Monday, January 23, 2017

"Pussy Power"

January 20, 2017: The new president, Donald Trump, gets sworn in at the National Mall. The crowd is sparse (about 160.000) compared with that for President Obama (about 1.8 million) in 2009:

Comparing Two Inauguration
Turnouts


January 21, 2017: The Women's March on Washington draws a much bigger crowd — at least 500,000 — to the National Mall:


The Turnout at the Women's March
on Washington


Most of the marchers are women and girls, but there are also men and boys. There are satellite women's marches in other U.S. cities and towns, and all around the world. The total number of marchers overall is in excess of 2 million. Many of the marchers wear knitted pink "pussyhats":

"Pussyhats" for "Pussy Power"


Symbolizing "pussy power," the hats are in response to candidate Trump's having bragged about groping women's genitals.

*****

According to the Washington Post:

The size of the gathering proved challenging. The audio from sound system did not reach everyone in the massive crowd, and far more portable toilets were needed.

When the toilets behind the stage broke down, security instructed women to use cups and ushered them into a box truck for privacy.

“I’m afraid to shake anyone’s hand,” one woman joked.

Thus did a march for "pussy power" morph into a march for "potty power" as well.

*****

Handshaking was key at the Women's March. Women from all over the country were meeting one another for the first time. They were organizing themselves into a permanent force in support of women's rights, LGBT rights, immigrants' rights, and more — and against the presidency of Donald Trump.

New York Times writer David Brooks' column of January 20 tells why the march's importance exceeded even that ambitious agenda:

Some on the left worry that we are seeing the rise of fascism, a new authoritarian age. That gets things exactly backward. The real fear in the Trump era should be that everything will become disorganized, chaotic, degenerate, clownish and incompetent.

The real fear should be that Trump is Captain Chaos, the ignorant dauphin of disorder. All the standard practices, norms, ways of speaking and interacting will be degraded and shredded. The political system and the economy will grind to a battered crawl. ...

If Trump’s opponents behave as clownishly as he does ... the whole government will get further delegitimized. But if people redouble their commitment to constitutional norms and practices, to substance and dignity, this thing is survivable.

Already you see the political system uniting to contain Trump.

The Women's March was an example of the political system organizing from the ground up to "build a wall" — specifically, a wall around Trump.









No comments: