January 10, 2023

What the Heck are Family Values?

Family Values! What the heck are these vaunted values anyway?

For decades those of the “conservative” ( what the heck does that mean anymore) bent have dropped those words like turds on the floor to discredit those of a “liberal” ( same as above) bent.

After much mental effort, it seems apparent that those values include as yet unborn babies but not those already living. Caring for living babies is the parent’s job, it would seem. These values also include the right to have as many weapons as you can stuff into your house but do not include storing them responsibly. This leads to another value which appears to be the right not to be bothered by any laws or regulations or anything that one disagrees with so long as one insists that Jesus is their personal savior. Free speech means I can say anything I want, and someone else must also listen, and if I am on some media or other, I must continue to get paid no matter what nonsense I speak. Not so free that speech!

Family values do not include any families that want to enter the US if those folks have other than European ancestry. There does seem to be an exception for Asians from India or China, or South Korea since those countries educate their citizens in technology which we do not seem to be able to do. Thus we need to import folks from places where education is valued and not vilified as the haunt of elitist intellectuals who often are of a more “liberal” persuasion. Any who are not regularly insist that folks with “conservative” notions are persecuted en masse.

Feeding children, funding schools, public health and medical care, and access to housing are not, so far as I can tell, “family values.” These are “socialism! The buzzword of the times.

Christian, white nationalism is a family value. That would free all those who espouse that idea from dealing with anyone who might say something that challenges their values.

One is forced to wonder what any of these ideas have to do with anything Jesus ever said, except “the poor are always with us.” Perhaps it is those words that give cover to the lack of compassion and the resistance to programs that attempt to help “the poor.”

It is stunning to view the vitriol coming from the MAGA camp, flinging hatred and sometimes violence at anyone who disagrees and making false equivalencies at every turn. Street violence and throwing incendiary devices in the direction of a federal building is not the same as invading the seat of government in search of representatives to do God knows what. Hundreds of rioters were arrested during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, but the white kid who decided to go down and keep order walked because the white guys he was threatening with his long gun scared him, so he just had to kill them.

“Family Values” is just one more undefined slogan that seems to have meaning, but like most slogans, it’s just a way to obfuscate and lend gravitas to a word salad with no content.

It’s past time to start insisting that we ask folks what exactly is meant by whatever catchphrase is spouted. I desperately would like to hear what is meant by Freedom, liberal, conservative, left, right, elites, intellectuals, and a plethora of other turd droppings. A man who insisted he was a billionaire, went to an Ivy League school, and used to live in a gilded penthouse but now lives in a gilded resort continues to condemn “elites.” What the heck is an elite if not him?

We’re down the rabbit hole, way past Wonderland and sinking down to the place the Greeks called Hades, but it is the hell of our own making.

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