Curing our nation's 'prevalent madness'

Once again, I am forced to explain to men who feel a woman’s right to her own body and the decisions she makes is positively her right, and her right alone. I’m still puzzled by the fact that the majority of arguments about Planned Parenthood and the services it provides is so objectionable to men. They say that Planned Parenthood is a baby killer, and count the moment of conception as life. However, I have yet to see a man getting pregnant and giving birth to a child.

I know that thanks to Viagra, men are capable of creating more children and certainly enjoying the benefits of a sexual encounter at an advanced age, but I have yet to see any man pregnant and going through the birth process. So until science makes it possible, I would suggest that you button it up and stick to your own personal issues. My answer to anyone questioning the need for birth control would be to first adopt the children now alive and orphaned, and when every single one of them is taken care of, thus ridding us of the need for foster care, then we’ll talk about birth control and its pros and cons.

This country is filled with a prevalent madness, perpetuated by the Republican Party, that is only getting worse with each passing day. There is a blowhard by the name of Donald Trump who uses the press to advance his campaign, but is never called out on his ignorant comments about women, immigrants and Muslims, which should have ended his candidacy for president, if not severely harmed it. But he keeps climbing in the polls, and seems to think he is really hot stuff. Come on people! I know you’re happy to hear someone spout his ideas right and left that you may be thinking silently, but really...? This is not a man who I want for the presidency of the United States, and any thinking person should not either.

Then there is Ted Cruz, who has stated he would make the sands glow in his attempt to get rid of ISIS, by carpet bombing innocent men, women and children where he thinks ISIS is dominant regionally. Not only is that against international law, but impractical in so many ways. He is No. 2 in the polls, behind Donald Trump. Do you really want this man for the president of the United States?

Then there is Rubio the Cuban, who is an immigrant himself, as is Cruz the Canadian, both of whom can’t possibly create a pathway to citizenship, but instead are willing to keep the children born in America and send their immigrant parents back to wherever. Is anyone aware of the hundreds of Chinese women who come to the United States specifically to give birth to their child, who is then an American citizen? How about stopping them from getting visas, as well as Muslims? Well hell, let’s close our borders to everyone who is not American, even though each and every one of us has an ancestor somewhere in our lineage who is an immigrant. The only people who are not immigrants at some point are the American Indians, and we know how that turned out for them, thanks to greedy white men stealing their land and heritage right out from under them.

Really, I could go on and on about what hypocrites Republicans are, as the majority of them have managed to pretty near stop the government in its tracks by not governing. Sore losers all, still not over the sting of our country electing a black (horrors!) president, not only once but twice! They sure showed him some payback, as well as ignoring all the people who elected him, by refusing to do their job for going on eight years now, with no end in sight.

The Republicans in the House and Senate have instead tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act over 50 times now, and refuse to confirm President Obama’s appointments to various posts and offices for years. They haven’t done the jobs they were elected to office to do. Instead, there have been constant attacks and slanderous accusations toward the President, as well as Hillary Clinton. Committees have been formed and dissolved and formed again to find Ms. Clinton guilty of some sort of malfeasance regarding Benghazi and those dreaded emails, and will be dissolved and formed again until the Republicans get the answers they want.

Meanwhile, our infrastructure is crumbling and senior citizens on Social Security and Medicare are taking one hit after another (sorry, no cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients this year and Medicare is going to cost more for those of you just now eligible for it), the almost no middle class can’t make a decent living wage, yet the 1 percent make more than practically the whole rest of the country does combined.

There is so much inequality in this country, and, as a result, these do-nothing elected officials argue about how much money to allocate to war they are just itching to start, because no one gets rich in a war but the rich, and, God forbid, they can’t close the tax loopholes and tax these 1 percent people because they contribute to our re-election, so that is an absolute no-no. It’s all so obvious and disgusting.

I consider myself a fairly intelligent moderate progressive liberal person and can see what’s going on, so why can’t the Republicans do likewise? I’ll tell you why. It’s FOX news, and Rush Limbaugh, it’s Hannity and Megan Fox, it’s Republican zealots who write Letters to the Editor with no one to write back and challenge their statements. It’s the people who read such letters and say, “Really, I didn’t know that” and take it to heart without questioning their ulterior motives or fact checking the letters published, including my own.

I am truly grateful to live in the finest country in the world, flaws and all, but fear for future generations unless things change and our government changes drastically and begins to do its job. What this means to me is for you (the government) to do the job you were elected to do, and, to the best of your ability, make the needs of the people of this country your number one priority. You can do this by voting for a living wage, taxing and closing all loopholes in the tax law for the rich, allowing a pathway to citizenship to immigrants, fixing our infrastructure and roads, and generally to do what the majority of the voting public elected you to do. This, I say, is fact, not fiction.

Fiona Gressler is a retired police officer who lives in Rathdrum.