Rape: The Ultimate Tyranny

-by Noah

Rape of the land. Rape of your 401K. Rape of Iraq. The desire to rape Iran. Rape of you. Rape of your whole class. Government sanctioned trans-vaginal violations. It’s no big deal, if you’re a Republican or some other malevolent conservative malignancy. What’s all the fuss? You won’t get pregnant if you’re raped anyway and if you do, you we’re probably, you know, asking for it, and you should spend the next nine months carrying the fetus to term because we might need another soldier on the front or another apple picker in the orchard. Rape is as Republican as a bottle of 1996 Chateau Margaux (If you have to ask how much, you probably don’t know a Koch brother, but the answer is $1,600).  
 
All this recent talk about Republican Rep. Todd Akin and his partner and co-sponsor VP nominee Paul Ryan and their light-hearted approach to rape has had me thinking about a post I wrote almost three years ago, in December of 2009, that dealt with the Senatorial aftermath of Jamie Leigh Jones’s charge of drugging and gang rape by KBR co-workers and ensuing abuse at a Halliburton/KBR Green Zone location in Iraq.

Jones was reportedly tossed into a shipping container, without food or water, bleeding and in dire need of medical treatment. How dare she ask for such things! She eventually lost her court case against KBR who enjoyed a significant amount of homecourt advantage in a Houston, TX court. The court even made her pay $145,000 in court costs after KBR called her suit frivolous and the locals on the jury decided against her. The court case was interesting from several angles and you can read about that in the linked Mother Jones piece from July of 2011. As is often the case, neither the plaintiff nor KBR came off well. Large parts of Jones’s case were tossed out by Judge Keith Ellison, a Clinton appointee, while KBR was allowed to raise questions about Jones’s credibility. It was a textbook case of putting the guilt on the victim, made worse by the fact that a single plaintiff can’t match the power of the platoon of lawyers that a large corporation can set against you. We’ve all seen this movie. There is no such thing as equal justice under the law.

The reaction in Congress, however, was interesting for a reason that goes beyond the individual merits of the case and how it played out. The reaction in the Senate is what got me thinking when the thoughts of Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin and Paul “Forcible Rape” Ryan surfaced this past week.
 
Freshman Senator Al Franken (D-MN) was inspired by the events surrounding Jones’s case to create a law that would prevent future plaintiffs from being blocked in their efforts to gain some measure of justice from an employer in a court of law. A key part of Jones’s case hinged on the legality (morality does not enter into the law) of an arbitration clause in her contract with KBR. It was a clause that was designed to prevent victims, alleged or otherwise from seeking justice in a court. KBR’s stance was that she had no such rights. Welcome to serfdom, 21st century style. You cannot only be be raped by your co-workers but, after that, your employer can take a turn. Jones fought the law and the law won.
 
Franken’s law, designed to enable a day in court for an alleged victim, was at least a partial or moral victory for justice. It does, however, have to be approved yearly as part of the Department of Defense appropriation process and corporate lobbyists will always fight mightily against it with stacks of nice green “campaign contributions."

The law passed in 2008 by a vote of 68 to 30. Guess which party has a pro-rape caucus that thinks that a woman alleging rape should have no day in court. In my post, I listed the 30 Senate members who would deny a person charging rape their day in court: Republicans all. Should we be surprised? It’s quite a list of ne’er do wells and total freaks, including none other than John McCain, a man who got his party’s nomination for President and a man who used the c-word to describe his own wife and, demonstratively had no problem telling rape jokes on the campaign trail. Hey, it’s all just good fun, heh, heh.



David Vitter? Ensign? ‘Nuff said.

• Alexander (R-TN)
• Barrasso (R-WY)
• Bond (R-MO)
• Brownback (R-KS)
• Bunning (R-KY)
• Burr (R-NC)
• Chambliss (R-GA)
• Coburn (R-OK)
• Cochran (R-MS)
• Corker (R-TN)
• Cornyn (R-TN)
• Crapo (R-ID)
• DeMint (R-SC)
• Ensign (R-NV)
• Enzi (R-WY)
• Graham (R-SC)
• Gregg (R-NH)
• Inhofe (R-OK)
• Isakson (R-ID)
• Johanns (R-NE)
• Kyl (R-AZ)
• McCain (R-AZ)
• McConnell (R-KY)
• Risch (R-ID)
• Roberts (R-KS)
• Sessions (KKK-AL)
• Shelby (R-AL)
• Thune (R-SD)
• Vitter (R-LA)
• Wicker (R-MS)

 Given that the case went against Jamie Leigh Jones, Franken’s law may not have a bright future as it comes up for its yearly vote. Will the Senate’s pro-rape caucus grow-- think Akin (MO), Connie Mack (FL), Tommy Thompson (WI), Denny Rehberg (MT), Jeff Flake (AZ), Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Mandel (OH), Rick Berg (ND)-- as time fades away and the cameras disappear? Most likely, yes. Will any of the Pro-Rape 30 change their votes? Never. It’s who they are; overgrown drunken fratboys who graduated from college after four years of raping coeds on pool tables, then, put on a suit to convey a phony air of respectability, and went to work in Washington after turning over enough rocks and selling out to any corporate bidder they could find.
 
Maybe sex and rape is one and the same to such inhuman and deranged minds. I don’t know. I am not a Republican. Republicans come from a different place than normally adjusted people. Republicans see women as décor or obstacles or merely utensils to greedy achievements, as are any “minority” or class that isn’t upper. KBR made a killing in Iraq and that was the goal of Iraq. War is the legalized rape of lands, of resources, of the people themselves. No wonder the Republicans always feel the need to start wars, whether necessary or not. Bush legalized the rape of Iraq and a lot of people got hurt along the way. Now they desire Iran. Lives be damned. It’s all the same. To the cigar-chompers, a cigar is so much more.
 
Republicans approach life with an Attila-the-Hun attitude. Sorry, Atilla, I didn’t mean to insult you. Bank rape. Corporate rape. Rape of women. Twisting the law to rape… Now, they give us concepts of “forcible rape” and “legitimate rape." One thing’s for sure. It is the victim who must be punished, or, at least has no rights. I feel that we are only minutes away from some Republican somewhere spouting the words “permissible rape."