Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
This song has been around for a few years. A group performed the dance associated with it yesterday in the cold, mud, and rain, at the Women’s March in Medford, Oregon. Turn out was lower this year, but it remains a worthwhile effort.
Here’s “Break the Chain” (2013, One Billion Rising).
A disturbing new movement is taking place in the opinion of this average white heterosexual male. After watching women of color under the Democratic Party banner win Congressional seats in the mid-terms, stories are emerging about why women shouldn’t march or wear pink during marches, or support and attend these marches. Three different reasons to date have been raised, about women of color not being involved and the marches being too white, about wearing pussy hats because that’s excluding or offending some, and now, the latest, that the group is anti-Semitism. Because of these stories, fewer marches are being planned. This year’s turnout is projected to be much lower.
I suspect that other reasons for not supporting the women’s marches will be raised in the coming days. I’m suspicious that the unification of women and their rise are terrifying the established powers — like the Koch Bros. and the white, male-dominated GOP, groups that prefer that women, no matter their education and accomplishments, their religious beliefs, or color of their skin, need to be kept in their place — and they’re fighting back through a whisper campaign to divide women.
Women’s success in the 2018 elections buoyed my hopes for the future. I love hearing and seeing women raising their voices to promote equality, justice, freedom, and democracy. Men have been dominating our politics since our nation’s founding, and look at the state we’re in. Look at our priorities and how ineffective our government has become at the highest levels.
I hope women keep strong, rally, stay united, and overcome these issues. If not, our country will be set back, yet again, at a time when we really need to push forward. Please, don’t let them break you.
Resist. Fight back. We need to change the status quo.
Multiple, large marches are planned for Saturday, January 21st, 2017. These are women’s marches, to protect their rights against Trump’s encroachment. For some reason, they’re concerned about a man who likes grabbing them by their pussy while thinking nothing of he or anyone else doing anything like that.
I’ll be marching, too, to support women, as part of a local march in southern Oregon.
What can I say? I like women. Why, some of my best friends are women. I like them so much, I married one. I don’t want to see her, Mom, my sisters or any other woman grabbed by their pussy because some idiot thinks it’s okay. Grab him by the balls uninvited, and let us see how he reacts. Well, the first thing he’d do is react according to who’s grabbing them. If they’re not a ‘loser’ or aren’t ‘unattractive’, he’ll be all for it.
According to a recent poll, many Republican men think it’s better to be a woman than a man now, because women have more rights. Too bad we can’t have someone grab them by their pussy, or work the same hours for less pay, or get raped and told they must carry the child to term because of another’s religions, or get raped and beaten and told they were asking for it because they were drinking or how they were dressed. Bet they’d change their fucking minds in a New York minute, were they ever the victims. But their white maleness often saves them from being victims.
Now some may read this and think that I want Trump to fail. Ben Carson, the failed presidential candidate now up for HUD Secretary, is probably one of those people. Ben said last November that he wouldn’t accept a Trump cabinet position. ‘“The way I’m leaning is to work from the outside and not from the inside,” Carson said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post. “I want to have the freedom to work on many issues and not be pigeonholed into one particular area.”’ He said that he made that clear to Trump in several conversations. I guess it wasn’t very clear after all.
It’s amusing to me that Trump often states he ‘dislikes losers’, but someone like Ben Carson, who ran for office and failed to win, the very definition of a loser, is his buddy. Likewise, the young woman singing the national anthem for his inauguration did not finish first on ‘America’s Got Talent’, which, sadly, according to Trump, makes her a loser. That’s how it works, right?
But I don’t want Trump to ‘fail’ any more than I want the United States to ‘fail’. I want Trump’s racist, bigoted, sexist and hateful policies to fail. I want his efforts to drag our country and progress in the areas of social rights and justice back to the 1950s or earlier to fail. I want his efforts to make shitloads of money by being POTUS to fail. But I don’t want him to fail.
I want him to change. I want him to be enlightened. I want him to quit acting like a child throwing a tantrum on Twitter every time someone famous criticizes him. And yeah, views of what it means to be enlightened can be different. I’ll be willing to argue those facts, although it’s hard addressing facts with people who insist that facts don’t matter.
I don’t want Trump to fail but I’d rather that we didn’t put the oilman in charge of oil policy, especially one so in love with Russia, like Rex Tillerson. It’s odd to note that if U.S. oil production increases, oil prices will drop, unless, as it is likely, OPEC takes action to protect their income streams by reducing production. No matter; Trump and his incoming administration want to wean America off of oil imports, even though that trend has been going on for a number of years, which Rex Tillerson should know, right?
I don’t want Trump to fail but I question his understanding of modern manufacturing processes and economics. He must know, because he’s a successful businessman, a reputed billionaire. We can argue about those points, too. Trump has promised and then refused to divulge his ‘big, very beautiful’ tax returns so we don’t know if he’s actually a billionaire. We do know from public records that he’s made money by suing others, reneging on contracts and payments for work done, and declaring bankruptcies.
Trump believes he can save America by putting tariffs on anything imported into America and forcing companies to build factories in America. By this, then, America will become great again. He believes he can force Apple, for example, to build their iPhones in America instead of China. Perhaps he can (although experts think he can’t). See, that’s been addressed multiple times by multiple people but no matter; it’s new to Trump and his supporters. Trump hasn’t been leading by example in this matter by outsourcing his clothing manufacturing to other countries besides America. He says that it’s because that’s the way it is but that he didn’t want to; yet, as a billionaire, he lacked that clout and needs to be POTUS in order to have such clout?
Oddly, a Chinese woman ordered a gold-plated iPhone encrusted with diamonds and engraved with Trump’s face to give to him as a gift at the inauguration. Perhaps she’s being ironic.
Wonder if he’ll turn it down?
Michael Seidel, writer 