By Colleen O’Connor
Chaos reigns.
Emergency declarations of war (Israel v. Hamas, Ukraine v. Russia); earthquakes in Afghanistan, massive migration across borders, global economic uncertainty, gun violence, mayhem in the U.S. House of Representatives with the “’first in history’ ouster of the Speaker, at least 538 mass shootings reported so far this year in the United States, and seemingly no one able “to navigate through ambiguity, be adaptable to change, and ultimately create structure where it doesn’t exist.”
Watch the news. See the chaos. Political theater. No governance. No apparent solutions, yet real-world consequences.
Hence, the hottest new college degree — Chaos Studies.
This chaos has exploded before. Think two world wars.
In her memoir, Looking for Trouble, Virginia Cowles, the trailblazing Sunday Times war correspondent who covered the front lines of the Spanish Civil war and the 1930s aftermath that led to World War II, eerily echoes today’s fears.
“Somehow it was always difficult to grasp that these were the actual combats on which civilization depended.”
“Peasants drawn from the villages of Spain to fight Europe’s first war against totalitarianism.”
Convention used to be so simple. So rigid. So banal. And so harmful. Designed to proscribe the roles for power and/or wealth. Especially re: women.
“The Angel in the House,” a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore, first published in 1854 and expanded until 1862, captures that myopathy.
Its premise was concise. Women belonged in the house. Not THE House as in Congress.
But, cleaning, cooking, raising children and never, ever contradicting their husbands.
She was to be the moral guardian in all things. Blessed Be Drudgery, published in 1896 also promoted that girdling of women’s choices as “the secret of all culture.”
Virginia Woolf satirized the ideal of femininity depicted in the Angels’ poem, writing:
“She [the perfect wife] was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it … Above all, she was pure.”
This “before times” command performance playhouse still boasts millions of adherents.
Despite working two centuries to gain suffrage for women, the 60s liberation movement, rights to own property, no-fault divorce, the #MeToo movement and the codification of Roe v. Wade (for women’s health care rights), this repression still exists.
“Anti-abortion advocates scored a big win on June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, restricting women’s health care rights.”
But the political tables are turning.
Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since that landmark court decision one year ago and in each instance, in red states and blue states, anti-abortion advocates have lost.”
In addition, women have won two Nobel Prizes this year. One for medicine. Katalin Karikó re: the “discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”
Another for Peace. Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.
The motto “Woman – Life – Freedom” – suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi.
Yet, chaos, authoritarianism, strong man antics and real fears of civil and possible world war have exploded. I hold to my March 2021 OB Rag prediction.
Prediction#1: Liz Cheney is going to be the first Republican female minority leader after Kevin McCarthy is ditched. She sees the future and it isn’t Trumpism.
Why? I wrote then.
“The reasons for Pelosi’s 2022 re-election bid are several; to avoid any “lame duck” status; to engineer a special election for her daughter’s candidacy; to finally vanquish Trump; or to become the avenging angel for women.
“Yes, the most Machiavellian plot, to simply deprive Trumpian ally, McCarthy, of the Speakership and reward Liz Cheney for her January 6th “profile in courage.”
“Or something else, all together!”
“She wins even if she loses! An enviable position to hold. Stay tuned.”
How? Part II.”
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
AND today Nobel Prize in Economics to a woman. This year’s Nobel economics prize has been awarded to Claudia Goldin, an American economic historian, for her work on women’s employment and pay.
Prof Goldin’s research uncovered key drivers behind the gender pay gap, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
She is only the third woman to receive the prize, and the first to not share the award with male colleagues.
Women need to do more than fight. They need to run for office!!
Best T-shirt I ever owned had the slogan “A woman’s place is in the House. And the Senate”.
And now? McCarthy says he’ll run for Speaker.
So, sorry Afghanistan and your earthquake, Armenia and your Azerbaijan occupation, you’re just too low on the list for our attention.
Because now we all have to turn our attention (again) to the teenagers running for class President, and play Hall Monitor.
Sorry, men, no offense meant, but if WOMEN were running the world, this world would be a very, very different picture.
And while there’s a LOT about Cheney I don’t like (not the least of which is her father), she really understood and performed her job in the Jan 6 investigations, and she is beyond fathoms more capable for Speaker than gym shorts Jordan, Scalise, or the already ousted McCarthy. But it will never happen.
“but if WOMEN were running the world”
The author likes to ramble around.
LOL, this isn’t a gender shtick. After you strip out the party extremists, do you really think Cheney is somehow not conservative? Not anti-abortion? Income tax increases in relation to budget? Gun legislation? Nikki Haley without the deference to Trump? GOPhers are well……GOPhers.
https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/171319/liz-cheney
Chris, I do get your point. There is nothing about Cheney’s platforms that I support and I wouldn’t vote for her in any election. Moreover, the fact that the Speaker is 2nd in line should something happen to a POTUS is truly sobering! Think on that in consideration of the current contenders!
However, my POV about Cheney in this context is more about simply running an EFFECTIVE House, which is a critical component (as we’ve seen in the ‘mired in sludge’ performance the past two years). And as we saw in Pelosi’s very effective management and finger on the pulse w/ regard to numbers, and what can be accomplished.
Its pretty clear Cheney understands a brief, and works hard to accomplish it. The passing or failing of legislation depends on who-all has been elected, so we can only hope that voters choose the right representatives to sit in chambers. But the actual running of the House? E.g., the confirmation of > 200 military advancements, held hostage by Tuberville, is a classic example. From a procedural standpoint? None of the men vying for the position can even control their own behavior, nevermind the important duty of ensuring that the House moves forward on the will of the people. Put a woman in charge, and at least that job gets done! :-)
Cheney and Kinzinger were very professional for the J6 committee, agreed.
None of the men vying for the position can even control their own behavior, nevermind the important duty of ensuring that the House moves forward on the will of the people. Put a woman in charge, and at least that job gets done!
Uh, Mace, Luna, Stefanik, Boebert, Greene ain’t getting anything done. Rational minds beyond gender I’ll support. Jacobs for our area seems to be doing fine.
Ken Buck, GOP, Colorado says more Speaker candidates could arise ‘if this becomes a mess’. Seems like it already is. SECRET BALLOT might help.
Hell opened a ski resort because I agree with Chris Schultz on this. He gave a good description with perfect examples of why the whole “put a women in charge” is not automatically the solution we’d like it to be.
Um, Chris, no, it never is , is it?
So, I’m just gonna go on full feminist here, and point out that in the past 24 hrs, we’ve had, from the men, gym shorts flipping from, ” I will” ” to “I wont” to “I’ll be the opening speaker for Scalise” to who even knows where he is now! Then, we have Scalise, who told us he’s “the David Duke without the baggage”. Honestly? I rest my case. Nobody (uh, including not a single woman) has offered the crazy women Boebert,Greene, of Stafanik in this picture! Even women- thank god for our acumen, are apparently not cut from that cloth of endorsement!
After Scalise’s attendance at the conference was publicized in 2014, journalist Stephanie Grace alleged that Scalise had once called himself “David Duke without the baggage”. The year of the speaking engagement was 2002.
Not a defense, just context for accuracy.
Gym Jordan, who thinks ignoring congressional subpoenas is fine, needs to be investigated for his J6 role.
It still is not a blanket recommendation one way or the other for women over men and vise versa. The subject is another division.
Unfortunately there often seems to be a specific type of women that ends up in positions of power. Think of all the various Margaret Thatcher types, or Madeline Albrights, Victoria Nulands, Condoleeza Rices, and the vicious recent rise of the likes of Loren Bubblebrain and Margerine TrailerTrash or the less well-known like Fascist supporter Franklin TN mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson and her ilk that are spread far and wide over this country.
Look around, it’s not a gender issue or a ‘party’ one, either! Conservative neo-cons or conservative neo-liberals owned by corporations and Wall St. bankers that haven’t much changed in behavior since they tried to overthrow FDR in 1934, and they still don’t allow much wiggle room, ya know?
We have a problem of the worst of the worst bubbling up in the stew of politics like a turd in an outhouse floating to the surface no matter how one goes pee. Pelosi and Cheney are far more similar that different in my opinion in terms of power, wealth accumulation, and social status. And both are very, very conservative just in slightly different ways.
Then of course you occasionally get the Katie Porter and Barbara Lee types but there just aren’t enough of them to make a difference because the wealthy elites who control and fund elections will far outspend their meager ability to refute the propaganda the conservative elites pay for. Same thing happens to the Lees and Porters that happens to the honest men types, they get buried too often under the avalanche of bad press by the conservative elites who own all the mainstream media outlets and fund so-called ‘think tanks’ and campaigns.
Somehow there needs to be an accounting of how politics is funded. Tossing out ‘Citizen’s United’ would be a good first step as would breaking the lock on the duopoly of a two-party system. Ending the revolving door of politicians to corporations and back seems like a good idea, too. And completely dropping the Electoral College would also do some good I think. I have no idea how one could end gerrymandering of congressional districts and other blatant shenanigans.
Just some thoughts from an old OB surfer dude sitting in the rainy mountains…
sealintheSelkirks
Cheney slams Trump as “dangerous” for attacking attacking Israel praising-Hezbollah in Wednesday speech”. A little light or making a move?
(https://thehill.com/policy/4252184-cheney-slams-dangerous-trump-for-attacking-israel-praising-hezbollah-in-wednesday-speech/)
And yet today Mace and Greene are positioning a new s-show and confusion in motion.
Mace on Wednesday said she couldn’t vote for Scalise as the next House Speaker because he “attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke.”
Greene, like Mace, said she was supporting House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after he was ousted last week from the role. However, she claimed the South Carolina Republican’s comments about Scalise — who won the nomination for the top GOP spot — were unfair.
“I’m supporting Jim Jordan for Speaker. I’m not supporting Scalise,” Greene reiterated in a lengthy thread on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I like Steve Scalise, and as I said, I want him to beat cancer, and he should be focused on that.”
“What I do think is an unfair and quite frankly disgusting attack is members of our conference using … Democratic talking points,” she continued, adding that they are “using the same lines of attack that Democrats use against every single Republican, every single election, every single day, in these halls of Congress to attack Steve.”
Here’s the deal. The GOPher clown show is going to struggle with this for the next year and then there’s the next election. RESET. The burn it down crowd doesn’t care unless they can convince desperation onto the remainder of the party for control under some misguided mantra of fiscal responsibility (truthful but insincere). The worst we can do is fragment through race, gender, sex, etc. There’s enough to consider when it comes to world, country, state and local politics that influence our lives without the distractions of our identity politics.
My personal soap box would like to see corporations/ high earners back at the old tax rates from a federal perspective. Corporations paying 21% (aside from write offs) while ordinary people pay 22% over 45K is wrong. And would like to see Cali at a more neutral/ lower tax stance as the earners are taxed too much for the system. California has to stop saying the solution is to tax the winners for winning in a free enterprise economy. It seems tax revenues are trying to be driven through real estate around prop 13.
You have to wonder, given that Mace helped torpedo Scalise (on questionable remarks 20 years ago), in favor of Jordan, (who is treasonous in Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election) and never testified (ignoring a Congressional subpoena), should he be elected leader of the House, second in line to the Presidency, and would he certify an election Trump may lose in 2024? This could be pretty bad.
And then Stefanik doing another wonderful job today (advocating for women in Congress) by sucking up to Jordan. I wish both women and men had a conscience to what the Constitution really means. The value of being a conservative has been reduced to doing nothing in spite of the obvious need for change.