Freedom & Independence or Oozing Patriarchal Oppression?

Sure I’m going to eat my share of festival food this weekend. I might light some sparklers and try to get in the spirit of the holiday, but I won’t for a minute be in denial about the actual lack of freedom and independence for women, minorities, workers, the poor and the middle class in our country and across the globe.   I can't forget the patriarchal oppression oozing out everywhere, especially in the Red States!

The statistics and current trends warrant repeating and repeating often. Women do 80% of the work around the globe while owning 20% of the assets. That sounds more like servitude than freedom and independence! Women and children are more likely to be adversely affected by austerity measures imposed upon the multitudes by conservative men running governments across the globe. Imposing unnecessary suffering and struggle is not something to celebrate. Women’s rights to birth control and abortion are being threatened around the United States while they are being subjected to state mandated vaginal probes that neither they nor their doctors want. Last time I checked being penetrated against one’s will was called rape! Republican congressmen and governors have literally made themselves state sanctioned rapists.  Sound like hyperbole to you?  I don't think so.

Workers in places like Wal-Mart work a 38 hour week but make so little money they must be on tax-payer funded food stamps. Too many Americans have shot themselves in the foot and drank the Kool-Aid making villains of teachers, fire fighters and union workers rather than hold the real culprits to freedom and independence accountable. Thanks to an activist Supreme Court, with the majority acting as an arm of the Republican party, corporations are now people and can contribute to political campaigns without limit and decades of voter protections for minorities have been gutted, disproportionately affecting people who vote for Democrats. Power over tactics are hardly freedom inducing.

Then there is this woman who has been in the news a lot this week. Her name is Paula Dean. She admitted to having said an awful word years and years ago when she was less conscious about such things. I know how it can be.  I grew up in the South, too. We all don’t evolve at the same pace. What gets me about this story is Paula Dean is paying a price that far outweighs her crime, while oppressive and racist political parties are allowed to stay in business. The GOP gets a pass for their sexism and racism, both of which rob women and minorities of their freedoms, only they aren't getting the same pressure as a single woman who makes no laws that affect people's lives.

Knowledge is a form of freedom, but not in Kansas where doctors must lie to women now, saying they put themselves at greater risk of breast cancer if they have an abortion. Still more lies and trumped up faux-facts to ram-rod male-dominated religious dogma into law as Republicans go about saying the fetus masturbates in the womb,  to make the point if it feels pleasure, it certainly feels the pain of an abortion.  In Texas some female congresswoman in a pink suit tries to explain the reason their extreme abortion bills do not allow for abortion in cases of rape or incest is because the rape kit, used to collect DNA, will “clean out” the woman, so an abortion will not be necessary. Interesting isn’t it these are the same people who pride themselves in applying the death penalty so easily to adults.   They also are cutting Head Start and food stamps and gutting education all the while they only agree on immigration progress if we spend millions on helicopters to protect the borders.  Of course we can always justify more money for the military industrial complex while we starve children's bellies and minds!

There is so much more I might say, but let this suffice: With brilliant minds of such depth as these steering the country maybe it’s clear why I don’t feel much like celebrating freedom and independence until more people at home and around the world actually have it!