Well, looks like all the public scrutiny of Jeff Duncan’s faith and family hypocrisy (you’ll remember when HF called out his non-ethical sluttiness) means he won’t seek reelection to his House seat this year. I’m just going to revel in the news for a minute until I find out what cray-cray women-hating Christian nationalist is going to throw their hat in the ring (I see you, Stewart Jones, I know you can’t wait to vote for a federal abortion ban that subjects women to the death penalty, just like that bill you co-sponsored last year in South Carolina). Fingers crossed for a moderate Republican woman to run.
And we need better representation, as I’ve said here many times before. ProPublica and Ms. Magazine had this great piece on how dire equal representation is in the Southeast, where some state legislatures are still 80% men.
Can we also just pause for a minute and reflect that neither Biden nor convicted-rapist Trump should be our presidential frontrunners? If we didn’t live in such a sexist and racist country, it’d be Haley vs. Harris. Don’t worry, I’m still voting for Biden, but I shouldn’t have to. And obviously Haley’s faux moderate take on abortion bans is extremely dangerous and misleading, so I’m not endorsing her either, but clearly these women are our most capable options.
Anyway. I’m piecing together summer camps already for the children so I can get some writing done on my book project this summer, and it reminds me of this excellent piece (thanks, Erin H. for sending!) by Greenville News reporter Savannah Moss on childcare costs and availability (can we also just shout our local journalists for their doggedness in the face of an absolute capitalist hellscape for media right now). Moss details the crushing costs of childcare, not just for individual families but for the state as well, a whopping 1.4 billion. I don’t see any of our Republican men rushing to solve this problem, probably because good women would just stay home with those babies, but their policy choices are literally costing us billions, in South Carolina alone.
It’s a real bummer to see folks continuously vote against their own class interests because they’re falling for the “hate your neighbor” xenophobia trap of conservative lawmakers. It’s all they seem to have—hating on Disney without any plans on how to help Americans, attacking programs that reveal how their racism, sexism, transphobia is just a screen to keep channeling money to the uberrich that line their pockets (ahem, Clarence). Meanwhile, people suffer and die needlessly as a direct result of their laws, polices and actions (read Jessica Valenti’s Senate testimony this week). And in the midst of it, grieving strangers and living as second-class citizens, we keep it all going, get the grocery shopping done, excel at our jobs, support our partners, like it couldn’t be one of us the next time, or someone we love the time after that.