Where “it” is my reaction to the latest SCOTUS decision, making it virtually impossible for women to hold employers accountable for discriminatory practices. I am so angry, I could spit enough nails to frame a McMansion.
But this, in addition to the infantilization of women ruling a few weeks back, are only the newest in a series of obvious assaults on the rights of citizens, supported by a largely media-illiterate electorate and an especially manipulative Federal administration, on its knees along with the US Chamber of Commerce, K Street, and the televangelistic industry in worship of the almighty dollar.
And this is only the beginning. The number of career and political appointments at the Dept of Justice (US) in the past 6 years cannot be considered anything but suspect. People who decry and have worked to dismantle voting rights and Affirmative Action have made it policy only to hire minorities – namely white religious zealots who call themselves Christian but show no evidence of ever having read the New Testament – into decision-making positions, regardless of any other skill or qualification.
And where the zealotry and gender issues meet, say in a Monica Goodling, we get the good little girl act, making no assertions other than to say some men made her feel uncomfortable, and that the problems she would encounter with women who earned their positions through relevant credentials were “queen bees”.
What happened to this country, or, at the risk of sounding corny, my country?
Being married to a legal alien foreign national furriner, and having spawned (isn’t that how one would reproduce with a furriner alien thingy?) has made me all the more aware that I am very much an American, no matter how good my ability to mimic accents and be mistaken for an internationalist in airports.
I remember visiting family about a year after 911 and being regarded as a traitor for recounting a conversation with European colleagues, where they had said it wasn’t a matter of if, but when, the US would be attacked. (Had I not known someone on UA 175, the talk may have become even more disrespectful towards me.) My alien hubby asked me not to write letters to the editor about the bogus propaganda around the Iraq invasion, as he has a green card.
But now, I wonder if any letter can have any significance. I wonder how thinking people, particularly Americans, can look at where we are now, and what is coming to light, and not be paralyzed with rage and disgust. What can we do? How can we restore reason, compassion, ethics, and the rule of law?
The Kitchen Table 