FPI / May 25, 2020

Corporate WATCH

By Joe Schaeffer

As presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden vows to have a female running mate, Michigan is giving us all a horrifying look at what electing women merely because they are women and not because of their qualifications leads to: a tyranny of feelings, ballooning senses of moral superiority, out-of-place emotion and, quite frankly, insanity.

This is all currently being showcased on a national scale by the ongoing active oppression of millions of Michiganders caused by the harsh coronavirus lockdown imposed by out-of-control Nanny State Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

As most of the nation begins to re-open, Whitmer has just announced that she is extending her punitive stay-at-home order for state citizens to June 12. Having become something of a progressive star over the past couple of months, she has revealed that she has had discussions with Biden for the VP spot on his ticket.

Earlier this month, Whitmer slandered Michiganders who had the temerity to protest her Soviet-styled shutdown on the steps of the state Capitol, smearing them by tying them to "nooses and Confederate flags and swastikas." She also says that sexism has played a huge role in the questioning of her autocratic executive powers.

Well, that's no surprise. For sexism plays a role in everything in the eyes of Whitmer. In 2012, while serving as a state senator, she declared that sexism ran rampant in the state legislature.

She even used the phrase "Neanderthal quotient" in describing male senators in an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press that now seems to have been scrubbed from that influential local mainstream paper's site. In 2018 she ran for governor and came to the "rational conclusion" that opposition to her candidacy was fired by… there it is again… sexism.

Gretchen Whitmer's entire political rise can be traced to the noxious idea that women should "vote their body parts." This is hardly an exaggeration but a mere capsulation of the governor's own words.

A vulgar political battle known as "Vaginagate" was conducted in the Michigan legislature in 2012. It was ignited when a female Democrat senator was rebuked for using the term for a woman's genitalia during a debate on abortion. Whitmer and other Democrats used the occasion to promote a call for a radical female revolution in The Great Lake State.

"The war on women in Michigan is not fabricated," Whitmer said in an angry message to Michigan women. "This is very real. And it comes at the highest levels of state government. Right now we are seeing our Republican colleagues in the House working to take away our rights to choose, our rights to health care, our rights to make decisions about our bodies…."

Whitmer joined notorious Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler, current U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and other unhinged Democrat female state legislators in staging a reading of The Vagina Monologues on the steps of the state Capitol, the very same place where anti-lockdown protests have been held in recent weeks that she has denounced as the height of extremism.

Here is a video clip of the future governor of Michigan leading the crowd in a chant: "Give me the Three Vs: Vagina, Voice, Vote!"



Whitmer was first anointed a progressive star in 2013 when she dropped an "I was raped in college" revelation, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, right into the middle of a debate on abortion legislation in the state legislature.

She had to know that it would be impossible for pro-life opponents to take the high ground away from her after she trotted out this story at a precise time and in a highly calculated way meant to attain maximum political advantage. This is the very embodiment of a tyranny of feelings.

Watch a seething Whitmer savagely attack male politicians through the :45 mark of this link and then move forward to her totally unverifiable oh-so-personal (with no details at all) rape story that begins at the 7:52 mark of the same video.

An appearance on paranoid radical progressive Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show immediately followed. An ebullient Whitmer gushed "I'm a huge fan" to Maddow as the national cable television program portrayed her as a modern-day Profile in Courage.

In an interview with the "Feministing" website, a very un-humble Whitmer admitted that she turned to the emotion of victimhood as the ultimate trump card in the abortion debate. "When I got up the microphone, I looked over at my colleagues who looked nonplussed by the cerebral arguments I was making and I tried to put a face to [the bill] and I told my story," she said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is Whitmer's hatchet lady on the lockdown. She has made national headlines of late by feuding with President Trump. In perfect symmetry with the governor she serves, Nessel herself used the "vote your body parts" argument to win election as state AG. In a campaign ad that defies belief, a weirdly amped-up Nessel appeared completely deranged as she said:

"If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it's that we need more women in positions of power, not less. So when you're choosing Michigan's next Attorney General, ask yourself this: Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn't have a penis? I'd say so."

Nessel has proven to be even more of a bullying tyrant during her time in office than the more heralded Whitmer. A "married" lesbian who considers cracking down on "hate crimes" to be a key component of her office, Nessel has described Catholic adoption agencies who believe in traditional marriage and refuse to place children with homosexual couples as "hate mongers." She has responded to criticism over the remark by doubling down on her statement.

Last September a federal judge suspended Nessel's homosexual adoption policy, stating that it put a Catholic agency "in the position of either giving up its [traditional] belief [on marriage] or giving up its contract with the State."

Which in fact is the entire point. Nessel has publicly declared that Christianity needs to change its moral precepts regarding homosexuality. "I know something that we’re seeking to do is to educate religious communities as much as possible on the importance of accepting LGBTQ people and there are a lot of religious organizations that have changed their views on this over the course of time, right?" Nessel said in a 2018 interview with a homosexual website. "More times than not, they've changed their policies and I think there is room for growth... I've seen it, and I've seen it happen pretty rapidly.

"I do think that we need to continue to work on education as it pertains to religious organizations and religious people of various religious faiths."

The attorney general who got elected by not having a penis has put the power of her government office to use to pressure Christian organizations to make doctrinal changes that satisfy her leftist worldview.

Back to that other incredibly disturbing element to Nessel's reign as Michigan AG, her targeting of "hate." In 2019 the Detroit News reported Nessel was creating a new hate crimes unit in her office that would use data acquired by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights as part of its enforcement efforts.

"The state Department of Civil Rights reviews reports from both the [Southern Poverty Law Center] and the Anti-Defamation League to get 'a snapshot of what's taking place' in Michigan," the paper reported, quoting Department of Civil Rights Director Agustin Arbulu. "Nessel’s new unit will fight against hate crimes and review any groups identified in the SPLC list, her spokeswoman Kelly Rossman-McKinney said," the News reported.

Guess who the ADL considers hate extremists? Lockdown protesters.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, meanwhile, has long been exposed as a sham organization meant to enrich its thoroughly shady co-founder Morris Dees. The SPLC has become so promiscuous in doling out its "hate group" labels over the years that even dominant media organizations such as The Washington Post have featured scathing condemnations of its work.

In an astonishingly cynical reply that reveals the inflated sense of entitlement running wild in Michigan's political leadership today, Nessel decried legal blowback against her efforts. "Only in Trump's America do you get sued for pledging to prosecute hate crimes and pursue organizations that engage in illegal conduct against minority communities," the feckless despot stated in a 2019 Facebook post.

As Joe Biden panders shamelessly on his vice presidential candidate selection, Americans would be wise to observe the grim goings-on in Michigan. The "vote your body parts" chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance. An entire state is being held hostage to the emotion-driven diktats of two politicians who used "vagina, voice and vote" and "I don't have a penis" to achieve power. Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel are self-righteous, smug and condescending. And they feel absolutely unaccountable to the very people they are meant to serve.

Joe Schaeffer is the former Managing Editor of The Washington Times National Weekly Edition. His columns appear at WorldTribune.com, LibertyNation.com and FreePressInternational.org.

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