Tag: Trump

P. T. Barnum Meets Revenge of the Nerds

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In view of what has been happening in Washington, it seems important to look at the larger context in which we women are losing our rights, as well as our social safety net and livelihoods. We find ourselves in the middle of a war on democracy, justice, freedom of speech, science, reality, and sanity, between 2 cults: the MAGA cult on the right, and the gender cult on the Left. In this post, I will focus on the former; I’ll deal with the gender cult in a subsequent post. In both cults, women lose, but in different ways.

The MAGA cult wants to strip us of all of our reproductive rights, our right to divorce our abusers, our right to equal pay for equal work, our dignity as single mothers, our right to choose our partners, our right to live free from fear of male violence and sexual assault, and have even gone so far as to suggest we should be stripped of our right to vote. The MAGA cult would enshrine fetal so-called “personhood” into law, while denying and even criminalizing our right to choose to be child and pregnancy free, and would even deny us birth control. Being anti-abortion and anti-ERA have been articles of faith for the religious Right, which comprise a huge portion of MAGA, for over 40 years. Anyone wanting to learn more about this threat, particularly from the religious Right, should watch the documentary, Bad Faith. The current administration in Washington has been enabled largely by an unholy Trinity of Christian Dominionists, Big Tech, and Billionaires like the Koch Brothers, and, of course, Elon Musk.

While Vance’s role seems to be relegated to being the administration’s attack dog, Musk is given free rein to destroy our government agencies, along with his band of unqualified, pubescent hackers. It is P. T. Barnum meets Revenge of the Nerds. Trump the lying huckster and Musk the incompetent self-promoting technocrat, narcissistic sociopaths selling their followers on the phony narrative of going after the “swamp” and “waste, fraud, and abuse” when they are the quintessential examples of corrupt plutocrats, dismantling every agency and department that stands in the way of their greed and exploitation. If they really wanted to do away with “waste, fraud, and abuse”, they could start by ending Elon Musk’s government contracts. In any case, it is truly amazing that anyone believes the hype that’s coming from the Trump/Musk traveling circus. But they dare not utter one word of protest or risk being shamed, humiliated, and banished from the cult. Total, unquestioning loyalty is required of Trump and Musk’s minions.

Corporate welfare in the form of government subsidies, grants, tax breaks, and giveaways are where the real money is going and how these criminal billionaires are growing fat off the taxpayer’s dime, selling America’s assets off to the highest bidder while sending all the watchdogs and laws and agencies meant to protect the 99% to the trash heap. Goodbye Inspectors General, Goodbye Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Goodbye ethical attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice, Goodbye programs that help the poor and middle class, Goodbye environmental protections, Goodbye to access for journalists, Goodbye to impartial law enforcement, Goodbye to everything the average American depends on in the name of “bringing down the deficit”. This is the billionaires’ idea of “Making America Great Again”.

A lie this huge ought to be obvious by now and this administration would be a hilarious clown show were it not for the reality that actual people all over the world are being harmed, and women, (and children) more than any other group, are once again the major recipients of this harm. This is particularly true for single mothers and older women, the poorest of the poor, who depend on the social safety net for survival. The MAGA cult is enamored with billionaires and vulture capitalism, and blatantly displays its male supremacy. In this world might is right, human beings are commodified, women are chattel, and every interaction transactional. The only values are money, profit, and power, and every action is only worthy if it can be “monetized” or can enhance their domination.

George Carlin warned us that the owner class was coming for us, years ago now, his words compellingly prophetic.

Both political parties are complicit in this sellout to corporate ownership of our government and ourselves, which began long ago, but with this duo and their loyalist enablers we are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra wealthy that is breathtaking in its scope. It is nothing short of a heist, hidden behind a shell game intended to distract from their true intention: to transform our democratic republic into a kleptocracy run by dictators hellbent on returning us to feudalism.

Jon Stewart’s monologue on DOGE’s budget cuts is also on point:


Silicon Valley and Big Tech have had these designs for a long time it turns out, and billionaires have been plotting to enrich themselves by impoverishing the rest of us for decades. But now it is coming into full fruition with the Trump/Musk traveling circus who are more than happy to allow the Christian fundamentalist, nationalist, dominionists to turn women into handmaidens as payment for their services in helping them gain power. We must resist with every ounce of our individual and collective strength or we will lose everything, including ourselves.

Trump’s Threat to Women’s Rights & the ERA

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The Equal Rights Amendment MUST Be Published Before Trump Takes Office!

In view of recent election results and, despite denials, the clear intention of the Trump Administration to implement Project 2025, which reads as a male supremacist manifesto, it is imperative that Biden reverse his obstructionism and instruct the National Archivist, Colleen Shogun, to publish the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.  The ERA has met all the legal requirements, having been ratified by ¾ of the states, the 38th of which, Virginia, ratified on January 27, 2020.  Women have been waiting for over a century for the ERA to first be passed by Congress, and then be ratified by the required number of states.

The National Archivist is a ministerial position under the Executive Branch, and Biden is the only person who can reverse the decision by the Trump Administration to unconstitutionally interfere with its automatic publication following ratification by the requisite states, and reverse his own administration’s continuation of the Trump obstructionism.  The ERA represents our best, and only, real bulwark against the tide of male supremacism Trump promises to deliver.

We acknowledge that biological women, as a sex class, have enemies on the Left and on the Right. The embrace and promotion of gender ideology on the Left and its erasure of women has been breathtaking, despite its utter lack of scientific evidence; its having been founded on junk science; its clear misogyny and homophobia in its exaltation of sexual stereotypes; its disregard for the safeguarding of children and legitimate concerns of parents; the willful blindness to the real harms of medicalization, and the corporate pharmaceutical money behind it; the pain of detransitioners and regretters; and total disregard of the infringement on the sex-based rights and safety of women and girls.

In addition, the cancel culture, McCarthyist repression of free speech and de-platforming of anyone questioning gender ideology and so-called “gender affirming care”, has exposed the authoritarian nature of this men’s rights movement, which has captured the Left, with rare exception.

Among other issues such as Gaza, the border, the disastrous handling of the exit from Afghanistan, concerns about the price of living, etc., the Biden Administration’s elevating the rights of trans-identified males over the rights of women and girls and the promotion of gender ideology was one of the reasons that the Presidential Democratic ticket lost the election to Trump.

In following the dictates of the TQ+ gender lobby, the Biden/Harris Administration and the Harris/Walz campaign ceded rational ground to the other enemies of women’s rights, the Christian nationalists and their MAGA allies, men’s rights activists, and other garden variety misogynists, who nevertheless know what a woman is and that there are only two sexes, observable at birth. Their adherence to this ideology contributed directly to Trump’s appeal and ultimate win, as this is an issue he plans to confront, some long-time Democrats even voting for him because they hope for some relative sanity to be restored in this regard.

The men’s rights activists insist that women are inferior, should cater to men, be subservient, and allow themselves to be sexually exploited. Some young incels and “bros” have been emboldened by Trump’s win to the extent that they are now exultantly proclaiming “Your body, MY choice!” in defiance of the abortion rights battle cry and women’s right to bodily autonomy and agency and in their zeal to dominate and control women’s lives and bodies.

The Christian Right, the other enemy of women’s sex-based rights, has embraced Trump as their champion and tirelessly devoted itself to his campaign, and has been greatly empowered by Trump’s win and takeover of Congress and the Supreme Court. It would like to not only turn women into handmaidens, but outlaw and criminalize abortion and also birth control, attempt to grant fetuses “personhood”, track women’s pregnancies and penalize miscarriages, do away with no-fault divorce, treat rapists with kid gloves and accuse victims of “false reporting”, end investigation of campus rape, penalize unmarried women, and generally return women to 1950’s America. The Christian Nationalists also take a very dim view of our federal government and welcome Trump’s plan to dismantle it.  The truth is, it aims to destroy our representative democracy, do away with the separation of church and state, and transform this country into a theocratic dictatorship. If you think this is an overstatement, please view the recently released documentary, “Bad Faith”, and prior to that, “The Family“. This is the enemy that will be in ascendance with Trump in power.

We call on all women and men who oppose tyranny and the destruction of the rights of natal women and girls to help us get the ERA finally published onto the Constitution in order to protect us from the twin threats of gender ideology and the religious right.  We have allies in Congress who have signed onto the resolutions, SJR 39 in the Senate, and HJR 82 in the House, which recognize that the only remaining step for the ERA to become law is publication, and that it is up to Joe Biden to finally take this step to ensure that all the hard-won rights women have fought for, including voting rights, abortion rights, contraception, equal pay, no-fault divorce, owning property, obtaining credit in one’s own name, safe spaces, sports, etc. are not rolled back. The ERA would ensure that women cease to be treated as second-class citizens before the law, and would have prevented Roe being overturned.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the sponsor of SJR 39, is hosting a virtual Town Hall on the ERA on this coming Tuesday, December 3rd at 4 PM PDT, 7 PM EST and we need supporters of the ERA to register now and attend! We also need you to call these Senators and U.S. Representatives and direct them to apply pressure to Biden to publish and text Biden at 302-404-0880 and Harris at 310-861-2977.

The time is NOW!  We cannot let the efforts of our First Wave Feminist forebears like Alice Paul’s efforts to be in vain.  Sign up for the Town Hall and start calling and writing these representatives and the White House, remind them on social media, and don’t stop until Biden makes the call to the National Archivist and gets the ERA in the Constitution!