I know that I’ve been a little slow to react to the Roe decision. That’s because I was in a state of blind rage. I’m still in a state of rage, but my blindness has subsided and I’m thinking clearly now.
This is the very first blog post I wrote twelve years ago. Please take three minutes to read it because today, at this point in time, there’s no denying that what I told you all those years ago is 100% true.
My rage toward the democratic party has been building for years, and it came to a head when Roe was overturned. Why? Because republicans aren’t pretending not to be monstrous. They tell you they’re monstrous every single day. They told you that their goal was to overturn Roe, and they did. They’re not giving the electorate false hope about anything. They promise hate and oppression, and goddamned it, that’s what they’re delivering.
Democrats, on the other hand are deeply fucking dishonest. They passed a republican healthcare plan (that they could have passed sixteen years earlier) that guarantees insurance companies a 20% profit margin by backstopping losses with your money. And they called that a giant victory for the American people. Seriously? No fucking first world country would even consider moving into the heaping pile of shit that is the ACA. As crappy as it was coming out of the gate, it was designed to be easily eroded. And guess what? In 2014, that’s exactly what first term senator Marco Rubio did. He dealt a massive blow to the ACA. And guess what? Democrats swallowed the pill and voted for it because what else could they do?
DRATS! If only they weren’t so hapless. Oh well, at least they’re well meaning and that’s good enough for me! That was sarcasm, just in case that didn’t come through.
This well meaning but hapless act that democrats have been subjecting us to for the past thirty years is tired, and it’s not helping anyone in the country. You can’t credibly be one of two major parties in America and be this fucking hapless. One fucking win in the past 20 years, and that was successfully passing RomneyCare? Are you fucking kidding me?
Actually, that’s a lie. Democrats have been stunningly successful at one thing; beating back progressives. After AOC caught them off guard, they’ve pulled out all the stops to prevent a progressive from winning a primary. Please read that article. It’s important to understanding the context for what I’m trying to tell you. Remember the 2020 primaries when Bernie earned more votes than anyone else in the first three primaries? You know, and then Biden won his very first primary ever (after running for president THREE times)? Remember? And then everyone who Biden lost to in the first three contests dropped out on the eve of Super Tuesday (after they had already made their ad buys) to endorse Biden? Because obviously, all of that losing was a clear indication that Biden was in the best position to win the general which he eked out by a 44,000 vote margin (don’t give me that electoral college crap because that’s just one more thing that democrats haven’t even attempted to fix) That was the point when democrats made it clear that they didn’t have any more use for democracy than republicans do.
I could go through a multitude of different examples (criminal justice reform, not ending the filibuster in 2009, skyrocketing child poverty, etc) but I won’t. You know what they are because you can’t come up with a way that democrats have improved any aspect of your life in the past 30 years, and neither can I. If you can come up with one, that’s not “proving me wrong” because one thing in thirty fucking years does not inspire the kind of cultish loyalty I’ve been seeing since Roe died.
We lost Roe because democratic lawmakers are ashamed of their stance on abortion and didn’t have the guts to codify it into law. This right here, is when Roe was doomed. And yeah, it was the Clintons that did it. When democrats ceded to the notion that abortion is bad, women all across the country were well on the way to losing bodily autonomy. Rhetoric is everything. Because democrats agreed that abortion is bad, they didn’t have the will to make it the law of the land. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
They’re more than fucking happy to fundraise and run on the issue though.
Look at how many democrats supported the Hyde amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion. That included Jimmy Carter, by the way. That means that poor women on Medicaid can’t get all of the fucking healthcare that they need. That was a massive fucking blow to poor women because 1/3 of all abortions in 1974 were paid for through Medicaid. We spend copious amounts of money to kill men, women, and children all around the world and in our own country but ensuring that women have access to reproductive rights is something to be ashamed of?
Biden definitely supported the Hyde Amendment in 2009, when the ACA explicitly excluded coverage for abortion, and Obama was fine with that.
There is nothing wrong with abortion. Nothing. Abortion is healthcare, it’s family planning, and it mitigates poverty. There’s absolutely fucking nothing to be ashamed of and you’ll be shocked to hear that in many countries, women aren’t ashamed of their abortions. It’s the goddamned rhetoric that democrats helped to create that makes American women ashamed of abortion.
Every time you’ve ever defended abortion rights by going to ‘rape’ or ‘incest’, you have helped to further this toxic rhetoric. I’m guilty of having done it in the past. No more. In fact, the argument should be, “You’re lucky that we’re not trying to make abortion mandatory for every woman in America so that you can see how liberating abortion actually is”.
My rage turned blind when my email and my phone were blowing up with requests for my money from democrats who definitely promise to do something about Roe, if I just chip in! I guess we just weren’t paying them enough to guarantee women’s reproductive rights in the past, so it’s time to kick in now. How fucking shameless are these fuckwits?
And then there was social media. Some douche who calls himself “defiant” despite the fact that he’s perpetually spouting establishment talking points had the audacity to blame Susan Sarandon for the loss of Roe. In his defense, he’s a paid shill now so he’s not being a moron for free anymore. I’ve seen a lot of pro bono morons since Roe was overturned.
To be fair, I’ve also seen people who see what I see and understand that electoral politics isn’t the solution here.
And now we move from the rage part of this post, to the solution proposition part.
Voting isn’t going to do the trick here. AOC is literally the only person in the Democratic Party coming up with any ideas. Who the fuck donates money in response to an email that proposes no solutions to work on with your money? That was $12M that establishment loyalists lit on fire in the first 24 hours after the official announcement of the SCOTUS decision. Okay, maybe I’m not done with the rage part of this post. Democrats had five weeks to come up with something from the time the leak happened, and the announcement was made. They didn’t. They’re just completely befuddled. But hey, they’re well meaning so go ahead and ignore how hapless they are and keep voting!
Okay, moving on. We need to put pressure on companies to get out of the states where abortion is severely limited or entirely eliminated. You know that long list of companies who very generously offered to pay for travel expenses for their employees who would like to get a safe abortion? Because what woman doesn’t want to discuss her healthcare decisions with her employer? We can start with those companies because they think that they’re going to get brownie points for doing absolutely fucking nothing. Specifically the ones who sell consumer goods. Like Apple. They have a big campus in Austin. Let’s all use Twitter to force them to leave Texas unless they overturn their anti-healthcare law. Here’s a partial list of companies to target. If they’re a B2C company, we can apply pressure thanks to Twitter. Tweet. Make your friends tweet. Don’t wake up one day and forget to tweet because you’re in the acceptance phase of this process or because you forgot. Schedule tweeting time on your calendars.
We also need to target Hollywood. A very significant number of shows you watch are filmed in Georgia. Here’s a list you can start with. You need to tweet every actor who appears on every show in Georgia until their twitter feeds are full of nothing but calls for them to boycott Georgia. If you see that stupid peach at the end of a show you just watched: TWEET. Get to tweeting. We need to shame actors into taking a meaningful stand here.
There’s only one thing that misogynistic politicians love more than subjugating women: MONEY. I can assure you that Brian Kemp and Greg Abbott will immediately reverse course if subjugating women costs them money.
I promise that this will work. Losing Georgia’s film and television industry will cost them billions of dollars in revenue. Kemp will reverse course. And please don’t give me the “but this will hurt people who work in that industry”. Yes it will, but that’s far fewer people than 51% of the whole fucking country. We’re at war now, and it’s time to act like it and accept that we have to do whatever it takes to win back bodily autonomy for half of our country.
The only good thing that’s happened in the past several years has been the gains that the labor movement has been making. No politician helped with that. Obama never put on his walking shoes and joined any picket line to support workers who are fighting for better working conditions. And he’s the one most of you lionize. No, we’re not going to vote our way to a solution here.
Don’t mistake what I’m saying: in general elections, you still have to vote for the hapless democrat on your ballot to mitigate the suffering by putting tiny speed bumps on that road. During the primaries, you need to fight like hell to unseat your incumbent democrat for a progressive grass roots candidate. Your incumbent probably sucks. More than 90% of incumbent democrats suck. Your representative is not likely to be the exception.
But electoral politics is not going to solve our problems. We have to.
I never, ever ask this but I need you to share this post repeatedly. Email it to your friends and post it on your social media over and over again. Less than 3% of your connections see any given post.
We can fix this if we have enough people putting pressure on red states.
