Bottomless (Part I.)

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did. I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could; I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for his good!
By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold, With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit; In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls. ~Robert W. Service, The Ballad Of Pious Pete.

I saw this earlier today. A doctor in Texas, Dr. Ingrid Skop, tried to say that it's Okay for a nine-year-old girl to have a kid. 

I mean, what the actual goddamned fuck? 

First of all, just because a person is biologically capable of having sex doesn't mean they should do it. Second, I can kind of remember being that age. Even the slightest interest in that sort of thing was at least a year or two away for me I think, and I did start kind of young...but not going anywhere near that far. The thought wouldn't have occurred to me. But the whole idea that a nine year old could make those kind of decisions or would even think of that stuff on their own, much less handle the emotional aspects and shit? No. Just no. That's not how any of that works. Like I said, none of this would even have started to occur to me for awhile yet when I was that age.

I mean, seriously, who even thinks this stuff up? Who the fuck would want to? This is the sort of thing that makes me, as a person, want to reach for my shotgun and I *Don't* have any kids. (A fact I'm rather glad for, these days.)

And the fact that it's some "Pro-Life" person and therefore most likely religious, well I'm sorry but that just seems kind of sick, to me. I'm sorry, but the main thing I remember hearing from those kind of people about anything to do with having sex was "Don't."

Instead, they're basically justifying sexual abuse and God only knows what else because "Abortion is bad" or something. 

As if anybody in the world thinks a woman or girl having an abortion is a good thing?

No one does, that I know of. At best, it's a serious matter. At worst it's a tragedy. 

But it's necessary, because among other things a rape victim should not have to have her rapist's kid. To use the doctor's example; A nine-year-old girl, coerced or manipulated into a situation likely beyond her understanding, should not then also have motherhood forced upon her. This isn't really that hard.

I can remember when pretty much everybody thought kids having kids was bad, and when there were even some rap songs and shit that promoted using condoms. Now there's almost a cult of irresponsible unprotected sex...if not simply a cult of the male orgasm...that all too often dresses itself up in the Christian religion.

Rape and sexual abuse are illegal and wrong but they happen, and he perpetrators are often hard to bring to justice. In point of fact, Conservatism and religion (especially conservative Christianity!) are usually ass-deep in protecting people who do shit like that. (And then, the same people will then point to a hypothetical ten-year-old mom and call her a social problem and an example of immorality and try to deny her social services, etc. etc.)

So, there has to be some kind of societal remedy, to help the victim after the fact, if nothing else.

And hell, plenty of times consensual sex ends up working out badly, doesn't it? So, what about that?

No, I don't like any of this any more than you do. But I'm not the one publicly justifying this shit or supporting anti-Abortion laws. One can dislike all manner of things without thinking they should be illegal. I don't like abortion much, but it's none of my business if a woman needs...or even simply wants to have one.

Also, pro-life my goddamned hairy ass. 

A hell of a lot of people who get forced into sexual situations too young or that they otherwise didn't want to be in end up with PTSD or other mental problems, and never get to have a normal life again. How is any of that "Pro-Life?"

This is stuff we need to make a serious effort to address as a society. Glib one-liners by monomaniacal fanatics are absolutely not the answer.

And it gets worse.

After telling a bunch of lies about a completely made-up encounter between herself and Ilhan Omar, Lauren Boebert made a bunch of homophobic comments about Pete Buttigieg and his husband being parents.

At this point if she worked literally anywhere else in the whole damn country, Blowbert would have been fired for cause and charges of harassment would likely at least had to have been considered, if not pressed.

Bitch, first of all your honkey ass white conservative suburbanite fake-Christian bullshit is not aspirational for everybody, nor is your stupid gun bunny bit. Second, just because this is your personal experience of life, that does not automatically make it the truth for everybody and other people are not holding out on you or trying to take away your Jesus or whatever by being different than you are. Seriously this warmed-over wannabe-movie-star foolishness is getting old. There was a time when members of Congress were at least supposed to have some measure of dignity or something. Hell, I used to be a conservative Republican, and this? This ain't it.

Hell, Secretary Pete is closer by far to what I was taught a conservative was supposed to be than Lauren Boebert is. He's held office, he's religious, and he's a veteran. And, being a gay man, he's married. Don't tell me there wasn't some thought put into all this?

Lauren Blowbert on the other hand seems to just make it up as she goes along, and that's effectively become the template for "Conservatism" in general.

There's just no bottom with these people.

And unless We The People develop a hard floor of What We'll Tolerate, there's never going to be. Pro tip based on life experience: You get what you tolerate.

And if you tolerate a political movement that has as its core values things like abuse, cruelty and greed, you're going to have problems because of it.

That's all there is to it. Some things are just wrong. I hope we don't have to re-learn this the hard way.

There's a lot of people who seem to want us to have to. Not for some grand ideological point, but because they're debased motherfuckers who think they'll get to really enjoy themselves hurting and killing and raping and stealing from other people.

And they're trying to sell this garbage as some kind of righteousness, or claim it's justified because somebody else is supposedly worse.

These people are moral bottomless pits.

There is no bottom.

Unless WE make one.

Part II

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan