JohnHenry.US

Tag: women’s rights

  • 2022 State of the Union

    Some rolling observations I made while watching the Big Speech.

    “Freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” We start off with a few bold statements praising Ukraine and sharply criticizing Russia. “When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause chaos.” Biden makes a good solid speech and case here, discussing work on alliances, sharing and analysis of intelligence data, and the deliberate choices to speak clearly about these things as they were happening.

    It’s a good case made, and I’m hard-pressed to think of a time there’s been this clear, sharp, and immediate response from the international community to provocative events.

    Talking about going after the oligarchs. Wish our leaders in the Democratic Party were as enthusiastic about mitigating the power of oligarchs here in the US.

    Biden reinforces that they’re not moving US forces “to fight Russia in Ukraine,” right before listing off all the countries where US forces are being moved and readied for conflict the minute one of those borders is crossed by Russians fighting in Ukraine.

    Announcement of release of some oil reserves, 60Mbbl total.

    “Iranian” instead of “Ukrainian,” and someone shouted something. We’ll see how the right-wing punditry handles that in this new era of anti-Russian sentiment.

    LOL boos from the right as Biden mentions “unlike the two trillion from the previous administration that went to the top one percent.”

    Economics. Lots of slogans and so forth, will there be any kind of solid announcements for any kind of relief? Applause line for infrastructure plan. Hearing more details on how that money’s being spent specifically, all of which is cool or cool-ish at least.

    Passing econ bill with sales pitch including promise from Intel to drop $100Bn on manufacturing growth. Lots of revitalizing manufacturing talk and so forth. I think it’s short-sighted to continue focusing on “creating jobs,” but most of the world isn’t on that page yet.

    Inflation and price conversation, lots of nativism in this conversation, but it is what it is. “USA” chant like we’re at a wrestling match. Validating the economic plan. Reducing prescription drugs, arguments in favor of reducing prices, political rhetoric but not ineffective, shout out to the kid in the audience, lots of well-used crowd-pleasing techniques here. Proposes capping cost of insulin at $35 a month. Let medicare negotiate prescription drug prices. Next up cutting energy cost & climate change. Tax credit for weatherization. Hints of subsidies for EVs and similar tech, but no specifics. Cutting child care costs, which is very popular and not a bad thing, but it’s not an issue super close to me as a single adult.

    Not hearing anything to strongly disagree with here or be terribly cynical about so far, other than continued bleating about “back to work” and “continued economic growth.”

    Discussions of fixing tax code and so forth, as well as a shot about confirming his fed nominations.

    Watchdogs are back, the Justice Department “will soon be naming a chief investigator for pandemic fraud.”

    “I’m a capitalist.” I’m not impressed, but that’s the frame we’re in. He’s not wrong about anything so far, staying within that framework.

    Lots of pitching for some leftist favorite ideas, and some discussion of Covid impact.

    Eh. Fund the police. Blugh. They’ve got funding; we need funding for everything else that feeds in to criminality.

    Right to vote. Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the DISCLOSE act, etc. All good things, nothing particularly new here though.

    Shoutout to Justice Stephen Breyer, which naturally goes to a pitch for nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Border security and immigration reform, some idiot – probably Boebert or Greene – trying to get a “built that wall” chant going that died quickly. More generally well-known talking points on that issue.

    “Preserve a woman’s right to choose,” Equality Act and addressing the LGBTQ+ population with supportive statements that appear to be aimed not so subtly at some state-level oppression that’s been happening there.

    “Unity agenda”

    • beat opioid epidemic, including the usual details
    • mental health, particular for kids
      • “hold social media companies accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.”
    • support veterans
    • end cancer as we know it

    This section of the whole thing seemed pretty cookie-cutter and not holding any gigantic announcements or headlines, but also nothing terribly objectionable or obnoxious.

    Ah, here we go, ARPA-H, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. I like this.

    “The state of the union is strong because you the American people are strong. This is our moment to overcome the challenges of our time, and we will.”

    Overall a solid performance, nothing to give progressives any huge enthusiasm, but some support for those priorities with a much heavier dose of status-quo dogwhistling…which isn’t unexpected. As a speech I’ll give it a B+. As a matter of hearing what I wanted to from a standpoint of advancing progressive priorities, C+.

  • Not All Men

    So this is one of those things that I’ve been grinding my teeth about for a long time, and I’ve said all of this before many, many times but I feel like it bears posting and keeping at hand:

    Anyone whose response to any conversation about the sexual aggression, exploitation, abuse, harassment, and assault is “Not All Men!” needs to sit down, shut up, and not speak again until you’ve learned how to act like a decent human being.

    Let me tell y’all “not all men” types a little secret that’s only a secret to you:

    ALL women – ALL women, every single woman you have ever known – has personally experienced sexual aggression, exploitation, or assault at the hands or words or eyes of a man in her lifetime, and most of them have experienced it within the last five years statistically. ALL women, everywhere, including those so normalized to it that they themselves don’t realize that’s what’s happening.

    Not just in “those countries” or “those states” or “that part of the whatever” or “those people.” ALL women. Every. Single. One. And I don’t have to ask them all; I’ll concede that if there’s a woman someplace who has never once in her life been in the presence of a man who knew she was female, then maybe she has escaped that experience.

    I am telling you if you’re a man and you think I’m making that up, it’s straight up because the women around you think you at least might be, maybe, sometimes, part of the problem, if in nothing else than at least in being so obviously averse to dealing with realities you don’t like that people who love you avoid presenting you with them.

    You probably need to deal with that internally before you go rushing to her to ask if I’m right.

    TOO MANY MEN, which means “MORE THAN ONE,” engage in sexual aggression, exploitation, or assault against women, and until the number of men engaging in sexual aggression, exploitation, or assault against women is ZERO, the phrase “not all men” simply need not exist.

    It is a defense purely of the male ego, almost universally offered by men who feel guilty about their own behavior but not guilty enough to sit down, shut up, and look within themselves for the keys to change it rather than just making the same empty noises as they wheedle for social approval with performative blather.

    If you’re not one of those men and you’re saying that crap, the problem is not that you aren’t one of those men, it’s that in the very act of thinking now’s the time to say so you are much farther on your way to becoming one of them than you apparently believe yourself to be.

    Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I’ve been John Henry.