Republicans like to claim they are the party that stands up for family values. I have an idea of what they think they mean by that – they oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage, sex education and teenage pregnancy, abortion, and crime. But how do their beliefs translate into real life?
Thom
Hartmann in his June 28, 2023 Substack post compared statistics between “Red”
and “Blue“ states. He showed (with links to supporting documents) that compared
with Democratic controlled states, Republican controlled states had higher
rates of:
·
Spousal
abuse and spousal murder
·
Divorce
·
Rape
·
Teen
pregnancy
·
Sexually
transmitted diseases
·
Opiate
addictions and deaths
·
Robbery
and aggravated assault
·
Homicide
·
Gun
deaths
·
Suicide
It appears
from the statistics that the majority of people involved with the items on this
list are Republican supporters. Do these statistics reflect their real family
values?
Related to
the above items are poverty related statistics. Again the following have higher
rates in Republican controlled states:
·
High
school dropouts
·
Unemployment
·
Unskilled
workers
·
Bankruptcy
and poverty
·
Child
poverty
·
People
on welfare
·
People
on disability support
·
Homelessness
·
Income
and wealth inequality
·
Smoking
·
Obesity
· Unvaccinated people
· Death from Covid and other preventable diseases
·
Maternal
and infant mortality
·
Contaminated
air and water
Poverty and
poor health go hand in hand. One could argue that smoking, obesity and being
unvaccinated are also choices people make, so could go in the family values
list. But they are also symptoms of poverty and low education.
This raises
the chicken and egg question: Do these people support the Republican Party
because they are poor or are they poor because they have a Republican
government? I argue it’s both, in what’s known as a vicious circle.
Being poor
and powerless makes them angry at the system, including all levels of
government. And being poorly educated makes them easy victims of the Republican propaganda
(Fox News, etc.) which tricks them into voting against their own interest.
Republican policies then contribute to their poverty while enriching the wealthy. A classic example are the ten Red states which, for ideological reasons, didn’t expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act leaving 1.6 million adults without health insurance. The last item in the list, air and water pollution, contributes significantly to poor health and is the result of government policies that allow the pollution, as well as the poverty which forces some people to live in it.
So next
time you hear a Republican talking about their party's family values, ask if they mean
values like rape, teen pregnancy, abortion, murder and suicide?
Source:
https://hartmannreport.com/p/do-republicans-worship-poverty-death
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