FOR ALL YOU AHISTORICAL FEMININSTS OUT THERE (A Poem)

 

(A poetic argument against Gloria Steinem, Sady Doyle, and other pro-Hillary Clinton feminists of the "left" who think making her President would be absolutely peachy-keen for women's empowerment:  a look at the historical record of women in power, hoping to clarify a few issues--GF)

 

So you think women’s

political empowerment

began with Hillary Clinton?

I guess you never heard of

Eleanor Roosevelt,

or Frances Perkins,

or perhaps the influential

Jackie Kennedy,

or (heaven forbid!)

even Barbara Bush!

Or Betty Ford, President

Gerald Ford’s wife,

upsetting the

Catholic Church

with her pro-reproductive

choice comments, including

open support for abortion rights! 

 

 

Or, for that matter,

on the opposite side

from that supposedly “leftist”

feminist political agenda

(women in political office

automatically means

advancement of progressive

and humane social policies

and political priorities, not

mere distaff office-holding;

or so it was said),

Britain’s Iron Lady,

Margaret Thatcher,

whom feminist icon

Gloria Steinem

gushingly called “a sister”

even while demurring,

“I don’t agree with her politics.”[i]

Indeed not (we would hope),

for the Iron Lady built a

political career on pleasing

the stodgy old men of London’s

financial district while vigorously

attacking the working-class women

who depended on the British

social safety net, which she

enthusiastically shredded!.

Or the ascent to power

of Indian despot Indira Gandhi ,

with which another U.S. feminist icon,

Betty Friedan, was excitedly pleased.[ii]

 

 

But we need not stop there, in what

to many people is merely

history, something that

occurred before they were born.

We may merely look at women’s

obvious political empowerment

in such “noted” personages

as in those women taken seriously

by millions whether we (of both sexes)

who style ourselves

“leftist,” “liberal,” or “progressive”

like it or not—Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter,

Michele Bachmann, Condoleeza Rice,

even Joni Ernst and Melania Trump!

(Though it does confirm the

invidious judgment of  nasty male

Karl Marx, who wrote, 

“Hegel remarks somewhere that

all facts and personages of world history

occur, as it were, twice.  He forgot to add:

the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”[iii]) 

Not to mention “liberal” women and

Hillary Clinton supporters Nancy Pelosi

and Madeleine Albright!  (This latter who

gave then-Chief of Staff [mere nasty male!]

Colin Powell “almost an aneurism” by insisting,

 “What’s the point of having this superb military…

if we can’t use it?”[iv])  

 

 

But oh, the “glass ceiling” has

been broken, can’t you see?  But didn’t

Carly Fiorina’s abortive Presidential

candidacy break it as well?  And isn’t

Jill Stein’s Presidential candidacy doing

the same thing?  Both showing

from opposite ends of the political

spectrum that women Presidential candidates  

are indeed taken seriously in 2016, even when

their names are not Hillary Clinton!  Same as

Barack Obama showed  for African American

Presidential candidates in 2008.  Can we ask,

Aren’t there enough glass ceilings

to break, or that haven’t been broken

already?   Because a 74-year-old Jewish

male socialist, Bernie Sanders, broke a

few of them too!  Or need we enumerate:

first Jew, first avowed socialist, to be taken

seriously as a major U.S political party

Presidential candidate!  Not to mention his being

a septuagenarian taken very seriously by, and

attracting enthusiastic mass support from,

Millennials young enough to be his grandchildren!  

 

 

And shouldn’t character count for something?   

After all, public opinion consistently shows

Hillary Clinton leading by only a few percentage points,

as regards basic untrustworthiness,  against an openly

quasi-fascistic, fraudulent and bombastic Presidential

candidate, Donald Trump!  Fact is, Clinton and Trump

are the two most disliked and most distrusted major

Presidential candidates in recent history!   Their joint

bamboozlement in 2016 rivals only that of the worst

days of the corrupt 19^th Century! 

 

 

But that doesn’t address the other issues in the race, nor Clinton’s political baggage elsewhere:  her pro-corporate economic orientation, her hawkish approach to foreign policy and warfare, that she is the overwhelmingly favored recipient

of Wall Street largess, her pandering to the African American vote on strictly symbolic cultural issues to show she’s “one of them” (carries hot sauce in her purse; really!), or what progressive stances her campaign does embody, she stole from Bernie Sanders!

 

 

So just what are you crowing about, all you supposedly

progressive pro-Hillary ahistorical feminists?

---

[i] I believe it was in her 1983 book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, as it is the only Gloria Steinem book I personally own and have read; but I am relying on memory here.  The index in the book is horribly inadequate.

[ii] Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement, New York: Random House, 1976, pp. 265-287.

[iii] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954, p. 15.  Originally published in 1852.

[iv] Michael Dobbs, “With Albright, Clinton Accepts New U.S. Role,” Washington Post, December 8, 1996, quoting from Colin Powell’s memoirs. Michael Dobbs, “With Albright, Clinton Accepts New U.S. Role,” Washington Post, December 8, 1996, quoting from Colin Powell’s memoirs.