They just want their patriarchy back

I finished the book The Novel by James Michener. Yeah, it’s a novel about novels. More accurately it is a novel about the people who bring books into existence. I’ve read several of Michener’s novels that explore the history of a place and I enjoy them. I saw this one at a used book fair and was intrigued by it. Much of the story takes place in Pennsylvania Dutch country between Allentown and Philadelphia. In this area “Dutch” doesn’t refer to people whose ancestors came from the Netherlands. This “Dutch” is a simplified spelling of “Dietch” or “Deutch” and refers to Germany. When they came to America (invited by William Penn himself) they were in two groups, the Amish who rejected all modern conveniences and the Mennonite who rejected only a few. Much of this story is in the Mennonite community and is set in 1991. At the start Lukas Yoder is finishing up his eighth novel set in his community. The first four didn’t sell well, the next three were best sellers. So there’s a lot riding on this one. We see what happens when a story is finished. He travels to New York City to talk to his editor and agent. There are comments by the editor about what needs to be fixed and he spends days fixing them. Various media want to write features about him. Movie producers want to talk to him about rights to a previous book. He gets lots of fan mail. The second section is about the editor, Yvonne Marmelle, how she came to love books and how she got to be an editor. I didn’t realize, though it makes sense, there are New York colleges that have classes in how to edit. Marmelle rises through the ranks of editing, from the slush pile (Mound Dreck) to having considerable influence with the bosses. Her duties include guiding the author to making the best book possible. In the background are threats that her company might be sold to a conglomerate. There is a lover who has a great idea for a book but can’t actually finish it. The third and longest section is about the critic, Karl Streibert. He grew up in the area and attended the local Mecklenberg College. He and his mentor discuss the nature of novels, some of which is shared with the reader. Are novels for everyone or are they the means for one elite to communicate to another about how to guide society? Should a novel focus on the state of the society as it is now? They agree a novel isn’t about grand ideas, it should be about how characters interact with grand ideas. Streibert ends up teaching at Mecklenberg and Marmelle wants him to write a book of criticism. He wants to include a review of Yoder, who he considers a hack with little to say, but Marmelle won’t let him savage another of her clients. Streibert’s students include Timothy and Jenny, who are on their way of being novelists. The final section is about Jane Gardner, Timothy’s grandmother and a local. She is a devoted reader, the kind of person authors love. On the walls of Streibert’s classroom he has a genealogy chart of the ancient Greek House of Atreus. He hands students a list of 21 people in the chart and how they interacted with each other (usually murder of some sort). His point is a great deal of Western storytelling descends from the stories of this family. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community wrote about the plot to turn women against birth control. As with many efforts like this it is based on lies. The claim is the pills are harmful, though they’ve been used since 1960 with only a small number experiencing side effects. The pill is also safer than pregnancy. The pill has revolutionized female life – maternal and infant health have improved dramatically and death rates have plummeted. Women are able to fill roles in education, professions, and politics. Those pushing a ban on contraception aren’t as quiet about their real goals as they have been in the past. Part of that is because the current Supreme Court, especially Justice Thomas, have invited cases that could lead to banning contraception. One might think that people who want to ban abortion would welcome contraception as a way to reduce the number of pregnancies and thus the number of abortions. But they’re just as much against contraception as abortion.

But their thorough analysis doesn’t quite capture the element of perverse misogyny at work in this crusade to demonize something that has proved effective—and transformative of women's role in our society—for over 70 years. The very people who brought about Dobbs and eliminated many women’s option to terminate unwanted pregnancies are the same people who are now targeting contraception. Their end goal is to control female sexual behavior so that pregnancy cannot be prevented (except by complete abstinence). Should anyone actually become pregnant, the goal is to provide no recourse, under any circumstances. In reality that’s not a plan at all, but a punishment. This is what [right-wing influencer and podcaster Matt] Walsh and others really mean by “women fully embracing their own womanhood.” It’s what ultimately underlies the right’s unrelenting obsession with women’s bodies and what they do with them. It envisions turning back the clock on all women's progress over the past century and instead reimposing a regime where every person’s potential is irreversibly tied to their sex or gender, with men running things and women in a subservient, childbearing role. In other words: They don’t really care about women’s health. They just want their patriarchy back.

Mark Sumner of Kos discussed oral arguments at the Supreme Court on the challenge to the abortion drug mifepristone. Most of the justices are skeptical of the doctors who brought the case, mostly because the doctors don’t have standing – they couldn’t explain how they were harmed by the availability of the drug. So taking the drug off the market is unlikely.

However, both Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas made sure to leave a trail of legal breadcrumbs hinting at a way for conservatives to not just prevent women from having access to mifepristone, but possibly enact a total national ban on abortion. “This is a prominent provision,” said Alito. “It's not some obscure subsection of a complicated obscure law.” The law he was referring to is the Comstock Act, an 1873 law against obscenity that has rarely been enforced over the past century and is generally remembered in the same breath as Prohibition, a misguided attempt to legislate morality that’s been dead for close to a century. But for conservatives, this porn law from the Victorian Age really isn’t obscure. It’s the foundation for their next big assault on reproductive rights.

The parts of the Comstock Act dealing with contraception have been repealed. The rest has been ignored. The parts on abortion are still on the books, though Roe made them inactive. So if Alito and Thomas are allowed to get their hands on it Republicans in Congress wouldn’t have to enact a national abortion ban. Joan McCarter of Kos also wrote about the mifepristone hearing at the Supremes and that the drug is likely safe for now. She also mentioned the Comstock Act. The big issue she presents is that the effort to get another abortion case before Alito and Thomas is led by “dark-money overlord Leonard Leo, the architect of the conservative court.” So why aren’t Democrats working to stop him? In particular, Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin and his committee have authorized subpoenas for Leo and Court sugar daddy Harlan Crow to testify before them. But months later the subpoenas haven’t been issued. Though Durban still criticizes the lack of ethics on the Court he isn’t doing this one thing to highlight the lack of ethics. Yesterday I wrote about conservatives blaming the Baltimore bridge collapse on DEI programs. John Stoehr, editor of the Editorial Board, discusses that action. Blaming something bad on marginalized people they dislike is highly predictable behavior of those on the far right. Pat Robertson did it when blaming gay people for hurricanes (what, hurricanes will stop if gay people disappear?).

The lyrics are different, but the song is the same. These days, the rightwing fringe is obsessed with something called DEI (or diversity, equity and inclusion programming). You don’t need to know much about DEI except that it’s a good-faith effort to make society fairer. Anyone with a sense of decency wouldn’t blink of an eye at that, but rightwingers don’t see fairness as fairness. They see it as theft. So whenever bad things happen, they are quick to blame Black people.

So why should we care about what they say. Even sounding stupid doesn’t stop them. A fact checker didn’t stop the nasty guy from lying.

All we need to know is how to recognize a malicious pattern – they already hate marginalized people and will exploit accidents, natural disasters, practically any bad thing that has ever happened to justify hating them and disseminating that hate. Don’t get me wrong. DEI, and any good-faith effort to make society fairer, is worth defending. But let’s not confuse defense with offense. Let’s not confuse setting the record straight with political victory.

A couple cartoons just for the fun of it. They’re in the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos. The first is from Nay Cartoons. Jesus is in the barber chair and the barber, trying to make small talk, says, “Any special plans for Easter?” Ellis Rosen posted a cartoon showing a sea captain at the wheel of his ship talking to his first mate, saying, “A storm rages from the East – tell the men to get below and snuggle up for movie night.”