THE PARADE OF LYING WOMEN

Women are inherently deceitful.  They will lie repeatedly to bring down powerful men and increase their own finances and social standing.  This is one of the core beliefs of Donald Trump.  After the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women, nineteen different women came forward and accused him of assaulting them in much the same manner that he was heard talking about.   He immediately said they were all lying, threatened to sue them, and, of course, even publicly insulted the physical appearance of one of them.  Later, when serious allegations of his extra marital affairs with a porn star and a Playboy centerfold and his possibly illegal payoffs to those women arose, he again shrugged them off.  More women just lying, as we all know they always do. 
And those are just the women he believes are lying about him.  He has also expressed sympathy for sexual harassers Bill O'Reilly and Roger Aisles, his former Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who abused his ex wife, and Senatorial candidate Roy Moore, who was credibly accused of having sexual contact with teenage girls.  He openly endorsed Moore, again shrugging off the accusers; even more lying women.   
Which leads to the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination.  With his long history of Republican partisanship   and conservative pedigree, along with the slim but strong majority his party holds in the Senate, it looked like he would be an easy lock for the court.  But now, three women have come forward to allege that in his high school and college days, Kavanaugh drank heavily and assaulted girls or tried to get them under the influence of drugs and alcohol so that he could take advantage of them. Christine Blasey Ford claims that he himself assaulted her, while the two other women describe his aggressive behavior when drunk.  He has, for his part, denied the whole thing, and the Republican party has either said they believe him, or that it happened a long time ago, so who cares?  (Which, of course, means that he's lying in his denial). Remember that Kavanaugh was a spoiled prep school athlete, and he has admitted to over drinking in both high school and college.  Is the notion that his drunken behavior often led to assaulting girls, or treating them like meat for the taking, all that far fetched? 

According to Trump they are; as expected, he has defended Kavanaugh and, while not he did not outright call these women liars, he has claimed that the Democrats are pulling "a con job." “People want fame, they want money, they want whatever.” he said in a recent press conference.  There's one small problem to this: despite what Trump wants to believe,  decades of studies have shown that the people who make accusations of rape or sexual assault are very rarely lying.  In fact, most cases go unreported, or, as in the case of Ford's accusations, are made years later, after much suffering and pain.  The notion that Ford is doing this just for money or fame is absurd: she was reluctant to come forward, knowing that the media attention would often be critical (or downright insulting), but she still felt that she should be heard.  And she and her family has inevitably been hit with death threats, something that Trump naturally, hasn't mentioned, because any sympathy he feels is for the "very outstanding"  Kavanaugh, not Ford. 
As it stands, it looks like Kavanaugh will weather this storm and the narrow Republican majority in the Senate will vote to put him on the court for the rest of his life.  This means that a president who has been accused of multiple sexual assaults may put on the court another accused assaulter who very well may rule to overturn a woman's right to an abortion in this country, joined in that opinion by justice Clarence Thomas, another man accused of sexual harassment.  And the Republican party will be enshrined not just as a safe place for bigots and homophobes, but also for misogynists. 

THE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION

Imagine if a new organization were formed to comment on the various political and social issues of the day.  Now imagine if that organization's founders openly declared that no woman would ever have any position of authority there.  Oh sure, women could join the group, play a role as secretaries and other minor positions, (and, of course, donations from women would be accepted), but every decision ever made by that group would be made by men and men only, from the top down.  And that this group of men would announce that any use of birth control is wrong, and that women's only choices in life are either celibacy or a marriage in which they will inevitably be constantly pregnant.

Now imagine if an educational organization that sent tutors to help out children in low achieving schools were rocked by scandals over some of those tutors being accused of molesting the children they were supposed to be helping. To make matters even worse, what if the administrators who ran the organization were aware of the accusations made against those tutors, and did nothing to investigate those accusations, even going so far as to send accused tutors from one school to another without a word about the allegations against them endangering innocent children.  Picture this going on for decades, with literally hundreds of pedophiles molesting thousands of children without punishment.

Now look at the Catholic Church, an organization that has done all of the above and more (the Inquisition, part of the church for centuries, tortured and killed thousands for the crime of heresy, but that was a long time ago, so I guess we're supposed to ignore that).  There is no way that any secular organization with a list of horrible behavior anywhere near the Catholic Church's could possibly survive.  Why do we give religious institutions such leeway?  Why are they allowed to openly discriminate and ignore crimes in a way no corporation could?

Religion is, quite simply, such a deep primal thing, something that has such a hold on so many people, that just turning away from it is almost unthinkable for them, no matter what. Many of the first artistic images created by ancient humans were religious in nature, and every civilization has created some kind of belief system in gods and/or goddesses, with some even willing to sacrifice their lives to a higher power.  That is how much strength religion has over people; it defines us to our very core.  And that especially goes for an institution like the Catholic Church, which has a history that goes back centuries and that has spread to every corner of the globe.  That's why it's entirely possible for someone to condemn the history of the Catholic Church, be sickened by the recent molestation scandal, completely disagree with the church's stance on birth control and abortion, and still attend church each week and drop money in the collection plate.  The good feeling that human beings have evolved to get from spiritual belief on a personal level, a feeling that is usually engrained in us as children, often beats the sick feeling one gets when viewing a church's history as a whole.  The logical part of our brain and the spiritual part do not often agree, which  can lead to such seemingly contradictory behavior. 

But there is a slow but steady drumbeat of people in first world countries moving away from religion.  Although the Catholic Church still stands at over a billion members worldwide, more and more people are responding "none of the above" when asked their religious affiliation in both the US and Europe.  And perhaps more pointedly, many members of a church are openly disagreeing with that church's teachings, like when the heavily Catholic country of Ireland voted in favor of gay marriage and abortion rights recently  Despite the grip religion can have a hold on people, scandals like the ones the Catholic Church is going through can take their toll.  Personally, I hope that these continuing scandals, along with the world's evolving views on women's rights and homosexuality, lead institutions like the Catholic Church to start changing their views or fading slowly away. I for one won't miss them.

THE DEATH OF DECENCY

TRUMP VISITS GOLF COURSE WHILE WASHINGTON MOURNS MCCAIN

The headline above from the September 1st edition of The New York Times perfectly illustrates the utterly classless and indifferent way that President Trump responded to the death of Republican Senator and war veteran John McCain.  Not only did he spend time playing golf (something that he once criticized President Obama for doing) during the funeral, he also found time to tweet out his usual dose of lies, boasts and insults while the proceedings were taking place.   Because even the death of one of the most admired politicians in the country can't stop Trump from thinking about himself.  It is fitting that McCain pointedly forbade Trump from attending his funeral services, seeing as how he once turned a speech at his own father's funeral into yet another excuse to brag about himself!

The death of McCain at age 81 from brain cancer is more than a tragedy, it's a sad symbol of what has really died in Washington since Trump took that fateful escalator ride more than two years ago: simple human decency.  McCain had a hot temper, was mostly a down the line conservative, and he was a constant defender of the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.  But he was also  a decent man who was willing to cross the political aisle to cut deals and build friendships.  He was outspoken in his (sadly doomed) attempt to cut down the influence of big money in politics.  And along with his war record, I will always admire him for three things: when, during the 2008 presidential campaign, he corrected a woman in the crowd who called Obama a Muslim, when he withdrew his (already reluctant) endorsement of then candidate Trump after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, and, of course, when he voted against the Senate's attempts to repeal Obamacare, which would have resulted in tens of millions of people losing their health care.

At the same time, McCain provided a bridge to the disastrous state that the country is in right now: in the 2008 campaign, when McCain's initial choice of vice presidential candidate, Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, was killed by the party because Lieberman was pro choice, McCain picked the mostly unknown governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as his running mate.  While she proved to be a terrible choice for the campaign, her plain spoken manner made her very popular in the party.  And as the campaign went on, her misstatements and lack of knowledge, combined with her willingness to embrace the more radical elements of the party (she once accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists") endeared her even more to the Republican base. 

 

Is it any surprise that eight years later the party was ready to embrace an unexperienced, insulting, blunt talker as its standard bearer?  And, in typical take no prisoners fashion, is it any surprise that Palin herself endorsed Trump, even after he had personally attacked McCain's war record? By 2016, McCain himself, was already a dinosaur, a remembrance of time when hyper partisanship wasn't the only thing driving the Republican party, as the often openly bigoted Trump wing of the party swept up behind the openly bigoted candidate. 

The good news is that, while Trump remains popular with the Republican base, the number of people in that base is shrinking: recently, Ohio Republican Governor  John Kasich admitted in an interview that  "We’re now down to about 25 percent. It’s all becoming like a remnant."  If any good can come from the Trump presidency, it may be that his open bigotry and conspiracy mongering may well  whittle down the Republican party to only a few remaining lunatics in the future.  But, for now, those lunatics are running the Washington asylum.  And they can do a lot of damage.