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Tag Archives: morality

Being Paul Gosar (r)

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Billy Long, Blaine Luetkemeyer, censure, Congress, Ethics, Jason Smith, morality, Paul Gosar, Vicky Hartzler

Today in the United States House of Representatives:

117TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. RES. 789 [pdf]
Censuring Representative Paul Gosar.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NOVEMBER 12, 2021
[….]
RESOLUTION
Censuring Representative Paul Gosar.

Whereas, on November 7, 2021, Representative Paul Gosar posted a manipulated video on his social media accounts depicting himself killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joseph Biden;

Whereas the video was posted on Representative Gosar’s official Instagram account and used the resources of the House of Representatives to further violence against elected officials;

Whereas Representative Gosar issued a statement on November 9, 2021, defending the video as a ‘‘symbolic cartoon’’ and spreading hateful and false rhetoric about immigrants;

Whereas the leadership of the Republican Party has failed to condemn Representative Gosar’s threats of violence against the President of the United States and a fellow Member of Congress;

Whereas the Speaker of the House made clear that threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States should not be tolerated and called on the Committee on Ethics of the House and law enforcement to investigate the video;

Whereas depictions of violence can foment actual violence and jeopardize the safety of elected officials, as witnessed in this chamber on January 6, 2021;

Whereas violence against women in politics is a global phenomenon meant to silence women and discourage them from seeking positions of authority and participating in public life, with women of color disproportionately impacted;

Whereas a 2016 survey by the Inter-Parliamentary Union found that 82 percent of women parliamentarians have experienced psychological violence and 44 percent received threats of death, sexual violence, beatings, or abduction during their term;

and Whereas the participation of women in politics makes our government more representative and just:

Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That—
(1) Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona be censured;
(2) Representative Paul Gosar forthwith present himself in the well of the House of Rep6 resentatives for the pronouncement of censure; and
(3) Representative Paul Gosar be censured with the public reading of this resolution by the Speaker.

Endorsing and supporting Paul Gosar (r):

Vicky Hartzler (r) [2021 file photo].

Billy Long (r) [2021 file photo]

Blaine Luetkemeyer (r)[2021 file photo]

Jason Smith (r) [2021 file photo]

The vote:

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 379
H RES 789 YEA-AND-NAY 17-Nov-2021 4:27 PM
QUESTION: On Agreeing to the Resolution
BILL TITLE: Censuring Representative Paul Gosar
[….]

—- YEAS 223 —

Bush
Cheney
Cleaver
Kinzinger

—- NAYS 207 —

Gosar
Graves (MO)
Hartzler
Long
Luetkemeyer
Smith (MO)
Wagner

—- ANSWERED “PRESENT” 1 —

—- NOT VOTING 3 —

When people show you who the really are – believe them.

Conservative morality

24 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by willykay in Uncategorized

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Tags

conservatives, corruption, CPAC, Ethics, Milo Yiannopoulos, missouri, morality, Vicky Hartzler, Women's March

Nancy LeTourneau of the Political Animal Blog recently wrote a provocative article on the issue of morality in a pluralistic society. The gist of her argument is that conservative Christians, by making their deal with the devil, i.e. Donald Trump, have not only abrogated their claim to superior morality, but opened the door to a discussion of morality that is more in harmony with liberal pluralistic values. LeTourneau implicitly suggests the existence of a gap between the moral universe inhabited by liberals and that of conservatives. It strikes me that this gap is both more substantive and coarser than LeTourneau in her effort to be fair, suggests.

The difference between the two points of view was clear when the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) revoked an invitation for Breitbart provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, to speak at their annual meeting after tapes surfaced in which he seemed to speak approvingly of pedophilia. Just a few weeks earlier conservatives professed to be horrified when he was similarly disinvited to speak by UC Berkeley. The difference? The Berkeley protestors whose actions precipitated the cancellation of Yiannopoulos talk were disturbed by his “free” exercise of “hate speech, racism, misogyny and transphobia.” CPAC couldn’t handle Yiannopoulos speaking “freely” about sexual practices that they consider especially taboo.

Time and again, it seems that the only behavior that can get conservative morality roiling is sexual. Here in Missouri we have a legislature that is all but openly selling influence when they’re not busy slurping the swill ladled out by lobbyists. But it took a sex scandal – legislators hustling interns – to provoke a backlash and, temporarily at least, lend some force to discussions about the need for ethical oversight. The results were rules governing interns (including a widely ridiculed proposal to keep those young sluts from dressing provocatively – our state legislators, it seems, shouldn’t be expected to resist temptation all on their own), and a few limp efforts to address legislative corruption.

Get the picture? If it involves sex, conservatives get worried about morality. Bullying, vicious slurs directed toward groups that conservatives view askance, along with financial and political corruption, not so much.

It’s no accident that conservative and ostentatiously Christian Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO4) objected to the Women’s march as much because of the signs, which she characterized as “very pornographic,”as anything else. I saw lots of signs about the ACA, Social Security and the full range of economic justice issues. To be fair, I also saw signs that would have shocked my very sedate grandmother. Words like “uterus” and Hartzler’s avowed president, Donald Trump’s, favorite, “pussy,” were visible, along with statements that the organs in question were the property of the women holding the signs, and, consequently, not subject to the control of the patriarchs.

Hartzler had much less to say about the issues that brought all those the men, women and children with the “pornographic” signs out. She doesn’t, for example, give a tinker’s you-know-what about healthcare, an issue that motivated many of the marchers – that’s why she’s voted some fifty or sixty times to repeal the ACA – but she’s worried that people who do care about it showed their concern with what she believes to be pornographic signs. It’s all about sex with these folks.

Even the issue that represents one of the most persistent areas of moral disagreement between conservatives and progressives/liberals, abortion, hinges on differences between the way the two camps respond to female sexual behavior. Despite the hysterical evocation of “baby-killilng” and silly labels like “pre-born,” the relationship between abortion and the fear of unfettered female sexuality is, as Sara Erdreich, argues obvious when one considers the prevalence of arguments about whether or not victims of rape or incest “deserve” to get an abortion, but women whose sexual behavior is voluntary don’t. And don’t get me started on Catholicism, female sexuality, and abortion.

Progressives are frequently advised to frame issues in moral terms if we want them to have wide resonance. However, if our concept of what is morally most important differs so radically from the “other” guy, it leaves us with one simple question: How do we talk about the full spectrum of moral issues – which are often life and death issues – with people whose concept of what can be considered moral or immoral seems to be so limited?

Reality really does bite: Where Hillary’s emails and God’s problems with profanity intersect

29 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by willykay in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Election 2016, Emails, Hillary Clinton, Media, morality, Roderigo Duterte

I read today that Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte has had a message from God:

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has promised to stop swearing, saying God spoke to him on a flight from Japan on Thursday, warning him the plane would crash if he kept using bad language.

This is the same Duterte who is directly or indirectly responsible for the murder of more than 2,400 people in a less than three month period. Most of these people were suspected drug dealers or users which, according to the quasi-facist Duterte and his supporters, makes it okay for police and death squads to condemn and execute them at will.

And then Duterte has the chutzpah to tell us that God is disturbed by his bad language.

It’s enough to put one off God.

But religion isn’t the real issue. Nor does the matter at hand have anything to do with conditions that are unique to the Philppines or any other “foreign” or “under-developed” country. It’s a question of perspective and its relation to our moral values, a question we in the United States have been confronted with every day during the current election.

Today, for instance, the paper version of my local paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ran a headline in one-inch caps reading “FBI Reviews New Emails.” The text ran down the left side of the front page and, on the other half, a half-lit profile of Hillary Clinton emerged from the dark background. Pretty sensational news, right?

Well no — although almost anyone seeing that headline layout will go away thinking that these emails constitute a momentous, game-changing discovery.

But as most of those who’ve paid attention know, once again this is much ado about nothing. The “new” emails were as Political Animal’s Nancy Letourneau notes, not from Hillary Clinton, not from her private server, not withheld from the FBI by Clinton, and are likely duplicates of emails already examined by the FBI — which is not, as many in the (perhaps intentionally) credulous media have asserted, “reopening” their investigation of Clinton.

Nevertheless, this latest irrelevant diversion will hold center stage for the next few days and possibly influence the direction of the election. The big orange pseudo-Mussolini is already crowing about how this news vindicates his absurd “Hillary Clinton for prison” war cry. Although it is unlikely to cost Clinton the presidency (knock on wood), it could depress her margin of victory, which would clear the path for a resurgent Trump or an über–nationalist Trump clone in 2018. Nor would it help with down-ballot races. At the very least, it may provide more ammunition for the GOP dead-enders who will inevitably seek to delegitimize a Clinton victory.

Meanwhile, the complex of forces unleashed in the Middle East by Bush’s invasion of Iraq are laying waste to the region, immigrants are flooding into the Western World — an influx that will only grow as the ravages of climate change increase. The warming of our world, if not mitigated in a timely fashion, will create environmental and economic wastelands. Economic and social inequality threaten the stability of the West while we are held in thrall by the ascendancy of ‘free market” advocates and oligarchs who seek to weaken the power of government to effect necessary long-term changes.

There are hard days ahead no matter who wins the election and none of it has anything to do with emails. And yet the media wants to persuade us that the election of our leaders should hinge on a just such unfounded suggestions of scandal.

It’s all a matter of moral perspective. Something that both Duterte’s God and our trivial entertainment and celebrity-sodden media culture seem to lack.

*Cross posted to Daily Kos.

Speaking Lefty Language

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

framing, George Lakoff, missouri, morality, sarah jo

A letter in the Wednesday Post-Dispatch deserves comment.

For whom does Sen. Blunt work?

Shame on U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., for choosing to stand on the side of powerful corporations instead of working for the people who elected him (“Blunt blasts EPA for Ameren lawsuit,” Jan. 14).

Members of Congress have the moral responsibility to protect the health and safety of all Americans, and this includes keeping cancer-causing pollutants out of our air.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, despite attacks on it from people like Mr. Blunt, works to keep our air and water clean enough to sustain life. Scientists at the EPA know that in an average year a typical coal plant emits almost 4 million tons of carbon dioxide, not to mention doses of arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals.

So when Ameren chooses its own wealth over our well being, our elected official should be outraged. Instead, the relationship between many of our elected representatives and corporate lobbyists has become almost incestuous.

We should ask Mr. Blunt if he works for us or for Ameren Missouri.

[italics mine]

Note that the letter writer has been listening to the advice dished out on this site by sarah jo, who summarized the Core Progressive Message, including this:

Progressives believe that the benefits of economic production should be shared by those who actually do the work and produce the wealth, not just by shareholders and top executives.

Progressives believe that the moral mission of government includes the protection and empowerment of citizens.  Protection includes education of all of its citizens,  defense against inhumane working conditions, medical care when needed,  access to safe food, air and water,  and a national defense and intelligence infrastructure commensurate with changing world conditions.

Sarah jo, a student of George Lakoff, recommends that whenever we criticize the right we should ALWAYS BEGIN BY STATING THE UNDERLYING MORALITY OF OUR POSITION. If you look at the italicized passages, you’ll see that the letter writer has done that. When it comes to effective communication with those who aren’t already in one’s own camp, Republicans have spent billions to give themselves a Ph.D. in mass psychology and linguistics. We’re in the second grade. But you get to skip a grade if you develop the presence of mind to always state the underlying morality of your position whenever you are presenting the lefty point of view. I’m going to do that–and bask in being a fourth grader.

Of course, most of the readers on this site implicitly understand that morality already, so I won’t be informing you of something you didn’t know. But, and here’s the thing, I suspect that we need to see this linguistic paradigm practiced. That’s the only way that the need for making our morality explicit to others will sink in. Otherwise, if you just read about it once, the admonition will strike you as “Yeah, yeah, she’s probably right.” And the idea will go no further.

This is an experiment. I don’t know whether I’ll find it too klunky to do it faithfully on this site. But I’ll try it, and I invite you to let me know how well you think it works–or doesn’t. (My sensibilities aren’t delicate. Speak up.)  

Kate Lovelady and a tale of two moralities

19 Wednesday Jan 2011

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ethical Society of Missouri, Kate Lovelady, missouri, morality, social security

Paul Krugman says that our political divisions won’t be easily resolved because they’re based on two different moralities:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state – a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net – morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

Kate Lovelady, the leader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, spoke about that same division in regards to Social Security. At a December workshop sponsored by the Alliance for Retired Americans, she calmly laid out her arguments, with a measure of empathy we’d do well to match … those of us who have the patience.

I hope you’ll enjoy (or else excuse) what I’ve added to reinforce Lovelady’s ideas.

Both Krugman and Lovelady stress what we Lefties need to emphasize in every conversation we have with independents and right wingers as well: the moral imperatives that underlie our political opinions. A society that pulls together so that the largest possible number reap the benefits is morally superior to, as well as more economically stable than, one that adheres to the idea that everybody is out for himself and may the Devil take the hindmost.

Lovelady said it well:

Although it can be tempting to be angry with people who want to privatize or to do away with Social Security, it might be more helpful to have pity on them. Most of them are deluded by a fantasy that they can gamble and win big.

……..

So we need to care enough to save the privatizers from themselves, as well as to make sure that they don’t hurt the rest of us.

She speaks in the spirit of those prophets of social unity, Gandhi and King.  

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