Political Inequality - Even some conservatives see this as a risk

A while back, Andrew Sullivan commented in his blog about the political threat of soaring inequality. That problem is still with us, and is getting worse.

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One of the things noted in the chart below is Elite Fratricide preceding Political Disorder.

This is a very dangerous time for any nation, as the lunatics come out and are at risk of gaining power.  Recently, the Governor of Texas put the state guard on alert, claiming to protect Texas from an invasion from the United States. Even Forbes Magazine (where this link originated) senses that people who would believe this are Right Wing Nut Jobs!  And yet, the polity in many of the Red States keeps electing people who in other times, would only be fit for a clown car.

In the past, I posed the question:

How many clowns can be fit into a typical Clown Car?

And I realized that I already had the answer:

No one knows - it is still spewing out clowns.

In the case of the GOP's field for 2016, we now have so many candidates, that it will be impossible to have all of them on the debate floor at the same time.

The "Tea Party" said that giving financial aid to Hurricane Sandy victims would be a big mistake because of all the fraud that would be involved. (And they were right.  Does anyone remember the "Stronger than the Storm" campaign, which had Governor Chris Christie prominent in every ad?") And now that Texas has been hit by a natural disaster, they have changed their tune....

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What we're seeing here is a political party that is out of control, a party which favors the political elite over the common good of society, and one that wants to continue adding to the economic inequality which is now disrupting the body politic.

An example of the disconnect between the GOP and reality is the candidacy of Carly Fiorina for the presidency. She is running, using her experience as CEO of Hewlett Packard as her way of showing she is qualified to hold high office.  One problem - HP kicked her out of the "C-Suite", as the firm under performed during her tenure. Can we risk having a poorly performing business person running the country, if we want America run as if it were a business?

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Right now, there is a case working its way through the court system which is geared to disrupt the idea that congressional districts are to contain equal numbers of people, by posing that the districts should contain equal numbers of voters.  Is this fair? Probably not. But, like Jim Crow, we've seen unfair systems established before in this country to keep a ruling elite in power. And I keep wondering - how long will it be before the disenfranchised say: "We're not going to take it anymore?"

The more things change, the more they stay the same - in the South

Years ago, scenes such as this were common through the states that rebelled against the Union in 1861. Although Slavery was eliminated by 1865, the South created "Jim Crow" and "Separate but Equal" as tools to keep Blacks disenfranchised. Making Blacks use separate facilities (if they existed) for basic needs (such as getting a drink of ice water, as in the photo above) was a way of telling Blacks that they were valued little more than cattle on the farm. Today, these signs are long gone. Yet, the South (with other conservative states) are creating a new class of third class citizen by use of laws that discriminate against a very small number of people - Transgenders. 

It shocked America when the former George Jorgensen came back to the United States in 1951 as Christine Jorgensen. She was looked on as a form of oddity then, as there were only a handful of people who had undergone a sex change operation. Even Louis Farrakhan (in his pre-Muslim Brotherhood days) wrote a song about her - "Is she is, or is she ain't?" Yet, I can't recall anyone trying to deny her the rights to go about as a woman in society. (I can't say whether she had an amended birth certificate or other ID that identified her as female, but she was treated as such by most people she met.)

However things have changed. We now know that transgenders are at least 1/3000th of our nation's population, and maybe more. And as more and more transgenders decide to live in the gender other than that assigned at birth, we're seeing conservative elements in society attempting to bring back obstacles that are intended to let transgenders know that they are considered not worthy of having basic rights.

The author of this blog entry (Wingnuts and the political machine) notes that the bigots are attacking basic human needs, such as the right of the transgenders to go to the bathroom. Since it doesn't make sense to provide separate facilities (there is no "Separate but Equal" requirement for transgenders) for such a small population, the laws that ban transgenders from using appropriate bathrooms mean that there is no place for these people to go.

Why does the sight of a transgender person worry a certain class of conservatives so much? I think that the idea of transgenders provide a proof that the gender binary that has been indoctrinated into some people since childhood is at risk. And they would rather destroy any facts that challenge their understanding of the world.  Could you imagine what these people would feel if they were to see one permanent exhibit at NYC's Museum of Sex? The exhibit I note has examples of animals which change their sex, animals which have both male and female sex organs, and animals that do not reproduce sexually. This certainly does not agree with the biblical account of creation.

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You'll notice that I started with an issue that affects a small percentage of the population. But it gets worse from there. America is a nation of immigrants. Yet, narrow minded people are "suggesting" that people change their names when they come to America to reduce the effort that the "natives" need to expend to learn their new neighbors' names. 

Time and time again, I see postings trying to stir up hatred of Islam from some of my more conservative friends. There is legitimate fear of extremists - these friends see evidence of what happens when radical Islamists get control of countries, and they are right to be worried. But they don't see that their imposition of a fundamentalist form of Christianity is almost as bad as what they fear. Yet, they do make some good points, when they note how the imposition of fundamentalist Islam has affected several countries.

 Iran - Before and After

 Egypt - Before and After

And this problem even infects a "Christian" country when a large number of fundamentalist Muslims immigrate there.....

The Netherlands -

Before and After

What I find interesting is that Christian fundamentalists who fear change can be just as extreme as Muslim fundamentalists. Both believe in forcing others to live their way - even if it means destroying anything which challenges their world view. And in the United States, it is our South that tends to put the most social restrictions on individual liberty. 

I hope that over time, it will become impossible to hold people down using religion and god as excuses to justify mistreatment of individuals. To see this day, forward thinking people will need to gain control of the media and broadcast their messages louder and more often than the opposition. As long as backward thinking people control the messages heard by the general public, we have a great risk of moving backward - as illustrated by the above pictures of Iran, Egypt and The Netherlands.  It will mean that we protect people that we don't really understand, such as Transgenders. But by protecting small minorities first, we prevent the back sliding that would put larger groups (such as Blacks) at greater risk....