I'm kind of busy lately and don't have time today for a lengthy post. However, one quick observation, and then a suggestion for the Republicans.
First, it is refreshing to see the Democrats in the United States taking the initiative by seizing a narrative that puts their opponents on the defensive. By defining the race in terms many can relate to, they offer a clear choice for the November elections.
I love it when there is even an iota of accountability at Fox.
If you would like to read further about this political madness, check out Edward Keenan, who also sets the record straight:
Joe Biden is not cancelling burgers. Or any other kind of meat. Despite what you may have heard, there’s no U.S. government plan to limit red meat consumption. There’s no reason to think Americans will be asked to carry a beef ration card in their wallet on future trips to the supermarket.
Perhaps to the surprise of no one, the American right, led by that red-meat party, the Republicans, has gone into a frenzy over a fabricated 'crisis.'
Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Tweeted Saturday, “Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90 per cent of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?” Fellow congressional Trump acolytes Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene piled on. Fox News, the most-watched cable news network, did several segments over the weekend warning of the plan.
Facts don't seem to matter in this feeding frenzy, but here they are:
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale did a good job of retracing how this fear campaign emerged: The British Daily Mail, reacting to Biden’s proposal to cut carbon emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030, found an old, pre-Biden administration academic paper that suggested if people cut their red meat consumption by 90 per cent it would cut emissions from dietary sources by 50 per cent. As Dale points out, that paper didn’t suggest mandating this dietary change, and it didn’t mention Biden, and Biden’s plan doesn’t refer to — or have anything to do with — the paper. But the Daily Mail story was picked up by Fox News, which led to repetition by influential Republicans, and soon barbecues across the land were being fired up in protest.
As usual, the unhinged right has given its base something to chew on, while the rest of us just sigh over the insanity to the south.
You may note that in the title of this post, I chose the informal version of all right, lest there be any doubt about the ideology of many young people today. Hardly conservative in their propensities, it would seem that many of them are awaking to the potential for power that they have, as long as they are able to keep alive the surging outrage welling within them, the most recent catalyst, of course, being the Parkland shooting.
It would seem the survivors of that shooting are playing the long game in order to keep their mission for sensible gun laws alive. Here is their latest effort at deepening the momentum they have thus far achieved in raising crucial awareness that their country needs sane gun laws, the deep obstructionist efforts of the NRA and their supporters, including bought-and-paid-for corrupt politicians, notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, galvanized by the diseased leadership of Trump, and a sign that democracy is not entirely dead, a record number of women are running in the U.S. midterms.
Now, if we can only convince Canadians out of their complacency, maybe the least we can accomplish is strong turnouts in pending provincial and federal elections.
One of our much-vaunted attributes as a species is our resilience. Our ability to recover from trauma, tragedy and setbacks is the stuff of legend. People devastated by wildfires rebuild; parents who lose a child to disease, accident or mayhem have another child; widows and widowers carry on with their lives; even crippling injury and maiming is not enough to stop us from looking forward to a better day.
Sometimes, however, that resilience and adaptability can work against us. I believe that is what is occurring under the presidency of Donald Trump. The Orange Ogre seems to have redefined what is acceptable or, at the very least, tolerable, in public life. Forget his serial philandering, his outright and ongoing mendacity, and his manifest unfitness for office, all of which, in an earlier time, would have provoked strong reaction and demands for remediation. Perhaps because Trump came from reality programming, and the United States, now more than ever in its history, subsists on a diet of illusion and false promise, it appears that widespread condemnation over what he does or does not do is largely absent, a 'perk of office' that his predecessor, Obama, did not enjoy.
Consider the following report, which begins at the 7:52 mark, and then ask yourself this question: If times were normal, what logical conclusion would most draw about Donald Trump vis-à-vis Russia?
We all knew them growing up - the kid who would do anything to curry favour with the teacher, the one we knew variously as 'the brown-noser,' the 'suck-up' or by any number of similarly unflattering terms. This kid did it, presumably, to curry favour, to gain some kind of imagined classroom status that his or her fevered mind craved.
Unfortunately, some kids never grow up.
In the above photo, the one on the left of the toddler-in-chief is Kevin McCarthy, U.S. House Majority Leader. He apparently learned his lessons well in boyhood. The following, I think, suggests the fulll measure of the boy-man:
U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy were alone in the presidential suite on Air Force One, flying east toward Washington in early October, when the president reached for a handful of Starbursts, the fruit-flavored, box-shaped chewy candies.
But instead of unwrapping all of the treats, the president was careful to pluck out and eat two particular flavours: cherry and strawberry, McCarthy noticed.
“We’re there, having a little dessert, and he offers me some,” McCarthy recalled in an interview. “Just the red and the pink. A bit later, a couple of his aides saw me with those colours and told me, ‘Those are the president’s favourites.’ ”
Days later, the No. 2 Republican in the House — known for his relentless cultivation of political alliances — bought a plentiful supply of Starbursts and asked a staffer to sort through the pile, placing only those two flavours in a jar. McCarthy made sure his name was on the side of the gift, which was delivered to a grinning Trump, according to a White House official.
While the motivation for such obsequious behaviour would be obvious to normal people, Trump is, both literally and figuratively, eating it up:
Trump has showcased the relationship and appears to enjoy the fidelity of a high-ranking GOP leader. Before having dinner together Sunday at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., Trump took questions from reporters under the club portico’s ornate arches, with McCarthy standing beside him.
McCarthy seems to understand Trump's severe limitations:
While at Camp David earlier this month, McCarthy took up the task of explaining the obstacles facing Republicans ahead of the midterm elections in November, walking through the financial hurdles and bleak prospects in various races.
According to two people familiar with the presentation, Trump appreciated McCarthy’s use of pictures and charts rather than a memo.
So why is this at all important, other than as an illustration of gross sycophancy and political pandering?
Critics of McCarthy privately grouse that he is an operator who is most concerned with improving his standing in the House by aligning himself with the Republican base’s standard-bearer. There are worries, too, that McCarthy’s ingratiation could enable Trump rather than contain him.
“I don’t think being a Trump sycophant is going to do much in the long run for the party or holding the majority,” said Republican consultant Mike Murphy. “It doesn’t change Trump’s behaviour, which is imperiling the party, and we’re getting to a place where challenging him is an imperative.”
The Republican Party has been in a downward spiral for quite some time. With standard bearers like Kevin McCarthy, it is not difficult to understand why.
... claim voter fraud. That is what the notoriously graceless Alabama loser and alleged pedophile Roy Moore is asserting, as he steadfastly maintains that he didn't lose the election to Democrat Doug Jones.
If you ever had any doubts about the cracker's racism, consider this: the main basis of his fraud claim is that he alleges
"anomalous" higher voter turnout in Jefferson County, in which census data shows 43% of the population is black. He called the county's 47% voter turnout as "highly unusual" and questioned the integrity of its election results.
Message to Moore: true and healthy democracy works when enough people care.
The other day I came across the following stinging but very accurate indictment of those who voted for Donald Trump:
Not all Trump supporters are racist, misogynist, xenophobes. All Trump supporters saw a racist, misogynist, xenophobe and said “this is an acceptable person to lead our country.”
You may not have racist, misogynist, xenophobic intent, but you have had racist, misogynist, xenophobic impact.
Impact > intent.
So when you get called racist, misogynist, and xenophobic – understand that your actions have enabled racism, misogyny, and xenophobia in the highest halls of our federal government, regardless of why you voted for him.
You have to own this. You don’t get to escape it because your feelings are hurt that people are calling you names. You may have felt like you had no other choice; you may have felt like he was genuinely the best choice for reasons that had nothing to do with hate.
But you have to own what you have done: you have enabled racism, misogyny, and xenophobia.
Impact > intent. Always.
— Phillip Howell
The above seems particularly germane given the spate of appointments the president-elect is making, appointments that confirm the worst fears of a large number of people.
The US president-elect on Friday picked Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Representative Mike Pompeo as director of the CIA and retired lieutenant-general Michael Flynn as national security adviser.
The hawkish trio have made inflammatory statements about race relations, immigration, Islam and the use of torture, and signal a provocative shift of the national security apparatus to the right.
You are as capable as I am of reading in depth about these appointments, so I won't go on about them here, since my real point is that while many commentators have offered an array of reasons that people supported Trump, such as their feelings of alienation, the fact that they don't feel their voices are being heard by their politicians, etc., etc. ad nauseam, the fact is that none of them can be excused for their choice. It is not as if they did not know the twisted 'values' of Trump, but either because of or despite those 'values', selected him anyway. For that, they must be harshly rebuked, even condemned.
And what about the approximately 50% of Americans who didn't bother to vote, some out of the usual indifference and apathy, some because they couldn't bring themselves to support either candidate? As Thomas Moore said in A Man For All Seasons, "Silence gives consent." By their non-participation in the election, they have significantly contributed to the darkness that is sure to envelop America and, unfortunately, much of the world.
The failure of the American electorate imposes upon the rest of us a special obligation. As I indicated in an earlier post, none of us can sit on the sidelines or turn away when we witness acts of hatred, racism, misogyny or other behaviour that represent the distemper of our times; sadly, in the minds of many, the election of a moral misfit has sanctified such vile acts.
Silence gives consent.
I will leave you with this peerless commentary that, from the progressive side, is the equivalent of shouting, "I'm mad as hell, and I won't take it anymore!
Yesterday, my post consisted of three letters culled from a larger series by Star readers reflecting on the dire state of both the U.S. Republican Party and American society. Pamela MacNeil, always an insightful commentator, offered some very interesting observations about both. I am featuring them here as a guest post:
I listened to a JFK speech the other day Lorne. If you're interested, you can find it at #NoWar2016 and what Kennedy said, WorldBeyondWar.org. Some people consider it his greatest speech and some even think it's what contributed to his assassination.
The speech was about PEACE. Why do I bring this up? Strictly for contrasts. Compare this speech with Trump's nomination speech. Implicitly, both speeches are a reflection of American culture. Kennedy's speech reflects a culture that was serious about ideas, where an intelligent President could articulate how a viable option of peace over the cold war could be achieved. Trumps speech reflects a culture that is intellectually and morally bankrupt. It contains no serious ideas and in fact sounds more like something that would be said at a marketing or business meeting. More importantly it reveals a culture not only in decline, but a culture intellectually having reached rock bottom where all that dominates is faith and force. American culture has gone from the political sophistication and the pursuit of progressive ideals of a JFK to the anti-intellectual rhetoric and sleaze of a Donald Trump.
The GOP with its Evangelical and neoliberal beliefs reflects a culture of power and entitlement. They do not bring anything beneficial to the table for the average American. They are political zombies. Having no political ideas, they need a leader who reflects that lack. Anyone with political substance and intelligence, or even common sense, would completely avoid the GOP. They would feel embarrassed to be associated with this mindless group called the GOP. Donald Trump feels no such embarrassment.
Do Americans ever wonder why they once had an intellectually sophisticated president such as JFK and now have a presidential candidate whose character is that of a P.T. Barnum barker?
Who is responsible for the American cultural and political destruction? Why have Americans stood by and watched their governments, both Democrats and Republicans, turn their country into an ignorant war monger that wants to dominate the world?
Going from a political culture under JFK to a political culture under Trump is like going from super sonic jet travel back to the horse and buggy.
An empire in decline and with its nuclear weapons one that could take the rest of the world with it.
Americans don't seem to know it, but they are looking into a cultural abyss.
Unless you have taken a strong slug of a particular Kool-Aid, I suspect you will be suitably appalled by the following. Indeed, the responses of the folks who were asked what it would take for Donald Trump to lose their vote reminds me of an old tune sung by Tammy Wynette.
I readily admit to not following U.S. politics too closely; my emotional resilience has limits. However, given the American media saturation coverage of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, it has been hard to ignore the run-up to their respective parties' presidential nominations. Never, it seems, has either party offered such unpopular and unpalatable mainstream candidates.
In his column today, Tony Burman says there is ultimately little cause for concern if, as many are suggesting, Hillary Clinton will be forced to withdraw from the race should she be indicted for her unauthorized use of a private email server while serving as Barack Obama's Secretary of State.
Dismissing Bernie Sanders as unacceptable to the party establishment, Burman points out that unlike the Republicans, delegates to the Democratic convention are free to vote for any candidate, regardless of primary results, and he suggests that candidate may very well be Vice-President Joe Biden:
He originally declined to run due to the death of his son, but has told friends that he regrets that decision.
In early May, a story appeared on the Politico website that created considerable buzz. It quoted sources close to Biden indicating that, had he decided to run, Biden would have chosen Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as his running mate. Warren is a widely respected financial authority who supports breaking up the big banks to prevent another global crisis. On Tuesday, she enthralled a Washington audience by tearing into Trump, calling him a “small, insecure money-grubber.” It was a devastating performance — a real carving up of Trump — that gave some indication of how effective she would be on the campaign trail.
Whether any of this comes to fruition is anyone's guess. I suspect, however, that given the impressiveness and integrity of Elizabeth Warren, she will be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.
I'll defer to others much better versed than I am in the vagaries of international politics to offer a more informed analysis, but the recent deference of the U.S. toward Saudi Arabia warrants a closer look. Despite, or perhaps because of, an unfortunate recent characterization by Barack Obama of the repressive Middle East kingdom as free riders eager to drag others into the region's sectarian conflicts, he has made a 'mea culpa trip there to soothe over tensions.
But why the apparent deference? The obvious answer involves the Saudis' massive oil deposits as well as their strategic location, but another issue has arisen in which the American president is acting as a hindrance to those 9/11 survivors who want to sue Saudi Arabia:
As you can see, a real fear is the Saudis' threat to liquidate $750 billion in American holdings. That fear has likely prompted this deferential visit by an American president. Better, it seems, to deny your citizens justice than to face an economic upheaval.
The argument that Obama gives for trying to impede the bipartisan bill that would allow citizens to sue the Saudi Arabian government seems weak to me. He claims it could open the floodgates to other countries suing the U.S., but as far as I know, there is nothing to prevent such action now. The following report probably offers the most realistic assessment of the sorry situation:
The Saudis have consistently received special and deferential treatment from the U.S. Some will recall that shortly after 9/11, when all air traffic in the U.S. was grounded, a group of Saudis, including relatives of bin Laden, was whisked back to their kingdom. And as indicated in the above video, now it is trying to keep classified 28 pages of a congressional report into the attack.
In 2002, shortly after a Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks concluded its report, the Bush administration ordered that the inquiry permanently seal a 28-page section that investigated possible Saudi government links to the attack. It has remained sealed ever since.
Some members of Congress who have read the report, but are barred from revealing its contents, describe it as potentially damning. An unnamed member of Congress told the New Yorker, "The real question is whether it was sanctioned at the royal-family level or beneath that, and whether these leads were followed through."
"The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier," former Sen. Bob Graham, who is leading the charge to release the document, said in February.
It is an unwarranted protection of Saudi interests that must end, according to Andrew C. McCarthy, who, as described in a Wikipedia entry, led
the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning a series of attacks against New York City landmarks.[4] He also contributed to the prosecutions of terrorists who bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He resigned from the Justice Department in 2003.
it is long, long past time — for the United States government to come clean with the American people, and with the families of Americans slaughtered on 9/11 by 19 jihadists, 15 of them Saudis. The government must disclose the 28 pages of the 2002 congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that it has shamefully withheld from the public for 14 years. Those pages outline Saudi complicity in the jihad.
It is nothing short of disgraceful that the Bush and Obama administrations, relying on the president’s constitutional authority over foreign intelligence and the conduct of foreign affairs, have concealed these materials.
Injustice frequently prevails in our fractured world. Despite all of the public clamour, I somehow doubt anything will soon change for those victims of terrorism currently seeking redress.
Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh talked in a wide-ranging interview with journalist Ken Klipperstein about the complex relationship between the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which he reported on extensively in his new book, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden.
Among other things, Hersh said in the exclusive AlterNet interview that the Saudi government bribed Pakistan with “hush money” to hide Osama bin Laden from the U.S. because the Saudis didn’t want the Americans to interrogate him.
“The money was from the government … what the Saudis were doing, so I’ve been told, by reasonable people (I haven’t written this) is that they were also passing along tankers of oil for the Pakistanis to resell. That’s really a lot of money,” Hersh told Klipperstein.
The bribe, in the form of money and tankers of oil, was in the amount of “hundreds of millions [of dollars],” but he didn’t have solid figures to share.
As well, be sure to check out Alison's post on the history of Canada's cozy arms-dealing relationship with Saudi Arabia.
lie, prevaricate, equivocate, palter, fib mean to tell an untruth. lie is the blunt term, imputing dishonesty . prevaricate softens the bluntness of lie by implying quibbling or confusing the issue . equivocate implies using words having more than one sense so as to seem to say one thing but intend another . palter implies making unreliable statements of fact or intention or insincere promises . fib applies to a telling of a trivial untruth .
Probably my second-favourite Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth delves darkly into the theme of equivocation. The word and the theme recur throughout the play as a way of exploring the evil that envelops and ultimately destroys the usurper king. From the moment he admits to his desire to be king, through to his cruel murder of his monarch, Duncan, and carrying through the bloody reign that ensues, Macbeth tries to present an innocent face while embracing mayhem. As his predator-partner Lady Macbeth counsels him, Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't (1.5.74-5)
Some would argue that there is no equivocation when it comes to Donald Trump, that what you see is what you get. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you haven't seen it, check out John Oliver's splendid takedown of Trump, available on The Mounds' blog. Oliver very skillfully demonstrates that to hear Trump talk is to listen to a flood of falsehoods, half-truths and self-important nonsense.
If you don't have the 21 minutes required to watch Oliver, you can take a look at the following much briefer report from NBC Nightly News. You will see quite clearly, as he temporizes and lies about the circumstances surrounding his refusal to disavow white supremacist David Duke, that you are watching vintage Trump as he blames others for his own lack of character and barely concealed racism.
The facts about Donald Trump, and the truth behind his self-propagated fiction about being a masterful businessman, is readily available for anyone who cares to look. But the question is, do Trump's supporters, and they are legion, even care that they are embracing someone who is so profoundly unworthy of national trust?
UPDATE: Over at the Toronto Star, Darren Thorne argues that the Trump blight is the logical outcome of the Republican Party's politics:
In reality, despite what is now being said, Trump is not a foreign entity executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. Rather, he is the tip of the spear; the sharpest point and the ultimate extension of the way Republicans have practiced politics in recent times. The lack of serious policy engagement, and the normalizing of corrosive rhetoric, anger and resentment that has become the norm have primed the electorate for a candidate like Trump.
Not that he had any semblance of previous virtue, but yesterday former Republican presidential nomination contender Chris Christie confirmed his capacious political whoredom by endorsing Donald Trump, a man he had previously ridiculed:
“We are not electing an entertainer in chief. Showmanship is fun, but it is not the kind of leadership that will truly change America.”
His opinion changed yesterday.
He’s a good friend. He’s a strong and resolute leader and he is someone who is going to lead the Republican Party to victory in November.”
Although beaten to the altar of Baal by the never-virtuous but always befuddled Sarah Palin last month, Chrisitie tried to impart a greater dignity to his shame. Compare the following two performances:
Nonetheless, one cannot help but ascribe Christie's Damascene conversion to less than pure motives, especially given the fact that Trump has lately been publicly musing about his running mate, should he secure the Republican nomination.
Since Christie is but the tender age of 52, one must modify Brian Mulroney's 1984 assessment of Bryce Mackasey:
"There's no whore like a middle-aged whore."
Sorry for the rough language, but sometimes there is no way to euphemize ugly realities.
Some years ago, Rick Mercer had a special called Talking To Americans, its purpose being to satirize the profound ignorance many of our U.S. cousins have regarding Canada. Here is a brief clip:
Given their chronic conviction that the United States is the centre of the universe, Americans could perhaps be excused for not knowing anything about their northern neighbours. However, it does not explain the following, in which actors pretending to be Fox News reporters asked people about some outrageous things their politicians allegedly said or did:
At a time when people are beginning to take seriously the possibility of a Trump presidency, it seems that widespread ignorance and credulity could have some far-reaching consequences.
As a retired person with no financial pressures, I realize that I am probably part of a comfortable minority. Many across a wide demographic range struggle with daily life, leaving little time for what some might call the luxury of reflection and critical thinking. However, there are also many others who simply don't care about the wider society and world around them, preferring to make a virtue of their ignorance. It is the latter segment for whom I reserve both my concern and my scorn.
The other day I wrote a post about the steady declines in readership and revenues confronting newspapers today; as I suggested in that post, this has very serious implications for the health of democracy. An ignorant populace is easy prey for the unscrupulous manipulations too frequently practised by those in power and those seeking power. In response to that post, Montreal Simon sent me a link, which I included in an update, to a Press Progress piece with these disturbing statistics:
According to Statscan, the number of Canadians who follow the news on a daily basis dropped from 68% in 2003 to 60% in 2013.
Meanwhile, over the last decade, the number of Canadians who "rarely or never" follow the news nearly doubled from 7% in 2003 to 13% in 2013.
As you can see, over a period of 15 years, American newspaper readership has fallen drastically in each demographic, from young to old. This got me thinking, and from that thinking I offer a thesis I realize is hardly a profound insight: There is a relationship between declines in consumption of traditional media (newspapers, network news, etc.) and the rise of the politics of division and demagoguery that has plagued both Canada and the United States in recent years.
Consider the evidence. In the world we once inhabited, pre-Internet and pre-Fox News, people got their information from what used to be termed 'trusted sources': network news and long-established newspapers. Today, with those sources in decline, people are cherry-picking their information sources, sources that all too frequently merely reinforce prejudices and ignorance. Indeed, in this view online materials do not function as part of the great equalizing function many ascribe to the Internet, but allow for even more isolation from the larger world we are all part of. Climate denialism is one illustration that comes readily to mind, and no amount of reason will derail the skeptics thanks to their selective consultation of sources. For a further and more nuanced discussion of this notion, I recommend an excellent and thought-provoking essay that Kirby Cairo wrote the other day.
As we in Canada well know, the longer the Harper cabal remained in office, the more divisive, contemptuous and racist it became. The last election campaign, with its race-baiting and profound denigration of all those who remained outside the narrow tent of their exclusionary practices, reached an historical nadir in our country. Achieving social consensus under that regime was regarded as a weakness, and so it doubled down in appealing to its base.
The same, of course, is happening right now in the United States in the Republican race for the presidential nomination:
Ted Cruz is no better. Watch his thoughts on climate change:
Especially rich in the above is Cruz's suggestion that people question the professors who spout climate change and think for themselves, the last thing he really wants. If you would like to read a refutation of Cruz's posturing, click here.
One must always be wary of oversimplifications, and I realize that what I have discussed here is only one part of the explanation for the deterioration of contemporary politics. Another big factor, of course, is the increasingly large proportion of people who are becoming the modern-day dispossessed. Justifiably angry and estranged, they want answers to the causes of their discontent that today's demagogues are only too eager to 'provide' on their road to power. Ignorance is their coin of the realm, and antidotes are desperately needed.
Increased news consumption can be part of the solution, but only if we have the will not to revel in our ignorance.
There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.
So said the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, at a rally for Hillary Clinton. Surely I am not the only one disgusted by the implication of that statement, that every woman has a moral obligation to support one of their own gender in her quest for the presidency, no matter how odious or inappropriate that woman might be:
While introducing Mrs. Clinton at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, talked about the importance of electing the first female president. In a dig at the “revolution” that Mr. Sanders often speaks of, she said that the first female commander in chief would be a true revolution. And she scolded any woman who felt otherwise.
“We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder, and a lot of you younger women think it’s done. It’s not done,” Ms. Albright said of the broader fight for women’s equality. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”
Not to be outdone, veteran feminist Gloria Steinem got into the act, somewhat ironically, on Bill Maher's show:
Explaining how women tend to become more active in politics as they become older, she suggested younger women were just backing Mr. Sanders so that they could meet young men.
“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’ ” Ms. Steinem said.
Realizing that this was potentially offensive, Mr. Maher recoiled. “Oh. Now if I said that, ‘They’re for Bernie because that’s where the boys are,’ you’d swat me.”
But Ms. Steinem laughed it off, replying, “How well do you know me?”
Take a look, starting at about the 4:00 minute mark:
One hopes, as one does with men, that critical-thinking will determine how a woman votes, not gender-identification.
