Georgia on Our Minds

As the struggle for America winds tighter and tighter, threatening to snap like a bridge cable, it was a welcome relief to see an entity as visible as Major League Baseball announce it would be siding with justice and equality by pulling its annual All-Star game from Atlanta in protest of the Georgia legislature's voting bill.

On one hand, Republicans have never been so transparent—or desperate. It's so nice to finally see their true motives on display. Long story short? They're exactly the venal, ghoulish sub-humans we've suspected them of being.

On the other, you can throw out that lip service about love of country and patriotism and God. Oh, and that shit about law and order, too. That is, unless we're talking about the new Republican law and order, which basically asserts 'thou shalt have no other party besides me'.

Yep. Their goal is absolute Republican rule. And even as they mimic them, let's not forget China is the embodiment of all that is evil.

Seriously?

Sorry, but 2021 Republicans present the biggest threat to democracy the United States has ever faced.

The most-ominous part of this legislation is the erosion of power held by the non-partisan election board and the handing over of that power to the partisan state legislature. As it stands, the Republican state legislature will wield total control over who interprets state election results and determines that election's validity.

Care to speculate about which elections would be judged valid? And which ones would not? 

“Bitch” McConnell maintains that no individual's ability to vote has been compromised and that the effects of the bill have been wildly overstated. And while your brain is on pause, kindly ignore that this legislation was enacted just months after a pair of Democratic victories in senatorial run-offs that handed a majority to Democrats.

Yeah, pure coincidence. Republicans wouldn't be working overtime to make sure that never happened again, would they?

If this bill is truly as harmless as McConnell paints it as, why has Ted Cruz become so defensive over the (very public) push-back, telling anyone who will listen that he and a cadre of Republican senators are working day and night to end Major League Baseball's anti-trust exemption?

Gosh. That seems like an even bigger over-reaction than Major League Baseball's, doesn't it, Ted?

I'm thinking Republicans are just really, really pissed-off that high-profile corporations like Coca-Cola, Delta, United Airlines and the aforementioned Major League Baseball see this legislation for what it is, and are outraged enough to go public with it.

On a lighter note, the Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn selected the following tweet as the funniest of the week ended 4/3/21. It is taken from the Book of Matthew, and like all great humor possesses a sharp sense of irony entirely appropriate to its subject:

"I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. Matthew 25:35. *Offer not valid in Georgia."

Kind of says it all, doesn't it? 

Thank you to the tweet's author @AIWashburn. Brilliant.

I Am Pro-Life Because I'm Pro-Choice

I've always been someone who preferred quality over quantity. But in the land where bigger and faster are the default ideals, this is a stance guaranteed to put me at odds with the prevailing norm.

More is always better—regardless of the context.

This seems to be the hand guiding Republican's recent abortion legislation, which ranges from outlawing it entirely to severely reducing the window of availability. It seemingly demands that more lives, not necessarily better ones, is the best path forward.

I not-so-respectfully disagree.

The majority of women who seek abortions have legitimate reasons for doing so. They are financially or emotionally unequipped for parenthood. They were the victim of rape or incest. Their doctors have discovered a condition which makes pregnancy a health risk.

If you happen to be a woman of color, the odds are overwhelming that even bringing a baby to term and giving it up for adoption sentences that child to an unending chain of abusive foster homes and inadequate state-run child care facilities.

The ugly, unavoidable truth is that black and brown babies usually go unadopted.

I haven't heard any of the fetus-loving public servants in the Alabama, Missouri or Georgia state legislatures commit to a program of enforced adoption, so I can only assume they are content to leave any and all unwanted children free to languish in these circumstances. 

Not to mention expanding the government infrastructure necessary to clothe, house and feed them. 

And where's the small government in that? (But that's looking ahead and these are, after all, Republicans, so we mustn't expect too much in the way of long-term vision.)

Even moreso than an aborted embryo, it is my belief that the greatest human tragedy is an unwanted child.

For starters, prisons are full of them. Children lacking committed parents or a stable home are the lifetime recipients of mental and physical abuse from parents who resent them. And that's assuming the kids stick around, which is assuming a lot.

And that's a better way forward? How?

And if you've been paying attention, you're aware of the deplorable state of government-run child care agencies. Underfunded, with fast food levels of turnover and exhausted managers who only want to make their numbers, they exist as child-care entities in name only.

Again, tell me how this is a better way forward. Please.

Ah, but now I'm playing God. And we don't ever do that in America. Ugh-uh.

The aforementioned child-care agencies are one example. Access to health care is another. The NRA-enabled flood of firearms threatening our freedoms yet another.

Then there is the issue of a woman's sovereignty over her body. Women have long argued that if men were the ones who got pregnant, abortion wouldn't be an issue. We'd be free to do whatever we wanted. And we would.

But we are reluctant to extend that freedom to women. And frankly, I don't know why.

I have to feel the vast majority of women who receive abortions do so only after protracted periods of thought and rigorous examination. However committed a prospective father may be, a woman has an intrinsically more intimate relationship with a fetus, and in my eyes is unlikely to make a casual decision regarding it.

Which is exactly how it should be.

Yes, there are women who seek abortions as casually as you or I visit the bathroom. But tell me this: is there anything a portion of a given population doesn't abuse?

No.

The holier-than-thou legislatures in Alabama and Missouri and Georgia and the wild-eyed evangelicals who endorse them love to spout about the sanctity of life. But given the paucity of Republican support for social programs, universal health care, gun control, labor unions, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, one can legitimately question whether they only care about that life while it is in the womb.

Upon leaving it, it is free to be murdered at school, church or work. It is free to receive a substandard education and substandard health care while living in substandard housing as it is confined to a toxic neighborhood based on its skin color.

Or perhaps it is free to mortgage its future in exchange for a college degree. Or struggle to survive in a nation increasingly ravaged by global warming.

Yes, no country is perfect. But before we recklessly commit to bringing every life into the world, shouldn't we provide for the ones already here?

One Side of the Coin

I still can't wrap my brain around the uproar surrounding Alpharetta, GA. police officers, who first pulled over and then arrested a sixty-five year-old African-American grandmother after she failed to comply with their requests to A. sign her citation and B. step out of her car after refusing to do so.

Granted, she was pulled over for a “minor” offense: that of failing to maintain her lane. But in our DUI-centric society, where it often seems that is the only crime an individual can commit, veering outside your lane is clue number-one to law enforcement that you're impaired.

Especially when it happens after sundown.

Rose Campbell—presumably being sober—had only to sit patiently, let the officer explain why she was being pulled over and hope that said officer, seeing that she was, in fact, sober, would let her off with a warning.

But she couldn't.

Campbell also couldn't ask “Why do I need to sign this?”, the better to learn that doing so merely acknowledges being pulled over for a traffic violation, and that if she wished to contest the ticket she could do so in court.

While I have not spoken to her personally about this incident, I am going to assume Campbell felt this was a textbook case of profiling—pulling someone over not necessarily because of what they did, but for who they were when they did it.

And sadly, she let that dictate the remainder of the encounter.

Campbell was childish. Campbell was petulant. Campbell screamed like a toddler told to finish their peas—or else forego their screen time. And after telling the arresting officer she wouldn't get out of her car until his supervisor came on scene, she refused to do so then as well.

I would have lost my temper, too. I would have dragged this sixty-five year-old brat out of her car and told her to shut the fuck up, too. Campbell's behavior was a disgrace. She soiled every legitimate claim of police profiling and police brutality out there.

Yes, being pulled over sucks. Is there anyone who enjoys having their vehicular miscues amplified by the flashing LED lights of a police car—in public?

Nope.

But it happens. And when it does, we have to be the amazing people we tell everyone we are on Facebook and Instagram.

Cops are stressed. I'm pretty sure they don't enjoy pulling people over. I'm pretty sure they wonder who the hell they've stopped, and whether a sawed-off shotgun awaits them as they approach the driver's-side window.

But as someone who has been pulled over for far-less serious infractions than failing to maintain my lane, my advice is this:

1. Shut-up. Let the officer do their job. Hand over your license and registration. Don't act like you're two days overdue for a hit of meth. Ask questions using your indoor voice. You don't like being screamed at, do you? Neither do cops.

2. Acknowledge reality. You were in a hurry to get to your job because you left the house ten-minutes late. And on the day you have to give an 8 AM PowerPoint presentation on the reasons behind your employer's declining market-share.

You hate your job. And PowerPoint. You were a whole 'nother kind of DWI—driving while irritable. It's 7:35 and you're still thirty minutes away from work. Your boss is going to be chewing on your ass all day long, aren't they?

We all have bad days. We screw up. And sometimes, we're caught.

Clench.

Again, be the towering monument to self-control you say you are on social media. (The thought being that a ticket is a whole lot better than being forcibly inserted into the back of a squad car.)

And remember: contrary to what our media often implies, traffic stops are survivable.

And speaking of our media (especially the electronic kind who can't resist airing a controversial video because it's good for business), shame on them for validating Campbell's behavior. Shame on them for painting her not as a spoiled and entitled exception whose mistakes should remain immune from prosecution because of her race, but as a doting grandmother and frail diabetic.

In other words, a hapless victim of wanton police brutality.

Retch.

Let's be very, very clear: Rose Campbell is not Rosa Parks. She is a driver who momentarily let her concentration lapse and then had a great, big hissy fit when she got caught.

As Campbell herself later stated in an interview “Everyone does it.”

You would be correct, Rose. And that is why distracted driving is a topic of national concern—except when you do it. Because you're special and even when law enforcement has a valid reason for pulling you over—they don't.

Do I have that right?

Upon hearing that Campbell is, like me, a professional driver, I would urge her to consider a career change. Perhaps to something in the field of landscaping.

Because abetted by our short-sighted media, she has a remarkable ability for turning molehills into mountains.