I wonder. What would happen if 10,000 women joined together and fought the GOP with the language they understand best, otherwise known as Corporate-Speak?
What if 10,000 women contributed $5, incorporated our uteri, joined ALEC, and worked to develop model legislation requesting Uterus, Inc. be treated with the same hands-off, don't regulate us framework enjoyed by Big Banks, Big Food and Big Energy?
We could ride the wave of rabid anti-regulation, anti-oversight, and free-market mania being enjoyed in Corporate America. We could hire lobbyists. We could fund Planned Parenthood in the same way the Koch Brothers fund their right wing think tanks and astro-turf groups. We could be a force for good.
We could turn the clocks back to the 1970's when we thought this "battle" was won. If ALEC wants to turn it back to the era of the robber barons, I think the 70's is attainable.
Of course it's a ridiculous idea.
What is even more ridiculous is the war on women, the anti-privacy legislation, the Draconian state-level laws which seeks to impose a radical vision of what "being an American who can pro-create" means and what rights and privacy she has lost in recent years. Yes, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Arizona and the rest...we are looking right at you.
Clearly, the GOP's cognitive dissonance regarding the role of government has reached its apex. The GOP lauds Citizens United's outcome of "corporations are people" and reminds We the People that we must NOT interfere with "businesses." We must sacrifice the social contract at the altar of free markets. Women? Health? Privacy? Oh, no, that's something completely different. (I wish this were a Monty Python sketch, actually...) Women, while being actual people, must NOT be not be allowed to run their lives - at least the s-e-x, reproductive and health parts of it.
Women must be interfered with. Women's decisions must be regulated. Women's doctors cannot be trusted to do what is in the best interest of their patients. Women must understand their post-menopausal male congressmen, and not their doctors have the final say on their health and best practices.
Women must understand, apparently, that in some horrific circumstances, the Almighty has a "plan" and if that plan traumatized you, allowed you to be assaulted, allowed you to be degraded, demeaned, victimized, or have your childhood stolen, well, who are you to question the almighty and how dare you seek to change the outcome.
I don't know whose "Almighty" that it, but it is not the g-d of any true belief or practice I am aware of. There is something sick, sinister, and sad about inferring that any manifestation of the divine would "plan" suffering of that magnitude.
As a former volunteer medical advocate for a sexual assault crisis center, Ms. Underpants knows of what she speaks. Sexual Violence is a "plan" of a sociopath, not a divine being. Shame on anyone who says otherwise.
Perhaps the only way to "win" is to fight the GOP on its own turf, with their own tactics, with their own arguments. While Coke, Pepsi, et al defect from ALEC, perhaps it is a unique opportunity to file articles of incorporation and for Uterus, Inc. to pony up the cash, and affect "the agenda" from the inside out.
Of course, it is ridiculous, but so is asserting that rape and incest are part of a divine plan.
Buying in to Uterus, Inc. costs $5. The "divine plan side" is more costly - I'm thinking the participation ante is one's immortal soul.
