What Women Face

Ms. Tillie Powers, Texas. Formerly Enslaved. LOC.

A quiet feature of our politics is its cognitive dissonance. Too often, our politics demands an internal rearrangement of values and morals into a new hierarchy of concern based on threats or fear. The new hierarchy soon gives comfort; its contradictory edges are smoothed. It undermining horrors are diminished and made to seem less extreme.

Women everywhere face these contradictions of choices. They have to decide whether to resist or take the path that appears least dangerous; they weigh group interest and self-interest; they review and balance advocacy and the status quo, family and precarious economic status, safety and emotional security. They are confronted with an array of bewildering choices from which they must organize a forward life.

Some, on occasion, may see safety in danger. Some may be desensitized; some may think the importance of effort lies elsewhere. All deserve respect in the dialogue, careful listening, and social action, esp. in politics, that ends their pain. All should ask who are our enemies, who are our friends? A question of first importance!

The Women Who Like Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/1UPe4dk