The Slick-Rock Irregular Book Report Posting No. 7012-1
The Slick-Rock (Irregular) Book Review
Title: Delirium
How the Sexual Counter-Revolution
Is Polarizing America
By:
Nancy L. Cohen
Book Type:
Non-Fiction Political Science,
Current Events, Political Commentary
A Groundbreaking Investigation into the shadow
movement that fuels our Political Wars.
Writing from Los Angeles, Nancy Cohen is a contributor to The Huffington
Post, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and Business History Review. This, her
third book, tells the little known story of the shadow movement that began in
1960 and continues to the present day. This ideological battle has shattered
both political parties.
Yet, each side has enthusiastically embraced each others
views but now wants those views to seem like their exclusive purview She traces
our current crises to a well organized, well financed and ideologically driven
movement to turn back the sexual revolution, feminissm and gay rights.
This line-in-the-sand
has polarized both political parties and divides America into irreconcilable
warring camps. Delirium charts the path that polarized national politics,
split, remade our political parties and unhinged the nation. The: “delirium” here is political, emotional
delirium. A state of Delirium is a
well-recognized mental illness, it is categorized as a 145.2 on the DSM Scale.
(A diagnostic guide for mental health professionals). It is a mental condition marked by the inability to tell reality from
fantasy in everyday activities.
Currently,
the Republican Party has staked its future on the promises to outlaw abortion,
to re-write the US Constitution to outlaw gay marriage, abolish sex education
and resurrect the traditional family by judicial and legislative fiat. Few people realize that originally it was
the other way around. In just one
generation people have forgotten that Barry Goldwater supported women’s rights
to abortion and thought that Americans “had the constitutional right to be gay…” Students for Goldwater, at one Ohio high
school was chaired by a young republican student named Hillary Rodham.
The shadow movement began with the
introduction of the pill in 1960. For
the first time in the history of womankind, sex could be enjoyed without a baby
or the costs associated with parenthood..
The next major stumbling block was the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970. Roe V. Wade was decided by the supreme
Court in 1972 making the aborting of a human life perfectly legal. A Gallup poll in 1973 reveled that 69% of
Republicans favored abortion to the Democrats 39%. Even Catholics reported 64%
in favor. Sex education in the schools
dealt a double blow to our political delirium.
No one knew reality from fantasy.
Gay marriage further eroded the traditional American family values.
That, in brief, was the sexual
revolution with something to offend everyone.
The author traces the rise of the sexual revolution in vivid, well
documented detail. But the counter-revolution was just getting started. On Jan 20, 2001 the candidate who had lost
the popular vote was inaugurated as President of the United States. Two months later, George Bush sent a message
to the anti-abortionist rally stating that he would back a constitutional
amendment banning all abortions in all cases.
Shortly Bush allowed faith-based schools to fund their education with a
system of taxpayer-paid vouchers, a long standing wish of Christian
fundamentalists who home schooled their children to prevent the evils of
teaching sex education and evolution in the public schools. After the elections in 2008 the Republicans
experienced a resurgence that was short lived.
In May of 2009, Time magazine asked “Is
the party over ?”
In 2010, The Tea Party was born
with the fundamental tenant being that nobody was conservative enough to lead
our nation as President. What that really means, is that nobody opposes sex and
sex related issues strongly enough. This is a doctrine of zero tolerance. It is a 21st century Pandora’s
Box that is said to release moral and spiritual death and destruction upon any
one who dares to look inside. In 2012
hundreds of millions have been spent on TV ads to try and change US attitudes
back to the way they never were. For
example, in 1920, 90% of men reported that they had ENJOYED SEX before
marriage. 60% of women had done
like-wise. The fact is that sexual
mores have always been that way. People
like to have sex. In fact, when you
interpolate those figures, you conclude that women had more sex partners and were
far more sexually active than men. Is
it any wonder that books like Sex and the
Single Girl were such runaway best-sellers in their time?
In the year prior to Roe v. Wade nearly 2 million women had illegal abortions.
There were only 1.4 million in the year after the decision.
Is this yet another manifestation of the alcohol-prohibition attitude where the
pent up demand for a previously illegal act is just a precursor the human
behavior and that legalizing an act hardly makes a difference in behavioral outcomes?
Bill and
Hillary Clinton. Both of the Clintons
were easy to hate. Hillary was always Bills defacto
co-elected official but she stood for things that were definitely not in the
American mainstream of political thought.
She held the moral high ground which was reason enough to hate her. She was an “uppity woman” who was smarter than most men and probably smarter
than her husband. That too, was another
reason to dislike her..
Nevertheless, she stood by her man despite continued
infidelity throughout the marriage but at the same time had the audacity to
hold herself out as being more competent than any of her male counterparts,
including her husband. Bill was charismatic but less intelligent and
talented. Hillary made up for these
failings but not without cost.. Hillary was at once seen to be pathologically
dependent and passively aggressive against her long cheating husband. He depended on her financially and
surrounded himself with especially capable and strong willed women. Soon it
became apparent that now, despite protestations to the contrary, Hillary and
Bill were co-candidates for the
Presidency of the US.
In 1994 when Bill
addressed the gay coalition in San Francisco and stated that he would gladly
resign his presidency if it would mean an end to AIDS. Gay activists clearly remember that night as
a tipping point between gays and the Democratic Party. Republicans remember
that act as catering to a group that they never wanted to appeal to in the
first place. It was yet another reason
to hate the Clintons.
:Later, the American people
taxpayers spent over $100 million on the Whitewater Special Prosecutor and
millions more on Paula Abdul and Monica Lewinski. He escaped impeachment by
only a few votes. Traditional republican
candidates had several more things about the Clintons to dislike, not the least
of which was Hillary’s run for the presidency herself.
When the same ideas are touted as
they were in 1960, but are dressed up in 21st Century garb it
somehow seems that these ideas are new.
Those who oppose sexuality do so because no one wants to be seen as
supporting dirty, degrading, disgusting behavior.
In the face of similar statistics to those of the 1960s, it
is clear – people like to have sex.
It’s just sounds newer, better and somehow like a new political idea.
Now the real panic sets in.
The Tea Party was born in 2010 and exemplified the fight against all
things sexual. It attracted Sarah Palin,
Michelle Bachman and several fundamentalist Christians as candidates. Even though Hillary Clinton lead the polls
for more than two years, a well-spoken Black man won. He did however, appoint Hillary as the US Secretary of
State. That was the final straw. First a women, then a black man. Time to
break out the big guns. One of the
first of these weapons was unending opposition to everything Democratic. In 2012, a Mormon, the arch-type
conservative with anti-sexual, anti-gay, no sex education, no federal funds for
abortion, teaching nothing but abstence as birth control even a “personhood”
amendment to state and federal constitutions got the nod as the republican
candidate.
There is now a new
line-in-the-sand. This book takes a
well researched, detailed look at how we got here.
_______________________________
This book is available in print, in a Kindle Format, or
download it electronltcally
from Google books or The Gutenberg Project.com. It is available in an MP-3 format or check
your local library. It is not yet available as an audio-book. .
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