I must admit that I wasn't originally going to write about it when Rick Santorum made his heinous statements about rape.  It was simply too easy like shooting fish in a barrel.

Then I saw the article on conservatives wanting to change the laws concerning domestic violence and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was something that would and could be overlooked concerning his statements and those of other conservatives and that I needed to address them.

Rape is more about control and dominance than it is about sex.  It's the need of those who internally feel powerless to prove to themselves that they have an element of control, at least in those fleeting minutes that they are assaulting someone.  They "get off" on the power to inflict themselves onto someone else.

You would think given Rick Santorum and his ilk's attitude concerning abortion that they would be clamoring to do what they could to help women with prenatal care, WIC, Food Stamps so the woman could be healthy during an already difficult pregnancy and so the precious child they have demanded should be born has the best chance to succeed.  Yes, if the child were the actual focus, that would be appropriate.  But, that's not the focus, not by a long shot.

You would think that any political party with any sense would not suggest that police need to leave the scene of a violent assault where both the victim and the potential attacker are still on the scene in order to get a warrant.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what would happen the minute the police turned the corner. If the victim of a crime were the focus, you'd understand that if a trained policeman sees the evidence of violent crime and can ascertain the potential criminal, he should arrest the individual right then instead of replacing the victim in danger.  But that's not the focus.

When this country came close to having a second Great Depression, assisting those who had been swept up in the maelstom should have been second nature.  It should have been as natural as running to the assistance after a natural disaster.    If wanting to rebuild the economy and putting people back to work  had been the focus, that would have made sense.  Instead, the GOP fought tooth and nail against any jobs bills, any lengthening of assistance for the long term unemployed and, at the same time, suggested that they were lazy good for nothings who deserved to lose their homes if they were foolish enough to be tricked.   Once again, that's because American workers and middle class taxpayers weren't the focus.

The focus in all of this is about control again.

For hundreds of years in this country, the majority of the power base was wealthy white male property owners from western European backgrounds and conservative Christian beliefs.  All the power was in their hands.  But, within the last 150 years, that's been changing.  They lost the right to have slaves, to control another race.  They lost the ability to control women through financial or legal means.  The poor, the middle class and immigrants from non-northern European countries not only had the same rights they did, and for those who could vote, they had more votes.  And fewer and fewer individuals are allowing them to control them spiritually.

Many, if not most, who fit the category were willing and able to accept that change had been coming for a long time and deal with it with grace.  These were the individuals who were comfortable about their own level of personal control and didn't have an issue with other's having the same ability.

The outrageous and extremist behavior we are now watching comes from those who demand that we roll time back to when they should have  had control.  They frantically attempt to control those same things that their ancestors generations before them had controled.  Things such as a woman's body and her right to privacy, the freedom of a person of color, the right to use violence without repercussion, the ability to make decisions for others who can now make decisions for themselves, the right to control people financially, the right to control who may get an education and the right to chose independently their own spiritual path.  

These impotent individuals flail and strike out in a vain attempt to gather back that which is already long gone and, for most, never really was.