Regrettably, my soft spot for keeping in touch with my distant friends and family is keeping me on Facebook, means I am periodically exposed to news articles detailing ridiculous controversies invented by leftists and the media (but I repeat myself). I regard these with the same level of vague distaste I would experience while watching two scrappy stray dogs fight and growl over the remains of a half-eaten pork chop, so I typically ignore them. But every once in a while they happen to offer insights into the way the leftist mind works. The peculiar case of Lisa Brown, some kind of low-level leftist political nobody in Michigan recently elevated to sainthood, is one such story, and too illustrative of the interpretative processes of the modern mind to let pass without comment.
No links here; you can find one yourself (though I caution readers to avoid exposing themselves to mainstream media accounts of anything for any longer than is necessary to parse relevant information from them). The gist is that Lisa Brown, a Democrat in the Michigan House of Representatives, was reprimanded when, during a debate on an abortion bill (my favorite part of which is its regulation of the disposition of fetal remains, which the bill forbids treating as medical waste), she said, “Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.”
This gelled into the standard fare leftist patriarchal oppression narrative with such rapidity that I can consider it nothing but a case of the wonderful (in the literal sense that it inspires wonder) leftist hivemind in action. Let’s unpack that narrative.
1. “No means no.” Get it? If you exhibit even so much as a glimmer of awareness that maybe it’s not cool to dump the remains of aborted babies down the storm drain in the floor of the janitor’s closet, you’re basically a rapist. Make no mistake, this is how our enemies actually think of us.
2. There’s a veiled conceit at work here, that the only reason a person could object to the use of the word “vagina” on the floor of the legislature during a scheduled debate is that one is offended by it. I suppose this relates to the fact that hurt feelings are pretty much the only thing leftists still recognize as sins, and, if it can’t be made sense of in their manner of viewing things, it simply must not make sense. So why was she censored? Because the Republican majority thinks vaginas are gross (cause they’re secretly gay, don’t'cha know); duh. It’s sophistry in defense of crudity.
There are ways of viewing the world that can’t be crammed into thoughtless, dichotomous attitudes like “if it doesn’t offend someone, it’s A-OK!”, but this possibility sails whistling over everyone’s heads. I guarantee that anyone who buys into the narrative mentioned in the above paragraph finds the world insufferably complicated and is probably being medicated for something (and it’s not helping).
In fact, “legislator shut down for mouthing off” is utterly routine for people whose exposure to conventional politics goes beyond what they read on Huffington Post on their iPhone on the drive to work in the morning. In high school, I spent a week or two as a page in the Maryland State Senate, during which time one fellow was reprimanded for repeatedly referencing ignorant “country doctors” (I can’t remember the exact context, but it was clearly a dig at the Minority Leader, a physician from the state’s rural Eastern Shore area). “Reprimanded,” in this case, meant losing speaking privileges for some period of time. The rules were even stricter on the House side, which was three times the size but dealt with the same number of bills in the same amount of time. The reason is simple: there’s lots of work to do, so speaking is a privilege (and one rarely employed, since most bills that make it through the committee system wind up passed by acclamation). If you decide to tard out on the floor of the House, you lose that privilege. I’m given to understand things work the same way at the Congressional level, so they probably don’t work any differently in Michigan.
So, again, utterly routine; but I suppose no one can accuse our enemies of possessing a sense of proportion.
3. When I heard of this originally, my initial instinct was, “Wait, does she really think the main concern of pro-lifers is literally her vagina (or even anyone else’s)? Is she an idiot?” I had to look up her biography to find out, and came to the conclusion that Lisa Brown is not, in fact, an idiot. She has a doctorate in law. And she’s run (at least) two successful campaigns for public office, which requires a minimum of competence and cunning. She’s clearly a smart cookie. So I really doubt she would be surprised if someone informed her that her privates are pretty far down people’s list of concerns regarding abortion. She knows what we believe, she just doesn’t care, and is willing to lie about it to get her way. Which means she’s not an idiot. She’s evil.
4. Most of the above should be immediately obvious to anyone with minimally-functioning frontal lobes. Which means those (non-lemming) leftists lionizing Lisa Brown are, also, evil.
5. The bill passed, in case you were wondering, not that anyone else noticed. Eat it!
I laughed at your final sentence before I realized that you didn’t mean it to be as funny as it is.
At any rate, her comment was a complete non-sequitur. I didn’t even get what she was talking about, initially. Doesn’t even make sense unless you share her mentality, so it’s clear that it was spoken with cunning malice.
At any rate, her comment was a complete non-sequitur. I didn’t even get what she was talking about, initially.
Yeah, I still don’t really get it. I don’t care to waste time finding out, though.
The answer is quite simple. Liberals have so much faith in their beliefs that they cannot conceive of another kind of system. They have a level of faith that would stun most Christians.
When you say you are “pro life” they don’t believe you. They cannot conceive of that. They literally cannot imagine it. They honestly believe that the only possible reason people could be against abortion or birth control is you want to punish slutty women because you hate it that women can have fun, likely due to jealousy. The idea that you actually value something higher than personal autonomy never occurs to them. To use a logical term it is outside their “universe of discourse.”
“Which means those (non-lemming) leftists lionizing Lisa Brown are, also, evil.”
Which means that those self-proclaimed conservatives who can be counted upon to fall all over themselves in paroxysms of joy at the opportunity to find “common ground” with the leftists by joining them in denouncing you (and me) for “intolerance” and “hateful language” are also evil (*).
(*) Myself, I prefer to use the word ‘wicked’, of which there is no ambiguity that one is making a moral judgment.
Good point. Also, “wicked” is probably ontologically more accurate than “evil.”
Facebook is the biggest waste of time since television.
Lisa Brown may not be an idiot, but her credentials hardly show she’s not. She attended Detroit College of Law, a festering TTT in decline with a contemptibly low median LSAT of 156 — source: http://msu.lawschoolnumbers.com/.
It’s true that she’s qualified to practice law, but that’s a low bar, as it were.
@machoman:
The answer is quite simple. Liberals have so much faith in their beliefs that they cannot conceive of another kind of system. They have a level of faith that would stun most Christians.
I still don’t understand her comment, though. Oh well, no matter.
They honestly believe that the only possible reason people could be against abortion or birth control is you want to punish slutty women because you hate it that women can have fun, likely due to jealousy.
You know, what makes this mentality particularly difficult to argue against is that I can’t deny it: I really do want men to “control” women (at least to a certain extent) – but that’s not why I’m pro-life.
The whole “you can’t tell me what to do with my body” line of argument is at best fruitless and at worst pernicious and idiotic, anyway. Because, yes, I can tell you what to do with your body. We do it all the time. The appropriate uses of your body are conditioned by the common good. This isn’t just standard-fare prohibitions on murder and rape; we ban drug use and suicide (in most places), too. Leftists are all about banning tobacco, fatty foods, sugary drinks, etc., for far less noble reasons. If you violate these laws, we will take your body and put it in prison or a mental institution until you can handle the responsibilities of living. Whether or not you consent to imprisonment or institutionalization or to the laws that led to them is irrelevant.
To this the abortionist might respond, “But these things affect real people in real ways — abortion just affects a lump of cells!” OK, well, make *that* argument then, since it’s obviously logically prior to any consideration of what you have a right to do with your body. Idiots.
But, wait, they aren’t idiots. They know all the above is true. What’s the word again for people who say things they know aren’t true?
What’s the word again for people who say things they know aren’t true?
I’ll let someone else lob this softball back over the net. To mix metaphors.
The whole “you can’t tell me what to do with my body” line of argument is at best fruitless and at worst pernicious and idiotic, anyway.
Along with the “abortion gives a woman control over her body.” Since when did people lose their control when they consent to the act of sex?
I don’t think I’d ever heard that argument before, but it’s especially evil (sorry, wicked). Why should we value having control over our own bodies more than human life? If infanticide is the price to pay for “freedom,” well, sorry, but freedom is a lemon.
Of course, here again the abortionist would respond, “but it’s not HUMAN life!” And again, the answer must be: So make that argument instead of blathering about freedom, which is clearly a secondary concern here.
I would hear that argument all the time when I was younger and stated that I was pro-life. The response given back was always about how women needed “control,” and by taking it away you were anti-woman. It’s interesting to see the illogical gymnastics which take place. Especially amongst young college women.