Jason Smith Plays Political Games with Easter

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

My congressman, Republican Jason Smith of southeast Missouri, is a forty-three-year-old bachelor politician who sleeps in his office at the Capitol (a government complex dubbed by some as a "homeless shelter" for congressmen).  Smith regards himself as a mover and shaker in Congress and is, in fact, the current chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a fact that he brings up ad nauseam in his weekly email newsletter to a few of his constituents.

I somehow made it onto Smith's email newsletter list a few years ago, and, so far, have not been removed.  It comes out on Mondays, and I always make reading it a priority.  I also take and read newsletters from Rep. Debbie Lesko  and Rep. Paul Gosar, both of Arizona.  Lesko's is fairly balanced and informative, even for a conservative from a strong conservative area, and Gosar's, as you might expect, is steeped in crazy, but always funny.  

Jason Smith's newsletter, on the other hand, is dry and formulaic.  The first third-to-half of the missive is always an attack on Joe Biden and/or his family and/or administration.  Jason rushes around during the week trying to secure speaking spots on right-wing sewage disposal outlets like Fox, Breitbart, and Newsmax, and then scatters links to those brushes with fame throughout the political portion of his newsletter.  The remainder of his newsletter is focused on news from back in the district:  area residents, and especially students, who are in the news for noteworthy achievements, as well as occasional congressional visits to area farms.  The newsletters begin with a good dose of political drivel, but are saved by the far more friendly and respectful local section.

This week's newsletter from Jason Smith began with a standard shot at the President.  This time Smith chose to lead with the false charge that Biden had declared "Easter Sunday as Transgender Visibility Day,"  a claim that had been completely debunked a full week before.   But it contained a couple of elements sure to rile Jason's voters back home, and he just could not help himself.   Even though it was not true, it was just too good politically not to print!

The International Day of Transgender Visibility has been celebrated on the same day - March 31st - for the past fifteen years.  Easter Sunday, as any practicing Christian knows, falls on a different day every year - but always on a Sunday.  This year the events happened to occur on the same day, purely a calendrical coincidence and not some nefarious Biden plot.    Jason Smith knew that, and the fact that he chose to make Easter a political issue by tying it International Transgender Visibility Day says more about Smith's disregard for the intelligence of his voters than it does about any supposed affront to Christianity.

Easter is a holy day celebrated by Christians around the globe.  It should be focused on love and acceptance, not acrimony and efforts to keep us divided.

Easter was marked with the ugly stain of politics this year, but Joe Biden wasn't the one who stained it.