The Clare Spark Blog

July 16, 2017

What does 21st Century “Americanism” mean to you?

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reddit.com

We are currently polarized around the question of nationalism vs. globalization. With the football season only a few months away, the fate of the now unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick has now generated some discussion of “patriotism” that many associate with “nationalism.”

Indeed, in high school we were taught that “nationalism, militarism, and imperialism” caused the rise of fascism after World War One. No mention of the Progressive or “Middle Way” response to industrialization that Hitler lauded in the Table Talk. The point was not to take patriotism to “extremes” as did the dictators.

Doesn’t Hitler sound like a “moderate” progressive here, lauding elites, collectivizing “the people,” and lauding “balance”?

[Hitler, 1942]:] “The English have to settle certain social problems which are ripe to be settled. At present these problems can still be solved from above, in a reasonable manner. I tremble for them if they don’t do it now. For if it’s left to the people to take the initiative, the road is open to madness and destruction. Men like Mosley would have had no difficulty in solving the problem, by finding a compromise between Conservatism and Socialism, by opening the road to the masses but without depriving the élite of their rights. Class prejudices can’t be maintained in a socially advanced State like ours, in which the proletariat produces men of such superiority. Every reasonably conducted organization is bound to favour the development of beings of worth. It has been my wish that the educative organisations of the Party should enable the poorest child to lay claim to the highest functions, if he has enough talent. The Party must see to it, on the other hand, that society is not compartmentalized so that everyone can quickly assert his gifts. Otherwise discontent raises its head, and the Jew finds himself in just the right situation to exploit it. It’s essential that a balance should be struck, in such a way that dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives may be abolished as well as Jewish and Bolshevik anarchists….”(Jan. 27, 1942, p. 253).

I have been reading Felix Gilbert’s The End of the European Era, 1890 To The Present (Norton, 1970) and like other social democrats, he describes the Russian Revolution of 1905 as a “socialist revolution.” Of course it was not, as the tsar remained in power and only modest reforms were achieved. But the lead up to 1905 was worth reviewing, for autocratic Russia was beginning to be industrialized, which opened the way to liberal reformism, and ultimately to Revisionism (the Menshevik road to socialism).

But what did 1930s Stalinists mean by the claim that “Communism is “20th Century Americanism”? I had always assumed that Reds were pulling the wool over American eyes, but I now wonder if they meant that for traditional Americans (loyal to the Constitution) they expected that “Americanism” would be adapted to a modicum of free speech and “good” labor unions, i.e., progressivism and the Third Way.

What do you think?

Hatsune flag posted by a libertarian nationalist

 

December 3, 2016

Apocalypse today (post-election 2016)

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 9:59 pm
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Charlotte NC 2012 Getty Images

Charlotte NC 2012 Harvest Moon Grille
Getty Images

This posting is about my response to the mass media hysteria after the Trump victory and transition to the Trump presidency.

The media, controlled as they are by “moderates,” is unable to explain the quandaries that the progressive movement is facing as it tries to grapple with its future, especially as it relates to the “white working class.” I might have been similarly baffled had I not studied social movements in U.S. history. I refer to the sharp turn to the pseudo-Left enacted by the inheritors of the Mugwump-ish conservatives after the shock of the Bolshevik revolution and the growing sympathy in this country for revolt among the working class and its allies. Behold how the (“moderate”) Nation magazine reacted to another apocalypse—this time to Woodrow Wilson’s contribution to the Versailles Conference that ended World War I: https://clarespark.com/2009/09/19/populism-progressivism-and-corporatist-liberalism-in-the-nation-1919/. Briefly, editor Villard urged his readers to emulate the populist-progressives to prevent looming socialist revolution and the rule of the international Big Money.

(Yet Oswald Garrison Villard was no democrat in his preference for elite, non-Jewish rule. Such is the vexed lineage of social democracy. Is it any wonder that “the Left” is unable to unmask itself?)

“Nativist” is the more polite term for “racist”—a moniker that Democrats prefer to affix to their rivals among Trump supporters. It is no surprise, then, that liberals, unembarrassed by 20th century New Left history, should not publicly understand that affirmative action, like all of “identity politics,” is inherently a quota system that is racist in its conception. Some on the Right complain that reverse racism exists. Such persons are apparently oblivious to the leftist insistence on “white supremacy,” a variant on the anti-imperialism of the counter-culture/New Left. (I.e., Dems insist that white workers are structurally unable to modify their own racism, because they indirectly profit from non-white subordination; we remain mired in the social relations of slavery. Upward mobility is only a fond fantasy perpetrated by laissez-faire capitalists to fool “the people.”)

acceptancepetergriffin

The Old Left believed in “history”—in the inevitable triumph of socialism through class consciousness.

The New Left said goodbye to all that, and counted on its own inherited moralism, elitism and subtle racism to vanquish threats from below. Is it any wonder that the Democrat Party is boxed in, with nowhere to go?

Ben Tillman 1906, Pinterest

Ben Tillman 1906, Pinterest

November 25, 2016

German Romanticism, Hitler, Herder, and multiculturalism

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:57 pm
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foreskinmanAs I start this rumination, the disappointed liberals and their media are pointing fingers and yelling about the nefarious influence of Richard B. Spencer (a white racist and anti-Semite, who had nothing to do with the proposed Cabinet picks) on the incoming Trump administration. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer).

This web post aims to review the connections that I see between German Romanticism, the Third Reich, and the all-controlling progressive ideology of multiculturalism. I have gone through this material constantly, but my research may have been too abstruse for some readers. What follows is a systematic account of some disturbing history that is not widely known: ‘cultural studies,’ (like comparative literature) will come out as either proto-fascist or simply neo-Nazi.

J. G. von Herder was an 18th century Protestant theologian, celebrated now as the founder of cultural anthropology and its offshoots. As a German nationalist, he rejected all French influences (such as the ‘mechanical materialist’ French Enlightenment).

There was a Herder revival during the Nazi period. (I found this out when the UCLA library still publicized the dates of Herder publications; not surprisingly the professoriate in cultural studies and comp lit professors appear to ignore this renewed interest in Herder during the period when Nazis burned books of ‘dangerous’ writers).

What Herder did that earned him Nazi kudos was his invidious distinction between (good) rooted and (bad) rootless cosmopolitans (who probably represented money, materialism, and the mercantile principle—all alleged ‘Jewish’ sins).

American progressives also admired Herder as well as his fellow German Romantics. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism can be seen as indebted to Herder and his counter-Enlightenment followers. (The German Enlightenment—Aufklärung—–cannot be conflated with such developments as the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Aufklärung was rather a reactionary move by organic conservatives, and it is the source of multiculturalism and one type of internationalism in the early 20th century. https://clarespark.com/2013/09/17/the-illusion-of-national-unity/.) For more on Herder’s nationalism and his followers, see https://clarespark.com/2010/10/18/the-dialectic-of-multiculturalism-helvetius-herder-fichte/. For the introduction of German Romanticism in progressive America, see https://clarespark.com/2010/07/20/german-romantic-predecessors-to-multiculturalism/.

Paris, June 28, 1919 Wilson in top hat

Paris, June 28, 1919 Wilson in top hat

What is the difference between a rooted cosmopolitan and a rootless cosmopolitan? This is a crucial distinction! Both Hitler and Stalin loathed ‘finance capital’ or the rule of money. These (grasping, uncompassionate) moneybag ‘Jews’ were rootless and indifferent to the plight of ordinary persons, it was held by the earthy and loving ‘rooted’ nationalists. (Both National Socialism and Soviet socialism would affix roots to the unpredictable wanderers of the working class.) The concept of the Volk or ‘people’s community’ was constantly promoted by the Hitler party.

How was the concept of rootedness carried forth in Hitler’s ‘secret’ book (1926)? The future Leader envisioned a world federation of volkisch states, each faithful to her group character, but all subordinated to the superior German people’s aims and objectives. (Here, the notion of der Führer-imposed state worship comes in.) For more discussion of this conception see https://clarespark.com/2015/06/13/hitlers-second-book-1928-his-war-aims-and-multiculturalism/.

It should be obvious now that multiculturalism, with its talk of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity,’ in practice is the racist concept of rootedness. Multiculturalism is either fascist or proto-fascist in its implications for society. Upper-class Americans traveled in Germany during the late 19th century (after the onset of German nationalism culminating in Bismarck–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Germany), and were perhaps impressed by the Iron Chancellor’s co-optative management of the red specter that had been haunting Europe during the Age of Revolution.

So when the pseudo-proletarians of the scribbling ‘Left’ media (such as the staff of Rolling Stone) sneer at the ‘white working class’ that voted for Trump, they are writing with the example of Nazi Hitler’s supposed compromise between capitalism and communism: the Third Way.

Does not all this sound like the dark meanderings of social democracy to you?

diversity and inclusion Wilsonian style

‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ Wilsonian style

 

November 13, 2016

Apocalypse now

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:50 pm
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Apocalypse Kingofwallpapers.com

Apocalypse: Kingofwallpapers.com

This blog is about the requirement to understand the socially-induced misconceptions of the protesters, including the destructive anarchists among them.

I have changed my mind about the election blog I would write, partly because I have seen the conservative responses written by many of my Facebook friends, which roundly criticize the protesters.

Indeed, my first response was to post a message from Jenny, one of my daughters: “I know many are mourning, crying, and panicked over the election results, a reaction to which I honestly cannot relate, but let people feel their feelings, I say. I cannot understand and find totally irresponsible, however, parents who have demonized the president elect, making their children believe he is a bad man and will hurt them and our world. Children need to feel secure and confident in order to grow into happy and successful adults. Shame on parents who feed their children unfounded ideas which then make them feel unsafe. This country is home to citizens and their families with a vast spectrum of valid values and beliefs. We can’t get our way all of the time. Liberals had eight years to get it right and now it’s time to take a different approach. Let us not put our children in the crossfire while battling different opinions. Oh, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we all act like grownups—inform ourselves, work to make ourselves and the world better, and be an example to the children of how to move forward in a constructive, generous, and faithful way. Let us leave tantrums to the two-year- olds.”(end of Jenny’s post-election comment.)

I agree with this analysis, but I also see the results of a partisan education outside the family, that has thwarted the political education of the youthful protesters, even the violent ones among them. This partisan education is also a form of child abuse that should be more widely recognized. (And Jenny concurs, noting that her comment was only one thread among many.)

The protesters (including the anarchists) are a product of an education that has left them terrified. In no particular order, these are the deficiencies that have fueled their panic (this fear of annihilation was brought to my attention by my daughter Rachel). In no particular order:

  1. The notion that the Democrat Party is left-wing. It is common for many conservatives to view “the Left” as if they are all communists, ignoring the obvious fact that Democrats/progressives have co-opted and neutralized the demands of revolutionary socialists: i.e., the radical demands of the 19th and early 20th century labor movements for worker control of production.
  2. The notion that identity politics/multiculturalism is a radical innovation, and is similarly communist-inspired. Indeed, it is another example of co-optation and neutralization, substituting “race” and “ethnicity” for class interest. Here came the notion of “political correctness” that Trump appears to have violated, leaving the masses unprotected from “racist” and “sexist” conservatives.
  3. The notion that the Constitution protected “white supremacy.” Again, this is context-ignoring factor. It is true that the Constitution was a compromise between Northern and Southern slaveholding elites, but that was dramatically changed by the Civil War and the social movements it spawned. Again, the progressives were aristocratic and racist, though this is too obvious a distinction for the “tenured radicals” controlling education today. Although progressives claim the mantle of science, balance, and enlightenment for themselves, in their zeal for the social relationships of the medieval period (e.g., deference to the Good King), they may be said to have dumbed down our population by denying the sharp tools of history.

This website has been devoted the misconceptions of our socialization. The media have always been partisan, but the 1960s movements developed a cadre of activists claiming the mantle of social justice, while trashing opponents as fascists, while some conservatives, just as foolishly, equated communism and fascism. (Both forms of social organization are statist and repressive, but fascism was a counter-revolution to the Soviet coup of 1917, not its structural twin.)

Is it any wonder that our young folk are in the streets? In their own eyes, they are doing the right thing by averting apocalypse now!

3-14-16, demo outside GOP headquarters. CBS News/AP

3-14-16, demo outside GOP headquarters. CBS News/AP

September 25, 2016

“Temperament” laced with “love”

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:25 pm
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Jungian archetype for Great Mother

Jungian archetype for Great Mother

See this first (https://clarespark.com/2012/05/15/progressive-uplift-vs-new-left-nihilism/. It quotes an anticommunist work from the progressive period devoted to uplifting recent immigrants, to self-control, i.e., “moderation” in all things for both rulers and the ruled.)

“Calm down!”

One of the tenets of this year’s presidential campaign has been that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the sane (centrist) alternative to wild man Donald J. Trump, the man of the crowd. This blog is about the deployment of the word “sanity” as against Madam Secretary’s “crazy,” “unpredictable” and “narcissistic” opponent.

The all-embracing Great Mother is played off against the Bad Father, a phony– even as he has managed to get the votes of the mob (in all its destructiveness and cries of “off with their heads”—the Jacobin Red Queen).  And yet, if there is another cop shooting of an “African-American,” liberals can rejoice that they have yet another opportunity to let their hair down by embracing primitivism in a black mob. (It is almost as satisfying as tap dancing.) Thus, the story out of Charlotte North Carolina elbows out the objectively more menacing terrorists in NYC, New Jersey, and Minnesota.

As I write this, really existing fascism goes unnoticed as ever so diverse progressivism/multiculturalism is rehabilitated by calling it the sane alternative to the madness of industrial society.

Let a thousand flowers bloom! http://meixianqiu.com/selected-works/let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom/.

Maoist slogan

Maoist slogan

September 10, 2016

Is “America” racist?

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:07 pm
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Clinton at LGBT event 9-10-16

Clinton at LGBT event 9-10-16

In the tumult of the 2016 campaign, three events stand out:

  1. The Colin Kaepernick scandal, in which K’s refusal to stand during the national anthem, threatens further to rouse the “hot-tempered” black nationalist population; and
  2. Ex-President Bill Clinton’s accusation that to claim that America would be “great” again is an obvious Trumpian sop to (poor white) Southerners who value their (dubious) superiority on the racial “totem pole.” (Recall that “the first black president” implicitly hitched onto the black power movement, as did his wife, as did Barack Obama, the real first black president., though Black Lives Matter might dispute this genealogy; see http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/08/opinions/bill-clinton-black-lives-matter-protesters-opinion-garza/ ); and
  3. Mrs. Clinton’s characterization of half of Trump’s base as “a basket of deplorables” after all, she is an (aristocratic) centrist who would never stoop so low.

    4. Sadly, supposedly Republican-leaning media (i.e., Fox News Channel) cannot address the ideologies represented by these widely publicized events, for the moderate men don’t dig deeply enough into dominant discourses, that are always collectivist.

    That is, “America” is a single individual, disgraceful or exemplary, depending on “point of view.” (See https://clarespark.com/2014/07/20/national-character-does-it-exist/).  To those devoted to the welfare state, “America” overcame its racist pass by devotion to “those less fortunate than we,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said. Centrists such as the Clintons are social democrats, with a whiff of fascism in their preoccupation with “race” over “class.”

    Even Ashley Montagu, that progressive anthropologist, despite his obvious flaws, emphasized the socially constructed notion of “race,” focusing on social conditions over hereditary notions of mental and moral character (“race”); see https://clarespark.com/2016/08/13/there-and-not-there-progressives-make-us-crazy-2/.

    There is an obvious choice on how we envision “the American Past, a.k.a., the “American Heritage.” We can focus on the novelty in the 18th C. of The Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution (especially the Amendments), or we can vent our adolescent wrath on westward expansion and its many crimes.

    The “New Left” (unlike many of their elders in the Old Left) chose the latter path, and we are muddled in that confusion.

    The Clintons and Colin Kaepernick belong in that “basket.”

    ABC News photo

    ABC News photo

August 27, 2016

“Trump can’t win”

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:10 pm
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Viking gods tattoos
Viking gods tattoos

There are people who understand the ins and outs of “politics.”Though I try, don’t expect me to match the expertise of those glued to the ever changing map of party politics. On the other hand, since I started to focus on the big picture (such as the uneven transition from pre-capitalist societies to more developed ones, or the rise of fascism and/or progressivism in the interwar period and even before that), certain patterns became evident. This blog is about the issues in the 2016 political campaign that may be too obvious for the more attentive and practiced in “political” analysis.

In no particular order:

Race and racism. While in graduate school, I occasionally confronted liberal/red faculty with the (insulting?) question: Where is structural racism in current institutions? By the time I got up the nerve to ask, the faculty apparently knew to ignore me with silence and changing the subject. (The pro-union faculty should have mentioned at least the inner city treatment of minority children, but sectarianism precluded such an obvious answer, apparent to me now but not then, despite the UCLA History Department’s public emphasis on unequal treatment: they were all in for criticizing “white supremacy,” but mostly silent about any unsavory aspect of “the labor movement.”)

So it is hardly surprising that attacking the Democrat stranglehold on “the minority vote” should meet with resistance on the part of liberals. This last week was topped off by “trading insults” by cable news (including an indignant Fox), as if the Democrat Party was not threatened by the move of Republicans to court black and brown votes in the working class. Forget the ideology of progressivism that has sought to uplift individuals and discourses  in order to pacify and co-opt ex-slaves and immigrant masses, hence the shock that Trump would correctly label the Democrat candidate in impolite lingo.

Multiculturalism. Which brings me to the all too obvious fact that both political parties indulge in collectivist discourses built on an imaginary national unity in diversity: e pluribus unum. What has happened to the dissenting individual in this mish-mash of ideologies, indulged in by “moderates” of all stripes?

patriotic tattoo/pinterest
patriotic tattoo/pinterest

The moderate men. My proudest achievement in the study of modern history was the subject of quiet repression by the ever so “fair and balanced” moderates (who would never undermine what passes for “democracy.”) Enter Fox News Channel, the “moderate” answer to media monopoly by progressives. For Fox, “fair and balanced” seems to mean gaining the maximum number of eyeballs, while seemingly not taking sides. Since the guiding men of Fox cannot be too explicit in their bogus theory of balance (what has happened to the Enlightenment project of investigating and possibly clarifying disputed facts? Oh, I remember now, the French Revolution/science inevitably lead to communism (https://clarespark.com/2010/11/06/moderate-men-falling-down/).

Though more conservatives inhabit Fox than in the competition (network television, CNN, MSNBC) Fox must not be too obviously one-sided. I have been watching their election coverage with the eyes of a skeptical historian,  and wonder if their “moderate” alternative is to allege that Trump has only the slimmest chance of winning the Presidency.

I expect this trend (at alt-Fox) to intensify between now and November 8, 2016 unless Trump should take the lead decisively.

deathtattoo

June 11, 2016

Are “the People” misguided? Is America “racist”?

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:26 pm
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establishmentThis blog is about the fecklessness of “the Republican establishment.” In prior blogs I have noticed that both major political parties cater to “the People” (a demagogic term never broken down into structural components, especially class or gender differences in needs and outlook: see https://clarespark.com/2016/06/04/multiculturalism-the-missing-term-in-the-trump-fiasco/ and https://clarespark.com/2016/06/09/sex-and-aggression-in-hillarys-following-in-either-gender/.)

Moreover, the “establishment” has refused to move away from Trump’s ostensibly “racist” remark about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, despite indications that the judge (like many lawyers) may indeed be tied to cultural nationalism, a.k.a. “identity politics”/multiculturalism, not to speak of an opposing law firm representing the plaintiffs tied to the Clinton campaign.

I include in my list of suspicious characters the obvious elitist Wall Street Journal and the more folksy Fox News Channel, both run by moderate men who do not diverge from Hillary Clinton’s fusing of workers and small businessmen.

Here is how to spot a moderate man: he or she uses the following key words: “compassion,” “teamwork”, “imagination,” “rainbow connection,” “a positive outlook,” “inclusiveness,” and “diversity”—-all in the service of “making the world a better place” “moving forward” and “health.” Let us recall that leading supporters of the New Deal/FDR called themselves “moderate conservatives” to distinguish themselves from Nazis and other upstart movements on either Left or Right that challenged their “centrist” (fair and balanced) leadership. FDR himself, that arch-moderate conservative, termed his opponents “economic royalists.”

PBS ad for Constitution series

PBS ad for Constitution series

Are Donald J. Trump and/or his followers among “the People” racists, as Paul Ryan and other top Republicans imply? Or does the “establishment” entirely misunderstand “racism,” forgetting its lineage?

We could answer this question if we knew more about the history of the Old Left versus the New Left. I was startled to discover that Marxist-Leninists came out against racism in the 1930s. True, some bashed the progressive bourgeoisie, but not so much after the Popular Front against fascism was declared in 1934-35.

It was the Leninist/Maoist and anti-imperialist New Left that changed all that hyping of the productive forces that would or should produce the revolutionary working class. I remember the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s very well; Amerikkka was now deemed to be classist, racist, sexist, and exploitative of Nature/Woman. Witness the popularity of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and the nascent Green Party.

New Leftists pretending to be hard-hats

New Leftists pretending to be hard-hats

These “social justice” radicals went to graduate school and entered the professions, including teaching and show biz. Many formed a network of buddies, got their PhD’s and now control the humanities and mass media, the social democrats (and some communists) among them warning against white male heterosexual supremacy, going so far as to propose exterminating the literary greats of yesteryear (at Yale for instance).

After all, if Shakespeare and Milton were widely read by the slobs, they must be part of the paranoid “People” and we all know that “the People is an ass.” https://clarespark.com/2009/08/24/the-people-is-an-ass-or-a-herd/.

Our betters insist upon it.

June 4, 2016

Multiculturalism: the missing term in the Trump ‘fiasco’

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:32 pm
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Branco cartoon in Conservative Daily News

Branco cartoon in Conservative Daily News

Time will tell if Donald J. Trump has damaged his campaign by referring to the American judge presiding over his Trump University fraud case as “Mexican.” Such prestigious Fox commentators as Charles Krauthammer have clucked over this [allegedly horrendous gaffe] without mentioning that the hyphenated Americans are primarily identified through their “ethnicity” or “race.” (“I thought I married an Italian!” says Ancestry.com, not even bothering to hyphenate Italian-American.)

Such are the wages of the phony version of assimilation known as “multiculturalism,” now hegemonic in the world thanks to the triumph of Wilsonian internationalism—the enemy of nationalism, but thanks to the Left and even “moderate conservatives”, now de rigueur in all the hip universities as a weapon against “white supremacy.” See https://clarespark.com/2011/03/28/index-to-multiculturalism-blogs/.

(Only a few internet folk nail “multiculturalism”: such as Robert Spencer and various writers for Gatestone Institute, but alas, even these learnèd writers fail to mark the contrast between the “rootless cosmopolitan” [see Stalin on Jews] and the [preferred] “rooted cosmopolitan” celebrated by German Romantics reacting to the dreaded [materialist] Enlightenment.)

Krauthammer and others on Fox might have looked into the associations of Judge Gonzalo Curiel with Hillary Clinton and her supporters in the Democratic Party, but then CK originally worked for the Carter administration (but is said to have experienced disillusion with the LBJ’s war on poverty during the 1980s). He has made his reputation as a “board certified psychiatrist”… “open to empirical evidence” but not as a footnoting, archive-sleuthing historian or political scientist.

See this apparently researched article for contrast with CK’s rejection of Trump’s alleged bigotry. http://spectator.org/rigged-the-trial-of-trump-university/. I don’t agree entirely with this article, for the so-called Left will say that it is understandable that Latino and Latina lawyers should band together on the grounds that they are “oppressed” and “marginalized.” Forget that many aspire to be hired guns on behalf of Big Government.

Such are wages of multiculturalism, which emphasizes race/ethnicity and gender, but not “class.”

Many a conservative, along with much of the Left, don’t want any workers in their clubs. So much for national unity and/or Milton Friedman.

were-different-were-the-same

April 29, 2016

The Woman Card

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:21 pm
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Valside.com image

Valside.com image

In this, the weirdest and most inflammatory and polarizing election season that I can remember, Donald J. Trump is calling his likely Democrat opponent Hillary Clinton, a player of the “Woman Card,” who would not even be in the running were she not a Woman, capitalizing on the novelty of being the first woman President. Hillary supporters are predictably indignant, predicting disaster for such (Trumpian) sentiments.

This blog tries to explore the current condition of women, married and unmarried. I take it for granted that my readers know that I am a feminist who is socially liberal (e.g., pro-choice, but who does not entirely dismiss the pro-life argument). See https://clarespark.com/2016/04/01/70s-feminism-and-its-bizarre-legacy/.

Women who are married to an adequately earning mate, have never had it so good, but those who are forced to work outside the home (either ideologically, or because of inadequate income) are in the same position as working males, either laborers or professionals. Because they are competing with men (and are subject to the same dangers to life and limb) such workers probably don’t have the leisure time or energy to evaluate the campaigns of competing parties or candidates, not to speak of the arguments about the “proper” roles and capacities of mothers/workers. (See https://clarespark.com/2012/10/03/the-sexual-revolution-2/.) I suspect that this group is fed up with male domination and would be happy to see at least one “strong” woman be the Leader, presumably one attuned to their needs, spoken and unspoken.

But whether married or unmarried, women are likely to be the only family members who take care of the elderly. It is strange to me that few politicians or journalists address this shock to the middle-aged women who thought that their “traditional” female duties would be over after the nest is emptied. I find it odd that even the relatively few “geriatric” physicians (including psychiatrists) are not addressing this source of stress, though television is full of ads for (invariably female) home care assistants.

Georgia ad

Georgia ad

Neither Hillary Clinton (nor any Republican or Democrat either) is addressing The Woman Question, except to defend or attack “abortion rights” (and equal pay).  Instead Mrs. Clinton is subsuming the volatile abortion issue into “women’s health,” while Carly Fiorina attacks Planned Parenthood for cutting up “babies”.

I continue to join other feminists in asking the ever more salient question, “Is there life after birth”? (https://clarespark.com/2015/10/10/is-there-life-after-birth-states-rights-and-controlling-our-children/).

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