There's a number of reasons that we're experiencing our current bout of right wing extremism taking over the Republican Party, causing them to primary anyone who is seen in public with a Democrat and pushing them to do things like, oh, side with people who think it's just awful that women leave husbands who beat them. Having a Democrat in office who is also the first black President is right at the top of the list, of course, but it's also just the changing face of America in general that is causing the surge of "take our country back!" sentiment. If you ever wonder what that means---specifically "from who?"---well, these statistics that were released today might be illuminating.
After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.
Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.
The rational, non-racist reaction to this news is to say, "Huh," and then go about your day. Not that there aren't ramifications for this sort of thing, but mostly they stem from how racist our country continues to be. If we could get our heads straight about this, demographic changes would by and large not be a big deal, but just evidence of the fascinating evolution of American society.
The declining white majority is, I suspect, one of the reasons that conservatives are flipping out, trying to shut down practically all government spending, and even attacking women's rights. The government spending issue---as well as health care reform---is the most direct response to all this. Knowing that the benefits of American citizenship are increasingly being shared with non-white people is causing a massive "shut 'er down!" approach. Privatization of everything may be less efficient and more expensive, but it also makes it easier to shut people out.
Interestingly, I also think the dramatic focus on taking away women's rights is also the result of this, at least in part. The escalating attacks on contraception, for instance, are fed by right wing myth-making about how white women are abandoning their God-given duty to marry young and get to baby-making, instead choosing to have casual sex and pursue careers that put them in competition for jobs that used to be male-only. I think it's hard for liberals to see it, because we're really used to siloing our issues, but that outrageous attacks on Sandra Fluke for speaking out about contraception and the barely-concealed racist fears and furies spring from the same well. This isn't even just an argument that's made through dog whistles and insinuation, even. The favorite way for conservatives to talk about this is to make dark claims that the liberalism and feminism of Europe is going to destroy it because there's so many Muslims now. They expect you're smart enough to see how those arguments translate when it comes to American demographics.
This article only came out this morning, so I haven't seen any direct conservative responses yet. But I imagine it's just a matter of time.
Joshua Holland has an important piece at Salon (originally Alternet) about the way that paranoid conspiracy theories constantly pumped out by right wing media rule the right wing imagination, and how important it is to understand this about conservatives. He describes what the country looks like for a loyal consumer of right wing media:
The White House has been usurped by a Kenyan socialist named Barry Soetero, who hatched an elaborate plot to pass himself off as a citizen of the United States – a plot the media refuse to even investigate. This president doesn’t just claim the right to assassinate suspected terrorists who are beyond the reach of law enforcement – he may be planning on rounding up his ideological opponents and putting them into concentration camps if he is reelected. He may have murdered a blogger who was critical of his administration, but authorities refuse to investigate. At the very least, he is plotting on disarming the American public after the election, in accordance with a secret deal cut with the UN and possibly with the assistance of foreign troops......
For the true believers, Latin American immigration isn’t a phenomenon to be managed, but a grave existential threat. A plot to “take back” large swaths of the Southwest is a theory that has aired not only on obscure right-wing blogs, but on Fox and CNN. On CNN, Lou Dobbs claimed immigrants were spreading leprosy; Rick Perry, Rep. Louie Gohmert and other “mainstream” voices on the right (that is, people with platforms) agree that Hezbollah and Hamas “are using Mexico as a way to penetrate into the southern part of the United States,” possibly with the aid of “terror babies” carried in pregnant women’s wombs.
I'll add that they also believe that feminists and Planned Parenthood are part of an elaborate conspiracy to abort every pregnancy in the country, for no other reason than we hate fetuses. From their rhetoric, it's clear they believe the abortion rate is many times higher than it is, and that the fact that women have 1 or 2 children instead of 9 or 10 on average is strictly because of secret abortions. For instance, Jon Kyle's famous "90%" number when talking about Planned Parenthood's services puts their abortion rate at about 30 times what it is. Since there are about 1.2 milllion abortions a year, going off that kind of rough estimating done on the right, you're left with realizing they believe there's something like 15 to 30 million abortions a year. I've never seen that number bandied about, but right wing rhetoric points to this belief that Kyle's belief that Planned Parenthood is doing 30 times the abortions there are, and that abortion is the main, and possibly only reason, for the current American birth rate. A lot of conservatives have taunted me personally with assumptions that I'm constantly getting abortions with my slutty slut self, so you can see why people who also believe that Obama is a covert agent might think there's some secret underground conspiracy of feminists to emasculate men by secretly stealing away the womb fruit that proves their American seed works. The 4 million proof-their-fathers-had-sex-things we call babies born a year are seen as the rare escapees from the pro-choice conspiracy to wipe out all proof of American virility.
When you think about stuff like this, you have to wonder. Do they really believe this shit?
I'm not so sure. I've said it before, but I think it's worth repeating: I think they only "believe" it. Which is to say, there are two kinds of ways people believe something. They have things they believe because they're factually accurate: That it's raining outside, that items dropped will fall, that Barack Obama is President. Then there's stuff that isn't real that people believe: that there's a God in heaven and an afterlife, that miracles happen, ghosts exist. These are things you don't really believe in the same way you believe in truths. It's more that these beliefs are convenient to apply a belief-like approach to, because the stories make you feel good or, more commonly, because joining in the belief connects you to your community. Everyone comes together under a common delusion: That might be the best way to describe religion. The confusion between these two kinds of beliefs is such that some skeptics, including myself, are beginning to prefer the terms "know" and "accept" to describe accuracy-based beliefs, and leave "belief" to describe mythical beliefs.
In my experience, the healthiest people (besides those who largely avoid the habit of "belief") are those who have a strict divide between accuracy-beliefs and myth-beliefs. God stays in church where he belongs, etc. But some people struggle a lot and confuse the two kinds of believing. They're overly literal in their belief in the supernatural, for one thing. But I think it clearly goes the other way, too, which is that they start to structure their understanding of the reality-based world on the same kinds of myth-making that denotes religion. So, for instance, you have this right wing worship of Sperm Magic and this conflation of male dominance with virility, a magical belief that causes them to make the fetus a symbol of masculine power and see abortion as a ritualistic rejection of it. That, in turn, spurs a belief that feminists are literally trying to abort as many pregnancies as possible, because we supposedly hate men, the only reason they allow for why we might not want men to rule us. This, in turn, creates elaborate conspiracy theories about how Planned Parenthood is trying to subvert the nation and how they secretly are doing 30 times as many abortions as they are, etc. They struggle to understand where accuracy-belief and myth-belief differ.
Look, for instance, at the right wing attempts to make a thing out of President Obama having dated in his 20s before he met Michelle. The way that the story is playing out, you'd think it was scandalous that a man in his 20s has girlfriends and likely has, you know, sex. They aren't getting this belief from reality. In reality, most people sex, and what's unusual is if you didn't have a few sexual relationships that fizzled out before you had one that stuck. But right wingers cling to this myth that abstinence until marriage is the right and proper thing to do, and that myth-belief gets all tangled up with their ability to understand reality. No wonder they think that abstinence-until-marriage is a reasonable thing to teach in schools, even though nearly everyone pushing that had sex themselves before marriage. The observable reality, that most people (including themselves) have sex, is trumped and confused by the myth-reality, where abstinence is the ideal and vanilla sex sounds way more filthy and perverse than it really is. It's one reason they worked themselves into a frenzy "believing" that Sandra Fluke spends her days and nights at Georgetown pulling trains, instead of being a rather ordinary law student with a fiance.
So no, I don't think they believe-believe this stuff. I think they're just confused about the difference between fake belief and real belief, though I think they're highly motivated to be confused about it. After all, that confusion helps generate right wing identity. They may even mistakenly believe it's politically beneficial, though the available evidence shows that it instead causes everyone else to think they're nut jobs.
If you want closed case evidence on how conservatism is mostly about sadism and mean-spiritedness, look no further than how general wingnuttery views young people. Student debt and high unemployment are major problems for the Millennials. You would think that conservatives could muster sympathy in this case, because a) the people suffering could be their own kids and grandkids and b) these are people who are working hard, studying hard, and still getting screwed. But no. Instead you get folks like the evil monster Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, saying this about the student debt crisis:
"I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there's no reason for that," Foxx continued. "We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' You don't sit on your butt and have it dumped in your lap."
I decided to figure out how doable her "just work your way through school, and you won't have debt" solution is. If you're lucky enough to get in-state tuitiion at UT Austin, which is one of the better and more affordable options for a quality education, tuition and housing for two semesters will run you about $18,800. That's not counting books, food, or general cost-of-living expenses. You have to do school full-time to maximize the cost-effectiveness, since the amount of money you pay per credit hour if you don't goes up susbstantially in direct and indirect ways. If you can somehow manage to do that and are lucky enough to get a full-time minimum wage job in this economy, then you'll make about $15,000 a year. So even if you work 80 hours a week (remember, there's only 168 hours in a week, 49 of which must be spent sleeping), you won't make enough to pay for two semesters worth of school. And that doesn't even take into account cost of living expenses over the summer. It's literally impossible for someone to pull off the Virginia Foxx Plan For College, even if you're superhuman in your energy levels.
Needless to say, Foxx considers herself "pro-life". I point this out, because "pro-life" people want you to believe that they're in it not to punish women for being sexual, but that they just really are The Protectors of the Young. Well, that's clearly bullshit. Anyone who really cared a whit about the young would take this student debt and employment crisis seriously. I'd argue that instead of actually being protectors of the young, conservatives are haters of the young. Anti-choice is actually a piece of this, because the idealized victim of their policies is a young woman, being punished for her youth and sexuality. It really comes across in the comments of this article about the employment/debt crisis that Atrios linked:
They want to go to a boutique college, borrow money or receive grants to cover the $50K tuition, major in an arcane subject like gender studies or urban anthropology, and then have someone hand them a well paying job, so they can maintain a hipster lifestyle in a trendy neighborhood.
Here are the most popular majors, in order, according to the Princeton Review: business, psychology, nursing, biology, education, English, economics, communications, political science, and computer science. It seems that kids are mostly picking majors that will lead to the kind of professional careers that they're told they should want. This commenter betrays himself with his ignorance, sure, but also with the phrase "hipster lifestyle". This is all about hating the young for being young, wanting them to suffer because they still have hard bodies and high libidos while your aging body makes it increasingly hard to ignore that death is coming for all of us. It's basically asshole behavior, believing that you had a right to be young, but no one else does now that you aren't anymore. The next comment was more of the same:
Parents need to do a far better job in helping young adults understand that the money spent on education needs to be able to be recouped in the form of a real job on the other side. Parents would also do well to explain the importance of hard work, personal responsibility, vision, personal sacrifice and minimizing the sense of entitlement.
Please review that list of the most popular majors to understand what an asshole this guy is. One in every four degrees handed out is a business degree. The notion that kids aren't viewing their education as job training is a farce. On the contrary, the complaint now is that students are too focused on how to get from school to work, and find any class that doesn't have immediately obvious relevance for future employment to be a waste of time. Once again, the underlying sentiment here is that now that the commenter is no longer young, no one else has a right to be, and that young people should have grim, colorless lives so that he feels better about not being young anymore.
These people aren't the protectors of the young. Remember these attitudes every time a conservative waxes on about how they love babies. If they really did, they would want those babies to have meaningful lives with joy and color in them, not the grim existences of all work and no play that these wingnuts feel is the only acceptable youth now that theirs is gone.
Well, I think we're on the next and final phase of conservatives trying to find a narrative that allows them to conduct all-out war on women while denying that's what they're doing: I'm rubber and you're glue. I'm a bit surprised they didn't latch on to this strategy sooner, honestly, since the ways of the petulant 5-year-old have always had tremendous appeal for those who classify themselves as "real Americans". That the strategy requires heavy use of the non sequitur is considered no bar to using it.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Monday pushed back against claims that Republicans were attacking women's rights and insisted that the "real war on women" was being directed by President Barack Obama.
"The real war on women is being conducted by the regime, by the Obama administration," he explained. "Since Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate for women has gone up from 7 to 8.1 percent. ... The poverty rate among women rose to 14.5 percent last year, up from 13.9 percent when Obama was immaculated."
Since this attack is being directed by someone who appears to believe that Obama was "immaculated" instead of what really happened---he won a national election with a stunningly high percentage of the vote for these polarizing times---I suppose it will have traction with those who are as delusional as he. But even then, this is all a garbled mess. Let's not even deal with the factual error, which of course is blaming the economic problems of the Bush administration on Obama. Let's deal with the fact that in order to rationalize a war on women that's being conducted in large part to keep women from competing economically with men, conservatives have resorted to pretending they give a shit about women's economic wellbeing. The two major planks of the war on women are ultimately about keeping women economically dependent on men, which in turn conservatives hope will keep the power balance at home in favor of men. First, there's the attempts to take away a woman's right to control when she gives birth, which is ultimately about economics. Women who lose that control fare poorly in the job market, unable to structure their career in a way that allows them to move up like a man can, which in turn can allow women to exercise more power in the home, with men losing the "but I make more money, so I'm owed more service and decision-making power" excuse. Additionally, women hobbled by unwanted child-bearing can't compete economically with men, which means people who are uncomfortable with female power in the workplace are going to support forced child-bearing.
The second plank of the war on women is to directly attack women's right to equal pay for equal work. That's why the Supreme Court ruled against Lilly Ledbetter, and that's why Gov. Scott Walker just repealed equal pay protections in his state. In order of the high unemployment gambit to work, two things have to happen: 1) The facts have to be shoved aside. (The fact is that the unemployment crisis is on President Bush, and Obama's efforts blunted it.) 2) The listener has to simulataneously get angry that women are unemployed while eagerly supporting policies that hurt women economically on purpose, because they don't want women to do well. Now, wingnuts are perfectly capable of that level of cognitive dissonance, but I don't see how that attack crosses the barrier into the mainstream. Functionally, Limbaugh is saying, "Don't look at those of us trying to destroy women economically because women aren't doing well economically, though better than they would if we were in charge, so if you support women, support those of us who are actively out to destroy them."
In contrast, the claim that the "real racists" are people who oppose racism because they notice racism seems like it nearly makes sense.
Because of the tortured logic of the "I'm rubber, you're glue" strategy, Fox decided just to skip even trying to make an argument. This the headline of example #2:
But if you read the actual article---which is about as hysterical and pointless as the headline would suggest---there is literally not a single word about the supposed war on women that Obama is suddenly conducting. No mention of wage equality, reproductive rights, women's wellbeing at all. In fact, there's no mention in the text of the article of women. The word "women" doesn't appear in the text. Nor "woman", nor "female". Not even "girl". The comments suggest that super wingnuts are making connections---they believe Muslims hate women, and they believe Obama is a secret Muslim, and that therefore that's all you need to know---but again, not enough there to jump the mainstream media line.
Ironically, there is something the Obama administration has done that conservatives could howl about if they wanted to score some "both sides" points that would be embraced by a mainstream media eager to embrace that narrative regardless of the facts. Conservatives could point to the preposterous Plan B decision. Of course, doing so would be a tacit embrace of the notion that women have reproductive rights, even after a man has "claimed" their body by ejaculating in it. However, that women lose their human rights once they have sex with a man is the fundamental belief they're pushing here, so I'm guessing they're going to sidestep that easy hit.
I'm thrilled that women's rights are a front-and-center issue this campaign season, but it does come with an excrutiating price tag: Conservatives bloviating about how they looooooove "strong women". This is a standard talking point that Republicans trot out when they're called out for anti-feminism. At its core, it's a nonsensical claim and works more as a distraction than a real argument. The image of the steel magnolia---a woman who dispatches her responsibilities with ease, who has a lot of energy and occasionally is sassy to her husband, because she's far more competent than he---has a lot of emotional resonance, for conservatives, as well as feminists. Feminists admire the Joan Holloway type for her survival skills, because we know exactly how hard it is to survive in a system that is designed to make you fail no matter what you do. Conservatives love the "strong woman" image for an entirely different reason: Because the existence of these women means we don't need feminism, in their minds. The underlying argument of, "I don't hate women. I love strong women," is that we need patriarchy as a sort of litmus test for which women are deserving and which are not. If you can live under a system where you're a second class citizen, where you get paid less for equal work, where you don't have reproductive rights, and where men have a lot of personal power over you---and you can still get out of bed every day, put on your lipstick, and get shit done? Well, you've done proved you're a "strong woman". Here's a Mother's Day card as a reward, and remember, you don't need no stupid feminism. Just don't ask any hard questions about why men aren't tested this way.
Of course, there is a teeny bit of kinda feminism in the conservative wanking about "strong women". The celebrants of "strong women" are willing to go way out on a limb and allow that their favored form of female not be burned at the stake for her scary mouthiness. Conservatives love to pat themselves on the back for believing that the 19th amendment shouldn't be repealed or for allowing that some women may be allowed to draw a salary under some circumstances, and then get all faux-outraged when feminists say the vote is great, but it's really not enough. (We gave you the vote! How dare you actually use it for something, you stupid bitches, er, strong women?) I have a couple of examples from the campaign trail that have amused me.
Example #1: Rick Santorum is trying to suggest he doesn't hate women just because he believes their god-given role is to spend 30 years of their lives constantly pregnant. He's deploying his wife to defend him against charges of misogyny, since that's become women's work in Republican circles.
Her argument is that Rick loves---you guessed it---strong women. Women with the strength to stand on two legs! Especially women who develop healthy pelvic muscles so that they don't have to wear pee pads all the time even after baby 8 or 10. By god, he's going to let her go back to work after all her kids are grown, which will be some time in her 70s, a well-known time in a woman's life when employers are scrambling over themselves to hire her for that resume with a 40-year gap in it. Did she mention that he supports her right to vote, because she votes for him? Who the fuck needs feminism?
But Rick Santorum is hardly the only man crowing about how his love of "strong women" means he doesn't have to answer for his votes against women's rights. Scott Brown has taken a hit for misogynist behavior and policy, and so he pulled the "strong woman" card out to argue against needing that stupid feminism stuff.
Brown was introduced at the press conference by his wife, former Boston television reporter Gail Huff.
Huff wasn't actively involved in the campaign that led to Brown's 2010 special election win to the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, but said she's able now to be more involved since she's no longer a reporter in Boston.
Brown said he's used to being surrounded by "strong willed women" and Huff said the family, including Brown and the couple's two daughters Ayla and Arianna, have open discussions around the kitchen table.
"The girls, now that they are 23 and 21, have very, very specific ideas about what they do and don't believe and they chime in with a lot of great ideas, and it's wonderful for both of us to be able to bounce things off of them because their generation sees things very differently," Huff said.
Brown declined to be more specific about the family discussions, but when a reporter asked Huff to name an issue that she and the couple's daughter have educated Brown on, Brown chimed in and said "how to cook."
"Yeah, how to cook, how to sew, how to clean," Huff added.
So let's see here. Brown deserves a cookie because he believes women are permitted to have political opinions, though he won't go so far as to suggest that anyone do something foolish like listen to those opinions. Women having opinions on politics is a lot like letting a kid repeat the plot of the movie he just saw to you: You let them rattle on because it's cute that they're trying, but they're not really ready to be Roger Ebert or anything.
But that doesn't mean women don't get to know stuff! I mean, they know how to cook and how to clean and even how to sew! They are so strong. Even in a world where the men around them think of them as slightly dim children who can't be trusted with grown-up stuff like reproductive rights, they get up in the morning and get those stubborn eggs into that heavy frying pan. They are so strong! And feminism is trying to take that away, ladies. They want you to forsake the condescending head pats from men who think you're stupid, and replace those head pats with equality and respect. Which sounds good on paper, but you know what happens then, right? No more head pats. Are you sure you can give that up?
Steve Kornacki at Salon has a piece up about Mitt Romney's continuing inability to win over evangelical voters. Personally, I'm not surprised evangelical Republicans are refusing to crown Romney the nominee. They were fed George W. Bush in 2000, and that led them to believe that they are the owners of the party, and Romney securing the nomination sends a strong signal that they aren't, and that the Republicans are primarily a pro-business party above all other things. The evangelical base is pro-capitalism, don't get me wrong, but they also believe, with reason, that capitalism may not be enough to preserve male dominance, gay oppression, and white supremacy. The reason they're so loud when calling Obama a "socialist" is because they're trying to convince themselves. A black President does a lot to shake their confidence that capitalism alone will fulfill their goals, and his general pro-feminist and pro-gay leanings don't help. Now, more than ever, they want to vote for someone that reads as one of their tribe, like Bush did. Romney simply doesn't.
It's not a single thing. The Mormon thing doesn't help, but I think a different Mormon who emulated fundie culture better would perform better for them. But it's also that Romney does seem like a rich banker who finds all that culture war shit a distraction. (I'm not actually sure that he does, though his flip-flopping on these issues does suggest that he may not personally care that much. Which isn't to say that he wouldn't be a warrior on culture issues if he won. As Molly Ivins liked to say, you gotta dance with the one that brung ya'.) Also, it's important to remember that we're talking about culture warriors here. Culture warriors talk a big game about "values", but often you find that things like what you eat and how you talk actually matter more than these so-called "values". Santorum and Gingrich give a good impression of people who think going to Applebee's is a find way to spend an evening, and Romney simply doesn't. Which, I think, explains why this stuff doesn't matter:
But now that he’s regularly getting crushed by Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania, the depths of Romney’s evangelical problem have come into focus. The question is what, exactly, it is that makes him so objectionable to Christian conservatives.
Santorum's Catholicism is the great red herring of this primary season. He disagrees with the Pope on more issues than he agrees with him on. Where he does agree with the Pope, it's because the Pope agrees with evangelical Christians, mainly on the question of whether or not women are full human beings with full human rights. (Both the Catholics and the evangelicals say no.) Santorum is, culturally speaking, an evangelical. When he denies global warming, it feels sincere; you really do get the impression that he can't believe that those muckety-muck scientists think they know better than he does just because they do stupid stuff like study and understand an issue. He also grasps that threatening to rain weapons down on Iran is a good ploy, because the evangelical base is nostalgic for the Crusades. He is also a full-throated supporter of theocracy, whereas Romney still has cultural memory of his family being hounded for their faith, and isn't reliable on this. You just get the impression that Gingrich or Santorum enjoys needling someone who orders the vegetarian entree, but Romney seems like someone who doesn't know he's supposed to go into a rage when he has to press 1 for English. Sure, Romney will pass economic policies that fuck the poor and working class, but they just feel entitled to that and oh so much more.
Even though I suspect the base knows that Romney will owe them if he wins, and will give them what they want, it's just about more than that. They want reassurance that they are the dominant class in America, and that their culture is winning. So they need someone who feels authentically like a full member of the tribe. They need someone whose resentments feel real, who devotion to ignorance feels absolute, and whose misogyny runs bone-deep. Not like that paternalistic misogyny of the banking class Romneys of the world, but the spittle-flinging anger at women that Limbaugh delivers and seems to be crawling right under Santorum's skin. Religion's relevance to this is that it's a quick shorthand for these more important, but difficult to articulate values. But in and of itself, religion isn't that meaningful. It's a tool, not the goal.
Now that the media has finally figured out that there's no "Catholic vote" and therefore Santorum isn't winning it by virtue of his Catholicism, Santorum himself is being questioned about this supposedly puzzling phenomenon. His response? One of my favorite logical fallacies: No True Scotsman.
I think the bottom line is that we do well among people who take their faith seriously, and as you know just like some Protestants, some Protestants are not church going, they are folks who identify with a particular religion but don’t necessarily practice that from the standpoint of going to church and the like, and I think, you know, with folks who do practice their religion more ardently I tend to do well.
Oh yeah, he went there, basically claiming that Catholics who don't vote for him aren't real Catholics. Implicitly, this is another attack on JFK, because JFK a) wouldn't have voted for him and b) believed in a separation of church and state, which makes Santorum want to throw up. It's also an attack on pretty much all Catholics, honestly. Santorum is creating a high bar for the "real Catholic" test. You not only have to believe the same things he does about women's roles and sexuality to clear it, but you also have to believe those issues are more important than war and poverty. I'm not entirely sure the Pope could clear Santorum's bar for "real Catholic". After all, Santorum differs with the Pope on probably more issues than he agrees with him, though it's up in the air whether or not the Pope really believes the "bitches ain't shit" philosophy trumps the "war is bad" one when determining who to vote for.
Of course, I can't help but have mixed feelings about this. If Santorum gets his way and the test for how Catholic you are is based on how much you hate Teh Sex, that means there aren't very many Catholics indeed. Which would, if taken seriously, basically mean they're a tiny cult with no real political power. Which would probably work out for the best, honestly, because right now their political power is being wielded to destroy women's rights and let people contract HIV and die. But Santorum, with thoughts of theocracy flitting through his head, doesn't really grasp this conundrum.
The only real question that comes to mind for me when Santorum says things like this is, well: stupid or evil? I mean, he's abandoned the pretense of the dog whistle and is basically saying that he's running openly as a theocrat. And that the only true Christians are also theocrats. He bleats constantly about how he wants to bomb Iran, but his philosophy of governance is the same as theirs, especially with regards to corraling people who claim to have the same church as you. Does he know that he sounds like someone who rejects the First Amendment, wants to create a Christian theocracy, and then start a holy war with Muslim theocracies? Or is he just incapable of controlling himself? I have no idea.
In all the chaos of SXSW, I very nearly missed the embarrassing overreach by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem, who are pushing for the FCC to pull Limbaugh from the airwaves. These women do good work in the world, but this is a classic case of feminist narrow-mindedness, where devotion to feminism without considering intersectionality can make us look stupid. Government censorship is something feminists really need to shun, on moral grounds and because, as the crackdowns on Occupy show, because it rarely works out for our side anyway. Going after his advertisers, and using shunning to show that he doesn't speak for "real America" is working great. Why rush it?
Jill and Lindsay have more to say on this issue. I just want to say that this is a more complex issue than I think many people really see. There's a tendency on the left to just get upset and want to shut it down when bigoted fucks like Limbaugh say the things they do. I definitely get that; it's true that Limbaugh's hate-spewing legitimately recruits new bigots and gives aid and comfort to others. But that's not all that's going on. Limbaugh is also giving voice to opinions that people already hold, and that they share in more private forums like social networking, email, and old-fashioned person-to-person communication. That stuff is powerful, but it's hidden from view. It makes it easier for conservatives to pretend to be interested in, oh, "religious liberty", when they just hate women. When Limbaugh gets on air and says what he and those he speaks for really mean, that is clarifying. In this case, it basically killed off the faux concerns about religious liberty and even David Brooks is now playing the "contraception is a serious problem because women abuse it" card. In a sense, they did us a favor. Now we can have an honest conversation about what's really going on, and in honest conversations, I do think liberals have a leg up.
Thus, I'm a bit torn on the Limbaugh thing, and think that the best strategy is to keep shaming anyone who advertises with him. If he's on air, giving voice to what conservatives are really thinking, but being shunned for it? That strikes me as the best of both possible worlds.
So, Sandra Fluke---Georgetown law student---testified in front of Congress about using birth control and the expense. The response from the right is to act like she's the first woman on Earth to have confessed to having sex for reasons other than baby-making, and thus to call her the town dump. I wish I could say I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. Rush Limbaugh, who has been married four times and is a well-known fan of taking big bottles of Viagra to the Dominican Republic, said this about Fluke:
LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
On top of the baffling assertion that there's a direct correlation between the amount of sex you're having and the price of the birth control pill (believe me, they charge you the same whether you're getting laid or not), you of course have the notion that any woman who has sex is a "slut" and a "prostitute". And I mean any. Limbaugh tries to give himself cover by saying the "taxpayer" would be on the hook, but in fact, this is about whether or not insurance plans women pay into should cover their fucking health care. More importantly, the idea that contraception is health care and not just some per-fuck admittance fee for sex has long been established. Conservatives are pretending that Obama is requiring insurance companies to cover something they've never covered before, but in fact, they already cover it. The only thing that this is about is whether or not that coverage should be universal and treated like preventive care, which means offered without a co-pay. For instance, my insurance covers about 40% of the cost now and will, starting in 2013, cover 100%. Since 99% of American women have used contraception and since insurance companies already accept that contraception is a service that should be covered, Limbaugh basically characterized the 99% of American women as "sluts" and "prostitutes". I don't imagine you get a pass if you've only used condoms, either, because roughly 0% of women who use only condoms do so out of some noble unwillingness to accept insurance coverage for their contraception. Additionally, women who only use condoms still get other kinds of health care related to being sexual, such as Pap smears and gynecological consultations on their contraception choices, which, by Limbaugh's logic, puts them firmly in the "slut" and "prostitute" category, since insurance covers that sexuality-related care as well. So I suppose that puts the percentage of American women who are "sluts" at the level All in his world, except maybe a handful of lifelong celibates. And he probably has a few choice, judgmental words for those women, as well.
Which shouldn't be a surprise. Conservatives try to pretend like these blatant anti-woman attitudes are about something other than just seething hatred of women for being female, but this entire contraception debacle has demonstrated that nope, it's just misogyny. For instance, check out the Craig Bannister piece I blogged about at XX Factor today. After going on at length about how women on the pill must all be filthy sluts who spend all day sucking and fucking, Bannister ends his piece with the unapologetic double standard:
If these co-eds really are this guy crazy, I should've gone to law school.
Yep! He trotted out the "if a woman has sex with one man, she will have sex with anyone who asks" line. (Which is, may I remind you, often used to rationalize rape---the "will have sex" turns into "has to have sex, whether she likes it or not" very easily.) I thought I was beyond being surprised by the levels of ignorance, misogyny and prudery that emanate from the right, but nope! Here is a grown ass man who actually still believes that single women can be divided into virgins and "whores"*, and of course still believes that having sex is roughly the worst possible thing a woman can do, a man having sex is just being a man.
To be clear, women are perfectly capable of dishing out the misogyny as well. Female misogynists are a special breed, morons who think they can escape being classified as women---and therefore as filthy whores who don't deserve any respect---if they hate on other women just as much as the male misogynists do. This is a uniquely stupid thing to believe, because not only do they not get a pass (remember, Limbaugh basically classified all women as "sluts" and "prostitutes"), but their male counterparts who are using them are probably laughing at them behind their backs for being such tools. With that in mind, I give you Tina Korbe of Hot Air:
At one point, Fluke mentions a friend who felt “embarrassed and powerless” when she learned her insurance didn’t cover contraception. Can you imagine how proud and empowered that same friend would be if she learned she has the ability to resist her own sexual urges? We can only assume she doesn’t know that because Fluke and she both labor under the illusion that contraception is a medical necessity.
Conservatives are their own worst enemy when trying to persuade the rest of us that women (and let's be clear, as the David Albo example proves, they are only referring to women---Albo felt so entitled to sex, he demanded an apology for not getting any) are "empowered" by not having sex for no good reason. After all, if pointless self-deprivation was so empowering, then folks like Korbe wouldn't be trying to push their lifestyle choices on the rest of us in a desperate bid to feel better about themselves by dragging everyone else down. Korbe just comes across as someone who is afraid of sexually satisfied people, because as long as we're walking around and being happy, we're making her look like a fool for depriving herself for no good reason. After all, she describes women who use contraception as "animals", even though in reality, using contraception is one of those things that sets us apart from other animals. In fact, I'd point out that most animals fuck according to the ideal Rick Santorum model: joylessly, infrequently, and only for procreation. Most even wait until the female is ovulating, to minimize the time they spend rutting! If your objective is to not be like other animals, the best strategy is to fuck all the time and take advantage of our unique ability to enjoy sex for its own sake.
Beyond all the hatefulness, prudery, and misogyny is just the plain weirdness of all of this. Reading the right wing reaction to Sandra Fluke, you get the strong impression that they think that a single woman in her mid-20s who is sexually active is some kind of freakish outlier, as if Fluke admitted to being a mercenary with side business in running drugs to pay off law school. In reality, Fluke is as normal and American as apple pie. Being sexually active before marriage is just what people do; 93% of Americans have premarital sex before turning 30. We can safely guess there's no love here for women whose main pregnancy prevention strategy is to only have sex with women. Additionally, since no distinctions between women who use contraception in or out of marriage are being made here, women who use it to have monogamous sex with their husbands are being rolled into the "town dump" category as well, which means that basically, the utterly normal and nearly universal experience of being female is being characterized on the right as something disgusting and beyond the pale. Which is just a long, roundabout way to say they straight up hate women.
*Scare quotes because I want to be clear that I don't think that being a sex worker is shameful. I hope we're all adult enough here to understand that references to "whores" and "prostitutes" are being used to shame, and that's why they're offensive, not because being a sex worker is inherently shameful.
The news is all abuzz today over the fact that Santorum "lost" the Catholic vote in the primaries last night. It's a construction that assumes that it was his to lose, and is based in one of the most pernecious myths of the Beltway media, which is that America is a sectarian society where "people of faith" not only vote according to religious guidelines, but according to those set by the loudest sectarians amongst them. Thus, you get claims that Obama is going to lose the "Jewish vote" because, I dunno, something about Israel, even though he really hasn't done a damn thing to hurt Israel. And now there's a growing adherence to the nonsensical belief that Catholics are a voting bloc, and one that votes primarily based on what a bunch of right wing celibates who spend all their time on TV denouncing vaginas think. The only group that doesn't get this treatment is mainline Protestants, because as the mainstream media doesn't tend to think of "white" as a race so much as a baseline, so it thinks of mainline Protestantism as the norm by which you measure others against. (On that basis alone, I enjoyed Santorum saying mainline Protestants aren't real Christians, because it actually jolted the media into realizing that various Protestants are also religious groups, just like Jews, Catholics, evangelicals, and Mormons.)
But really, this nonsense about the "Catholic vote" has got to stop. There's literally no evidence for such a thing. Most Catholics are pro-choice and use birth control, and they do so in roughly the same numbers as non-Catholics. In fact, they're indistinguishable from the public at large in their voting habits. There's perhaps a slim chance that some of them were moved against Santorum by the JFK comment, but honestly, I'm skeptical. The reason is that we're talking about a Repubilcan primary. I guarantee their identity as Republicans was a bigger factor for Catholic Republicans voting in the primary than their loyalty to the only Catholic President.
Ironically, Rick Santorum is a perfect example of why this supposition that Catholics are following Vatican marching orders when they vote is just completely off-base. Santorum's hardline stance on contraception is presumed, incorrectly, to stem from his devotion. In fact, like with other conservative Catholics, the Pope just provides cover for already-existing misogyny. That is to say, they hated women first and used faith to rationalize it second. You can tell this, because the Pope has lots of other opinions on stuff besides contraception, and Santorum ignores all of it. Juan Cole put together a list of ten Catholic teachings that Santorum rejects while pretending to be a hapless warrior for Catholic Jesus. Santorum has gone against the church on the issues of the Iraq War, universal health care, the death penalty, welfare, the minimum wage, union organizing, and immigration. Interestingly, not only does Santorum reject the church when it comes to these political matters, he also is a cafeteria Catholic on issues of religious questions. For instance, the Catholic Church accepts the theory of evolution and teaches that their god guided the process. Santorum rejects church teachings on this. In fact, not only does the Catholic Church accept evolution, but they are like most religions in this. Really, it's only evangelical Christians that hold that one must reject evolution as a part of their faith; Jews, mainline Protestants, Muslims, etc. by and large accept the theory as not in conflict with their religious beliefs.
The point isn't to say that Santorum is more or less Catholic than other Catholics who may agree with church teachings far more than he (while mostly rejecting the contraception nonsense as the medieval misogyny that it is). The point is that Catholics are a diverse group, politically speaking, and their faith has very little bearing on how they lean. Race, class, geography, personality, etc. all have more influence. In fact, as the example of Santorum shows, there's something of a cultural conflict between the markers of wingnuttery and Catholicism, and so Catholics who want to go full wingnut end up looking and sounding more like evangelicals. Which, in turn, means the notion that a Bible thumper like Santorum is going to make cultural appeals to Catholic voters sound even sillier, since he doesn't really come across as the average Catholic, insofar as there even is such a thing. I bet, if you surveyed people, a substantial number would think he's evangelical. Possibly even a majority.
By the way, that is one religious group that does have a predictable vote: evangelical Christians. While a minority are more liberal, by and large, most are fundamentalists. The whole point of being a fundamentalist is that it gives godly rationalizations to your conservative leanings, and so this isn't surprising.
The Bible doesn't mention Rick Santorum's obsession, abortion (though not because ancient people didn't have it; the historical record suggests that as long as women have been getting pregnant, they've looked to abortion to control their fertility), but it does mention that it's really naughty to lie. In fact, lying about important issues, i.e. bearing false witness, is so bad that it's one of the commandments. It's one that Santorum breaks on a daily basis, but it's particularly ironic that Rick Panty Sniffer would lie so flagrantly when it comes to one of his fellow Catholics on the subject of Catholicism.
Santorum's hostility to Kennedy's admirable enthusiasm for First Amendment protections that keep us from sliding into a fundamentalist theocracy have been covered to death, but I particularly like how he lied about what Kennedy clearly meant by "separation of church and state". This is what Santorum claims that separation of church and state means:
To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?
Yep! That's exactly what Catholic President JFK meant, that only atheists should have a role in government. Which is why he ran for President! Perhaps Santorum believes that Kennedy didn't have religion? I realize that Santorum has an allergy to Google, but seriously, it took roughly two seconds to fact check the "Kennedy was an atheist" insinuation.
This is the Republican strategy for imposing theocracy: confusing the issue. They're claiming that "religious liberty" means giving fundamentalists the right to impose their religious views on everyone else, and now the claim is that unless we accede to theocracy, we're preventing religious people (I refuse to use that stupid term "people of faith") from participating in government. The only question now is how many people are stupid enough to buy this?
Andy McCarthy has a problem with a lesson from high school civics:
Very clear constitutional commands that, for example, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”, or that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” or that “No state shall … deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”, have not stopped courts from upholding campaign finance reform, prohibitions against gun possession, or racial preferences.
Most of us, sometime around 11th grade or so, learn that there are no absolute rights in the Constitution. This makes sense, because about the time we're seventeen is when we realize that, while saying "penis" at competitively escalating volumes is hilarious, it's not really an appropriate thing to say during class and we deserve to be punished for it. While giggling, obviously.
Under a theory of constitutional absolutism, Andy McCarthy should support the free practice of sharia law. After all, it would almost certainly offend the conscience of Muslims who seek to practice it to have that practice banned. Yet...he doesn't. The First Amendment clearly states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[,]" which would seem to indicate that private citizens choosing to govern their affairs by private religious laws should have that choice reaffirmed by the courts, rather than trampled on by intolerant secularist bigotry.
Or something, whatever. I'm not entirely sure what sharia law is, except that the Muslims in my apartment complex have nice curtains, so I assume that's part of it.
Of course, it doesn't, because the Constitution isn't a legal code. It's an outline applied to the world as it exists, within the context of society as it evolves. There are things it protects and things it doesn't, however imperfectly those realms are determined. Constitutional absolutism of the sort that results in a "right of conscience" to be free of laws you find offensive only works so long as you assume the Constitution was meant to protect you and only you, and that there was a mysterious Eleventh Amendment lost from the original Bill of Rights that tells everyone else to kiss your hairy ass.
Of course, if I had a constitutional right to play the penis game in school, I'm totally going to pretend to be the world's oldest high school senior next year.
Steve Kornacki has a good horse race summary taking the temperature of Mitt Romney's campaign. Diagnosis: not good. While Romney basically can't lose, barring some kind of weird delegate wrangling that I suppose is always possible but seems unlikely, the knocks he's taking are leaving him in poor fighting condition to take on the general election against Obama. A huge part of the problem is that Romney is just a shitty candidate, something that got forgotten when he was looking good next to the slate of cranks and kooks that challenged him in the primary. But I think a larger part of the problem is that hating Romney has become a stand-in for conservative self-loathing and the current right wing mania for purity.
It's the same urge that is causing them to react to Obama accommodating their bullshit arguments about religious freedom by going on the full-blown warpath against contraception, functionally arguing that if you work for someone who is against contraception, you should be blocked from getting free contraception from a third party, even though it doesn't involve your employer at all. While the words "religious liberty" are being thrown around, that's just the usual right wing attempts to confuse the issue, much like when they deliberately conflate contraception, which prevents abortion, with abortion. In right wing land, preventing abortion is abortion, and allowing employees to have the religious liberty to obtain contraception is an attack on religious liberty. Also, up is down, black is white, cats are dogs, and pandas are ugly. Whatever blatant lie you need to believe to get you through the day.
But I digress. The point is that they're attacking contraception in a big way, blanketing the right wing media with screeching attacks on women who use it, impugning their moral character and conflating birth control pills with a party drug. Along with shitting all over Mitt Romney, who has moved to the right and accommodated them in every way, is just madness. But I was reading Corey Robin's book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin this weekend, and he had a lot of insight into this situation. Basically, he argues that when threatened with the reality that progress is going to happen and traditional power hierarchies are threatened, conservatives tend to turn on themselves, blaming themselves for letting this happen by not being tough enough. He describes those who denounce the French Revolution as blaming the toppled powers for their softness in letting this happen.
I think we're seeing a similar mentality here. They see a black President, women gaining equality, gay couples getting married, people in the streets demanding economic justice. And their conclusion was, "We let this get out of hand." And they're not wrong, for instance, to grasp that the popularity of contraception helped create the cultural context where women start to think of themselves as full human beings with full human rights. As I wrote at RH Reality Check, telling women we're entitled to contraception is just going to usher that process along even further. Where I think they make a mistake is belieivng you can unring that bell. They think that adopting the absolutist stances they've previously let slide will cause their opponents to start re-believing we don't deserve nice things. But we've tasted freedom, and now that we know that it tastes good, it's going to be a lot harder to take it away.
Actually, let me put it another way. George Will uses a man whose father was his mother's rapist (and also her father) to prove the importance of fathers in people's lives.
As you know, House Republicans are flipping out and screaming about Obama and the HHS wanting to mandate contraception coverage for those dirty, dirty sluts that use contraception, the ones that constitute over 99% of women. This isn't about "religious freedom", no matter how much that's being used as a distraction. As Mother Jones reports, the USCCB has made it clear that they want a repeal of the entire mandate, because they think women having sex for pleasure is wrong, full stop. Before they were screeching about "religious freedom", the USCCB was clear that they just really want to punish women for fucking. Dana Goldstein reported on this in 2010, and got this delicious quote:
"I don't want to overstate or understate our level of concern," said McQuade, the Catholic bishops' spokesperson. "We consider [birth control] an elective drug. Married women can practice periodic abstinence. Other women can abstain altogether. Not having sex doesn't make you sick."
This is a full-blown war on women's sexuality. Always has been. Republicans are rallying around the idea that women who have sex are sinful and dirty and that therefore their basic health care needs aren't "real" health care. That's what's behind this battle, and was behind the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and the pushing of abstinence-only education before that.
“‘I was thinking about how sexy it would be to kiss you,’” world renowned pickup artist Wayne Elise told a group of young Rick Santorum fans. “You can say that [to a girl], it’s a cool.”
Elise, better known by his handle “Juggler” from Neil Strauss’ notorious pickup memoir The Game, was offering advice to attendees at conservative mega-conference CPAC on how to improve their dating game. Remember that old VH1 reality show The Pickup Artist with that lanky host with a Slash hat and goggles teaching people how to insult girls then hit on them when their self esteem is shattered? This is one of his top rivals, charging upwards of $5,000 for a one-day private session.....
But on Thursday, young socially conservative activists got it for free. One tip, he noted, was to introduce sensuality into early conversations with girls — like the above quote — to keep from falling into the platonic zone with your target.
“Most guys fall into the category of not being sexual enough, so that girls will easily see them as friend material and the guys have a hard time getting out of that,” he said. “I think one of my ideas that connects to conservatives is that it’s OK to wait but you definitely want to show the person you’re sexual and sensual.”
Emphasis mine. This goes on for awhile, but the short version of it is that while simultaneously screeching about the evils of feminism and how terrible it is that women want to have their contraception covered like common slatterns, conservative activists are also encouraging young men to be more sexual, more sexually aggressive, and to even seek casual sex with women. Women who then can be condemned by the Catholic bishops, House Republicans, anti-choice activists, and whoever else wants a potshot for offending their delicate sensibilities with their desire not to get pregnant. The double standard always lurks in these discussions about sex, but man, it's just getting blatant. Being a perverted liberal, I've been to lots of conferences where groups like Planned Parenthood and the like handed out condoms, precisely because they know people hook up at these things. But I'm guessing they're not welcome at CPAC. Because while men apparently need to be more sexual, women being sexual at all is a national tragedy that moaning and wailing about it has to dominate the cable news and the halls of Congress.
Update: I also want to point out that "pick-up artistry" is sexist, in that it promotes a "men are hunters/women are prey" approach to sex, as opposed to the enthusiastic consent model of femihism. But it's also just bullshit. If anything, some of their pointers, such as being rude and insulting to women, probably make it less likely you'll get laid. You're better off honing your overall social skills, because women are people, and being people, they act like people.
