{"id":39668,"date":"2012-11-08T16:36:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T23:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=39668"},"modified":"2014-12-30T11:01:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T18:01:48","slug":"um-but-you-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/um-but-you-said.html","title":{"rendered":"Um, but you said…."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So\u00a0 a couple of weeks ago, John Zmirak wrote a column in which he bitterly denounced those\u00a0 of us who were refusing to vote for Romney as spiritual masturbators.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Really. That was his dominant image in speaking of \u201cspilling one\u2019s vote upon the ground<\/a>\u201c.\u00a0 It was a tour de force of angry denunciation of those of us who could not, in conscience, bring ourselves to vote for a GOP candidate who advocated several different grave intrinsic evils, and it deployed character assassination, ad hominem and non sequitur with a kind of artistry that made you sort of admire it the way you admire Triumph of the Will<\/em> as a cinematic achievement until you remember what it\u2019s saying:<\/p>\n

How manly<\/em> it feels, refusing to \u201ccompromise.\u201d How satisfying it is\u00a0 to flounce away from the playground with your marbles tight in your whitening\u00a0 hand: \u201cThat will show them. I won\u2019t be fooled again by the party that holds out\u00a0 the carrot of Roe v. Wade<\/em> to make us jackasses pull the cart. I\u2019ll\u00a0 write in Ron Paul. Or Pope Pius IX. Or Eamon de Valera. I won\u2019t compromise\u2014I\u2019m\u00a0 too much of a man<\/em> for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I felt that way and voted that way in 1996, 2000, and 2004. It helped that I\u00a0 lived in New York State\u2014where any candidate much to the right of Saul\u00a0 Alinsky<\/a> was already doomed.<\/p>\n

But the first year I lived in a \u201cswing state\u201d (New Hampshire) where my vote\u00a0 might actually make a difference to the outcome\u2014to the question of whether the\u00a0 next Supreme Court justice proposed would be a Scalia or a Sotomayor\u2014my fun was\u00a0 over.<\/p>\n

It was time to grow up. I actually had to choose between the alternative of\u00a0 doing my (little) best to push back against the gigantic evil that had\u00a0 overwhelmed my country, or toddling off like Onan to spill my vote upon the\u00a0 ground.<\/p>\n

Those of you who live in one-party states like New York and California are\u00a0 still free to join my old pal Andrew (and the old me) out on the pavement\u00a0 outside the Dubliner. It\u2019s a warm and fuzzy feeling, there flat on your back,\u00a0 and self-satisfaction is foaming, free on tap.<\/p>\n

The rest of you, who can actually do something to restore our Constitution\u00a0 and our liberties, I hope you will pretend, for a moment, that 3,300\u00a0 innocent unborn lives a day<\/a> might rest on your decision. As they do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ya got yer \u201cYou are a disgusting narcissist\u201d canard.\u00a0 Ya got yer \u201cspiritual masturbator\u201d image just to add a dash of gross.\u00a0 Ya got yer mathematically illiterate claim that a third party vote is so important it will swing the election and so meaningless that it\u2019s pointless to bother casting it.\u00a0 Ya got\u00a0 yer \u201cIf you don\u2019t vote for this baby killing Republican and instead vote for somebody who opposes killing babies, you are voting for a babykiller!\u201d nonsense.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got the totally false claim that if you don\u2019t vote Romney, babies will die that otherwise would not have died (and the blind eye to the very real possibility that voting for Romney would mean that Iranian babies would die who would not otherwise die).\u00a0 But above all, you have this message: GET IN LINE.\u00a0 IGNORE YOUR PRECIOUS CONSCIENCE, YOU MASTURBATING NARCISSIST, AND SUPPORT THE GOP AT ALL COSTS.\u00a0 JOHN ZMIRAK IS VERY ANGRY AT YOU FOR NOT DOING THIS.<\/p>\n

Okay.\u00a0 Duly noted.\u00a0 I thought the argument was rank sophistry then and said as much.\u00a0 He was welcome to do as he thought best with his ballot.\u00a0 He was not welcome to charge those who were obeying their conscience in a way different from him with mortal sin (which masturbation is).\u00a0 His way of voting to limit evil as well as ours has the Church\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

But what to my wondering eyes should appear today but a post from Alternate Universe John Zmirak, who is now telling us \u201cProlifers Must Stop Being Pawns<\/a>\u201d and remonstrating with gullible prolifers for selling their birthright for a pot of GOP message, compromising their principles and letting themselves be co-opted, exploited, manipulated and pushed around by the GOP.\u00a0 The sole thread of continuity between the two pieces is that John Zmirak wants prolifers to know how wrong they are and how right he is, with absolutely no acknowledgement of what he said less than a month ago.<\/p>\n

The chutzpah is really quite gobsmacking.\u00a0 But I\u2019m glad we finally agree.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So\u00a0 a couple of weeks ago, John Zmirak wrote a column in which he bitterly denounced those\u00a0 of us who were refusing to vote for Romney as spiritual masturbators.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Really. That was his dominant image in speaking of \u201cspilling one\u2019s vote upon the ground\u201c.\u00a0 It was a tour de force of angry denunciation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[294,30],"class_list":["post-39668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chutzpah","tag-register-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\nUm, but you said....<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So\u00a0 a couple of weeks ago, John Zmirak wrote a column in which he bitterly denounced those\u00a0 of us who were refusing to vote for Romney as spiritual\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/um-but-you-said.html\" 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