Thoughts While Watching the House Defund PPFA

1. I like watching the House of Reps on CSPAN live. I like knowing who the players are. I like watching the formality of it all.
2. Why do they have to say “I move to strike the last word” every time they end their speeches?
3. The Republicans make my insides shrivel up a little bit. I want to hit them with my big liberal weapon: REASON. But they have reason-shields, mostly made of condescension and the willingness to say things that aren’t true over and over and over again.
4. I hate it when doctors who are congresspeople talk is if they, actually, have all the knowledge ever.
5. Shouting logical fallacies at the computer or twitter does not make the Republicans blink or stop talking. They don’t care about logic. They have removed logic for the sake of pathos.
6. If Republicans couldn’t talk about the babies, all the babies, and had to talk about individuals who can actually vote, then what would they have left to say?
7. I wonder if all the congresspeople get bored when somebody describes abortion in gruesome detail. Do they roll their eyes when asked if they themselves could perform this surgery, because they know that they really couldn’t perform any surgery (except the doctors)? Or do they really think about it? They have to hear it so often, that I imagine they just text their friends about how they really want a Diet Coke instead.
8. When Democrats get up and say something logical, or something that exposes the silly configuration of logic that a Republican has just gone through, I’m happy, but wonder if that is just liberal logic porn to counter conservative abortion porn.  These clear bouts of reason clearly do nothing to shift the vote, just as reading from propaganda books does nothing to sway the other side.
9. Except this one comparison, that Rep. Speier brought up Halliburton, and was like, if you want to talk about forcing taxpayers to pay for things that are immoral or illegal, then let’s talk Halliburton. And she brought up responsibility. She got her ethos on, and it worked.  That one broke through the logic shield a little bit, though it does seem like it might not be irresponsible of the Democrats to defund Halliburton, but alas, now I am in an ethos/logic sink of my own, and very far off the already farflung path of getting money to PPFA.
10. When congresswomen speak about having actual uteruses, like in their own bodies, it makes me realize about a thousand to the nth power more how important is have to all kinds of people in congress, and not just white dudes who say things like “I like women, I have a wife,” or “just ask my daughter, mom, etc.”  I got shivers when Rep. Gwen Moore said “I know of what the previous speaker referred, to all those well meaning people…I am really touched by the passion of the opposite to want to save black babies. I can tell you I know a lot about having black babies. I have 3 of them.” And when Rep. Speiers said “I’m one of those women,” and gave a voice and face to all the abstract women that Congress had been talking about, it cut through the logic porn and the abortion porn and both of these congresswomen made the conversation REAL. And it was real because it wasn’t about babies (born, unborn, cherubs, smiling, or crying), it was about grown ups: people with voice and autonomy and power who do not have a big innocence cloak as much as they have the insane reality of experience making shit hard, especially with Congress making it harder.
11. Gentlewoman! What a lovely title.
12. Is watching this doing any good, or is it like reading the New Yorker article on Scientology, confirming what I already pretty much knew (that I won’t be signing up to be a Scientologist anytime soon, and that this is how the abortion argument goes).
13. Does any of this matter, since the Senate will swing it the other way anyway?