Populism

Evidently Roseanne Barr is running for president, and she (or whoever) has written a bulls eye of a  article on the mommy wars. It is succinct, direct, and disdainful, just as it should be. A few of its greatest hits:

The media, which are completely clueless about every single issue that affects American women, must have had a shiver run down their nonexistent spine when they realized they could dig out the old “stay-at-home mom versus working mom” script that worked so well to divide and conquer mothers and women along class lines to help defeat the Equal Rights Amendment back in my 20s.

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The picture of Ann Romney “manning” the phone banks in front of a campaign poster that reads “Mitt Romney is good for business” tells me all I need to know about her contributions to her family, her church, and her country—convincing other privileged white women that defeating feminism is necessary to save the confederacy of dunces called the GOP, which steals bread from the mouths of widows and orphans and workers’ retirement funds as it congratulates itself for dismantling all that social-safety-net, entitlement, nanny-state load of socialist insurrection and places that money instead into private hands, so that the filthy working sluts can’t get any of it for their selfish selves. They will just use it to pay for abortions and other fun things if given half a chance.

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But why bring out this fake issue again now? Could it be to divert the conversation from the continued restrictions being placed on women’s reproductive rights and make us forget that both parties are socialists for their own causes whose joint policies of redistribution of wealth have made it nearly impossible for anyone to “choose” the stay-home option and not feel that the system is rigged against 99.9 percent of the population, no matter how hard they work?

Supporting the .01 percent is immoral but Republicans advocate immoral policies all the time, in vague and pious terms that evade the effects of their actions. Unfortunately followers don't feel ashamed for doing what the authority wants, they are ashamed when they don't do what the authority wants. To break the bond between the two you have to destroy the follower's belief in the authority. This is fairly easy to do with libertarians because conservatives already consider them suspect for publicly rejecting the right way, the conservative way. But conservatives will not turn on their leaders until the majority rejects their leaders. Followers must follow.