Scanning the news this past week, I have felt that we were living through a cross between a science fiction movie, with the planet enmeshed in scary weather, and “A Handmaid’s Tale.”
Throughout the country, indeed the world, the weather seemed to turn on us. Death Valley had a high temperature of 128 degrees July 16, inching towards its record of 134 degrees Fahrenheit. Phoenix hit 118 degrees, a record, as Arizona suffered under a heat wave with no end in sight. The worst wildfire season ever continued to scorch Canada, which has recorded more than 3,000 fires since the beginning of the year, blackening millions of acres and clouding the air in the Northeast and Midwest. Meanwhile, in the drenched Northeast, five died in flash flooding in Philadelphia and water rampaged through Vermont’s capital of Montpelier.
I am fond of B-grade disaster movies, but don’t care to live through them.
A disaster of a different kind was occurring in states such as Iowa, where on July 14 Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law banning most abortions after six weeks. In that state Republicans voted down amendments that would have allowed abortion in children 12 or under, ages at which it is dangerous to give birth. The Iowa law is, in effect, a total ban on abortion since few women know they are pregnant until after six weeks, which, of course, the conservatives who call themselves “Christian” understand perfectly well.
Ten states now ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, thus giving predatory family members and violent assailants alike a brand new freedom: to force the women they terrorize to bear their children.
It’s all enough to make me want to hide in my second-floor barn office here on our farm. Reading the news, I am torn between sputtering with rage or hitting my head repeatedly on a keyboard.
But last week, House Republicans managed to marry these two very different themes and take a swipe at diversity using an unlikely vehicle. America’s version of the Taliban, alive and well in the GOP, tacked on the defense authorization bill a multitude of amendments on far-right social issues. Ordinarily, the bill that helps pay for the military is as bipartisan as a fractious Congress ever gets.
But last week the military funding bill that sailed out of the Armed Services Committee got loaded down with amendments once it hit the House floor. Among the amendments were those forbidding the Pentagon from giving women service members paid time off or travel expenses to journey for abortion access; cuts money for readiness and climate change; and bans programs that encourage diversity and inclusion in the military.
Aside from making the military hostage to the wish list of the far right, the amendments are not constructive.
Only an idiot or an oil baron denies that climate change isn’t a thing. Red state congressmen from the South who voted against funding for climate change mitigation efforts are from the very places that are burning up.
Military recruitment has become a yearly struggle. The Army has missed its recruitment goals for two years. The Navy and the Air Force expect to fall short this year. And women are becoming harder to recruit, particularly in the Army. If women soldiers’ health decisions are dependent on the whims of conservative congressmen, even fewer will join.
Finally, the DEI bogeyman (diversity, equity and inclusion) has joined the list of right-wing legislative piñatas. Now diversity in the armed forces is a target, despite the fact that since 1948 the military is the one institution in our country that has handled integration and race relations better than any other.
The war on diversity is the brainchild of conservative think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute and its “model legislation” has been introduced in more than 30 states. I’ve read the bills of several states, including in my own state of Connecticut, and the language banning diversity programs is exactly the same.
Yet the future is increasingly multicultural. Nearly half of Generation Z, for example, those born after 1996, are ethnic minorities. We are destined to be a multiracial society, and will be stronger for it.
So, as I sit in my barn, watching a blue heron land gracefully next to the pond, I wonder: Is the GOP digging its own grave as it rails against diversity, puts its collective boots on the necks of women and ignores the fact that something seriously spooky is happening to the climate? Part of me hopes so.
And yet, I know we need a rational, moderate, functioning Republican Party to balance the Democrats. We do not need a major party held captive to extremists. While the party is doing its best to turn the clock back 50 years, I long for the GOP that existed back then, with its healthy debate, its liberal wing of Rockefeller Republicans, its environmentalists and even conservatives such as Barry Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s but who later defended gay rights.
In 1993, Goldwater said that it was “just plain dumb,” for the GOP to fight the issue of gays in the military. He said he wanted to tell his party, "Don't raise hell about the gays, the blacks and the Mexicans. Free people have a right to do as they damn please.”
Goldwater wouldn’t have a chance in today’s Republican Party, whose actions in the last week are, at the very least, just plain dumb. And he wouldn’t ignore climate change while his home state burned up from record heat.
Maura, your piece todays demonstrates well the intersectionality of so many of the disastrous issues of our times - the divisive and crazy political atmosphere, the climate catastrophes, the weaponizing of women's rights and military service, etc. I have found it so ridiculous in our country for up until now insurance companies to continue to repeatedly provide insurance for the mansions that roll in the Pacific Ocean. Isn't it ironic that the most recent big landslide was from a gated development called Rolling Hills!
Our children deserve a livable, breathable, equitable, democratic future. I hope they vote the crazies out. Young people have been subjected to active shooter drills, diminishing rights, and a climate crisis that should inspire them to vote as if their lives depend on it. It does. I’m counting on them to save civilization.
Tune into www.Partners4Democracy.org 7/26 & 7pm for a Zoom conversation about the youth vote and how to support it.