A Manifesto for Battered Citizens

Progressives ain’t feeling the love from the man they fell head over heels for in 2008. The precipitous letdown from the hallucinatory mash notes, hymns, and messianic delusions they heaped on the God King four years ago has to stand as one of the greatest hangovers in binge politics in the history of the Republic. Click that link and ask yourself, O Progressive, how it was you could have said that stuff with a straight face. And reflect again on where things now stand:

The Lightworker, the Advanced Soul, who communicated with God-like Energy, gave you drone strikes on teenagers papered over with ex post facto declarations that we wouldn’t have killed them if they weren’t enemy combatants. He gave you (with bipartisan support), secret kill lists with zero due process, aimed at anybody he feels like killing, citizen or not. He gave you indefinite detainment. And he’s done nothing but get richer and more powerful as he’s done it–along with his rich and powerful cronies. And you’re still seriously planning to vote for him because you are terrified the Other Rich and Powerful Lizard will win.

Sucker.

Meanwhile, prolifers are likewise confronted with a man who will tell a bald-faced lie right to their faces to get their vote:

“I am a pro-life individual, I was a pro-life governor, I served as a pro-life governor, I’m a pro-life candidate. I simply do not want to participate in anything that takes the lives of an unborn child.” – Mitt Romney, lying to get your vote. No. Really.

Now, I get the Sucks Less argument, ably summarized by A Conservative Blog for Peace as “Better a jerk who doesn’t care about you than one who hates you.” I can see that. I really can. Obama actively hates the Church and is not merely cynically exploiting you, but making war on you. Romney, in contrast, couldn’t care less about you and may, by accident, fail to trample on you since he doesn’t have an interest in seeking you out to punish and stamp on you. After all, he finds you useful each election year.

What gets me, though, is how hard it is for prolifers to just stay with that and acknowledge that the most we can realistically hope for from Romney is that he just doesn’t care about our concerns, has no interest in the unborn except their utility in gaining him power, has no intention of doing anything about the HHS mandate, doesn’t care about gay “marriage” and is interested in the things that animate social conservatives only insofar as they may gain him power. If we clearly acknowledged that, we would recognize that now, not some future cloud cuckoo time, is the moment to put pressure on this campaign to knuckle under to basic demands that it pledge to rescind the HHS mandate, that it make concrete plans to do something real about abortion, and that it make serious and substantive policy pledges instead of vague “when we get around to it we will give your concerns some thought” noises. Instead, what we consistently see are conservative Catholics and Christians seriously attempting to defend and make excuses for this ticket every time it betrays them. It sounds… very much like betrayed Obama voters telling themselves that they have vote for O again last things too terrible to describe happen when Romney wins. As a reader writes:

Party politics has many of the dynamics of abused spouses.

1. Lots of excuses are made for the wrong-doings of the beloved, abusing partner.
2. Lots of arguments for proportionality are made about the partner’s added benefits to the relationship.
3. Extreme emotional defensiveness, animosity, and belligerence result when a friend or family member tries to point out that the that friend or family member will no longer be participating in and supporting the abusive relationship any longer. The abused partner will blame the friend or family member rejecting the abuse dynamic for problems and failures in the relationship, not the abusive partner whose faults in these arguments will never be acknowledged and whose good points will be inflated.

These responses intensify if the abused partner will find themselves “alone” if the relationship ends. (Ron Paul supporters or third party participation is this equivalent in party politics. Such arrangements electorally are pretty isolating.) These responses intensify with years of habitually engaging in items 1,2, and 3 above. These responses intensify if one has long habituated to being abused over decades.

Men like Obama and Romney will be what they will be: predators who view you as tools for attaining power, to be cast aside the moment your utility ends. One reader thinks “predators” is too harsh. I think any pol who climbs to power on a pile of dead babies is aptly (and perhaps too gently) described as a predator, and both these men have done so (though only one now lies to us that he was “prolife” during his climb to power while the other openly and naked proclaims his pro-abortion and church persecuting zeal. I’ll leave you to decide which is more repellent, I can’t). But there is no reason you have to put up with being seen as a tool. The biggest thing your vote affects is not the outcome of the election, but your soul. Think different. If you feel you must vote Romney (or if you are a Progressive, Obama) lest the other Lizard win, fine. Your conscience is to be obeyed. But please, stop and consider how many times these guys say to you, “I love you, baby, and won’t ever hit you again”–and how many times you tell your worried family and friends to stop talking trash about him because he’s not really that bad, and besides who else will love you, and you are afraid he’ll leave you. Vote if you must, but stop making excuses for these abusive predators when they look you in the eye and lie through their teeth and you know in your heart of hearts they are doing it. Put pressure, not on those friends and family who warn you in love about the lies and the abuse, but on the abusive liars. Trust Jesus, not these men. If not now, when?