Wasn’t it a Yale study that found that the US is not a functioning democracy, but rather an oligarchy?
Edit: Went and checked-Princeton and Northwestern.
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Even if it did, why would that be a bad thing? Nobody gets angry about the idea of appointing a CEO who dedicated their entire career to business.
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Sadly, I cannot remember the names of people involved in studies I read some references to in another work, 25 years ago, but I am bad with names. But the then-decades-old references would be fairly outdated anyways, given the research that’s been done since - seriously, there’s been a lot of work done on, for example, the impact of media representations of different groups that’s really relevant here. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.
There’s a big difference between putting cracks in the glass ceiling and shattering it once and for all. It may be cracked as soon as this election is over, but it’s still there.
Yep. You said so yourself:
Wom e n, not wom a n. If she wins, it means nothing for the glass ceiling unless it changes things for women in politics in the future.
FTFY.
Obama Derangement Syndrome is a very real thing, as is Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
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Supreme Court. Not that long ago a woman as a justice was unthinkable. It took a little time after Sandra Day O’Connor before the next one, but shortlists were immediately no longer all male, and nobody blinks anymore at the possibility of a court which is 50% (or even 100%) comprised of women.
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You want a real challenge? Try to get the first (openly) atheist president elected. Not in my lifetime, I’d bet.
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Yes the most important thing about hyperbolic metaphors is whether they are literally true.
It’s not even figuratively true.
Geronimo would be rolling over in his grave, if only…
Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Lady Vanishes” is deeply relevant to this conversation. Comes in with several examples of women making it into previously male-exclusive fields, and what effect that’s had for other women, subsequently.
Elevates this conversation from being theoretical to being concrete. Definitely worth a listen, I think.
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Abe, my man, this is the first thing you’ve written that’s actively pissed me off. Not only is this attitude needlessly nihilistic and hopeless, but I do submit it’s genuinely wrongheaded. In late 2003, how many people outside of Illinois had so much as heard of Barack H. Obama? Before his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, he was invisible to most of the nation; four and a half years later he was President. If you’d asked anyone in 2003 that our next President would be a black man nobody’d yet heard of, you would have been laughed out of the pub. If you’d said it was going to be Colin Powell, people would at least have thought you were trying to be somewhat plausible, but still would have dismissed you out of hand.
A female President isn’t just impending, it’s long overdue, and not just in a moral or cosmic-justice sense. The Obama presidency opened the door for both Herman Cain and Ben Carson to run campaigns that were briefly taken seriously, until the essential unqualifiedness of the candidates themselves became apparent. Neither collapsed because of their race. And both were, of all things, Republicans.
“What amazing future woman president are we now never going to have?” What the fuck, Abe? Let me put it to you this way: what amazing future woman president that you currently have no idea exists will now have a clearer path to the presidency simply because the American electorate has discovered that they can survive (nay, prosper) under a woman President? Who out there that we might not yet know will give it a shot because she doesn’t have to run under the absolutely ridiculous added pressure of being The First? Sure, yes, we know: racism is far from dead. But the idea that a black man is fundamentally incapable of being President because he’s too black to be elected is now proven false. Clinton’s election won’t just be a one-time triumph; it will actually prove that she can do it, and if Hillary Clinton with all her flaws and historically high disapproval ratings can be elected President in spite of all the sexism around her, is that not indicative of the weakening power of that sexism? Won’t the next woman have an easier time of it?
You know Elizabeth Warren would have a hell of a great shot at it, though I’d be surprised if she ran in 2024 when she’ll be 75, and I suspect a primary challenge from her in 2020 would be vanishingly unlikely. Still… she’s not the last best hope. It’s a big country, and there are a lot of smart and talented women out there. You know that.
Mr Obama won the presidency after fewer than four complete years as a U.S. Senator; less than a single term. He had eight years in the Illinois State Senate before that.
As for Secretary Clinton, her twelve years as First Lady of Arkansas and eight years as FLOTUS may not have been paid gigs, but neither were they particularly apolitical housewife years. Add to that her eight years in the Senate and four years as Secretary of State and you pretty much have a full political resume. Not for nothing is she the single most qualified Presidential candidate we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
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Uh, no, I was saying the opposite - that the sum total of all races have had one result in respect to female candidates, they’ve never, ever won. A single female candidate who won would change that, forever.
Crazy people gonna crazy.
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American liberals are so repulsive. Hillary will blow up people in faraway countries like any other piece of shit that will rule over the cold dead heart of empire. She helped manage the coup in Honduras, too. American liberals’ idea of progress is like listening to people extol the smell of vomit over shit. Repulsive, absolutely repulsive.
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And your “seriously” questioning (i.e. your negative, as opposed to positive, position) is founded on what positive (as in existing and encountered by you) empirical evidence?
And again, your casual negative suspicion is founded on what positive evidence?
No, you really are taking a position – a negative one. You’re saying “I have no evidence one way or the other, but even so: negative negative negative! NOW EVERYONE ELSE PROVE ME WRONG!”
It doesn’t work that way, citizen. Either provide evidence backing up your negativity or take back the negativity altogether. It’s not everyone else’s job to prove your position (because it obviously is a position) wrong.
And we will chastise her for doing so, but we have no reason to believe her Republican rival is less likely to get people blown up. Remember, according to Trump’s own statements we would currently be in a shooting war with Iran if he had been the one sitting in the White House a couple of months ago.
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Scew you and your moronic glass ceiling. I was born an outsider like the other 99% male, female or any bloody thing in-between. No glass ceiling for me, ton of bricks ceiling for me, just like the other 99%, the ton of bricks they drop on you if you step out of the 1% demanded line.
Bugger the yale record as a pile of shite 1% supporter, yeah, how bloody stupid do you think we really, do you moronic fwits really think changing the genitals of those screwing us over really makes a difference, screw you and you moronic genitals, apparently where you brains reside.
How happy do you think the commoners were under Queen Victoria, how many did that homicidal maniac kill and torture to death to retain power. Yale record burn, you are part of the problem and will never be part of the solution.
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You seem rather angry.
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I sincerely tried to read all the comments, and then I got alternately angry, discomfited, and resigned. I suppose it inevitably comes down to the personal. It’s impossible to comprehend the magnitude of something unless it becomes personal to us. I live in Alabama. I sat and watched the election returns with an African-American friend of mine when Obama won. She cried. She called her 86-year-old nana. They cried together. I felt joyful, but frankly, I didn’t understand fully because I haven’t experienced what they have. Hillary is imperfect in many ways (i.e., she’s an old-school Republican in sheep’s clothing), but she ain’t the anti-christ, which is the rhetoric that has surrounded her for years that I refuse to endorse. I will sit, with my daughter, and watch her win, hopefully. It won’t end sexism, any more than Obama’s election ended racism. But I will cry, and I will hug my daughter close, and whisper in her ear, “See? You can do better than her, if that’s your journey. It’s possible.” Broken glass ceilings matter, and if you don’t agree, ask all those suffragettes who were force fed in prison before they were allowed to vote. Of course it doesn’t happen overnight, but we represent over 50% of the population and it’s long past time we had a woman president in the US. Period. End of sentence.
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If Hillary wins, yes she does break the glass ceiling. However, because of her corruption, no one will EVER elect another woman as President (if there is even a United States left). I am not endorsing Donald Trump either.
