I love the silence of snowfall. Sure, blizzards can howl, but there is something so pleasing about how a heavy snowfall can muffle the sounds of nature.
Trumpists like to call us snowflakes. For people whose entire political movement is based on white male fragility, the irony of the meme is overwhelming. I guess they use snowflake as a slur because an individual snowflake, while unique, is so insignificant and harmless. I’ll let George Takei respond better than I can.
xThe thing about "snowflakes" is this: They are beautiful and unique, but in large numbers become an unstoppable avalanche that will bury you
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 21, 2017I was walking in just such a snowfall as dusk set in, with not a sound under the blanket of heavy wet snow and featureless grey sky, when the silence was suddenly broken by a large crack ricocheting through the valley, echoing off the hills. Snow was falling heavy, and it had pulled a great tree down. The sound was of a tree trunk, too large to put one’s arms around, snapping under the weight of an army of snowflakes. A tree that had lived for maybe a hundred years saw its life come to an end in an instant.
Wood has such a natural beauty too. And it truly is an engineering marvel, as all but the smallest twigs are beyond the bare strength of human beings. Split wood with an axe, and you can see all the fibers created by the vessels, which in turn bundle together to provide such great strength. A relatively weak strike in just the right orientation and at just the right place will cleave those fibers apart. Otherwise, enormous forces of nature are required.
I understand this is a difficult time for many. It’s not just the confirmation of Kavanaugh. It’s the confirmation of institutional sexism and patriarchy. This is but my own attempt to help.
It’s easy to miss all the branches and roots of the patriarchy weaving through our society. It’s easy to dismiss it as no different than the thicket of problems facing progress. In my opinion, though, the past few years have never more clearly shown just how dangerous patriarchy is to progress, especially when it is threatened. The hysterical need to preserve the patriarchy just caused the Senate Majority Leader to ram through not only a judge dismissed as unqualified by Supreme Court Justices of his own party, but one who will be haunted by legal jeopardy and illegitimacy for his entire tenure.
xThis stuff is going to keep coming out and it is going to be devastating for the legitimacy of both Kavanaugh and the court. https://t.co/XpYqbkkwce
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) October 5, 2018Not that Republicans care.
Like most on the left, I tend to think of nature as intrinsically beautiful and benign, but the description of Old Man Willow from J.R.R. Tolkein may be more apt for how I liken the patriarchy:
...none were more dangerous than the Great Willow; his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.
There are so many different cellulosic fibers winding strength to the patriarchy.
Sure, there was the response of Republican Senators, male and female, to allegations against Brett Kavanuagh. It’s not that they didn’t believe the allegations. If they didn’t believe them, they wouldn’t have rushed him through and then restricted an FBI investigation. They knew they were true. They just didn’t care. Boys will be boys.
There’s also the awe shucks patriarchy of George W. Bush, lending a hard candy to Michelle Obama at the funeral of John McCain, while making repeated phone calls to Senators, especially Susan Collins, to help get Kavanuagh confirmed. Kavanaugh’s intent is to reverse the gains of women by restricting their reproductive freedom. George W. Bush knows this.
The patriarchy poisons our news coverage.
xImagine if a woman president got on Twitter every morning to complain about people being mean and unfair to her. Weak. Hysterical. Shrill. Bitch. Unfit to lead.
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) September 10, 2018The horrific sexism in the coverage of Hillary Clinton was obvious. Less obvious is the way it taints coverage between men who support and oppose the patriarchy, like how Trump’s job numbers are always reported as showing strength, even though they are weaker than Obama’s, which were routinely reported as mediocre and weak. And of course, how some voters are more significant than others.
xHow can Trump voters be "the forgotten" if we won't stop staring at them, poking at them, commiserating with them and studying them?
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) April 27, 2017Institutional sexism doesn’t grow exclusively on the right. Lost in the story of Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct was a brief news cycle where journobros (and becky’s) on the progressive left attempted to frame Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s reluctance to reveal the accuser’s name as an acquiescence to Kavanaugh.
It was to protect the life of the accuser, you dispshit.Ryan Grimm is the DC bureau chief at The Intercept. You know, the brogressive news outlet that could get Edward Snowden to Russia but deliberately and purposefully burned Reality Winnersending her to jail for 5 years because they didn’t like her narrative.
And as we’ve seen women often violently defend the patriarchy as well. Even on the left. This is still an actual article on Vox:
Laura McGann is the editorial director of Vox.com. She ran Vox's politics and policy coverage during the 2016 election. She previously worked as an editor at Politico, where she oversaw a variety of coverage, including money and politics, Congress and domestic policy.There’s a lot holding the patriarchy together. But heavy wet snow is falling. At some point, the forces holding the tree up will be overwhelmed by the forces pulling it down. And in that instant, with a thunderous crack, fibers will be twisted and wrenched apart under forces well beyond any one human being, wood and bark will be explosively splintered, and the tree will come crashing down.
I wish I knew how much time was left. Some trees can live for thousands of years. Trees can heal as well, callusing over wounds.
But the sound of massive resistance you heard this past week? The sound of kamikaze desperation to get Kavanaugh confirmed? Kavanaugh’s tanking popularity? That was a massive fracturing within. Something broke that can’t easily be repaired.
There is something we can do in the mean time: Identify institutional sexism and defense of patriarchy in the media, especially on the center and left, and work to replace those journalists. Oh, and vote.