RE: Amy Conan Barrett

Smart Crone Talking: RE: Amy Coney Barrett
 
When I was first writing politics some 15 years ago, I did a series titled “Woman Against Women,” examining the voting records of elected Republican women, rising Republican female stars, and the who and the what behind their rise to structural power. I took a great deal of heat for the title, the thrust of the criticism being women need to support each other, not rip each other apart. I was also told the title should have been woman against humanity, not woman against women. I did not, I do not, agree. Women can be and are as vicious to other women as patriarchy, especially conservative women, in the name of traditional values. Serena Joy lives and she is about to take her place on the Supreme Court. The judiciary, both federal and state, is now stacked with evangelicals, and American democracy is about to be fundamentally re-made according to their gospel, their God, and their Jesus.
 
With the passage of Citizen’s United, the United States, morphed from evil corporacracy – government of, by and for the corporation – into the even more evil Plutocracy - government of, by, and for the wealthy. Neo-liberalism gave us coporacracy and coporacracy has given us Plutocracy. Watching the sham and outright power grab, that was the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, Republicans argued that democrats were attacking religion and Democrats argued that Republicans were attacking humanity. Sheldon Whitehouse took the argument, out of the either/or, this-or-that, frame by making it unmistakably clear, with visual aids no less, that Plutocracy was behind the nomination and subsequent ramming through of Amy Coney Barrett. That should have been the headlines, that should still be the headlines; the sharp, utterly transparent feed between Plutocracy and evangelicals, which in a sane, reasonably intelligent world would trigger a sane and reasonably intelligent conversation about how to defeat dark money. Biden’s son is a distraction, distraction works well, Schafly single-handedly defeated ERA by telling women they’d have to go to the bathroom with men. ERA was about equal pay and equal choice, and had virtually nothing to do with going to the bathroom with men. Economic change brings social change and social change is more terrifying, more threatening, to the masses than climate change, rapacious capitalism, the erosion of civil liberties and nuclear anihilation. Divisiveness is the most effective weapon of the powers that be for changing and taking control of the narrative. 
 
Here at the Kitchen Table Caucus, we're very clear that voting for Biden (which we will) is not going to change the fact that the Supreme Court and state judiciaries are stacked with evangelicals. That Coney Barrett has no agenda is ludicrous. Any evangelical’s job is to create their God’s kingdom on earth. The idea that judges aren’t policy makers is even more ridiculous. You make law – that establishes policy. Yes, we hear rumors that Democrats are going to expand the court as payback for the Republicans’ bad behavior, but we seriously doubt it, and we are also keenly aware of how long that’s going to take and the damage that will done in the interim.

What the Democrats are focused on is getting drump out no matter what it takes. What the Democrats are focused on is flipping the house. Both vitally important goals, goals we actively support and am working towards, but even if Democrats get drump out and flip the house that’s not going to change the fact that the Supreme Court and state judiciaries are stacked with evangelicals, and any policy change, any change to the law, will be passed, or not, through the judiciary. P.S. If you think an evangelical/ plutocratic viewpoint isn’t going to frame the final decision, I have bridge to sell you.
 
My friend Frank, who I’ve known for over 30 years, tells me I have to take my victories where I find them, but I suck at that because I’m too busy seeing the big picture. Frank is much more positive than I am; he finds light and I am the voice of doom and gloom. He has a Libra rising, of course he finds the light. I am Scorpio, a water sign and I live between the lines.  We of the Kitchen Table Caucus were delighted to watch Savannah hold the orange one’s feet to the flames but it still felt like a little too little, a little too late.

Every social issue, every issue of civil unrest, every crime against nature and humanity, is rooted in an economic system that has the majority on their knees with numbing worry and throw-up-on-the-floor-fear. What with the pandemic and people, jobs, and businesses dying, people are so scared and freaked out, it’s pretty damn hard to see the big picture and why would you want to? Because it’s so fucking grim. We are of mind and heart that if we are genuinely aware of what’s happening, no matter how shitty, and if we don’t try to make it something it’s not - ie put a pretty spin on it - we can find a way through. This entails stepping outside the frame, the expected; this entails a willingness to develop another type of consciousness entirely. A consciousness rooted in life force, inearth, in humanity, not some bloodless creation.
 
Human beings are more important than a rich man’s profit. The evangelical stacking of the courts will support every policy that benefits the corporation and its plutocratic kings. The plutocrats will finance elected officials who support the creation of theocracy. This is not our God; this is not our Goddess, and we will not be quiet. Talk back my darlings.
 
Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools.
Katherine Manaan
Secretary: The Kitchen Table Caucus

​Art: Kristan Kwan
​1st posted 10/2021