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| Page 1 of My Completed Ballot for the November 8 Election |
Alek Skarlatos first gained attention in 2015 when he was one of three men who subdued a would-be mass murderer on a French train. He was honored for his bravery by the presidents of France and America; made the rounds of America's radio and TV talk shows; appeared on Dancing with the Stars; and played himself in a movie.
He is now a 30-year-old Republican who is making his second bid for the Congressional seat of Democrat Peter DeFazio who is retiring after 35-years. Skarlatos well represents the prevalent hypocrisy and immorality of the Republican Party and its voters. To whit...
He is using a 2015 photo of him and Obama to imply that Obama supports his right-wing candidacy, and although he staunchly opposes abortion, his ads claim that he supports health care for women, words associated with abortion rights.
In 2018, Skarlotos appeared on the podcast Drinkin' Bros to publicize his upcoming movie. The intellectual depth of the podcast can be inferred from the fact that much of the 45-minute discussion consisted of a light-hearted look at murdering women during sex. At one point, the host asked Skarlatos if he had thought about what would happen "if you choked someone and killed them in bed." Skarlatos replied, "Oh yeah. Oh yeah!" and he and the host laughed. Skarlatos then told about a 2017 Florida case in which a woman died of asphyxiation because her partner, in Skarlatos's words, "kept his dick in her mouth" while she strangled. Skarlatos said that the fact he was found innocent of intentional homicide proved, “He got off in more ways than one.”
Skarlatos also enjoys looking at Facebook photos of scantily-clad pubescent girls (he checks the "like" box), and he has bitterly complained that he has to leave his current home in Roseburg (population 29,000) to find dates because only two of the town's women are pretty enough to suit him.
Skarlatos doesn't deny any of this, although he complains that his opponent is playing dirty politics by mentioning it. He does say that he wishes he hadn't joked about murdering women, but, after all, he was ever so much younger in 2018. Will Republicans vote for such a man? God yes! They knew of his problems when they put him on the ticket, and; Republicans from all over America are pouring millions into his campaign fund (most days, Peggy and I receive at least one mailing each from Skarlatos). Finally, if they didn't hesitate to vote for Trump after he said the following, why would they hesitate to vote for Scarlatos:
“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” (Just last week, Trump was deposed by the lawyers of yet another woman who accused him of rape.)
Skarlatos' contempt for women is akin to that of retired football player Herschel Walker, a Senatorial candidate from Georgia. Aside from the fact that he is semiliterate, Walker is like Skarlatos in that he has no qualifications for office except for the fact that he used to be famous. Also, Walker's life stands in stark contrast to his claim to oppose abortion and support family values in that he fathered several children out of wedlock (after being married), coerced at least two of the women he screwed to have abortions, and never paid child support until hauled into court.
Where is the moral bottom for a people who insisted that Bill Clinton should be removed from office for receiving blow jobs in the Oval Office because, "Character matters," only to ignore the depravity of their own politicians. Republican candidates and the people who support them claim to hold the moral high ground because they are "good Christians," but where is the evidence of their goodness? Given their previous political alliances, I believe that Republicans would vote for Satan himself if Satan presented himself as a gun-loving fascist who hated gay people, opposed abortion, and claimed that any election he lost was stolen.
As I was about to put this online, I learned that Nancy Pelosi's husband had been attacked in their home by a hammer-wielding Republican. Given that the Republican Party officially regards the the deadly capitol invasion as "legitimate political discourse," why should they not view today's attack as more of the same?
14 comments:
And we learn that Nancy Pelosi's husband had his skull fractured by the man who was 'waiting for Nancy'. Scary times. And yes, character does matter. I would not/could not vote for either of the men you discuss in this post. And how I wish that their 'care' for women involved providing support rather than banning things.
Oh Snowy. You sure know how to cheer me up. What happened to Pelosi's husband is appalling. I felt awful for them when I listened to the 7am radio news.
'Legitimate political discourse'? Bah and humbug. Maybe there are decent Republican politicians in office and while I may not agree with their politics, they are decent people. But, I don't know of any.
Our own political machinations are depressing enough but yours seem worse.
One should be shocked, disgusted and despairing when reading your account of this *celebrated* individual. But I'm NOT.
He is akin to thousands, possibly millions of others, alive or dead, who have prospered in life and swayed millions of 'ordinary' people throughout time.
You've heard that "The love of money is the root of all evil", but that's not quite true. I'd say that the "Desire and love of POWER" is the driving force of these individuals. People like Trump, Hitler, Elon Musk and numerous others spring to mind.
It's the same in most countries I'd say, although it's alarmingly more evident in America right now imho. OK Snowy, nothing I can say or do about the warped human race so I give up.
"And how I wish that their 'care' for women involved providing support rather than banning things."
After claiming that they only wanted individual states to have "the right" to ban abortion, Republicans now favor a nationwide ban that would also include at least some restrictions on birth control pills and devices. As for abortion, their leadership would make no exception in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the woman's life. In one recent example of how far they would go, an Indiana doctor preferred an abortion on a ten years old Ohio girl who was raped (the abortion was legal in Indiana but not in Ohio), and Republicans immediately claimed (falsely as it turned out) that the doctor should be prosecuted for murder because she failed to report the abortion. Their attitude about everything they disapprove of is that, even if it's legal, we'll make people's lives so miserable that they'll wish they hadn't done it.
"Maybe there are decent Republican politicians in office... But, I don't know of any."
I can think of a very few that I respect. For example, there's Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Liz Chaney of Wyoming, and Susan Collins of Maine. However, Trumpians have destroyed the careers of nearly all ethical Republican leaders, and are working hard to destroy the careers of the few who remain, there being no end to how low these people will stoop. Trump also nominated large numbers of his supporters to federal judgeships in order to insure that voting-related judicial decisions will go his way, and his supporters are now running for the office of Secretary of State in individual states in order to declare Democratic election victories invalid. Conservative states are also doing everything possible to prevent Democrats from voting. For instance, Democrats are more likely to live in urban areas, so the state of Texas, for one, has drastically reduced the number of urban voting precincts and placed them as inconveniently as possible in areas where there are few places to park. Georgia is infamous for finding "irregularities" on the voting registration cards of black people (most blacks are Democrats) when it's too late to correct them, and it has so reduced the number of urban precincts that lines stretch for blocks, and it can take up to four hours to vote. Because Democrats tend to favor voting by mail, Trumpian states that have had that as an option are now banning it as being "rife with voter fraud," although they are unable to offer evidence to support their claim. (In my state of Oregon, there is no in-person voting, which is why I was able to put my ballot online." Masked Trumpian thugs in tactical gear with guns on their hips are standing near urban drop-off ballot sites in Arizona in order to scare people away from voting, and Republican judges are supporting such intimidation doing as their "Constitutional right." I could go on, and on, and on, regarding how determined violent, fanatical, intimidating, Trumpians are to destroy democracy in America. In fact, they are even openly questioning the wisdom of democracy.
I fear that America's Democratic leaders have been much like Chamberlain in the 1930s in that, until recently, they simply refused to believe that Republicans--their own countrymen no less--were really as evil as they seem. Now, I think it might be too late because of the problems I mentioned, and because they are doing a good job of making people believe that Democrats are to blame for inflation, crime, and illegal immigration, not mentioning that they themselves have done their utmost to to block Democratically proposed legislation. They don't stop there though; they claim that Democrats are doing everything possible to destroy America from within as part of a Jewish led conspiracy the goal of which is to control every facet of people's lives in what Republicans label "the New World Order." I've compared Trumpism to Nazism from the outset, and everything along the way has confirmed my belief that I am right.
"OK Snowy, nothing I can say or do about the warped human race so I give up."
I am somewhat in the same boat you are, being in almost too much pain to think much less to struggle, yet to entertain even the faintest glimmer of hope seems preferable to having no hope at all. Although evil cannot be defeated, my hope is that it can, perhaps, be mitigated.
"Desire and love of POWER is the driving force of these individuals. People like Trump, Hitler, Elon Musk and numerous others spring to mind."
I agree. It's ambition that makes people like Musk and Trump wealthy, but once they have money, they turn their focus elsewhere.
I hate to disagree with you but...
Satan was on the ballot. The Republicans and many others elected him president. I just hope it doesn't happen again.
Oh boy, Snowy, the pickings of honest decent politicians are pretty slim, but some this year pushed by the national R's, are just absolutely vile.
oh dear
"I hate to disagree with you but...Satan was on the ballot"
I think we agree that Donald Trump is capable of any evil, but I had in mind the fellow with horns, red skin, and a tail--the one who says, "Yes, I am Satan." Trump is not him. Trump's followers commonly view Trump in the same way as Minnesota Republican Michelle Bachmann: "He is highly biblical, and I would say to your listeners, we will, in all likelihood never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetime. So we need to be not only praying for him, we need to support him, in my opinion, in every possible way that we can.” In thinking about what you wrote, I had one other thought...Once we call someone Satan, there's no lower designation left to us. So, while I believe that Trump is capable of any amount of evil, he hasn't committed the level of evil that, for example, Putin is now committing. Therefore if we call Trump Satan, what do we call Putin?
"Oh boy, Snowy, the pickings of honest decent politicians are pretty slim, but some this year pushed by the national R's, are just absolutely vile."
Yet the people who support depraved politicians and attempt to win elections by any means necessary say that you and I cannot live moral lives because we don't believe in God. They do, and this is where it has gotten them.
"oh dear"
Yes.
I havent heard of Skarlatos but he sounds revolting, almost as revolting as the Trump quote.
I was just this morning listening to father Richard Rohr talking about how society makes a binary of everything, which seems to me to cover the whole democrat/ republican thing. Only i've forgotten what he ascribed it to...time to re-listen :)
I hope you're doing ok
"I was just this morning listening to father Richard Rohr talking about how society makes a binary of everything, which seems to me to cover the whole democrat/ republican thing."
I looked up the word binary in order to find a definition that would enable me to understand what you are referring to. The only definition that even might apply is "something having two parts." Does this mean that you regard science-and-superstition (or generosity and greed) as two sides of the same coin, and if you do, how do you benefit from it?
Sad state of affairs in this country. Wishing you the best.
The idea is something I need to work through so I can't really answer. Science and faith was mentioned (which I suppose is the same as science/ superstition)
I think the point was that we don't like unknowns, grey areas or spectrums so we try to force every one and every idea into a binary and end up with a lot of conflict
"The idea is something I need to work through so I can't really answer."
I hope you will keep me informed.
"Science and faith was mentioned (which I suppose is the same as science/ superstition)"
I would need to know more in order to agree or disagree. While it is true that we all have faith, the question becomes whether a person's faith is intelligently placed, there being a world of difference in having faith in the scientific method versus having faith in astrology or tarot cards. When it comes to gaining knowledge through science versus through superstition, I believe that the former approach is praiseworthy and the latter illusory.
Rohr wrote: "The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. Dualistic thinking works well for the sake of simplification and conversation, but not for the sake of truth or the immense subtlety of actual personal experience....The dualistic mind pulls everything down into some kind of tit-for-tat system of false choices and too-simple contraries, which is largely what “fast food religion” teaches...much religion is frankly dangerous."
I think his point is well-taken, although it appears--from what little I know of him--that he criticized dualism from a dualistic perspective. I also believe that dualism is often valid because there are really people and beliefs that are very good overall while there are other people and beliefs that are very bad overall. For example, Hitler was said to love dogs (assuming that Hitler had the ability to love anything), but his love for dogs (perhaps it was with good reason that he killed his favorite dog Blondie shortly before he killed himself) counts as nothing against the fact that he caused 100-million deaths, and destroyed cities, artworks, economies, and trillions of nonhuman lives. Fred Rogers, by contrast, was good, his failings being minuscule compared to the abundance of comfort he gave. Likewise, in America, I believe that the Republican Party stands near the extreme of evil. I also believe that there are times when one party to a dualistic issue is moral, prudent, and intelligent (in regard to that issue), while the other side is immoral, ignorant, and nihilistic. Some examples: people who support getting Covid vaccines versus people who oppose them. People who trust scientific consensus versus people who consider scientific consensus inferior to the pronouncements of Donald Trump. People who believe that Biden won the presidential election fairly versus people who claim--without evidence--that he stole it. Likewise, right-versus-wrong exists when it comes to sexually molesting a toddler, or cheating poor people out of their lawful wages in order to enrich oneself.
When I moved to Eugene from rural Mississippi in 1986, I encountered new ways of thinking. After considerable thought, I rejected most of them. For example, I ran into people who denied that right and wrong exist, which means that a man like Trump is no more deserving of condemnation than a woman like Liz Cheney (who sacrificed her political career by attempting to hold Trump accountable for his crimes). Their underlying argument was that the one and only goal of each and every human is personal happiness, and so it makes no difference what one does to achieve it. In other words, they thought that a belief in right versus wrong, moral versus immoral, and good versus evil, was as childish as a belief in Santa Claus. It seems to me that those who make this claim this are the opposite of dualists, yet I doubt that Rohr would approve of them because anyone who sincerely believes that evil doesn't exist is capable of causing any amount of harm to others and walking away with a clear conscience.
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