Monday, August 22, 2016

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 19th 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.