Kamala Harris Is the Worst Nightmare of America's Far Right: Robert Reich. Control of Women

[appalachiablue]

- Trump, JD Vance, and their Maga allies are misogynists who want to control women. Harris could not be more of a threat. The Guardian, July 30, 2024. - Ed. 🪆
--------
When Joe Biden stepped down in support of Kamala Harris, he didn’t just pass the torch to another generation. He passed it from old white men to America’s future. Consider that women now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates. And that by 2050, it’s estimated that America will consist mostly of people of color – 30% more Black people than today, 60% more Latinos and twice the number of Asian Americans.

The power shift has already started.

Many of the people who have demanded accountability from Trump constitute a Trump nightmare of strong and able women, including several of color – Letitia James and Fani Willis – along with E Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi. And now, Kamala Harris. In naming JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Trump feinted a torch pass – but backwards. Vance’s white male belongs in the early 20th century.

During Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio in 2021, he called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”, offering as examples Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked, suggesting the only way to have a “direct stake” is by giving birth. Even before Vance said this, Harris was stepmother to two teenagers. Soon after, Buttigieg and his husband adopted infant twins.

By this logic, no American male – including Vance and Trump – can have a “direct stake” in America.

Trump himself – dog-whistling racist; alleged groper, fondler, and sexual harasser; and adjudicated rapist – is hardly respectful of women, especially women of color. Of Harris, he claimed: “They’re saying she isn’t qualified because she wasn’t born in this country.” (Harris was born in Calif.) Of Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, he charged – also without evidence – that “she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member”. Trump has repeatedly denigrated women of color as “angry” or “nasty”.
And he views female human beings as almost alien creatures.. Trump misogyny has infected the entire Maga Republican party...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/kamala-harris-donald-trump-women-gender
--------
- Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now.
He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

[appalachiablue]

1. Lebensborn, secret Nazi Eugenics program created in 1935 to produce racially pure, Aryan children.

Wiki. Lebensborn e.V. (literally: 'Fount of Life') was a secret, SS-initiated, state-registered association in Nazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "healthy" Aryans, based on Nazi eugenics (also called "racial hygiene" by some eugenicists).

Lebensborn was established by Heinrich Himmler, and provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediated adoption of children by likewise "racially pure" and "healthy" parents, particularly SS members and their families.

The Cross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the most Aryan children.

Abortion was legalized (and, more commonly, endorsed) by the Nazis for disabled and non-Germanic children, but strictly punished otherwise. Set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries with Germanic populations during the World War II. It included the selection of "racially worthy" orphans for adoption and care for children born from Aryan women who had been in relationships with SS members.

It originally excluded children born from unions between common soldiers and foreign women, because there was no proof of "racial purity" on both sides. During the war, many children were kidnapped from their parents and judged by Aryan criteria for their suitability to be raised in Lebensborn homes, and fostered by German families...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn