Blame Jim Bob and Michelle

The Duggars. Ugh. We’ve had almost 20 years of these quiverfull zealots. I had a family member who was obsessed with them. “Look how Michelle has those kids trained! How does she do it? They all play instruments and she teaches them.” And on and on and ON. It was nauseating.

You know, it’s ok if you want to live that way but on the lifestyle choices graph, the Duggar family is definitely an outlier. Consider their radical form of Baptist theology meant that their whole family was and still is tied to women as breeders in a strictly patriarchal purity culture on steroids. In fact, Michelle Duggar advised her daughters and daughters in law to never refuse sex with their husbands. And that means unprotected sex. While it looks like some of the Duggar girls have decided not to follow their parents’ rules, Anna Duggar, Josh Duggars’ long suffering wife appears to live by them. Josh was arrested in April on the receipt and possession of child pornography. He was found guilty of both charges today. And Anna Duggar gave birth to her seventh child in October.

Josh is looking at a minimum sentence of 5 years and possibly 20 years in jail. Those seven kids will grow up without their dad, which actually might be a good thing for the daughters. Anna Duggar won’t have a husband and her lifestyle choice didn’t prepare her for bearing the financial burden of raising a family of seven kids.

The number of victims of Josh’s child pornography lifestyle choice is staggering. I don’t even want to know what the images contain except that the prosecutors claim that some of them were the worst they’d ever seen and there were over 100 images or remnants of images recovered from his hard drive.

Josh has had a problem with sex on multiple occasions over the years. Im not surprised. The lifestyle choices his parents made put such a high price on normal sexual development that there was no natural outlet for Josh. He didn’t even kiss his wife until they were married and the video of that kiss looked like some kind of primitive ritual. The entire church was present when he was finally able to perform what should have been a private act. I remember thinking at the time that it was obscene, as if the whole congregation was going to later get off on Anna’s deflowering.

The preoccupation with chastity is at the heart of the turmoil over Roe v Wade as well. Women need to guard themselves. They need to save themselves for marriage. And then they must submit themselves to their husband’s demands and fulfill their divine natures as perpetual mothers and long suffering wives.

I feel sorry for Anna. Her choices were taken away from her at the age of 18 when her father handed her to her husband. They have a covenant marriage which makes divorce difficult if not impossible. She did her duty and answered her calling like so many other outlier Baptist sect followers and Mormons and Jehovahs Witnesses and nebby fundamentalist evangelicals and strict Catholics who want their fringe sexuality lifestyle choices acknowledged as the one true way with all of the child sexual abusers that these sects seem to create and protect.

These are the people who are deciding what your daughters can do with their bodies.

Waiting….

For the Build Back Better bill to come to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

For the Select Committee on the January 6, 2020 insurrection to hold public hearings.

For another attempt to pass the Voting Rights bills.

For a major effort undertaken from the White House to have Democrats override the filibuster on the bills, so as to try to protect American elections.

For more contempt proceedings against insurrectionists who refuse to appear for hearings or depositions.

For more direct attacks by Democrats on the Republican Party, which is 95% in the hands of violent extremists who will accept no election result in which they do not win, and who intend to contest any such results in 2024, and throw the election into the House, where they will win, and thus steal the presidency.

For some people to become sick of Fox News, the totalitarian network full of endless lies and propaganda.

For protection of elections to become the #1 issue for Democrats, and the one that is brought up in every public appearance.

For immense sums of money being spent by Democrats in states, to try to insure that state election boards are not taken over by people whose only goal will either be to overturn any election that the Democrats win, or cause enough stalling and disruption, that the presidential election votes cannot reach the notorious “safe harbor”day, and thus the House gets to decide, and hand the election to Republicans.

For President Biden and Vice President Harris to alert the American people as to how this is going on right now, and how it must be prevented.

For the media to talk about how gas prices are going down.

For the media to note that inflation is receding, and that the supply chain is improving; to finally change their daily narrative of “soaring inflation,” and “the store shelves are empty, and no one can buy supplies or presents.”

For the media which hailed a gain of 200,000 jobs in one month under Trump as “strong,” and disparaged a gain of 200,000 jobs under Biden as “sluggish,” to either admit that they are in the hip pocket of Republicans, or to actually act like a media, and start reporting news. rather than pounding narratives.

For someone in the media which is not a totally right wing radical venue, to realize that if this becomes a totalitarian state, or even if the election is handed to the Republicans by the Congress, no one but right wing radicals will watch them, everyone else will be too angry or upset or demoralized; so that most of them will either go out of business, or have to change their format to wrestling or game shows.

For people to stop saying, “The Democrats hold a majority in the Senate,” when two Democratic senators voted against imposed vaccine mandates on businesses. For the media to stop saying, “Some Democrats opposed Biden’s plan, too,” when it was two out of fifty. For them to tell the story and then let the listeners figure it out, rather than to try to fit the stories into their prefabricated narrative.

For the news stories to even occasionally start with good economic news, given that almost all major indicators are positive. and that most large financial institutions are forecasting robust growth next year.

For at least some people to stop using those insidious Alexa and Siri, and other pleasantly named installations, which listen to your calls, tell you how to live your life, and foster dependence by people who apparently cannot do anything of their own accord, or make their own choices. Maybe they should see Pixar’s “Wall-E,” which showed a future of overweight humans sitting on lounge chairs, having all varieties of junk food and drink brought to them, and never moving a foot outside their chair. Or the “Twilight Zone” episode where William Shatner, sitting in a diner with his wife, becomes so obsessed with the little fortune telling machine which gives out ambiguous messages on slips of paper, that he will not move from his spot, because he is not sure that it is safe.

For someone to point out that “cancel culture,” so called, originated on the Right, with book burning and blacklisting; and that Republican governors like DeSantis and Youngkin have recently called for various books to be banned.

For this “War on Christmas” idiocy to stop being effective in riling up people. We also had a “War on Thanksgiving,” soon a “War against May Day.” Well, perhaps not that one, maypoles, and all.

For people who write reviews online to stop using the word “hilarious,” which has become a catch-all for anything they thought was funny. Also those childish words like “gotta,” “gimme,” “kinda.” “The Great Gatsby” is “kinda interesting,” “it’s gotta be one of the most important novels,” “This new movie (any comedy movie) is hilarious.” As if the language has devolved a la Orwell’s prediction in “1984.” And using slang and contractions out of an “Archie” comic book of the ’50’s, does not make these writers hip or cool or post-modern.

For a new novel which is truly great, like the great classics were.

For a radio music station which I can actually listen to for an hour, like I could in the ’60’s, or to the indie stations in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s.

At first flash of Eden

We raced down to the sea

Standing there on freedom’s shore

Waiting for the sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting for the sun

Can you feel it

Now that spring has come

And it’s time to live

In the scattered sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting

Waiting for you to come along

Waiting for you to hear my song

Waiting for you to come along

Waiting for you to tell me what went wrong

This is the strangest life I’ve ever known

Can’t you feel it now that spring has come

And it’s time to live in the scattered sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting for the sun

Waiting

For the sun

The Doors

“Waiting for the Sun” (1968)