Patriarchy is everywhere. But only one party sells it as their brand.
by digby
With the latest polling showing Judge Roy Moore and Doug Jones in adead heat, I was reminded of this great piece by Adele Stan about our current "reckoning." I urge you to read the whole thing. It's not long and every word is important. This is the conclusion:
It’s difficult to imagine a system more patriarchal than the one on which the U.S. economy was founded—that of chattel slavery. Plantation owners raped the women they enslaved, then enslaved any children resulting from those assaults, often using them as house servants in the domain of the gentleman farmer’s wife. This is our legacy, the part we don’t talk about. It courses silently through the veins of the body politic.
Seeing as how the Republican Party has become the home of neo-Confederates—of such people as Alabama’s U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore, who opposed the removal of segregation provisions from the state constitution—the depth of this legacy in both parties must not be allowed to overshadow its exercise in law, ideology, and tribalism. The sexism and misogyny found among Democrats is rightfully derided as hypocritical, since Democrats claim to stand for equality—of race, of sex, of sexual orientation and identity, of religion. But the sexism and misogyny (and racism and queerphobia) of Republicans these days is part of the brand, a rallying cry. There’s a self-described pussy-grabber in the White House. You’d have to conclude that a lot of the people who voted for him liked that about him, just as they liked the false crime statistics he tweeted about African Americans, his description of Mexicans as rapists, and his smearing of all Muslims as potential terrorists. They like it all, because it’s all of a piece.
Our choices being less than optimum, they are nonetheless stark. As for me, I’m sticking with the hypocrites.