Medievalism, 2012-Style

--Man, Woman and Sin (1927, silent)

Now wicked things can happen...
you see 'em goin' down in war.
But when you play in a quiet way
that bites it even more
--Say It Isn't So, Hall & Oates

In this dark march toward
whatever it is we are approaching...
don't - don't hang back with the brutes!
--A Streetcar Named Desire,
Tennessee Williams
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Below are thoughts prefatory to "Sin, Sin, Sin", RAW's tour de force handicapping of the Republican contenders on their SIN quotient -- coming this weekend.

Who's the biggest sinner of all? The lord loves a sinner, so perchance he who sins more, is more worthy of great things. After drawing names from a hat, what could be a better indicator of winning potential? Does the sinner take all?

. . . Stay tuned!

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Medievalism. Nope, we're not gonna talk about Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or the lot of them. We are talking right here in River City.

It doesn't seem real, this focus on women's bodies amongst the Republican presidential contenders. Our economy is in shambles; we are in a war; the country's basic needs are profound -- and yet somehow, women's bodies have become the battlefield.

We did become fully human (almost) in 1920, with the contentious ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. For over 90 years, women have been granted full manumission in the U.S., in terms of being allowed to exercise our rights of citizenship (even Mississippi ratified the amendment, albeit in 1973.) And yet, our rights over our very bodies remain in the hands of men.

For less than 40 years, women have legally been allowed to determine whether they shall carry a pregnancy to term, without risking our lives in shoddy back alley operations or self-inducements. This right has been contentious since it was granted, but now in 2012, Rick Santorum -- Republican frontrunner -- suggests that contraception is harmful to society and pre-natal testing should be curtailed as it promotes abortions.

Santorum approves of some pre-natal tests like sonograms, but not amniocentesis, on the basis that it encourages abortion. “Amniocentesis does, in fact, result more often than not in this country in abortions,” Santorum said. “That is a fact” (Rick Santorum: Prenatal testing encourages abortions).

That is a disingenuous statement. The test itself may result in a 1-5% chance of miscarriage, but the test does not result in more abortions. What it does result in is an informed woman who may then make choices based on the results of accurate scientific testing. We did go through the Scientific Revolution so that we might avail ourselves of technology which might reduce human suffering.

Amniocentesis is ordered when a basic sonogram reveals abnormalities. Because there is a risk of false positives with a sonogram, amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS) are then necessary to give an almost 100% verification of chromosomal abnormalities like Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21), or Trisomy 28, which Santorum's child has.

Santorum's wording is painfully ignorant when he says things like, “The president has a very bad record on the issue of abortion and children who are disabled who are in the womb. I think this simply is a continuation of that idea.” How do these children crawl retroactively back into a womb? Children result from a live birth. Words and their meanings matter.

In Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, she argues that the events of 9-11-01 allowed for a cultural atavism, in which male folklore returns, imperiling feminism. Rick Santorum is resonating with the people because he embodies, if not the machismo, then certainly the subjugation of women in the guise of protectionism.

We have a Homeland Security guarding our borders, why not a president who oversees the gateway to the uterus? This is not benign concern -- this is a brazen attempt to co-opt women's decision-making. It is malevolent paternalism.

How is this even a topic of presidential concern in 2012?

Radical Clerics

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Ranger has written on the illegality and meaninglessness of Anwar al-Awlaki -- U.S. citizen and Muslim cleric in Yemen, being placed on the U.S. president's "kill list" (U.S. of Assassination, 11.09.10).

Al-Awlaki is a basic, one each radical cleric who preaches death to Americans. Serves him right, you say. But an 11.20.10 editorial in the NYT backs Ranger up -- "A False Target in Yemen":

"[N]o one should remain under the mistaken assumption that killing Mr.Awlaki will somehow make us safer.

"Mr. Awlaki isn’t the group’s top religious scholar (Adil al-Abab), its chief of military operations (Qassim al-Raymi), its bomb maker (Ibrahim Hassan Asiri) or even its leading ideologue (Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaysh).

"Rather, he is a midlevel religious functionary who happens to have American citizenship and speak English. This makes him a propaganda threat, but not one whose elimination would do anything to limit the reach of the Qaeda branch.

"He’s not even particularly good at what he does: Mr. Awlaki is a decidedly unoriginal thinker in Arabic and isn’t that well known in Yemen. ..."

If a Muslim cleric is radical, we slap a death sentence on him -- but what about the radical Christian clerics, to include military chaplains who are cheerleaders of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) and five-by behind our invasions of sand box nations (the sort Ranger wrote about in "The Chaplain")? Why can radical Christian clerics do the same thing we condemn their clerics to death for doing?

For not only do the worst of the Christian clerics pump up their flocks behind killing the Islamic Infidel, they also call fatwas on abortion providers.

A Tallahassee abortion provide, Dr. John Britton, was shot and killed by a shotgun round to the head from Reverend Paul Jennings in Pensacola, Florida in 1994. Hill also killed Britton's bodyguard, retired Air Force lieutenant James Barrett, and wounded Barrett's wife June, a retired nurse. Hill could be called an "anti-abortion terrorist", for his goal and that of his fellows is to intimidate any future doctors from performing the procedure. (Hill was inspired by the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn.)

This is a perfect double-standard as they support killing certain people deemed un-Christian in their support of the "pre-born", but we expect that from the religious realm.

This is a national hypocrisy and shame when it becomes institutionalized.

Immaculate Deception

--Danieal Kelly

They only hit until you cry
And after that you don't ask why
You just don't argue anymore
--Luka, Suzanne Vega

--Ruth, you listen to me! Don't you do it!
What if I'd aborted you?
--Well at least I wouldn't have had to
suck your boyfriend's cock!
--Don't you bring that up again! That's ancient history!
I've been saved!
--Citizen Ruth (1996)
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This Sunday's homily is on the topic of child abuse.

"Abortion: The Ultimate Child Abuse" is the rallying cry of the Right to Lifers. It papers billboards throughout the Southeast. We beg to differ with the sentiment.

The ultimate child abuse IS child abuse, and it happens every day of the week in every city. We only get to hear about the sensational cases.

How about Danieal Kelly, 14, whose mother pled guilty last week to starving her child to death. Danieal, a cerebral palsy victim, was kept sequestered in a room on a mattress soaked in her own excrement, her last words begging her little brother for a sip of water.

Or the mom last month in Orlando who killed her son "to save him" (she must've been reading some COIN from Vietnam days), she being the Antichrist who felt she would usher in 1,000 years of peace by so doing. (To her credit, she was confused as to why she was the Antichrist, since her bible led her to believe that privilege should fall to a man.)

But the ultimate child abuse might be the ongoing verbal and/or physical cruelty suffered quietly by children in dysfunctional families, or lives spent in an impersonal foster care system which merely profits by their presence.

In The Principle at Stake at Notre Dame last week, The WaPo's Kathleen Parker writes on abortion, "It has always seemed to me that the truest form of feminism. . . would be to hold abhorrent the state-sanctioned destruction of women's unique life-bearing gifts."

How very disingenuous of Ms. Parker, who issues the typical conservative clap-trap wrapped in high-mindedness. In fact, the highest form of humanism would be to oppose actual "state-sanctioned destruction" of these "gifts" (=humans), which would be to oppose war. But she and her ilk will never raise themselves to that height.

Abortion is a finality; abuse is a beginning.

Suffer the children, indeed.