Thanks for this piece. I have to report, though, that Ohio politics is worse even than this story conveys. Dave Yost would need about six big promotions to reach the rank of "jerk", and Jordan, the King of the Sauna, is pond scum, but those yokels aren't even the worst. We have a state rep who has introduced a bill which would require that both sides (no, really) of the holocaust be taught in Ohio schools, a proposed constitutional amendment that would forbid any business, school, club, etc. from requiring that its employees, customers, students members or guests to be vaccinated (and that's for any disease, not just COVID 19) and at least one state senator who won re-election after his recent felony conviction. At least our politics are more exciting than our scenery.
let me get this straight: is it actually a thing now, that there are two equally valid "sides" vis-a-vis the Holocaust? when did THIS shit happen? as much as I hate to admit it, I can sort of understand that, (after the public's been properly trained by the Right to consider it "the issue of issues") there are two sides of the abortion rights issue. and I know there are Holocaust deniers. but "TWO SIDES??"
I don’t think the argument gets to “valid”, but the mindset is out there. My father was among the Allied troops who liberated some of the camps, and he had nightmares and worse for the rest of his life. He spoke about it only once, never again. It broke him. There is only one side to this; my father loved Eisenhower for his insistence that the world see the truth of this obscenity and agreed with Ike’s sense that someday soon some son of a bitch would claim this never happened.
Notice how it took all of 15 minutes for Lucian's low to go even lower. It's been like this since the beginning of the Trump administration, but the intervals have been getting shorter and shorter.
Fox News or Wall Street Journal, what's the difference? They are both vile, Murdoch-owned cesspits. Accurate, factual reporting is an alien concept to them. And what else would one expect from "Gym" Jordan? Turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to sexual improprieties isn't just his strongest suit, it's a tradition.
Since I was a college undergraduate sixty years ago I've been thinking and writing about what it is that differentiates movement conservatives from ordinary people, and what makes them double down on the casual cruelty that is so emblematic of the way they think, or more accurately, how they react to human tragedy. In this case, there is a 10-year-old girl who was raped multiple times, ending up pregnant with her rapist's fetus in her belly. These so-called 'conservatives' then indulge themselves in all sorts of mental contortions that somehow put the blame on the young girl who was the victim of this horrific crime, as if she had done something to bring it down on herself. Failing that, conservatives are more than willing to assert that the crime against this young girl could not have happened, and in fact, did not happen the way it was depicted.
I think this denialism has its roots in people's minds a losing control, and having such wrongdoing happened to them, without recourse or recompense. I think the mindset is, 'I wouldn't let that happen to me, because I follow all of the rules, and God would not allow that to happen to me. If it did happen to me, it would be my fault because I did something wrong'. We see this attitude wrapped up in the certitudes of religion, especially the kind of Puritanism that seeks to strip away anything that God might disapprove of.
Puritan New England, and the society of anguished guilt that grew out of the rigid theocracy of the Divines, is a principal example within our own country. Based upon the tumult of their lives, and the threats of hell and damnation that their clergy hurled at them, those that survived became hardened and self-righteous. That's what we are seeing today in the evangelical-addled Republican Party. They believe in the Gospel of Wealth; but even more so in the Gospel of Damnation. No one is ever good enough, or lucky enough to escape damnation; and these people will believe anything anyone tells them to make the prospect of that damnation go away. They believe that abortion is wrong because they are told so by clergy, and by politicians, were looking for a wedge issue on which they can proclaim their own righteousness above all others within their community.
Most human communities are aware of the humbug of the overly pious, who set themselves above and apart from the rest of humanity by their ostentatious display of religiosity. No matter that they make things up with rituals, spells, and incantations that are intended to awe and neutralize potential opponents within their community. It's the basis of human sacrifice, where the ritual murder of some scapegoated people is religiously sanctified, supposedly to benefit the entire community. Pregnancy out of wedlock creates dissonance; and it creates tensions within a community because it denotes pleasure seeking outside the confines of marriage. The impulse is to punish all concerned, regardless of whether it arose from rape or incest, or the agent vulnerability of the victim. It is acting out the presupposition that God is angry and vengeful, and will destroy the community if not placated. Often as practitioners go to wild extremes and acting out the punishments that their vision of God will inflict on them if they do nothing. Look at the punishments for heresy, witchcraft, and apostasy. It is the same impulse distilled down to an an irrational decision to destroy the life of a 10-year-old child by making her bear the consequences of her rape by another, in this case a man more than twice her age. It's all dressed up in pomp and circumstance by pretending that an embryo or developing fetus is the full equivalent of a live birth. Now we have state legislatures who claim that full personhood begins at the moment of fertilization. Even the English common law never went that far, holding that legal protection begins when the 'quickening' of the child is first felt. This has been the law for centuries, when application of the laws was much more arbitrary, and when communities were surrounded by ignorance and superstition. And state legislatures are doing this because they are wrapped up in a competitive contest as to which of them can appear to be the more righteous among them. This is about bragging rights. Not about law. Not about morality. Not about mercy. Not about compassion. It is about the power to order people around, because they have the votes to do so.
Many points worth pondering here, but I question whether in the case of pregnancy out of wedlock "the impulse is to punish all concerned." As far as I can tell, the impulse is to punish the woman, and the child if there is one. Not the man. Which isn't surprising, because men show no obvious physical evidence that they have engaged in extramarital sex.
Decades ago I immersed myself for a while in testimonies from European witchcraft trials -- has anyone else out there read at least part of the MALLEUS MALIFICARUM? Ingenious men loved to blame incubi and succubi for their sexual misbehavior. In slavery times the plantation mistress might rage when a slave woman bore a child who looked like the master, but she generally directed her rage not at her husband -- of course not: he was powerful, and the source of her livelihood and social standing -- but at the slave woman, who had zero say in the matter.
So in a way the woman becomes a scapegoat for the man, who might be blaming her for the whole encounter in the first place.
I don't doubt that the burdens are unequal, but men who make a career of impregnating women are on a downward spiral. Blended families are fraught with difficulty. The 'love 'em and leave 'em' ethos of bygone days has been replaced with Child Support offices within county prosecutors' offices. The financial burdens are punishing. There can be no respite where financial burdens multiply. Back in the day, there were 'shotgun weddings', followed by decades of resentments and abuse. Dashed hopes and bankruptcies. Divorce and infidelity. Sometimes it's a class thing. I recall several women I dated, one of whom gave up her newborn and couldn't resolve the conflict. Another woman couldn't admit to me that she had carried her pregnancy to term. All she said was that a year of her life was taken from her. She was incapable of creating intimacy. Someone else lived in a trailer with her three years old daughter. In each case, the men in their lives left a trail of destruction behind them, and they invariably were leading lives of marginal existence, what with child support obligations that could could never be brought up to date. These are damaged people, stuck on the bottom rung of life.
The only way Republicans--the minority party, rejected by most Americans--can keep doing this is if we--the majority--let them.
It's pretty simple. Despite all the Republican-engineered voter suppression and all their partisan gerrymandering (and spare me the "everbody does its;" nobody does it like they do)...if the majority uses its agency and votes we can again make decency and progress America's hallmarks.
In other words, a better future doesn't hinge on the minority doing the right thing. They won't. It hinges on what the majority does. Now.
If my voting choice is between a Republican and a tuna fish sandwich, the sandwich wins hands down. "Never Again", for me, also applies to voting for an R
I understand that Fox News and other right wing media have now taken a new tack: "ten year old girl raped by an undocumented alien." No word on whether they still think she should have been forced to carry to term.
There’s going to be a reckoning over all of this stuff and I fear it will be very soon. I can’t comprehend how people think this way and support this BS. It’s saddening and maddening and a barometer for just how uneducated at least a third of the population happen to be. Rupert Murdoch is mostly responsible for this. What a madman.
You didn't mention that the right wing rage machine is all upset that the rapist has living in Ohio for 7 years illegally. That is Bidens fault as well....
Lucian -- it would be great if you (and other journalists) forced the bastards who called the story a lie to apologize --- every reporter who comes in contact with them should insist that they OWN the fact that they rushed to call the story fake --- and explain why they did so and what they would say to the girl and the public by way of an apology ...
Waiting for these sanctimonious bastards to apologize is a fool's errand. Jim Jordan is example #1 in this regard. I suspect he was on the receiving end of too many cross faces, and they permanently scrambled his neural circuits.
Whatever the neofascist right wingers don’t want to believe or be held accountable for they simply declare to be untrue. There is no cure for this profound dishonesty--to stop them they must be voted out of office. Perhaps also President Biden must appoint four additional Supreme Court justices.
Wow! We are really in Orwell's "1984", come to life. When you have your own alternative universe, the "truth" is whatever you say it is. How deep into unreality can conservatives go? When and why might they stop? Cults like this have been able to grow to hundreds of followers, maybe a few thousand, but not much more. This is new.
Gym Jordan has since declared: I never doubted the child. I was responding to a headline from your profession, the news profession, which happens all the time on Twitter. I doubted Joe Biden, which is usually a smart thing to do."
Sadly, he's right about one thing: the WAPO now has to compete with Twitter for the news? Or, is it journalism? If it's on Twitter it must be true.
Casual cruelty. I left Ohio in 1978 because I could see it headed this way. There seemed to be a visceral dislike of anything New York, a sure tip off. Yet Upstate NY was totally like Ohio culturally speaking.
Thanks for this piece. I have to report, though, that Ohio politics is worse even than this story conveys. Dave Yost would need about six big promotions to reach the rank of "jerk", and Jordan, the King of the Sauna, is pond scum, but those yokels aren't even the worst. We have a state rep who has introduced a bill which would require that both sides (no, really) of the holocaust be taught in Ohio schools, a proposed constitutional amendment that would forbid any business, school, club, etc. from requiring that its employees, customers, students members or guests to be vaccinated (and that's for any disease, not just COVID 19) and at least one state senator who won re-election after his recent felony conviction. At least our politics are more exciting than our scenery.
let me get this straight: is it actually a thing now, that there are two equally valid "sides" vis-a-vis the Holocaust? when did THIS shit happen? as much as I hate to admit it, I can sort of understand that, (after the public's been properly trained by the Right to consider it "the issue of issues") there are two sides of the abortion rights issue. and I know there are Holocaust deniers. but "TWO SIDES??"
I don’t think the argument gets to “valid”, but the mindset is out there. My father was among the Allied troops who liberated some of the camps, and he had nightmares and worse for the rest of his life. He spoke about it only once, never again. It broke him. There is only one side to this; my father loved Eisenhower for his insistence that the world see the truth of this obscenity and agreed with Ike’s sense that someday soon some son of a bitch would claim this never happened.
Every day I think, “The lies that the Republicans spew can’t possiblly get any worse”... and every day they outdo themselves.
Notice how it took all of 15 minutes for Lucian's low to go even lower. It's been like this since the beginning of the Trump administration, but the intervals have been getting shorter and shorter.
Fox News or Wall Street Journal, what's the difference? They are both vile, Murdoch-owned cesspits. Accurate, factual reporting is an alien concept to them. And what else would one expect from "Gym" Jordan? Turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to sexual improprieties isn't just his strongest suit, it's a tradition.
Since I was a college undergraduate sixty years ago I've been thinking and writing about what it is that differentiates movement conservatives from ordinary people, and what makes them double down on the casual cruelty that is so emblematic of the way they think, or more accurately, how they react to human tragedy. In this case, there is a 10-year-old girl who was raped multiple times, ending up pregnant with her rapist's fetus in her belly. These so-called 'conservatives' then indulge themselves in all sorts of mental contortions that somehow put the blame on the young girl who was the victim of this horrific crime, as if she had done something to bring it down on herself. Failing that, conservatives are more than willing to assert that the crime against this young girl could not have happened, and in fact, did not happen the way it was depicted.
I think this denialism has its roots in people's minds a losing control, and having such wrongdoing happened to them, without recourse or recompense. I think the mindset is, 'I wouldn't let that happen to me, because I follow all of the rules, and God would not allow that to happen to me. If it did happen to me, it would be my fault because I did something wrong'. We see this attitude wrapped up in the certitudes of religion, especially the kind of Puritanism that seeks to strip away anything that God might disapprove of.
Puritan New England, and the society of anguished guilt that grew out of the rigid theocracy of the Divines, is a principal example within our own country. Based upon the tumult of their lives, and the threats of hell and damnation that their clergy hurled at them, those that survived became hardened and self-righteous. That's what we are seeing today in the evangelical-addled Republican Party. They believe in the Gospel of Wealth; but even more so in the Gospel of Damnation. No one is ever good enough, or lucky enough to escape damnation; and these people will believe anything anyone tells them to make the prospect of that damnation go away. They believe that abortion is wrong because they are told so by clergy, and by politicians, were looking for a wedge issue on which they can proclaim their own righteousness above all others within their community.
Most human communities are aware of the humbug of the overly pious, who set themselves above and apart from the rest of humanity by their ostentatious display of religiosity. No matter that they make things up with rituals, spells, and incantations that are intended to awe and neutralize potential opponents within their community. It's the basis of human sacrifice, where the ritual murder of some scapegoated people is religiously sanctified, supposedly to benefit the entire community. Pregnancy out of wedlock creates dissonance; and it creates tensions within a community because it denotes pleasure seeking outside the confines of marriage. The impulse is to punish all concerned, regardless of whether it arose from rape or incest, or the agent vulnerability of the victim. It is acting out the presupposition that God is angry and vengeful, and will destroy the community if not placated. Often as practitioners go to wild extremes and acting out the punishments that their vision of God will inflict on them if they do nothing. Look at the punishments for heresy, witchcraft, and apostasy. It is the same impulse distilled down to an an irrational decision to destroy the life of a 10-year-old child by making her bear the consequences of her rape by another, in this case a man more than twice her age. It's all dressed up in pomp and circumstance by pretending that an embryo or developing fetus is the full equivalent of a live birth. Now we have state legislatures who claim that full personhood begins at the moment of fertilization. Even the English common law never went that far, holding that legal protection begins when the 'quickening' of the child is first felt. This has been the law for centuries, when application of the laws was much more arbitrary, and when communities were surrounded by ignorance and superstition. And state legislatures are doing this because they are wrapped up in a competitive contest as to which of them can appear to be the more righteous among them. This is about bragging rights. Not about law. Not about morality. Not about mercy. Not about compassion. It is about the power to order people around, because they have the votes to do so.
Many points worth pondering here, but I question whether in the case of pregnancy out of wedlock "the impulse is to punish all concerned." As far as I can tell, the impulse is to punish the woman, and the child if there is one. Not the man. Which isn't surprising, because men show no obvious physical evidence that they have engaged in extramarital sex.
Decades ago I immersed myself for a while in testimonies from European witchcraft trials -- has anyone else out there read at least part of the MALLEUS MALIFICARUM? Ingenious men loved to blame incubi and succubi for their sexual misbehavior. In slavery times the plantation mistress might rage when a slave woman bore a child who looked like the master, but she generally directed her rage not at her husband -- of course not: he was powerful, and the source of her livelihood and social standing -- but at the slave woman, who had zero say in the matter.
So in a way the woman becomes a scapegoat for the man, who might be blaming her for the whole encounter in the first place.
I don't doubt that the burdens are unequal, but men who make a career of impregnating women are on a downward spiral. Blended families are fraught with difficulty. The 'love 'em and leave 'em' ethos of bygone days has been replaced with Child Support offices within county prosecutors' offices. The financial burdens are punishing. There can be no respite where financial burdens multiply. Back in the day, there were 'shotgun weddings', followed by decades of resentments and abuse. Dashed hopes and bankruptcies. Divorce and infidelity. Sometimes it's a class thing. I recall several women I dated, one of whom gave up her newborn and couldn't resolve the conflict. Another woman couldn't admit to me that she had carried her pregnancy to term. All she said was that a year of her life was taken from her. She was incapable of creating intimacy. Someone else lived in a trailer with her three years old daughter. In each case, the men in their lives left a trail of destruction behind them, and they invariably were leading lives of marginal existence, what with child support obligations that could could never be brought up to date. These are damaged people, stuck on the bottom rung of life.
They're not just coming after women. they're coming after girls, children.
The only way Republicans--the minority party, rejected by most Americans--can keep doing this is if we--the majority--let them.
It's pretty simple. Despite all the Republican-engineered voter suppression and all their partisan gerrymandering (and spare me the "everbody does its;" nobody does it like they do)...if the majority uses its agency and votes we can again make decency and progress America's hallmarks.
In other words, a better future doesn't hinge on the minority doing the right thing. They won't. It hinges on what the majority does. Now.
If my voting choice is between a Republican and a tuna fish sandwich, the sandwich wins hands down. "Never Again", for me, also applies to voting for an R
I understand that Fox News and other right wing media have now taken a new tack: "ten year old girl raped by an undocumented alien." No word on whether they still think she should have been forced to carry to term.
There’s going to be a reckoning over all of this stuff and I fear it will be very soon. I can’t comprehend how people think this way and support this BS. It’s saddening and maddening and a barometer for just how uneducated at least a third of the population happen to be. Rupert Murdoch is mostly responsible for this. What a madman.
They make "1984" seem like a sweet little fairy tale.
“They strain at gnats, while swallowing camels”. J’ of Nazareth.
You didn't mention that the right wing rage machine is all upset that the rapist has living in Ohio for 7 years illegally. That is Bidens fault as well....
Lucian -- it would be great if you (and other journalists) forced the bastards who called the story a lie to apologize --- every reporter who comes in contact with them should insist that they OWN the fact that they rushed to call the story fake --- and explain why they did so and what they would say to the girl and the public by way of an apology ...
Waiting for these sanctimonious bastards to apologize is a fool's errand. Jim Jordan is example #1 in this regard. I suspect he was on the receiving end of too many cross faces, and they permanently scrambled his neural circuits.
Whatever the neofascist right wingers don’t want to believe or be held accountable for they simply declare to be untrue. There is no cure for this profound dishonesty--to stop them they must be voted out of office. Perhaps also President Biden must appoint four additional Supreme Court justices.
Jordon has always been an arrogant POS.
Wow! We are really in Orwell's "1984", come to life. When you have your own alternative universe, the "truth" is whatever you say it is. How deep into unreality can conservatives go? When and why might they stop? Cults like this have been able to grow to hundreds of followers, maybe a few thousand, but not much more. This is new.
Gym Jordan has since declared: I never doubted the child. I was responding to a headline from your profession, the news profession, which happens all the time on Twitter. I doubted Joe Biden, which is usually a smart thing to do."
Sadly, he's right about one thing: the WAPO now has to compete with Twitter for the news? Or, is it journalism? If it's on Twitter it must be true.
Casual cruelty. I left Ohio in 1978 because I could see it headed this way. There seemed to be a visceral dislike of anything New York, a sure tip off. Yet Upstate NY was totally like Ohio culturally speaking.