Tag Archives: misogyny

Cultural Revolution?

In a recent newsletter, Paul Krugman compared the Trump administration’s anti-DEI (i.e., pro-racism & misogyny) efforts to China’s cultural revolution under Mao.

Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.

The Cultural Revolution was, of course, a huge disaster for China. It inflicted vast suffering on its targets and also devastated the economy. But the Maoists didn’t care. Revenge was their priority, never mind the effects on GDP.

As we’ve seen, China’s efforts failed–albeit not without years of unnecessary suffering. As I’ve previously opined, changing a nation’s culture rarely if ever works. But our would-be king–unhampered by anything suggesting intellect or competent appointees within his “administration,” is certainly trying to fulfill the most ardent wish of his MAGA base–taking American society back to the 1950s (or perhaps before), when women were pushing out babies and doing the dishes in the kitchen, and Black Americans were subject to segregation and confined to subservient positions.

That effort requires eliminating evidence of the worth and competence of women and Blacks. Accordingly, I did a search for federal websites that have been scrubbed of references to the contributions of women and black people.

Here’s what I found.

The Department of Defense undertook a significant purge of DEI-related content, resulting in the removal of profiles and articles about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, a Black Medal of Honor recipient; the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the Navajo Code Talkers (including profiles of Indigenous veterans; women veterans such as Lisa Jaster, the first female Army Reserve graduate of Ranger School); historical figures like Jackie Robinson, who served in the Army during World War II; the Tuskegee Airmen and Women Airforce Service Pilots; and notable gravesites of Hispanic and Black service members at Arlington National Cemetery.

Some content has been restored following public outcry, but many of those pages remain inaccessible .​

NASA removed profiles of women and people of color from its website. The profile of Rose Ferreira, a Dominican-American intern, was taken down and later reinstated after public backlash. However, the restoration led to harassment directed at Ferreira, highlighting the challenges faced by individuals whose stories were previously celebrated .​

The National Park Service revised its content to align with the administration’s directives. Those erasures included the removal of mentions of transgender individuals from articles about the suffragist movement; changing terminology from “LGBT” to “LGB” and omitting the word “queer;” altering language in articles about the Underground Railroad, including removing a quote and image of Harriet Tubman and the term “slavery.”

The Small Business Administration removed a photograph from its website depicting a diverse group of individuals, including women and people of color, in front of a whiteboard.

Other federal agencies that have complied include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has removed content related to LGBTQ+ veterans; the Federal Trade Commission, which has deleted over 300 posts, including those reporting on antitrust actions against tech giants; and the State Department, which altered the language in international travel advisories, replacing “LGBTQ+” with “LGB” and omitting references to safety concerns for transgender Americans abroad.

I have no idea how many Americans visit these sites; certainly, the information that has been deleted is widely available elsewhere. (In the age of the Internet, erasure of information previously available is a pipe dream…) That said, these alterations provide additional evidence (as if we needed it) of the central preoccupation of the White Christian Nationalists and other assorted bigots who form the majority of MAGA adherents.

It remains to be seen whether those who supported Trump because he promised to reward their racism–to return them to social dominance– will be steadfast in that support despite the chaos and damage being done to the economy, public health, science, education and the rule of law, among other elements of accelerating collateral damage.

As Krugman admonished readers, looking for rational strategy in Trump’s hysterical assault on DEI and “woke-ism” (aka equality and humanity) is a fool’s errand. “Don’t try to sanewash what’s happening. It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.”

Mao couldn’t change his culture. I don’t think Trump will change America’s, either. But we’ll suffer while he tries.

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Telling It Like It Is

As Americans try to cope with the national lunacy being imposed on us by the cretins in charge of our federal government, two essential elements of our current disaster have become too obvious to ignore.

First, voters did this. Granted, not a majority–most voters cast their ballots for someone other than the cult leader, and a disgraceful number of American citizens didn’t even bother to vote. Trump’s “victory” was razor-thin–but it was a victory, and we are reaping the consequences of that disastrous civic failure.

Second, the overwhelming reason voters supported Trump was racism. Those voters didn’t cast ballots for the destruction of America’s global dominance, or for the evisceration of Medicaid and Social Security; most of them (if they followed actual news and knew what was going on) would oppose measures hobbling the IRS’ ability to audit our billionaire overlords. No–what they wanted, and what the administration is providing, is culture war, an effort to take the United States back to the social arrangements of the 1950s and before, a time when LGBT folks were closeted, no one had even heard the word “trans,” women were in the kitchen, and Black people “knew their place.”

A recent essay from Jennifer Rubin in The Contrarian examined the language MAGA employs in an effort to veil that obvious effort. Prominent, of course, is the administration’s war against “DEI.” (It’s so much nicer to rail against letters of the alphabet than to use the N word…)

As with “CRT,” the MAGA censors, thought police (aimed at rooting out “improper ideology”), Great Replacement paranoids, and outright bigots cannot tell us precisely what “DEI” is—they merely know they are dead set against it. Teaching children to hate America. Making whites feel guilty. Quotas. None of that resembles the “DEI” practices utilized by universities, employers, researchers, and government entities—but that’s irrelevant to them.

Nuanced concepts (e.g., outreach to recruit Americans of all backgrounds, medical trials to ensure women’s physiology is taken into account) do not appeal to people who think Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick epitomize “merit.”

Increasingly “DEI” in the MAGA dictionary has come to mean “Blacks” or “women” or “a convenient scapegoat who represents the ‘other.’” A plane goes down? DEI. A museum pays tribute to the greatness of Jackie Robinson? DEI.

Increasingly, the anti-DEI mission has become an explicit attempt to blame or erase non-whites, females, and other disenfranchised groups. Remember when they used to oppose “canceling” people and policing speech? MAGA ideologues no longer hide their core belief: that white men are inherently qualified, the “true” history of America has been made by white males, and non-white men are to blame for all calamities.

What Rubin correctly calls a “ham-handed effort to bolster white advantage” doesn’t conceal the obvious. The goal is to resegregate America, to return the country to what White Christian Nationalists believe is the proper, “Godly” order of things: dominance of White Christian Males over everyone else. As Rubin notes, if we had any doubts of that goal, Trump’s repeal of LBJ’s Executive Order 11375 gives the game away.

LBJ’s Executive Order “gave the Secretary of Labor the authority to ensure equal opportunity for people of color and women in federal contractors’ recruitment, hiring, training and other employment practices,” The point was simple; if the federal government was contracting with private firms, it had the right to demand that those firms refrain from discriminating. If the composition of the relevant workforce was markedly different from local demographics, that didn’t necessarily preclude contracting, but the business would need to show that it had taken affirmative steps to recruit a more representative workforce.

In other words, the government wasn’t going to use our tax dollars to reward intentional discrimination.

As Rubin points out,

The anti-DEI crusade seems aimed to repeal the fundamental statutory and constitutional protections that prohibit discrimination and give meaning to “All men are created equal.” After all, if the MAGA crowd really wanted to root out unfairness and promote merit they would insist we reject unqualified white appointees and dump legacy admissions at colleges and universities schools. Instead, the anti-DEI crusade aims to bolster white entitlement and eradicate any sense of obligation to right society’s wrongs.

The war against “DEI” and the effort to make “woke” an epithet are intended to cloak MAGA’S racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism with neutral language, to pretend that efforts to address systemic inequalities are the problem, not the inequalities themselves.

Ironically, in voting their fears and bigotries, MAGA folks voted to retreat from the foundational principles that really did make America great.

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Natal Con

At a recent lunch discussion, my friend and sometimes co-author Morton Marcus asked me if I was aware of the “pro natalist” movement gathering steam on the right. I wasn’t.

I was aware of the emergence of the “trad wives”–women who, for whatever reason, are asserting their desire to retreat back to the kitchen and nursery. My superficial understanding of that particular “movement” suggests it’s part of White Christian Nationalism, with its reliance on biblical cherry-picking and–especially– fear of the hated modernity that allows those “others” to claim equal civic status with “Godly” folks. But I hadn’t heard of the natalists.

Morton subsequently sent me a transcript of an interview with a couple named Collins who were attending a convention of natalists. The interviewer began by reminding listeners that both JD Vance and Elon Musk are on record decrying reduced birthrates. Musk–with his 13+ children–has obviously been working against that trend. (Not that he bothers spending much time with most of his offspring, according to interviews with several of them. Evidently the quality of parenting is less important than the quantity…)

The podcast included a clip of comments made by one Charles Haywood at the first Natal Con. Haywood, who made his money as a shampoo magnate, was a sponsor this year. Haywood is heard in that clip saying that “generally, women should not have careers. They should be socially stigmatized if they have careers.” He blames declining birth rates on feminism and the overturning of what he sees as “natural hierarchies of gender and race.”

And there, my friends, you have it.

I have frequently posted my conviction that Trumpism is basically a revolt against equality–against the notion that there are no “natural hierarchies of gender and race.”

I understand why MAGA appeals to mediocre (or worse) White men who resent having to share the civic landscape with women and people of color. I admit to bafflement when it comes to the women who agree with Mrs. Collins that her role in life is to push out as many babies as possible. (I say that as a women who has “pushed out” three of my own–and as the daughter of a woman who insisted that women could–and should–live well-rounded lives that included whatever careers we desired.)

The irony is that the neo-natalists are aiming their criticisms at the wrong culprit. As the podcaster pointed out, the evidence for declining birthrates points not to women’s equality, but to a very different reason. Surveys show that most people continue to want children, but they are increasingly aware of what parenting requires- the ability to provide a stable home, sufficient income, and (usually) a partner.

When a society isn’t providing the social supports that make meeting those requirements possible, prudent people decide to have fewer children, if they have any at all. The lack of government funding for health care, the dearth of affordable housing, the lack of support for good public schools, the high cost and limited availability of child care–all are disincentives for parenthood.

My own grandchildren would add the threat of climate change and our lackluster efforts to address it.

The podcast quoted a scholar who studies this movement and explained its roots: the idea that “our society has become excessively effeminate, weak, compassionate. And what they want to do is breed or elevate an aristocratic class that’s going to be masculine, violent, not necessarily motivated by, let’s call it, empathy.”

The neo-natalists want to restore a “masculine” culture that requires rooting out feminism and multicultural democracy. “Women are to be subordinated to men, largely going to be responsible for managing the household, although with no real particular authority. And of course, they’re going to have an awful lot of children.” And of course, non-White men will be subordinated to their “natural” betters.

If we needed any evidence of how wrongheaded (okay, insane) this belief in a “natural hierarchy” of White men is, we need only look at the “superior” White guys in the Trump administration. It would be hard to assemble a more pathetic, clownish and ignorant group.

The neo-natalists interviewed in this very informative–if nauseating–podcast are enthusiastic Trumpers. They provide additional evidence–as if we needed it–that support for MAGA and Trumpism are today’s eruptions of the oldest American sins: the racism and misogyny of White men who are frantic at their loss of automatic dominance, and angry that they have to compete for status on the basis of actual merit.

I suppose I should thank Morton for the additional evidence of what is really at stake…

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Hubbell Cuts To The Chase

We are now seeing the “Chattering Class” carping and criticising and offering convoluted reasons for America’s descent into fascism–aka, the election of Donald Trump. Harris should have gone more to the Left, no, she should have gone to the Right, the problem was Democratic elitism, etc. (Interestingly, very few media pundits have addressed the very real role played by the media environment, very much including a mainstream press which failed repeatedly to call insanity insanity, instead normalizing aberrant rhetoric and behavior that formerly would have been consider shocking and disqualifying.)

Almost all of those smug analyses are efforts to avoid the truth–refusals to face what really happened. Robert Hubbell, however, was clear-eyed:

Just as the media normalized Trump before the election, there is a wholesale effort to “normalize” the election results. Pundits are claiming the election was decided by voters’ concerns over inflation, immigration, or crime. Those issues are post-facto rationalizations offered by voters to conceal their real reasons for voting for a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser over an eminently qualified candidate.

Kamala Harris lost because Trump’s supporters were motivated by racism, misogyny, and white supremacy. They voted for a felon and against prosecutor/senator/vice president because she is a woman of Black and South Asian ancestry. All of the remaining explanations are camouflage to conceal the real motivations of those who voted against Kamala Harris.

We will learn nothing if we accept pollsters’ dog-and-pony show to explain the election with exit polls and crosstabs in spreadsheets that have nothing to do with the real motivations of voters. Do not conflate data with information. Do not mistake information for knowledge. Do not confuse knowledge and understanding. Do not accept percentages and cohorts in response to the simple but profound question, “Why?”

Racism. Misogyny. White supremacy. Occam’s Razor.

Hubble is exactly right. H.L. Mencken predicted this years ago, locating the problem precisely in the defects of We the People:

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”

Well, we’re there.

Those of us who live in a kinder, less hateful world misunderstood the effects of Trump’s out-and-proud racism. We thought his horrific Madison Square Garden rally damaged him–as it certainly did with the nice, normal people who weren’t going to vote for him anyway. What is now clear, however, is that Trump’s supporters don’t share the reactions of nice, normal people. For them, it was a welcome endorsement of their bigotries, a reassurance that their resentments are valid, and an explicit permission to express them. It was a rejection of “political correctness” (aka civility), and a validation of the public expression of invective and meanness.

We all need to recognize that the inhumanity, the bigotry, the misogyny isn’t a bug–its a feature. Indeed, it is the feature. It isn’t a distasteful aspect of the Trump campaign that voters nevertheless overlooked–it is what a majority of our fellow-citizens voted for.

Living with that understanding is hurtful, to put it mildly.

But there’s a semi-silver lining. There’s a biblical adage to the effect that “the truth shall make you free.” Now we know. And when those who are working to build a better, kinder, more inclusive society know what they are up against, they can fight for that society more effectively.

We are about to see some very dark years. The theocrats and autocrats and ignoramuses will attack the foundational premises of America, and they will do considerable damage. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to step back and consider whether we want to defend a status quo that has morphed and ossified in unfortunate ways–a status quo with serious systemic flaws, economic unfairness, overly-complex and under-inclusive social programs…the list is long. The insecurities generated by the gaps and injustices undoubtedly contributed to the frustration and hate. Our jobs, during the dark days, will be to consider what we will build when the edifice built on racism, misogyny, homophobia and nationalism collapses.

Because it will. And we need to be ready to pick up the pieces–ready to replace both the dark side and the considerable flaws that preceded and enabled it with a better, more humane, more just version of the American Idea.

We need to resist the worst that will come. We must try to protect the objects of Trumpers’ animus. But we also need to plan for what will come after.

We have work to do.

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What It Was All About

Those of us who have taken the American Idea seriously have to face what has previously been unthinkable: the racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny weren’t bugs–they were features. As sick as it makes me to confront that truth, it’s inescapable: the bigotry (and the accompanying ignorance) were what most Trump voters were endorsing. 

In case there is any doubt, Project 2025 will be the roadmap to a second Trump administration. In addition to what that will mean for women’s rights, for LGBTQ+ people and people of color, let me remind readers of its major “promises”–promises that will affect the entire world, not just the United States.

A  Trump administration will ” Restore warfighting as the military’s sole mission” and end what it calls “the Left’s social experimentation in the military” by halting the admission of transgender individuals. It will increase the Army by 50,000, bring overseas troops home, grow the Navy and Air Force, and triple the number of nuclear weapons—while withdrawing America from all arms reduction treaties, and from NATO.

In other words, Trump will make the entire world unsafe (except, of course, for Putin and other autocrats).

 USAID will defund women’s rights provisions in foreign aid initiatives, withdraw from all multi-lateral trade agreements, and stop providing financial aid to Ukraine, which will be gift-wrapped for Putin.

Trump wants to institute 60% tariffs on Chinese goods and 10% on all other imports. (Every reputable economist—conservative and liberal—has pointed out that tariffs are a tax on Americans, and that imposing them would cost American families thousands of dollars a year and throw the country into recession. The economy that President Biden has made the envy of the world will tank.

In order to destroy America’s fidelity to the rule of law, Trump plans to replace 50 thousand civil service employees with Trump loyalists. The Heritage Foundation is currently “vetting” individuals in order to facilitate that replacement. 

The media has reported on the proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, Head Start, Title 1, & school lunch programs. The less-reported portions of their “education” policies are equally regressive: they would eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, post the Ten Commandments in all school classrooms and eliminate any books addressing race or gender from the nation’s classrooms.

RNK, Jr isn’t the only medical moron likely to be dictating “health” measures; Project 2025 proposes to withdraw federal funding from any school requiring vaccinations. (Not sure how they’re going to remove flouride from the nation’s water supply, but reality hasn’t been a big part of Rightwing ideology.)

Kiss goodby to Medicare (they’d privatize it), the EPA, OSHA, the EEOC and the FDIC.

But it’s with the bigotries that we really see the animating message of the worldview. 

Trump has echoed the Project’s promise of immediate mass deportation of (dark-skinned) undocumented persons, a massive effort that would wreak havoc with the economy. (Think groceries are high now? Watch what happens when there’s no one to pick crops.) The Project proposes internment camps and limiting lawful immigration to 20,000 annually. They’d also deport all the Dreamers (who came as children with their parents, and most of whom have never known another country. They want to ban Muslims and Haitians from entering the country, roll back gay rights, invalidate same-sex marriages, and outlaw both transgender rights and no-fault divorce.

Then there’s the effect on the already precarious environment.

Authors of the Project say—and I quote– the “climate is not changing and schools are not to teach that it is.” Since climate change is just a liberal myth, they would eliminate climate and environmental protections, eliminate the regulation of greenhouse gases, and defund FEMA. They’d dismantle the National Hurricane Center and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, halt all climate research, revoke the Global Change Research Act of 1990, withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accords, halt research into electrical vehicles and revoke tax incentives for clean energy.

That’s just a small part of what the bigots have voted for. Of course, courts would once have declared much of that roadmap blatantly unconstitutional, but Trump’s appointment of rogue Justices has removed that pesky impediment.

And of course, his election will allow the first convicted felon to be elected President to escape accountability for his crimes.

Welcome to the new Dark Ages.

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