Sunday, May 29, 2022

Roe v. Wade Worked For Fifty Years But . . .

 

. . . Republican Politicians have set up the Supreme Court and many State Governments to impose Republican Theology on everyone.



LEARN ENOUGH TO MAKE A POWERFUL VOTE THIS NOVEMBER

Halfway through a U.S. President’s four-year term of office the “midterm elections” happen.
 
On November 8, 2022 we citizens (age 18 and above) will vote and elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives--they serve two year terms; and voters will elect 35 of the 100 members of the Senate. Senators serve six year terms.

About 90% of Representatives and Senators will be re-elected even when the majority of public opinion is against what they stand for! Really? How can this be?
The most powerful reason is that voters are not voting yes or no on specific issues; instead, 90% of voters vote by Party loyalty. Also, as my previous blogs have highlighted, the politicians talk in slogans for promoting themselves and condemning their opponents. The politicians also communicate non-verbally. For example, they might smirk or pretend disappointment at their opponent’s personal or political actions. TV newsmen and women are also famous for their nonverbal “commentary.” 
 
Here are a few famous slogans:
  • “Come and Take It” (Used in first battle of the Texas revolution)
     
  • “LBJ for the USA” (Used in Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign) 
     
  • “The Buck Stops Here” (Used by President Truman) 
     
  • “Yes We Can” (Obama presidential campaign)
     
  • “Defeat the Washington Cartel” (An accusatory slogan used in Ted Cruz’s primary campaign)
Notice that the slogans are only generalities—they don’t inform us about the real, nitty gritty issues. 
 
Slogans are a part of routine leadership behavior. Parents, teachers, coaches, politicians, preachers and others use slogans to motivate people to do things. Successful politicians use slogans to get their most important messages into the heads and hearts of the voters. 
 
The politician’s goal is to get elected and do government as they and their political party believe it should be done.
 
But instead, when we the people’s majority disagree with the politicians, then we should get what our majority of voters want. And then we must monitor and insure that the Congress puts into effect the voice of the people.


WHAT IS THE POLITICAL DRAMA WE SHOULD NOT FOCUS ON?

Don’t Focus on Campaign Dra-ah-ah-mah.
 
Refer to my initial blogs for the discussion of how political hobbyism thrives on drama but is not effective for impacting politicians. But politicians command your attention and get your vote through drama. Myself, I never understood that process until reading Hersh's book Politics Is For Power.
 
The famous, conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote about the ugliness of politics (as found in Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics, 2015). He said that every two years when the midterm elections come, the political “industry” conducts “wall -to-wall character assassination.” He goes on to say: 
 
“Politics is the only American industry whose participants devote their advertising budgets to the regular, public, savage undermining of one another. It is the only American industry whose participants devote prodigious sums to destroying whatever shred of allegiance any of them might once have won with their customers.”


Don’t Focus on highly publicized, serious, terribly polarized issues which have been turned into political footballs by the two major parties.
Prime examples include: criminalizing abortion, protecting gun rights, pretending the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent when in fact it was one of the most legitimate and error free.

Don’t focus on fighting for all or none, either-or, nothing in between, extremes of excessively permissive or excessively restrictive rights.

Statistically, the attitudes, the hopes and fears of Americans vary greatly but are in the middle range of the “bell shaped curve” of the normal distribution. It is to be expected that on many important issues, large groups of citizens would be strongly opposed to one another. 
 

Generally, from between 2015 and 2021, the percentages favoring pro-life or pro-choice were within five points of each other; and, which group’s percentage was greater or lesser flip-flopped from year to year. Here are graph results from Gallup:

Recently, a few states have been rapidly making laws restricting abortion anytime after conception—as if that moment were knowable. Clearly, politicians think and feel it is meaningful to define life as starting with a fertilized egg. However, the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade states that while the Texas law says life begins at conception, 
 
“We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at a consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer” (Harrison and Gilbert, 2003).



SOMETHING TO PONDER
 
An important question needs to be answered by anyone trying to find a basis for deciding whether pro-choice or pro-life is right or wrong for them personally-- and for the county as a whole: 
 
Since for many years the majority of Americans have accepted and supported the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, why should the beliefs of fifty percent of the population forcefully take from the other fifty percent the legal availability of abortion?


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