Joining the Club (Part 1)

This one goes out to the ladies.

And what do I have to say to 50.5 percent of the American population? Just this:

The GOP hates you. 

OK, maybe that was a little blunt. But it’s not inaccurate. You see, the guys (and it is overwhelmingly guys) who lead the modern conservative movement are not big fans of women.

I’m not just talking about right-wing men taking a sledgehammer to Roe vs. Wade, threatening to execute women who have abortions, and then lying about it. I’m talking about the strong strain of misogyny in the conservative movement.

Yes, I know there are plenty of misogynistic liberals out there, so don’t bother to list them for me. But it is undeniable that the Republican Party is the preferred party for woman-haters. 

Hell, their presumed presidential nominee famously boasts about grabbing women’s genitals, insults women every chance he gets, and was found liable for sexual assault. That’s not a pro-female kind of guy.

That he is the leader of the Republican Party should be sufficient evidence of the GOP’s antipathy toward women. But you should also consider the GOP leaders who have denigrated women, been accused of rape, or pistol-whipped their girlfriends. Really, it’s quite a list.

However, there is more—so much more. Whole books have been written about the conservative attitude toward people with the XX chromosome. In fact, hostility toward women is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.

Leaders of the conservative movement routinely insist that women “should give up on their careers and become wives and mothers instead.” And many of those conservative leaders are women.

Now, that’s perhaps the most interesting part. We can get our minds around misogynist dudes banding together to oppress women. But why would a woman join their ranks?

Well, some women are either self-loathing, hyper-religious, or too intimidated by men to question their power. Other women somehow believe, consciously or not, that men will protect them (despite the fact that over a third of female murder victims are killed by their male partners, compared to just 6 percent of male murder victims who are killed by their female partners).

Many white women, in particular, embrace racism because it offers them a semblance of power in a misogynistic world. For example, Moms for Liberty is a right-wing shitshow “like many before it that sells conservative women on the idea that they can somehow gain power through embracing submissive gender roles.”

But it is absurd to trust bigots to have your back, a shocking revelation to those conservative women who thought coddling angry men would create a respectful relationship.

It turned out that being linked to Moms for Liberty “hurt Republicans in the midterms,” and as a result, “the GOP cannot drop them fast enough.”

And yet, “most Republican women [are] deaf to the clear lesson here: Complicity will not protect you.”

You see, conservative men will only support women who offer them political cover and help them advance their agenda of male supremacy. 

Also, conservative guys only like women who are hot. 

Yeah, that’s a sexist thing to say. But when it comes to conservatives, it is the truth.

Just about every female conservative leader in recent history has been physically attractive, but none of them have had long careers. This is not a coincidence.

Sarah Palin went from presidential contender to a has-been unable to win a House seat in a Republican state. Nothing changed, except that she was no longer a smokin’ babe.

Conservatives stopped listening to Ann Coulter not because she praised Nazis, but because she aged out. 

And who even knows what happened to former hotties like Michele Bachmann and Susan Molinari? Once the wrinkles piled on, conservative men were done with them.

There is no Republican equivalent of Nancy Pelosi or Elizabeth Warren. The GOP wants only young sexpots who will tell them, “You guys are right. You are so oppressed. And handsome.”

The idea of a congressional Republican woman reaching Mitch McConnell’s age, with her power intact, is absurd.

This is because “activating the lizard brain bigotries of the GOP base works even better in conjunction with titillating their gonads.” Conservative women are “supposed to be sexy but chaste, aggressive but submissive,” creating a “conundrum that can't be beat.”

The Taylor Greenes and Boeberts of the world “combine the ‘who me?’ innocent-sexy act of a pageant queen with the belligerence of the nastiest troll on Twitter,” only to be dismissed when a younger version comes along. These women will inevitably be “done in by the impossible dilemma of trying to be a female leader in the deeply misogynist world of MAGA.” 

So what can American women, especially liberal women, do in the face of this nonstop hostility from Republican men?

Apparently, they just have to shut up and marry the guys. Seriously—major media outlets have implied that women should ignore right-wing sexism and simply get hitched to guys who ascribe “to an ideology in which [women] are not fully human.”

The thinking is that the love of a good woman will mellow a MAGA blowhard and make him less antagonistic to the ladies. But of course, “trying to get men who already think women are inferior to listen to their liberal wives is a joke.” And it’s a particularly cruel one.

The truth is that the modern conservative movement depends on misogyny. The GOP requires “that women look and behave a certain way” and submit to male authority.

The only surprising thing is that so many American women are OK with that.

Survival of the Richest

If you have ever wanted to live like a James Bond villain in your own island lair, I have good news for you.

For the low price of several bajillion dollars, you can buy “a maximum security compound in which to ride out the coming plague, solar storm, or electric grid collapse,” whichever apocalyptic event comes first.

OK, maybe you don’t have a spare several million to drop on a high-tech sanctuary from which to survive the “environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.”

That just means you don’t love your family, because you are sentencing them to death in the inevitable Armageddon headed our way. 

But don’t worry. Because rich people will be just fine.

Yes, our favorite 1 percent of the population — the uber-wealthy — are striving to insulate “themselves from the very real and present dangers” that in many cases, they helped to create. 

Whether they made their money by destroying the environment or fomenting societal upheaval, billionaires are buying bunkers, hoarding resources and even creating private compounds in New Zealand (proving once again that rich oligarchs may praise right-wing enclaves like Hungary, but they actually want to live in a stable, socially liberal country).

These plutocrats are trying to “break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to… escape from the apocalypse of their own making.”

And they can afford it. Since the pandemic, the top 1% “have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world.”

Of course, there are many Americans who hero-worship the rich, and they are perfectly fine with sacrificing themselves if it means that an affluent buffoon will continue to live in luxury even if society collapses.

That sounds like an exaggeration, but witness how many poor Americans continue to vote Republican despite the GOP’s admission that it wants to destroy any semblance of a social safety net, give more money to billionaires, and allow the rich to “exploit the majority so they can accumulate wealth and move society forward as they wish.” 

A large percentage of Americans struggle to pay their bills, but shriek that any effort to make wealthy narcissists contribute more is “class warfare” or “socialism” or just morally offensive.

When it comes to opulent show-offs, Americans love “the wild philistinism and the bullying and the offhand cruelty, the compulsive self-aggrandizement and the giddy vengeful sadism.. all of it so oafishly performed that it could not possibly be mistaken for anything but what it is.”

The GOP knows this. So they have leaned into promoting crass morons born into wealth as avatars of the American Dream. 

Republicans have long insisted that “democracy and unfettered capitalism always traveled together,” but recently they have “ignored the ‘democracy’ part of that equation and continually doubled down on the idea that the American system means that businesses should be able to do whatever they wished,” while insisting that “any oversight must be Soviet-style communism.”

The result is that Republican legislators will gleefully derail bills to provide free breakfast and lunch for school students because they don’t want kids to get dependent on government. Seriously — this is an actual top GOP priority. Hey, for Republicans, hungry children do not even exist.

So if Republicans get their way, and rich people continue to tear the world down while plotting their escapes, what happens years from now, when only the wealthy can afford to survive?

Well, the truth is that islands are more dependent, not less, on society. So that approach won’t work.

Also, underground bunkers have air filters that break down and require strenuous effort to fix. You really think some pampered blue blood can handle that degree of manual labor?

And when it comes to armed compounds, remember that the hired thugs who protect the wealthy are people too. If the economic system has collapsed and money has no value, do you believe rifle-toting mercenaries are going to protect some rich jerk out of kindness and love?

So no, the wealthy will not survive.

There, don’t you feel better now?

Forsooth!

It’s a holiday week, so I’m taking a break, unrelated to my frantic surge to finish my manuscript before my publisher bursts through my front door, shouting, “Where the hell is it?”

No, just a holiday pause.

I will be back next week with a full post.

Until then, here is an AI-generated Shakespearean passage that I created with a random prompt:

To challenge the shadows, it doth yearn, without scope to counterattack

Deluged in confusion, verily, 'tis an abyss to be explored

At her very core, I stand, consumed by her exaggeration's might

Be honest. You thought that was really Shakespeare, didn’t you?

Enjoy the holiday, and see you next week.

Stressful Times

As opposed to many writers, I’ve never suffered from depression. I’m grateful to have avoided this killer.

So does that mean I’m a bubbly, upbeat dude who makes lemonade out of lemons and greets every day with a smile?

OK, I didn’t say that.

I don’t get sad. I get mad. 

People in my life know that I have a short temper. Many of them have told me to relax and not get so angry. 

I find this advice odd, in that you would never tell a depressed person to just cheer up. Yet my negative emotion, anger, is somehow viewed as a choice.

I’m betting before long that we will diagnose chronic fury the same way we diagnose chronic depression. We will have a pill to treat anger that costs too much and comes with devastating side effects.

Until then, more Americans like me will continue to battle high blood pressure and a propensity for tirades.

One factor that triggers rage — not just in me, but in many people — is stress. This malady is so malicious that it can change the body at a cellular level. And Americans are more stressed than ever.

A recent study found that over half of Americans suffer financial stress. Massive numbers of Americans, especially ethnic minorities, suffer from health conditions that stress their bodies. And our “unequal society contributes to people in the United States aging quicker, becoming sicker, and dying younger.”

Yes, we like to proclaim America as the land of opportunity. But in reality, it has become the land of unrelenting stress and punishing inequality.

How unequal are we? Consider that “students’ standardized test scores rise with their parents’ incomes — and disparities start years before students sit for tests.”

Also consider that the United States “continues to underperform on an annual list that ranks inclusivity as experienced by marginalized groups in countries across the globe.” Currently, the United States “ranks 118th in the world for racial inclusion.”

It doesn’t exactly make you want to shout, “USA! USA!” 

To top off this survey of our stressful nation, please note that stress can begin in the womb, accumulate through difficult childhoods, and cascade right into adulthood. So yes, a whole generation of kids are currently being set up for stressful, miserable lives.

And as a final insult, studies show that people who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to be suffering from stress. That explains a lot about the America that we live in.

Is it any wonder that I feel so angry all the time?

The Latest Data

It’s time for another update on how my fellow Latinos are doing.

First, the good news. 

Ongoing efforts to mobilize Latino voters are paying off, and Hispanics are poised “to become a consequential voting bloc influencing contested races in the 2024 presidential election.”

So instead of leaving it to Black women to save America over and over again, perhaps we Latinos can step up for democracy this time.

Your other bit of good news is that scientists are testing new technology on immigrant workers that will “send alerts when the core body temperature rises critically or when other alarming signals indicate heat stress.” The innovation could save the lives of many Latin American immigrants, who often toil in brutal heat to keep the nation’s economy humming.

But that leads to the bad news.

You see, recent studies have shown that Latino kids in states with more anti-immigrant laws “are in poorer health.”

Yes, bigotry is lethal. The study found that Latino children living in states with more anti-immigrant laws and policies—and its “resulting inequities in access” —are more likely to suffer chronic physical health conditions and mental health issues.

On a related note, Latino kids nationwide are also being kept ignorant about their own history.

Recent research has shown that “most of the seminal events” in U.S. Latino history “are not a subject of study in high schools across the country.” The study found that “87% of key Latino topics were either not covered in U.S. history textbooks or were mentioned in just five or fewer sentences.”

And speaking of education, you will be disconcerted to discover that over half of Latino college students considered dropping out last year, which is a substantial increase since 2020 and comes “after Hispanics had made significant gains in higher education.”

As if that weren’t enough, another study has shown internecine strife among Latinos. The study says that most Latinos who struggle with Spanish say another Latino “has made them feel bad for it.” So it’s bad enough that we have white supremacists targeting us. But here is fresh proof that we can be our own worst enemy.

Take it from someone whose abuela was constantly muttering “sin verguenza” about my lack of fluency. That attitude doesn’t magically make someone bilingual. 

Well, that’s about it. As usual, the bad news seems to outweigh the good.

Oh, and one more thing. The recent surge in hate crimes, which includes spikes in antisemitism and Islamophobia, also includes a “significant increase” against Latinos.

So there’s that.

Aren’t you glad that I led off with the good news?