Flake’s Exit Speech

Just read it. It’s going to go down in history as an important speech (and with any luck, a pivotal moment in US politics).

**

At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord than by our own values and principles, let me note an obvious point: that these offices that we hold are not ours indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time. Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office, and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.

It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics. Regret because of the indecency of our discourse. Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership. Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end.

In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal. That we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, and the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve.

Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength, because our strength comes from our values. It, instead, projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness.

It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say? Mr. President, I rise today to say, enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal.

With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, civility and stability right behind it.

We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that.

Here today, I stand to say that we would be better served, we would better serve the country by better fulfilling our obligations under the Constitution by adhering to our Article 1 old normal, Mr. Madison’s doctrine of separation of powers. This genius innovation, which assured Madison’s status as a true visionary, and which Madison argued in Federalist 51, held that the equal branches of our government would balance and counteract with each other, if necessary. Ambition counteracts ambition, he wrote. But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency?

Were the shoe on the other foot, would we Republicans meekly accept such display from dominant Democrats? Of course we wouldn’t, and we would be wrong if we did.

When we remain silent and fail to act when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do, because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseam, when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and our liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.

Now, I’m aware that more politically savvy people than I will caution against such talk. I’m aware that there’s a segment of my party that believes that anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to a president who belongs to my party is unacceptable and suspect.

If I have been critical, it is not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the president of the United States. If I have been critical, it is because I believe it is my obligation to do so, and as a matter and duty of conscience, the notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters, the notion that we should say or do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided.

A president, a Republican president named Roosevelt, had this to say about the president and a citizen’s relationship to the office. “The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed to exactly the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.”

President Roosevelt continued, “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by a president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Acting on conscience and principle is the manner in which we express our moral selves. And as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party. We can all be forgiven for failing in that measure from time to time. I certainly put myself at the top of the list of those who fall short in this regard. I am holier than none. But too often we rush to salvage principle, not to salvage principle, but to forgive and excuse our failures so that we might accommodate them and go right on failing until the accommodation itself becomes our principle. In that way and over time, we can justify almost any behavior and sacrifice any principle. I am afraid that this is where we now find ourselves.

When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country and instead of addressing it goes to look for someone to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often, a good place to start in assigning blame is to look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops.

Humility helps. Character counts. Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly or debased appetites in us. Leadership lives by the American creed: E pluribus unum. From many, one. American leadership looks to the world and, just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man.

Humanity is not a zero-sum game. When we have been at our most prosperous, we have been at our most principled, and when we do well, the rest of the world does well. These articles of civic faith have been critical to the American identity for as long as we have been alive.

They are our birthright and our obligation. We must guard them jealously and pass them on for as long as the calendar has days. To betray them or to be unserious in their defense is a betrayal of the fundamental obligations of American leadership, and to behave as if they don’t matter is simply not who we are.

Now the efficacy of American leadership around the globe has come into question. When the United States emerged from World War II, we contributed about half of the world’s economic activity. It would have been easy to secure our dominance, keeping those countries who had been defeated or greatly weakened during the war in their place. We didn’t do that. It would have been easy to focus inward. We resisted those impulses.

Instead, we financed reconstruction of shattered countries and created international organizations and institutions that have helped provide security and foster prosperity around the world for more than 70 years. Now it seems that we, the architects of this visionary rules-based world order that has brought so much freedom and prosperity, are the ones most eager to abandon it.

The implications of this abandonment are profound, and the beneficiaries of this rather radical departure in the American approach to the world are the ideological enemies of our values. Despotism loves a vacuum, and our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this?

I have children and grandchildren to answer to. And so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit or silent. I’ve decided that I would be better represent the people of Arizona and to better serve my country and my conscience by freeing myself of the political consideration that consumed far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles. To that end, I’m announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019.

It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative, who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party, the party that has so long defined itself by its belief in those things. It’s also clear to me for the moment that we have given in or given up on the core principles in favor of a more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment.

To be clear, the anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess that we’ve created are justified, but anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy. There is an undeniable potency to a populist appeal by mischaracterizing or misunderstanding our problems and giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle — the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful and backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican Party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.

We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.

This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say the sooner the better. Because we have a healthy government, we must also have healthy and functioning parties.

We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently and never be afraid to compromise. We must assume the best of our fellow man and always look for the good. Until that day comes, we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does. I plan to spend the remaining 14 months of my Senate term doing just that.

Mr. President, the graveyard is full of indispensable men and women. None of us here is indispensable, nor were even the great figures of history who toiled at these very desks in this very chamber to shape the country that we’ve inherited. What is indispensable are the values that they consecrated in Philadelphia and in this place, values which have endured and will endure for so long as men and women wish to remain free. What is indispensable is what we do here in defense of those values. A political career does not mean much if we are complicit in undermining these values.

I thank my colleagues for indulging me here today. I will close by borrowing the words of President Lincoln, who knew more about healthy enmity and preserving our founding values than any other American who has ever lived. His words from his first inaugural were a prayer in his time and are now no less in ours: “We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely as they will be by the better angels of our nature.”

**

That line, “Mr. President, the graveyard is full of indispensable men and women” is chilling.

All the Genders #metoo

Feminist friends, sexual assault and harassment is not just a women’s issue. People of all genders are assaulted, harassed, and raped.

This includes: straight men, cis women, trans women, trans men, girls, boys, GNC people, genderqueer people, gay men, lesbians, butches, femmes, bois, queens, drag kings, fairies, androgynes, enbies, bigender people, people who are agender, asexual, bisexual, queer, transmasculine, masculine of center, genderfluid, third gender, two spirit, fa’fafine, kathoey, hjira, guevedoce, muxe, intersex, fems, ETC.

ALL OF THE GENDERS experience sexual assault and harassment. 

What is wrong is a patriarchy system of violence – rape culture – which permits or ignores when someone in a position of power feels entitled to another person’s body and sexuality.

Please, let’s not be stupid about this. Women do not own these issues. We may experience in them in greater numbers, but the shame for people who are male-identified and/or masculine is pretty goddamned significant and I’m sure we have no idea what those numbers are really.

I know women have significant trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and the rest because of this violence or the threat of it, but that doesn’t mean people of other genders don’t. They often expect to be heard and listened to and believed far less often than even we do, and that’s a problem.

Surviving sexual assault and harassment doesn’t have a gender. 

 

Birth Control Is Healthcare

With even birth control under attack, various people and organizations have been posting about all the other medically necessary reasons for birth control. I, for instance, have PCOS, which leads to all sorts of crap, including irregular periods, so they put me on birth control for 20 years. There are numerous other medical instances that aren’t pregnancy that birth control is prescribed for.

But: preventing pregnancy is a medical reason. It IS healthcare. Body autonomy is health-care.

Don’t cave to these fools. People have the right to prevent pregnancy, to plan pregnancy, and the entire nation benefits from our ability to do so.

And you have the right to have sex without getting pregnant and without getting someone else pregnant.

Punching Back

The DOJ reversal is a punch in the gut for trans people, so if you know any, please be nice to them today / this week & make sure they’re managing.

Whether this action is legal or not, the message just sent from the White House is that trans people don’t matter.

& they do, they do, YOU DO.

NCTE & TLDEF are already preparing to take the DOJ to court over this, but in the meantime, NCTE’s Mara Keisling adds:

We’ll take more punches like this before this is through, but it will end and we will prevail. And remember, this disgraceful administration cannot change the law. They can only refuse to do their jobs and enforce the law. The law still protects us. And we will win this guidance and regulations and memos all back in a few years. It hurts, and we’ll need to fight together, but we will win.

And she’s right, we will. Stay strong, folks, as I’m sure there is more bad news coming and it seems the RP has decided that trans people are a soft target, which is both despicable and mean.

If you voted for these monsters, shame on you.

CisHet White Men Questionnaire

Application Allowing Cishet White Men to Live Among Us

In the light of yet another mass shooting by a cishet white man, it is apparent that, as a group, these individuals do not quite understand the basic laws of civilization. Therefore, this committee recommends only allowing them to live among us once they have filled out this questionnaire which will in turn be reviewed by a small committee consisting of 3-5 individuals preferably including (1) RBG or Elizabeth Warren, (2) a professional woman, (3) a radical queer/trans activist, (4) an ethnic studies prof, critical race theorist or BLM activist, and (5) a gender studies professor or long-time feminist activist. Much thanks to Jonathan Swift for his input.

  1. Do some women just regret having sex the day after, or are some just making up sexual assault allegations?
  2. Do you secretly wonder if gay men find you attractive? Are you able to acknowledge in public and around other men that any man makes you a little tingly? Do you respect and admire him for that?
  3. Do you actually believe you are smarter than a black man, a woman, or any queer person? Please provide reasons and evidence.
  4. Are you absolutely sure that you can bring a woman to orgasm? Like, are you really really sure? 100 million percent sure? Are there women in your life/past who will certify that you can?
  5. Have you ever used any of these phrases while involved in sexual activity: “It’s just so hard to tell when a woman has an orgasm” “Did you come yet?” “You’d be more attractive if you __________” “I really can’t use condoms” or “But I really only get off with a blowjob.”
  6. Have you ever noticed that you talk a lot in classes/meetings/political rallies? Are you aware of talking significantly less when only other men are present?
  7. Do you maintain personal hygiene, clothing, weight, hair style, and shoe selection based on being attractive to women or gay men? Do you often think “she’d be pretty if…”?
  8. Do you watch porn/fantasize about fat women, mature women, women with penises, women with short hair, muscular women but *somehow* managed to marry/partner with a conventionally pretty, feminine, petite woman with a tiny waist and long pretty hair whose only goal in life was to have children?
  9. Do you understand any jokes women tell?
  10. Do you feel left out when in a room full of women/black people/gay and lesbian people? Does it anger you to feel left out?
  11. Have you ever stopped a meeting to point out or repeat what a woman has just said and made sure to give her credit for the idea you’ve just re-shared?
  12. How often do you call any woman who was kind to you – your mother, an aunt, a grandmother, a sister, friend, whoever – just to thank her? Have you sent her a card on mother’s day or brought her chocolate just because? Have you ever calculated the unpaid labor that people around you do to make your day/life easier? Do you, in turn, try to make it easier on them?
  13. Have you ever gotten away with some high school prank that you know would have gotten a person of color in much more trouble? Have you ever done anything to acknowledge that incident?
  14. Are you aware that you have emotions other than anger? Do you ever have them in front of other people? Are you secretly pleased with yourself if people are a little scared of you?
  15. Have you ever threatened violence, raised your fist or hand to slap or punch a woman, or threw a nearby inanimate object in a woman’s general direction?
  16. Are you aware that most of your people do not know how to resolve conflict or frustration without committing acts of violence? What are you doing to help them?
  17. Do you understand that many people are nice to you precisely because they’re afraid of you? How does that feel?
  18. Have you ever truly felt that someone owed you sex because _________________.
  19. How many times a week does someone like you make a joke that makes fun of women, black people, trans people, gay people, different abled people or the mentally ill? Have you ever shut down the person telling that kind of joke or stopped being friends with them?
  20. Do you understand that guns kill people, and that it is not our god-given right to decide to kill them depending on your mood/financial situation/having been cheated on/had a woman turn you down or break your heart?
  21. Is depression for women?
  22. Can you dance, cook more than 2 meals, get a baby to sleep, change a diaper, or resolve a conflict between children?
  23. Can you get two of your own kind to STFU, sit down, and stop arguing?
  24. Do you think of your wife or girlfriend as “yours”? Your children? Do you take pride in how good they look or in how well they do in school while doing absolutely nothing to foster those achievements?
  25. Have you ever felt you deserve a job and are surprised or chagrined because there are women, black people, and gays who are “doing better” in life than you are? Are you confused by how that is even possible?
  26. Do you understand that black men generally comport themselves in a way to be less threatening? Has it ever occurred to you that there might be any situation, save one concerning a police officer when you’re drunk, where you need to be compliant or passive and otherwise agreeing with whatever someone else is saying to you?
  27. Do you understand that violence is not a way to resolve conflict, to express emotion, or to make a political statement?
  28. How often do you tell women to smile? Do you feel better when they oblige you?
  29. Have you ever tried to explain/justify racism to a person of color, try to give pointers on how to behave around police, or even thought “just don’t break the law” when a person of color is arrested for a minor offense?
  30. Are you super proud of your daughter when she steals a base? Are you as proud when your son wants to be Wonder Woman for Halloween? Are you even aware you should be?
  31. Do you think it’s a woman’s responsibility to dress in a way that makes you capable of controlling your penis/libido/anger?
  32. Can you recite any lyrics by Morrissey, Big Freedia, or any female lyricist? Are any of those lyrics words you would have tattooed on you or that you feel you live by? Are any of your favorite bands lead by women or gay men?
  33. Do you think of yourself as a “hothead” “hot under the collar” or as someone who just “needs to let off some steam” once in a while? Have you ever noticed that children or women around you look worried or concerned when you do so? Or that, if they are able, they leave the room/house/bar when you start to get upset?
  34. Do women simply stop talking altogether when you start yelling? Have you noticed a worried, faraway look on a woman’s face when you are angry? Have you ever noticed a woman moving toward people if you are having a personal quarrel with her in public? Have you ever seen another woman glance protectively toward your wife or girlfriend during an argument with you?
  35. Have you ever started to disagree with a woman by saying “Well, actually…”?
  36. Are you aware that trans women are women, that your desire for them is heterosexual, and that having been assigned male at birth is not some weird way to trap you into expressing same sex desire?
  37. Do any of your favorite movies or books pass the Bechdel Test? Are any written by women, feature a female narrator, or involve only a female heroine or protagonist? Likewise for any books or movies written by or about black people, Native Americans, books that are translated from another language or films with subtitles?
    1. Do you know what the Bechdel Test is?
  38. Does it upset you not be able to use the N-slur, the T-slur, or to be told, in general, that you shouldn’t use a word if it is not one used to describe/denigrate you?
  39. Are you endlessly “intellectually” curious about whether women or black people or whoever can actually do science, art, comedy, or any other pursuit? Do you seek out scientific validation of your own biases and validate them by calling these studies scientific?
  40. Finally, please write a short essay explaining briefly why most of the violence in the world, especially gun violence, is committed by you & your kind. Spelling and grammar count.