Hey, ladies: stop listening to men telling you how and how not to protest. Joe Scarborough says don't yell at senators? FUCK HIM. Why, exactly, does a man get a say in how women react to not being listened to?
Yell at senators. Vote, certainly. Vote every last one who voted to confirm out. But yell, too. Make them afraid that every time they go out in public, there's going to be an angry crowd screaming at them for failing in their duty.
Because here's the thing: rape apologists, white nationalists, anti-trans hatemongers? All the trash that's come out of the woodwork in droves in the past several years? They're relying on the idea of politeness to keep doing their deadly work.
The neo-Nazi sympathizers in power are relying on the social contract of "never make a scene" to allow them to work unhindered. Don't Make A Scene is the status quo's greatest shield.
They are counting on all of us being more afraid of awkwardness than we are of losing fundamental rights and, hell, at the end of the day, *seeing people die.* They're counting on you to Keep Calm And Carry On, to get meekly into the truck that comes to carry you away, etc.
Here's why: normalization is a frog in boiling water thing. I've said it before, I'll say it again: there aren't going to be dark clouds on the horizon and ominous music to cue you as to when we're too far into the fascism nosedive to pull up.
And part of that normalization is presenting stuff that should have GIANT FUCKING FLASHING LIGHTS of THIS IS NOT OKAY as rational and normal and the everyday workings of government. There will be votes on these things (they're shams, but whatever). There will be laws passed.
And they're depending on you and everyone else to continue to *react* as if this is politics as normal. As if, well, we lost this particular partisan battle, so we'll just wait for the next round of the game and see if we can vote them out at the appointed time.
Putting kids in cages isn't "we lost this round of the game, better luck next time." Putting a judge who an FBI report indicates perjured himself on the Supreme Court isn't "partisan politics as normal, we'll try to get a seat back with the next president."
And yes, I'm well aware that the racists and the sexists and the homophobes have always been here and have always been in power. But there's an intensity difference between that and open white nationalism in the White House. Between that and the Kavanaugh hearing.
The fringe groups are comfortable being out in the open. And the argument of "oh, this is somehow better, if we scare them too much they'll go back into dark corners and we won't know what they're doing" is bullshit.
It's harder for these groups to operate when they can't openly admit what they are and what they want. It's harder to recruit when society shuns them. It's harder to influence law and policy when it's the death knell for a politician's career if they're seen associating with them
When we don't, as a society, make it unacceptable for them to openly parade neo-Nazi/white nationalist viewpoints, to be open that they think rape is excusable, that's how we end up here. independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…
The societal contract that says "we can all be polite, because it's largely unthinkable that anyone would openly admit to being a white nationalist, because admitting it would result in them being shunned and discredited" is gone. So stop being polite.
We've largely been able to depend on inertia for half a century to keep white nationalists/neo-Nazis in their dark corners. But they're out. And it's going to take a serious application of energy to push them back in. It's going to take making things awkward. Making a scene.
But as long as we, as a society, are treating them as a legitimate political faction, to be disagreed with and debated and patiently voted out, rather than as something utterly unacceptable to be shunned, we're moving backward, not forward.
So, absolutely, vote out everyone who's ever agreed with Trump on anything. Vote out everyone who voted to confirm Kavanaugh. But there's a lot more work to be done than voting. We need to make them afraid to show their faces. We need to make them FEEL like pariahs.
And they don't get to be able to eat out in public without fear that someone will confront them about what they've done until they've at the very least relinquished their power to do more of the same kind of harm, or better, actively worked to repair it.
We, as a society, gave them extraordinary power with the agreement that they would wield it to make our lives better. They're using it as a weapon against the vulnerable. They're maliciously failing at their jobs. Make it awkward for them.
Fuck Joe Scarborough. Yell at your senators.
FIN.
FIN.
