Women’s Strike Tomorrow

Somewhere in our various educations, most of us have come across Aristophane’s play Lysistrata. In the midst of a war between Athens and Sparta; an Athenian woman named Lysistrata calls women from throughout Greece together, to present her plan for ending the hostilities. The women agree to dress provocatively and act seductively towards their husbands and boyfriends, but then withhold sex until the men swear to end the war. It evidently worked.

Lysistrata appears to be the very first Women’s Strike.

Tomorrow, June 24th, Hoosier women are planning to join with other American women in a more modern-day version. As the strike website describes the effort: 

Women4Change and women in Indiana are going on strike, June 24th, 2024 with thousands of our sisters across the United States.

Why are we going on strike?

In acknowledgement of the 2nd anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we are removing ourselves for 1 day en masse.

What is a strike?

No spending. No work. No school.

(Evidently, the “no sex” aspect pioneered by Lysistrata is up to the individual woman…)

Hoosiers for Democracy has elaborated on the motivation for this one-day expression of resistance.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court reversed a fifty-year constitutional right to reproductive health and safe access to abortion. The country has ample evidence that Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas are under the influence of White Christian Nationalists and ‘dark money’ contributions. We have a tape recording of Justice Samuel Alito saying that he will fight to return this country to a state of Godliness; so we can assume that the upside flag that flew outside his house on the day of the attack on the Capital and the white nationalist pine tree flag that has been seen waving at his summer home were not by mistake. Justice Clarence Thomas has received a little over 4 million dollars in gifts from Republican mega donor Harlan Crow. We also know that the three justices appointed by Donald Trump lied when they stood before their Senate Confirmation Hearing and testified that they believed Roe V. Wade was ‘settled law’. The Supreme Court has only begun reversing personal freedoms. The right to contraception, the right to gay marriage, protection of voting rights and an attack on the LGBTQ+ community are in the ‘wings’ of what is coming next.

It was actually much simpler for women back in olden-times Greece–women didn’t hold jobs or attend school. (I’m not sure whether they even had the right to spend money in that patriarchal society.) Withholding sex was pretty much the only “strike” available. Today’s women, having gone from being property to something approaching partnership (hence the title of the book I wrote with Morton Marcus and that I continue to promote here), undoubtedly find themselves in a more complicated situation when it comes to withdrawing from their obligations, even for one day.

But as Hoosiers for Democracy remind us, Indiana women face a particularly ferocious attack.

  • The Republican candidate for Governor, Mike Braun, supports Indiana’s six-week abortion ban and is an ardent Trump supporter. He ‘goes along’ with whatever Trump says. His running mate for Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist, and was the person spearheading the Hamilton County Library Board’s decision to remove John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars, from the Young Adult section of the Fishers library. Beckwith says that the January 6th attack on the Capital was ‘divinely inspired’.
  • The Women’s Strike is an important action for Hoosier women and their allies. The 2022 Dobbs decision to deny women their constitutional right to an abortion is a decision that several of our state candidates support. Mike Braun, the Republican candidate for Governor, Micah Beckwith, the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Jim Banks, the Republican candidate for Senate, and Victoria Spartz, the Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District will work to further those restrictions. We must let them know that we will not go back. We can make a statement on June 24, 2024 and again on November 5, 2024.

At the very least, we women can withhold our dollars tomorrow. Absent some important obligation at the office that cannot be rescheduled, or an exam that a teacher will not allow a student to take at a different time, a one-day absence from the office or classroom shouldn’t work a hardship–but should send a message.

And while we’re sending that message, we need to demonstrate support for Jennifer McCormick’s campaign for Governor and Valerie McCrae’s Campaign for Senate. Send them money–no amount is too small to function as evidence that you support sanity and sense over theocracy and misogyny.

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Parties Versus Cults

A recent essay in the Washington Post considered the inside baseball aspects of party platforms.

“Back in the day,” when politics was far more focused on policy, I participated in local efforts to craft platforms that reflected thoughtful policy positions; as the linked article notes, those days–and their “thoughtful discussions”– are long-gone. As the essay also noted, while candidates sometimes tried to distance themselves from unpopular planks, platforms mattered. They revealed which factions really held power, and testified to the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

That was then. Policy doesn’t matter when politics is all about a cult waging culture war.

Four years ago, having scaled back their convention because of covid-19, the Republicans who nominated Donald Trump to a second term didn’t bother to adopt a platform at all. Instead, the party decided to stick with its 2016 document and “continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”

The last actual GOP platform contains all sorts of commitments that the the current crazies have abandoned.

That eight-year-old platform is a fossil of primordial, pre-MAGA conservatism — of a day when abortion rights seemed secure enough that posturing against them carried little political cost; when Republicans could agree that Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” needed to be defended against “a resurgent Russia.”

Written before our rogue Supreme Court overturned Roe, the platform pandered to single-issue anti-choice voters with a plank supporting a human life amendment to the Constitution that would make the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth. That’s going to be a bit awkward in a country where something like 70% of voters are pro-choice– and angry about the first-ever retraction of a constitutional right.

So maybe it is time for today’s Republicans to acknowledge the truth. They are no longer a party with any firm principles at all. Enduring and consistent values? Not for them.

Come to think of it, this whole exercise of writing a 2024 platform for the Republican Party could be pretty simple. Why bother with putting together another 60-page document when the truth about today’s GOP can be summed up in a single sentence?

“RESOLVED, That the Republican Party stands for whatever the hell Donald Trump says it does.”

Robert Hubbell recently reminded us just “what the hell” Trump has said lately.

Trump has promised to deny funds to any school that requires mandatory vaccines. Childhood vaccines against 16 diseases have saved hundreds of thousands of lives over the last century. Defunding schools that require vaccines will cause outbreaks of diseases that have been effectively eliminated. See HuffPo, Trump Makes Bizarre Threat About Schools And Vaccine Mandates.

Trump says that business leaders who do not support him should be fired. NBC News, Trump says business executives should be ‘fired for incompetence’ if they don’t support him.

Trump trashed Fox News for having the temerity to interview a guest—former Speaker Paul Ryan—who was critical of the former president. Trump said, “Nobody can ever trust Fox News, and I am one of them.” MSN, Trump Loses It At Fox News, Says No One Can Trust It.

Trump said that President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plans are “stunts” that will be “rebuked” if Trump is elected. See The Independent, Trump calls Biden’s student loan forgiveness a ‘vile’ publicity stunt.

Trump recently told the Danbury Institute that, if elected, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make a comeback like just about no other group . . . And I’ll be with you side by side.” The Danbury Institute promotes fetal personhood, opposing abortion from “the moment of conception” (a position that would effectively ban IVF). See Missouri Independent, Trump says he’ll work ‘side by side’ with group that wants abortion ‘eradicated.

Granted, Trump says whatever he thinks a given audience wants to hear–his lack of any comprehensive policy commitment (or understanding of what policy is or how government operates) is one reason his initial term did less damage than it might otherwise have done. Should he win in November, he’ll have the far greater competence of Project 2025 authors to draw on.

David Sedaris said it best. Anyone who thinks there is any equivalence between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is like the airline passenger in his often-cited example:

The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

To vote for Donald Trump–or the Indiana GOP’s Christian Taliban–is to reject the chicken.

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Unfortunately, Eternal Vigilance Really IS The Price of Liberty…

Louisiana just passed a manifestly unconstitutional law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. History really does repeat itself. I’ve addressed similar efforts multiple times over the years.

Here’s one from 1996.

I suppose it was only a matter of time until Indiana became embroiled in one of the more recent church-state controversies: the movement to post the Ten Commandments on the walls of courtrooms and government buildings throughout the country. It began in Alabama with a judge who defied clear Supreme Court rulings (nothing like a judge who decides that in his courtroom, laws he doesn’t like just won’t be followed). The governor of Alabama has taken an Orville Faubus approach to two Federal Court rulings requiring the judge to follow the law and remove the Commandments, and a few months ago there was a memorable rally in favor of the judge’s position which was enlivened by the presence of several hundred “bikers for Christ.”

Here in Indiana, the Hendricks County and Grant County Commissioners have voted to post the Commandments in their respective county courthouses. The officials are clearly aware that their actions are illegal, since the Resolution passed by each of them begins with a defiant declaration that the Supreme Court is wrong about separation of church and state.

Proponents of posting the Commandments offer a number of reasons: America needs to return to God; the Commandments aren’t really religious, but moral; and separation of church and state isn’t really in the Bill of Rights, but was invented by the satanic ACLU. Easily the most straightforward explanation was the one offered by J.D.Clampitt ( I am not making his name up), a Hendricks County Commissioner. “When Christians were in the minority,” Mr. Clampitt explained, “we were thrown to the lions. Now that we are the majority, it is time for us to be the lions.”

Mr. Clampitt makes explicit what most other members of the religious political extreme would deny: that the persistent attempts to eviscerate the First Amendment are part and parcel of an agenda that is far more menacing than the right wing’s lurid fabrications about the “gay agenda.”

Of course, a gay agenda does exist, just as a religious right agenda does. It may be instructive to compare them.

Gays want the right to be treated like everyone else. Gays and Lesbians want their job security to depend upon job performance rather than sexual identity; they want to marry and establish families that are recognized by government as such. They want to file taxes and receive government benefits on the same basis as everybody else.

The political religious extremists, however, want to be treated UNequally. Ironically, they are the ones demanding “special rights”– the right to have their beliefs endorsed by government, to have their religious tenets imposed by law (one need look no further than their insistence that their position on abortion and their disapproval of homosexuality be the law of the land). In Orwell’s famous phrase, they want to be “more equal” than others.

They want–as Clampitt readily admitted–to be the lions.

And here are a few paragraphs from one in 1997.

A new organization based in Auburn, Indiana, called the “Christian Family Association”  argues that the Supreme Court has consistently misconstrued the First Amendment.
According to the Supreme Court (and generations of historians and legal scholars) the Establishment Clause of the Bill of Rights prohibits government–and only government–from sponsoring or endorsing religious beliefs. The Free Exercise clause protects religious expression from government interference. While the First Amendment originally applied only to the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Bill of Rights to state and local governments as well.
The Christian Family Association claims that the refusal of government to prioritize Judeo-Christian religious views discriminates against them. In effect, they argue that their right to free exercise is violated unless there is explicit government endorsement of their religious beliefs. Most reasonable people would distinguish between government neutrality in matters of belief and acts of religious discrimination.
Some proponents argue that the Ten Commandments are not religious, but form a part of our general moral framework and should thus be viewed solely as an historic document. The text–as a clergyman friend of mine recently noted–refutes any such reading. “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” “You shall not make for yourselves an idol…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,” “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain..,” “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” are not generalized moral tenets.

Given the Hoosier ascendance of Christian Nationalists like Micah Beckwith, Jim Banks and Todd Rokita, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar effort mounted here once again.

There are many more. The battle is never over….

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You Are What You Read…

Remember when nutritionists admonished us with the phrase “you are what you eat”? A recent report from Harvard’s Kennedy school has modernized it, warning that–in our era of pervasive propaganda and misinformation–we are what we read (or otherwise access).

The study explored the media consumption of participants, and the degree to which the unreliability of that media left them with inaccurate beliefs about COVID-19 and vaccination. The researchers found that “the average bias and reliability of participants’ media consumption are significant predictors of their perceptions of false claims about COVID-19 and vaccination.”

I know–your first thought was “duh.” Did we really need a study showing that people who depend on garbage media believe ridiculous things? Wouldn’t logic tell us that?

Still, what seems self-evident can often prove less than conclusive, so confirmation of that logic in a rigorous study is important. In addition, the study confirmed politically-relevant differences in media consumption and credulity between Republicans and Democrats.

Here’s their summary of the study:

  • We surveyed 3,276 U.S. adults, applying Ad Fontes Media’s (2023) ratings of media bias and reliability to measure these facets of participants’ preferred news sources. We also probed their perceptions of inaccurate claims about COVID-19 and vaccination.
  • We found participants who tend to vote for Democrats—on average—consume less biased and more reliable media than those who tend to vote for Republicans. We found these (left-leaning) participants’ media reliability moderates the relationship between their media’s bias and their degree of holding false beliefs about COVID-19 and vaccination.
  • Unlike left-leaning media consumers, right-leaning media consumers’ misinformed beliefs seem largely unaffected by their news sources’ degree of (un)reliability. 
  • This study introduces and investigates a novel means of measuring participants’ selected news sources: employing Ad Fontes’s (2023) media bias and media reliability ratings. It also suggests the topic of COVID-19, among many other scientific fields of recent decades, has fallen prey to the twin risks of a politicized science communication environment and accompanying group-identity-aligned stances so often operating in the polarized present. 

The researchers found that the news-seeking and news-avoiding behaviors of the participants confirmed “the longstanding concern that those who embrace—and subsequently seek out—misinformation, even if inadvertently, constitute a group at risk of endangering their own and others’ health.”

In a country sharply divided along partisan lines, the implications rather obviously go further.

As any student of history–especially the history of journalism–can attest, America has always produced biased sources of information. What is different now, thanks to the Internet and social media, is its ubiquity–and greatly increased political motivation to seek out confirmatory “information.”

Other studies tell us that people who want to believe X do not necessarily change their belief in X when confronted with evidence that X is inaccurate. The Harvard study found that anti-vaccine attitudes were “tenacious and challenging to counter, unyielding to evidence, and bolstered by persuasive anti-vaccine messaging—which is not difficult to find and immerse oneself in. In the COVID-19 context, several identity groups appear to have engaged in this immersion.”

Some research has suggested that confrontation with contrary facts can lead to what is called a “backfire effect,” causing people to double down and become even more stubborn in their original beliefs. (Facebook found, for example, that warning users that an article was false caused people to share that article even more.) Other research has suggested that fact-checking, if done properly, can often successfully correct misperceptions. But…

First, facts and scientific evidence are not the most powerful and easy way to encourage people to abandon false or inaccurate beliefs and perspectives. Second, people embrace fake news, misinformation and disinformation because of their beliefs, even if they can be proven wrong, exercising, in many cases, a demonstration of tribal loyalty. Third, engaging in a dialogue in a non-threatening manner to avoid defense mechanisms from activating with personal stories has a greater likelihood of success.

Even when encounters with the facts might actually cause a reconsideration, it turns out that the algorithms used by social media platforms increasingly shield users from information they might find uncongenial. Those “likes” we register act as guidelines used to feed us more of the posts we’ll “like,” and shield us from contrary perspectives or facts that might debunk our preferred prejudices.

And now, the deepfakes are coming.

On the one hand, several sites are available that evaluate the credibility of the sources we consult. On the other hand, no one can force people to visit those sites or believe their ratings.

it has never been easier to avoid uncongenial realities and evade critical thinking…..

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The “Clean Hands” Posturers

As political campaigns proceed toward November, I become more and more terrified. It isn’t simply at the Presidential level–although the prospect of giving a stark raving lunatic access to the nuclear codes does, among other things, keep me up at night. Even a superficial acquaintance with the antics of the MAGA know-nothings in Congress and their peers in Red state legislatures is incredibly depressing.

November will tell the tale. Will sensible Americans reject the party of out-and-proud theocrats and culture warriors running for state and federal offices? Here in Indiana, the GOP–in thrall to the lunatic– is running candidates for state office who would have been unthinkable even to the right wing of the party just a few years ago.

It’s not just Beckwith.

Lots of sensible Hoosiers will never learn of the outrageous positions held by Braun, Banks and Rokita, thanks to our current information environment. And some segment–small, but arguably important–will adopt what Tom Nichols has accurately dubbed the “Clean Hands” posture. These are the “holier than thou” voters who recognize that Trump is completely unfit for office and will not vote for him—yet will not vote to stop him.

Bill Barr comes to mind, as does Nikki Haley. Barr is a true believer, and Haley is a shallow opportunist, but both are pillars of courage next to Republicans such as Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and John Bolton, the supposed guardians of the guardrails who have made the case against Trump but have also vowed not to vote for either Trump or Joe Biden. (Bolton has said that he will write in Dick Cheney.) Even former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a more moderate Republican now running for a Senate seat, has said that he will write in a “symbolic vote that states my dissatisfaction with where the party is.”

It isn’t simply these political insiders who are posturing about the “morality” of their votes. As Nichols notes,

I am aware of all the arguments people make in favor of protest votes, and about how no one should have to mark the box for a candidate they don’t like. In a normal political year, I might even buy some of them. If you genuinely think that Trump and Biden are exact political isomers of each other—symmetrical in their badness and differing only in style—then not voting for either of them makes sense at least in theory, because you are in effect saying that you don’t think anything will really change either way.

But anyone with even half a brain knows that–between Biden and Trump–there is zero equivalence.

Biden is a typical (and relatively moderate center-left) American president, and the Jimmy Clean Hands Republicans know that outside MAGA world, they would sound pusillanimous if they started mumbling about egg prices and diversity training programs while Trump is threatening to attack the Constitution, release insurrectionists from prison, and use the government to get revenge on his personal enemies.

In the end, the Clean Hands position encourages people to think that their vote really does not matter, other than as a solipsistic expression of personal dissatisfaction. It indulges the narcissistic fantasy that on Election Day, a town crier will say, “1 million votes for Biden, 1 million and one votes for Trump, and one admirable vote for Ronald Reagan. We all want to thank you for your deeply principled stand. And it’s not your fault that Trump won the state.”

As Nichols reminds us, the reality is that only one of these men will emerge with the codes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. And he ends with a statement that every one of us ought to take seriously:

Personally, I vote as if my vote is the deciding ballot. I know it isn’t, of course, but it focuses my mind and makes me take the civic duty of voting seriously. People have given their lives for my right to stand in that booth, and when American democracy is facing a clear and existential threat, their sacrifice deserves something more than the selfish calculations of the Jimmy Clean Hands caucus.

No sane voter thinks that Jill Stein or JFK, Jr. is going to win the Presidency. A vote for one of the “spoiler” candidates is a mark of moral cowardice–a refusal to acknowledge that no candidate, of either party, is faultless–or even close– and that our duty as citizens is not to clutch our pearls and posture, but to choose between the alternatives genuinely on offer.

And anyone who thinks Joe Biden and Donald Trump are remotely close to equivalent ought to see a psychiatrist.

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