President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

With exceptions up to 20 weeks for rape and incest and exceptions after 16 weeks to save the woman’s life, preserve her health and in case of fetal complications.

And no bullshit laws like waiting periods and guilt-trip speeches.

All of which would mean roughly 95 percent of abortions that were previously legal would still be legal. Are you sure the “abortion is murder and an affront to God!” crowd would accept it?

 

You know, I think there are a lot of possible answers here, and I think this is a great discussion question. Here's my two cents.

There are a couple of streams that have converged here. From a tactical standpoint, I think Newt Gingrich constitutes a major turning point. After 1994, liberals were not just wrong, they were morally defective and dangerous, so it became justified to call them "sick" and go from there. MTG is her own special brand of crazy but Gingrich moved the Overton window in the direction that she became OK.

From a doctrinal standpoint, the second Iraq war constituted a significant shift. At least in the 80s and 90s, conservative policy principles came hand in hand with belt-tightening, but after we pursued a war of choice on another continent without considering raising taxes, it really cemented a line of thinking that "all public spending that does not directly benefit me or my interests is, by definition, waste." I know caring, compassionate people who are opposed to foreign aid for war zones (such as Ukraine) because of vets or potholes or whatever comparatively parochial unmet need found not much further than the end of their nose. How convenient it is for the GOP that they have just enough money to fund the things they want!

Philosophically, I think John Kenneth Galbraith nailed it on the head that, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." Personally, I think being a resident of the richest, most powerful nation on earth should come with unlimited salad and breadsticks (and health care) because we can, but once we've stripped conservatism down to selfishness (because that's about as much economic theory as 99% of the right can understand) and relieved our fellow man of any responsibility to anyone other than themselves, sharing comes off as theft. For these people, the military, the cops, maybe even the farm subsidies, are OK because they keep the scary terrorists or gangs away and keep food on the table and gas prices low, but we've conditioned ourselves to believe that we have a right to direct which of the less fortunate are worthy of our support and which ones are responsible for their own problems, which is some of the most sinful behavior in America today.

And then the religion part. I've been the only person in my age group in my church enough times to believe that the generation before mine didn't do a very good job of instilling faith into my peers. And Christianity has steadily lost influence as my peers passed into adulthood. However, instead of admitting they've done a shitty job of evangelism (or, for that matter, parenting), they've doubled down on external pressure. I know people who believe in "spiritual warfare," that is to say that powers of evil attempting to exert malevolent influence on people's lives for the purposes of opposing a holy good. It's less crazy than it seems. After all, if we believe there's a supernatural force for good, it stands to reason there is an opposition to it. My point is that it's a lot easier to blame your family/church/neighborhood/community's problems on Satan (or people and causes you view as Satan's proxies such as the LGBT community, the pro-choice lobby, etc.) than your own choices, even if you made them for a good reason (two incomes in the home, personal ambition, honest to goodness mental health problems, etc.) Before Obergefell v. Hodges, most of those threats were theoretical, but once they lost that case, they had a real price to pay and they are SCARED. We went from a Democratic president signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 to Obergefell less than 20 years later. That's some whiplash, even if you grew up in the 60s. My Dad is a very reasonable and centrist man, and almost every weekend when we talk, he grouses that he can't get enough people together to form a decent church choir anymore. The point of this illustration is that there are a lot of people, most of whom don't know a gay person or a Black man who's been abused by police, that see the world changing around them and view it as decay even if it's just increased awareness.

Now to bring this all together -- ironically, the party that built its brand on 'personal responsibility' has warped it into 'personal conspiracy.' It is now GOP orthodoxy that government is an entity actively conspiring against its own citizens, in many cases on a spiritual level. There's no reasoning with that, or even compromise. I don't think there's an easy way to unwind that other than to throw the violent ones in jail and do everything you can to keep the rest from winning an election. That's not always possible in some jurisdictions. So I don't have a great solution unless you can convince 50 million people that all those scary "caravans" of trans migrant LGBT socialists are not coming for them, their churches, their Social Security and their guns.

 

Exceptions for rape, incest or maternal health?

 

Della beat me to it.

I'm beginning to think the trumplican party was lying when they said they wanted abortion to be a state issue.

Keep going, motherfuckers. This is going to end badly for the GOP.

 

Gingrich's influence continues to be felt, but don't forget another important root of where the Republican party is now, the Lee Atwater, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone dirty tricksters group, who descended from CREEP style politics. *Anything* was fair if it moved the needle for your guy or against your opponent.

 

They have half a dozen of these culture war clashes that are all going to drive the vote against them. Then they'll be wailing "Where did all these Democratic votes come from? Voter fraud!".

Abortion, guns, election rights, LGBTQ, cutting Social Security, schools/books, all sorts of ways that they are pissing off voters wholesale. They can't gin up enough outrage voters to offset the damage they are doing to themselves.

 

I’m convinced half of all GOP governance in solid red states is driven by sheer curiosity at how much more the rubes will tolerate.

 

Pro-military:

 

All this bemoaning about how Republicans let it get to this and no fucking mention of Karl Rove?

 

A fair point (I was born in 1984, so those bastards are before my time).

I've gone back and picked at my little unsolicited essay a couple times since I posted it, so if you care, please refer to the current version. I have a political science minor and, as I bemoaned on Election Night 2016, am a little bit more invested in politics than I wish I was. Dad (who I worked a story about in) says he hates politics, but I've always felt that politics is not a thing in and of itself, it is simply the means by which communities make decisions. To be engaged in your community is to be engaged in politics, for better or worse. On the other hand, I wish Mom hated politics. She watches way too much CNN and truly hates both guns and Donald Trump. Every time there is a school shooting I fear for her state of mind.