Horse 3366 - JD Vance And The Cat Ladies

Back in July 2021 when JD Vance was running as a hopeful for the position of United States Senator from Ohio, like any good Republican who needs to bend the knee and show loyalty and fealty to his handlers, he went on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. In a case of "there's always a tweet" or "there's always a clip", yet again we find an example where someone has said something where they have been utterly sincere, in which their character is on display.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SSGKiUBrfAU

Now admittedly politics is a dirty game and in a dirty game, mud will thrown. However even the dirty games like American Football, the two kinds of Rugby, Australian Rules Football, Gaelic Football, and just Football, there are Laws and "the spirit of the game" which is mentioned. Mr Vance has done what we would call playing the player and not the ball, and while that seems to be accepted in the game of politics, it is still a dirty tactic. Having said that, he won the position of United States Senator from Ohio in 2022, which proves that dirty tactics work.

I am not all that surprised that this kind of comment should be found in someone like Mr Vance's past, and especially coming from someone who was endorsed by the very militant Christian CINO-right because these are the kinds of people who see women as lesser and subservient to men, and who think that a woman's place is no more than to be a mother to their children. 

Please note, I do not in any way wish to disparage motherhood. Choosing to raise children is arguably one of the most selfless and difficult jobs on the face of the planet; which demands so very much more from women than men. Have you seen children? Children start out as messy and noisy and when they get bigger, they begin to start talking back and get messy in different ways. The fact that you do have women who choose to give and give and give and give of themselves, magnitudes beyond what we would expect of any worker in any paid position, is noble and quite frankly incredible; which is why the CINO-right are so hideously insidious in their disparaging of that as well. If the full economic cost of motherhood was actually paid by the men who think that they aught to lord it over the world, then they would be as bankrupt as they are morally.

It's also quite frankly insulting to the scripture which the CINO-right likely never reads. Who is it that mostly causes the idiocy and stupidity within the text of the Bible? It's men. When you do get women in leadership positions, they are generally competent and brilliant at their job. Also, the often cited section from Proverbs 31 illustrates a woman who is a business titan, who is smart, who is savvy, who is able to argue her own, and who is gloriously competent.

This is why JD Vance's comments are small, petty, and stupid. Kamala Harris might be the inheritor of the probable leadership position of a political party which is generally impotent and small minded, but it is exactly the same kind of impotence and small mindedness which characterises his own. Yes the Democrats have spent most of the past 12 years playing stupid identity politics but the Republican Party have also spent most of the past 12 years playing stupid identity politics, with a different set of hats and masks. 

Rather than attack what Ms Harris did as Attorney General of California, or her track record on legislation, he chose to do this. Why? 

Because it works.

I cite JD Vance as proof. He won the position of United States Senator from Ohio in the very election cycle where this video is from. 

It plays well in sandlot politics. Rather than play the very big game of attacking her on record of policy, or the even bigger game of laying out his own vision and policy on how to get there, Mr Vance chose the smallest game. This is like Babe Ruth trying to wail on twelve year old kids in the empty lot but finding that he actually up against Barry Bonds. (Okay, I admit that I have very little idea about the cultural overlay of baseball.)

If you take this at face value, what business is it of Mr Vance that Ms Harris does not have children anyway? There might be some very good reasons why someone does not have children. There might be some medical reason, which although they may want children, is preventing them from having them. They might have tried and can't. Or they may have wanted to and the pressures of life made it difficult and that time passed them by.

They may also, and this might surprise Mr Vance, not choose to have any. Some people just might never have the motivation to have children. Some people just know that they should not have children. Is Mr Vance trying to disparage Ms Harris by inferring that because she doesn't have children that she is unfit to lead the nation? I am sorry but I do not see how that logically follows. Never mind the fact that civic philos and familial philos are different, matters inside one's personal and intimate relationships such as eros are also quite different from civic philos. Logically, Mr Vance's comment is a non sequitur and therefore incompetent. 

Is Mr Vance trying to draw a line of equivalence which suggests that Ms Harris is incapable of love? I do not have children and this has been directed at me personally. Let's assume for a second that this is in fact true, then what? Would Mr Vance force someone to have children, who he has judged as being incapable of love? What kind of a sick twisted mind would suggest such a thing? To condemn a child to a life where they are unloved? Why would you wish that on someone? 

Some people might even choose to do something else, like give themselves over to a life of public service. In that respect, the fact that you would have someone who chose not to have children and chose to serve their community, their state and their nation, has done something which Mr Vance has chosen to disparage.

To that point where he says that childless people have no the stake in the future of the country. This has all kinds of implications. Should we give six year old children the vote, since they have the biggest stake in the future of the country? Should we remove the franchise from old people, since their stake in the future of the country is actually quite limited? Exactly what does he think about service personnel who dies while fighting for the future of the country? If they died without children, was their sacrifice worthless by that metric? What would he say to George Washington who also never had any children? 

I hope that he is consistent and decides to personally spit in the face of all military personnel, all police, all fire fighters, all medical staff, and every other public officer that he meets because he may as well have told each and every one of them that he thinks that a life of public service is worthless. If this is true, then why is he running for the office of Vice-President?

Perhaps what is worse about this, in trying to disparage Kamala Harris for being a childless woman who is running for office because this might offend his pretend religious beliefs as a CINO, is that he is quite prepared to overlook the fact that the person whom he will be running alongside and be servant to, was impeached from improper payments to a porn actress from a political fund, and who has been held up in court as a rapist. How very little do you have to think of women, where that kind of thing is not only acceptable, but clearly a plank of belief which holds up a core of values.

I also think it interesting that Mr Vance should specifically go after Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Why specifically those three? Again, we hearken back to the game of playing stupid identity politics and what he didn't say but wished he could: "It was better in the days when women weren't in politics and didn't have the vote"? or "It was better in the days when we could stone gay people"? 

He might not be able to say these things for fear of calling down a yell-down war-hellride but many in his electoral base are thinking that (some even say such things). There is a reasonably vocal section among Republican Party supporters who have been successfully captured within churches, who quite like the idea of a Christofascist Ethnostate, or at very least believe in a small vending machine god whereby if you put prayers in you get blessings out. Obvious codified dog-whistling is obvious sometimes.

And since everything is about me, then would JD Vance think that I should not have the vote because I do not have children? I wonder what he would make of my political positions that public education and university education should be free, that there shouldn't be private health care and that all health care and hospital services should be free at the point of delivery? What would he say to someone who thinks that the most important word in the US Constitution is in fact that very first one "We" and that all of the very big projects of civil society can only be fought for, and only be built, as collective projects?

And lastly, if we take the most petty and incidental part of this argument, what is exactly wrong with being a cat lady anyway? Does Mr Vance have cats? Does he hate cats? If he had cats then he would know that they are sometimes irrational, sometimes demanding, sometimes aloof sometimes insane creatures, wrapped up within 10 to 20 pounds of floof and murder spikes. People have cats because they like cats. People are allowed to like what they like. People have cats, likely already know that the irrational, demanding, aloof, and insane, beings whom you share your house with, answer mostly to no-one. If anyone is most qualified to be President Of The United States, then it is someone who knows how to deal with irrational, demanding, aloof, and insane, beings and loves them anyway. Arguably someone who has cats is over-qualified to be President Of The United States because they have dealt with this in miniature.