Abortion

Erosion

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

A game of legal cat-and-mouse is in full swing as legislatures scramble to outlaw everything that falls just outside the perimeters of that which is constitutionally protected.  You can protest, but not near any political figure relevant to your message.  You can vote, but not without this single, specific form of identification.  You can have an abortion, but not until we are done violating and humiliating you.  You can get an education, but not without the burden of lifelong debt.  You can have a picnic, but not without a permit.  Like a plane working its way across a piece of wood, the layers of our civil liberties and their protective laws are shaved away, landing coiled and useless on the floor as the corrupt and insane shape the new America.

Just beneath the gliding sound of the plane’s dark work, you can hear the lapping of the ocean – a vast body of corporate initiatives and the endless goals of the financially insatiable – as it pounds its relentless force against America’s delicate social fabric.  Cultural and religious freedoms, logic and reason, checks and balances, individual liberties, privacy, personal choice are all eroding along the edges of our society.  Each tumultuous swipe of the sea strips away more and more of that which we hold most dear.  Yet, unbelievably, the lemmings – distracted by imbecilic obsessions (“Did you watch Idol last night?!”), led by the cunning and manipulative (“Fracking is safe.”), and obliged by the insanely religious (“[The Christian] church needs to be the conscious of the nation!”) – keep marching headlong into the cold and terrible depths.

America was a nation built by people seeking freedom from judgment, discrimination, persecution, and fear.  It was a nation designed so every citizen could create a life individually tailored to him or her, in which personal goals could be set and met through hard work and determination.  It was a nation of hope and liberty in which all voices and matters could be heard and what is best for all could be deduced from intellectual debate – free from the slant of varying religious ideologies, unencumbered by the motives of small-minded men, and unmarked by the scars of ancient human error.  She has sadly now become her own adversary, blanketed in the filth of bigotry, hot with the tempers of misogynists and racists, and corrupted by limitless, unethical, and vicious greed.

Soldiers called by moral obligation, Occupiers and their supporters stream into the streets, driven by a fiery sense of urgency and invited by promises made to them in our founding documents.  The peaceful warriors who deny the continuously slipping status quo and fight for the fundamental rights that keep us from a swift descent back to the 14th century are met by the private armies of billionaires, both hunter and hound donning the uniforms of those sworn to protect us.  Like the Reich marched from the basements of Munich’s brew houses into the heart of the German people only to butcher it with a knife of pure evil, our public servants wear the badge of honor and the mask of deceit.

Make no mistake, our government is working quickly, quietly, and pointedly at political, societal, and legislative manipulations intended to control and stifle us.  Undoubtedly the new laws and market manipulations (from the Trespass Bill to the doubling of student loan interest rates) are maneuvers of those in power to improve their position, gaining from what the rest of us lose.  The steady erosion of our freedom serves to strengthen their political hand in a high-stakes game between the haves and the have-nots, America’s new aristocracy versus the strong and faithful who built this country with their bare hands.

Inevitably, the makers of this war on all that is fair and just will come to find that the people will only take so much.  Eventually the sugar-coma of modern life (or should I say, “high-fructose-corn-syrup-coma?”) will wear off.  The lemmings will realize, as they stare at the lessening shoreline, this year they don’t feel much like swimming.  With Occupy opening up in the spring warmth like the impatient crocus, spreading out across the land, carrying its message of freedom and justice farther than ever before, the criminals on the Hill will find the masses at their feet growing in number and in rage.

Rise, my fellow Americans, like the mountains – higher than the sea.  Stand up and preside over your nation with the same majesty and immovability.   Spring forth from the depths of those waters like the beautiful, volcanic islands that defy that rippling temper.  Push back against their attempts to strip from you that which is yours by birth, yours by right, yours by law.  No matter how many profanities they scribble on the pages of our history, they cannot erase what is already written there.  We have been endowed with certain unalienable rights.  We have the right to speak or yell or write…; we have the right to assemble peaceably and to be left in peace while we do so; we have the right to demand our government hear and address our grievances; the right to a trial by jury; the right to live free of involuntary servitude (even if those who attempt to enslave us are corporate entities); the right to a free and appropriate public education (for all students of all ages – post-secondary included); the right to a clean and safe abortion; the right to practice our religious beliefs even if those beliefs compel a person to practice no religion at all; the right to a safe work environment and fair compensation; the right to live without fear of discrimination – be it racial, gender-based, or for sexual preference; the right to drink clean water and breathe clean air…  the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These things cannot be taken from us unless we let them.  There are no laws, no chains, no cages that can contain what is right and good and fair.  We are not the sand and soil that washes clean away with no resistance to the ebbs and flows of their temperamental tides of change.  We are the rocks, the roots, the concrete pillars of a people who have proven time and time again that in the face of grave injustice, we stand united.  We will prevail.  We Will Prevail.  WE WILL PREVAIL.

Wag The Womb

/ JillArcangela / 1 Comment

We’ve all heard of wagging the dog, right?  It is the political protocol of those who are so deeply woven into the corruption that rots our political system that they are unable to discuss the actual issues.  The first time I distinctly remember anyone wagging the dog was the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, during which time it was discovered that the then-President had approved the sale of military super computers to communist China, increasing China’s nuclear capabilities.  In the years since, I’ve noticed it happening every election and most days in between.

In the past few weeks, an argument over insurance covering pharmaceutical contraception has triggered a conversation that is so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it is actually being entertained.  For generations, it was up to insurance companies to hammer out the details of the plans they offered, and it was up to women and their gynecologists to determine their medical needs and measures.  With the rise of the spin doctor, however, medicine has become political gun powder.  Suddenly, I’m looking at a panel of five men – most of whom are sworn to celibacy and have (in theory) no sexual experience whatsoever and none of whom are medical professionals – publicly debating the religious correctness of women taking birth control.  As the news unfolds, all I can think is, “Where are we going, and why am I in this hand-basket?”

Setting aside the dubious separation between church and state, which summarizes to churches taking funding and wielding unreasonable political influence but paying no taxes, I can’t help but wonder what a different world this would be if men got pregnant instead of women.  A brave woman I know well often quotes an even braver friend who had once said that “if men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”  The thought is striking, not only for its vulgarity but for the weight of what it implies.  First, that this is, for all our bra-burning, still a man’s world; and second, that the men of this world are still indulging at their gender-given ability to relieve themselves of any and all sexual responsibility, should he choose.  (Stay with me, guys…)

No one is arguing about whether or not insurance should be covering vasectomy.  (Many plans do.)  No one ever stands outside an abortion clinic with signs calling for the castration of dead beat dads, one-night wonders, or incestuous uncles.  No one ever yells about the guy who fathered multiple children and fell behind on his child support, blaming his morally questionable libido for an overextended welfare system.  Yet the women who bear the pregnancies, the children, and the scars of such circumstances come under attack constantly, from the ceaseless trimming of already insufficient social services to the threats of reducing access to care in women’s clinics.  These injuries are then peppered by the insulting rants of people like (Head-) Rush Limbaugh.

Without getting into the fact that the same groups of people who complain about legal abortions and birth control are also, ironically, often the same ones who want to cut welfare programs supporting the impoverished communities that most need access to such services, tossing aside the basic logic that if the poor and underinsured can’t get birth control then there will be more children on welfare…  Leaving alone the reality that conversations about the accessibility of women’s contraception should be about health and civil liberties, not morality and judgment…  Completely ignoring the fact that the support these arguments receive from notorious chauvinists and discriminators should be enough to send any sane person looking for the quickest way to distance himself…  These arguments are, without a doubt, nothing more than a simple diversion from the issues that are real and damaging to the nation.

Every election is the same routine, like a scene from a movie we have all watched a thousand times: a flaming arrow is shot into a barn while the thieves make off with the gold.  The powers-that-be ignite the crazies and gas the flames, creating a conflagration through the glare of which we cannot see the perils of their true workings.  People ignore the voting records of these politicians, their former-lobbyist appointees, their multi-million dollar estates, and hone in on arguments that appeal to their inner-bigot.  Meanwhile, they slowly chisel away our rights with things like indefinite detainment, the Trespass Bill, and surveillance drones, simultaneously lubricating countless palms (including their own) with plans for pipelines, fracking, and genetically modified foods.  The whole time, we are running back and forth dumping pint glasses of water on an inferno that is timed to self-extinguish the minute their deals are signed.

It is a series of marionettes cascading down the great political stage, puppets controlling puppets.  Wanting to change the conversation, the corporate puppet masters pull on the political representatives that are indebted to them.  The reps then pull on the leaders of special interest groups, because no one is happier to plunge us back into the dark ages; and they – in turn – yank the strings on the people they control with the most proven measure known to man: mysticism.  Within a hot media minute, the whole world is on its head in a mess of wood and string, a Pinocchio production gone berserk.

The current debates over things like women’s reproductive rights and civil unions are important issues, but they aren’t the issues.  The issues are the ones that allow systems like this to even exist.  The fact that we live in a society where access to affordable healthcare is a problem for millions; that corporations have the power to determine so much about how our government and society function; that politicians and their radical supporters can call women terrible names but can’t stand up to a Wall Street tycoon; that legislation can close health clinics serving the poor but not Bank of America; that five men with religion for a resume can speak about female contraception but the only human in the room who might actually take it isn’t allow to speak at all; all while the citizens acting as the voice of the people, carrying out their most basic right in a last-ditch effort to save the nation, are arrested for standing on the steps, not the sidewalk.

There is nothing new under the sun.  We are witnessing the old stand-by call from a worn out playbook, the burning barn.  So, while Occupy writes the current attack on women’s civil rights onto the schedule of teach-ins and rallies, adding it to the heaping junk pile of American issues we, the people, now need to address, it is critically important to see (and make clear to others) the overarching theme that ties all these issues together: America is being stolen from her people while the masses are gazing wide-eyed at the long-nosed liars parading from strings in a song and dance we know too well.  Cut the strings.  Free the people.  It is time to wag the tail, not the dog… or in the case of the current spectacle, the womb.