The Ends Can Be Problematic: When the Means Are Used as a Means to be Mean

Hello my Missives!  I understand if you are a bit pissed off at me.  After all, it has been over a week since I have written about the problems of the world and being the true Missives that you are, you wanted to read me bitching about things so that you could bitch right along with me.  Now, all you have to bitch about is the fact that that I haven’t given you something new to bitch about.  I wanted to write sooner believe me, but something interesting happened last week that completely changed what I was planning to write about.

It appears that President Obama is at it again.  I could have just immediately written about what it is he was up to, but I figured that my talents would be better served if I waited for everybody to bitch about it first.

Last week the President announced that he would begin enacting the DREAM Act that was defeated in Congress two years ago.  Put in its simplest terms, the DREAM Act is legislation that outlines a legal pathway to U. S. citizenship for young people who, having lived here their whole lives, are American in everything but the legal sense.  The move prompted the usual complaints about immigrants—the jobs that they are taking away from Americans who desperately need them, the fact that as illegal immigrants those helped by the DREAM Act get to live in America tax free, the fact that true Christian Americans don’t support such a conciliatory move towards immigration in the first place.  There were also many conservatives who complained about the audacity of the President to ignore Congress and enact legislation that they had voted down in 2010, some going so far as to intimate that he’d exceeded his powers in doing so.  Finally there was the accusation that President Obama had merely made the announcement for political gain.

I would like to take a brief moment to look the Americans asking these questions and making these claims in the eye and ask them to please stop being so fucking stupid.

Where to start?  Well let’s start with the fact that the President did not pass the DREAM Act, and he certainly didn’t exceed his powers.  The President simply called for a cease on the deportation of young, undocumented immigrant workers that have been living in America for most, if not all, of their lives because they were brought to America as children by their parents.  President Obama’s announcement wasn’t an example of him exceeding his power either.  He stopped the deportation by executive order.  President George W. Bush issued almost 300 of them and conservatives never seemed to think any of those were illegal.  To compound the stupidity, it should be noted that this is far from the first executive order that President Obama has signed; he’s issued over one hundred.  In fact, since the thirties almost 8000 executive orders have been issued by U. S. Presidents.  Learn some fucking history before you comment on the present, you know?

Now, to address the “jobs for Americans” and “taxation of the undocumented” concerns of the patriotic American, well you should have all supported the DREAM Act in the first fucking place.  The DREAM Act was a pathway to citizenship for those young immigrants that are as American as you are with the one small exception of not being born to parents that were born in America themselves.  If you really want American jobs to be held by Americans you should support a means by which so many people can become American, and if you’re really concerned with undocumented workers not paying taxes you should definitely support a pathway to citizenship.  Once these workers are American you can tax the fuck out of them.

Of course none of this really matters, right?  I mean this is all just political posturing right?  Even Republican Nominee Mitt Romney (can we drop the “presumptive” please?  Do we really have to wait until the goddamn Republican Convention?), who still refuses to say anything about immigration beyond . . . well anything claimed that the President only made the announcement for political gain.

SO FUCKING WHAT!  There are a number of things that are disturbing about our current political climate, but one of the most disturbing things to me is the hypocritical finger pointing by this politician at that politician for being political.  It’s politics.  Has everybody forgotten what the job description of a politician is?  Would Mitt Romney have us believe that he is not trying to make political gains?

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that this executive order was strictly a political move, does that matter if it’s the right thing to do?  This election, conservatives seem to be obsessed with the means by which President Obama achieves his ends.  To believe the Republican narrative is to believe that President Obama doesn’t believe in anything at all.  Everything he’s done or said has been minimized by this argument.

Which brings me back to my earlier contention about the President being at it again.  He’s done it again, he’s taken a ballsy stand on something his opponents can do nothing but attack him for, and that’s exactly what they have done.  However in doing so they keep attacking all of the people he’s standing up for.

President Obama thinks that women should be paid the same as men?  Well, President Obama is trying to politicize women to use a tool to get reelected.  He’s trying to wage that “war on women” you’ve heard so much about.  As conservatives the only smart thing to do is to prove how much we truly care for working women by voting against this equal pay and extol the virtues of stay at home mothers (maybe for good measure we can roll back reproductive rights four decades).  Now Obama can’t use the passage of such legislation in his campaign and women can legally get paid less.  Did the ends justify the means here?

President Obama supports same sex marriage?  Well, he’s just trying to make gay marriage an issue in the campaign when this is a question that the American people answered years ago, so as conservatives we should remind everybody that marriage is between a man and a women and push a fresh set of ballot initiatives in states across the country.  However, years have a way of passing, and same sex marriage grows in acceptance as each one does.  Conservatives can take pride in the fact that they continue to advocate the denial of basic civil rights to an entire group of Americans by vilifying them because their churches told them to.

There is a pattern here.  President Obama suggests decency and fairness for women, homosexuals and the children of illegal immigrants, and he is attacked by the vitriol of a Republican Party that seems to have adopted vitriol as its platform.  He is accused of only making such stands for political gain, but he is well ahead amongst women, LBGT and Hispanic voters; he has their votes anyway.  The social stands that he has taken in the last three months can only lose him votes.  Still, conservatives consistently claim that his motives aren’t pure because he’s only doing this to get reelected. Obviously he’s trying to get reelected, but if that were all he was after, why would he be saying so many bold things that could actually cost him the election?

Finally, since conservatives seem to be so concerned with purity of motives, what is their motivation in insisting that these people aren’t people at all but a presidential sound bite?  What is their motive in going so far out of their way to deny all of these people the fair treatment they deserve?  As Americans, aren’t we supposed to treat everybody with fairness, isn’t that the point?  Are Christian Americans only supposed to be Christian to other Americans and other Christians?  That’s rather non-Christian isn’t it?

You see, I have a problem justifying their ends and their means because all too often it seems as though being mean is their end.  Need something to bitch about?  Bitch about that.