The Myths of Bluebeard and Orangeskin
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
I have been tamping down my disgust for the last four weeks, just as many of you have.
I’m completely disgusted with talking head punditry blaming everyone but themselves, including Democrats and Democratic Party-wannabes who decided after the election that it was a good time to kick minority groups and blame them, or turned stupid before the camera and insist the barrier to winning was something facts say it wasn’t.
But I have a specially level of revulsion allocated for – brace yourself, it’s not about some of you personally – white women.
53% of white American women have voted for Donald the adjudicated rapist Trump not once, not twice, but three fucking times – in 2016, in 2020, and yet again in 2024.
For some it was about financial issues like taxes – I earned this, I’ve got mine, fuck you, they voted, wanting Trump to ensure their rank in the economic pecking order was conserved.
For others it was about race and/or misogyny. Internalized oppression makes these voters believe they are somehow exempt from the oppression when they are only a future victim.
In a handful of states it’s clear reproductive rights were important to this bloc of voters because they voted against abortion restrictions. And yet they still voted for Trump.
Trump’s claims that he would leave abortion to states to decide apparently convinced them they could have things both ways. They could belong to the cult of Trump and white patriarchal supremacy and still retain their reproductive rights.
What poppycock. Trump had already made the biggest move possible to eliminate their rights at federal level by ensuring the Roberts’ Supreme Court would undermine them.
It’s infuriating and yet somehow predictable.
This cognitive dissonance in women is the stuff of myth, the kind of behavior we’ve been warned about in stories nearly a millennia old.
We’re watching once again the unfolding myth of Bluebeard.
~ ~ ~
Here’s the tl;dr version of the Bluebeard myth from Simple Wikipedia:
A rich man has a blue beard which frightens young women. He has been married several times but no one knows what has happened to his wives. He woos two young sisters in the neighborhood but neither are inclined to consider marriage. He treats them to a lavish time in his country house. The younger sister decides to marry him. Shortly after the wedding (and before he travels to a far land on business), Bluebeard gives his wife the keys to his house. One key opens a door to a distant room. He forbids her to enter this room. He leaves and his wife opens the door to the forbidden room. Here she finds Bluebeard’s former wives, all dead and lying on a floor covered with blood. She drops the key. It is magic and becomes stained with blood that cannot be washed away. Bluebeard returns. He discovers the blood-stained key and knows his wife has disobeyed his order. He tells her she will take her place among the dead. He grants her a few minutes to pray. She calls her sister Anne and asks her to go to the top of the tower to see if her brothers are on the road. After several tense moments, Anne reports seeing the men approaching. Bluebeard raises a cutlass to decapitate his wife. Her brothers burst into the room. They kill Bluebeard. Their sister is safe.
I’m not going to write out the full Bluebeard myth here. I’m going to trust readers to do their homework reading the original, more complex Wikipedia entry and possibly the Charles Perrault version available for free at Project Gutenberg.
There are many versions of this myth across languages, countries, and cultures. It has been adapted in contemporary culture repeatedly. In other words, humans have been telling a story in which the same familiar elements have occurred because humans universally find it relatable across history and now.
We’ve even begun discussion of universal liberation and the enslavement of fully-conscious AI “women” to serve Bluebeardian men, as in writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).
It should not be difficult to see the parallels between Bluebeard and Trump – the multiple silenced wives, the naïve woman/women who yield to promises of wealth and pleasure, the unpleasantness of discovering the truth beneath the promises, the mortal price to be paid.
Nor should it be difficult to see the meta layer of this myth, where wealthy men feel entitled to demand subordination by women including the suppression of knowledge and therefore consent. To slip this leash is to suffer loss unless rescued at the last moment. That rescue is the only thing separating the bride from the corpses of sister brides.
The biggest single variant between versions of the Bluebeard myth is the means of rescue. A sister or sisters, brother or brothers, or a mother figure steps in at the very last moment to save the final girl.
Unfortunately, the parallel here is that they believe naively they will always be the lucky final girl; in truth we as societal siblings are always the rescuers.
We did a shit job three elections in a row, mostly because we assumed the victim(s) were fully informed and aware of the danger, failing to reach them at a level mythic stories connect. Many were fully informed and blithely voted for Trump because he said he would leave reproductive rights to the states.
Like the last bride in Bluebeard’s myth, they may have been amply informed of the manifold deaths of previous wives yet plunged ahead into marriage believing they were somehow immune.
What if the victim(s) refuse efforts to save them?
~ ~ ~
Three women married Trump, two of whom should have known better. More women were involved with him consensually; they, too should have known better.
Note status of consent here – some girls and women were forced to be involved with Trump without their consent, from minors at the Miss Teen USA pageant to E. Jean Carroll. Don’t confuse these persons with the former. Many of them fought in some way not to be involved with Trump, informing more women about his nature as they did so, clawing back against his efforts to stuff them in his bloody oubliette by way of SLAPP suits and other forms of legal harassment.
The women who voted for Trump three times are among those who expressed their consent at the ballot box. They agreed to what he offered them as a candidate.
Like the younger sister who heard all the rumors about Bluebeard, who may have been warned by mother and sisters against him, they went ahead and consented to Trump as president.
The only thing which gave Bluebeard’s final wife pause was her own discovery in the personal pursuit of information. In many versions of the myth she is merely overwhelmed by her own curiosity about the forbidden. In other versions she is upset about being denied access to what is hers by rights as his wife. Whatever it is that drives her, it is she who must put the key into the lock, she who makes the discovery of the many corpses, she who in terror drops the key and eventually exposes her intransigence to Bluebeard.
It is she who must be threatened for her failure to obey and she who must face the intense fear of death.
She will seek her ready rescuers only after she has been confronted with the reality of Bluebeard’s immense monstrousness and his intent to kill her.
In short, the 53% of white women who voted for Trump will only realize the enormity of their mistake when he threatens them personally at immense personal cost.
They will ask us for help once they are fully aware of the immediate danger to themselves and loved ones – not before then.
Or as Adrian Bott as @Cavalorn tweeted so elegantly on the dead bird app back in 2015,
‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
So very prescient that he used a woman as a face-eaten victim.
Until a substantive number of these 53% of white women voters actually lose their faces so to say, they will not reach out for aid.
~ ~ ~
You may be depressed now. You may already be angry. But you must be prepared for the day that last bride, the final girl, the blundering substantive number of white women Trump voters emerge from their privileged state of heedless unawareness – unwokeness, dare I say – holding out a bloody key of knowledge asking frantically to be saved.
Because you’re going to have to be ready to save her sorry stupid ass in order to save us all.
If this wasn’t true humans wouldn’t be telling this story over and over so many times in so many ways, both as a warning to the women who need to be informed, and as a reminder to the rescuers they will be needed if Bluebeard is to be stopped from taking yet more victims.
Furthermore, you need to prepare yourself to tell your children and grandchildren about the myth of Bluebeard.
Now with Orangeskin.
Mix pigment orange with pigment blue and you have the color of mud.
-retired painter
That occurred to me, but there’s a lot of contrast visually between blue and orange — this may have unconsciously acted as a mask hiding the monstrous. (“He can’t be bluebeardian, he’s the opposite…”)
Also occurred to me there’s been an unconscious effort to sustain hyperreality, to increase conflict from an opposing position even in terms of color. See https://colormetrix.com/blog/oranges-blues-prevalent-movie-industry/
“For others it was about race and/or misogyny. Internalized oppression makes these voters believe they are somehow exempt from the oppression when they are only a future victim.”
Also, there’s a not-insubstantial number of women who have gone full TERF and have decided it’s worth risking their rights if it means, in their stupid view, “men can’t enter the women’s washroom”.
Yeah, they’ve fallen prey to the argument that there are only two genders in spite of the fact it’s not true across the breadth of nature.
At the same time it’s the promise they will be protected by Trump somehow from some nebulous injury they’ve never suffered which lured them in.
Meanwhile, 2-3 American women are murdered each day by an intimate partner — not trans women in bathrooms.
‘Yeah, they’ve fallen prey to the argument that there are only two genders in spite of the fact it’s not true across the breadth of nature.’
Reveal to them that the default setting of any human embryo is female, watch their tiny little heads spin until they explode :-)
vg diatribe, Rayne.
Amazed that you did it without any expletive deletes, which is simply fucking remarkable
Why would I delete expletives when writing about the monstrous in myth?
Hard to convey the degree of monstrousness without the appropriate language. Some of the monsters in these myths don’t wear blue beards or orange skin, identified instead by our anger sworn out as epithets.
Well, you got me, Rayne, music being my thang :-)
‘The biggest single variant between versions of the Bluebeard myth is the means of rescue. A sister or sisters, brother or brothers, or a mother figure steps in at the very last moment to save the final girl.’
In Bela Bartok’s version (libretto by Béla Balázs), there is no rescue:
‘Behind the door are Bluebeard’s three former wives, but still alive, dressed in crowns and jewellery. They emerge silently, and Bluebeard, overcome with emotion, prostrates himself before them and praises each in turn (as his wives of dawn, midday and dusk), finally turning to Judith and beginning to praise her as his fourth wife (of the night). She is horrified and begs him to stop, but it is too late. He dresses her in the jewellery they wear, which she finds exceedingly heavy. Her head drooping under the weight, she follows the other wives along a beam of moonlight through the seventh door. It closes behind her, and Bluebeard is left alone as all fades to total darkness.’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard%27s_Castle)
I don’t know if Bartok or Balázs were feminists but this version seems a more honest (and horrific) depiction of what Trump’s women are letting themselves in for. Nobody comes out of that looking very good. Bluebeard is controlling and self-obsessed; Judith is the archetypal horror movie character who knows she shouldn’t do this but is too curious to stop herself. We have to KNOW! Perhaps she thinks she has agency, only to learn she hasn’t.
Lots of versions on youtube, lots of interpretations. I can’t really pick one out, but Bartok’s music is wonderful. The organ chords at the opening of the fifth door are spine-chilling. (Powell and Pressburger’s film looks wonderful but they replace the organ with an orchestra and it sounds pretty feeble.)
To put it in a more modern context, here’s Kirsty McColl: ‘I put you on a pedestal, you put me on the pill.’
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnzpg5GgQCo&ab_channel=stiffrecordsuk)
Look, you pointed to an exception. It’s just that. When you run into exceptions to the rule, you should examine the origins of what may have made it an exception across a millennia-plus of versions.
Béla Balázs was kind of sketchy given his support of Leni Riefenstahl.
Béla Bartók had a thing for younger women.
These two men don’t strike me as the type to see women as anything but opportunities for their entertainment or advancement, and in Balázs’ case to his definite detriment.
You’re objections are perfectly valid, I’m not objecting to your point of view, but my point is that Trump’s women can’t expect any rescue. They have to be aware enough to rescue themselves. As do we all.
You’re saying they can’t expect rescue because a couple men one or two generations ago wrote an exception.
Let’s examine the exception of Ex Machina, in which the rescuer-brother-man ends up swapping places with the final girl. The message from a male writer-director to men is don’t even trust synthetic women.
And yet the vast number of versions tell us the rescuers come and end Bluebeard’s predation. The message isn’t just to the naïve last bride but to the potential rescuers. We’re called to perform a duty even for stupid chits.
Replying to Rayne, December 9, 2024, at 4:20 pm
I think we are at cross purposes here. I thought you were pointing out the false promise of those versions in which the women were saved. I was noting that that was not always the case – that reality is sometimes harsh and does not deliver fairytale endings. I certainly don’t expect a Trump government to do anything to help women.
Apoligies if I have misunderstood.
Reply to gruntfuttock
December 9, 2024 at 4:29 pm
The rescue needed will be from Trump. The rescue has already failed women who’ve suffered for and died since Dobbs as one example.
But as a collective group the Karens will have a face-eaten moment of revelation and we’ll have to be prepare for that.
Reminds me of a time period/ gender inversion of ‘Under The Skin’ (Scarlett Johansson), specifically the fate of the victims stuck in eternity.
Notably, Johansson’s character rebels and rejects entrapping men.. And then she is chased by the men who were on her side, and murdered by a man she met while vulnerable on the run who tried to gain her trust in order to rape her.
There are lots of things not safe in patriarchal, heteronormative, racist, sexist, classist environments, amplified with economic hardships. The consequences of rejecting that environment are direct to one’s identity, maybe even mortal. Any woman facing those harms needs support
To understand this election, you must think in terms of the tribal nature of American society, not TFG’s repellent personal characteristics.
In the US today, we have (mostly) two tribes, or social classes. I have personally known hundreds of people from both tribes, so I speak from personal knowledge.
The upper class:
1. Doubtless includes most readers of this (btw, excellent) forum.
2. They are mostly educated and make more money than the others. I’m sure many readers will object that they are barely getting by, and have only a high school diploma. But on the whole, even those people share viewpoints with the educated class.
3. They tend to be less concerned with traditional values, and more with social justice, for historically downtrodden groups like racial and sexual minorities. They are fine with identity politics, and believe it is appropriate to tweak the rules to tilt the balance toward these groups. They do not feel personally threatened by such an approach, so they don’t see it as a problem.
4. Because they have more money, they can afford to have a longer-term view of issues such as climate change. It doesn’t hurt that they are the ones receiving the subsidies for electric cars, solar panels, etc., etc.
5. Because they are much more likely to own a house and have stock investments, they are much less damaged by the inflation of the last few years.
6. They do not believe their jobs are threatened by illegal immigrants.
Net: all in all, they are personally and economically fine with the Democrats.
The lower class:
1. Mostly has a high school diploma or less. For many, perhaps most, what dominates their lives is making it to the next paycheck.
2. They are very concerned with traditional values, particular the idea that those who work hard should be rewarded (or at least, not screwed by the system).
3. There are certainly plenty of narrow-minded bigots among them. However, their ideas are definitely changing over the years, but there is a limit. For example: gay marriage is not very controversial among the majority of this tribe. But transsexualism is completely out of range, and idea of forcing people to use made-up pronouns for transsexuals is at best, bizarre, and at worst outrageous.
4. The idea that racial minorities should have equal opportunities is also not very controversial at this point. But the idea of racial preference is enraging. They see it as a direct threat to their ability to survive economically and for their children to build a better future. Similarly, allowing illegal immigrants to (in their view) jump to the front of the line is an outrage. (I’m really not exaggerating here.)
5. From their POV, all the money spent by the Biden administration is going to someone else. Upper class electric car buyers, illegal immigrants, racial preferences, unions (most are suspicious of unions) are all getting handouts. But “average working people” don’t see that anyone is looking out for them.
From where Joe and Nancy in Altoona sit, the election boiled down to a choice between a snappy, mixed-race woman from California, who they couldn’t relate to at all, vs. a known creep – – but a creep who they think is on their side. Nancy (and maybe Joe) would definitely support abortion rights, but when it came down to it, they voted for their tribal/economic/cultural survival.
That a lot of minorities voted for Trump is (in a certain bizarre sense) good news for America, in that they are starting to see themselves as part of the mainstream.
The real takeaway from this election should be the following:
If the Dem’s did this badly against an evil corrupt felon, they will never win another election until they start talking to the lower tribe. They completely missed the point this time.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You attempted to publish this comment under what I believe to be your real name, triggering auto-moderation; it has been edited to reflect your established username. Please check your browser’s cache and autofill; future comments may not publish if username does not match. /~Rayne]
Oh honey, I don’t even know where to start with this pile.
To understand this election, you must think in terms of the tribal nature of American society, not TFG’s repellent personal characteristics.
I do not must anything. You’re engaging in the same stupid blame game I derided with good reason at the top of the post.
If you insist this is about tribalism, you’ve blown right past the point of this post: 53% of white women voters are a tribe, the tribe of Karens. They outnumber the other minorities you wish to blame for Harris-Walz’s loss.
Thanks for making my point about the meta level of Bluebeard’s myth, though: Women aren’t supposed to know anything; we must take men’s word for whatever it is.
Bah.
Rayne, I love when you write posts like this. And I love when you make comments like the ones you have here. I hear I’m not alone. Thank you.
“[Y]ou must think….” Blew it right there.
Just as bad, you think Trump’s “repellent personal characteristics” are NOT a fundamental part of his attraction, that they don’t make the moths of his tribe fly around his flame? LOL.
I was at an event where a guy, pleasant enough, was going on about the Federal debt, etc., and we had a contentious yet friendly discussion of current events.
Towards the end, he said in a jovial and engaging way, “We all know he lies, he cheats. We know he’s an a**h**e, but he’s OUR a**h**e.” Which I found quite illuminating.
While I’m here, terrific line:
MAGA cultists proudly held up signs that he’s a convicted felon. These people love him BECAUSE he’s an a–hole, not in spite of it.
Thank you for correcting my user name. My PW manager auto-entered it, and I didn’t notice.
The point is not whether you like it or not, I don’t like it either. The point is, what really happened? I think my description is quite accurate. It’s the same reason we saw solid votes for abortion rights, but a wholesale swing to the Republicans, even in solidly Blue states (like the one I live in).
You can blame the electorate all you want, but they are really all you have to work with.
FIFTY THREE PERCENT OF WHITE WOMEN VOTERS.
THEY VOTED THREE TIMES FOR TRUMP.
That’s the next largest voting bloc to white men who voted for Trump.
Quit going into the fucking weeds looking for people of color to foist this on.
Absolutely, it’s not a story of POC vs. white. In fact, as I pointed out, there was a distinct drift of POC voters toward the Republicans.
What this absolutely is, is a story of social class. The Democrats have become identified as the party of the educated class, allowing the Republicans to identify as the party of “average working people.”
Those are the facts. Democrats need to come to grips with this reality if they hope to win in the future.
As Rayne pointed out, 53% of white women represents more voters than all the people of color who shifted to Trump.
Facts are less of a problem than that so many people believe the magical propaganda that a hard right wing billionaire former president, born a millionaire, is an outsider and man of the people, who wants to tear down the system that made him, and that he leads a party devoted to the welfare of average working families.
My exasperation with white women has existed long before Trump. I agree, and will grudgingly be prepared to “save their sorry stupid ass”. But I will be really pissed about it.
Plenty of these women know full well what they are getting themselves into and are perfectly happy to exist in what I would find to be an untenable situation. see: Melania Trump. She sold herself to the highest bidder and makes no illusions about it. As long as her son is included in The Will and she has fresh supplies of $75,000 Hermes Birkin handbags to accessorize her designer wardrobe, she is fine with her situation.
The person who is more like the sister who married Bluebeard, is E. Jean Carroll. She is an educated woman, who moved among the higher levels of New York society who thought she could flirt with a rich and notorious man and she got burned. You do not go shopping in Bergdorfs lingerie department and go into a dressing room with that man and not expect something to happen that you wouldn’t want printed on the front page of the NYT. That in no way excuses him of his vile behavior, but she flew too close to the flame and got burned. A full fledged member of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
I am fully prepared to be yelled at as victim blaming, and I am. Women have to be wise enough to analyze situations and determine if they can live with the results if things go sideways, even if it isn’t fair. She didn’t. Neither have millions of women who have voted for Trump three times. They will find out soon enough when no-fault divorces are ended, when birth control is no longer available. They are finding out now in many states where medically necessary abortion is illegal.
I will fight like hell to bail the Trump acolytes out, but only because it is for the betterment of us all. I am going to be very angry doing it.
True, regarding Carroll, agree she still didn’t deserve to be assaulted. I have long wished NYC gossip columnist Liz Smith had done more about Trump which may have discouraged the Icarian types like Carroll. But Trump probably threatened Smith like he has many other journalists who were too open about his habits.
And I am definitely on Team Angry Doer with you. Fucking pisses me off I will have to bail out their asses after they shit on so many other women.
I am on Team Angry Doer too! And I have no, zero, hope/thought that, just because they get rescued by the Team, they won’t turn around the very next second and put themselves back in mortal danger. They are stupid beyond belief.
Thanks for saying all that you did, but what struck a chord was the E. Jean take. For a myriad of reasons that should be discussed more openly, some women pick the bad boys. It was as evident in high school and while some may learn a lesson over time, others do not. E. Jean is a “flawed” person society chose to elevate as champion’s in order to make a point.
A story of a “bad boy” who was aided and abetted by women is currently playing on Peacock. Joey Francis and the “Girls Gone Wild” franchise is a tale about a bad boy that preyed on women and then when an all female jury had the chance to remedy some of the damage, they voted to acquit. The talking head lawyer indicated that having an all female jury was the wrong group to choose as women were more likely to judge other women harshly for their behavior.
https://www.aol.com/entertainment/biggest-girls-gone-wild-revelations-165051434.html
My current example of a person that society has elevated to our overall detriment is 2024 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Judy Shepherd, mother of Matthew Shepherd. She decided and the media went along that hatred of gays in Laramie and the West was the only part of the story that needed to be told. I am now friends with one of the men represented in the Laramie Project and he was a product of NY, but was living in Laramie. He told me he had no fear of being gay in Laramie before or after Matthew Shepherd’s murder, but that is not the story the media told the world.
“E. Jean is a “flawed” person”
Dude. We are ALL flawed. No still means no, no matter who says it or whether it’s in a department store dressing room. Consent shouldn’t be that challenging a concept.
“he was a product of NY”
So being a gay from NYC is ample reason to rationalize and excuse hate crime. Fuck all the way off.
His friend’s from NY feared more his safety by living in Laramie than in NY, he begged to differ on that score. Its all in how you tell the story. Certainly it was a hate crime but leaving out the intersection of meth and hate is the crime that has eaten at this story from the beginning and still does in spite the Medal of Freedom.
Hmm I mean’t flawed in the way Molly meant it, yet I get the stick…..funny stuff…..
I will say my point plainly. Molly was pissed about having to bail out women sometime in the future and I would say it will be men and women doing the bailing as if it is just left up to women, it will not get done. See the all female jury letting Joey off the hook.
Greg, you have an uncanny knack of pissing me off frequently. You have the fucking testosterone-laden equipment to say that shit about women UNDERNEATH A POST WRITTEN BY A WOMAN warning that we — not an exclusionary we — will have to bail the sorry ass white women when their faces are eaten.
E. Jean Carroll’s story resonates for many reasons. Bullying men, who think with the head below their belt buckle, and not much with the other one, require constant management by women in their way.
Every encounter is a labor, because the toxic-testosterone bully is always looking for “a way in,” regardless of how short, small, or innocuous the encounter. For them, “No!” is a reason to keep going, not a stop sign. Anywhere will do for these guys, so long as the facts boil down to he said-she said. That’s on Trump, not Carroll.
I am aware of bullying men and so did the jury in E. Jean’s case, but what Molly was saying is that some women put themselves in a clearly poor position by accepting some invitations from certain men. I would never excuse Trump’s behavior in the situation.
What seemingly doesn’t warrant any nuanced or reasoned discussion is the dynamics of an all female jury letting Joey off the hook? Men’s behavior gets a ton of well deserved attention when it comes to exerting sexual pressure, but what gets less attention is how women wield or adjudicate their own power.
Not too off topic since you invoked ‘fully-conscious AI “women” to serve Bluebeardian men, as in writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).’: this just blows my mind:
https://apnews.com/article/alina-habba-trump-attorney-white-house-942238382acd7cb36088fe870a47ee59
Alina.Fucking.Habba.
Ava from Ex Machina would have been preferable. At least there would be logic and intelligence without the worry of ‘good looks’. And Ava may well be able to cauterize the orange threat. Oh, wait – did I just invoke the specter of Hannibal Lecter?
https://www.rawstory.com/alina-habba-trump-2666873681/
She’d “rather be pretty than smart, because you can fake being smart”.
Proving once again that although plastic surgery does exist for the “unpretty”, there is no cure for stupidity.
Einstein said “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
There is a Bluebeard type story with a different ending that occurs in a Nazi death camp. It may not have any resonance for you but it does for me. I made a short video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAio8jsAoRE
One hell of a story. Thank you for making the video.
An issue with the Ghandi / Hitler hypothesis of course is that Hitler would’ve just forced Ghandi to watch the rest of the beating, and the next one, and the next one. and the next one…. until Ghandi plead to be beaten to death himself to avoid having to ever watch another one. And Hitler would’ve refused, knowing he got to cause Ghandi more of a hell on earth by keeping him alive than beating him to death.
The cruelty is indeed the point.
See Timothy Snyder on “Sadopopulism” on youtube.
Rayne,
Don’t you know that white women have had to pay more for eggs than the rest of us? ;-)
I get your post but I think I disagree with the basic thrust. I think you’re imagining these women as naive or ignorant or somehow victims.
They’re not victims; they’re voters.
They’re Trumpers.
They’re in it for the sadopopulism JUST LIKE THE MEN who voted for Trump who’s wives or daughters or even mothers might need reproductive healthcare.
I think separating out the gender differences between voters is misguided. Perhaps the women imagine they’ll be spared or saved at the last minute, the SAME WAY a man might imagine his sister would or that he’ll be miraculously spared financial ruin because of Trump’s policies.
I’M BLAMING ALL OF THEM EQUALLY.
There’s a lot of blame to go around.
“naive or ignorant or somehow victims”
Yes, naive, or perhaps in denial that they could ever become victims. Never mind we have cable channels some jokingly refer to as Victim TV over which we see women falling prey to human monsters again and again. Never mind 2-3 women die every day at the hands of intimate partners, overwhelmingly male. Somehow white women think it can’t possibly happen to them, and somehow that rich-looking guy on The Apprentice couldn’t possibly be a monster in spite of the multiple wives and mistresses.
Willful blindness, whatever. The last bride willfully making the wrong choices.
The myth tells us it’s not just about the sorry-ass stupid bride but the rescuers. Do you want to stop the monster? You may have to wait until the women who provide his narcissistic supply catch a fucking clue.
I appreciate the reply.
Trump is a vampire. A “prince of darkness”. He seduces. He charms. He lies. He conducts his evil deeds under the cover of darkness. He lives off of the blood of his victims. He steals their money and their souls; and in turn he grants them immortality.
Daylight would incinerate him where he stands.
Daylight is the only thing that will destroy this monster. I believe that’s why you post. I thank you for it. I’m immensely grateful to any and everybody that’s stood in resistance to this disease.
IMO, These are not white women voters. They are white women Trumpers (with the small % of exceptions proving the rule). They voted against Hillary. Being women isn’t their self identifying feature. Being Trumpers is.
Only the daylight that burns them too will wake them from the spell he’s cast.
Keep at it Rayne. We’ve got a long hard road ahead.
Thank you.
I agree. But I don’t have much hope that a “substantive number” of these 53% will ever admit their orange savior put them in danger; they’ll find someone or something else to blame. And even if they did want to be rescued I don’t see what the means of rescue is. We can’t rescue them by voting him out; only they can decide to vote against him, but that is them rescuing themselves. But that’s not an option since he’ll be gone in 4 years (supposedly).
“only they can decide to vote against him”
That’s one of the places where rescuers step in — they will need an alternative choice. They won’t be saving themselves per se.
MAWD. Middle aged white dude.
Unfortunately we will be so screwed by drumpfs policies that trying to save anyone else may not be operable, and the people that voted for this fool will have to find out the hard way. As of right now I am expecting the worst from his presidency. Not saying I will not try to help, will have to choose battles to fight very carefully.
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We have adopted this minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is far too short it will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. Thanks. /~Rayne]
When you find you can’t fight a battle, have the grace to stay the fuck out of the way while providing support to those who fight.
We don’t need unintentional damage on top of intentional damage from middle-age white dudes.
To coin a phrase, lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Great piece, Rayne. I have recently shared two meals with three Trumpers (one man, two sisters). I have learned these things:
All the prosecutions and lawsuits are the deep state trying to block Trump from doing what needs to be done.
Elon Musk is a genius who got the liberal scum off Twitter. The fact that he destroyed the company’s value is irrelevant.
When Trump cuts two trillion from the budget, the economy is going to explode into wealth for all of us.
Lastly, when I mentioned I had gotten a ticket for talking on my phone while driving, that was because I was driving while white.
It’s bizarro world and that’s what we are dealing with.
Unless it’s a hands-free phone, driving while using a mobile violates traffic rules, because it’s unsafe. Your argument that you were ticketed for it because you were white seems like a privileged white guy’s argument.
I think Knox was intending to ventriloquise the MAGAs interpretation rather than present “driving while white” as his own interpretation of the matter.
Punctuation would have avoided any misunderstanding, but that was what I believed he meant.
This is correct. I obviously failed to convey or attribute their sense of grievance and loss of privilege and how they deigned my ticket the result of me “driving while white,” instead of the fact that I simply got busted breaking the law.
My female cousin voted for Trump. I found out – accidentally – my daughter-in-law voted for Trump. Her husband – my son – voted for Jill Effing Stein because of Palestine?! I’m not sure which is the greater failure.
I did my best, but my best was not good enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5qsHeEboQI
A professor had a group of students. Time for finals. The students are gathered. He walks into the room with a goldfish in a bowl. He takes the gold fish out of the bowl and leaves it gasping on the desk. He then says: “If anyone touches this goldfish you fail”. Then he leaves the room.
How many classes watched the gold fish die? How many put the goldfish back in the bowl? In the end the story goes that the professor failed the classes that stood by and let the gold fish die.
We watched Trump punish babies to teach immigrants a lesson and we did not over throw him.
We have to make an inner commitment to risk our safety for the safety of us all. What risks are white people willing to take? It takes a coordinated community response of people willing to risk punishment. We need to focus on those characters in society that are willing to risk for the safety and peace of us all. What are you willing to die for?
We have been numbed to violence, punishment, pain, cruelty and injustice for so long. We have been numbed by the idea that some “super parent” figure with power beyond that of normal men and women will save us and that all that super parent must fear is kryptonite. What a white wash!!
Blue beards wife could not save herself without her brothers. A coordinated response is required. And in that white people must be willing to risk an F or even more. Or this will only get worse.
Civil disobedience. A coordinated community response. Risk in the face of authority.
“super parent” figure with power beyond that of normal men and women will save us”… For TFG’s voters he is the super parent. They see the super parent’s anger and vengeful nature as a power that will be used to protect them and save them from the evils of the world until that same nature is turned on them. Often it is women raised with authoritarian, abusive bully father’s that marry the same type. They have learned to see nice men as weak.
come on man. I take your point, but don’t you think it’s a bit too bleak?
Some folks will come along and try to save the goldfish
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c07ggrnxx45o
I would bet a lot of those women have internalized the belief that men are superior to women. Most of the women I knew from my parents’ and grandparents’ believed that men were smarter than women, which I attributed to the fact that the men in their lives were better educated. But there is also the fact that a lot of white evangelical “Christians” are brainwashed by their churches to accept male dominance even when it is abusive.
From what I have seen our mainstream “liberal” media is loathe to criticize religious beliefs. I think that is why they don’t cover the fact that powerful rightwing men like Leonard Leo, Project 2025 author Kevin Roberts, Peter Thiel, William Barr are involved with the far right Catholic cult Opus Dei. Most have ignored the new book OPUS written by the financial investigative journalist Gareth Gore.
“ OPUS DEI AND THE MONEYBAGS KID
In his new book OPUS, Gareth Gore examines the ties binding Supreme Court puppetmaster Leonard Leo and a radical, powerful Catholic organization”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/opus-dei-leonard-leo-supreme-court-moneybags-kid-1235115538/
There has also been little coverage of the church Pete Hegseth joined that blames women for men wanting to rape them and says sex is not about mutual pleasuring.
“Pete Hegseth’s mother begged him to “get some help” — he joined a misogynist church instead
Fringe denomination’s leader argues that men “dream of being rapists” because women aren’t submissive enough”
https://www.salon.com/2024/12/03/pete-hegseths-mother-begged-him-to-get-some-help—he-joined-a-misogynist-church-instead/
So far the new book is also being ignored:
“ Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America”
“ From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.”
“ https://ptreyesbooks.com/book/9780306829192”
Newt and JD converted. The Roman Church outlasted Rome by centuries, and seems to have staying power. The Hegseth types? Has Pete read Augustine or Thomas Aquinas? I can accept JD converting more than Pete being Pete, then finding an excuse faith that believes being Pete is normal, and being otherwise is not.
A Happy New Year to all, up to Jan 20, and then what?
We’ll see.
Theodora30, I agree 100%. Trump loves the poorly educated and MAGA Christians not because he’s one of them but because he knows he can manipulate them.
I’ve always found it ironic that MAGA Christians claim to hate being told what to do by the government and science while insisting that everyone submit to their invisible authoritarian in the sky.
The Opus Dei problem is grossly overlooked in all sorts of reporting. Reporting on religion makes most reporters pretty hinky.
When we first moved to Marin County, we put our children in a private school run by Dominican nuns. It was boarding for high school girls, but a co-ed day school for lower school children. A week or two into the school year, my 11 year old daughter and I were invited to a parents home in Nicasio for a “get to know you” party with other girls and their mothers.
It was a nice opportunity to find a way into the community; until a couple mothers cornered me and started telling me about a special ‘group’ that we might want our daughter to join. They had meetings and special events. I said thank you and that we would consider it.
Not being Catholic I approached the lower school principal the next day to find out more about this group, the name of which I cannot recall now. She immediately said, ‘Oh, no,no, no, that is not something your daughter would be happy in’. And I answered by saying well what is Opus Dei ? I understand this is the girls division of that ?
I had no idea about it then, but I would not overlook the possibility that this Opus Dei sponsored girls group has been more widespread and indoctrinating more girls than most people realize. We left that school the next year.
Surveys so far don’t indicate a trend toward Catholicism let alone religion. There’s probably some secular spin which makes the values but not religion itself more popular — like that sick tradwife trend, which may be a response to pandemic conditions, social media buzz, and continued pressure on income distribution affecting younger families.
See:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/03/15/8-in-10-americans-say-religion-is-losing-influence-in-public-life/
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/
I’m not sure I’m totally on board with the premise of this post for the following reasons:
1. Assumption that the 53% of the white women who all voted for Trump share the same or similar reasons for voting for him. That would be something like 47 million give or take, right? That is a huge number to throw a blanket fundamental and somehow stable characteristic that is hundreds of years old, over. Would like to see data that not only provides nominal view, but a qualitative understanding as well – such as “why did you vote for Trump?”
2. Bluebeard was written about a woman’s travails by a man during a time when women were actually helpless. It could be a cautionary tale for young women to be wary of a man who is simply rich and cool and all that – there is more that you need to discover before taking the marriage leap.
3. The 53% while interesting, is actually a sample that has changed over time – it is not the same exact women. Some of the women who voted for him in 2024 were 12, 13, 14 years old when he ran in 2016 and some of the women who voted for him in 2016 are dead. (although, they may have voted for him in 2024! haha, little election fraud joke there)
4. Rather than seek an underlying characteristic, I think it would be worthwhile to determine where they get their information from – which is the major input to decision making. Isn’t the irrationality of women in aggregate feeding into a stereotype? Isn’t Bluebeard, the story about stereotypes to begin with?
“53% of the white women who all voted for Trump”
Did you actually read the part where I spelled out these women had different reasons for voting for him? The point is this bloc will still get their faces eaten no matter why they voted for the face-eating leopard.
“women were actually helpless”
The manifold variations of this myth explain that the last bride could exercise choice — and she chose to marry him. She could exercise choice not to use the key and not open the room — and she chose to do so. She could have chosen to flee — but she tried to hide her use of the key.
She was not helpless, she had agency, and she chose wrong repeatedly.
“a sample that has changed over time”
Yup, but they are unchangingly white women. Ditto Bluebeard’s bride over countless retellings and variants — the last bride is the same over nearly a millennia.
“where they get their information from”
That’s changed over the last eight years and yet that 53% of white women remains incredibly sticky. Gee, could it be an underlying unvarying ethic instead, say, white supremacy?
“Isn’t Bluebeard, the story about stereotypes to begin with?”
Bluebeard is a myth, and myths are based in universal stories. Not stereotypes but archetypes, and in Bluebeard, archetypes which transcend time, country, culture. Bluebeard is at its core one of the seven fundamental story types; it’s “overcoming the monster.”
The monster that keeps reappearing, if in a new guise, all the time.
Funny how Elmo fits the Bluebeard model, hmm?
Funny, not funny, how many times you have explained Bluebeard and yet people miss the point. They have reached their limit.
You buy them books and they just chew on the corners.
Good post, clarifying comments.
My own folk tradition is more of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, which most people are familiar with but a translation is worth a read.
I found this tale reflected, but with much worse outcomes than a naked king, in a ProPublica article I was served up yesterday, about what appears to be an uncharged criminal oncologist in Montana.
The story about the “criminal oncologist” in his small Montana town and his seemingly cult-like support among many, apparently mostly women, was hard for me to understand. I’m not sure how far this goes in explaining human nature, but I remember hearing once that for men, “duties” are arranged in a mostly fixed hierarchy; whereas for women, “duties” are arranged in something more like a web where priorities can change according to particular circumstances.
It sure does seem gendered, but hard to tease out whether that was due to the roles (nurses & administrators vs doctors & executives) or the individuals. My thought was that nurses would have their own understandable pride in providing patient care and, working one-on-one with the oncologist, be more susceptible to the charm, money, his professional status, etc. Conversely, doctors faced his competitive side, and executives had the usual dollar signs partially obscuring their view, plus the reported threats of lawsuits, etc.
Rayne, I can understand and sympathize with your unhappiness with white women. One could be equally, or even more unhappy with white men. I assure you, there are lots of white men getting their asses kicked by a culture that uses them up physically and mentally while paying them more than “those other folks” to make them feel good about it. But the utility of a strong back and compliant nature is declining and they are unhappy about it.
I am a white man. I grew up with lots of working class folks. I still see them. I don’t really know how to reach them.
It’s not an either-or proposition.
There is a vast body of folktales and songs related to the Bluebeard motif. One such is a ballad sung long ago in Maine and the Canadian Maritime provinces that’s part of a family known to scholars as “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight”. In it, “a well-bred youth” courts “an inn-keeper’s daughter” and eventually persuades her to run away with him to get married. Instead, he leads her to the sea-side where he plans to throw her in, as he has done with six pretty maids before her. She convinces him to let her undress first because her clothes are too fine to rot in the sea. She tells him he must turn around while she undresses because it’s not polite to see a naked woman. He does so and, “With all the strength this poor maiden had, she shoved him into the sea.”
There are a zillion versions of this story. ‘Tis said it’s painted on a Greek vase. An eastern European sword, dated around 600 AD, has it in engravings, one depicting a tree with six maids hung in it; below the tree sits a maid with a knight lying with his head in her lap. She’s probably picking lice from his head, as mentioned in several stories. She then stabs him with his own knife.
In another, he’s going to cut her head off; she says, “Maid’s blood spurts far and it would be a shame to spoil that fine new coat you’re wearing.” The next verse says, “…his head was off before his coat.”
A fun version which shows that the singer couldn’t remember correctly has the knight saying, “I’m going to kill you but first I have to take a nap – promise you won’t kill me while I’m asleep. “Oh, I PROMISE”, she replies. When he’s asleep, she ties him up; then she wakes him, saying, “Promised I wouldn’t kill you while you were asleep!”
I love all these songs in which the woman outsmarts the man. I learned the Maine version from a Pete Seeger record and added a few elements from other versions in the old books. When I sang it at the 1977 Philadelphia Folk Festival, people cheered when she shoved him into the sea. (discogs.com lists the song on the PFF LP as “Lady Isabel and the Elf King”. They have a few used copies of the LP for sale.)
You’re enjoying a different story which is similar but not the same as the myth of Bluebeard.
See the explanation about the Aarne-Thompson classification for Bluebeard. Bluebeard is 312 in which the last bride is rescued by others; in 311 stories the final girl rescues herself.
Of course we’d prefer the sorry gits would rescue themselves but I just don’t see that happening when they repeatedly make bad choices.
When I played at folk festicles, (or the Ark) I liked to participate in “Women’s Songs” sessions because there are several good but obscure ones that show women prevailing. It irked me when a woman singer merely switched the genders in some old songs (like “Banks of the Ohio” – having a man plead for his life while the woman holds a knife – possible back then but improbable)…
So much richer when some understanding of old songs is turned on its head and not merely by gender flipping.
Like the Dolly Parton classic, “Jolene”: what if the antagonist isn’t a red-haired woman but Death?
O__O
Don’t be ‘practical’ in politics. To be practical in that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines, and in the grooves that those who rob you would desire you to think.
James Connolly
Patriarchy robs.
The young woman in the story believes that “only she” can tame this man, but in the end she discovers that her fate is to be covered in blood just like the other women, and she needs the help of her sisters and brothers.
The rescue only restores her to the fate of ordinary folk, her brothers and sisters. In our society, what is the fate of normal people? Well, we work for a living and help our brothers and sisters.
Perhaps this 53% is signaling that enormous changes have been made (thank you RBG and ACLU, and all the activists in the Democratic party) … but the fate on the ground has not changed that much.
For example: the Tech sector, where I have worked for 40 years, is very difficult for women. Even in IBM, a top-rated company for DEI, even in the United States. It is much worse in other companies, other industries, and other countries. Promises were made, but the fate on the ground has not changed that much.
We can choose to focus on our hope, after 50 years of extraordinary effort, that we can live in a country where Kamala Harris, a woman of color, was almost elected President. Against huge obstacles (especially within the Dem “leadership”). 47% of white women voted for her. This is a HUGE signal from the electorate.
What needs to be done? Improve the fate. Deliver on the remaining planks of FDR’s New Deal. There’s so much work to do.
I don’t think it’s conditions on the ground meaning economic disadvantage when some of these women are complaining about taxes and not wages.
They are *told* they are being damaged by Democratic policies even while they are beneficiaries, and they believe what they are told because they are a combination of poorly informed by shitty US media (ex. Joe Biden is old, etc.), consume misinformation and disinformation while media illiterate through their platform du jour (ex. once Facebook, now TikTok), and they are poorly educated. A sizable percentage of these 53% of white women Trump voters are not college educated, and if publicly educated, their schools have been under sustained pressure by GOP defunding and far right culture war.
They are also told by frauds in positions of authority what to believe, like Rep. Nancy Mace alleging falsely today she was rushed by a trans person, further adding to the disinformation they’re consuming.
They believe they are under attack when it’s the furthest thing from the truth. Example:
The stickiness of the 53% is in no small part because they have not witnessed and experienced real damage to themselves; their privilege has been protected and their denialism is part of that protection. Until reality upsets their illusions, they won’t change.
The couple in the photo, as we all know, were performing. I don’t see that as delusional. In their grifter world, it might even be rational.
For the non-performant 53%, the point holds. MLK came to believe that civil rights were not enough. The conditions on the ground had to change.
Perhaps his turn to economic rights triggered the assassination.
FDR faced many of the same dynamics we see today. The New Deal program, even for white people, was never completed. Rampant misinformation flooded the zone with shit. The Supreme Court obstructed most of the agenda. American elites flirted openly with fascism.
FDR’s speeches are *very* radical by today’s standards. He proposed rights to work, to shelter, and to education. Perhaps even more radical than Bernie. In the long view of the right wing, the battle is still about the New Deal.
47% for Kamala’s agenda! No wonder the right wing is getting heated.
You may believe the McCloskeys were performing but law enforcement didn’t.
The rage against the results of the Election is justified. All kinds of statistics are being flung out there, the latest, that the “landslide” was just 1.2%. A Republican lawyer friend swore after the insurrection, that he would never vote for Trump again. Yet, he did. And he claims Trump won by a landslide.
Men are just as capable of succumbing to the kind of dynamic which Rayne takes from the Bluebeard saga.
The blanket condemnation of white women is disturbing and racist. I am a white woman, a person who was brought up and educated with 2 degrees from a very Southern University. I voted for Harris. I voted for Biden, and all the way back for decades for Democrats. I am not upper class; and I was not brought up in an upper class family. But, my family were educated. There are many factors which make people choose political candidates. I suspect, that of the 53% cited, that many of them were traditional wives, busy with children and their elderly parents, and too busy to read the news or watch Fox. They are probably like a cousin of mine who is well-educated and the mother of 3 children and grandmother of too many to count. She never watches the news. She reads: not “trash” but good literature. But she is part of a community of women who are simply disconnected from politics in general. She only “knows” Trump from The Apprentice. And, I suspect, most of the Trump folks only know him that way. That was a scripted show and entirely made-up. But, they are seduced by TV and the manner in which dramas and the news overlap. Celebrity worship is part of it.
We shouldn’t let the rage over the injustice of another Trump term take over our psyches. We need to save our vehemence for constructive reactions which will change the voting dynamic and repair our minds for something besides worship of celebrities, sports figures, politicians, actors, and renegade criminals who get away with it all. Focus on what we can change and how to do it. Hitting at the 53% of women who made a terrible choice will not work toward changing their ignorance.
Keep our voices civil and show that we who cherish our Constitutional liberties are kind and decent and wish the best for our fellow Citizens. Work toward the Common Good.
“The blanket condemnation of white women is disturbing and racist.”
First, did you read the part where I pointedly wrote, “brace yourself, it’s not about some of you personally“? If you didn’t vote for Trump, you’re not among the voting bloc who is problematic. You don’t have a right to be butt hurt.
Second, it’s not racism to point to nearly half of the dominant social group in this country and note how they are oppressing minority groups and hurting themselves by continuing to make stupid choices — yes, STUPID. Get over the fact that the 53% of white women who voted for Trump are a threat to the rest of us; we know why they’re stupid, just stop defending them for their indefensible fascist votes.
“We shouldn’t let the rage over the injustice of another Trump term take over our psyches.”
Fuck no. If you aren’t outraged that an overt fascist Hitler-wannabe has taken office a second time, you need to check your fucking privilege. We should already be planning, organizing, building personal networks for mutual aid, fueled by that outrage but you want us to just sit on our goddamned hands.
“We need to save our vehemence for constructive reactions which will change the voting dynamic”
Oh kiss my ass with this. You completely missed the point of this entire post. We on the left collectively are going to have to be prepared to save some sorry stupid Trump-voting white women’s asses and you think we need to save our vehemence, like, keep our powder dry. Jesus Christ, just take a seat and stay the fuck out of the way.
That last paragraph worked out well for the Dems, didn’t it? Let’s bring civility to a knife fight. No, we should not do what Trump does, but we can’t pretend he’s not doing it, we can’t fail to prepare better ways to respond to it.
Trump is about to take the reins of power again. The Supreme Court’s radical right majority gave him immunity to do literally almost anything with it. He will push that envelope without restraint, lie while he’s doing it, and push it some more.
People are going to die when he takes office again and she’s worried about anger about the white women who voted for it this time in addition to 2020, and 2016 when his bullshit killed +1 million people in this country.
Jeebus, EoH. Take the keys for a while. I need to walk this off.
Sorry. Friends don’t let friends blog mad. Mad blogging, though, might be different. :-)
Your anger is fuel for a Revolution in which your cause will suffer, because you lash out at anyone who does not think exactly as you do. That is not Democratic behavior. That is Trumpism.
But, I am immune to your anger because I believe in reason and positive action, not making enemies of those who do not think exactly as you or I do.
(And, as you seem to take umbrage at anything I comment on at this site, I suspect you have many insecurities which make you very angry at anyone who disagrees with you. I forgive you.)
Carl Jung wrote in Symbols of Transformation: “The most important question anyone can ask is, ‘What myth are you living?'”
What myth are you living with your civility policing and your apologia for the 53% of white women who are fascists?
You like to tell us you’re a Democratic voter but you sure talk like a moderate Republican.
And you can take your forgiveness and park it where the sun doesn’t shine. Nobody needs that useless crap. If you think I’m angry with you often you should ask yourself why would a die-hard Democratic voter with a strong progressive bent who has dedicated a couple decades to activism be so often annoyed with you. And then go do something constructive someplace else.
Garden variety armchair psych assessment, unworthy of even a corporate HR dept. Not worth buying popcorn to watch.
Life is not black or white; it’s shades over many colors and values. Painting all white Republican women with the same broad brush is simply unfair. We will never convince any of them to listen to the truths of Democratic accomplishments and the benefits, thereof if we are so vehemently hostile towards them.
I am not a Republican: I recall, explicitly, sending telegrams to Richard Nixon, first for ending the War in Vietnam, and the other, for his participation in allowing the massacre of students at Kent State. I am a democrat who votes for Democrats, even when I am not totally convinced they are the best the Party has to offer. Party Democrats need to be able to take criticism about how they choose candidates, and how much they will support them.
Since you do not allow yourself to know me, you are not qualified to analyze my psyche. I think it’s malpractice for anyone who claims to be an expert. I still forgive you, because you have fine talent as a writer when you don’t allow your rhetoric to descend into the gutter.
“Painting all white Republican women with the same broad brush is simply unfair.”
Uh-huh. Among that 53% of white women Trump voters are some very nice GOP white women thought voting for a misogynistic racist adjudicated rapist and felon was a better choice, just as some very unpleasant GOP white women thought voting for Trump was necessary to own the libs or prevent their wages from getting hoovered as taxes or the eggs are too high or whatever fucking apologia you want to use to excuse their very nice votes for a fascist and his creative destruction.
You’ve simply lost all cred with me.
Reply again in this thread with your condescending forgiveness and it will be binned.