Evangelicals, Abortion, and Other Contentious Subjects

Anyone who's read my blog knows I'm not a fan of organized religion.  My "position piece" on the subject is here.

I'm back to call out some of the most recent hypocrisy and generally offend fundamentalists, because I haven't offended enough of them this week.

I'll start with the contentious topic at the moment, abortion, where being completely up front, I think it's a woman's choice because it's her body.  Full stop.  

Of course, evangelicals scream that it's murder and life begins at conception.  Science says otherwise, but why do they hold such a position?  Their cherished book makes no mention of abortion or when life begins, so why would anyone pay attention to an entity that's mostly ignored science as a matter of course (except when it suits them)?  That makes as much sense as asking a blind man to review a silent movie.  If it wasn't your god, then the position could have only come from the church leadership.   

The evangelical church really didn't weigh in on the subject until the late sixties.  In fact, before that time, some (SBC) were expanding access to abortion.  Then the Equal Rights Amendment and Roe came along.  The evangelicals live and die by their belief in the patriarchal structure, meaning the man is the leader, with his wife being subservient to him.  Evangelical leaders saw ERA and Roe as threats to the patriarchal structure.  Women would have power over both their bodies and paychecks; they could demand equality in the family!  

Evangelical leaders couldn't allow such a threat to exist.  They needed to solidify their power over the women in the church.  So they caucused and decided God considered life to begin at conception and abortion was murder.  Who knew that God could change his mind like that?

This is one of reasons I despise organized religion.  The supposed word of God has been perverted and twisted so many times by power hungry white dudes, that there's no way it can bear any resemblance to true Christianity at this point.  Lest their be concern I fabricated these events, I highly suggest reading Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristin Du Mez.  She's an Evangelical scholar and pastor.  Even as an atheist, I found the book to be quite interesting.  She pretty much admits what I've been thinking for decades, which is literally everything the church does is about power.  

While I may seem pretty raw on this subject, I hold a great deal of sympathy for Christian women who've been betrayed by their church.  They've been manipulated for decades by men not fit to lead their flocks and it will certainly shake the core beliefs of those who finally wake up to the fact.  But the fact remains abortion was accepted by the church until they felt the need to tighten control over women.  

Evangelicals endorse having the baby and "taking personal responsibility", "rising to the occasion", and all that other bullshit.  That's a lovely idea, but expecting sixteen year old's to become adults overnight is pretty fucking unrealistic.  Let's say the new mother does make that leap, but has no support structure.  Evangelicals can't fathom this because they have the whole klan of cousins and spouses (who are typically one and the same) to help out.  In any case, if she doesn't have that safety net, she's not getting one from the right wing.  "Get a job."  Okay, how about some assistance for child care, because the kind of job an uneducated new mother can capture won't pay enough to cover half of that burden.  If those making these horrible laws truly believed in the sanctity of life, they wouldn't abandon fetuses after they pop out of the womb. 

Ultimately, I think most Republican politicians could give two shits about abortion.  You know damned well most of the men have knocked up at least one impressionable girl and paid to make it go away.  But they need the evangelical vote and abortion is a hot topic for them, at least it is now.   So they pander, laughing behind their backs.  Remember, with very few exceptions, your elected officials consider their only job to be reelection.  

A perfect example of this popped up in today's election news.  Mike Erickson has secured the Republican nomination for the House in Oregon's 6th district.  Here's a story about how gave a girlfriend $300, took her to the doctor's for the procedure, then later claimed he didn't know she was pregnant or having an abortion.  Many Republicans seem to share a brain defect that either prevents them from being aware of their surroundings or forget things they said.  Are they really fit to govern this country?

To those evangelicals who are amazingly, still reading, I'd love to hear how you reconcile the (recent) belief that every life is sacred, but don't give a thought to tossing that life aside, once it leaves the womb.  Also, please explain why you consider abortion to be murder, when your church didn't until recently.  I'd really like to hear from women anti choice politicians, who are actively working to help men bring women under control.  Evil or fucking moronic; no other option for them.

Baby Formula

 There's no other way to say this than the folks blaming the Biden administration for the baby formula shortage are clueless (those who know me should assume that word wasn't my first choice).  

We got here because Abbott Nutrition had to shut down their Sturgis, MI facility, which was producing tainted formula.  A point for Team Trump for removing a not insignificant number of FDA safeguards and dramatically reducing inspections.  Another point for Team Trump for putting protectionist measures in place that make it virtually impossible to import baby formula.  This is what the current administration is working on overcoming now.

But the FDA should have done more!!!  Like fucking what?  They shut down production of tainted product to prevent further infant deaths.  But they should have known this would cause an issue!!!  Newsflash, it's not the government's job to monitor capacity of a product, versus demand.  

Why was there a capacity issue in the first place and why didn't other manufacturers have extra capacity to take up the slack?  The baby formula market is controlled by three players, Abbott, Nestle, and Mead-Johnson, making it a controlled monopoly.  These companies' respective market shares have remained pretty static, with each of them enjoying some portion of various government programs (read fixed price).  And there's little any can do to capture significant market share from the others.  Baby formula has strict standards and takes a lot of work for new products to be approved by the FDA.  For damned good reason; it's for babies.  Unlike something like an automobile, where demand is variable, being impacted by economic conditions, adoption in developing countries, etc., demand for baby formula is known because it's directly tied to the birth rate.  Not as though there's an emerging market for it hiding somewhere.  And the birth rate in the US has been declining for decades.  At the end of the day, you have a product with incredibly static and declining demand, that you don't make much margin on.  Anyone at these companies who endorsed adding capacity would be fired for being incompetent.

So there it is, the perfect storm that got us where we are.

For the cherry on top, yesterday, the House voted on a measure that would make it easier on mothers who rely on subsidies (which is most of them) to get formula for their babies.  It shouldn't surprise you that the Republicans, who've been screaming loudest about how badly the administration fucked this up, voted against it.  Fucking pieces of shit continue to prove how they only care about controlling women and not actual children.  

Guns Revisited

 With recent events, I thought it a good time to revisit what I wrote on gun control, along with some additional thoughts.  Before I go any further, let me say that I'm saddened and outraged at what that piece of shit did in Buffalo.  The kid was a sociopath, but the blame for this falls firmly at the feet of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the right wing media.  A good chunk of piece of shit's manifesto was lifted right from Tucker Carlson and others promoting replacement theory, among other lies.  So, to all of you MAGA morons, go fuck yourselves.  Do the rest of the country a favor and bump that suicide rate, because you fucking deserve it for buying into the utter stupidity being thrown at you.  You're not conservatives, but fucking racist, misogynistic inbreds who continue to destroy our society.  Yeah, I'm fucking livid...fucking Trump managed to completely pervert what it means to be to be a conservative and has left the world worse off.

Also, lest you have any doubts this heinous act wasn't racially motivated, take note of how the shooter avoids shooting the white guy hiding between the registers and actually apologizes to him.  Below is a link to the footage.  I'll warn you that it's incredibly disturbing.

Shooter's Video

Mass Homicides

We'll start with the stats on mass homicides (I may use mass shootings interchangeably, because frankly it's easier to type), which is defined as an event involving a firearm that results in four or more deaths.  These events are the ones that grab the headlines and bring the most outrage.  Mother Jones maintains an excellent database of these events, that includes a lot of detail on the shooter, weapon used, etc.  Links to that and the FBI database I'll refer to will be at the end.  Also, I've stopped with 2019, because with everyone under lockdown in 2020, there weren't really opportunities for mass anything.

The data says there have been 102 mass shootings since 1982, resulting in in a total of 918 deaths.  If we break the data into time periods, an alarming trend emerges.  Between 2000 and 2009, there were 171 mass shooting deaths, versus 482 the following decade.  The number of mass shootings more than doubled as well.  Because Mother Jones' database lists the firearms used in each event, we can determine how many deaths were the result of the shooter using an AR-15 / AK. military style rifle.    Assuming any unspecified semiautomatic rifle to be an AR-15 or AK, that number for 2010-2019 is 254, or half of the the deaths from mass shootings.  The decade prior saw 5 mass shootings, using these weapons, with a death toll of 33, and 2 in the 80's, with a total death toll of 15.  This is reflected in average number of deaths per event, which peaked in 2017 at almost 20, although it's been in the single digits since 2018.  Clearly, the AR-15, along with the AK platform, represent a serious threat, with respect to mass shootings.  I'll dig into the AR-15 in the second part because there's a lot about this gun I'm sure most aren't aware of.  Worth noting is how Joe Biden is responsible for the AR-15's popularity.

Overall Firearm Related Homicides
Back to the stats.  Before we jump to any conclusions, based on the mass homicides, let's put some context around them.   According to FBI statistics, the total number of firearm related murders, from 2012 through 2019, was 78,162.  That's a pretty astonishing number, which we'll dig into a bit later, but the positive thing is it's been trending downward since 2017.  If we compare mass homicides with total homicides, using firearms from 2012 through 2019, the former represents roughly 0.6% of the total deaths noted above.  I'll say that again; mass shootings represent less than 1% of all gun related homicides.  For additional context, there were 60% more murders in Chicago (where you can't legally buy a gun) last year than mass shooting victims in the same time period.  

Again, please don't take my comments as being dismissive, but the fact is that, while mass shootings get all the headlines, they're statistically a footnote in the bigger picture.  Quite frankly, it would be dumb to base legislation on something of this magnitude, or lack thereof.  

Digging into the FBI numbers a bit more, another story begins to emerge.  The FBI statistics break down homicides by weapon.  I'm happy to report strangulations are trending seriously downward, whereas murder using explosives is showing growth, although not quite, um, explosive growth.  Firearms numbers are further broken down by type: handguns, rifles, shotguns, etc.  There's also a category of 'Firearms, type not stated', which I find problematic, considering it's over a quarter of the total.  Looking at unmanipulated numbers, in 2019, handguns represented 62% of the 10,258 firearms related homicides, but were trending downward from 68% in 2013.  Rifles were only 4%.  Back to the not specified bucket, I think it would be cherry picking to not divvy that up a bit (although the Daily Caller had no issue doing so), knowing how much AR-15's have proliferated recently.  I went with 20% for rifles, which caused them to jump to 10% of firearm homicides in 2019, or 1,020 fatalities.  Taking supposition a step further, we'll err on the high side and say military style rifles account for 60% of that.   Military style rifles only accounted for 6% of firearms related homicides in 2019.  This is the first time when you ask yourself what impact banning such rifles would have on overall gun violence.

So what can be done to decrease the number of firearm related deaths?  First, I think rather than focusing on what trigger is being pulled, attention should be focused why the trigger's being pulled in the first place.  Anyone with half a brain should be able to make that distinction.  Having half a brain myself, that's what I'll focus on.  First, I think that more and more people live solitary lives without support structures and succumb to mental illness leaving them feel hopeless or that the world is against them. On a side note, why is it the greater a boring loser someone is, the more they're convinced the government is spying on them?  But people feel less included and more disenfranchised as time goes by.  However, I also think too many people have been raised to be self absorbed little racist snowflakes and don't understand the word 'resilience'.  So many murders are to 'get back at someone' for shit that is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.  Being disrespected is part of life; get over it.  Your significant other dumped you for your best friend?  Get over it and bang his mother, not shoot both of them, you moron.  How many of us were bullied as children, but the thought of killing anyone over such transgressions never crossed our minds?  My dad grew up in a rural area.  Almost every guy had a rifle or shotgun in their car, at school, because they all went hunting after.  If you had a beef with someone, it was settled with fists after school; no one ever grabbed a gun over whatever it was.  

Finally, there are those who want their fifteen minutes of fame and are willing to kill to get it.  Finally finally, shitty parenting has a great deal of impact, beyond raising snow flakes.  Two perfect examples of how decent parenting would have prevented mass shootings - Sandy Hook wouldn't have happened if the shooter's mother had half a brain and not tried to connect to her mentally ill son through shooting. (He shot her and took the guns)  The Columbine shooters were a couple of complete sociopaths that had exhibited plenty of warning signs ahead of that shooting.  Where the fuck were their parents?

Make no mistake, I'm completely behind universal background checks and other reasonable measures to prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands.  Universal should be emphasized here, because not all states perform their checks in the same manner.  NICS is the FBI's national background check system and, from what I've been able to uncover, queries their terror watchlist on each inquiry.  However, only 36 states currently use NICS, the remainder either carrying out checks at the state level or using some sort of hybrid model.  As someone pointed out, the Boulder shooter was on an FBI terror watchlist, yet still received approval to purchase his firearm.  Colorado isn't one of the 36, instead using their own homegrown system.  Had CO been a NICS state, the approval likely would have been denied, preventing another mass shooting.  Again, universal background checks are a good thing, are effective, and that's a no brainer.  

But other actions have to be taken to decrease gun violence or we never address the root cause.  Banning weapons, aside from it not working, sends the message 'we've given up on our society'.  We need to begin taking better care of each other or things will only get worse; gun violence will be the least of our concerns.