The Virginia Senate, in a grotesque Party-line vote for the unconscionably inhumane treatment of all pregnant captives of its jurisdiction, has moved to compel the burden and the frivolously punitive trauma of a mandatory ultra-sound invasion of the womb before any procedure to terminate a pregnancy. Gallantly, our cavaliers do not compel the patient to view the illustrations arising from this lewd prank, nakedly gutting its own pretenses.
But there is, so tellingly and so chronically in their endless horror of female empowerment, the lechery of the lying Giacomo in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, seducing her husband to believe her unfaithful. At the core of this jest of rectitude, they need an image to project their fearful pruriency; if it isn't Cymbeline's mole, it's the shadow of an ultra-sound:
For further satisfying, under her breast
(Worthy her pressing) lies a mole, right proud
Of that most delicate lodging. By my life,
I kiss'd it, and it gave me present hunger
To feed again, though full. You do remember
This stain upon her?
Ay, and it doth confirm
Another stain, as big as hell can hold ..
Not merely exulting in the wings, but exhorting this stark oppression forward, has been the Pat Robertson-trained zealot Governor, defending himself by asserting the duty to inform the sub-citizen gender of its incompetence. Now running for Vice-President, he is the same man who lied to gain election, by repudiating his own thesis to get an academic degree. Now he has the allies he needs. In its freshly minted profile of dis-embodied dogmatic degeneracy, the present gov-ernment of the Commonwealth of Virginia rushes to the beat of fanaticism. This is the face of that Party which demands this year to rule this nation. Again and again, if not more constantly, its hypocrisies are equalled in number and purity only by its tautologies. They cite a dogma for every abuse of right they inflict. The Party which con-tests the obligation to accept health insurance as unconstitutional has voted to compel a procedure and its many dimensions of cost against the inviolable exercise of a Constitutional right, as a benign act of illumination. Wherever it can, throughout the nation, this Party is imposing torturous burdens upon the right to vote, but it has not resorted yet to the ostensible practice of medicine to deter the young, the poor, and the unwhite from the polls. I wait in confidence for that brainwave.
Beneath it all, the nasty sucktooth cracker and the smirking fratboy preen to claim the auspices of sectarian chivalry. There is nothing about this intimidation, this humiliation, this worse than sordid invasion of human rights which is not directly traceable to gender chauvinism and dilettante rape. Decent people shudder to bear the name of their faith.
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
II, 134-140
1609
The Arden Shakespeare
J.M. Nosworthy, editor
Methuen & Co., Ltd, 1955©
Stephen Greenblatt
Shakespeare's Freedom
op. cit.
These people are Dominionists, wanting nothing more than their version of heaven on earth, which is actually hell.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your visit and for the nomenclature you offer; under any nomenclature, I concur in your prognosis of such policies. In the several hours since this entry was composed, I have been bothered by the last sentence, considering whether to edit it to say, "... bear the name they give to their faith." What I resist in such a change, is emulating their own jihad to read me out of my faith. So I'm particularly grateful for your emendation here, and will leave the final line of the text as-is, for the trouble it portrays. If one were to rank the cruelties these people take such open delight in inflicting, one would have to rate very, very high their horrid discourtesy toward people of conscience, and their willingness to invoke the powers of the State to injure the human heart.
ReplyDeleteI'm extremely grateful for your consideration.