Sunday, March 18, 2012

Who's the Evil Marxist Now?

I'm not particularly good at making predictions about the future but I'm going to try and make one anyway.  Obama is going to get re-elected.  It's not going to be because he's a great candidate because he's not.  It's just that his opponents are so effing terrible that he can't help but look better in comparison.  It's like in High school when a girl has a fat friend that makes her look more attractive by comparison except in this case the fat girl hates women and science and gays and wants to turn America into a fascist theocracy.  You don't have to be "good" to compete with that, "semi-competent" will do just fine.  Also helping Obama is the fact that his critics are pretty much as insane as his opponents.  Again, he's a pretty terrible president but not for any of the reasons you are likely to hear from the Right.  When your critics only bring up patently untrue, hyperbolic bullshit as criticism it's easy to act as if your actual failures and transgressions never happened.  Obama has done a lot of questionable things but all you ever hear about is how he's a Socialist Atheist Muslim who wants to take your guns and Bibles away and kill your grandma with communism - none of which is actually even kind of true.

Let me tell you a story about a country.  Imagine if you will a land where:

  • Abortion and birth control was illegal and illegal abortions was a criminal offense with harsh penalties.
  • Divorce was also illegal except in the most exceptional cases
  • Sex education in schools was non-existent
  • The government was focused on the family - with not only a massive propaganda campaign extolling the virtue and patriotism of family but also heavier taxes for the childless and monetary incentives for those who did have kids
  • The police are deployed in hospitals to ensure that no abortions take place.
  • There is mandatory monthly gynecological examinations for all women of childbearing age (even for pubescent girls), to identify pregnancies in the earliest stages and to monitor pregnant women to ensure that their pregnancies came to term. 
  • All miscarriages were to be investigated  to make sure there was no foul play
  • The state set up "Demographic Command Units" to ensure that all women were given gynecological exams at their place of work to check for pregnancies and monitor women from conception to delivery.
  • Childless couples also get investigated by these units to find out why they don't have any children.
  • In the extremely rare case where an abortion was absolutely medically needed, a women needed not only government permission but also a government representative present to supervise the process.



Does that sound familiar?  Kind of sounds like the kind of place that GOP is headed with their war on contraception, abortion and women's reproductive rights, doesn't it?  Unfortunately if you want to visit this Republican wonderland you would need a time machine.  Not because it's a description of the Santorum presidency but because this all happened a couple of decades ago in the Communist wonderland of Romania.


Kind of weird, isn't it?  You constantly hear accusations that Obama is following some kind of radical socialist playbook but here we have the Republican party doing its best to follow in the actual footsteps of this guy.



So who is the one with the radical communist agenda now?

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Update:
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Truth be told I was worried that this post would seem a little hyperbolic when I wrote it but I needn't have worried.  I just read Libby Anne's post "My rights as a pregnant woman or the lack thereof" and it turns out this is in fact exactly what the GOP seems to aiming for.

6 comments:

Leoal said...

My first thought? Slippery slope arguments are hyperbolic and ineffective. But then I read your links. ::shudder::

Reposting to facebook.

GumbyTheCat said...

It's like Godwin's Law, with Romanians!

Eugene said...

Leoal - I get that! At first this seems to be some crazy out of proportion rhetoric from a pro-choice Glen Beck type person but no, this is all real. They really are trying to make it law that doctors doing sonograms don't have to tell you there is something wrong with your baby. A lawmaker really did suggest that women carry even dead babies to term the way his pigs do. No one is making this up, that is what's so terrifying!

Eugene said...

Gumby - seeing as how "communist"/"stalinist"/"marxist"/"socialist" is currently getting thrown around in debates in much the same way as Hitler comparisons are, I think we really need a term for this!

GumbyTheCat said...

How about (Your last name)'s Corollary to Godwin's Law?

Too wordy?

How about "Obama's Law"? After all, it does seem the longer one talks about Obama, the probability that the words "socialist" or "Marxist" will come up approaches 1.

Eugene said...

I don't think I'm famous (or infamous) enough to coin my own internet law! "Obama's Law" does have a nice ring to it though! You should try using it on Topix some time and see if it catches on!