copyright 2010 mogmismo, used with permission.

I just received a forwarded email (copied in the first comment) from a representative of Conservative America, offering terms of settlement for divorce.  As it came to me, I reckon I am a fit delegate to respond to the offer.  My response is as follows:

Dear American Conservatives, righties, social retardists, despots, fascists, and Palin supporters, et al:

I have to say I was relieved to receive your email.  As you say, we have stuck together for years for the children, but given the obvious fact that the children are growing up and are able to make their own life choices, it’s clearly time we ended the game.  I’m in complete agreement that it’s far past time we stopped pretending to be on the same side, and I’m glad that for once you appear to be willing to talk on the level and come to a reasonable agreement.

I appreciate the fact that you clearly understand me well enough to offer some terms you feel I can not only accept, but even be happy with.  However, if this split is truly to happen on equitable terms, I have to clarify a few points.  I’m sure you will find my requests not only reasonable, but every bit as understanding and acceptable as those you have offered me.

Clearly, the dividing of assets is a necessary, but uncomfortable, part of any separation.  When it comes to actual landmass I can see that the argument could devolve to pettiness, but I think we can both be mature enough to realize that in actual fact, we rarely want the same things.  So I’ll take California, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington D.C., New York, Rhode Island, and Maryland…the states where same sex marriage is at least recognized (yes, I remember Proposition 8, but we both know it isn’t going to last (edit: told you).  I’ll also take Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, as along with California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland, they are the top solar producers.  I’d also like Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota, and Iowa, as they are the top wind power producers in the country.  It only seems fair, since you are generously gifting me the alternative energy and hoping that fossil fuels are going to work out for you.  That’s 23 states, and to even it out completely, I think I should have Washington state and Oregon, as everyone knows they like me more than you.  Oh, and I’m going to have to ask for western North Carolina, or at least Asheville, as I live there and everyone I know in town pretty much hates you.

I’m going to be honest, here, and admit that I know Texas will be a bit of a wrench for you.  But, considering the Gulf War (which I know you intend to continue) and all the oil you can siphon out of the area around the BP oil spill, I’m sure you can see that it’s really a fair split.

Once that’s settled (and I think you can hardly disagree with my logic, so that should be simple), we can move on to dividing up the rest of our assets.

I’m happy to keep the redistributive taxes, though I hardly think we’ll need them once you’re gone.  I do understand that you will be taking at least 80% of the wealth in the nation with you, but I don’t think we’ll miss it.  After all, once you’re gone we can cure cancer and other congenital diseases, as well as make major advances in alternative energy, space exploration, and other sciences, so taking a long range view I’m figuring we’ll do OK.  Just as a side note, I think I should get to keep The Internet.  I know it was your kids who started it, but you have to admit it’s been our baby for a long time, and if you really had any invested interest in it Wikipedia and Opensecrets.org wouldn’t exist.  After all, it’s just a bunch of perverts and conspiracy theorists, why would you want it, anyway?

I’m happy to take the liberal judges and the ACLU, you can have the KKK, the white supremacists, the Christian fundamentalists, and Wall Street.  You can have your guns and war, but you must also take every single person who has ever participated at a Tough Man contest, the professional wrestlers, and Nascar.  All of it.  You also can keep Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Mel Gibson.  Quite honestly, I have no idea how you’re going to afford their medical bills, as I anticipate that drugs will be rather expensive over there, but I guess that’s really your problem, isn’t it?

Happy for you to have the pharmaceutical companies and Wal-Mart, we’ll take the public universities, NPR, and alternative press.  By all means keep the Alaskan hockey moms and greedy CEO’s, and you can have the rednecks but the country folk are ours.  Actually, I think we can make this even simpler: we keep art, education, and research, and you can keep religion and the military industrial complex.  I know we’ve always disagreed about the importance of these things, so you take yours and I’ll take mine and let the best man win.

Happy to take peace with Iran and Palestine, and you go ahead and fight them until you’re blue in the face.  Not stepping in to save your economy, though, you’ll have to go a little more in hock to China for that.  Speaking of which, you take the debts.  It was your missile habit that got us there in the first place, I don’t think I should have to pay for it.

In exchange, I’ll take on the U.N. bill, but if I’m paying for it that means I get the seat on the Security Council.  You can take as many “Judeo-Christian values” as you can muster, but I get the ones who want to turn the other cheek.  I’ll take the rest of the religions, though, as well as those who don’t espouse one.  It’s that Freedom of Religion thing that I always wanted to try.  You remember the one.

By all means take the gas guzzlers.  But in exchange, I get Detroit.  You screwed the pooch on that one, and I hear some folks there have some pretty interesting ideas that I’d like to support.

As to music, you can have “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The National Anthem” (it’s called “The Star Spangled Banner”, by the way, but no one can sing it, anyway).  We’ll take all The Beatles, as well as punk rock, the blues, most rock and roll, and The Dixie Chicks.  You can have pop.

You can have the part of our history which you directed.  The loyalists during the Revolutionary War, every avowedly conservative President, McCarthyism, Japanese Internment, racism, sexism, etc.  We’ll keep the progressive bits, and I’m sorry to tell you that will include the Founding Fathers.

As to the flag, I propose a compromise:
 
You can keep the stripes, and we’ll hang on to the stars.

Sincerely,

Celestina Adams

Profligate and Heretic

In case you missed the “satire” tag…of course I believe everything I said here. Photo by billy verdin. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

**PLEASE NOTE BEFORE COMMENTING***

This article is satire.  That means (in case you can’t be bothered to click the link) that it’s not meant to be read literally.  It’s a comment on many aspects of our culture, but actually has nothing to do with my beliefs about babies.  Which means that if you comment based solely upon the title, without reading the article or thinking about its content, you will simply look like a fool.  As exemplified by most of the previous comments.  Here’s hoping someone out there can be bothered to actually read seven lines of text before blathering.  If you do, you will have restored my faith in humanity.  Thanks.

***END NOTE***

I was reading over one of the terribly predictable unbelievably repetitive many debates about the “moral basis” for and against abortion today, when it suddenly hit me: I suppose I should blame society for making me feel it is not OK for a woman to hate babies. But once I had my epiphany, I have to say everything fell into place, and my position (thus far so terribly hard to justify) was suddenly crystal clear.

Let’s consider this rationally. Babies are not people. If they were people they would have some special clause in the Constitution defending their rights. But they don’t, and so clearly our forefathers recognized their non-people status. Realistically, if we granted babies people status, we would be on a slippery slope to a point where we grant other things “people” rights. Things such as homosexuals, goats, and even cockroaches. It’s a horrifying prospect. We must avoid that future at all costs.

Let’s face it, babies are annoying, snivelling, needy little blobs who contribute nothing whatsoever to our society. They just take and take. Do we cater to any other group in America the way we cater to babies? Hell, no, and here’s why: we believe in hard work and earning your keep in America. No one gets a free ride. That’s what makes us great — everyone earns their place in our society, and you can tell who has worked the hardest by the size of their bank accounts. Do babies have bank accounts? Nope. Their worth therefore is likewise zero.

Babies also have an annoying habit of not recognizing the social mores of our culture. They ogle teats openly (not only their mother’s, mind you, but any boob which gets within their limited range of vision), they have a fascination with their own bodies which borders on the obscene (and they don’t hesitate to reveal this to strangers), they even play with their own excrement and drool on others. Are these the kind of creatures we want to call “people”? Would we tolerate this from any other source? I think not.

Now, I know there will be some who claim that we need to protect and aid those in our society who are less fortunate that we are, those who enter here without understanding our customs or our language. To you I say they should have learned our language before they came here, and it’s not my fucking job to support those who are too lazy, or too unskilled, to support themself. I work hard for my money, and I have spent years in a dedicated pursuit of fuller comprehension of the myriad complex grammatical rules and spellings of the American language. Why should some weepy little half-wit be able to come in and receive coddling and catering that I, myself, do not receive? Clearly, they shouldn’t.

What’s more, if you chart the course of these slobbering salamanders over the course of their development, many of them never transform into anything better! Visit your local nursing home, and what do you find? Aisles and aisles of “old” people (all of whom used to be babies, by the way), and what are they doing? Drooling all over themselves and being spoonfed…just like babies! Yep, they go from useless burden on society to useless burden on society just like that. Why were we so adamant about protecting the unborn, again?

Some might argue that the inherent “value” in babies is that in-between stage, where they have developed past babyhood and before they get locked in a nursing home. Firstly, I would like to point out that you are gambling, there, on a future which may never exist. Five out of every one thousand newborns born in the United States die each year, making us second highest in the world in newborn death rates. Clearly, I am not the only one who hates babies. What’s more, even supposing these slovenly sacks of spit make it through to adulthood, there is no guarantee whatsoever that they will contribute anything useful to society. Approximately 26.2% of Americans have a diagnosable mental disorder each year. That’s over a quarter of us. 31,484 Americans killed themselves in 2004. Why? Because for whatever reason they didn’t want to be here, anymore. So life is a precious gift, is it? Not for everyone. Maybe we should stop kidding ourselves. Just because we can legally force a woman to deliver a baby does not guarantee that either she, or the child, will value its life so highly.

What’s more, even if they make it through their middle years without succumbing to suicide or mind-numbing paranoia, that does not equate to them being a person I actually want to talk to. I meet people every day who are effectively nothing more than big babies in grown-up clothing. “Feed me,” they say. “Let me suck your tits,” they say. I will be the first to admit that I often wonder if there is a God, and whether it has noticed the mass quantities of completely useless lifeforms swarming the planet. Can we get another flood down here, already?!

So, yeah, I support abortions because I hate babies. I think there are far, far too many of them. I suppose it might be all right to let a few of them live, provided their mother is willing to sponsor their worthless existence until such time as they manage to bring in a decent income. I mean, if they turn out to be psychopaths it’s her fault, anyway, so she should be willing to take responsibility from the start. If a woman is not willing to sign a contract obligating herself to indefinite servitude and blame, then she should have every right to ditch the appointment. After all, if I told you that you were morally obligated to wipe the drool, clean the ass, and accept the responsibility for any mistakes of a stranger…would you accept it?