I always thought that the Democrat(ic) Party was basically an offshoot of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), and the Republic(an) Party represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Let’s face it – in a country with a yearly GDP of some $25 trillion based on a so-called free market economy, the government should attempt to strike a balance between the needs of workers on the one hand, and the needs of owners on the other.
In that regard, however, both parties have lately been defining themselves and their goals in terms of something called woke or anti-woke, which means that you either care about women who used to be men taking a piss in a lady’s bathroom or you don’t. Which is I guess what you do when a political campaign begins to take shape at a time when the unemployment rate is under 4% and American troops outside our borders are being used to guard embassy gates.
But what I find interesting in the attempt by the GOP to make a political issue out of transgender stuff is that the alt-right bunch doesn’t seem to have any memory of what happened the first time that someone tried to make a big deal out of sexual or gender preferences – I’m referring to the anti-gay campaign concocted in 1977 by Anita Bryant who got all hot and bothered when Dade County passed a local ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation which Bryant felt would threaten the lives and welfare of America’s kids.
Bryant actually managed to persuade a majority of Dade County residents to overturn the ordnance, but what she really did was to energize pro-gay groups in other parts of the country which changed the whole national discussion about gays and gayness even before Anthony Fauci figured out what was causing a medical threat to the gay community known as AIDS.
The night of the Dade County vote, I happened to be eating dinner with a friend at a restaurant in New York City that was just off 5th Avenue, somewhere about midway between Greenwich Village and Times Square. All of a sudden, we heard an enormous cacophony of noise coming from the street, and when we walked outside to see what was going on, there was this enormous gaggle of gays and straights marching up 5th Avenue yelling various pro-gay chants.
This type of demonstration, unplanned and spontaneous, occurred that night in cities all over the United States. And just as how every politician in New York City always marches in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, now these same politicos never miss the annual gay right’s parade.
The attempt by the GOP to also make an issue out of Kamala’s various verbal gaffes is nothing more than a not-so-subtle attempt to push this year’s version of gender politics or better said, the politics of anything and everything which can’t be subsumed under the twin pillars of being male and being white.
Know why so many people came out and marched to protest the death of George Floyd? The marchers might have been mobilized by Black Lives Matter, but they were motivated to march because Donald Trump just couldn’t find it in himself to say something immediate and forceful about a white cop who stomped out the life of some black guy in the middle of the street.
Trump’s silence was so extraordinary that even Rush Limbaugh devoted an entire broadcast later that same week to beg his White House buddy to open his mouth. And when Trump finally did say something, he made a point of covering his alt-right rear end by condemning the alleged property destruction committed by the pro-BLM ‘mobs.’
The week after Floyd’s murder, Trump’s approval rating fell to 39%, the lowest point of his entire Presidency. His national approval only dropped below that mark following the riot on January 6th.
That’s what happens when you try to create a political campaign based on so-called ‘cultural wars,’ because you can’t control the events which create the country’s social culture, and you sure can’t tell anyone else what they should or shouldn’t believe.
Joe was born two years before I was born, so we share the fact that we will both be living on ‘borrowed time’ so to speak after 2024, if not right now. Which is why the GOP is trying to make a big deal out of Kamala’s misstatements, giggles, and gaffes, because it’s assumed that she might be sitting behind the Resolute desk before 2028.
Know what? Even with the Pandemic, we survived Donald Trump. And if the country kept going under that orange shithead, nobody, not even Kamala, could do worse.
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