There was a cartoon I saw once on the Internet, and I just spent a fruitless 2 hours trying to find it again. This was during a time when talking heads on cable “news” programs were explaining that a large part of the blame for our economic woes was the fact that teachers in Chicago were getting pensions. The cartoon showed three financial managers, dressed in pinstripe suits and smoking cigars, as they pushed wheelbarrows full of cash labelled “bailouts” out the back door of a building. They round the corner, and run into a mob carrying pitchforks and torches. Both groups stare at each other in surprise for a moment, and then one of the financial dudes points in another direction and yells “Look! Teachers with pensions!”
And the mob turns and charges off in that direction, as the man turns to his fellow managers and says smugly, “works every time!”
It certainly seems to.
Every election cycle in the US, there is a new issue raised that has absolutely no relevance to our lives or main concerns. The straw dog is only meant to draw attention away from the real issues, or to convince the American people that they need to elect someone to high office that they would normally never consider electing to their Home Owners Association.
Once upon a time, it was voter fraud. Despite the fact that study after study showed that it was NOT an issue at all, that hardly any real incident of voter fraud could be found, we were all told it was something that threatened the fabric of our society, and we could only save democracy by making sure it was harder for people to vote. Despite the obvious contradiction, The Vast American Wad accepted it as fact.
In local elections in Alabama recently, it was beware sharia law! Muslims are secretly working to force their religious beliefs on us! This is very impressive, since according to the American Religious Identification Survey, only .05% of the population of Alabama is Muslim. They must have one heck of a get-out-the-vote drive, to enable about 24,000 to impose their laws on a state of close to 4.8 million.
We were told one year that illegal aliens collecting Welfare was bankrupting our economy. Not those three wars we were running, not the $6.6 billion in cash that was lost in Iraq (no kidding, truck loads of actual cash that were lost! as in, gee they were there just a minute ago), it was clearly families of 4 living on $900 a month from Uncle Sugar that was dragging us down.
Now we have hit a new low in the smoke and mirrors of political distraction. Forget terrorism, fret not for the economy, pish-posh to jobs, don’t concern yourself with fracking, never mind lead in your drinking water, don’t worry that half of congress wants to take away your health care, climate change my ass, disregard runaway consumer loan charges, and give not another thought to the high price and low quality of the education system. Our biggest problem, the thing that is going to spell the end of America As We Know It – is who is using which public bathrooms in Target.
Apparently, vast hordes of transgender men and women, who apparently having been holding it for the last few thousand years, are about to descend on innocent women, men, and children, and molest the general hell out of them, just as soon as states pass laws saying they are allowed to use the public bathroom where they are most comfortable. For some reason I have had trouble understanding, Target is especially singled out as having made a deal with Satan to allow this to happen.
There is so much wrong with this whole “issue”, that is is hard to even begin to point out just how much bovine residue is involved here.
I guess first of all, Target?? Really? Perverts all across America have been waiting for the opportunity to molest children in Target stores? And they’ve only been held at bay only because the signs said “MEN” and “WOMEN”? They are eager to molest, but not willing to trespass?
I am not a child molester (of course, you would EXPECT a child molester to say that), but I cannot think of a worst place to molest someone than in the public bathroom of a busy department store. Have you heard how sound echoes in those places? Every fart sounds like that Dolby THX test before a movie! Not only that, but Target has anti-theft security cameras all around their stores and security guards in uniform and street clothes. Are perverts excited by the challenge? Are trangenders going to drop out of the ceiling like Tom Cruise in Mission:Impossible to get in a quick diddle?
The other thing that boggles my mind is how much Americans have sexualized going to the bathroom. Do you really think that the image of you squatting on a filthy public toilet, neck muscles bulging as you struggle to drop the kids off at the pool, is something that is going to incite people into a sexual frenzy? Really?
The truth is, 90% of the time children are molested by someone they know. 69% of the time, it is a family member. Almost always, the person doing the molesting is a straight male.
Between 2004 and 2014, 3,400 children reported being molested by priests in the Catholic church. During the same time period, not a single child was molested by a transgender. Former congressman Dennis Hastert has single-handedly molested more people than every transgender in America. Yet the same people screaming we must be protected in the bathroom are saying that he should be pardoned.
The rest of the world is not bothered by the whole bathroom issue. I have seen time and again in foreign countries, that they are not concerned with who uses which bathroom. Many countries have public bathrooms that are open to anyone, just pick a stall. I’ve seen women breastfeeding in other countries without inciting riots. I’ve been using a urinal when a woman mopped around my feet – and neither of us were particularly aroused.
I had an experience in Florence, Italy a few years ago that highlights the differences perfectly. My wife and I went to find the public bathrooms at the Uffizi Museum. As is usual in public places, there was a huge line for the Donnes (women) room, but no line at all for the Uomini. I went in and took care of business, and when I came out I told Rita, who was still waiting in line, “Hey, nobody is in there, and it’s all cubicles in there with doors anyway if you want just go right in.”
oliticsRita jumped at the chance, as did several of the European women in line. But an American woman grabbed her daughter’s shoulders, shook her, and said “Don’t you listen to them!”
Typical. Don’t listen to a reasonable solution to a problem. It’s so much more entertaining to listen to talking heads screaming over top of each other. I wonder what the Kardashians are up to ….
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