RETAIL POLITICS
November 6, 2018 — Election Day in America.
The so-called Mid-term election for members of the House and Senate are understood to be the first public response to the work – policies, attitudes and actions – of a new President and a majority party…in this case the Republican Party controlling both houses of Congress.
For the past two years pure power has been on display – the Executive branch in full flight; the Legislative branch in lock-step silence. Lots of policy changes through the edict of Presidential appointees and few votes taken on these changes. Yet, for those who fear what they see and hear; those who are deeply disturbed by what seems like unchecked power in all areas of government policy, we suggest you take another look. Just ask former Presidents Clinton and Obama about power. They each saw eight years of their work all but decimated in the first years of an opposing party President – “W” Bush on one hand, and Mr. Trump now. As President they each felt they knew about the real power of the Imperial Presidency. What do they think now?
So what will this mid-term election tell us?
In the House of Representatives, the Republicans hold a 43 seat majority with 6 vacancies.
In the Senate, the Republicans hold a two seat majority with the Vice President able to break any ties. There are 35 seats up for grabs.
Seems normal. Bill Clinton took a beating in his first mid-term. Barack Obama saw a tidal wave against him.
And now? Well now the game has changed. What seems like a normal mid-term election has become something else…something truly different.
Women are back and potentially more powerfully than ever before in American history.
SEX AND LIBERATION
Real change in any society takes forever.
In the case of women’s liberation it is still taking place.
Several decades before the end of the 19th Century, a brave band of women in corsets, bustles and hats began campaigning for a single moment of equality: their right to vote.
It took almost forty years and almost a third of the way into the 20th Century, before passage of the 19th Constitutional amendment in 1920 which granted women their right to vote.
It took another 40 years for the next step: the development of a pill which would permit them to control their own right to be pregnant. That pill triggered the beginning of the Women’s Liberation movement…the personalities, books and popular magazines that began to salute a woman’s need to be independent, to be herself, to be free of societal norms which kept her bound to a life established and codified by others.
And then, the next step – a woman’s right to control her own body by choosing whether to become pregnant or not turned into her right to an abortion. The societal war that followed led to the astounding judicial decision Roe v. Wade…a ruling which settled but never ended the question of whether a woman could have the right to choose what happened inside her body.
And that phrase ‘inside her body’ has now become the next step in the fight for real freedom and equality.
Because here is a single truth: no heterosexual man can fully understand the meaning of sexual assault or the fear of rape unless he recognizes what it is like for every woman in the act of sex: exposure and penetration of what is secret and special about her body. Given in love or lust but given, not forced or assaulted by someone bigger and stronger.
Without that understanding it is difficult for men of any age to wonder what #Me Too is really about. It is about the very last stand of masculine dominance…in a world of increasing female influence. There is no reason to believe that men will get it…but there is no longer a reason to believe it will matter whether they do or not.
All over America and the World men who have sexually abused or assaulted women are being overthrown from whatever ‘high standing’ they might hold. Not only politicians, entertainers and sports heroes…but major corporate executives are simply being thrown out by the growing recognition that women have a right to be free of sexual dominance in any form.
Even the distinguished panel of the Nobel Prize Committee on Literature was torn by accusations of rape that led to a failure to select a Nobel Prize for literature this year. The accused has been sentenced to a prison term.
As we look at our society today we see the advances women have made in support of that equality. There are more women in college, in law school and in medical school than men. While the growing selection of women to become CEO’s in business has begun to wane it is because so many women elevated to that position have been involved in corporations with significant trouble; trouble they could not overcome. But that is all temporary as is the inevitable glass ceiling of financial return: Men still earn more money for the same job…but in the system we live in today few but the 1% are making any real money..and that ceiling will be cracked forever in the years just ahead.
The last stand for true liberation for women is sexual freedom from fear and intimidation.
Nothing will now stop the movement and on November 6th, with an unprecedented 600 women running for some political office in America, we sit on the cusp of change.
True 600 women running for office in a country of 300 million people doesn’t equate to anything much. And yet tens of millions of women voting across the country for the freedom they deserve will deliver the message forcefully and potently.
Change comes slowly but it comes.