PicoBlog

I spend a lot of time mulling over questions without clear answers. For instance:

Freedom of religion is a core American principle. I’m all for it.

But how are women free if we’re born into a belief system rooted in we’re to blame?

The story of Eve in the garden seeps into the subconscious. If you buy into the idea that all woe is made from a woman eating from the tree of knowledge, it does not bode well for women in politics.

It doesn’t bode well for women, period.

And how do women ever get freedom if they’re on their knees, begging the Great Daddy in the Sky to fix it?

Some of the burkas we wear are invisible. It doesn’t mean we aren’t cloaked in them. Or as my friend Lori said to me around thirty years ago,

“Don’t tell me burkas are oppressive. Now a bikini, that’s oppressive.”

The Trump White House burka looks like this: dresses and heels, long polished nails, hair blown out and preferably blond. It’s a look that might impress frat boys, like Ann Coulter has been trying to do for decades.

I’d like to impose a moratorium on impressing frat boys.

I get the impulse. If I have the protection of the Alpha Male, I’m safe from the rest of them. If I can be the cool girl, men won’t hate me.

Like most fairy tales, it’s a lie. And frat boys in government are bad for our health. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing a terrible job governing. Toxic masculinity is going to kill us all.

We’re a nation full of bright women who say nothing, wasting our cumulative knowledge. Meanwhile, Matt Gaetz, the Tool of all Tools, has incapacitated Congress.

Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump. It’s ridiculous.

I’ve had thoughts like this for a long time, but particularly after reading Cassidy Hutchinson’s memoir, Enough. At least she and I can agree on the title.

And who better to illustrate the very problem than Hutchinson, who sat outside the Oval Office the day our democracy almost died. I find myself both grateful to her and wanting to scream my head off in frustration that she remains a member of a political party bent on reducing women to chattel.

I almost blew her off.  Last week, a friend told me he thought I’d like her. I said,

“She’s a Republican, right?”

“Yes,” he replied.

I gave him my standard spiel in response.

I’ve got an issue with anyone who belongs to a party bent on the subhuman treatment of women. If you don’t believe in abortion, fine. I have no wish to convince you otherwise. Don’t get one. But forced pregnancy is just another form of rape.

My bodily autonomy is not a minor issue. Freedom isn’t just for men. I get to have it too, even though I can reproduce.

Republicans have highly flawed reasoning which doesn’t seem to disturb their voters. They espouse limited government, while adamant the government can determine whether I give birth. What they’re good at is emotional hijacking.

If you fall for it and are more concerned with the unborn babies of your imagination than a living, breathing woman, I don’t have much interest in your political philosophy. If abortion were off the political table, I’d be happy to hear why you think limited government works.

But abortion is not off the table. So, no. Not interested in her book.

The next day, another friend brought up Hutchinson and suggested I check out the book. This friend is a pro-choice woman who I respect deeply. She’s a thinker.

I asked her a question: Why is Hutchinson a Republican?

“She gets into that in the book,” she replied.

Spoiler alert: not really. She writes in the most general of terms about her party affiliation. But I decided to download Hutchinson’s memoir and give it a chance. I told myself suspending judgment of someone in the GOP is a good thought exercise.

I listened for compassion in the narrative. I can’t say I found much for anyone but the usual suspects: white men in power, the people who least deserve it.

And thus lies the problem. Hutchinson was more concerned Trump’s white face mask would show his bronzer than the example he’d set by wearing the mask in a pandemic. Never mind people dying, we can’t have the president looking as foolish as he is.

It tries my patience. Mightily.

The book details Hutchinson’s time as Mark Meadow’s right hand while he was serving as 45’s fourth Chief of Staff, and how she made the very courageous choice to tell the truth about January 6th to the House Committee investigating what happened.

What she did was no small act. I’m grateful to her for deciding to tell the truth. In the end, she put her country before party, unlike most of the Republicans in Washington, and all their presidential candidates, save Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson.

And I will say this: the book answered one question of mine. I’ve always wondered how the White House and nation kept running under 45’s presidency. I now have the answer.

For a time, Cassidy Hutchinson ran it.

She’s an intelligent, highly competent woman. She’s an organized thinker. She gets things done. She’s a leader. Like her mentor Liz Cheney, she has integrity and is willing to put her career on the line for her country.

Wonderful. How can such a woman belong to a party which believes the government knows best when it comes to her body or mine?

My problem is her willingness to prop up systems which reward misogyny and racism. We can’t be decent Americans or humans, let alone feminists, if we support these systems. And the GOP supports a ban on abortion, and amongst other things, actively works to keep Black Americans from voting.

The most agonizing parts of the book for me were not about Trump, or D.C., or unethical politicians, or mobs at the Capitol. I knew about those.

What surprised me wasn’t what happened in Washington, but my level of rage over how Hutchinson’s father treated her. Those are the worst parts of the book.

They explain a lot, and not just about Hutchinson.

The fog Hutchinson was in with her father is the same fog in which many women find themselves. Men have the power, the money, the political clout. We think we’re doing the right thing by supporting them because they’ve trained us to believe them, to be loyal.

We are not doing the right thing. When we shore up toxic men, we’re shoring up a failing system. They fail us as children, fail us as adults, and fail us as a nation.

When I read of Hutchinson returning to her father again and again, despite what he did to her, like sending she and her brother the hearts of two deer he gutted, it killed me. And when she goes to him, desperate for help in retaining an attorney, he taunted her as she sobbed on the floor.

My blood ran cold. Is it any wonder she adored Trump?

I don’t know many women who haven’t been just like her at some point, curled up weeping on the floor over some awful man’s cruelty.

I loved my own father desperately. And sometimes, he was terrifying. Both things existed at once.

I don’t know how we stop the cycle. But we must stop going to Daddy to fix it. He can’t. He’s the one who broke it.

Hutchinson did an appearance on The View recently, and was questioned about her devotion to Trump, particularly her decision to move to Florida and be part of the president’s team after he left the White House.

Joy Behar asked,

“Were there daddy issues?”

I was so struck by the offhand use of the term, like all of us aren’t suffering from daddy issues. Like the entire nation and world don’t have a daddy issue. I’m happy to release Eve from thousands of years of blame and rest it squarely on Daddy’s shoulders where it belongs.

But I so understood the fog Hutchinson was in. She’d given her word to follow Trump and work on his team. She felt she couldn’t go back on her word.

If that isn’t irony, irony doesn’t exist. She was ready to move her entire life for a man who couldn’t keep his word if he tried, a man who betrayed our nation in a grievous way.

But the fog lifted for her. And the fog lifted for me.

I started this stack a few months ago because I felt like I couldn’t subject myself or my work to another organization dealing in misogyny.

In May of this year, I submitted an opinion piece about testifying in a rape trial to CNN. They bought it. Then I went through an excruciating fact-checking process which lasted a week. It seemed like no detail I wrote about testifying could go unchecked.

I spent a week scouring newspapers, calling in favors to contact the DA, calling a hospital asking for records so old they’d been discarded, all trying to prove what I’d written was true.

The day after the heavily edited piece was published, CNN had Donald Trump on for a town hall. He was free to lie with impunity. He’d just been found liable in a sexual abuse and defamation case brought by E. Jean Carrol.

The audience CNN picked for him, cheered for him.

I was in a depression for a month.

Like Cassidy Hutchinson, I’ve had enough. I don’t ever want to hear another word out of Trump’s mouth. It’s time to let women do the talking.

Like Cassidy Hutchinson, I’m frightened. I don’t want daddy mad at me either. It’s scary to speak up.

Maybe we can all practice together. I think women need to aim for rude.

If we all try to be rude to a man every day, maybe we’ll open our mouths and say what we think. It’s a pendulum. Aim high and get a medium result. Just like politics.

My wish for Cassidy Hutchinson is that she look around, ditch daddy in whatever guise he appears, and look within. She’s got what it takes.

I don’t want her to waste it on the GOP. The party isn’t worthy of her.

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