MAGA Visions of Womanhood
Spitting Out (White) Babies and Killing Puppies
A core tenet of right wing ideology these days is “great replacement theory,” the latest authoritarian argument for government intervention in societal matters. It’s a multifaceted proposition with the potential for doing away with social progress over the course of US history.
Needless to say, history taught in schools is portrayed as a player in the War on Woke. A prominent right wing college is producing course materials that erase or downplay past upheavals relating to gender, race, and science. MAGA inspired officials in Red states have bought into Hillsdale College’s curricula as part of their opposition to imagined Critical Race Theory infiltration of education.
Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum, a social studies resource for K-12 schools, claims “progressivism was a rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence,” and the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement created “programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.” It’s offered for free because even though the school has roughly 1600 students, it has a $900,000,000+ endowment.
A critical facet of contemporary anti-woke propaganda are assertions concerning a declining birth rate among populations not rooted in Western European culture and tradition (code for race). While it’s true that population growth in developed economies falls, the white man’s culture isn’t the problem. One only needs to look at China, whose government has flipped from a state-enforced one child rule to encouraging childbirths, to see through that lie.
Here’s a shocker– in the United States:
The birth rate for women over 40 is not falling.
The birth rate for women over 30 is not falling.
Young women ages 15 to 17 are having fewer babies. Kids are having fewer kids.
In 1991 25% of 15 year olds gave birth before they turned 21. Now it's 6%.
Declines in teen age birth rates happened among all race/ethnic groups, among younger and older teens, and across all states.
Repeated studies have found that teen pregnancy is down in the US, thanks in large part to sex education and availability of contraception.
The most famous example of this sort of study was the State of Colorado’s five year program aimed at reducing unintended pregnancy.
The Colorado Family Planning Initiative (CFPI) offered low-income women and teenagers access to low or no-cost contraceptive devices, including IUDs and implants, and trained providers in insertion and counseling techniques.
Not only did birth rates fall, so did the need for public assistance, high school dropouts, and –most significant in my view– abortion rates fell (and continue to fall) precipitously.
For every dollar spent on the program, Colorado saved $5.85 in labor/delivery costs, food stamps, and child care assistance.
Now you might think that the pro-life movement and advocates for fiscal conservatism would celebrate this application of health science, but you’d be wrong. A Republican legislature canceled the program in 2015, with Republican senators citing concern over funding the program on various grounds, including redundancy – arguing that state and federal money already goes to general family planning services, so there was no need to fund a specific program. Others raised the disputed concern that IUDs themselves can cause abortions.
The far right’s agenda involves making more of the right kind of babies. Many of those in the tech industry who see themselves as visionaries have adopted this premise.
Politico Magazine’s coverage of the 2023 Natal Conference in Austin led me to the conclusion that all roads to this imagined baby boom lead to a eugenicist nightmare. The polite way of saying this at the event was “more, better people.” The devil is in the details.
Keenan,[a pseudonymous writer affiliated with the conservative Claremont Institute] who has previously celebrated her sense that it is now acceptable to say “white genocide is real,” says better means conservative. Pat Fagan, the director of the Marriage and Religion Institute at the Catholic University of America, says good children are the product of stable, two-parent Christian households, away from the corrupting influences of public school and sex ed. (Christian couples, he adds, have “the best, most orgasmic sex,” citing no research or surveys to support this.) To protect these households, we must abolish no-fault divorce, declares Brit Benjamin, a lawyer with waist-length curly red hair. (Until relatively recently, Benjamin was married to Patri Friedman — grandson of economist Milton Friedman — the founder of the Seasteading Institute, a Peter Thiel-backed effort to build new libertarian enclaves at sea.) And to ensure that these children grow up to be adults who understand their proper place in both the family and the larger social order, we need to oust women from the workforce and reinstitute male-only spaces “where women are disadvantaged as a result,” shampoo magnate and aspiring warlord Charles Haywood says, prompting cheers from the men in the audience.
Haywood’s final words to the audience elicit raucous applause: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its progeny are probably the single most destructive set of laws in American history, and all should be wiped forever,” he says before getting off stage. (A few women told me afterward they and others disagreed with Haywood.)
When it comes to the MAGA vision of womanhood, the Fake Frontier Woman fits the bill, as Nina Burleigh tells it in writing about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s prowess at cruelty.
How far we’ve come since the summer of ‘16, sliding down down down. From politicians who send out Christmas cards with their kids holding AR-15s in front of the tree, to politicians assaulting reporters and getting elected anyway, to MAGAts threatening the lives of elected officials and Dr. Fauci, and driving judges into hiding or forcing them to hire security.
And now, a contender for selection as Trump’s vice president bragged that she executed a puppy. Puppy killing is kind of a test, isn’t it? A toeing of the next line. Real Americans shoot puppies. That dog don’t hunt? Bye, bye doggie.
Noem saw fit to include that yarn about a dog named Cricket - who she couldn’t train to hunt - in her upcoming autobiography, she says, to illustrate her willingness in politics, as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly.”
These idealized MAGA visions of womanhood offer a sharp contrast to Kerry Eleveld’s call for a Biden campaign abortion-plus strategy, driving home the impact of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling along with magnifying their opponent’s clear lack of concern about their issues.
Indeed, given all of Trump's blathering on about abortion, the right framing of that dynamic itself could be too much for women—even those who aren't super excited about voting for Biden.
Such as, for example, when Trump says the GOP's life-threatening abortion bans are "really working out well for people" and that "they're very very happy."
After all, there's nothing better than having a clueless man tell you how you feel.
One success for the Trump campaign has been accommodations by the mainstream media in coverage of what he says. This is especially true when it comes to abortion. Jessica Valenti is sounding the alarm about a Time Magazine interview, where the candidate admits that if reelected, he’d let anti-abortion activists do whatever they want.
Now, none of this is a surprise. Feminists have been screaming from the rooftops that Trump would give anti-abortion groups and lawmakers anything they want if he got a second run at the White House. The only reason Trump has been able to pretend that he’s less radical than other GOP leaders is because mainstream media outlets consistently echo his talking points—giving his lie the credence it needs to deliver a 2024 win.
I think all the time about the former president’s interview with “Meet the Press” in September, where he said seven different times that abortion providers “kill the baby after birth” only to have the headline at NBC News declare that he wanted to “bring the country together” on abortion.
In spite of his bullshit messaging, Trump has a very hard time not admitting all. The question as we speed towards November is whether or not the people who shape the national debate will take him at his word rather than his talking points.
As part of International Women’s Month, the Indivisible campaign published “31 Warnings of What’s to Come” if Team Trump can seize the executive and legislative branches of government. It’s worth a look to grasp just how big the right’s war on women really is.
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Tuesday’s News to Think About
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Boy, I Sure Was Wrong About Tucker Carlson's Post-Fox Fate by Parker Molloy at The Present Age
Rarely am I happy to say I was wrong, but this is certainly one very pleasant exception. I was wrong. Carlson’s career has taken a massive hit since leaving Fox. Sure, he’s still a millionaire many times over. And yes, he still has millions of fans. That’s nothing to sneeze at, for sure. But this is a man that people, myself included, used to think might one day become (a horrible, tyrannical) president. He’s just a year removed from being one of the most influential political voices in the country, and that’s just wild to me.
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Trapped, tired, weak: Trial shatters Trump's image by Jason Sattler at FrameLab
In an election that will be decided “by margins of 1 or 2 percentage points in just six states,” the role this trial could play in shaping the narrative for November is immense.
Thus far much of the reporting and images emerging from that courtroom are exposing the Trump behind the curtain as the opposite of the Wizard he’s spent more than half a century pretending to be.
And no one seems to get that better than the defendant himself, who reportedly keeps whining to those closest to him about how he appears in courtroom sketches along with the now daily reports of him falling asleep.
Who thinks being sleepy is a terrible sign of weakness and embarrassment? Based on the year he spent running against the current president as “Sleepy Joe,” we know Donald Trump does.
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RFK Jr. Is On The Ballot In California Thanks To A Right-Wing Political Party via Huffpost
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that he’ll appear on the 2024 ballot in California thanks to an assist from the formerly segregationist-supporting American Independent Party.
The news means Kennedy’s name will be on the ballot in the state with the most Electoral College votes, even as the former Democrat struggles for ballot access in all 50 states.
The American Independent Party has long been associated with racists.
