Tag: politics

A Borderless Nation

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

If there is one thing that makes El Salvador a subject of conversations abroad, it is the country’s extraordinarily high crime rates. Crime—and the environment of fear and insecurity it creates—is one of the ways in which Central American oligarchies discipline the region’s population into accepting the economic system that has been established in the region in the past three decades. William Castro has aptly named this phenomenon ‘a criminal globalization,’ explaining that “in the context of this criminal globalization, oligarchic forces manipulate the fear of crime to maintain their stronghold on political and economic power” (125). The successive post-war administrations have used a variety of strategies to create an impression that they are addressing the high rates of criminal activity in the country, yet most Salvadorans perceive no significant change in the fear that haunts their daily lives.

Many Salvadorans respond to this unending terror by abandoning the country. This is not an unwelcome phenomenon for the country’s ruling classes, given that migration has become a “development strategy embraced by the state and elites in El Salvador” (Gammage 75). The official vision of El Salvador’s nationhood as described in a document titled Política Nacional para la Protección y Desarrollo de la Persona Migrante Salvadoreña y su Familia that was published by the government of El Salvador in 2017 begins with the following statement:

The concept of nation that the government of El Salvador promotes is one that transcends borders. It remembers and includes our brothers and sisters who decided to take the path of migration and settle in other countries, but who, regardless of the time elapsed or the geographical distances, continue to be an essential part of the Salvadoran people. (Política 6)

These words are part of the introductory section of the report that was written in the first person and signed by Salvador Sánchez Cerén, who served as the president of El Salvador between 2014 and 2019.[1] What hides behind these appeals to brotherhood, however, is “a complete lack of interest on the part of the politicians who govern various countries of Latin America to ensure the right of their compatriots to stay and not migrate” (Cruz González 18). It is not surprising that migrants see successive Salvadoran governments’ efforts to reach out to them as utilitarian and aimed only at “guaranteeing a continued flow of remittances to the country” (Andrade-Eekhoff and Silva-Avalos 37).

The idea of ‘a borderless nation’ that the report puts forward rests on an insuperable contradiction between the concept of state sovereignty and the attempts to adapt it to the ethos of transnationalization: “Identifying the linkage between sending states and their members on foreign soil as exemplifying the ‘deterritorialized nation-state,’ stretches the definition of the state beyond meaning. States only legitimately possess the power of coercion within their own borders, and consular activities abroad depend on the acquiescence of hosts” (Waldinger and Fitzgerald 1180). Given the extraordinary difficulty that El Salvador’s successive governments have had in wrestling any degree of control over large parts of the country’s territory from gangs, there is no question of El Salvador having much of a say in what happens to Salvadorans residing abroad. The document’s definition of the nation only makes sense if we see it not as a political or a cultural statement but as an economic one. For as long as migrants feel some degree of attachment to their country of origin, they can be counted on sending back remittances which will allow the government to maintain the fiction of at least a somewhat functioning society.

Policy papers issued by the government are, of course, not the only source of information which imparts to the people of El Salvador the idea that the best thing that a Salvadoran can do for his or her country is leave it. In Salvadoran Imaginaries, Cecilia Rivas analyzes in great detail the ‘Departamento 15,’ a section of La Prensa Gráfica, a Salvadoran daily newspaper that “constructs Salvadorans as model transnational citizens in the global division of labor” (21). ‘Departamento 15’ covers the experiences of Salvadorans residing abroad and has adopted the same vision of El Salvador as a nation without borders that informs the report signed by Sánchez Cerén. An advertisement for ‘Departamento 15’ published in 2000 opens with a large-type statement, “Our country does not end at the border” (Rivas 33). The advertisement invites Salvadorans who still live in the country to appreciate those who emigrated for “their successes, achievements and business initiatives that this cultural exchange has brought about” (Rivas 33). The advertisement fails to mention that the ‘cultural exchange’ which, according to the newspaper, has created these feats of entrepreneurialism is both uneven and exploitative. The equality that the term ‘exchange’ presupposes is absent from the relationship between the United States (the recipient of the largest share of Salvadoran migrants) and El Salvador. The ad does not ask what prevents many Salvadorans from being successful and capable of undertaking entrepreneurial initiatives at home. Instead, the neoliberal vocabulary of entrepreneurialism and achievement masks the reality of many Salvadoran immigrants to the US who experience hopelessness and poverty in the receiving country.

The language of the ads in ‘Departamento 15’ is curiously similar to that of capitalists who make extraordinarily large amounts of money by exploiting the transformation of tens of millions of people worldwide into economic migrants. For instance, Michael Kent, the founder of multi-billion companies Small World Financial Services Group and Azimo that facilitate off-line and online money transfers, uses similar vocabulary to present emigration as a sign that one is a higher-quality human being: “The thing that people often forget is that people who migrate are the brightest and best of their generation. It takes guts and determination to leave family and friends for what can be a tough and sometimes hostile new environment. Migrants are very entrepreneurial” (Mavadiya n. pag.). Kent has made a fortune by creating one of the largest remittance-processing companies in the world, and his enthusiasm for large-scale migration is hardly surprising.

As it affirms the idea of a ‘borderless nation’, the advertisement belies its message of borderless inclusion through the vocabulary it uses: “The use of the pronouns ‘their’ (‘their accomplishments’) and ‘our’ (‘our people abroad’) construct semantic borders—in this case, emigrants are outside, and not only literally. They are not among the imagined audience for this advertisement” (Rivas 33-4). The paradox of the ad lies in its suggestion that a model Salvadoran is the one who left the country and no longer is part of ‘us,’ insinuating that the newspaper’s readers are deficient by virtue of not having yet joined the ranks of the high-achieving, entrepreneurial émigrés. In its avoidance of any mention of the objective conditions that force many people to leave the country, the ad mimics the neoliberal vision of migration as an expression of an unmediated individual choice that entrepreneurs of self pursue in order to maximize their opportunities: “A portrayal of migration as a process of purely individual choices and opportunities would erase other institutional factors associated with neoliberalism or structural adjustment in Latin America, policies which are often associated with a rise in economic inequality” (Rivas 35). In the receiving countries, there is very little interest as to what drives Central Americans to “choose” migration and the majority of political battles around migration is fought over the legal status that is to be assigned to the human capital extracted from the region.

Latin America is rapidly turning into the largest supplier of transnational capital liquidity.[3] In 2016, Latin American migrants sent US$74.3 billion in remittances through official channels (such as banks) to their countries of origin (Budiman and Connor n. pag.). This number almost doubled the US$40 billion in remittances sent to Latin America twelve years earlier, in 2004 (Gammage 76), yet it does not include money transfers made through informal channels, making the total of remittances into the region much larger (Budiman and Connor n. pag.).

In El Salvador, the remittances that Salvadorans who work abroad sent back home constituted 20.3% of the country’s entire GDP for the year 2018 (Teos n. pag). By 2015, at least a third of Salvadorans was receiving remittances from emigrant relatives and relying upon them, for such basic expenditures as housing and consumer goods (Wade, “Civil War” 408). This staggering number, however, does not constitute the only way in which Salvadoran migrants unwittingly contribute to preserving the deeply flawed economic system of their country of origin that forced them to leave the country in the first place. By the beginning of the second decade of this century, a growing percentage of the country’s tax revenue was coming from migrants. In 2010, for instance, 12,9% of the nation’s VAT collected by the state came from the remittance-sending migrants (Cuevas Molina 41, n. 5). Of course, there are also hidden financial benefits that come from exporting overseas a large migrant population which remains tied by affective and cultural links to the country of origin. Migrants spend their earnings on international travel—whether their own or that of relatives they bring over to their new country for a visit—that maintains the illusion of closeness, telephone calls, and a variety of other purchases related to their migrant status, and this contribution to the functioning of the economies both in their home country and in the new one is usually excluded from the calculations of the economic impact of migration (Cuevas Molina 41, n. 5). A report published in 2010 by the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities on the financial contribution of Central American migrants to the economies of their native countries was titled “Paying Their Share: Migrants’ Contribution to Fiscal Health in Mexico and El Salvador.” In a typically neoliberal fashion, this title anthropomorphizes the economy[4] and links its health to the state’s capacity to expel migrants.

Both the Salvadoran state and the supranational financial organizations, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), have been making significant efforts to channel the informal economy of family-based remittances into formalized “remittance networks [that] increase the capture of remittances by large banks and financial services” (Gammage 76). Over sixty-six percent of Salvadorans who send the remittances to support their relatives back home have no plans to return to the country in the foreseeable future (Teos n. pag). This is not surprising given that there have been no significant changes for the better in El Salvador’s economy. Poverty, however, is not the only reason behind the migrant flows out of the region. In 2019, El Salvador’s Institute of Public Opinion, which is part of José Simeón Cañas Central American University, published a study estimating that, in the previous year, 5.2% of Salvadorans had to change residence because of threats or fear of violence. Sixty percent of them considered abandoning El Salvador for another country (IUDOP 1-2). The incapacity of successive Salvadoran governments to achieve a stable reduction of crime rates is due to a variety of objective factors, yet one would be justified in wondering whether the country’s political forces are truly motivated to address gang violence when the environment of terror that gangs create is bringing such great profits through an increase in emigration.

[1] Sánchez Cerén was the first former guerrilla leader to become president of the country, and at the time, his election gave rise to the hope that the legacy of the Civil War would finally be put to rest.

[2] Castellanos Moya’s Moronga, which is analyzed later in this chapter, demonstrates the differences and the similarities between the immigrant experiences of a college professor and a part-time blue-collar worker who, in spite of the disparities in their economic status and educational background, find themselves similarly alienated and confused by the reality of living in the US.

[3] In 2016, as flows of remittance funds declined everywhere else in the world, remittances sent to Latin American and the Caribbean experienced a sharp increase (Budiman and Connor n. pag.).

[4] See John Patrick Leary’s Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism for a discussion of how biological and environmental metaphors are used to support the neoliberal view of the economy at large and individual businesses as a living organism of sorts that often receives more care than the actual human beings who work to sustain the economy or a business.

Remember 1986

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

Hmm, I wonder who was president in 1986 and which party he represented. What a curious mystery.

I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this won’t happen with Trump in the WH. He was, after all, the person who brought us the Platinum Plan that put criminals in the streets to restore racial justice and proposed to make lynching a federal hate crime. As we know, Kamala Harris is proud that this plan was finally completed by the Biden administration. Why exactly I’m supposed to believe that Trump’s second term would be dramatically different from his first nobody ever even tried to explain.

I’m not voting for Kamala either because I don’t like these policies no matter who they come from.

Putin’s Press-Conference, Part III

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

Putin then heaped praise on the Ukrainian President Poroshenko, saying that Poroshenko was ready to collaborate with Putin but some mysterious members of the Ukrainian government were preventing him from doing that. This limp-wristed attempt at discrediting Poroshenko tells me that Putin fears him and sees him as a political force to be reckoned with.

Then Putin confirmed that the heroes of the Donetsk Airport were still alive and still fighting. This is great news because we’ve been fearing that they were no longer among the living.

There was also a long discussion of how the mean, horrible Ukrainians just had to get into a war (with themselves) on purpose to prevent the Russians from enjoying their massive win at the Olympics. They are really obsessed with those Olympics, folks. It’s been almost a year, and they are still going on and on about the Olympics. There is a huge sense of grievance that is being fostered in Russia about those Olympic Games. I actually started feeling sorry for the Russians after hearing this endless blabber about the Olympics. Poor freaks.

One of the journalists was holding up a pink bunny and a poster that said, “I have a kind question.” I found that to be an interesting journalistic tactic of attracting attention. 

Putin informed the audience that the line between a member of the opposition and a traitor to the nation was very blurry. You’ve really got to appreciate the honesty with which he warned the dissidents of what awaited them.

What I find really funny is that Putin moves, talks and gesticulates exactly like the career criminals in Russian TV series that N. and I love to watch. I think he works with an acting coach to acquire this persona because people watch a lot of these shows and find it easy to relate to this kind of character.

My Analysis of Putin’s Speech, Part IV

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

Ready? Here goes:

In a situation where you had domination by one country and its allies, or its satellites rather, the search for global solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes.

We all know what “one country” Putin has in mind, right? His ideology is pretty simple: it’s unfair that there should be a single global power (the US) that pushes its own recipes (democracy, human rights “Western values,” gay marriage, separation of church and state) on everybody. So it’s only fair, Putin says, that there should be another world power who would promote the exact opposite to create a more balanced system.

The profound cynicism of this position lies in the attempt to convince the world that Putin’s assault on democracy and human rights in Russia and neighboring countries is only done for the benefit of the planet.

“Don’t you see what I’m doing, you dummies?” he says. “I’m killing Ukrainians, rigging elections, and bashing gays (to name just a few favorite pursuits) to benefit you! So that our shared planet is a more objective and just place!”

I knew before starting to read the speech that our dear friend Mr. Snowden would make an appearance and serve a useful purpose. And so he did, even earlier in the speech than I thought:

It is not for nothing that ‘big brother’ is spending billions of dollars on keeping the whole world, including its own closest allies, under surveillance.

Obviously, I’m no longer naive enough to think that this will in any way influence Snowden’s fans to abandon their hero-worship.

A Theory on Obama’s Approach to Syria

~ Clarissa ~ 18 Comments

Somebody just advanced a theory that Obama doesn’t want to invade Syria and is doing what he can to avoid looking weak while sabotaging the invasion. And this is why he declared he will let the Congress that hates him have the final say. In the end, he won’t have to invade and will be able to blame the Congress for any consequences just as we go into the congressional electoral campaign.

This would be a beautiful world I don’t mind inhabiting.

Do we have any optimists who think this is a likely explanation around here?

Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Part I

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

I keep looking for a source of information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would at least try to depart from the “bad Jews/good Arabs” or “bad Arabs/good Jews” model. Both of these approaches are equally reductive and offensive. Still, I’m getting a feeling that nobody is even attempting to discuss the issue in any other manner. Initially, I had high hopes for Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine but I have to admit that the book has been a serious disappointment. I listed some of my objections to Pappe’s writing here but that was only the beginning.

For some incomprehensible reason, Pappe decided to alienate every Jewish reader – even the potentially anti-Israel and pro-Palestiane one – from the get go. It is hard for a Jewish person to remain open to a point of view that insistently equates the displacement of the Palestinian people from their villages with the Holocaust. I don’t see why it is so necessary to equate two such different events at all. The forcible removal of the Palestinians is a horrible, horrible crime and a huge tragedy. But it cannot even begin to compare to the Holocaust. Pappe tries to make the two tragedies similar by making it hard to figure out that the Palestinians were displaced from their villages without being killed. (It took me a while, for example, to realize that when Pappe says, “Village X was destroyed,” he is forgetting to mention that only the physical buildings were destroyed (or simply damaged), while the people were not.)

Ilan Pappe is altogether very careless about the Holocaust. He discusses it as a reality that has certain bearing on the actions of the international community. He says, for example, that after the Holocaust, any instance of ethnic cleansing in the world becomes impossible to conceal. This is a very strange statement to begin with, since the Holocaust was very obviously not an example of ethnic cleansing but of genocide. As Pappe explains at length, ethnic cleansing does not involve the mass murder of the displaced ethnicity while the genocide does. At the same time, there is no discussion in the book of how the Holocaust might have influenced the Jews. To the contrary, Pappe suggests time and again that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would exist in pretty much the same form had the Holocaust never happened.

For those who manage to keep reading the book even in the face of this cavalier dismissal of the Holocaust, Pappe brings out the argument that will surely convince any person who does not passionately hate the Jews as a group to stop reading. I am speaking, of course, of the trope of the greedy Jew.

For a while, the suggestion of Jewish greediness is made without the direct use of the word “greedy”. This allows a reader to keep convincing herself that she is being too sensitive and is imagining anti-Semitism where there is none. Until, that is, a story of “a greedy Tel-Aviv municipality” that sets out to steal the crop of oranges grown by hard-working Palestinians. And the story of the “monstrous villas and extravagant palaces for rich American Jews” that have been created because of “constructors’ greed” and that are disfiguring the architectural ensemble of Jerusalem. And many other stories of greedy, dishonest Jews who don’t create anything of their own but, rather, steal the fruits of the labor of others. (The words “exploit” and “exploitation” appear constantly in the text to describe the intentions of the Jews.)

(To be continued. . .)

P.S. I would very much like to avoid the third-grade level of discussion of this serious issue that such debates almost always slip down to. This is why I’m asking everybody to refrain from the egregiously unintelligent analysis of who was where “first” and whom “this land initially belonged to.” I have to issue this warning because I looked through the Amazon reviews of the book and this is all I have seen there.

Why Are They So Rabid?

~ Clarissa ~ 16 Comments

Reader Evelina Anville says a propos of my post on Girl Scouts and their vilification by the Catholic Church:

On the one hand, the Catholic Church is one of the major churches in the US (and the world); and, on the other hand, Girl Scouts is so wholesome and so very “establishment.” So it’s not like some fringe church is rejecting a group of radical feminists. It’s a major church with a great deal of clout rejecting a mainstream group (and, from what I understand,continuing to support the Boy Scouts.) So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am worried what this means in terms of gender and sexual politics when a major Church brands a group that encourages cookie-selling, arts and crafts and camping, as radical or extreme. I agree that it’s the Catholic Church’s right and that the Church shouldn’t be forced to recognize the Girl Scouts or anything. Still, I find the entire thing disturbing.

I agree completely that the Church’s attack on the Girl Scouts is completely out of proportion but I have a different view of what this means. I find that the rejection of such an – as Evelina says – wholesome group and such a vicious backlash against a very non-threatening organization for children signals complete and utter desperation on the Church’s side. They are losing parishioners left and right. There is one scandal after another, they are being slowly squeezed out of contemporary reality, so they flail around like a drowning person.

This is precisely why the Fundamentalists are trying to pass all of these outrageously barbaric measures against contraception and abortion. This is why the Republican primaries have been so bizarre. The Fundamentalist, ultra-religious brand of Conservatism is dying out. These are their final moments, and they know it extremely well. This is the very last opportunity they have to signal their presence. They are so rabid because they are scared. I have a feeling that even among Conservatives there is a growing dissatisfaction with how the Conservative movement has been overrun with shrill religious fanatics, which does great damage to the rational, intelligent Conservatism.

I believe that soon the prolonged agony of fanatisicm will be over. Religious people will give up on trying to make the secular society follow their rules and bow down to their beliefs because very very soon this will become completely untenable. And then, finally, the reasonable, non-fanatical representatives of Conservatism will recover their movement and we will start seeing productive interactions between Liberals and Conservatives.

As stressful and depressing as it is to observe the current developments in the war against secularism, feminism, human rights and choice, the reality that they obscure is very hopeful and positive. The more rabid the fanatics get, the greater is the desperation that they are communicating by their acts.

Now There Is Really Nobody to Vote For

~ Clarissa ~ 41 Comments

Can you guess who said this recently?

We are putting colleges on notice — you can’t keep — you can’t assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down. We should push colleges to do better. We should hold them accountable if they don’t.

And this (the same person):

We call this — one of the things that we’re doing at the Consumer Finance Protection Board that I just set up with Richard Cordray — (applause) — is to make sure that young people understand the financing of colleges. He calls it, “Know Before You Owe.” (Laughter.) Know before you owe. So we want to push more information out so consumers can make good choices, so you as consumers of higher education understand what it is that you’re getting.

And the following (still the same guy):

 We’re successful because we have an outstanding military — that costs money.

To resume:

– college students are consumers, which makes imposing the business model on academia a must;

– colleges must be forced into even more cuts, which makes the further erosion of the concept of tenure inevitable. One over-extended adjunct can do the teaching of 3 profs. As for research, who the hell needs it anyways? So, adjuncts in, professors out;

– the money that is squeezed out from public universities should be pored into the military because there is always a dinky little war that needs to be waged somewhere to keep Pentagon happy. And private contractors, too. Yippee.

I know that you are all aware that these are excerpts from a recent speech by President Obama. And that’s the most progressive option we get.

OK, so how am I supposed to indoctrinate my students when I’m very disappointed with all of the candidates there are? I have to teach tomorrow, people, so we need to come up with something. I can’t let a whole day of classes go without some nice indoctrination.

Romney Calculators

~ Clarissa ~ 33 Comments

Have you seen these Romney Calculators that seem to be the latest fad on Liberal websites? My blogroll is filled to the brim with them, articles about them, and calculations based on them.

I so hope that this “Romney is rich which is why you shouldn’t vote for him” spiel will not become the axis of the Liberal Presidential elections campaign. There are very few things that Obama’s supporters can do to lose him the election. This, however, is one of them. Trying to milk class resentments of the Americans? Really? This strategy is going to be extremely counterproductive.

I’ve been living in this country since 2003 and I have not seen a widespread hatred of wealth. People hate the government, the IRS, the bureaucrats, the “elitist intellectuals”, etc. But they don’t hate the rich. Everybody hopes to strike it rich which turns people who make a lot of money into role models. If Romney were a jet-setting heir to a fortune who hasn’t worked a day in his life, then there is a slight chance one could successfully invoke class resentment toward him. But he isn’t.

Remember 2004? That was the moment when the entirety of the Liberal discourse on President Bush was reduced to the supremely ineffective “Bush lied!” mantra. Every time I heard it, I’d whisper, “What are they doing? This is a guaranteed way to lose the elections!” And that was exactly what happened. Of course, the Dems also had no candidate to run a against Bush, just like the Republicans don’t have a viable candidate right now. If the “Romney Calculator” type of strategy continues, though, Romney is likely to become such a candidate.

Take me, for example. I don’t like Romney and I’d never support him for President. Still, after I saw the Romney Calculator, I’m less opposed to him than before.

Of course, if people who have been living in this country for a longer time than I have tell me that there are massive class resentments against high earners that can be successfully exploited in the US, I’ll believe you. If I’m not seeing something, this doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

What do you, folks, think? Is the Romney Calculator a winning strategy?

And For the Especially Clueless: Ron Paul Is NOT a Libertarian

~ Clarissa ~ 39 Comments

He is a fake Libertarian who is supported by Fundamentalist Evangelicals and is interested in nothing but promoting their savage and barbaric beliefs:

When GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul was asked today about Tuesday’s federal court ruling upholding an aggressive new sonogram law in his home state of Texas, the congressman said the requirement that women seeking an abortion first get a sonogram “should always have been a Texas state position.’’

What are the chances that the guy who supports the governmental intrusion into your body will be opposed to the governmental intrusion into your bed, your bank account, your smoking, drinking and reading matter, etc.? Seriously, how clueless do you have to be not to notice that this Ron Paul character supports an extremely powerful state apparatus that will police your body parts like there is no tomorrow?

Yes, he pretends he will legalize pot. And that makes him yet another candidate who lies through his teeth to get elected. Just think about it: how likely are his Fundamentalist backers to allow him to move even an inch in that direction? And if he is in favor of the government controlling what happens inside of your body, how can he possibly be against, say, mandatory drug tests? It isn’t logical, folks. You want to mandate sonograms, you can’t oppose mandating drug tests. Nobody would be able to make an argument supporting the former but opposing the latter.

It is so annoying to see smart, well-read, politically conscious people swallow Ron Paul’s lies and not see that he is in no way different from the fanatical Huckabee, to give just one example.

So whenever you are tempted to take this Evangelical clown seriously, ask yourself the following: Ron Paul wants the government to rummage in women’s vaginas. What does this tell us about his general attitude to an extremely powerful and intrusive government?

Don’t start typing out a response immediately. Just think about it for a moment. And now consider the following question:

Brian Williams should ask him tonight at the debate whether he would agree that a state government has the right to demand pat-downs at its airports. I’d be curious to hear the answer.

If Ron Paul says no, he is a hypocrite of enormous proportions. If he says yes, then he recognizes he favors an all-powerful government whose right to police your body is inviolate.

It makes a lot more sense to support a candidate who is both pro-sonogram and pro-drug tests because such a candidate is at least trying to be consistent.

I just had a grad student offer me a long rant on how Ron Paul is a good candidate because he supports withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. I agree that Ron Paul may attempt to stop waging a war in Afghanistan. (And we all know that he will fail completely in that effort, don’t we?) I also know, however, that he will wage a war against his own people. Women, you know, are people, too. And I consider invading women’s uteri an act of aggression.