I'm thinking this is probably not really about self-reliance or empowerment or even the usual patronizing bullshit of "lemme mansplain about how we just wanna keep you sweet brainless dollies a little safer".
Selling with sex is one thing, but look at it. She's an attractive, purposeful-looking grownup woman - throwing open her coat to give us a peek at her kinda-girlie lingerie, while reaching around behind her, hoping to grab hold of somebody's big hard steely penis, which of course is her only salvation because she's really just that "sweet brainless dollie" who can't possibly survive without some guy's dick in her hand.
A whole Marketing Division somewhere is toasting themselves because they know there's an army of dumbass ammosexuals masturbating on Mom's clean sheets over this right now.
Guys - even without my own little hangups, there're enough Repression Issues in just this one picture to keep a battalion of Freudians on the bestseller list for-fucking-ever.
This being the Vernal Equinox, it won't be long before it's time to pack up the old family wagon and make the trek to a relaxing week at a beach somewhere. You'll wanna check out all the gear, but also, you need to take certain precautions to be sure your flabby winter bod can take the added stress of the vacation season - especially if you've got kids.
Wouldn't it be nice to look forward to a time when we can just learn this and be a little amazed, and not feel like we have to catalog the knowledge in a way that makes it easily retrievable because we know we'll need it to push back against some idiot god-knobber who wants to teach kids about talking snakes and 900-year-old boat builders?
So at first, I'm thinking - well now, that'd make a pretty good meme; maybe something like: "Next time my kids bitch about their hard-ass math teacher..." -- or -- "All I've ever asked you to do around here is to clean up your room once in a while" But fuck that, cuz fuck me for not trying to think a bit past my own little corner of the world, which is still pretty well insulated from what seems like a bigger and bigger piece of the world that looks more and more fucked up practically every day. I'm still gonna make my silly jokes, but I'll be trying to widen the horizon a little. It actually gets harder to ensure the survival of the species if we insist on never looking beyond, "it could be much worse for us, so be glad it's them".
I don't want to discount the real dangers of The Trumpenstein Monster. Weirder things have happened in politics all over the world for a very long time.
But I want to make a coupla points.
First, even though Trump has a "commanding lead", he's still polling below 50% (mostly), which is half of the 30-40% of the rabidly nutty wingnuts in the GOP, which still adds up to about 20% of the total electorate.
But second - and here's the kicker - the GOP has spent a lot of time effort and money putting in place mechanisms intended (IMO) to shift political power towards minority control.
eg: Only about 30% of Americans favor tight restrictions on abortion, but according to Gutmacher, 80% of the states have passed laws aimed at putting abortion out of reach for many women, and/or banning most abortions in one way or another.
How many legitimate voters will be turned away in November because of Voter ID and continuing efforts to scrub the registration rolls?
When a sizable majority of votes cast nationally are votes for Democratic candidates (Mid-Terms 2014), but we still have a GOP majority in both houses of congress, and GOP majorities at the state and local levels, something's amiss.
So, it's not just the rhetoric and bombast that "conservatives" have been playing with for 35 years that created this Trump Problem. We have to put that together with the nuts and bolts of a political organization built to make a "majority" out of about 48% of the votes by whipping the army of rubes into a rich creamy lather and pointing them at a variety of phantom enemies in order to drive them out to the polls each time.
Trump's no dummy. He saw that nobody's really in charge way back in 2011. Remember, part of the deal with authoritarianism (supported by an apologist army of corporate Press Poodles) is that when things blow up or fall apart, "there's plenty of blame to go around"; "mistakes were made"; "let's not start pointing fingers" etc. The first order of business is to make sure nobody can be held accountable for anything, so the party faithful are just milling about in an amorphous blob looking for somebody to help them channel their anger at having been played for such suckers for such a long time. Trump just stepped in to fill the void.
Or more accurately, Trump is pretending to fill that void - if you notice, he's taking no responsibility for the shit he's throwing into the fan.
So what happens when this little pipe dream disappears with the morning fog, and along about midnight on the first Tuesday in November, the rubes are thinking they've been left just standing there with their dicks in their hands - again?
The "wise gray heads" of the GOP are up late every night. Worried, certainly - but as per usual, they're indulging themselves in a cynical exercise of trying to flip it back around so they don't have to admit to being wrong about almost everything.
Lets' review: They don't think the problem is the fact that they've effectively killed off one of the major political parties that just happens to be essential to a healthy democracy. They think the real problem is that they might have to accept the blame for killing it off. This is up to you guys, GOP gurus. First you address it, then you fix it, and then Sepuku, motherfucker. We'll miss ya, but we'll all be better off without ya.
