For those willing to take the time to look, they will see that we - in the USA - is in the thick of a madding crowd. Not just in the nook and cranny but even in the halls of Congress, for there is a growing illness infecting the nation's psyche. Let's begin with the slightly benign, though no less debilitating.
In the House Judiciary Committee Hearing, on March 1, 2022:
Aimee Arrambide, the executive director of the abortion advocacy group Avow Texas, was asked by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) what she believes the definition of a woman is.
"I believe that everyone can identify for themselves," Arrambide said.
When asked if she then believed that men could therefore get pregnant and have abortions, her response was a simple "yes." Bishop did not push the topic any further.
In a joint Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing two months earlier, the nominee for the recently vacated Associate Justice of the Supreme Court declined to answer a question on how she would define a woman, declaring she is not a biologist. That "duck and weave" of a response was out of avoiding a backlash from the liberal and woke politicians and media if she answered in a singular way that would have described the natural male/female definition of the two sexes.
Madding (Old English)
adjective:
1. acting madly or senselessly; insane; frenzied:
a quiet place far from the madding crowd.
making mad:
2. a madding grief.
Madding USA might as well sound like, "Made in USA", because only here that a school district had authorized the placement of Tampons in the boys restrooms.
May 6, 2022 .. In July 2021, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed the controversial “Menstrual Dignity Act,” which requires all K-12 schools to provide free ..
“Starting next year (2022-2023), products will be available in all restrooms (male, female and all-gender) in every PPS building where education occurs,” the Portland school district said in a 2021 statement.
“To ensure timely compliance, PPS ordered 500 dispensers. Dispensers have been installed in all elementary and middle school girls’ restrooms, and more will be installed in all remaining bathrooms, including boys’ restrooms, next year,” it said.
Oregon is the same state, same governor, that "will no longer require its students to demonstrate proficiency in math, reading and writing in order to earn a high school diploma..". Students will get a "modified diploma".
If one is looking for an example of the height of insanity, Mount Everest would seem like a molehill compared to how far up the la la cloud the State of Oregon had soared.
Meanwhile, in Kiel, Wisconsin, three elementary students were charged by the school district for sexual harassment for not using the proper pronouns to refer to another student, since the latter declared to be referred to "they" in place of "he" or "she". This pluralization of a singular gender identity is clearly an insane destruction of proper grammar, at a critical time when students are struggling to adhere to the tenets of good writing, reading and math.
Some schools had already disbanded the honors classes for fear of offending those not in it. In many graduation ceremonies we no longer hear about valedictorians and salutatorians. It will offend the rest of the graduating class.
We wonder why China, Singapore, South Korea and a lot more other countries are outperforming U.S. high school proficiencies in science and math.
Now, for some of the malignancy that is dividing the country further and weakening it down as represented by no less than a disconnected view the Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen took, when she declared:
“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades”.
In effect what she said was, "that banning abortion would be “very damaging” for the economy by reducing women’s ability to balance their careers and their families".
She doubled down even further, “It means that children will grow up in poverty and do worse themselves,” Yellen responded. “This is not harsh. this is the truth.”
Fortunately, a sitting Black Senator from S. Carolina was able to balance the Senate hearing with one profound statement:
“I’ll just say that as a guy raised by a Black woman in abject poverty, I am thankful to be here as a United States senator,” he said.
True story, one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a black woman who was at the adjoining lane at the pool of the fitness center. She was using the pool as part of her physical therapy post a knee surgery. The conversation led to talking about family. She has one son that immediately I could tell was much the source of her greatest pride. As a single mother she raised him since 31 years ago when she was just eighteen. She went against the advice of many around her to not go through with her pregnancy. It was the same people around her who blamed her further when at six months old the baby was diagnosed with Down Syndrome.
Her son, whom she describes as not near fully able to function normally, was able to read and write though not at the same pace as the other kids his age growing up, yet is capable of taking care of himself. He is often asked to "deliver a sermon" at their local Baptist church from time to time.
I can tell from her beaming eyes and and broad smiling face how proud she is of that child. She must have sacrificed so much to raise that child while she pursued a vocational career to earn enough to avoid giving him up to foster care early on. She is 49 now but she still looks at herself as a proud single mom, because that child might be forever childlike but remains the greatest joy of her life.
We can be sure there are countless examples like that but what of the countless more, a hundred times fold, of those whose lives have never seen the dawn of birth, their beating hearts and limbs afloat in motherly cocoons but never had the chance to feel the coolness of the outside air nor the glare of lights outside the womb nor hear the din of voices other than their mothers'.
This issue, mind you, shall be one that will divide the nation further away from where the middle is, almost exactly. It is so unbelievable that a political system from which this great nation had grown and flourished since its inception almost three centuries ago, buoyed by the rule of the majority, is now divided at the almost unbreachable bulwark of a 50-50 population.
If this nation could not find a way to re-unite soon, the weakened state of a divided country will open up its belly, infected from within and exposed to all that will be harmful to it from without.
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