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Advice to A Young Feminist
Recently I made the acquaintance of a young feminist/activist. She had read my blog on a different site before I moved here and decided we were kindred spirits. She was despairing of contemporary America and told me that she planned to find an affordable island somewhere and set up a lesbian separatist commune. I was invited to join, and she asked for my thoughts and advice on the subject. After noting that I do not qualify either by gender or sexuality, being neither female nor lesbian (I had to explain I was ace and neutrois), I told her I had experience that historically most lesbian separatist communes failed. (I remember them from the 70s and 80s.) They do so b/c women are still humans and bring with them all the problems that humans have. IMHO if she were serious about wanting to improve the lives of women and work for a more equitable society, she would stay and fight here in the U.S. We live in a time of change, where women have amazing role models before them: Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Michelle Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, etc…Should Clinton win, the glass ceiling of the highest office in the land will have been shattered. But the struggle for equal opportunity will not be over-there will still be those who seek to defund Planned Parenthood, ban abortions, and oppress LGBTQA individuals . Should (shudder) Trump win, those who are feminists/activists will be even more needed. Being the librarian I am, I gave her a reading list.
I do intend to write on the Democrats and Hillary’s nomination. I’m dealing with some health issues, though, and my energy is limited.
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Trump’s New Slogan: Make Russia Great Again!
The FBI is investigating the hack into the DNC which released emails to WikiLeaks from the Clinton campaign about her former rival Sanders. U.S. officials suspect that it was in fact a Russian cyber-attack. The timing and nature of this incident has the Clinton campaign saying that it was done deliberately to help Republican nominee Trump. Trump has been vociferous in his admiration of Russian leader Putin, and Putin has returned that by giving his endorsement to the controversial candidate. Given Trump’s ties to Putin, including substantial Russian monetary ones, this is hardly surprising. But Trump has channeled this politically, pushing the Republican platform to change its stance on the Ukraine and saying that he would not honor the NATO treaty to defend U.S. allies, a move which could potentially benefit Russia in its move towards hegemony in the Middle East and Europe. The question is: will Trump supporters CARE about any of this? They seem to be fueled by faith and willing to give The Donald an innumerable number of passes. Lied? No big deal. Scammed people? He’s a businessman! So maybe it’ll be “What’s a little bit of foreign intrigue/quasi-treasonous activity?”
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Faith and Office
So. I get an email from Hillary telling me how she has picked Tim Kaine to be her VP. As a Virginian I’m happy, though I had hoped she’d pick Elizabeth Warren. But something has been irking me. She made a point of telling me how he and his had joined a church and built a home centered around faith. And this annoys me why? Because I do not think his faith has anything to do with his ability to govern, unless I’m missing something and churches ARE now teaching classes. (Given the current political atmosphere, I fully expect that some Evangelical churches probably are doing that very thing.) I long for the day when a political candidate does not feel obliged to take a faith-based litmus test in order to run for public office in the US, as if being a good Christian automatically confers greater executive, legislative, or judicial skills. I say “good Christian” because, despite there being Jewish and even a few Muslim elected officials, we all know that Christianity is the religion that rules the land. Witness the RNC. And let agnostics and atheists beware! For a individual to come out publicly as a nonbeliever is the kiss of death. No-one currently serving in the Senate or House of Representatives admits to being atheist or even agnostic. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), the only openly avowed atheist, left office in 2013; Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) only came out as atheist after he had left office. No-one atheist has ever been elected to the Supreme Court. There are still states where it is AGAINST THE LAW for an atheist to hold public office.
One of the many things I liked about Bernie was that I DIDN’T hear him talk about his faith. I never heard him say anything about how he belonged to this or that synagogue, how much god meant to him, etc. etc. Of course, he IS Jewish, and we tend to talk and think about religion differently than Christians. And, to give Hillary her due, she doesn’t beat you over the head with a religious schtick (pun intended), either. I think she mentions it about as much as she has to. She might have her personal beliefs, but I’m pretty confident that the government she runs will not be faith-based and that the wall of separation between church and state will be respected. And that, I’m afraid, is about as much as we can ask for, given the current furor and frenzy that seems to sweeping the land.
