For the last few months, logging on to facebook has been nothing but an exercise in patience and trying to prevent my eyes from getting stuck due to all the rolling.
I am a politically minded person. I care about politics and will discuss them in organically occurring situations. I will not, however, take to the airwaves of social media and blast every meandering thought that crosses my mind about the (il)legitimacy of one candidate or another. Because what’s the point? Whose mind has ever been changed by one particularly hard hitting meme created only to irk the people with a differing opinion? Facebook has always been a breeding ground for stupidity and petty banter, but it’s reaching new lows these days as are the people on it. From both camps. I’ve pretty well cleansed my friends list of people who hold ideologies I find ignorant and cruel so I actually miss most of the conservative, right wing propaganda – but if it’s anything like the verbal and visual diarrhea coming from the Left (and I have to assume it’s worse given the views they’re starting with) I might have to give up facebook entirely until the election is over.
That being said, for the time being I still log in every day and my fb feed is where I get the majority of my news. I follow CNN, Al-Jazeera, the Daily Show, John Oliver, and Fox News (in the spirit of keeping one eye on the enemy, ya know) and some of the non-election news I’m reading is infinitely more alarming than the fact Hillary only leads Trump by 3 points.
Case in point: Oklahoma. The most dangerous state to be a woman in right now. Last Thursday, Oklahoma lawmakers voted 33-12 to ban abortion in their state as well as make it a felony for doctors to perform one.
Whether it is through being harassed and objectified on the street, paid and recognized less for doing equal (if not more) work, or being blamed for our own sexual assaults, women are consistently treated as humans less worthy of respect than men all over our country. Roe v. Wade was one of the first true victories in giving women the legal power we deserve over our bodies and futures and it is fully protected by the Constitution – a document that the people who push for bills like this usually claim to revere. It blows my mind how lawmakers in this state fail to realize the hypocrisy of screaming about their almighty Second Amendment Rights (the fruits of which actually result in the deaths of children,) yet blatantly pass a bill that violates the Fourteenth. I don’t care how you feel about abortion, it is legal and this is a clear cut case of attempting to violate women’s constitutional rights.
Thankfully, Governor Mary Fallin vetoed the bill, although lord knows if the veto will stick or if she will have the same good sense to veto a more articulately worded proposal – given it was the lack of the bill’s clarity, not its assault on women’s rights, that prompted the veto.
Regardless of the outcome of this first attempt, Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma have stated they will not be deterred by vetoes, and women can expect to see more bills of this nature until their Christian agenda is legally enforced. (As a quick aside, how many of these same Christian lawmakers would lose their damn minds if Muslim lawmakers tried to get a faith based bill passed? Every. Single. One. The hypocrisy is infuriating.)
As a silver lining, at least they’re giving the women of Oklahoma fair warning, I suppose? It’s not common in nature to find predators who alert their prey beforehand, so at least there’s that.
To end on a happier note, Obama did a kick ass thing that didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved. For all the haters out there that complain about his fiscal irresponsibility, I would like to point out that he just saved Americans 10 million dollars annually on cutting worthless abstinence only sex education programs that have proven ineffectual since their inception 25 years ago. (Well, a net savings of 6 million, in that 4 million is being allocated towards actual sex education programs which inform students about birth control as well as abstinence and have been proven to work.) Watching President Obama navigate his last year with a give-no-fucks attitude has been amazing, and I’m glad he’s still got eight months left.
Attic Confessional 