Lately, it's been hard not to notice the resurgence of the grand old patriarchal political strategy of demonizing women.
Republicans have been championing forced birthing and state control of the nation's uteri for decades, but now the right-wing appears to have officially adopted the modern witch trial as the proper antidote to noisy Democratic women.
The witch trial of Hillary Clinton is the most famous right-wing 'success story.' By portraying a hard-working policy wonk, healthcare champion, and former Senator and Secretary of State as an evil witch, the Republican Party was able to bless this great country with a nationwide expansion of Trump University. Who needs a smart, 'boring' woman when a philandering male megalomaniac and bankruptcy-filing expert brings so much more to the table, right?
Now that Hillary's punching bag expiration date has mostly passed, the Right needs other women to demonize, destroy, diminish and dumb-ify.
Nancy Pelosi, our soon to be Speaker of the House, is once again getting ready to make legislation great again; meanwhile, Republicans are likely doing nothing but preparing for her witch trial.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—the Democratic Socialist Congresswoman-elect who favors single-payer healthcare, tuition-free college, criminal justice reform, elections, living wages, campaign finance reform, paying attention to science and other progressive policies, has recently become the Right's favorite piñata. They are trying to frighten the already frightened, paranoid American Right into thinking that Venezuela is coming to America.
Never mind that socialism blended with regulated market economics already produces a higher standard of living and higher quality of life for most Canadians, French, Germans, English, Irish, Icelanders, Danes, Finns and Swedes than it does for America's bamboozled masses who are cruelly subjected to the unregulated Republican reverse Robin Hood effect.
Just yesterday Dinesh D'Souza described Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the "stupidest person elected to public office."
Fox News, hate radio and the radical religious Right must now work hard to vilify Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris and the bumper crop of newly elected, contraception-wielding, Democratic House women who have the audacity to represent all Americans instead of just the miserly 0.1 percent and their duped Confederate masses.
And which Grand Old Patriarch is leading the charge? The Misogynist-In-Chief.
Here is America's so-called president recently responding to female reporters, providing a how-to manual for patriotic misogynists:
To ABC News White House reporter Cecilia Vega in October:
Trump: "You're not thinking. You never do"
To CNN's Abby Phillip when she asked about Robert Mueller's investigation:
Trump: "What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot and you ask a lot of stupid questions."
Trump also called April Ryan, a reporter for American Urban Radio Networks, a "loser."
Trump told reporter Yamiche Alcindor of PBS that she asked him a "racist" question.
Phillip, Ryan and Alcindor are all black female reporters.
And Trump famously tweeted this in June: "Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person." Waters is black.
This Republican-Trumpian misogyny may be an effective strategy for the shrinking Trumpian base of angry white men and their concubines, but one can't help surmise that repeated insults to half of America's population (i.e. women—not to mention men who actually respect women) is…ummm...pretty stupid.
And as long as the Right works hard every day to portray progressive women as crazy, dumb and dangerous, let's remember some of the award-winning male stupidity that the Republican Party has delivered to the American people.
"You know Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." - United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
"Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again." - Former President George W. Bush.
"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." - Todd Akin, former U.S. Representative.
"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize, life is a gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen." - Richard Mourdock, 2012 Indiana Senate Republican.
Politicians from both sides will always be muttering something stupid, but when one adds in the Republican party's serial rejection of science, embrace of religious fantasy, abandonment of healthcare, a guns over people public safety policy, and its winner-take-all economics, it's no wonder why they call it the Party of Stupid and it's no wonder that Donald the city-slicker loves the "poorly educated."
Last year, the author J.K. Rowling described the current Oval Office occupant as a "tiny, tiny, tiny little man."
America deserves better than a Lilliputian President and his army of Lilliputian Republicans criticizing women for a living to the sad cheers of angry, insecure white men.
Chelsea Handler is a comedian, author and activist. She is the author of five New York Times best selling books. Chelsea is a co-chair for Emily's List and has been touring the country to help elect women and progressives for the 2018 mid-terms. She is currently writing her sixth book and filming a documentary for Netflix. Glen Handler is an Audit Director of a large multinational corporation. He used to change his baby sister Chelsea's diapers when he was a teenager.
The views expressed in this article are the authors' own.
