Better To Be Thought A Fool Than To Be Madison Cawthorn
Greetings from Gilead, where Jesus is always smiling on us
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, the 26-year-old extremist from North Carolina, demonstrated his brittle knowledge of the issues surrounding abortion earlier this week as he argued for the reversal of Roe v. Wade on the House floor.
The Donald Trump-style Republican read out an analogy on Wednesday comparing pregnancy to a Polaroid picture in what amounted to a sermon that labeled women “earthen vessels sanctified by almighty God.”
His minute-and-a-half speech came the same day that conservatives on the Supreme Court appeared openly willing to turn back the clock on abortion rights in America by overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide.
There are few things more distressing about the abortion debate than hypocritical, Jesus-y, and uber-Republican Penis-Americans like Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) pretending that it’s got anything at all to do with Christianity. Of course, it doesn’t. It never has- because Jesus (the one I don’t believe in) said exactly ZERO on the topic. Yet anti-choice zealots like Cawthorn have seized on abortion as THE defining subject of their faith- as if abortion is ipso facto an attack on their religious freedom.
As a Penis-America, Cawthorn is at no risk of becoming pregnant- yet he believes that he has the absolute right to be among those making decisions regarding women’s bodies. He may not believe this, but being White, Penis-American, Conservative, and heterosexual confer upon him no special rights as far as controlling women’s bodily autonomy.
His minute-and-a-half speech on the floor of the House is just about the most thoroughly unhinged and offensive thing imaginable. It betrays just how little compassion he holds towards women if he indeed views a uterus as akin to “an earthen vessel.”
A woman is not an object, nor is she property of God or the state. The only person who has any right to be making decisions vis-a-vis her reproductive functions is the owner of the uterus in question. For Cawthorn or anyone else to believe they have the right to take that away from a woman is the height of arrogance. Worse, it’s un-Christian and un-American; not that such a consideration matters at all to Cawthorn.
Cawthorn began by inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to “imagine you’ve just walked out of this chamber” to see a “gorgeous sunset.”
“You have a Polaroid camera and you snap a beautiful picture, and a great photo prints out the front,” he continued.
“You hold it and shake it, waiting for the picture to appear, but suddenly someone walks by and snatches your photo, ripping it to shreds,” Cawthorn said, describing a task that would be nearly impossible without scissors.
“You cry, ‘Why did you destroy my picture?’” the congressman wailed. The callous passerby then asserts that because the Polaroid “wasn’t fully developed yet,” it was “not a picture.”
“All of us in this room realize how asinine that reasoning is,” Cawthorn said, accidentally landing on an apt description of his entire speech.
Of course, the idea of comparing a uterus to a Polaroid photograph is the height of arrogant Penis-American absurdity. There is no comparison to be made, and Cawthorn’s characterization of “how asinine that reasoning is” is far more accurate than he likely intended. It borders on being an epic- if unintended- self-own.
The problems with his analogy should be evident to virtually any sentient being. A baby is not a picture. Moreover, it takes a significant toll on the human body to bring one into the world. It also exacts a huge financial toll on caregivers, who may not be prepared to assume such a burden.
For one thing, there’s no government support, so not only are anti-choice zealots like Cawthorn prepared to force women to carry a child to term no matter the circumstances, they refuse to consider government assistance for new mothers. They LOVE babies, but they hate children once they exit the womb and see no reason to offer service or assistance.
Of course, one would also have to ask how the Polaroid Corporation feels about having its most famous product introduced into the abortion debate. I can’t imagine how that will be anything but a lose/lose situation for everyone concerned.
Sometimes- most of the time, really- Cawthorn, the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger Effect, isn’t smart enough to understand when he’s talking himself into a corner. In this case, not only does his analogy not hold up to analysis, it’s illogical and not well-constructed. But, on the other hand, it also re-confirms that Cawthorn has the intellectual depth and agility of a Polaroid photograph, which is an argument far more sound than the one he was trying to make.
We also have questions: Is the passerby supposed to represent a woman seeking an abortion? Certainly the analogy makes more sense if she is holding the Polaroid camera and making decisions about what happens to the photograph. Or is the Polaroid camera itself ― an inert object with no feeling ― supposed to represent a human woman in Cawthorn’s analogy?
There are times when discretion really IS the better part of valor, and keeping one’s mouth shut is by far the wisest course. Unfortunately for Cawthorn, he’s too arrogant and lacking in common sense to understand that, and so he rolls his wheelchair into areas where angels fear to tread. That he ends up looking foolish and callow is of little concern to him. Then again, when you’re a victim of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you’re too dense to recognize that you are, in fact, irredeemably devoid of native intelligence.
The only “earthen vessel” evident in Cawthorn’s 90-second speech is his brain…along with his non-existent sense of the absurd.
Surely the people of Asheville, NC, can do better than this intellectual and moral lightweight?
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