Cruel intentions

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I can’t even remember when or how I became a Democrat. I grew up addicted to politics, with the innermost knowledge that I would always be a Democrat. I bet it was that way for many of you as well. Sometimes who we are – our chosen identity — is with us from childhood or even birth. It is ingrained in us, and we do not remember how it got there. We just know it’s a part of us.

And Democrats equal democracy. Democrats equal fairness, doing good, and helping the less fortunate. We all share the knowledge that we want to do good. Some people don’t. Some people, in fact, are the opposite. They never perhaps developed moral fiber or a little thing called a conscience. They never perhaps saw women as equal to men. Perhaps they were born that way. We’ll never know.

What we do know is who they are NOW. And the GOP is the party of doing cruelty. As much good as we want to do? The GOP would like to sabotage these efforts. Case in point: Abortion. The GOP can’t let the subject go because their hostility toward women is a part of them. They cannot let it go even when they know it’s a losing issue.

Just ask United State Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma because he has revealed himself and others in the GOP. During a speech on Tuesday, Lankford made clear what the ambitions are for some members of the GOP. And those ambitions are to make abortion: “unthinkable.”

Lankford, in this speech, equated abortion — ALL abortions — to murder. He did not seem to worry about ten-year-old girls who were victims of gang rape. He did not seem to worry about women and what THEY believed at all. The floor was his, and the revelations poured from his lips like the most poisonous cocktail.

“I’m working on making abortion unthinkable,” Lankford said flatly. “At its most basic level” he continued, “there is no difference between any one of us in this room and when we were at this stage right here in our mother’s womb.”

It’s horrifying, isn’t it? It’s horrible to hear this smug, sanctimonious disdainful man speak. This man obviously sees women as mere objects. These stories serve as highlighters about who the GOP is and who they will always be. They are the party of cruel intentions. Perhaps they were born that way.

They are a warning that we keep abortion in the spotlight. Because as much as we may have known who we were from an early age, I suspect folks like Lankford did as well. That’s the true danger in all of this.