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The Right's Gender Scam: How They're Conning America with Fake Outrage

A grotesque theater of bathroom panic and pronoun hysteria, designed to keep you scared, distracted, and obedient—while they ignore the real problems.

https://open.substack.com/pub/patricemersault/p/moral-panic-for-dummies?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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Idaho is one of the states suing to ban abortion medication, claiming a state interest because it's reducing the population and therefore representation in Congress and federal money.

It couldn't be because people are trying to GTFO of Idaho with its combination of crazy conservative control freaks and literal Nazis.

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My "representative" in Congress, Marianette Miller-Meeks said, in response to her opponent's accurate assertion that Iowa faces a severe OB-GYN shortage exacerbated by its six-week abortion ban with "exceptions" for which there is no mechanism to adjudicate their availability in a timely fashion that makes medical professionals comfortable they won't be prosecuted, "She’s conflating an issue. One she brought up: the lack of OBGYN providers, conflating that with abortion. It has nothing to do with that." Rep. Miller-Meeks is herself a medical professional. And either the most obtuse one ever to be granted a license, or a bald-faced liars. Any odds which one I think is truer?

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A conservative must lie. The only goal of conservatism is the acquisition and maintenance of power, and if they ran on that, they'd lose every election.

The abortion issue itself was ginned up by conservatives to win over southern Evangelicals (it was the stand-in for segregation). Outside of the Catholic Church, the anti-abortion movement is younger than the Happy Meal.

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Obligatory: Why not both?

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Red States LOVE to be voted in, but once they are, they HATE the Citizens .

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Ta, Dok. I enjoyed hiking in Idaho many, many years ago; it's gorgeous. Now it's too mad for me to set foot in, which is a damned shame. (I've never been to Boise.)

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I've been to Boise many times, but only rarely out east (and then only as a child, and I don't remember a lot). I did once visit the panhandle as an adult, and it was indeed gorgeous, but it's much like eastern British Columbia, which is far less crazy and has better health care, so if I feel the need to see that landscape again, BC is where I'm headed.

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“The most trusted bond that we can have is that between a child and their parent”. Possibly. And in an ideal world, maybe even probably. But there are so many cases where this is so far from the truth that teachers fall into the category of mandatory reporters. It seems like it’s well past time to resurrect some form of those old “I learned it from you” PSAs, and start pointing out to parents that “it’s you. They need protection from you. And once a kid works up enough courage to talk to some adult at school, we are not going to kick them back into the tank for more abuse. Because these kids don’t seem to be experiencing that trusted bond.”

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Idaho has been shit for women and kids for at least 15-20 years. My youngest cousin lives there with her husband and only child -- *only* child because Idaho's inability to keep enough qualified OB/Gyns in the state and the lack of laws mandating a better standard of care meant that my cousin ended up with an infection in her abdomen that would have been treated easily enough if caught in time; instead, it spread within her abdominal muscles, almost killed her, and cost her any chance at being able to carry another child.

Oh, and guess what? In their infinite wisdom, Idaho's lawmakers decided to remove any laws that might inconvenience less-than-stellar doctors, so a malpractice suit was not an option. Women are expendable, after all. Even crappy doctors in a shit state are apparently worth far more than the lives of any of their patients.

I gather that my cousin's husband is unwilling to leave Idaho because his own family is there. And for his familial devotion, he won't be having a bigger family of his own unless they adopt, or goddess forbid, my cousin has another medical crisis and dies on him, so he can trade her in on a newer model.

My advice to anyone considering moving to Idaho is to be VERY sure you have no medical crises planned for the time you'll be there, and that you harbor no less-than-conservative traits or points of view you wouldn't want to either hide or suffer for. And you'd have to be bug-fuck nuts to even think about moving kids into the state's jurisdiction. Idaho does not consider them as anything more than chattel.

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I was talking with a mountain biking friend last week. He and his family moved to Maine from Idaho because he was sick of all the literal Nazis, militia types, and scary right wingers who have been moving in. Idaho has always been conservative, but you can see the sort of utopia they've created for themselves up there. It's intolerable for normal people anymore.

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Brad Little is a worthless fuck, but he's the best the Republicans can offer in Idaho. He still seems to more of a Romney than a DeSantis. When he's gone, I can't begin to imagine the fucking evil daffy duck Idaho will replace him with. Think white Mark Robinson.

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He's more a old school Republican Rancher type bending to the nutcases to a certain extent.

Little was pretty good and we followed the science for the most part and he ate shit for that, so we owe him for that. The Lt. Governor is Batshit Crazy though....

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One really has to wonder what qualifications Barbara Erhardt has to make law affecting children. Her college education culminated in a BS in English and language arts education from Idaho State. She was a women's basketball coach for 4 separate college teams, ending up with a record of 12-72 while she was a head coach. She ran a sports camp and managed basketball programs.

With this stellar history, Ms. Erhardt has never married, never had children of her own. but she is said to feel that her 14 nieces and nephews and the children she coached give her the feeling of "being blessed with many children.

Any parent would know that these are not qualifications to pass legislation affecting their own children, and since getting elected to the state legislature in 2017, she has been behind bills that 1) restrict statewide sex education, 2) sponsored a bill that would required transgender athletes to play on teams corresponding to the gender they were assigned at birth, and 3) this fuckiing law. She clearly has a bug up her butt about children and sex.

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But, according to JD Couchfucker, she shouldn't have ANY say because she isn't actually a parent. If Harris' stepchildren "don't count" (which is stupid in and of itself), in his logic, neither should nieces, nephews, or other people's kids Erhardt coached.

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If you're the kind of parent who wants to make sure your kid can't talk to someone else confidentially, you're the kind of parent that your kid needs protection from.

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Horrific Idaho law.

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Parents are the worst possible choice to make decisions for their teenagers.

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My state has a parental notification law for minors getting an abortion. If that had been in place when I was 16, I'm not sure I'd be here. So many people so blithely say to me, "but wouldn't you want to know if your child was getting an abortion?" No one ever seems to think that I wouldn't my child to go through what I thought I was going to go through until I talked to the nice lady at the clinic.

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People like that never consider that if a teenager doesn't want their parents knowing they're having an abortion they might have a very good reason.

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That kid and her baby are just plain doomed.

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Well Idaho is one of the states that said they didn’t have enough teen pregnancies, so I guess, winning?

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In addition to the governor of Idaho, one Republican member of the legislature was mentioned as saying the law was going cause a lot of problems but still voted for the law. Sort of like Mitch McConnell, after blaming Trump for 1/6 and admitting Trump would be dangerous to democracy if he was elected again, said I'm a Republican, who do you think I'm voting for, Trump. Or Bill Barr saying basically the same thing. Unless they changed their oath of office, they swear to protect and defend the constitution, not Trump. Although if Trump is elected, that oath may change to "protect Trump and screw the constitution". A more blatant example of party over country cannot be found. Along with violating their oath of office, which should be a felony.

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Ffs, every single asshole in the legislature who voted for those crappy laws -- and now claim to have had misgivings (feelings that mysteriously appeared only *after* the fallout, no doubt) -- still owns responsibility for young lives ruined and lost, every bit as much as any legislator who didn't claim to have second thoughts. If ANY of them cared one bit about the lives ruined and lost because of THEIR ACTIONS, they've done precious little about it.

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Even if it was Garland would do fuck all.

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Sadly, it appears as though nearly half of the voting population of the United States would prefer some sort of strongman dictator ruling over a fundamentalist Christian theocracy as opposed to what we have had in the past.

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