are the ones I don't know personally but know about. And I don't know anyone who DOESN'T know someone or have someone close to them that considers themselves gay. So when you're voting, you're literally deciding whether these people you know get to have basic rights or not. Their right to be who they were born to be. To dress how they see fit. Call themselves what name they feel comfortable with. Be able to safely use the bathroom, get married, get a job, healthcare, and anything else the rest of us enjoy just by virtue of being born with the right parts.
That's where I'm talking about clarity. One side wants to live and let live and the other side is actively voting against people's equality. It's not different than voting for segregation. They just refuse to see it because it's cloaked in religion. Religion somehow makes it acceptable. I'm waiting for one legitimate answer as to why it's okay to strip people of their rights. I still haven't heard how it adversely affects anyone else if the LGBTQ community keeps any rights they currently have or are fighting to have. Except, I guess, that in a broad brush stroke, if we allow them rights, we're all just going to hell in a hand basket. #FineByMe
I'm also waiting for that answer to the age old question of, if everyone BIRTHS all the fetuses, are you willing to PAY to help those born babies? #waitingforever #ifiheldmybreathidbedead
As much as some like to believe it's a one religion country, which people have said in my own backyard when they think no one is listening, we do not have a national religion. We're not supposed to be making laws based in religion. I don't know why we have to keep saying this. This is the problem with proselytizing religions. It's this mentality drummed in that you're supposed to push your religion on to others and make them live how you live. That's not the way we're supposed to be governed here.
How is it not clear that if you don't want to have an abortion, don't have one. If you aren't gay then don't have a gay marriage. If you're not transgender, then what rights or protections they have shouldn't be an issue for you. One side is trying to make sure everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, and the other side wants any marginalized people to be stripped of their rights and protections under the law because it doesn't gel with their interpretation of religion. The ones on the anti-progressive side can't even come to these feelings of their own voluntary thinking of right and wrong, but through someone's interpretation of something they follow.
I don't know it isn't common sense to see how crazy and wrong it would be to legislate that everyone must have abortions or be gay. How it is not common sense to see it from the other side??
Written above is just me being a broken record, but what's worse was what came next, after I was called a hypocrite and a bigot. It was something like "SMH, it's never going to happen. Stop believing everything you read!".
People, respected political pundits, said Trump would never be elected President. He was elected. We've already seen White Nationalists & Nazi's marching in the streets of a city in the USA after it was said that some were being overly dramatic by comparing Trump to Hitler. Trump stole a Supreme Court nominee and then got another one. He helped make a mockery of the Supreme Court with the Kavanaugh circus and could populate the whole Supreme Court with ultra socially conservative judges. That could affect protections for millions of people. Yet, men and women alike support taking rights away from people because it doesn't seemingly affect them and much of it in the name of religion.
When someone says "it's not going to happen" in terms of reversing Roe vs Wade, defining gender in a way that strips people of their rights, or any other quality of life issue, I just think about how privileged view of the world that must be. To be so much a part of the majority that they can discount how scary it is to be any minority just waiting for your existence to be erased, jailed, deported, separated from family or forced to have a baby you can't take care of or don't want. Sorry if I can't just take the average person's word for what will and won't be legislated while just laying down and taking it. Russia elected our President. Clearly, anything can happen.
We already had a time without legal abortion. Remember Penny from Dirty Dancing, the dirty table and rusty knife situation? Revolutionary Road? Coat hangers? While the movies themselves may be fictional, those situations aren't disputed as being fictional. Yet, we have people so stubborn in their feeling that abortion shouldn't be legal that they're willing to cling to Trump as their Christian Family Values poster child. The man married three times. Having five kids with three different women. Known to have paid thousands of dollars to pay off a porn star that he cheated on his wife with. THIS, is the person being held up as the moral vote just because he's willing to say he'll abolish abortion and take away rights from the LGBTQ community.
I was called a hypocrite and a bigot but to me, the clarity should be that it's hypocritical and bigoted to decide that other people should be abiding by law based on the rules of your religion. I've been told the message Christianity is supposed to give is of love. That the only one who can judge is God. As far as I see it then, He or She gets to make the laws up there, and we make the laws down here. For everyone. Equally.
We can't heal any divide when we have people expecting everyone to stand for a flag and a national anthem, pledging- "And liberty and justice for all", when really they mean- "And liberty and justice for those who believe the same way I do". We can't heal a divide when we have people yelling "Fake News" about the truth. We can't heal a divide when we're okay with some people having all the rights and some having none. We can't heal a divide when there is no empathy or regard for people who are different, don't have as much, and/or who don't want to live within the confines of someone else's religious beliefs. People have been fleeing religious persecution since the beginning of time. The reason being that no one wants to be forced to believe anything.
We can't heal a divide when people are yelling "If you don't like it, if you don't stand, if you don't whatever- then get out!" People shouldn't be expected to conform to just live. You don't have to agree with my positions. You don't have to agree with or like abortion. You don't have to agree with or even be okay with any LGBTQ lifestyle. You don't have agree with, like, or participate in any activity or lifestyle that conflicts with your religion or belief system. However, you shouldn't be able to legislate that other people can't, and that, is where there is a problem. I don't know how many ways it can be said. You don't lose anything by living and let live. But others DO lose when you try to put your beliefs into law.
Look how crazy people get when even the thought of taking any gun rights away comes up. The NRA supporters, who tend to also be on the side of revoking other people's freedoms, think it's preposterous to even consider tightening gun laws, because they believe something is being taken away from them. Yet....
I feel like I just said the same thing over and over and over again. Like a broken record. I guess I'm just going to have to keep saying it until it sinks in.
Am I angry? Yes. Do I disparage the current President? Hell yes. You know how the Holocaust happened? It happened by people just sitting around doing and saying nothing when they came for other people. Until they came for them too. Don't tell me it can't happen because I can find you people who lived it. It's very easy to mobilize sheep- just look up a hate group or two on Facebook and see how many members are in any given one. If that doesn't scare you into standing up for people who need it now, then all I can say is #baaaaaaaaaaa
**By the way- I'm sitting here at work with the tv on. I just heard a political attack ad from Hugin (R) about Menendez (D) in NJ. It's from the perspective of a mom with a newborn daughter, claiming in this attack ad that Menendez allegedly went to prostitutes who were as young as sixteen. That she could never explain a vote for him (Menendez) to HER (the innocent newborn daughter). Now, I don't know anything about Menendez and teen prostitutes, however, our Lecherous Leader In Chief has many sexual allegations against him, told someone how you should grab women by the pussy, and worse. This, THIS is the subject matter this republican is using againt his democratic opponent?? I think my head just exploded. How is Hugin then going to explain his support of anything Trump, ever? I hope he plans on speaking out on what an utter scumbag Trump has been to and about women if he's trying to run on the Family Values, wholesome family man platform. Again, hypocritical and baffling to where my head just exploded.
Talk about clarity- anyone can say anything now, nothing means anything, and we're all living in some kind of alternate universe. The universe where the President is publicly calling a woman he slept with "Horse Face" and we're all talking about the size (or lack) of his penis.
#AbrahamLincolnisrollinginhisgrave #Vote2018