NYT opinion pages are a mess of contradictions.

Tom Friedman thinks, if the reporters don't tell us it, Americans won't catch on that our goal in Ukraine is to depose Putin and use the little country to stock us with soldiers to attack Russia using our latest military technology.  Lol.  His book From Beirut to Jerusalem convinced him of that...

If they don't report it, nobody knows what is really going on.  Oh dear, times have changed, Tom.  Keep mum, because "loose lips sink ships" citing the WWII cliche.  Except people kinda know who sunk the Russian warship.  Even if America doesn't own up to it for another 10 or 20.  

We know what's happening, and pretty much choose to turn our heads, content to let other people's sons war for American Western market aims.  Junior has a ballgame, or monster truck rally, today.  He's not gonna grow up to be a soldier, why worry?  Hush, Friedman counsels the Biden administration.  Get old slow Joe off the stage, and let the octagenarians play dress-up -- as Nancy Pelosi is wont to do -- and fly into Kiev for a brunch with the newfound celebrity "crush" Zelensky, who encourages his people's sufferings to serve the Western war machine. 

No need to negotiate a settlement now!  

I like to think of "globalists" like Friedman (the earth is flat and ours to reap riches from!) -- who have enriched themselves for generations, they think -- "discovering" new international markets, claiming the resources like oil in the Mideast and lithium deposits in Western Russia/Eastern Ukraine for our own.  Western businessmen need an American military that can lead the world in eliminating the native populations because making treaties and negotiating with those who currently people those lands is so... costly in terms of time and money.

Back when only the "experts" in the foreign bureaus could tell us of Middle East happenings, of course no one questioned whether we were hurting people.  Now, it's the environment that will get them in trouble.  Endless wars to conquer markets has a sell-by date, and the clock is always ticking.

"The smart ones keep quiet" is a saying from Tom's native Minnesota, with its sizeable Germanic-descended population.  He counsels the same, but there's too many thinking people who understand what our weapons are really destroying in the world today:  the world~!  War is not good for the environment, or living things.  It won't end well, but a few will make their fortunes promoting it.  Friedman and his ilk primary among them.  

I wish him well as he winds down his career watching it play out.  But there's a reason Ohio elected J.D. Vance as its candidate for Republican senator yesterday on an anti-war platform.  (Shh... don't tell.)  The future is coming and these days of artificial dominance by Western warriors seeking new lands to conquer for their own country's riches will end in time.  

Kids today care about saving the planet, and eventually, they will reject these old people flying in to Kiev to stir up trouble.  Report on it, or not, the pages of the NYT are not so influential with the votes who respect life.

In another story, Roxanne Gay tells us she and her wife are childhood sexual assault victims who were afraid to speak out as little girls and worried about getting pregnant.  That's why abortion should remain legal in our country today.  Again, it's not a logical point but one borne of the trauma the two women suffer still, even after all these years of work processing their pain and shame.

Reality tells us though, that empowering female bodies to speak up, timely, in reporting assault, and educating them about how their bodies work, is more important in allaying pregnancy fears and preventing unwanted pregnancies than using a "medical procedure" to help them end the lives of their pre-born children.  (Neither got pregnant from the assaults; it was just a fear they both shared then, and Gay is now sharing with NYT readers.)

Arguably, Ms. Gay could travel to Nebraska -- where she was raised as a girl -- and tell her story to persuade residents there to keep abortion legal if Roe v. Wade turns the issue back to the states. But her personal pain, and the gain she has gotten as a woman with a tragic story to sell, is just one story of many.  Respecting women as life-bearers, treating intercourse as something more worthy than just a childhood game for boys to score, will probably do more to help the once little ones like herself coming up today than making the "medical procedure" available to minors who are afraid to speak up to report what is happening to their bodies as they fear the unknowns of what is to come for them.  

Break the cycle, ladies. You're grown now. More educated too.

Then we come to Bret Stephens, who attempts to tell us that the Court not the people in the States should continue to decide for the country if abortion remains legal.  Why?  Because the American people, and our sexual culture in so many social circles today, demands the mistake carry on... It's CONSERVATIVE to keep on erring and deny the Constitution because men, and men with sexually active daughters, can't stop/won't stop relying on the easy-sex-no-consequences ways they are embedded in.

Today's culture relies on abortion as a quick fix.  How can we change 50 years of culture?, he stomps. Impossible to consider imparting other values now!

Naw, that doesn't pass the smell test, Bret.  That's a liberal take, one he is of course free to argue, like he is of course free to have advocate for a lot of free-love sex for men with consenting females. Free to live in a liberal state in America where abortion is like getting a flu shot, just a quick trip to the doctor's office.  Free to send his children to colleges in liberal states where an "oops I did it again!" moment can be quickly fixed, multiple times even, if a woman accidentally conceives and indeed, finds herself pregnant in reality, as Gay and her wife once feared as well...

But his personal preferences shouldn't be the law of the land.  Not the lands where the conservatives live.  That's not what the Constitution tells us. Stephens is not a legal scholar, nor a persuasive writer.  Well connected though. (His wealthy grandmother in Mexico supported free love, back in the day.  His first wife wrote a book on starter marriages because women have more choices and independence now.)

Imagine Bret arguing, as many slavers once did, that reliance on a legal right meant the right must continue everywhere -- in the new states and territories as well! -- because, hey, we got it wrong for this long and built a culture around our errors!  

Be honest, at least, about your aims, and don't try and play the conservative card to further advance your career.  He's another liberal Democrat now, albeit uncomfortable in their company it seems (he ran away upstate with his family when Covid hit the city, he has shared in print conversation with his fellow lib Gail Collins...)  Say what you will about Ross Douthat, and his after-the-fact/after-the-fart, upturned-nose writing style, he's an honest conservative at least, in practice and in print.

J.D. Vance -- the realist who is a true conservative Republican looking ahead -- is more the future of our country, I think, than the Freidman's, Gay's or Stephens' families.  The Vance's are more representative of the majority in this country whose voices are being heard once again as the Constitution intended, while the formerly monopolistic news platforms lose their populist power.

Voting results, not polling predictions, demonstrate that.

In short, it's not gonna work:  the quick tug of emotions, selective reporting, and false labeling that Gay, (little girls have abortion needs too! *pout*), Friedman ("say shh!"), and Stephens (I consider myself a conservative today, really I do!) engage in today.  

It's fishwrap argumentation really, earning each of them their daily bread (and then some!) but not influential with more pragmatic voters reasoning about reality today.  

Good luck to them each. They all reached the peaks of their persuasive powers in the past, it seems, and their expert voices are waning in strength. This new world is not so artificial and the American people not so powerless as these three pretend.

#Everyone:Vote!

---------------------

*oops, upside ya head, I said, oops upside ya head!  Cuz uptown funk gonna give it to ya!  Uptown funk gonna give it ya! Don't believe me, just watch...*  

Make it a great midweek Wednesday, friends.  The future looks bright: wear your shades! Turn the other cheek and smile if the libs keep ramping up the hate and anger to sell these needless deaths of others.  We've got the power in numbers, and the platforms to expose their falsities now too. nttawwt, right. ;-)