I’ll say this with the sensitivity I know White Males of Privilege have in spades: I’m sorry, isn’t the War On Women an obvious wedge issue? To me it’s the usual progressive ideals versus religious brick wall, meant to divide voters during an election year. Submitting to the traditional patriarchal framing of this debate sets back the goalposts on women’s rights. And where yesterday the public was questioning the undemocratic authoritarian fiscal system which perpetuates, among many ills, gender and social inequalities, now the American population’s better half is being misdirected to the usual Neanderthal bogeyman. Who is against female reproductive choices? The same Scooby-Doo straw villains who keep Gay Marriage in a seesaw of legal battles. The moral struggle against archaic cultural traditions has already been won, but corporate feudal interests pretend that the public they poll would forbid it. It requires a continuous drive, especially if we keep falling for the Kabuki illusion that the end zone grows further off. To women now mobilizing their energies against the so-called W.O.W. I have to say, way to let the ass’s tail wag you. Yes, Rush Limbaugh is doing today’s henchman cameo, yesterday it was the church and the GOP, but who declared this “war” to divide the 51% from the 99%? None other than President Obama with his health care measure meant to provoke church-administered health facilities. You don’t think this was a depth charge set to fire exactly now? As local women’s groups extemporize defensive demonstrations, it will be interesting to see what activism infrastructure already had the astroturf on order.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
Let women die in war! Let them know what it is to suffer for their family with their life! Men need to stand up agianst the modern women. Let them die in agony for a change.
Brian, what rock did you crawl out from under?
“Let them die in agony for a change.”
This arsehole never heard of childbirth?
ROME CALLING! — POUND SPEAKING!
Very perceptive article. There are two kinds of non-issues, “wedge issues,” if you will. The first is the one that elevates some essentially non-political matter to political intensity, i.e., to the point of enmity or, at least, controversy, to divert public attention from real issues. The second is, as you note, a sham controversy created, for the same purpose, around a matter that has already been decided. From the standpoint of political sanity, it is difficult to say which is worse.
Both “Left “and “Right” in America are full of suckers for non-issues. A good example is a recent article in NMT:
As usual, your in-house infantile leftist, voraciously snapping up the toothsome bait of polit-correct, entirely misses the point. (“Anti-Gay hatred splits local Presbyterian congregations into warring groups, ” NMT, March 6th, 2012.)
However, a “retired” Los Angeles police sergeant who is a parishioner of First Prez just gave away the show:
“The gay ordination issue is getting all the attention; sex usually does.
“However, First Presbyterian’s support group for family and friends of lesbians, gay men, transgendered and bisexual people continues as it has for years. The pastoral staff emphasizes kindness, care and compassion in dealing with this volatile issue.
“Then comes politics. The liberal progressives who are in the leadership majority at PCUSA Headquarters in Louisville, Ky., are again pushing for divestment in American companies who do business with Israel, claiming that the quagmire known collectively as the “Middle East” is entirely Israel’s fault.
“Mysteriously these so-called leaders are ignoring the clearly stated goal of Israel’s neighbors, namely to push their Jewish enemies into the sea and wipe anything Israeli off the face of the earth — suicide bombings on public buses, at elementary schools and wherever else terrorists can kill as many Jewish men, women and children as possible. I am outraged that a portion of my Sunday offering goes to pay the salaries of these people; soon not a penny more.”
“Presbyterian Schism Isn’t Just About Ordination Of Gay Clergy,” Rob Bernsen, Colorado Springs Gazette, March 12th , 2012)
Now that the the holy-roller sects have largely been taken over by the “ Israel” Lobby, an effort is underway to make what remains of the mainline protestant denominations into political instruments of Likudery.
Especially in military towns like Colorado Springs, the people who attend the posher Sunday morning social clubs are far more valuable to the Tribe than the wage-slaves, grunts, and assorted social discards who, in their understandable despair, flock to evangelical medicine men. That is way some of them have at least one Mossad operative—sprinkled with Holy water, of course— in the congregation.
Almost everybody in Colorado Springs knows that military “chaplains,” especially in the Chair Force and its “Academy, ” are neo-con polit-comissars. What is not so well-known is that they spread a version of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer cult that is tailored to the neo-con mentality. No matter that this creepy little cradle-robber was the theological creature of Niebuhr and Barth. He conspired with cowardly reactionaries to assassinate the head of state of “his” country when it was fighting for its very life, and for the survival of all of Western Civilisation. Fortunately, that plan was thwarted by my good friend Maj. Gen. Otto-Ernst Remer. But it indicates the “worst contingency” plans of the neo-con cadres in the U.S. military.
An excellent introduction to “Christian Zionism” and the manufactured heresy of “Dispensationalism” is Father Stephen R. Sizer’s
Christian Zionists—On the Road to Armageddon (2004)
http://www.sizers.org/articles/ebook_sizer.pdf
and his doctoral thesis
Christian Zionism: Its History, Theology and Politics (2005)
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/SIZERchriszion.pdf
If you are inclined to exercise your talents as an investigative journalist, which I know are considerable, I’ll give you a starting point: Mark Tooley.
Take it from there.
—George Lansbury