Susan G. Komen Planned Parenthood Funding Decision Sparks Donation Spike, Strong Reactions
Good. I'm just beside myself over this whole thing. These so-called conservatives are just big, fat hypocrites and very hateful people. Those at the top do so much infamous dirt for which they frequently get busted: embezzlement, insider trading, supporting the sex trade industry (associated with HUMAN TRAFFICKING) though let's just politely call it 'personal donations' , exploit immigrant labour (cos, you know, who's going to change the rich old man's bed pan, do the laundry, and mow the lawn?), and you know good and well when their daughters and nieces require terminations for their unplanned pregnancies all of a sudden morality becomes a remote consideration, if a consideration at all. Incidentally there are so many links on these subjects that I could spend the remainder of my blogging life posting links, but I digress; the far right is rife with morality orientated scandal.
Bottom line? Like most far right crusades, this lastest shit storm has very little to do with morality and boils down to suppressing the rights of working class populations; see hegemonic actualization. And as usual, this hegemonic actualization is cleverly disguised as the morality fairy poised to beat down 'baby killers' with her magic wand. When you weigh in abortion services provided by private health care providers against those provided by public health care, and also weigh the plethora of other, more commonly performed health care services other than abortion provided by Planned Parenthood, like routine breast examinations (which help prevent cancer), and most often pap screenings (which help prevent cancer), you're inevitably forced to consider the dawning suspicion that perhaps a handful of conservatives with the financial resources to control the social tide are legitimately against abortion, but something more is at play. Permit me to boldly suggest that outside of the aforementioned handful, the rest of the powerful far right constituency may be simply be holding to the basic belief that poor and working class people shouldn't have the right to affordable or free healthcare services in the first place... especially if they're poor women. Wouldn't want them to gain any advantages of any kind. Somebody's gotta work at Wal-Mart, scrub the toilets of the rich and be wage slaves. So let's break this down a bit. Have a look at what Planned Parenthood actually does.
Plese note the three percent on the pie chart. Who is providing the rest of these abortion services? Mostly, private health care providers according to a midwife I spoke with who wished to remain anonymous. People with money can and do often go to their private health care providers for abortions, and certain members of the monied social class are interested in making sure that people without resources have no recourse when faced with unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, much needed breast screenings, or other services associated with public health facilities... which subsequently would go to suggest that they should be allowed to suffer and die.
This isn't just a women's issue or a feminist issue; this is a class issue and I wholeheartedly suggest that second-class citizenry is an phenomenon which requires that average people start noticing the patterns. In the U.S. second-class citizenry (or poverty) has (A) been mythologized, as self-inflicted because myths surrounding choosing to become successful have predominated popular American culture through the American Dream rhetoric and (B) second-class citizenry has strategically been bound to race and mostly race by design so that struggling and impoverished white people will mentally fall back on race privilege to feel better about themselves or blame ethnic minorities for their economic woes. The realities and nuences of second-class citizenry where traditionally, for example, the likes of John McCain's ancestors might have hired the likes of Sarah Palin's ancestors to oversee their slaves but not marry their children or sit at their table for Sunday supper have been largely ignored by the majority of average people affected by these class stratifications. It's easier to ignore your lot as a second class citizen and focus on what small crumbs of racial privilege those in charge throw at you; it's all very glass half full. This is also why Tea Partiers refuse to accept that they have, economically and socially, more in common with the family who raised Obama than they do with the family that raised McCain - because we're trained to think that superficial genetic appearance (race) trumps class commonalities. And hegemony likes it that way and trains people that way.
We've been duped on how massive class oppression actually is because those at the top 10 economic percent don't need for all of us to figure out how much the wealthy conservative right hates all of us. I'm not saying anything new; read Althusser's writings on how ISAs operate then go watch some Sut Jhally and get back to me. And, no, I'm not a socialist. I'm a realist whose eyes are open enough to consider that problems and their answers usually lie somewhere between the critical examination of society and a variety of proposed theoretical solutions. People had better stop calling this a feminist issue or an abortion issue and start focusing on the fact that in a country of soaring health care costs it is horrific that some charity foundation, under the guise of morality, could snatch that level of health care support away from Americans who really need it. What a pack of liars. They just want anyone who isn't rich to be totally desolate. What's next? Ask yourself, those of you who work a regular job and make less than $50,000 a year, if the people with resources on the far right are going to help you pay for your girlfriend's cancer treatment because Planned Parenthood got shut down and she couldn't afford to pay to go to a private physician for early detection. Maybe that's not your situation, but just think about it for a minute: how will more of these sorts of antics affect you? Don't get caught up in the morality spin; there is something more behind this.
For the record, I now live abroad in a country which is sufficiently capitalist, but ALSO has a very well functioning national health service - I'm here to remind those of you who are so worried about socialized health care creating socialism in general in America that there is a middle ground. Believe me, I had no complaints over being able to grieve over a recent miscarriage without having to consider paying a $3000 or $4000 hospitalization bill at the same time. But then again, I'm also living in a country where those with financial resources by and large do not have a secret agenda to leave working class people completely out in the cold, then blame them for not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and seizing the American Dream.
...And while I was writing this blog, this just came in, and I'm filing it under Oh REALLY?
OK, it's time for me to go do my pedicure and get prettied up for the weekend; a weekend of studying cultural and critical subject matter, but a weekend nonetheless, and that always requires hotness and beauty, people.
Bottom line? Like most far right crusades, this lastest shit storm has very little to do with morality and boils down to suppressing the rights of working class populations; see hegemonic actualization. And as usual, this hegemonic actualization is cleverly disguised as the morality fairy poised to beat down 'baby killers' with her magic wand. When you weigh in abortion services provided by private health care providers against those provided by public health care, and also weigh the plethora of other, more commonly performed health care services other than abortion provided by Planned Parenthood, like routine breast examinations (which help prevent cancer), and most often pap screenings (which help prevent cancer), you're inevitably forced to consider the dawning suspicion that perhaps a handful of conservatives with the financial resources to control the social tide are legitimately against abortion, but something more is at play. Permit me to boldly suggest that outside of the aforementioned handful, the rest of the powerful far right constituency may be simply be holding to the basic belief that poor and working class people shouldn't have the right to affordable or free healthcare services in the first place... especially if they're poor women. Wouldn't want them to gain any advantages of any kind. Somebody's gotta work at Wal-Mart, scrub the toilets of the rich and be wage slaves. So let's break this down a bit. Have a look at what Planned Parenthood actually does.
Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x648468
Plese note the three percent on the pie chart. Who is providing the rest of these abortion services? Mostly, private health care providers according to a midwife I spoke with who wished to remain anonymous. People with money can and do often go to their private health care providers for abortions, and certain members of the monied social class are interested in making sure that people without resources have no recourse when faced with unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, much needed breast screenings, or other services associated with public health facilities... which subsequently would go to suggest that they should be allowed to suffer and die.
This isn't just a women's issue or a feminist issue; this is a class issue and I wholeheartedly suggest that second-class citizenry is an phenomenon which requires that average people start noticing the patterns. In the U.S. second-class citizenry (or poverty) has (A) been mythologized, as self-inflicted because myths surrounding choosing to become successful have predominated popular American culture through the American Dream rhetoric and (B) second-class citizenry has strategically been bound to race and mostly race by design so that struggling and impoverished white people will mentally fall back on race privilege to feel better about themselves or blame ethnic minorities for their economic woes. The realities and nuences of second-class citizenry where traditionally, for example, the likes of John McCain's ancestors might have hired the likes of Sarah Palin's ancestors to oversee their slaves but not marry their children or sit at their table for Sunday supper have been largely ignored by the majority of average people affected by these class stratifications. It's easier to ignore your lot as a second class citizen and focus on what small crumbs of racial privilege those in charge throw at you; it's all very glass half full. This is also why Tea Partiers refuse to accept that they have, economically and socially, more in common with the family who raised Obama than they do with the family that raised McCain - because we're trained to think that superficial genetic appearance (race) trumps class commonalities. And hegemony likes it that way and trains people that way.
We've been duped on how massive class oppression actually is because those at the top 10 economic percent don't need for all of us to figure out how much the wealthy conservative right hates all of us. I'm not saying anything new; read Althusser's writings on how ISAs operate then go watch some Sut Jhally and get back to me. And, no, I'm not a socialist. I'm a realist whose eyes are open enough to consider that problems and their answers usually lie somewhere between the critical examination of society and a variety of proposed theoretical solutions. People had better stop calling this a feminist issue or an abortion issue and start focusing on the fact that in a country of soaring health care costs it is horrific that some charity foundation, under the guise of morality, could snatch that level of health care support away from Americans who really need it. What a pack of liars. They just want anyone who isn't rich to be totally desolate. What's next? Ask yourself, those of you who work a regular job and make less than $50,000 a year, if the people with resources on the far right are going to help you pay for your girlfriend's cancer treatment because Planned Parenthood got shut down and she couldn't afford to pay to go to a private physician for early detection. Maybe that's not your situation, but just think about it for a minute: how will more of these sorts of antics affect you? Don't get caught up in the morality spin; there is something more behind this.
For the record, I now live abroad in a country which is sufficiently capitalist, but ALSO has a very well functioning national health service - I'm here to remind those of you who are so worried about socialized health care creating socialism in general in America that there is a middle ground. Believe me, I had no complaints over being able to grieve over a recent miscarriage without having to consider paying a $3000 or $4000 hospitalization bill at the same time. But then again, I'm also living in a country where those with financial resources by and large do not have a secret agenda to leave working class people completely out in the cold, then blame them for not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and seizing the American Dream.
...And while I was writing this blog, this just came in, and I'm filing it under Oh REALLY?
OK, it's time for me to go do my pedicure and get prettied up for the weekend; a weekend of studying cultural and critical subject matter, but a weekend nonetheless, and that always requires hotness and beauty, people.
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