Criminalizing Existence For Power And Profit
Back in the 1980s major right wing Christian leaders made a deal with the Republican party. Republicans champion their causes like abortion, and the Christian leaders would turn government propaganda and voting for Republicans into a moral and spiritual duty. Christians thought they had taken over the Republican party. Now the Republican platform was rooted in the Bible, Republican candidates were God's chosen leaders, while their opponents were degenerates working against the will of God.
Christians were wrong. They got it completely backwards (other than Democrats being degenerates, nailed that one). Instead of Republicans altering their platform to reflect Christian ethics, all major conservative churches altered Christian ethics to reflect what Republicans wanted. When the major churches started spreading the same garbage, it became more and more acceptable, and even less mainstream churches joined in. Suddenly George Bush napalming retreating Iraqi soldiers was God's will. Sanctions that starved millions of children to death was acceptable under Christian morality. Drone bombing aid workers and weddings fit under God's will. Cops shooting a 12 year old in the back, or murdering a woman in her sleep is now ok, it can be justified and explained away, as if it is ever ok to kill a child who is just playing in the park.
The abortion issue is most often, rightly, argued around women's rights and abortions place as a medical procedure. Christians generally frame it as a moral issue, the fetal cells are alive and therefor 'life' and removing them would be murder. Not sure why they are ok with killing living multiplying cancer cells, but that's not what this is about. They believe that the Republican party, which has gone out of its way to outlaw abortion, agrees with them on this. They are absolutely wrong. As should be made clear by the number of Republican politicians who have forced their mistresses to have abortions, their stance has nothing to do with being anti-abortion.
There's a lot of reasons Republicans want to make abortion illegal. Too many to get into. But to focus on the main one, put together with all the laws they are working on at the state and federal level, Republicans want to make sex illegal as much as possible. Abortion is step one for two reasons. Their base is very anti-abortion so it ensures loyalty and donations. Also, unlike all the other ways they want to make sex illegal, abortion has the most evidence and so easiest to prove. And throws the widest net. Under the laws they are passing, anyone providing financial or material support is also guilty. Boyfriend wants to help his girlfriend get an abortion? Guilty. Aunt gives them a ride to the clinic? Guilty. Doctors and nurses involved in the procedure? Guilty. If she has no one so has to reach out to a network of pro-choice people willing to provide assistance? They are all now committing felonies.
Also, by the way, if a woman miscarries but can't prove it, most of the laws are written so that she can easily be convicted of a felony. That's around 20% of all pregnancies that are now potential crimes committed by no one but with serious consequences for the woman.
Now, you might think it is an absurd idea that anyone would want to make sex illegal. I mean, politicians have sex right? Yes, and they will also continue to have sex and continue to force their mistresses to have abortions, just like they and their families already break laws with little to no consequence. These are more of those laws that aren't for the wealthy and powerful, they are for the rest of us only.
But look at it. They want to make birth control illegal. Make abortions illegal. Make sodomy illegal. Maximize the potential for pregnancy by making everything to prevent it illegal, then make miscarriages and unwanted pregnancies illegal. Now you have functionally made existence illegal for pretty much everyone.
Republicans know abstinence isn't a realistic policy. You will never stop people from having sex. You will never stop kinky sex, or homosexual sex, or any of the long list of things sexual and otherwise they are using Christians to make illegal. Because they want the existence of poor people, even poor Christians, to be illegal. Because the goal is to always have an excuse to imprison anyone who disagrees with them.
That's always been a thing illegitimate governments have tried to do. Nixon did much the same with his drug war, creating drug laws specifically to target minorities and socialist groups. To have an excuse to harass, raid and jail those individuals and organizations who disagreed with him. We know politicians and their family members are often caught with drugs, yet no penalties? Notice with all the supposed pro-legalization Democrats who have had power, none have ever tried to end the drug war at the federal level? Because they still use drug laws for the same reasons. Now they are taking it to the next level. Not everyone uses drugs, but everyone has sex.*
What really gets me about Christians allowing themselves to be used as they are, is that central to modern Christian belief is that the state will one day have absolute power to monitor and control the population. To the point if you don't accept the government's power, you can't even buy anything. Meanwhile they are the ones being used to give the state this authority and the powers to enforce it. All while claiming to be doing the opposite.
In terms of funding, US law enforcement is the second largest standing army on earth. Who are they at war with? The US has the largest prison population in the world. Filled almost entirely with poor people. Not to ignore the extremely telling stat of the percentages who are minorities, but the predominant and most extreme stat is how many are poor. Because things poor people do are criminalized more often and punished much harsher. NOT because the poor are more likely to be bad people. ONLY because if you are poor you are 1000 times more likely to do something the people in power decided to criminalize. Yes, there are bad poor people, but that is not why the majority of poor people are in prison.
And the building up of the police into a military, fully done with the approval of the Christian right. They supported the prison system buildup. They supported more and more laws that criminalized being poor. Every step of the way they blessed the government's march to absolute power. Not that others are blameless, or that liberals haven't been conned in similar ways into supporting the same results. But where we are now, at this crucial tipping point, it is the blindness of conservatives that will allow for the final push. With the government's ability to monitor everyone, and track everything from location to purchasing habits to bedroom activities, criminalizing sexual activity will give them the authority to imprison practically anyone at any time.
In case this seems like... an overreaction: First, recognize that our current president is one of the main architects of our current prison system, and has helped the police grow for entire time in public office. He has been adamantly against Roe vs. Wade that entire time. He has made deals to support anti-choice judges since at least Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court appointment, and his party was actively supporting anti-choice candidates even after it was leaked that Roe would be overturned. Democrats are not fighting what is going on. They support it. Just like they've always supported police and military funding. Far from being the socialists or communists the right likes to say they are, Democrats are a fake opposition that want the same end results Republicans do. Absolute government authority, using a police state to keep the people under control for the sake of massive corporations.
Secondly... here's a forgotten part of US and Republican history. During WWII, while our troops were invading Europe, three companies with Prescott Bush on the board were shut down for trading with the Nazis. One was a bank that super wealthy Americans were using to funnel money to fund the Nazi party. Historical fact that the richest Americans actively supported the Nazis even after the US declared war. Their punishment? Well, Prescott Bush became a multimillionaire senator and started a Republican family dynasty.
George Bush the elder got to head the CIA for a bit. And then became VP. And while doing so he helped fund and arm far right militants in Latin America. Most people forget, these groups were often formed by literal actual Nazis and their children who fled Germany after the war. People like Pinochet were the front men for Nazis and their descendants who were attempting to seize power in Latin America. And George Bush directly gave them aid.
On top of all that, keep in mind US intelligence brought over Nazis after WWII to help set up the CIA. Also, Hoover brought over several to help rebuild the FBI. Hitler joined the Nazi party to spy on them for the German military, in order to disrupt them if need be. When he took over he was still working for the German military. This exact same program was instituted in the FBI under the name COINTELPro and was a big part of Nixon's war against minorities and socialists.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Martin Niemoller, a pastor in Germany wrote this about the Nazis. This has played out again and again under every far right fascist government, from South America, to Asia, to Africa, time and again. Fascists will start with the socialists and communists, because these two ideas cannot coexist. They never come for the capitalists. Because they are the capitalists. In the US it has been the same, only a much slower process.
Most in the US don't recognize our history of murdered socialists. The ones they came for first. Because that was black history, which we tried to erase. That was COINTELPro. Which is ongoing though no one seems to mention it. When they killed Martin Luther King Jr. they killed the most prominent modern socialist in the US. Fred Hampton was another. In fact all the Black Panthers had socialist leanings.
Now look at all the laws being broken by companies like Amazon and Starbucks to prevent unionization of their employees.
Probably shouldn't be using the word Nazi. Because they aren't exactly Nazis. When WWII ended, Nazis lost, but their ideas lived on. They were always supported by US industrialist and many many politicians. Why did McCarthy go crazy rooting out communists? Why did the US support the mass murder of socialists in Latin America, Asia, and Africa? Why are we still trying to starve out the tiny country of Cuba? Because socialism and communism are both the natural enemies of corporate fascism.
And why did I just go over all of this? Because remember the deal made in the 1980s between Republicans and major Christian leaders? That is who they made a deal with. Fascists. Mass murderers. Men who value corporate profits and investments over human life. The Christian right became the unfiltered mouthpiece of monsters. That is not an exaggeration. Not even close to an overstatement.
Both parties are now controlled by the same multi-billion dollar investment firms. The politicians themselves, in both parties, are invested in these firms, and personally profit from doing their bidding. These firms are buying controlling interest in massive corporations, and also buying up housing, farmland, hospitals, literally everything they can get their hands on that people need to survive. So that we fully depend on them for work, for food, for housing, for healthcare.
And far from stopping them, our government is criminalizing existence in every way it can. So that anyone who resists can be targeted and imprisoned. Taken from resistance and turned into slave labor. Criminalizing sex is just step one in that.
I think I point out the Christian right's part in all this because I am kind of fascinated. Like I said, no other group so strongly believes what is going to happen will happen and is extremely evil and must be resisted at all costs. Yet also, they have aided it every step of the way...
Another aside, prayer in school. Another thing conservative Christians are claiming as a victory thanks to the Supreme Court. But corporations control the government. What kind of God do they think multibillion dollar investment firms are going to allow in the classroom? One that says it is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of the needle than to enter heaven? Or one that says God approves everything they do?
We're kind of screwed. In expanding the capabilities to be able to track women who may have abortions and sodomy, privacy will finally become non existent. And you will allow it, or you have something to hide, and will be a victim of it. And make no mistake, it is supported by both parties, who will never again have to worry about a third party, or any resistance they can't immediately find cause to arrest. Make no mistake, it is absolutely fascism. Peak capitalism, corporate profit over all else, including human life. Including whatever religious beliefs you have that you think it supports.
The only response is the ending of the laws that support it. That criminalize the poor for existing. But we seem pretty far gone for that. There's no unity among the poor. The slow growth of workers unions is a great start, the best hope of resisting corporate powers. But soon they'll be arresting union leaders over sex laws and whatever restrictions come next. Not to be all doom and gloom. I always have hope. Latin America is now coming together under socialism in a way I never really dreamed possible considering the strain the US placed them under. True anti-corporate antifascist socialism. They are trailblazing a path we could follow, and at the least there will be a large organization of countries nearby who will support efforts to change the direction of the US.
But fuck. We're in a huge huge dumpster that's about to be lit on fire.
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