I don’t know about the rest of you, but politics in America has become really, really exhausting. We bounce around from one freaking political or government crisis to the next one, and we’re never given a single moment to try to catch our breath.
Every single day Democrats are calling anyone who doesn’t believe as they do vile names, and Republicans while generally not as graphic as their Democrat counterparts, are still at times also guilty of extreme rhetoric. Whatever happened to reasonable people sitting down and hashing things out and coming to a mutually acceptable agreement, without the vitriol and accusations that permeate our current political discourse?
Is that gone for good? Have we reached a point where our political discourse will never again be calm and measured? I sure hope not, because I’m exhausted watching all the drama coming out of Washington. Our politicians on both sides of the aisle have forgotten the time-worn tradition that ‘what governs the best, governs the least’. Once the political class gets involved in anything they make it worse.
But it just seems that our professional political class revels in stirring up the emotions of their constituents over contentious issues. Keeping people on edge, frightened, and angry. If they don’t have a contentious issue they create one. Whatever it takes to fire up their base. It has become all about winning elections instead of governing. Both parties are now in a constant state of political campaigns, now and then fitting in a vote on naming a post office after someone.
Take the most recent exercise in political pontification coming from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is near apoplectic over the leak from the Supreme Court indicating that Roe v. Wade may be overturned. With his veins popping out of his head, he screeched about this recent Supreme Court revelation. Ole Chuck’s level of hypocrisy, for which he is much renowned, was at its’ very best. I used to enjoy watching him on the TV News years ago when he was just another Democrat Senator. He’d go through gyrations and contortions to try to get into the TV camera’s view when then Senate Majority leader Harry Reid would be addressing the press. He was actually really entertaining, even comical. Contrary to what he probably thinks, he’s not now nor ever will be anyone of real historical note. Not a great orator or statesman, he’s just another angry and hypocritical Democrat.
From my understanding of the Supreme Court decision that may be coming, it really sounds to me to be pretty much a ‘Nothing-Burger.’ All that it does is send back to the individual states an issue that has always belonged being decided at the state level. Far too many Constitutional scholars much smarter than me have made that very point. What it doesn’t do is outlaw abortion in the United States.
For those so inclined, abortion will still be readily available in nearly every state in the Union. There may be certain limitations as to what time frame in a pregnancy one can still seek an abortion, but even those limitations won’t really hinder anyone determined to obtain an abortion. Even “the poor.”
For that matter, if “the poor” is a real concern then my first question is how many billions of dollars is Oprah Winfrey worth? My guess is that she could easily write a check to cover travel arrangements for the few women who might be living in a restrictive abortion state, so that they can travel to California - where certainly abortion will be just as available as it is now - without making a dent in Oprah’s fat bank book. There’s plenty of wealthy millionaires and billionaires out there who can support those poor women who might need to travel for an abortion. Or does their support only amount to “talking the talk, and not walking the walk”?
But contrary to what Elizabeth ‘Woman Who Spreads Buffalo Chips’ Warren says (her tribal name), a woman’s right to choose will still be intact. They may just have to make some adjustments. Or ask Oprah for cab fare.
Regardless of one’s political persuasion, I think there’s one thing that most of us could agree on. Our politics has become exhausting to us. When the only ones who should be exhausted are the politicians who are supposed to be working hard for us.