REWRITING AMERICAN HISTORY WITH REPUBLICAN CONSENT

By Ruth A. Sheets

Trump proves daily that he is an ignorant would-be tyrant, and he is well on the way to achieving that goal.  He knows nothing of history, yet wants to dictate what it should include.

Russell Vought of “Project 2025” fame, knows nothing of history either.  He’s just  a whiny white boy who is too rich for anyone's good and who has been sponsored and coddled by a bunch of racist, misogynistic cowards at the Heritage Foundation who are too scared of anyone who is not rich white and male.  OK, they are terrified of them too; they could turn on him and his kind in an instant.  It has happened throughout history.  So, Vought, Miller, Bessent, and a collected crowd of scared white men and the women who love them want to get their Baby Donnie to  make history less scary, less filled with ways white men have oppressed and abused people, less information about outstanding women, and people of color, and white men who don't buy the scared white male BS.  The Trumpers are not a large group, but want everyone to think they are all-powerful, so we will be cowed into submission. 

Trump’s next target is the Smithsonian Institution, often fondly referred to as “our nation’s attic.”  Trump and his buddies who know nothing of history, science, art, and this nation, want to have oversight for all exhibitions, displays, etc.  What!  They would be lost in the jargon of science, history, art, and the rest.  Those whiny rich boys would bring nothing positive to the museums or anywhere else they plan to try to control, just lies, inaccuracies, and their personal fears, resentments, and ignorance, none of which anyone in this country needs or wants on display in an honored institution. 

Smithsonian Secretary Bunch and the rest of the amazing people you work with, don't give in!  Ask the American people to help to support your work more now that Trump and his fascist crew are trying so hard to rewrite American history, and thus a part of the history of the world. 

When I worked for the Smithsonian, I loved working with the designers of exhibitions and giving tours of their fine work.  I can't imagine what a tour of Trump's history would sound like, a lot of lies, disinformation, and would not be worth the effort.  I am trying to imagine Trump as a tour guide of his brand of history and realize he wouldn't get past the first display because he wouldn't have a clue what was there.  He and his buddies like to whine about whites being discriminated against when that is so rare as to be nearly invisible, but Trump wants that insignificance to be more than visible, actually prominent, even if they have to make it up. 

The Smithsonian crew are going to have to be very creative to get around the ignoramuses of Trumplandia.  The residents of Trumplandia, toddler men and a few women know so little it is embarrassing.  Their ignorance is the reason only fools and the incompetent, serve as secretaries and department heads in our current government.  For Trump, ignorance is bliss.

However, Republicans in Congress, mostly white men, like the Trump takeover of our national entities like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian, and say "sure, Mr. Sir, whatever you want, we care nothing for this nation, our oath of office,  and the people who elected us, just the money we can collect in gifts (bribes) and we are getting a lot right now, so, it’s all good,  whatever you want, we’re behind you, can you feel our presence back there?" 

THE THING WE WON’T TALK ABOUT

By Ruth A. Sheets

One positive thing that might come from the current Musk/Trump insanity is that we may force ourselves as a nation to take a serious look at the thing that can’t be mentioned. 

Many Americans voted for Trump and his crazies because of their embedded racism and misogyny, wrapped in sayings like "the price of eggs."  Maybe if we can be honest about that, people can see that voting for someone just because he is white, male, belligerent, and has a big mouth over a woman of color who unlike Trump, is actually more than competent will never save their lives, fortunes, or sacred honor.

I get it that by tradition, white and white wannabees , and many men are scared of anyone who is not them and will lash out at those folks who are more competent and skilled than any white male folks they know, but we don’t have to go along with it.  We the People keep pretending that racism and misogyny are things of the past, and they are, but they are also things of the present and future if we do nothing to call them out wherever we see them and bring it to the attention of the racists and misogynists who are using issues like the economy to cover their hatreds and bad behavior. 

Trump, Musk, and nearly every person nominated and approved of for high positions in our government, male and female are both racist and misogynist, yet our Senate Republicans and a few Democrats voted for them anyway.  A host of Republican representatives at all levels in our nation are racists and/or misogynists (usually both), but keep being elected because their opponents are not "supposed" to mention that, and it might not matter anyway since their constituents often share their racism and misogyny.  Those representatives though, are permitted to call THEIR opponents all kinds of racist and misogynistic names not only with impunity, but gaining them higher approval points. 

President Biden declared the ERA the 28th Amendment of our Constitution, which it should have been declared by Trump 5 years ago when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify, but I have not yet heard that the archivist was forced to actually see that it is printed in all copies of the Constitution, as she should have done since all of the requirements were met as described in our Constitution.  And, yes, women can be as misogynistic as men, often to please the men in their lives.

Where is the racism?  It is nearly everywhere if one takes a moment to notice.  The Washington, DC government as ordered a street mural for “Black Lives Matter” removed at significant cost because Trump threatened to cut their funding if they don’t, a minor but powerful instance.  The plans for cutting programs that serve disadvantaged communities as well as DEI are a much larger example.  In neither case has Congress stood up to stop the actions.

So, it is time we as a people fully acknowledge our complicity with the racism and misogyny rampant in our nation.  It does have economic costs since most of the billionaire class are white and male, just as one would expect and they intend to stay on top no matter what they have to do to maintain their position and wealth.  It really is up to all of us who recognize racism and misogyny when we see it to take a stand.

• We must demand better candidates and of a greater variety. 
• We need audits of our elections to see that people’s actual votes are being cast and tallied accurately. 
• - We need advertising that shows what racism and misogyny are and how they can be identified and challenged. 
• - We need more movies and TV programming to deal with racism and misogyny head-on, emphasizing the cruelty and evil nature of both as well as positive examples of communities where the people are effectively dealing with both. 
• - We need quality journalism at all levels from local to international, telling the truth regularly, about the impacts of racism and misogyny.
•  

We can do this if we really act as our Constitution claims to want to do, “form a more perfect union.”  That can’t happen when racism and misogyny reign.

THE NEW MISOGYNY, JUST A RERUN

By Ruth A. Sheets

We are facing a strange time with a weird bunch of actors.  I don’t know about you, but I would not have believed so many people would be on board with the effort of dragging our nation into some “golden” past when women were irrelevant well, except for doing all the work of bearing and raising our children and pampering a controlling husband or male partner.  I knew there were forces of misogyny doing their best to undermine women at every turn and to keep women out of nearly every position that had some authority attached to it, but I didn’t realize just how malignant the efforts were and that when they released the Cracken, it would be huge and target women at every level, more than a century after women got the vote.

Going on 52 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that women should have the right to abortion up until the fetus is viable, currently about 24 weeks.  There was enormous celebration then because previously, for so  many women, to end a pregnancy meant getting “help” from someone who had to perform the “procedure” in secret which often meant in unsanitary conditions that could have a bad outcome:  some women died or were unable to become pregnant afterwards.  Even knowing that, many women still chose abortion.

In the 1960s, a group of women in Chicago, the Janes provided safe abortions for women, that is, until they were set up/betrayed, and several of them were arrested.  They had an underground network of activist women trained by medical personnel to provide abortions to women through a word of mouth network.  They figure they performed around 11,000 out of 11,000 safe abortions.

By the late 1970s, Republicans and conservatives in general needed a cause.  The War in Vietnam was over and they weren’t getting traction on anything else.  They had staunch anti-abortion folks in their ranks and chose that to be the issue to run on even though the majority of Americans was in favor of abortion being legal.  Men were mostly behind the move, but realized they would have to recruit women to promote the issue.  They found a few and they tied the anti-abortion stance to pushing the value/wonder of being a stay-at-home mom providing total care for her kids and her hubby.  Of course the women doing the pushing of this movement did not live what they were promoting, but they whipped up the women to such heights they didn’t even notice that Phyllis Schlafly was a lawyer, and the other woman leaders were also professionals, not stay-at-homes.  Hypocrisy!

The movement gained traction through the ‘80s and ‘90s, but the Supreme Court still ruled that women had a basic right to abortion care, but let the states take bites out of that right, and many states took big bites:  waiting periods and expensive ultrasounds that were totally unnecessary, the criteria for facilities that provided abortions, etc.  Protesters harassed women going to perfectly legal clinics, providers were killed, clinics vandalized, and workers terrorized.  Some effort was made to stop the violence and harassment, but not much and the bad behavior continues. 

Meanwhile, in significant numbers, women have entered many fields that were once nearly exclusively male:  tech, engineering and all types of design.  Orchestras have many female members.  About 20% of Congress is female and women have been elected to state legislatures too.  There are female governors even in some “red” states.  Very few women are at the top of major corporations, but at the mid-management level, women are steadily increasing in number.  Many women are journalists, influencers, news anchors, and sports reporters and announcers.  Women are scientists in every field.  The majority of college students and graduates are women too.  I mention this because the movement to drive women back into the home, no birth control, popping babies at the will of the sperm and the state is ultimately not a winning proposition for any political party. 

Donald Trump and his handlers, while in the White House were able to put on the Supreme Court 3 justices who along with the three conservatives already there, have decided that the old days were much better than today, so have handed down numerous decisions under John Roberts that have set a framework to promote rich white men and corporations and diminish everyone else.  That includes ending the abortion protections women had by letting states’ mostly old white male and conservative female legislatures decide about a woman’s bodily autonomy.  Right now, people still have some respect for the Court, but it is on the edge of losing it. 

I, like many other women and our allies, are hoping younger women are putting together networks like the Janes all over the country to provide abortions, to help with miscarriages, and to stockpile Mifepristone and other abortion medications to make them available to anyone who needs them.  Most of us have read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and are determined it will not happen here.  We women and our allies need to make it clear to the men and their female surrogates who like J.D. Vance and his master, Donald Trump that we do not appreciate their misogyny, calling women childless cat ladies who have miserable lives and want everyone else to be miserable.  Women don’t appreciate being told that post-menopausal women will provide the child care for the younger women rather than our government providing help to afford child care.  It is not OK that right now at least 20 states have pretty much banned abortions.  Why?  They want to control women.  What they need to realize is that even if Trump is re-elected, women are not going to return to being baby factories and care-givers for selfish child-men.  Misogyny has been around for millennia, and a bunch of scared men are trying to use it as a weapon and they have courted women to go along with the game as long as they get to share in the male power.  Those female surrogates don’t see that they will only be given as much power as the men around them permit in their rabid misogyny.

So women, and allies, if we care about our future and want the struggle to be a bit less problematic, we need to ditch this new, old misogyny, declare that we are not going back,  and vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and Democrats up and down the ballot because Republicans have decided women are good only for doing men’s bidding, and care nothing for the quality of the men doing the bidding.

ONE-UPMANSHIP IN OUR REVENGE CULTURE

by Ruth A. Sheets

The states in the former Confederacy and Confederate wannabees are pushing to make more and more restrictive laws on their citizens, particularly those citizens who are not rich, white, straight, men. 

I know the main purpose of such laws is to gain power for those rich, white, straight, men, but it is at least as much to keep others from having power.  In the past few decades, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community have been gaining some ground in being elected to office and holding slightly higher positions in business and industry.  The privileged white men see that as a decrease in their own power and now it is time for them to take revenge.

The most blatant actions being taken are on two fronts:  limiting or eliminating abortion and other reproductive rights for women, and limiting or eliminating voting rights for people of color.  Despite the fact that Rowe v. Wade is the "law of the land" states have defied it to pass extremely restrictive bans on what is legal.  How does that work?  I guess when rich  white straight men and the women they have recruited to their cause decree it, anything is worthy of being ignored, even the law.  As of this week, in Kentucky it is now completely "illegal" to perform or obtain an abortion, even though it is legal in this country to obtain and perform abortions.  Hmmm! 

This Kentucky event did not come from nowhere, formed whole.  Over the years, all kinds of restrictions to having a legal abortion have been tacked on.  Then when other states saw that what another state had tried and found it had worked, the original restriction was extended:  a 24 hour waiting period, then 48 hours, then 72 hours, often requiring the woman to return to the abortion center multiple times for no medical reason, while missing work or having to find child care for her kids. 

When the time extensions worked, they moved to invasive procedures before the abortion could take place:  vaginal ultrasound, lying about dangers of having abortion, forced counseling using lies and misdirection, requiring various permissions to have an abortion:  parents, husband, rapist, etc.  Those didn't prove sufficient to stop abortions, so, states declared that aborted fetuses had to be buried, abortion centers had to meet building standards that were completely unnecessary and doctors and others who performed abortions had to have privileges in local hospitals even though abortion is among the safest medical procedures performed.  Of course the hospitals in the former Confederacy and other white states would not give doctors those privileges, which they should not have needed at all.

Texas passed a law that not only banned abortions after 6 weeks when a "heartbeat" could be detected (not a heartbeat since there is no heart yet, but who cares about reality and science?), they deputized anyone anywhere to report anyone anywhere who helped a woman to obtain an abortion in Texas – vigilante law.  And, those snitches get to claim $10,000 for their reward.

A few other former Confederate states have jumped on board the vigilante wagon.  They also want to jail doctors who perform abortions for 10 years, eventually imprisoning women who have abortions too.  Missouri didn't want to stop there.  They want to put women to death for having an abortion.  That one didn't pass, but not by much. 

The Supreme Court has allowed all of these extensions of illegal abortion restrictions through refusing to hear cases or as in the Texas case, through the Shadow Docket, a sneaky way to rule on something without accountability or hearing a case, or a public ruling with the names of the justices attached.

Voting is also working its way through the one-upmanship treatment.  In 2013, John Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court decided to tear apart the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which had required states with a history of discrimination to get permission for any changes in voting policies in their state.  He, a privileged white man, claimed racism was a thing of the past in this country so . . .

Immediately, state after state in the former Confederacy returned to their discriminatory ways with a host of bills to keep the "wrong" people from voting.  When people found ways around some of the worst restrictions, new ones were introduced.  When Black people voted on Sundays as congregations, Sunday voting was scrapped.  When people who weren't the right kind of rich white male were elected, voter fraud was called.  When election workers picked up mail-in ballots from Native American reservations, laws were passed making it illegal for anyone but designated family members to hand in ballots. 

After what was nearly universally described as the best run and safest election in American history, Republicans in one state after another declared fraud and passed all kinds of additional voter restrictions from matching signatures of voters, (some signatures 50 or more years old when everyone knows people's signatures change over time), to forbidding anyone to give anyone food or drink while standing in voting lines that were designed to keep people of color waiting to vote for up to 8 hours sometimes in severe heat.  Those long lines would never happen in the areas of the state with mostly middle to upper class white people because those are the people Republicans think they can count on, and usually they can.  Besides, those white folks could cause trouble.

What has the Supreme Court done to end the one-upmanship?  Mostly nothing.  OK, they have arbitrarily allowed or disallowed gerrymandering, when gerrymandering should never be permitted in a democracy in the first place.  So far, they have permitted everything else states are doing. 

What can we the people do about the white state one-upmanship?

- We can demand that each woman has sovereignty over her own body and can make decisions for herself asking for advice and support only when she chooses. 

- Congress can stop the Rowe v. Wade challenges by codifying a woman's right to decide for herself into law.  Certifying the ERA which has been passed by the required 38 states would help too.

- Putting abortion in the realm of medicine where it belongs, monitored by medical personnel instead of ignorant vengeful politicians and judges.

- Voter registration be made automatic on the day a citizen of this country turns 18.  That would stop the challenges to the kind of license presented when a person first registered to vote because every citizen would be able to vote.

- Gerrymandering would be made illegal and every state would have an independent board to determine the maps each decade with legislative input, but not final say on the maps used.

- Election day should be a holiday and every workplace would be required to give employees paid time off to vote.  That wouldn't be a problem if every state had unrestricted vote-by-mail. 

Let's face it, racism and misogyny are alive and well in nearly every corner of this nation.  It is mostly the states of the former Confederacy and Confederate wannabees run by Republicans who are doing the most damage to the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ persons.  We need to call them out for their prejudices whenever possible and be sure we in other states are aware of our own biases so we are not participating in the revenge culture that demands we get even with those we think have taken what belongs to us alone.  We can do this.  It all starts with education, helping children of privilege see they don't deserve more than anyone else has, and it's OK.  Then, there's voting.

CAREER OPPORTUNITY IN TEXAS

by Ruth A. Sheets

On the 82^nd anniversary of the German attack on Poland that began World War II, I want to introduce you to a job opportunity inspired by the Nazis.  All you Texas Republicans, primarily men because conservative men do Nazi so well, get ready to earn a bundle for betraying your neighbors for $10,000 a pop.

Sound easy?  Of course it is, particularly if you are white.  It helps if you are also a misogynist and a self-righteous Christian too. 

“What do I have to do for such a bounty?” you ask.

Find a desperate woman of child-bearing age who may have become pregnant but can’t afford to keep the pregnancy or the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, two very common occurrences in Texas, as you well know.  Note:  This works especially well if you are the implanter of the pregnancy.

Follow the woman around and watch to see where she goes and who she talks to.  If it looks like she is heading toward a Planned Parenthood center or some other abortion clinic, you get to sue that center or clinic or hospital, the person who drives her to the facility, and anyone else you can suspect of helping her, an automatic $10,000 per betrayal.  That’s a lot of money for almost no effort on your part. 

Where else in the United States of America can you get money for a simple betrayal?  Where else do you get to use your sadistic tendencies as well as your business acumen and well-developed misogyny to so much personal gain?  And you thought that kind of benefit died with the defeat of the Nazis at the end of WWII and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe! 

Well, you’re wrong!  And, it’s right there in good ole Texas.  You can quit your old job and grab a few burgers and cokes and just sit and watch those baby-killing joints so you can nab as many pathetic women and their helpers.  The best part of this new career, your hypocrisy will be highly valued.  You say you got a girl pregnant once and she had an abortion because she was still in school and couldn’t take care of a child and you didn’t want to either?  No problem, no one will ask what kind of person you are really.  You just need to be an outward fanatic in a cause your Republican brothers see as essential to life in Texas.

If you are worried about people in your town shunning you when they learn of your betrayals, no problem!  Just do your stalking and betraying in a nearby community where you aren’t known.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS

- ability to dismiss feelings that the job might be unjust

- a nominal Christian faith that misses the love part and is into the do harm to those who are not like you part

- time to stalk women of child-bearing age and a willingness to betray them in their time of need

- a belief that democracy is whatever Republicans say it is

- a cut-throat competitive spirit to out-betray the other men and some women who are going after the same money 

Good luck.  Apply at the Texas State Legislature immediately.

NOTE:  This career may be coming to a Republican state near you.  Republicans are really good copy-catters, especially when it involves taking away people’s rights, that is, people who are not rich white straight Christian Republican men.