Following a national backlash from white supremacists to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws of the 1960s and 70s, white fundamentalists finally began to organize. They left the Democratic party throughout the Southern and Middle states and joined with the Republican party to eradicate the feminist-liberal-Black-atheist-Democratic-nonconformist-communist-Nothern elitist-hippie Californian-Hollywood-nontraditionalist threats to the American way of life. Americans bought into it. The enemy was no longer simply a communist sympathizer. The enemy was someone you already disliked and distrusted.
Right wing policies rely on people's fears. When I was out hiking with my father, I sometimes thought I was afraid because we seemed lost. But he taught me that I was afraid because I had not identified the sound or odor. Today, I want my audience to identify the sounds and odors. We’re lost when we’re willingly distracted or misinformed or afraid. We’re able to help ourselves and others when we understand how we got here and where we’re going.
Women must take the lead in building a democratic society on service, diversity, workers rights, voting rights, opportunity, equality, justice, and fairness.
Turning Point Summit: The Summit was not about conservatism, “one nation under god”, traditional values, revival, destiny, or Making America Great Again. The Summit, as with all Republican outreach programs for women and minorities, was about White Christian Male Supremacy. There can be no Supremacy unless The Others are less important, less worthy. There can be no Male Supremacy unless Women are in servitude to Men.
The answer according to me is both complex (because this nation's white Christian leaders fought long and hard to build a capitalist system that would reward wealthy landowners with increasingly larger shares of national wealth and power while maintaining a compliant worker class and finding new ways to subjugate the poor and vulnerable) and simple (because Christianity is organized fantasy).
Like toddlers, teenagers, drug addicts, and Donald J Trump, America’s far right destroys the good stuff, then tries in their own idiotic ways to fix the chaos they create. Why are they thus inclined? Because their conservatism is not based on common sense, logic, reason, empathy, or rules. They live in a far right bubble of mindset and action. #NeverVoteRepublicanEverAgain
Although I am no longer a religious woman, I understand the powers of thinking: critical and creative thought empower us to learn, grow, empathize, adapt to changes, and plan for our futures. While absolutist and narrow thinking empower us to destroy all the possibilities and ideas of Others. Unfortunately for those who feel thus empowered, absolutist and narrow thinking is also self-destructive.
But above all else, if the Democratic party and its progressive base want to unify around any issue, desire election wins, intend to demolish MAGA power and end the Project 2025 Republican assault on democracy, they must confront Institutional Racism and its parent, White Christian Male Supremacy. Enough of wishing it would go away and hide under the rocks from whence it slithers, do the hard work over time to eradicate it.
Today is another post about the news and information that arrives via my email box every day. I share some of the headlines, writers, reporters, and the links to sites. STAY INFORMED!
When the end of this right-wing fascist revival experiences its downfall, we as community and nation must grapple with the fact that we let this happen. We allowed right wing policies to erode the strength of our public education system. A thriving public education system is our first obligation.
As citizens of the world and the USA, we have a solemn duty to stay informed. Right wing billionaires and the Republican party are defying our rights and our duties by disseminating lies and right wing propaganda.
The "masculinism" and "tradwife" movements are destined to be cruel. They are built on fantasy, and the subjugation of America's women to these movements' policy changes will be horrific.