​A Surplus of Sopranos

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

The Donald Is Playing ‘Mac the Knife’

There have been several centuries-old historical records when men and boys were intentionally castrated to provide a specific social function. The Republican Party and Donald Trump have just started another record.

Eunuchs in the reign of Semiramis 4,000 years ago served as servants and slaves, as domestic workers, singers and entertainers, concubines, sexual partners, religious leaders, royal guards, government officials, and guardians of women or harem servants.

I have not found any historical records of girls and women sterilized to prevent pregnancies, but there are modern records in the U.S. and a few other countries authenticating it.

In the Fifth Century B.C. the Achaemenid Persian king thought he was God’s ruler on Planet Earth, so he spent most of his time in his domestic inner court with his eunuchs, who served his children and women from his harem. His harem included his wives and concubines, his sisters, mothers, and other female members. Persian women were jealously guarded and were hidden in carriages with drapes if they traveled. So Donald Trump was not the first king to have a harem.

Homo sapiens evidently learned early that male genitalia was the center of procreation besides being an amusing plaything. The testicles influenced the development of the voice, eventually changing it from high falsetto and soprano to tenor, baritone, and bass. Need some more altos and sopranos for your choir? Why not just recruit some girls and women? But what can you do if you don’t want to give girls and women recognition?

The Vatican had paid no attention to women or even mothers for 15 centuries, so get out the knife. Pope Sixtus V had noticed an older lad in a St Peter’s choir still had a soprano voice. He had lost his testicles to an illness called intestinal hernia by 16th Century Rome doctors.

The pope paid secular agents to find large poor families and pay them exorbitant fees for castrating a boy or two for the Vatican Choir. By the 18th Century, although castration was against Italian law, it has been estimated that more than 4,000 boys were castrated to provide those angelic high notes.

The Republican Party Has Many Castratos Knifed by Trump, Who Scream Support

I helped my dad castrate young pigs that we sold for good profit in the “biggest little pig market in the world” at Little Falls. In the book The Castrato and His Wife, the surgery was described when it was done in a small town near Tuscany: “Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was operated on at the age of 13 by an itinerant surgeon-barber (a combination trade in those days!) with a sharp knife and no anesthetic. Tenducci’s father, a laborer, needed the money. His wife could only stand by as she heard her son’s screams of agony. He was later pronounced fit after his wounds were treated. He was then sent to an orphanage operated by the Catholic Church where he was prepared to sing in church choirs and live a life of divine service.” I remember the little pigs screamed a lot, too.

It’s been an interesting seven years since the malignant narcissist Donald Trump slithered down the escalator with his sharp, ignorant tongue and began to castrate many leaders of the Republican Party on his way to “Make America Great Again.” Many “Christians” listened to his pleas for votes and sacrificed their testicles to gain a political advantage over those who refused to accept the word of someone who had only one love---himself. Those who supported him became mute or spoke only with soprano voices of the eunuch.

The Three Mouseketeers from North Dakota, Hoeven, Cramer, and Armstrong, often remain silent or speak in high wispy voices when it comes to supporting him. Many Republicans, once real conservatives, will soon realize that testicles don’t grow back.

But Testicles Get Us to the Problems of Abortion and Gender Every Second

Some believe God created the universe 6,000 years ago and some, the universe is 13 billion years old and God had nothing to do with it. Whatever, the earth has changed a lot since I was born in a house without water or electricity. It “moves on.”

We had a wonderful hot tub for 30 years at our lake home. I miss it a lot. Last week I read that Bullfrog Spas in Utah had a terrible time getting parts to build them during supply chain problems during the pandemic. They manufacture several models, and for just one model of around 1,850 parts, those parts come from seven countries, 14 states, and traveled a cumulative 887,776 miles to get to Utah.

That is why, with the advances in science for both the human body and the things we use to feed, shelter, clothe, and maintain health, I have come to the conclusion that religion, whether Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Great Spaghetti Monster, has created grave dangers for any female pregnant with a fetus that may have only a 70% chance of being born a child.

A perfect God who has created 870,000 viruses and allows 30% of lives to end after “life begins at conception” did not use “Intelligent Design” when examining and approving the product in the womb.

The critical fact is, almost all genders enjoy sex. In her article “The Republican War on Sex,” Mara Gay opens with “One day I hope to be a mother. But for now, I just have sex because I like it. Sex is fun.” Do you know anyone who has decided, to avoid “complications,” to have two children, so they agree to have sex just twice?

What do you do when a pregnant woman discovers her several-month fetus has no skull? Discuss it with a priest or minister? Consult her local Republican representative? Obstetricians estimate that four out of 100 pregnancies have fatal medical abnormalities and seven have very serious complications requiring immediate surgery and treatment. We are not “wonderfully formed!”

The Three PPPs Are Creating a Hell on Earth for Pregnant Girls and Women

Popes, priests, and politicians: Take a long hike to Never-Never Land!

Dante in his Inferno created the “Nine Circles of Hell” for all sinners rejected by God at St. Peter’s gate. Popes, priests, politicians, the U.S. Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell, Franklin Graham, Islamic imans, Bette Grande, Senators Cramer and Cruz, Governors DeSantis and Noemi have converted the nine circles into abortion Hell for the 21st Century and beyond.

The world recognizes 140 million new faces a year or 385,000 babies per day—or 10,267 born every day in the Divided States of America. This means that, using estimates by medical authorities who should know, at least 60 million fetuses are lost each year to miscarriages and a thousand other causes. In addition, the United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that 2,600 babies die within 24 hours of birth every day of the year, two million newborns live only a week, and 2.6 million die before the end of their first month.

UNICEF’s Chief of Health Stefan Peterson says: “This year we call on governments and partners to join the fight to save millions of children’s lives by providing proven, low-cost solutions.”

Unfortunately, nearly half of the children born this year likely won’t live to see the 22nd Century. A child born in Sweden in 2018 is most likely to live to 2100, while a child from Somalia would be unlikely to live beyond 2075. Lack of healthcare will make the difference.

Among those children mentioned above, more than 80% died from preventable and treatable causes such as premature birth, complications during delivery, and infections like sepsis and pneumonia.

The conditions created by DSA religious and political leaders are guaranteed to keep filling the nine levels of Pregnancy Hell:

1. Most states that have outlawed abortions or banned them after six weeks have high rates of food insecurity and child hunger (Idaho, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and West Virginia). How many are “Republican” states?

2. Almost half of the states rejected expanding Medicaid after the Republican Supreme Court decided to give them the option when the Court approved Obamacare 5-4 (the same states listed above). This rejection causes the death of many mothers and pregnancies because of poor healthcare.

3. Fifty-nine percent of abortions in the DSA are performed on women who have children. Gee, does religion or economics or health play a big role here?

4. Forty-nine percent of recipients of abortion live below the poverty line. Gee, does religion or economics and health play a big role here?

5. Of the 15 states with the strictest abortion laws, ten rank in the bottom quartile for cash assistance available for poor families and none mandate parental leave.

6. The latest estimate to raise a child to age 18 is $311,000. A single mother making the minimum wage falls about $27,000 short.

7. That whole bit about listening to the heartbeat of a fetus at six weeks? It’s a scam. Expert obstetricians and gynecologists say the chambers and valves of the heart—the opening and closing of which create the heartbeat sound—don’t exist yet.

Evolution: “It Has Taken 3.5 million Years to Move from Amoeba to Donald Trump”

Telmo Pievani, a biology professor at the University of Padua in Italy, has written a unique book about evolution called Imperfection. It points out in an amusing and truthful fashion the imperfections of the human body in function and its ability to reproduce. He ruefully calls it “Unintelligent Design” after the words used for centuries by theologians to describe God’s work as being of “intelligent design.”

Pievani disagrees: “Homo sapiens have useless earlobes, wisdom teeth have little function but to decay, the tubes carrying food and air are so close that choking is a significant cause of mortality, the terrible structure of our knees, spine, and the awkwardness of having our reproduction and sewerage emerging right next to one another points out the deficiencies that would not get a passing grade in any engineering class.”

But he saves his greatest criticism for the birthing process. Because we have big brains (he hopes), the fetus is often too big to pass through the birth canal because the pelvis is too small and the lower ribs too close. The obvious place for birthing is the large area taken up by the abdomen and intestines where the baby is taken out if everything else is too small. No reason not to have the birth canal there. It would eliminate a painful, rather ugly effort to get the baby out.

I will leave you with a statement by Nicole Walker, a teacher of creative writing at the University of Arizona, who was raped and had an abortion when she was eleven: “In many parts of the world, the U.S. included, adult men marry children, sometimes legally and sometimes not. These girls are often forced to give birth. The pelvis can be too small for a fetus. The fetus can die. The girl can suffer from a fistula, where the pressure from prolonged labor creates a connection between the bladder or rectum and the vagina.” It’s no time for an ignorant religious leader or politician to establish guidelines for treatment.