Dystopia arrived while you were sleeping
Gilead, Yapoo, without the freedom to choose there is little difference.
It never made sense to look at the past as today's arbiter of everything. As time moves on, the world changes beyond recognition. There are no similarities for the digital age, so why look for them in some trogladyte cave?. Search for the answers in the here and now. Besides, nobody is omnipotent or all-knowing, past, present or future.
Margaret Atwoods' The Handmaid's Tale, a novel and tv series now about a future America, called Gilead, where most women are nothing but breeding machines in the name of some almighty superbeing is creeping closer and closer upon us. The Supreme Court, the highest authority in the USA when it comes to the law, last year changed the rules on when women can have an abortion. It had nothing to do with a changing world view of the justices, au contrair, the conservative majority, some 50 years after Roe vs. Wade, finally saw their change. Personal preferences rather than the rule of law led them to change the rules they way they saw fit.
The crusade is not over. Not by long. Americans are wondering whether or not the Supreme Court will stop at Roe vs. Wade. Justice Thomas agreed that no-one had asked the Court to overturn other substantive due process rights but that the Court should do so at the next available opportunity. “... we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,”
Griswold stops states from banning contraception, even for married couples. Lawrence protects people engaged in sexual activity previously outlawed by so-called “sodomy laws” from arrest. And without Obergefell, states would once again be free to deny Americans the right to unite themselves in marriage to the person they love, think racial segregation for instance.
That's pretty awful for a Supreme Court Justice. And if you think that's not bad enough, look up Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginny. Mrs. Thomas seems to loathe democracy (which I get to some degree) and transparancy.
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Now imagine, just for fun, the next, male, Supreme Court Justice is into femdom. Not only that, he believes that all women are superior and acts accordingly. He is also an active member of the church of femdom. Of course upon his nomination, the churches website is scrubbed of his affiliation and during the hearings he vehemently denies any involvement. Stop.
With his background do you really believe his nomination would've ever made it to the confirmation hearings? Of course not. Now let's turn the tables and assume it's a female judge who believes in serving men. And the law - when it's convenient. Enter Amy Coney Barrett who is [was?] a member of People of Praise. It's a Christian sect, emphasizing the importance of childbirth, pregnancy and the abandonment of autonomy and privacy it supposedly entails, as a core part of what it means to be a woman.
“Fully a Woman” “self-giving, responsible and reserved”. In a 1978 church article, childbearing is described as a “central reality of womanhood” that “determines our presence in the world”, even for those who “by chance or choice” did not have children. [666] “Pregnancy teaches a woman that others have a claim on her very person for the service of life. Rather than annihilating her, pregnancy makes her a new person, radiant and strong: a mother,” "men in People of Praise “were quietly taught by their heads and leaders not to change or rinse out diapers” and that women’s emotions were “distrusted”. Pastoral problems were often addressed by asking a woman where she was in her menstrual cycle."
Now imagine a woman like Amy Coney Barrett, who holds these facts to be true to be elevated to the US Supreme Court. Myself, I often wonder whether or not I'm qualified to write about certain things. To put it mildly, the eternal battle between self knowledge and self censorship. Then again, whatever I write doesn't affect millions of lives, nor will the police come knocking on your door if you don't do as I decree.
But how can a woman, who at her core doesn't believe in equality, freedom to choose and the fact that we are all the same but also unique, uphold the law? Gilead sneaked in with few of us realizing. Don't think the good girls are gonna win. Only in the movies good triumphs over evil, the real world is much murkier.
David McCallum - The Edge
Earlier this week David Keith McCallum - Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the American television series NCIS - died. He was born to musical parents, his father a violinist for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and his mother played the violine.
In the 1960s, McCallum recorded four album. "The best known of his pieces today is "The Edge", which was sampled by Dr. Dre as the intro and riff to the track "The Next Episode". McCallum's version of "The Edge" appears on the soundtracks to the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV and the 2017 film Baby Driver." Listen and you'll instantly recognize it.
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| David McCallum - The Edge [click to listen] |
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And how was your summer? For once the joke is on Putin's Russia. Monday is 01 October and autumn is nowhere to be seen in Europe. The Netherlands is expecting temperatures of around 24 degrees Celcius, which means there is little use for gas to warm our homes. When summer is especially bad we sometimes have to turn on the heating late August for the first time.
Doesn't mean Russia cannot sell it gas elsewhere but every little bit helps
in a war that's been going on for 20 months now and with no end in sight.But
yes,
cruel autumn ahead.
Notes
[1] In the Bible, Bilhah is a woman mentioned in the Book of Genesis. She was given to Rachel to be her handmaid on Rachel's marriage to Jacob. When Rachel failed to have children, Rachel gave Bilhah to Jacob like a wife to bear him children. Bilhah gave birth to two sons, whom Rachel claimed as her own. When [first wife and elder sister of Rachel] Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob like a wife to bear him children as well. [source Wikipedia, adapted]
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