The Democratic leadership is wheeling from the leaked opinion of Justice Samuel Alito on Roe vs Wade. Caught off guard again, the Democrats seem to be waiting on an invitation to a campfire with the Republican Party. Even after the insurrection of January 6, 2021, the leadership is hoping and praying for an evening of peace and love, singing Kumbaya with the likes of Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. The Republican Right, on the other hand, is confident the day will come when the pedophiles and their supports stand judgment before the wrath of God.
Living in Kenosha, Wisconsin, I've become familiar with a demographics not quite content with the direction the country is headed but content to align themselves with the leadership of the right.
I would invite the Democrat leadership to read Tim Alberto's article in The Atlantic about the right of today. The Democratic leadership may have missed the "seamless" fusion of the "new Republican orthodoxy" with the "old conservative theology." They may have missed the 2021 Pew Research Center report showing that the right perceives an America "under siege," with more barbarians at the gates.
It means something when 55% of white women vote for a white supremacist, a man accused of sexual misconduct. Even rape. Yet, in the last 17 US presidential elections since 1952, as political scientist Jane Junn writes, "white women have only voted more Democratic than Republican twice." This isn't a new phenomenon. As Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger, explains, white women very often vote on "behalf of white patriarchal power structures and conservative politics." But the numbers are growing. How do we talk about the power of women when white women pledge allegiance to the power in possession of white supremacists?
As
a Washington
Post
article, citing sociologist Joseph O. Jewell's work, states, white
women continued to play a role in "maintaining
institutional racism in the late 19th century". Jewell's work
"examines specific instances of what he calls 'social mothering'
in San Francisco and New Orleans, when white mothers pushed policies
that established school segregation." Today, we have a particular
demographics of precious children who can't be made uncomfortable
by the history of this country, and "social mothering" by white
women is seeing to it that their fear of that "dark" past becomes
front and center until the threat of it contaminating their children
is eliminated.
When Democrats speak of these women as naà ¯vely voting against their "better interests," I cringe. Those white women who voted for Trump are responding to the perceived victimization of white men, "victimized" by democratic ideas of equality and justice. The presence of "freed" black people.
And should anyone be surprised to witness how the divisive evangelical rhetoric fuses smoothly with the hateful rhetoric surrounding the supremacy of white, male power? According to Alberto, some 80% of evangelicals voted for Trump. "More and more white Trump supporters," according to the Pew Report Alberto cites, "began self-identifying as evangelicals during his presidency, whether or not they attended church." I haven't been asked whether or not I attend church; instead, I'm asked, mainly by white women, whether or not I believe in God, with no concern for the appropriateness of the question. Just get right to it so a judgment can be issued on the spot!
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