#if overturning roe was a red alert

[northern-spies]

Any Americans who don't think the threats to ban contraception are legitimate need to learn about Decree 770, which banned abortion and contraception in Romania in nearly all circumstances between 1967 and 1989. The Ceaușescu episodes of Behind the Bastards touch on it for a start.

[weerd1]

ENT Rewatch Starlog,  18 February, 2024: Episode 3.12 “Chosen Realm”

As Travis and Trip complete a recon mission inside the cloaking field of a sphere, a small alien ship observes them heading back to Enterprise. The leader, D’Jamat remarks that this is what they have been waiting for. 

Later on Enterprise while T’Pol is reviewing the Sphere data, the bridge alerts Archer that a small ship is sending out a distress signal. They rescue the ship and the people on board. Soon it becomes apparent that D’Jamat and his people worship the Sphere builders and consider their presence how the Builders are making the Expanse-The Chosen Realm-into a paradise for their followers. T’Pol is disdainful, but Archer tries to get along. Soon after though D’Jamat reveals his entire crew are basically suicide bombers as they are biologically modified with explosives. One of them detonates to prove the point.

D’Jamat reveals he will destroy Enterprise unless they can use it as the advanced technology that will allow him to end a century long holy war against heretics on their planet of Triannon. 

D’Jamat also tells Archer he must choose one crew member to pay for the sin of violating the sphere as he deletes the database with the Sphere information. Archer chooses himself, convincing D’Jamat that the transporter serves as an execution chamber. He has T’Pol beam him to a secluded location. 

In collusion with Phlox, Archer realizes there are two members of the intruding forces that have issues with D’Jamat’s tactics. Yarrick and his wife Indara have enough problems with this war that Indara approached Phlox to give her an abortion since she does not want her child to be part of this madness. Archer gathers the data Phlox needs to neutralize the explosives, but someone will have to go to the bridge to route the system Phlox needs to sickbay. Archer approaches Yarrick and convinces him to do so. (He also discovers the holy war is a result of one faction believing the Sphere Builders created the Spheres in nine days; the other say it’s ten and this has caused a century-long war.)

Meanwhile, Enterprise is approached by Triannon ships from the other faction, and D’Jamat commences to use Enterprise to start destroying them. While distracted by this, he does not see Yarrick come on the bridge and relay the controls to Phlox he needs, rendering the explosives useless. Archer frees Reed, and in turn, they MACOs, and they begin to retake the ship deck by deck, seizing the bridge just before the last of the other faction are destroyed. 

Back in control, Archer takes D’Jamat and his people back to Triannon where they discover that the two factions had a nuclear exchange eight month previous. There are no major cities left. The war is indeed over, and there are no winners. 

Certainly a dig at fundamentalist ideology in true Star Trek fashion. Recognizing this episode was made just a couple years after the US started a “war on terror” in response to ideologically motivated terrorism, the imagery of the suicide bomber cannot be a coincidence. This episode may not explore those themes as deeply as Ron D. Moore’s “Battlestar Galactica” did around this time period (where the HUMANS were using suicide bombers against CYLONS), but it is an interesting look. Add in the discussion on abortion, written in a world that never dreamed that within a couple of decades the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, Enterprise here continues to prove as I have said many times that “Star Trek is always relevant.”

A couple of things this episode also brought to mind for me: The Holy War being fought over whether the period of creation was nine days or ten reminded me of the great Cat exodus from the Red Dwarf in THAT series over whether the novelty hats the chosen should wear would be red or blue. The ending here also echos the ending to one of my very favorite Classic Star Trek episodes, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” where two members of ethnic factions on the planet Cheron have been chasing and fighting one another for thousands of years, and finally return to their homeworld…to find that world destroyed.  Lokai and Bele chose to keep fighting in the ruins of their people; I wonder if D’Jamat’s people would do the same?

Next Voyage:  Hello, Pinkskin. Everyone’s favorite Andorian captain returns to help Enterprise out in a “Proving Ground.”

(Images taken from the main website for @trekcore; I am happy to remove the images if asked.)

[dyingroses]

Dear United States of America: You are currently using my 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale as the template for your own dystopia and are doing so without my authorization, thereby violating U.S. copyright law. Adopting one or two aspects of The Handmaid’s Tale to rebrand the American Dream would be considered “fair use,” but all of them? Honestly, America, I get a Google alert every time you rip off one of my ideas. My condo strata filed a noise complaint, and Hulu producers banned me from The Handmaid’s Tale season 5 set due to my phone’s incessant pinging. It took me 18 months to write this book and to develop the nightmare world of Gilead, so you’ll understand my dismay at seeing you plagiarize the following key scenarios. Restricting reproductive rights By overturning Roe v. Wade, you have adopted the central dystopian feature of The Handmaid’s Tale, namely, restricting the reproductive rights of women. Did you think I wouldn’t get wind of this? Fox News, Papa John’s app, and even Hobby Lobby’s newsletter all reported the ruling as though it was the brainchild of your Founding Fathers. America, I demand you acknowledge credit by renaming “reverse-vasectomies” as “Atwood-ectomies.” Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Sons of Jacob instigated a coup d’état against the U.S. government; and on Jan. 6, 2021, your president did the same. Initially, I was flattered that the mob’s red MAGA hats replicated the red of my handmaid’s habits. But when my lawyers informed me that “MAGA” doesn’t mean “Make America Gilead Again,” I felt duped. America, you need to acknowledge credit! At the very least I would have appreciated an invitation to shoot 18 at Mar-a-Lago or a suite at the Trump Hotel in New York City. Culture of surveillance I was sure that Gilead’s surveillance-as-a-form-of-control motif would scare the bejesus out of you. Yet in the past decade, your elected officials and tech-bros have monitored phone and internet records, personal credit histories, and period-tracking apps — and I’ve yet to receive one handwritten thank-you card. When China dialed up their national surveillance efforts, they had the courtesy to acknowledge my work as their inspiration: every Christmas, President Xi Jinping sends me a gift basket of 1,000 steamed dumplings with an open invitation to join him on an electric scooter trip along the Great Wall. He’s probably trying to get in my pants, but at least he’s doing the work. Censorship This may sound catty for mentioning censorship here, as you’ve banned The Handmaid’s Tale in libraries and schools nearly as often as any other book, but censorship is yet another aspect of totalitarian Gilead you’ve purloined as your own. This parallel between your nation and my novel is there for anyone to see (assuming they attend a school whose library allows access to my book). Maybe just once, you could come up with your own f--ked-up strategies for social control. Until then, I demand a national bank holiday named in my honour, but don’t be cheeky and shove my day on Feb. 29. I want Thanksgiving replaced with National Margaret Atwood Gratitude Day. Breakdown of barriers between church and state In the Gilead of my novel, church and state are one, and that’s clearly a model you’re adopting for yourselves. In fact, your Supreme Court is going full-throttle and allowing Christians to fly flags with crosses at Boston City Hall, taxpayers in Maine to fund religious schools, and football coaches in Washington to lead Christian prayers on the field. Had I missed an email request, a Facebook message, or a Snapchat from you to adopt this theme? Even Saudi Arabia and Iran slid into my DMs with their copyright renewal requests. But from you? Nada! Baseline anxiety about everything You nailed this. To show goodwill, I’m giving you this one as a freebie. Conclusion With your $6-trillion annual production budget, you’ve produced a more faithful adaptation of my work than Hulu ever could. Hulu, however, had the decency to ask me to be a consulting producer on The Handmaid’s Tale TV series, and they gave me a cameo in the pilot. You didn’t even offer me a seat on the Supreme Court, a chair on the Senate Ethics Committee, or a spot on Forbes’ “80 Over 80 Favourite Canadians” list. America: what the f--k? Therefore, in addition to the above-mentioned demands, I insist you update the Latin motto on all your coins from E pluribus unum to E atwood unum, and replace the eagle on the Great Seal of the United States with an image of me (please use my 1978 headshot; that was my best hair year). If I do not hear from you within 10 days, I reserve the right to pursue all legal claims that I may have against the U.S., including punitive damages, compensatory damages, and withholding all of Canada’s exports of maple syrup for your pancakes.

Margaret Atwood

[sopranoentravesti]

Ngl with all this “Day of Hate,” bs I’m just feeling like a frog whose skin is starting to blister.

Like, my little life is actually starting to get better— chronic illness and genetic disorder is still a bitch, but I start a new job soon as a Research Program Coordinator at Hopkins, which puts me a little closer to the career path I want and offers better pay and accommodations than the job I have now, (which I had to draft a complaint to the EEOC to get the accommodations I needed). I’ll be able to take classes at Hopkins in addition to the benefit package I get (dental, vision, healthcare). I was injured the other day week bc Rosie the Rollator hit a crack in the sidewalk (I was going too fast, and ate the pavement) but I get more comfortable with her every time I use her. I have tickets to go to a Convention in Philly (hosted by GAYS IN SPACE) where several Trek actors will be.

Like, I’m aware of the rising antisemitism. I’ve had the odd penny tossed my way in the past, I’m not naive, honestly I kind of expected the other shoe to drop back in 2015-2016, ad we saw MAGA gain popularity. Roe was overturned, and we are seeing consequences, and Republicans are continually trying to take it further.

I’m honestly scared more by my own lack of terror. Like I care, and do what I can, I know this is Bad, but but man I don’t have the spoons to keep on Red Alert all the time. I just want to be grateful for the things that finally feel like they are going my way, and not have to be hypervigilant. I know there are cracks in the sidewalk.

[thelastspeecher]

Okay after looking up my favorite tweet of all time (a tweet from the official account of my favorite band, The Mountain Goats), I remembered how the twitter bot that posts lyrics from Mountain Goats songs got shadowbanned for tweeting the lyrics "I'm gonna bribe the officials/I'm gonna kill all the judges" and I wanted to look that up too.

And I've stumbled into QUITE the saga here that really I should have expected from a bot that tweets Mountain Goats song lyrics. here are some highlights.

(Links to tweets in alt.)

First off, apparently someone reported the bot for its concerning lyrics, which is funny on its own, but the response from the person who wrote those concerning lyrics really kicks it up a notch.

[Image description: A tweet from mountain goats bot reading “twitter noooooo” and a crying emoji, followed by a screenshot of a Twitter Safety Notification that reads "Hello mountain goats bot, We're writing to you because a concerned individual has recently alerted us to potentially suicidal or self-harming comments posted on your account. In difficult times and when you need someone to talk to, it may help to speak to professionals who can assist you in coping with your current circumstances." There is a replied tweet from The Mountain Goats reading "looooool". End description.]

And then there are a few....poorly timed tweets with shocking prescient lyrics around the time of the January 6 insurrection.

[Image description: A retweet from mountain goats bot. The original tweet is also from mountain goats bot and reads "I hope it stays dark forever I hope the worst isn't over". The retweet reads "I'M SORRY" in all capital letters. Both the original tweet and the retweet are dated January 6, 2021. End description.]

[Image description: A tweet from mountain goats bot reading "It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage". The tweet is dated January 7, 2021. End description.]

And finally, the saga of the bot getting locked for tweeting a lyric from the song "Up the Wolves". A lyric that it apparently tweeted plenty of times before without getting in trouble for. I wonder if the timing of the leaked decision that overturned Roe v. Wade had anything to do with it...

(Note: the twitter account em (holland1945) is the creator of the mountain goats bot.)

[Image description: A tweet from em reading “tmgbot has tweeted this line dozens of times. wonder why twitter would suddenly be extra concerned about defending the poor little judges" followed by a screenshot of an email from Twitter. The email reads "Hi mountain goats bot, your account @tmgbot has been locked for violating the Twitter Rules. Specifically for: Violating our rules against abuse and harassment. You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm." The email screenshot includes a screenshot of a tweet from mountain goats bot reading "I'm gonna bribe the officials I'm gonna kill all the judges It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage". The tweet from em is dated May 6, 2022. End description.]

[Image description: A tweet from mountain goats bot reading "hey just a reminder this bot is not sentient and definitely DOESN’T encourage the killing of judges!" followed by an emoji of a red heart. The tweet includes a picture of a cat. Imposed over the picture are the addresses of the six US Supreme Court judges that overturned Roe v. Wade. End description.]

Anyways, go listen to The Mountain Goats.

[taylorscottbarnett]

Corpses have more rights over their bodies than someone with uterus does now.

If I die, you can't take my organs to save another life if I didn't consent. Period.

Furthermore your family can refuse to allow your organs to be donated after your death, EVEN IF you consented in life.

A fucking corpse has more bodily autonomy than a woman does in 2022 America.

Not only is bodily autonomy a human right, it is the foundation upon which other human rights are built.

And it was just hit with a sledgehammer in America today.

This is a dark day for America.

This is a dark day for Americans.

This is a dark day for religious freedom.

This is a dark day for anyone with a uterus in America.

In Texas right now is a law that bans abortion after six weeks. It only allows only private citizens, not state officials, to enforce it's abortion bans. That provision keeps the law from being challenged as unconstitutional in federal court. Any person can enforce state law. Anyone. And get a payment from the state for doing so. Because it specifically bars state officials from enforcing the law, it can't be challenged in federal court.

Idaho’s law bans abortion after about six weeks, and allows family members (including a rapist’s relatives) of the “preborn child” to sue a provider who performs an abortion. Totally legal.

Missouri favors a bill that allows private citizens to sue an out-of-state abortion provider, or even someone who helps transport a person across state lines for an abortion.

What's more, if a far-right SCOTUS can overturn Roe v Wade, a decades-long precedent, they can overturn Romer v. Evans, aka: when the court found that 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause applied LGBTQ. It declared laws can't single-out LGBTQ people to take away their rights.

It can overturn Griswold v. Connecticut. A case that struck down a state ban on contraceptives

It can overturn Bowers v. Hardwick.

The court at the time found that the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment gave the petitioners “the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention… The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the individual’s personal and private life.” it was the 2003 landmark ruling that declared all laws in the US making gay sex a crime unconstitutional. That individuals have: “the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention… ".

It can gut Obergefell v Hodges. The landmark ruling that Kennedy declared: “It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the Nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage."

This is not hyperbolic. Republican Senators have already made these comments questioning decisions that made state bans on contraceptives unconstitutional, decisions that made states recognize same-sex marriage, and even Loving v. Virginia. That one btw declared that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment

Sitting SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas himself has already made clear he wants the court to overturn the cases that legalized marriage equality, same-sex intimacy, and the right to use birth control. Specifically he stated:

"For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous."

Red.

Fucking.

Alert.

Republicans must not be allowed anywhere near control of congress. It is very clear that there will be no system to protect us from their dreams to turn America's laws, protections, and established rights back half-a-century.

[qqueenofhades]

Women and “medieval cruelty and ignorance”

Okay. So. We could probably have guessed that this tweet was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, but here we are anyway.

(Tagging @artielu​ because I know she enjoys my history smackdowns and this is right in her wheelhouse of interest.)

First: nobody denies that the Alabama bill and similar efforts are absolutely heinous, are designed to be test cases to get Roe v. Wade overturned, and are deliberately gratuitous in their constitutional overreach and general horrible Handmaid’s Tale nature. But for well-meaning liberals, such as above, calling them representative of “medieval cruelty and ignorance” is a) not accurate and b) counterproductive. If we insist on using “the medieval” as a conceptual category inferior to “the modern,” these recent bills bear a complicated, at best, resemblance to medieval canon law and social practice. And there was never, I promise you, any law that prescribed a 99-year jail term for abortionists. So if we want to point out how the modern Republican party is actually much worse than their medieval counterparts, we can do that, but also: trust me, this is thoroughly modern cruelty and ignorance, and we should insist on that distinction.

First, obviously, women’s bodies have always been subject to a social discourse of power, control, gendered anxiety, and attendant responses. This was certainly the case in the medieval era, but our modern interpretations of that discourse can be... iffy, at best. In discussing the feminization of witchcraft in the late 15th century, M.D. Bailey critiques how scholars have tended to take the Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witch-hunting handbook, as representative of a self-evident and endemic medieval and clerical misogyny. In fact, the Malleus was the equivalent of the extreme right wing today, was relatively quickly condemned even by the church itself, and was largely reworked from earlier ecclesiastical anti-sodomy polemics, because the idea of “disordered gender” was certainly one that occupied medieval moralists and theorists. I have discussed the Malleus in other posts, but while it certainly is virulently and systematically misogynist, it also was a work of rhetoric rather than a reflection of historical reality. Medieval misogyny absolutely and obviously existed, and it impacted women’s lives, but we also really need to get rid of The Medieval Era Was Bad For Women, (tm), Therefore Everything Was Worse Back Then.

The possibility of magic being used to cause impotence/loss of fertility was another concern, and one of the main anxieties about the practice of witchcraft was that it would bring “sterility” and irregular sexual activity (usually with the devil). However, an extensive corpus of contraceptive and abortifacient knowledge has existed since antiquity, and in tracing the representation of unborn children in medieval theological thought, Danuta Shanzer notes:

My findings suggest that it is overstatement to claim that from the start Christianity considered the fetus a living being from conception. Augustine is a major agonized and agnostic counter-example.

Hence, contrary to right-wing claims that the church has “always” thought that life began at conception (spoiler alert: the church has never once “always” thought the same thing on anything), it was almost never the case in medieval legal or theoretical practice. Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians argued that “ensoulment” or the separation of the fetus into a living being happened at quickening, when the baby could move on its own (which medieval medical treatises had various standards for measuring, but it would be the equivalent of about 20 weeks of pregnancy). Monica Green, a leading medieval medical and gender historian, has examined a vast corpus of obstetric and gynecological Middle English texts, and in “Making Motherhood,” argues:

Texts on women’s medicine might also be concerned to “unmake” or prevent motherhood, either by preventing conception in the first place or expelling a dead foetus that would not emerge spontaneously. Abortion per se was almost never mentioned.

In other words: abortion was not paid attention to in nearly the same way we do today, and while canon law, in theory, prescribed penalties for contraception and abortion, historians have consistently (surprise!) discovered a disconnect between this and secular law and everyday practice. And while some twelfth-century (male) jurists did attempt to equate miscarriage with homicide, and to install it in canon law, these laws were almost never practically used or prosecuted. In Divisions of Labor: Gender, Power, and Later Medieval Childbirth, c. 1200-1500, Rebecca Wynne Jones surveys the extant literature and notes:

In his 2012 book The Criminalization of Abortion in the West, Wolfgang Müller documents how 12th‐century jurists' increasing tendency to equate violence resulting in miscarriage with homicide was institutionalized in canon law. Though this development led to the widespread criminalization of abortion in ecclesiastical jurisdictions, Müller has little to say about gender relations on the ground. Rather, by highlighting local communities' reluctance to prosecute, he presents laws that might once have been seen as proof of a medieval “war on women” as legislative enactments whose practical power remained limited.

Once again: medieval ecclesiastical proscriptions against abortion were, at best, sporadically enforced, communities were reluctant to actually prosecute women or to criminalize early-term pregnancy loss, and church law was not identical with secular law, which was the standard ordinary people used and were subject to. This concords with what Fiona Harris-Stoertz has found in her survey of pregnancy and childbirth in twelfth and thirteenth-century French and English law:

It is striking that in these thirteenth-century English texts, no penalty was assigned for the loss of less developed fetuses. This absence flew in the face of high medieval church legislation, which, in theory at least, took all contraception and abortion seriously. John Riddle finds that the idea that early-term abortion is less serious than late-term abortion occurred in the work of Aristotle and appeared occasionally throughout the early Middle Ages, particularly in church penitentials, although it also appeared in the early medieval Visigothic code.

While late-term abortion of potentially viable fetuses was still a crime, secular law still essentially held to quickening as the moment at which a pregnancy could not be terminated. Before that, however -- anywhere in the first 4-5 months of pregnancy -- it could often be dealt with, if desired, without any penalty. Anne L. McClanan has investigated the material culture of abortion and contraception in the early Byzantine period. And Ireland, which as recently as last year remained one of the last European countries to outlaw abortion, had a medieval hagiography that actively canonized abortionist saints:

Medieval hagiographers told of Irish Catholics par excellence, the saints themselves, performing abortions as well as of “bastards” becoming bishops and saints. In hagiography and the penitentials, virginal status depended more on a woman’s relationship with the church than with a man. To my knowledge, no other country in Christendom, medieval or modern, produced abortionist saints or restored virgins, apart from the nun of Watton. Why Ireland is among the few European countries to maintain severely restrictive policies on reproduction remains an unanswered question, but it clearly cannot be attributed to its medieval Catholicism.

Last part bolded because important. Modern bans on abortion don’t relate to how these notions were conceptualized or used in the past, and they are not holdovers from The Medieval Era (tm). They don’t represent medieval concerns or medieval ideas of gender, or at least certainly not in a direct genealogy. Even as late as the seventeenth century, when ideas of childbirth, marriage, and reproduction were more strictly controlled, the period prior to quickening, or the movement of the baby, was still generally not penalized or subject to legal control or coercion. So in sum: while religious moralists and canonical lawyers absolutely did object to abortion (aka right-wing men, the same ones who object to it today, funnily enough), in secular law and daily practice, a pregnancy that was terminated prior to quickening was not subject to practical prosecution or legal punishment, and medieval women had access to a vast corpus of gynecological texts, medical practices, herbal recipes, rituals, and charms intended to accomplish a wide range of fertility goals: conception, contraception, abortion, a healthy pregnancy and delivery, and so forth. I also answered an ask a while ago that discussed all this in detail.

Also: abortion was explicitly mobilized as a wedge issue in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise of the religious right in American politics, and that happened not because of abortion, but in resistance to the IRS penalizing them for refusing to racially integrate evangelical schools and colleges. Randall Balmer has written about the history of the “abortion myth”; do yourself a favor and read it. The Southern Baptist Convention campaigned in 1971 for the liberalization of American abortion laws, and hailed the 1973 Roe decision as a win for the rights of the mother. (Oh how the mighty have fallen?) The right wing came together as a political force to resist racial integration, exemplified by their loss in the 1983 Supreme Court case Bob Jones University v. United States. But since it was not a winning political strategy (yet, at least) to fly the flag of “let us be racist in peace,” they, as Balmer discusses, created the “abortion myth” to make themselves look better and to present a narrative of holy/moral concern for the lives of the unborn. The reason abortion is as huge as it is in the present American political landscape owes to modern religious conservatism and extremism, resistance to racial equality, ideological control over women, and other bigotry, and (again) not to medievalism or medieval practices.

So, yes. Let us call the Alabama bill and other heinousness exactly what it is: a modern effort by a lot of terrible modern people to do terrible things to modern women. We don’t need to qualify it by fallacious equivalences to so-called “medieval cruelty” -- especially, again, when medieval practice and perspective on these issues was nowhere near the stereotype, and certainly nowhere near this “99 years in prison for performing an abortion” dystopian nightmare. If we want to shame the GOP, by all means, do so. But we should not resort to distorting and simplifying history to do it, and using the imagined “bad medieval” as a straw man to club them with. There’s plenty on its own. The modern world needs to take responsibility for its own misogyny, and stop trying to frame it as a historical issue that only existed in the past, and that any manifestations of it must be medieval in nature. Because it’s not.

[runforsomethingnow]

Ok a little rant: 

In case you've been living under a rock for the past 12 hours, you have probably heard about the recent abortion ban that passed in Alabama, criminalizing all abortions even cases of rape and incest. The fuckery in Alabama comes on the heels of another draconian anti-choice bill in Georgia as well as bills set to go forward in Ohio and Missouri.

It's obvious what's going down.

State legislators are passing unconstitutional abortion bans with the hopes of taking them all the way to the Supreme Court and overturning Roe v. Wade. This tactic has been used in the past by anti-choice legislators, promoting everything from 6-week bans to fetal heartbeat laws.

It’s bullshit. And we're fighting back. 

Alabama is a historically red state, but that shouldn’t stop us from pushing for a blue future. There are progressives in Alabama...and Georgia...and Kentucky...and Ohio...and Indiana. We know because we're on the ground, working with them everyday. They know what’s at stake and so do we. 

That’s why, we’re asking you to join the fight. 

It won't be easy: you’ll throw something, cry and scream with the passion of a thousand Khaleesi’s burning down King’s Landing (spoiler alert), but we have to do this.  Progressive policies have taken a massive hit on a federal level, but we have the ability to push back on a local level. 

No, we may not be able to get the Head Cheeto in Charge out of office, but we can damn sure make moves on his cronies in state and local seats.

So here's what we need from you: MOBILIZE: 

Donate.

Volunteer.

But most of all RUN FOR SOMETHING. 

You guys, we can't let them turn the clock back on our rights. This is truly a do or die time, so let's get to work. 

[precaffeinatedsalomon]

Georgia on My Mind: The Aesthetics of The Handmaid’s Tale

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As of this day, May 14, 2019, the state senate of Alabama in the United States passed House Bill 314 or “Human Life Protection Act,”which effectively bans abortions in the state unless the pregnancy is a health risk to the mother. It has now criminalized the procedure. No exceptions are made for cases of incest or rape. A few days earlier, the state of Georgia passed a similar law. Both are threatening to overturn Roe vs. Wade, which gives women the constitutional right over deciding to have an abortion. As I raged on from the comfort of my couch, I was reminded of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 Sci-fi dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and Hulu’s first season adaptation of it. The show’s aesthetic choices ensure that every aspect of the mise-en-scene in each shot elevate each moment of the story. From the costuming, to the framing choices, and the effective use of symbolism each scene all serves as a reminder of what happens to a nation where appreciation for civil rights only comes after they’ve already been taken away. 

Published in 1985 and inspired by books such as George Orwell’s 1984, author Margaret Atwood decided to write her own dystopian novel narrated from a female perspective. The show’s first season uses an  intermittent adaptation format. In other words, the show follows the story closely, keeps nearly all aspects of the original story but expands, adds, erases, conflates, or diminishes characters and plot points as it sees fit.  

The story takes place in Gilead, a dystopian socia in a non specified future where births are low, wars that have destroyed nearly everything have been fought, and a new kind of government arose from those ashes. A hyper patriarchal-fundamentalist-totalitarian theocracy that takes over what remains of the former United States after a second Civil War. In this world, everything and everyone who does not meet the rules and requirements of the new regime is either murdered or sent to work at the colonies.  The only religion allowed in their particular one. One that uses the most convenient bible versus to justify their way of life. Men are superior to women in every way and women’s purpose are determined by men.

State Over Body: This body is not mine

The story is narrated by Offred, a handmaid or one of the last few fertile women left in this world. She lives in the Commander and his complicit wife’s home, where she is enslaved and forced to endure state sanctioned rapes monthly. The name “Offered”, is meant to be a play on the word offered. It also means that she is Of Fred-the name of the commander who owns her. Through Offred’s gaze, we learn about her life as a handmaid, the Gilead society and how it came to be, as well as her every effort to retain some of her own self and sanity in the process. 

The Semiotics of Fashion: A Color Coded Caste Society System 

The Wives                            The Aunts                              The Handmaids

In the show, colors play a significant part in the visual narrative of the story. Gilead’s society is run as a caste system where each color of dress is coded to instantly mark where each person stands within that hierarchy. The clothes are meant to signify the power dynamics between each character.

 In an aptly titled CNN piece,”The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’: The clothes that empower or oppress,”  Ane Crabtree, the show’s costume designer explains how “ [she views] each new costume as a puzzle and tries to solve the emotional, intellectual and psychological problems the character might face through her designs.” She also states how she is influenced and inspired by different points in history, styles, and culture.

There are four main types of women who serve different functions in the story. In order of power and control these are: The Wives, The Aunts, The Handmaids, and The Marthas. Though the colors on the dresses remain the same throughout the show, the depth of color can be lighter or darker depending on the emotional state of the character.

Dressed in teal are the Wives of the men who run the country. They are the women with the most “power” and enjoy the most privilege in Gilead’s society.  One of the actresses playing a Wife recounts how Crabtree always puts her character “in these prominent collars, and it's almost like a peacock with her feathers up.”

The aunts are dressed in brown with a militaristic styled dress and heavy cloak. The aunts are in charged of teaching and handling the handmaids. They indoctrinate or punish as necessary.

The Marhas are barren women who are assigned as the housekeepers in the elite households. The are dressed in khaki.

The commander (Left, Joseph Fiennes) is dressed in power suits. While Nick (Max Minghella, right) the driver and security guard is dressed in black army uniform styled clothes.

The Handmaids: Ladies in red

Red is the most powerful color of The Handmaids Tale. When asked about the significance of the color in the show, Ane Crabtree explained:

  “For The Handmaid’s Tale, the color red was of the utmost importance, so we started there. I worked alone and side by side with Reed Morano [director] to find the perfect shade that would emotionally exemplify a kind of visual life blood of our piece. We wanted the Handmaids, as they are the fertile women’s tribe of the story, to flow down the streets of Gilead, leaving a long line of red in the midst of the gray of Gilead. Beyond this, the red is the color of a womb, of a wanton woman, a scarlet kind of mark upon a pious world of dark tones in the visual landscape, and also in a tiny intimate space.”

The White winged caps are an integral part of the uniform. It is used whenever a handmaid leaves the house. It is meant to cover her face, yet at the same time it also prevents her to have a broader look of the world outside. It represents a tunneled, limited vision either by force or by choice. The hat gives a times feelings of claustrophobia and at others of intimacy when combined with the extreme close ups the show generally uses. 

The aesthetics of the dress are now being used as around the world as a symbol of protest against the violation and erasure of women’s rights.

The use of circles: Michel Foucault and The Panopticon

The scene represented by the picture below is a flashback of the training centers where handmaids are trained for their duties and brainwashed on how to behave. Here the woman at the center is recounting a rape. Each person in the circle is forced or encouraged to blame the victim for the abuse, effective playing each woman against each other. 

The use of circles is prominent throughout the show. Their usage bring Michel Foucault's writings on the Panopticon to mind. The panopticon was designed though never built by Jeremy Bentham in 1787. It was to be a circular prison where every inmate would be seen by guards, but never by each other. To Foucault, this method forces people to behave as there is an implied fear that even if they could not see it themselves, their behavior  is consonantly being observed. This leads to self discipline and regulation for fear of punishment.

The combined power of women: The bad, the good, and the yet to be discovered.

The shots below may seem nearly identical, but in fact, they juxtapose each other. The first is shot at a moment when the handmaids have brought death on an individual; the second is after they have aided in bringing a new human to life. Both shots show how powerful women can be when united for a common cause.

Surrounded by light. Cast in shadows: This is the shot of when we are introduced to June/Offred. In cinema theory,  windows are used to create a frame within a frame. It tells us the charactered is sequestered within the frame, but there is more going on than meets the eye. It also serves as a visualization of the phrase “when one door closes..”

In this shot, June is shrouded in light that casts her in shadows. It also signifies the hypocrisy of the society will be presented throughout the show. Religious enlightment will constantly be used to suppress people of their humanity. June’s/Offred’s challenge will be to keep her sanity and inner light as she subversively fights as society set to rob her of every thing that makes her shine.

Overall, the show enjoys a cast of extremely talented people both in front and behind the camera. The following video explains both succinctly and well detailed one of the reasons the show earned an Emmy for its first season. Spoiler alert: It’s the way the cinematographer captures the aesthetics of the film.

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As beautiful as the aesthetics of the show are, it is worth noting that what allows the film to get under one’s skin is how it serves as a warning that if we do not fight, protest, resist,and hold on to our civil rights they can easily be taken away. It is important as citizens to:

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Let The Circus Continue! Kavanaugh Hearing Day 2 Preview

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh (screenshot via YouTube)

Welcome to Day 2 of the Kavanaugh hearings where the stakes are higher and the chances that a Supreme Court nominee straight up tells us he’s pretty sure segregation was a good thing increase! Yesterday, we had handmaids, interrupting protestors, a complete breakdown in basic procedure, haunting images of the nominee running like a cur from honest engagement, something about the merits of the semicolon. It was a circus like nothing the United States Senate has seen since the good old days when Senators randomly beat each other with canes, which may be just around the corner. Make CSPAN Great Again.

Oh and just for good measure, we also got the subtle white power sign yesterday:

That’s former Kavanaugh clerk Zina Gelman Bash who recently left the White House to work for Ken Paxton. Was this oh-so-subtle gang sign intentional? Well, try to rest your arm naturally like that. Her husband, U.S. Attorney John Bash, labels these criticisms as “repulsive” and says his family isn’t even familiar with the white power symbol. So, I guess go ahead and be terrified that a U.S. Attorney claims he has no clue about the pervasive symbology of domestic terror groups he’s supposed to be prosecuting!

But today will be the day we feast on the real red meat of these hearings. Today is when we’ll hear Kavanaugh asked about Brown and his role in America’s torture shame and just maybe how he spent most of his adult life managing Judge Kozinski’s hiring. It’s when Democrats try to build a case that might make Susan Collins wake up long enough to wonder if she has a Moose bladder’s chance of being Governor of Maine if she becomes the deciding vote to overturn Roe. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t care.

Each Senator will take turns in order of party and seniority asking the tough questions that ultimately won’t impact Kavanaugh’s nomination as much as provide the needed soundbytes for a million 2020 campaigns.

Today, for the record, is also why the Democrats are sticking around this sham of a hearing. Some will argue that the Democrats should have walked out of the hearing like 4-year-olds to “get tough” and “fight fire with fire,” but all this adolescent talk is just a political placebo. They want an empty display of “power” because that’s the only way they can imagine measuring a politician anymore.

If anyone’s looking for the roots of this worldview, look no further than Fox News and MSNBC for making their livings off fluffing marginally engaged partisans into enough righteous anger that these relatively comfortable viewers can feel they’ve performed their citizenly duty for the day by getting steamed about something mostly outside their power. The networks daily manufacture discursive failure based on vapid arguments via talking points that end in an attention span-friendly 3-5 minutes. If nothing’s resolved within half an hour then no one must be trying.

But if you want to fight fire with fire, the arsonist always wins.

Donald Trump’s in office because of a rich tapestry of white fragility, sexism, voter suppression efforts, and failed Democratic outreach, but the umbrella hovering over all of these is Trump’s understanding that the combination of shallow argument and the Manichean worldview that the “very fine people on both sides” of the cable news wars traffic in only succeeded in creating a subculture fascinated with authoritarianism. The cult of personality is a simple narrative for media to package into their bite-sized perversion of news and Trump seized on that.

Democrats have a lot of problems, but “needing to act more like Republicans” isn’t any of them. “Triangulation” used to posit that Democrats needed to take more and more conservative policy stances to win. Now that logic’s been ported into believing they need to behave more and more like the authoritarians across the aisle.

It won’t work because the parties have fundamentally different victory conditions. Democrats can’t fully embrace a “burn everything down” strategy because ultimately, they WANT to govern. They need a system capable of producing forward movement and that’s built on strong norms that prevent wild swings undermining policies every few years. The Republicans, on the other hand, WANT government largely dismantled. From Mitch McConnell’s perspective, if the entire Senate grinds to a halt that’s just fine with him. He’d accept getting no judges at all — which he more or less did during the Obama years —  to get no new taxes, no new gun restrictions, no new environmental regulations.

Is there any solution for the Democrats? Sure, stop trying to be Republicans but harder, faster, and sexier. It’s the filibuster argument all over again, when Democrats convinced Harry Reid to nuke the filibuster for lower court judicial appointments only to see the Republicans take that ball and run with it at the first opportunity. McConnell might have done it anyway, but Democrats just casually readjusted that Overton Window to give McConnell all the cover he needed.

During the filibuster debate, instead of endorsing the core premise of the filibuster and throwing a few exceptions on it, Reid could have followed Senators Merkely and Udall who were calling for a complete overhaul of the whole concept that would have ended the cozy practice of giving the minority a consequence-free legislative roadblock entirely. It would’ve repaired the hack with a new, fair procedure instead of papering over it with a quick fix.

There’s probably no way of stopping Kavanaugh at this point. Maybe this process will gin up enough anti-abortion rhetoric to give Susan Collins the willies, but it was almost assuredly over before it began. If Democrats want to save the Supreme Court, it’s time to start arguing for term limits. Laurence Tribe’s explained how this can be done legislatively without running afoul of the Constitution. It’s not another round of court packing, which just gives the victor another cheap score before what goes around comes around in worse fashion. When people think “everyone does it” then there’s nothing left. Blow up the game! Take the Court out of the hands of the bad actors. Force them to  defend the monarchical Court and explain why it’s bad that they don’t have to abide by a “two justices per term” policy.

If people are unsettled by the idea of placing an open authoritarian on the Court, the answer needs to be a robust defense of norms. The current crop of elected Democrats may not have the chops to forge those innovative solutions, but smashing what’s left unless they get their way isn’t going help either.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

Let The Circus Continue! Kavanaugh Hearing Day 2 Preview republished via Above the Law

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Democrats’ last shot at stopping Trump’s Supreme Court pick

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=9159

Democrats’ last shot at stopping Trump’s Supreme Court pick

Senate Democrats are zeroing in on the health care views of Brett Kavanaugh, who could pull the nation’s high court to the right for a generation — and determine the fate of abortion rights, the social safety net and Obamacare itself. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Legal

If they can’t beat Kavanaugh, they’ll use his conservative views to fuel their ‘blue wave.’

By ADAM CANCRYN

09/03/2018 05:00 PM EDT

The long-shot path to killing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination runs through the heart of the American health care system — and right into the November midterm elections.

Senate Democrats prepping for this week’s marathon confirmation hearings are zeroing in on the health care views of the man who could pull the nation’s high court to the right for a generation — and determine the fate of abortion rights, the social safety net and Obamacare itself, possibly within months.

Story Continued Below

Their goal: to box Kavanaugh into committing to preserve those health care pillars. Or, failing that, to get the 53-year-old appellate court justice to validate Democrats’ fear he’d vote to wipe them out — a reveal they hope would prompt a wave of public outcry and the additional two Senate votes needed to sink President Donald Trump’s nominee.

“If Americans really knew what he intends to do to our republic, perhaps many more Americans would be speaking out against his nomination,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), one of the Judiciary Committee Democrats who will grill Kavanaugh at the hearings, which start Tuesday.

But even if that doesn’t happen — and Democrats privately know they aren’t likely to stop Kavanaugh — Democrats plan to use the confirmation battle to mobilize their base around threats to health care coverage and reproductive rights to build a blue wave for November.

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In a bit of fortuitous split-screen timing, a court in Texas will be hearing its first oral arguments in yet another a case aimed at toppling Obamacare — and the popular protections for people with pre-existing conditions — the same day that Kavanaugh testifies.

Supreme Court nominees are usually adept at not letting themselves be pinned down on the specifics of how they might rule on a future case . But Democrats say they will call Kavanaugh out, citing his voluminous written record from his years on the bench and in government.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who before he became the Democratic leader went through other Supreme Court hearings as a Judiciary Committee member, said the conservative judge at a preconfirmation meeting “did not give me any reassurance” that he would protect abortion rights.

But at the upcoming hearings, Schumer said, Kavanaugh would have to be more direct. Democrats will ask him, for instance, if he believes the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion case was correctly decided.

“That’s the key question,” Schumer added.

Democrats are likely to quiz him on other specific health-related issues that are wending their way through lower courts — Obamacare pre-existing condition protections, state laws that would ban specific abortion procedures, new work requirements conservative states are imposing on Medicaid recipients.

And Democrats believe the hearings will reverberate — another platform for the message they want to personalize, in particular, for women and minorities key to capturing the House and possibly even the Senate in November.

“I’m someone who obviously has quite a lot of pre-existing conditions, but I’m also a woman of color,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War veteran who lost both her legs in combat. “It makes me exactly the kind of person whose health care — whose health — would be on the line if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed.” She isn’t on the Judiciary Committee, but she’ll make her opposition clear when the nomination reaches the Senate floor.

The math and history both favor Kavanaugh. The Senate has rejected only 12 Supreme Court nominees in U.S. history. To do it for a 13th time, Democrats need to unite their entire caucus against Kavanaugh — including a few of the red-state senators in tough reelection fights — and flip at least two Republicans on top of that.

Kavanaugh has no glaring holes in his polished resume. He boasts a well-funded advocacy campaign and has vows of support from most Republicans in Congress. Vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in states that Trump carried are also facing pressure to back Kavanaugh, just as they did last year with Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Yet Senate Democrats and those working against Kavanaugh’s nomination say there’s still a remote chance of blocking his ascent — one that relies heavily on exploiting Kavanaugh’s writings relevant to major cases like Roe v. Wadeand Texas’ challenge to the Affordable Care Act, as well as lesser-known health care disputes they maintain could offer a troubling window in his judicial mindset.

That means focusing on how Kavanaugh could upend Americans’ access to health care by gutting laws like Obamacare and, perhaps even more consequential politically, the legal right to an abortion. Where conservatives in Congress have failed, conservatives on the bench may succeed.

“Women in this country should care very, very much about what’s going to happen to their health care,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who also serves on Judiciary.

Abortion may also hold the key to the votes of centrist Republicans and staunch abortion rights defenders Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Neither has yet indicated how they’ll vote, though Collins has on multiple occasions raised Kavanaugh’s qualifications and noted that he has tied himself to Chief Justice John Roberts’ view of Roe as a “settled” precedent.

That line — which emerged from a meeting with Collins — was a red flag for abortion rights advocates, given Roberts’ role in upholding a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions and his dissent in a 2016 case striking down abortion services restrictions.

Settled law is “settled” for the lower courts — but the Supreme Court can “unsettle” it in a future case. And even if the court doesn’t overturn Roe, activists note Kavanaugh could form part of a new conservative majority on the Roberts court that erodes access to abortion in rulings on a slew of other reproductive rights cases moving through the lower courts.

“We’re going to hear some pretty aggressive pushback against the idea that he can get away with code words like ‘settled law,’” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Democrats aim to turn Kavanaugh’s words against him when it comes to Obamacare, too. In the Texas case, 20 conservative state attorneys general argue that by gutting the health law’s individual mandate penalty, congressional Republicans rendered the whole health law unconstitutional. That particular application of the severability argument — when one part of a law is struck, another one has to go, too — has drawn ridicule from legal scholars on both sides of the aisle, particularly as Congress left the rest of the law intact, despite months of trying to repeal it.

Kavanaugh has expressed skepticism of such a broad interpretation of severability as well. But he’s also suggested presidents could effectively ignore laws they believe are unconstitutional — a remark tucked into the footnote of a 2011 Obamacare case he ruled on that’s raised alarms for the unchecked power it could grant Trump.

“The question is whether Kavanaugh believes that a sitting president or his administration can be held accountable for his actions,” said Abbe Gluck, a Yale Law School professor with expertise in health law. “That doesn’t impact just the Affordable Care Act … it affects everything.”

Citing precedent, Senate Republicans have already signaled they’ll push back against attempts to tease out Kavanaugh’s views on active cases.

“How are you going to know what a case is 10 years from now?” Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “There isn’t going to be a black-and-white answer to anything.”

But Democrats insist they won’t back down, especially after what they contend has been years of ruthless norm-breaking by Republicans — most notably the 2016 blockade of former President Barack Obama’s court nominee Merrick Garland.

“This is one of the most important acts a senator performs,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a former prosecutor and potential 2020 presidential contender. “It has a profound impact on the lives of Americans, and I’m of the strong belief that anything and everything we can do to make sure that the American public knows who this person is must be done.”

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The Feminist Majority is launching a grassroots movement to save Roe v. Wade. The Millions4Roe.org campaign will activate feminists across the country to protect abortion rights on the federal, state and local levels.

“An active right-wing movement is working to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states under the right to privacy,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “The reversing of the right to privacy in Roe could even threaten access to birth control, which was made legal under the right to privacy in a Supreme Court case only seven years prior to Roe.”

“This is a red alert to save women’s right to control their own bodies and lives,” continued Smeal. “Millions4Roe.org is empowering people who care about women’s lives to not only take action on their own, but also form state and local advocacy teams with whom they can lobby their Representative, Senators, and legislators to save Roe and the right to privacy.”

Millions4Roe.org is starting with a campaign to help block the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has shown his hostility to women’s rights by putting corporations’ interests above women’s right to access birth control. His allegiance to original intent also shows he does not believe the Constitution, as is, provides any protections for women against sex discrimination, save for the 19th amendment guaranteeing the right to vote.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, women would almost immediately lose access to abortion in 22 states that have trigger laws in place. In another 11 states plus the District of Columbia, legislation could drastically restrict abortion access. In only 17 states would access to abortion be secure.

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