Let us pay our respects to the life and work of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice of the US Supreme Court, who was a pioneer in women’s involvement in the legal professions and a champion of women’s and LGBTQ rights through the laws, having personally faced sexism as she studies law through the period prior to the second wave of feminism.
trump showed his face at the memorial service for Ginsberg (why?) but but then he heard the chants, “Vote him out! Vote him out!”, and he scuttled back inside. More and more, he has to face the fact that, aside from his zealous followers that he in reality despises-and who he tolerates if he wants an adoring crowd-so many people are rising up against trump, and are ready to go to the voting booths and the streets to pry him out of power, and are not impressed by his playing dictator, nor his claim that he won’t accept the election results if they don’t suit him.
His idea for replacing Ginsberg on the Court is Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of religious conservatives bent on totally eliminating women’s reproductive rights. ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/26/what-we-know-trumps-supreme-court-pick/3546199001/) Barrett is a member of People of Praise, a conservative Catholic movement said to be the model of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian classic of a future society where women are oppressed by a theocratic regime. (Sound familiar?) In this group, women are supervised by a “handmaiden,” who oversees their decisions about their lives. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenrobinsonjacobs/2020/09/26/heres-what-to-know-about-people-of-praise-the-christian-group-amy-coney-barrett-belongs-to/#1c6607f0f753)
That has been a major Republican project, to load the federal courts with judges who oppose the rights of women, minorities, and workers, and who would repress their efforts to use the government apparatus to advance their rights, making the government solely the instrument of plutocratic power-just think of the Koch brothers. More corporate power mean workers would be at the “mercy” of their corporate masters over working conditions, moving plants out of the country, and employment (or the lack thereof); the environment would be further devastated by pollution, forest fires, and disease; and CEO salaries and bonuses would soar for no good reason while workers wouldn’t event scrape by.
No matter what goes down in the Supreme Court or Congress, we MUST vote on November 3; and also get out on the streets and let them know that we WON’T tolerate our rights being stolen from us. Ruth Bader Ginsberg would want it that way.
