Not only does authoritarianism edit the past and abuse the present -- it wants to the steal the future, too.
It's especially after the future for women. The Heritage Foundation has a long-term blueprint to shove women back into "church, children and cooking," whether we want it or not -- and they're utterly serious about it.
It's fantasy bullshit. My mother was born in 1931, to parents who were born in the 19th Century. Her mother was a schoolteacher who raised six children, ran a household, and worked all her life, at paying jobs and charity work. My Mom worked full-time until her first child, worked part-time afterward, was a Girl Scout troop leader and, when my baby brother was older, a Cub Scout Den Mother; but by then, she was already working full-time again, too.
She kept house all along, and did most of the cooking (dishes and routine gardening fell to the children when we were old enough, followed by lawn care and eventually some of the cooking and other household chores), and her jobs weren't inconsequential; starting as a secretary, she became an insurance adjuster, adjuster/manager, and ended up in the company's main office, handling claims running to a million dollars and more. Mom and her mother were lifelong Republicans, active in their churches, and involved in local politics; but they certainly don't fit the mold today's conservatives would condemn them to. And yet there they are, square in the past Heritage is busy lying about.
This is -- as I wrote yesterday -- dictator stuff, and it aligns squarely with the social roles the WW II Axis powers assigned to women.
For all their red, white and blue, flag-waving, publicly-praying poses, Mr. Trump's party is selling what the West fought to stop. Polling suggests it's not quite working for them, but bear in mind that Axis leaders never let a little thing like public opinion get in their way. Americans need to keep pushing back.
Ironically, the erstwhile Heritage Foundation & sundry Dominionist Religious orgs have focused on the garnish while skipping the actual meal when it comes to religion. There's tons of stuff in the Bible about eschewing greed, helping the needy, being humble, loving your neighbor- things that they tend to gloss over or ignore.
ReplyDeleteInstead, it's all the surface morality stuff that they tend to ignore in a not so private fashion.
My mother (b 1914, m 1934, d 1994) worked at many jobs over her lifetime. I have photos of her and Dad (b 1909, m 1934, d 1989) with their Model A Ford, out selling Rawleigh home supplies before I was born (1938). In the 1940s, Mom worked on A-26s at Douglas Aircraft then drove a city bus in Tulsa. Later, she worked in a bank and in a hospital pharmacy. The job she most enjoyed was as a salesclerk for a Katz Drug store in Kansas City MO. Her paychecks paid my undergraduate college expenses. Whichever parent was at home at a given time was the parent in charge of us kids. Like you, we were put to work at whatever needed to be done as soon as we were capable of doing it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the role of women, has anyone else noticed that a lot of the Trump admin tend to be women of artificial appearance who talk a big Trad Conservative Values game, but openly shack up with dudes they're not married to? Funny how the 2025'ers don't ever seem to notice that.
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