My husband jokes with me that I always need a “nest,” a home base that is warm and comforting. Familiar pictures on the walls, the smell of focaccia fresh from the oven, and a home-cooked meal on the table. He says he could live comfortably in a hotel room without a scrap of his own “stuff” around save clothing and shoes.
There is power in a nesting instinct, ladies. We protect our own, perhaps even ourselves, God willing.
The writing is on the wall. Mitch McConnell can leave Washington forever with his legacy intact, messing with the Supreme Court so that for the next fifty years women and gays will lose their right to exist equally in the USA.
There’s a difference between politicians and true believers. Now that the conservative movement has “caught the car” in the reversal of Roe, the true believers are driving the car right off the cliff while the vote-desperate Republicans are yelling “Whoa, nelly” to no avail.
Historically, the conservative movement relied on racism to feed its base, until overt racism became politically unacceptable. Then they came up with a new issue, abortion, and proceeded to persuade the evangelicals (think Jerry Falwell) to get on board, making abortion a divisive political and now religious issue.
The Federalist Society Judge Mill fed candidates into the system but politicians only thought the fight for “pro-life” (which is nothing of the sort because they don’t care for babies or the women who birth and mother them at all) would be an eternal quest to gain money and political power. Not that they’d win.
Until Dobbs. Now come the true believers, some of whom have lifetime appointments to Federal courts. They don’t want abortion, mefipristone, IVF, or contraception. They want to erase our 250-year separation of church and state and don’t care if women die, are not permitted interstate travel (just in case an abortion is on the agenda this family vacation) or are sent to jail for having a miscarriage. They don’t even care if neighbors get bounties for telling on suspected violators of abortion laws.
Politicians like Donald Trump and Kari Lake are running around like chickens without their heads this week after Arizona resurrected an anti-abortion law from 1864. Heavens to murgatroid, we didn’t want that, in an election year! Just wait, Trump’s “keep it in the states” position today will turn into a national ban on abortion the second week in November if he’s re-elected. All he needs to do is get you to pull the lever his way thinking you know he no longer wants an abortion ban, to kill Obamacare and whatever his version is of “election integrity” which is just lots of goons at the polls intimidating voters and suing anyone at the polls who looks like they might vote for Biden as an illegal voter.
The politicians would like to get elected then vote against women every day of the week. The judges (Supreme Court Justices, supremely) lie to Congress during confirmation about precedent and settled law, then the latest three immediately reversed 49 years of a sacred civil right. Boom, done. What’s next? Contraception and same-sex marriage.
Politicians have found catching the car a liability in getting elected/re-elected. True believers won’t stop until women are back in the dark ages. Gone is a woman’s ability to choose for herself about her body, finances, travel, everything we assumed we had will be gone.
Alert the nest. Only women can change this. We have to vote for Democrats for the foreseeable future to right this ship for our families, for the future of our children. We have to convince our non-nester spouses to do the same. I’ve an idea. Perhaps a nationwide sex strike. No sex until you men fix this. You caused it. Fix it. Because the mess we’re in now really has nothing to do with abortion per se, it’s all about power and control. And men are still reeling from women who fought for the right to vote in the early 1900’s to the sixties and the sexual revolution brought about by the likes of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Erica Jong. This is payback. We must let them know that going back to 1864 is not in our playbook.
Joe Biden is a good man. No, he doesn’t send out provocative tweets at 2:00 a.m. or entertain us with fantastical lies at rallies. He’s Grandpa Joe, a solid, work-behind-the-scenes and get s*it done kind of guy. We forget how Grandpa Joe got us over COVID and back from the brink economically. How chaotic were the four years before Joe, years he’s had to clean up for with his predecessor as the eternal backseat driver telling his minions how to vote in Congress. Let’s take over Greenland! Drink bleach! Hate your neighbor! American carnage! Retribution for disloyalty!
Let’s get four more years of sanity with enough leverage to allow the righting of the ship that is our United States of America. Fix the Supreme Court, ban dark money in elections and resume ERIC to prevent interstate voter fraud, fix the abortion/IVF/contraception and same-sex marriage mess for good. Eliminate the Electoral College or find a way around it. Help reintroduce bi-partisanship and end siloing of ideas and communities. Begin to trust each other again. There’s so much that can be done that’s good.
I’m 65 and would like to keep my newly-acquired Social Security and Medicare (unused yet). I remain committed to my country and believe in its people. There is hope, if we mind the nest and help others to do the same, we women can make a huge difference. Cheers! Dee
Cooking with Dee 