As liberals, If we weren’t busy paving the path to hell with good intentions, then we would have idle hands, which I’m told do work for the devil. I’ve been so worn down by this circular stupidity being cast in my direction that if the devil was hiring for a project, I might take him up on his offer out of sheer trying to do something to improve things here.

Meanwhile conservatives, from their curated perch of moral superiority, pave the path to heaven with privately funded toll roads. One can’t get in if he doesn’t pay, and like all those ‘what would Jesus do?’ bumper magnets, it’s just as empty and pointless if it’s filled by the likes of you. Take your weary scratch off tickets and slither back to the deserted wastelands you crawled from.

Of course we’re not just talking about roads here, we’re talking about rights. In my lifetime one party has been about expanding them, the other has been about taking them away from everyone but straight white men, pausing only to defend an outdated musket rights amendment.

Another mass shooting happened in Buffalo last weekend, and I have no confidence any meaningful change will come about as a result. Ten more people will take that stroll up the road to St. Peter, how can he possibly judge them when the crime that caused their death in 2022 was skin color? 

As an imperfect person, what place do I have to judge anyone you might be asking? These are simply observations and criticisms of the world around me that I can talk about with a clean concience because I subscribe to the gospel of: Do no harm. The choices I make and the actions I take in my life are firmly rooted in this concept, and I think there are a lot of people who would do well to follow.

After all, this belief is rooted in the Hippocratic oath that all physicians in the modern world have agreed to abide by. I live my life to do no harm to others with my actions, and limit the consequences of the ones I can live with, like hangovers. I don’t want harm-inducing republican votes to happen, or result in any of the abhorent things they believe in, but I would never attempt to re-engineer the structure of voting to take away the rights of them to make the wrong decisions.

Maybe, they will eventually choose to leave our minds and bodies out of their agenda this time and do no harm to the rest of us, but I doubt it. If the Pennsylvania primary is any indication, we are in for high surf on the sea of stupidity again this year, with no end in sight. The next time you ask the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ and the answer isn’t, ‘Buy a Prius’ you can drive straight to hell.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere to liberal parents and I will admit that I listened to a lot of conservative radio as a way of re-enforcing my beliefs. At my first job after college I would switch between Rush Limbaugh and American Family Radio to see who was giving the hot take of the day, this was way back in 2010 before they called it, ‘owning the libs.’

They were fronting all kinds of nonsense about Obama at the time, and despite passing the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 election cycle was a bloodbath for Democrats. The vitriol I heard on the christian radio station just 12 years ago has now become the reality, the systemic transition of the rule of the majority to the rule of the minority.

Thanks to three Supreme Court seats being filled by Donald Trump, the christian right has finally achieved its goal to overturn Roe V. Wade. So where do we start with capacity? This is a word defined as the maximum amount something can contain, as in, what is the maximum capacity a female human being in America has to make decisions about her own health care and her body.

I want to pause for a minute and place part of the blame on Democrats for not passing a national law on the topic, considering they have a nearly universal stance on choice, but let me stop there. The idea that a Woman does not have the capacity to make a choice on something as important as bringing or not bringing another life into this world is unconscionable.

Two-Thirds of the country believe abortion should be safe and legal, and this is not a state issue, this is a right like my ability to write this sentence is. Since the time I was listening to the very driven poison on conservative radio they have neglected to speak out against things that cause death in America like mass shootings. Attempts to make meaningful legislative change on the issue have often come down to capacity, as in the capacity of the magazine, as if that would have stopped Sandy Hook from happening.

If the United States government is more concerned about 36 rounds than 36 weeks, we have a major problem. Women don’t have a second amendment to cling to and rely on, so they need the rest of us. Unfortunately, we have a system of electing presidents that gives enough power to a minority of ignorant evangelicals instead of the will of the people.

I count myself lucky enough to have never been in a situation where abortion was on the table, but I don’t take that lightly, and I understand the weight of a decision that important. Several states have adopted ‘heartbeat’ legislation that prevents abortion after 6 weeks or a fetal heart beat can be detected. Mitch McConnell has three children, and there has yet to be a heartbeat detected among them.

Abortion is not an easy topic, but it is a topic that we have to talk about. This is especially true now considering we may now have a generation of unwanted pregnancies that will need care. A six week fetus cannot sustain life on its own anymore than a stack of dirty laundry, and I say this as a joke, but who knows it could be a Republican slogan in 4 years: Masturbation is Murder!

So when we are talking about capacity, the maximum allowable amount, why would we not think that women would have the capacity to make a decision about their own lives? Considering this is something white men have enjoyed since 1789 in the U.S. Constitution, what exactly does this say about the constitution?