No sausages today. At least in Western democracies, military personnel and veterans seldom get to see the laws or the sausages being made — they find it difficult, not to mention often unlawful, to stick their heads up above the bowl, even to watch (let alone object to the spicing… or the blade). This is therefore merely a snarl at a bullying theocrat — or is that theocratic bully? — who cannot be bothered to actually deal with those who oppose him. Instead, he insists on taking his power out on those who have no responsibility whatsoever for the policies he opposes.
Policies put in place by the electoral winners, who happen to Not Be His Type, because they don't believe in the Lost Cause or any variation thereon. Neither are they theocrats inclined to overtly discriminate against every person who doesn't share their particular sectarian bent.
Policies consistent with the apparent inclination of most of the nation. Perhaps, you arrogant jerk, in the bowels of Christ you should think it possible you may be mistaken.1
So instead of actually engaging with the policy makers, he's taking it out on those who cannot call him out on it. This particular policy preference is — in the eyes of Sen Teletubbyville (T-CSA) — so important that he cannot be bothered to do the one thing that veterans stood for, that active-duty military people stand for, that is the foundation of both this nation and every representative democracy: Listen and persuade. Instead, he's beating up Quaker kids (or at least Quakers as to him) because he doesn't like something their parents did. No, not did — they didn't force all military personnel and dependents to have abortions; they contemplated that eliminating an economic barrier might be appropriate for others.2
Of course, there's one other difference between Sen Teletubbyville and those nonpolicymakers whose promotions and appointments he's blocking: At least for the active-duty folk (an experience set he doesn't share), they're so senior that the majority have served in command positions in which a soldier/sailor/airman under their command, or a dependant, became pregnant through nonconsensual sex (up to and including "rape" in its most technical sense) or under circumstances in which carrying a pregnancy to term will directly, foreseeably impair military readiness.3 They thus have had the opportunity to learn a bit about what it's like for those personnel to not have the resources to respond to a peacetime horror.
- There is no public evidence — none whatsoever — that the particular target of today's screed has any concept whatsoever of what this means, or its context, or what it was opposing. And the ironies of that demonstrate why no "football coach" should ever be elected to statewide office again, in any state: For all of the years that he made two-digit multiples of wet-behind-the-ears junior faculty, none of that rubbed off on him because he was unwilling to learn. Stick to dogcatcher next time.
- Any resemblance between this nonsense and both the causes and the conduct of the Second Thirty Years War… will just really, really piss me off. And does.
- So have I.