Wednesday, July 20, 2005
The insult of "I heart Gitmo" and the administration's "support" of women's rightsSo for a brief moment tonight I posted my vitriolic email exchange with
Move America Forward, the right-wing fringe group that came up with
that wonderful and America-loving "I heart Gitmo" paraphernalia. I
emailed them after I read about their new TV ad campaign that claims to
"speak for the troops" against my senator, Dick Durbin, and other liberal
politicians who speak out against the war in Iraq. I told them they didn't speak
for me or my husband. And a few other things. 11:55:14 PM | I realized minutes after I posted the exchange, though, that the emails were basically meaningless, like so many other exchanges with intractable fascists. Why share meaningless emails here? So I deleted the post. I found that I could tell Move America Forward again and again how hypocritical it was to condemn Newsweek for "causing" deadly riots in Afghanistan and then sell, for profit, inflammatory merchandise like their stickers, but it wouldn't matter. I could tell them how they are making my husband's job more difficult by creating this merchandise. I could tell them that they are not the ones dealing with an already-hostile population, nor are they being shot at. I could tell them how they are not "patriotic" in the least, because clearly they do not even like America or our troops if they are willing to create more problems for us in order to further their own narrow, political agenda. I could tell them all this (and I did), but it wouldn't (and it didn't) matter one bit. They offered their "sincere prayers" to my husband and me, which I assumed was actually a sincere "fuck you." They did not answer my charge that their merchandise is endangering our troops because it is impossible to answer and their merchandise is indefensible. Instead they circled around my criticisms and answered me with meaningless platitudes, and talked about how sad it was that I'm "so angry." Yes, I'm angry. In fact I'm furious. There is too much to be outraged about these days. I need a break, so the rest of the week I'm going to read poetry and perhaps a novel, and I'm going to put down the non-fiction books and magazines. I'm going to turn off the TV, get my news from the blogs I read and that's it. Give my spirit a rest from all of this. It's just too much! Speaking of blogs I read, here are a couple of posts worth your time. Both concern the rights of women: Snag writes about the John Roberts nomination and how the Roe decision and women's control over their own health care decisions are under threat. He rightly points out that before Roe women died having unsanitary, illegal abortions. This is the real issue. The "right" thinks a fetus is worth 'saving' and in the case of wackos like Eric Rudolph, worth killing over. The woman's life, on the other hand, is worthless. In fact she is disposable. She is worth less than a clump of cells yet to be born, and therefore it is okay for her to die on a kitchen table or in a back alley. Imagine all of the women who died or were permanently disabled before Roe here in the US, just as how many women die or are maimed across the world in countries where abortion is illegal today. And then think how each one of those deaths was and is preventable with a safe medical procedure. (I know; I'm preaching to the choir on this one.) Heretik talks about how our government claims that our invasion of Iraq will bring equality to women there while in fact the opposite is true. The new constitution will integrate sharia, fundamentalist Islamic law that restricts the rights of women. It is hypocritical but it is predictable, given that the administration infantilizes American women and thinks we are incapable of making our own decisions regarding our own health care, our own bodies, or even our own deaths. Oh the outrage. It never ends, does it? 
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Last update: 8/3/05; 12:28:45 AM .
