Divinest Sense

It is hard to describe the white-hot rage that consumed me, body and soul, this morning as I sat in heavy traffic, streets clogged with the cars of innocent commuters trying to navigate those last few blocks to the office amidst throngs of snotty young people with anti-choice signs and placards. All dressed alike in blue caps and lily-white skin, huddled like little flocks of sheep around the giant buses that decided to park in the middle of E street to drop them off.

Pretty much all DC protests arouse some ire in me when they decide to organize in the middle of my commute. But these ridiculous brainwashed morons bussed in from mega-churches all over the eastern U.S. were too contemptible for me to handle without busting a vein in my neck. I think what upsets me the most about this particular Jesus-freak love-in is the way that the churches brazenly explot their young people for the purpose of making a cheap political play. It’s easy to get a bunch of teenagers on a bus to go do something stupid. I mean, what could be more awesome than a bus trip out of town with all the other cool kids? This is how I got suckered into attending that morally blurry Steven Curtis Chapman concert at the age of 14. They even got me to wear a T-Shirt that said “get right, or get left….behind!” Listening to a couple hours of contemporary christian drivel seemed like a small price to pay to hang out with my friends at a concert downtown, plus we got to go out for mexican food afterward.

That what is so sad. Those pompous teenagers with their hats and signs are having lots of fun in DC today, but a few years down the road they are going to look back with morbid embarrassment - and sharp pangs of regret - once they realize that they contributed, in their own little way, to the curtailment of a human right and an essential public health service. They will hide their heads in shame when they realize that they have killed more people than they have saved, and caused more misery to BORN children than they ever imagined possible.

SusanG addresses part of my anger:

I’m just trying to tune in to the logic here of this fetishization of the fetus, this cult of the blastula. As far as I can tell, the “reasoning” must go something like this: Embryos are innocent and sinless, unlike the rest of humankind, therefore God commands that they are somehow deserving of treatment as a special class (although it’s hard to justify the God-induced early miscarriage rate under this argument … but never mind). But watch out, kiddo. Once you draw that first lungful of breath, sin must get sucked into your lungs like a couple gallons of evil in sick building syndrome, because … Baby, you are on your own. Yeah, you and your mama too, if she’s not of the right economic class. No child care, crappy and undersubsidized health care, no Head Start, no school lunches, no student aid to dig your sorry ass out of the mess you were born into, no federal job training if the conservatives continue their slash and burn budget cuts (but you can join the military, babe). Once you draw that first fateful breath, you’re just as worthless as the rest of us … and part of the growing legion of the discarded, shamed, blamed and forgotten, tossed into the dark corners of our “free” society. Crawl your own way out of the ditch the compassionate conservatives dug for you. Little infants who respirate, be on notice: You are the embarrassing debris left over from the American dream. Get used to it.