So I was out of the country for awhile.  It was nice.  Beautiful trip.  And I was able to avoid the full brunt of politics in America for a couple weeks.   But I’m back now and pretty much subjected myself to emotional misery by reviewing all the shit that went on while I was gone.  For what it is worth,  here is one of my take aways from the settled, suffocating dust of the Kavanaugh proceedings.

Our two party system is quickly evolving into an alarming split-gender demographic.  The Republican party is the unequivocal party of old, white men.  The Democratic party is becoming the party of young women of all ethnicities.  I can not understand why Republicans keep failing to grasp how alienating one demographic group after another is bound to eventually bite them in the ass.  The leaders of the Trump administration have lost hispanic, black, and Muslim voters with their agenda and apparently could not care less.   That seems like a crazy way to run a political party,, but maybe that’s just me.  But women?  Are you kidding me? You’re looking at half the population for god’s sakes.  Sure, there is a large segment of women that will put up with Trump for some reason.  What that reason is is basically  the same one that propels the block of old white men.  The fear of losing power, the fear of change.    All but one of the women in the senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh.  Are they “gender traitors?”  You might say that.

   Et tu Brute?

The more important thing to those senators in all of this was the need to stand by the patriarchy for security.  They are more sympathetic with Grassley, Hatch, Graham and McConnell, old men who all made condescending remarks about women during or concerning  the hearings.  How come?  Survival of the power structure.  It is all about “whiteness.”  Quoting Alexis Grenell from one of her NY Times articles, “…white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain.  In return they are placed on a pedestal to be ‘cherished and revered’ as speaker Paul Ryan has said about women, but all the while denied basic rights.”

I sense the Republican party is about to loose it’s grip on this segment of white women,  if not by now, no doubt in the near future if those in control of party discourse keep up the subjugating mentality.  Celebrating victory by body slamming women like Trump did- ridiculing Dr. Blasey Ford at campaign rallies and with his “very scary time for young men in America” remark- is something most women with experience or knowledge of sexual assault are,  I would suspect,  not inclined to forgive.  As I have said many times, I can make no claim to understand women in general.  What I do understand is that the dozen or so women I have conversed with in the past couple weeks are all appalled by comments made by the old white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee. There is a  lesson that should be learned in all of this, I believe,  and it applies to both parties.  More will be accomplished if both sides figure out how to compromise and resist the  temptation to exacerbate feelings of ill will.  But the Republicans have far more to lose if they don’t come to terms with that reality quickly.   It is simply a matter of attrition.  All these old white guys will soon be dead white guys, and unless things change, new recruits will be hard to come by.