More Abuse as Metaphor

[Trigger warning.]

Just yesterday, I noted famed conservative asshole Dr. Helen comparing the SAMHSA Guide to Getting Through Tough Economic Times to "an abusive spouse providing you with tips on how to cope with his or her abuse," and today I see at Think Progress that, last night on the Glenn Beck Show (of course), Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC), last seen kissing Limbaugh's boots, claimed that accepting the stimulus funds (which his state desperately needs) is tantamount to "fiscal child abuse."

SANFORD: Since we don't have any of this money that's now being dispensed from Washington, DC; since we're going out and printing money and we're issuing debt to solve a problem that was created by too much debt; since that's taking place, and since those costs will be borne by the next generation, in fact it is sort of fiscal child abuse to do what we're doing.

BECK: Yes.

Yes. Yes, of course. How obvious it is to such reasonable men—fiscal child abuse!

Passing on future debt to children so they can have teachers now, and so their parents can have jobs in order to house and clothe and feed them now, is just like beating or neglecting them.

Wait. Actually...

Despite the fact that there's an argument to be made in the other direction, I'm not going to go there. Because, the truth is, using child abuse, which is intimate and personal and scarring, as a metaphor for political machinations that indirectly "abuse" children is fucked up. No kid has ever laid awake at night wondering if it's their fault that their governor refused stimulus funds.

And the problem with use abuse (and rape) metaphors, aside from the fact that they're triggering for survivors, is that they diminish the gravity of such profound violations, slowly inuring the culture to the language and to the very acts themselves. That abuse can be invoked so casually already is evidence enough that our horror at its ugliness is not what it should be, in a decent world.