Pacific Views

All There Is To Say

From Harold Ford, the only response it's really necessary for Democrats in public office to give to moralizing GOP partisans:

In TN, How does Harold Ford, Jr. beat back an NRSC ad that notes he once partied with Playboy bunnies?

Says Ford: "I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator."

Hopefully the shame of Mark Foley's behavior and the complicity of the Republican House leadership will raise the bar of 'scandal' in DC to acts that are truly non-consensual. So for the record:

Having a good time with someone who's interested in having a good time with you makes a person ... normal, if not always bright. And what could be more normal than not always doing the bright thing?

Forcing attentions on someone who's either not interested, incapable of consent, or powerless to say no makes a person ... a sick creep who poses a danger to society.

Any blurring of those two lines, treating consensual sexuality like something that's as shocking or worse than non-consensual activity, ultimately poisons the public morality. Because the problem isn't people wanting to have sex. Predation isn't a sexual orientation, it's sociopathy. It's people wanting to abuse others from a position of greater physical, economic or social power. It's the impulse to abuse, to take undue advantage, to admire rapacity and greed as if they were true strength, that is the dry rot eating the United States away from behind the storefront of our founding documents.

In this grim episode, the Republican leadership is revealed as the Very Hungry Caterpillar they have always been. Perpetually open maws entirely lacking in conscience or respect for others. They have failed soldiers and emergency response workers dependent on them for equipment, hurricane victims dependent on them for rescue and everything after, innocent foreigners dependent on them for their lives and bodily integrity, workers dependent on them for a living wage and health care, and, now we learn, minors directly dependent on them for guardianship.

They have no mercy towards those who are in their care. No feeling or compassion for them. No leniency for mistakes lacking in malice. They respect nothing but what feeds the beast, pours the money in for their campaigns and favorite contributors, keeps their power flowing, gives them the advantage, lets them feel dominant.

But as with any organism that heedlessly consumes, there comes the day when it bites off something it should have taken a longer, closer look at before swallowing. These soulless perverts have finally been revealed as guilty of a type of abuse for which the public is willing to extract punishment, but it was a long time coming. After the public, lulled to apathy by a media that's been acting like thorazine patients on a bender, spent the last five years winking at the abuse of the poor, the soldier, the foreigner, the sick, the unfortunate, it was only a matter of time before that victim list got another shameful addition.

It's time to send the Republican leadership home. Or to prison. And were it in the power of anyone living, to damn them to Hell for the pain they've caused.

Update: Links added, minor correction.

Posted by natasha at October 6, 2006 07:09 PM | US Politics | Technorati links |