Ask A Genius 999: Human Rights Watch and Gender Equality Regression
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/03
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So I want to discuss the backlash against women’s rights progress. This has happened recently, and for several years before that, I will be reading from Human Rights Watch. They know, according to the UN, that women’s gender disparities are worsening. In Afghanistan, the Taliban banned women and teenage girls from taking part in any aspect or many aspects of daily life. They can’t, in secondary school or university, work many jobs, can’t move freely outside the home. In China, feminists are being silenced. Many terms they’re using are being termed harmful speech. In Poland, they’re actively targeting women’s rights activists. The Constitutional Tribunal undermined women’s and girls’ reproductive rights. In the United States, they’ve repealed a women’s rights wave, and multiple states have attacked access to legal abortions in South Korea. They’ve made a pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. There has been a disregard for the harsh realities for women and girls there. In Pakistan, the Aurat March for International Women’s Day has been targeted by Pakistani Taliban extremists in terms of a backlash. As well, many threats are happening to women’s rights activists in those countries. That’s a shorthand list of a lot.
Rick Rosner: Yes, worldwide, there’s been a rise in fascism, whether the fascists take power. The fascists haven’t taken power in that many democratic countries, but there’s been a lot more fascist agitation — just a lot more people who’ve been running around and hooting under fascist banners. You could draw a parallel between now and immediately after World War I. When everybody got COVID, the world got shut down in many places.
You could argue that half the world has gotten COVID. Maybe it’s messed up some people’s minds and made them more susceptible to fascist propaganda; lumping them into fascist groups or social media makes it easier for fascist movements to recruit. It was more challenging in the 1950s when you had to recruit using the mailman just by sending letters. Anyway, the parallel is that everybody after World War One, at least a third of the planet, got the flu, which cooked a lot of people’s brains. Then, starting in the 20s, you’ve got a worldwide rise in fascism, culminating in World War Two. Are we in a similar situation now? Or is it just a swing of the pendulum? In America, the vast majority of Americans don’t want women to be fucked over. It’s just that the Republicans and the Christo-fascists have had some good luck in grabbing onto power, even though they are a minority interest.
The shit starts going wrong. All right, so Clinton, Bill Clinton, in the mid-90s, has an affair with Monica Lewinsky. He would have gotten away with it, except he jizzed on one of her dresses, and she kept the dress, which let them prove that he jizzed on her. This disgusted Al Gore, who didn’t use Clinton enough when he ran for president in 2000. It would have helped because Clinton was still wildly popular. His popularity went up after he was impeached for lying about having sex because most Americans thought it was bullshit. But Al Gore maybe thought Clinton had cheapened the office, and Al Gore lost narrowly. Bush becomes president for eight years. Then Obama gets elected, and things look pretty good. People talk about things like the end of history, that things are great now and will stay great. Then Hillary Clinton gets fucked over in several ways and narrowly loses to Trump.
Under Obama, Obama missed an opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice just because Mitch McConnell would not let him. Obama was not very confrontational and constantly played by the Republicans. So, that Supreme Court vacancy went to Trump. Then Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t retire under Obama because everybody thought Hillary Clinton would win. She dies under Trump, still on the court, which gives Trump another Supreme Court justice. Then one, and then fucking what’s his name, retires mysteriously.
I want to say Kennedy, but that would be wrong, wouldn’t it? Or it wasn’t fucking Kennedy. Anyway, the justice whose son worked at Deutsche Bank, which was the only bank that would loan Trump money because he was too bad at credit risk because he always defaulted on his loans. They were using Russian oligarch money. The Russian oligarchs don’t care if some of their loans go bad because that’s the price of trying to get your money out of fucking Russia before Putin decides you’re not his friend anymore and repossesses all your oligarch shit. There was some weird transaction where they got another Supreme Court justice to retire.
Trump got to appoint three justices, a third of the court, all picked by and vetted by Leonard Leo and the Heritage Foundation and Judicial Watch. They shut down abortion. They’re pushing for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page fundamentalist wish list. We’re in a tough spot because Trump is leading in the polls right now. Until last week, I thought he was falsely leading in the polls. Then Biden did shitty at the debate. Now, I believe that Trump’s lead is real.
With minority support, it could be that Trump, who is an amoral, immoral, fascist fuck, might, the betting markets have him more than twice as likely to get reelected as Biden now. If he does, he’s going to do a whole bunch of the shitty stuff he’s going to do, he’s going to do a bunch of anti-women shit. So yes, we’re in a fucked position, even though anti-women is not the position of most Americans. I haven’t looked at every fucking country in the world. Americans are notorious for not knowing what’s going on in other countries. I guess you could include me in that. But I would think that in a lot of the countries that have anti-women shit going on, and fascism on the rise, it’s fascists recruiting and lying to people who are stupider than average. It’s that way in the US; we’ve talked about it.
Brexit was people propagandizing idiots. Everybody in England regrets voting for Brexit. I’m guessing now that France is on the verge of electing Marie Le Pen, who runs a far-right party. Her dad ran the same party. Her dad was a Holocaust denier. She kicked him out of the party for being too extreme. But still, she’s pretty fucking extreme. We’ll be lucky; the planet will be lucky if we get out of this period of fascism and potential fascism relatively unscathed. We’ve got our worst war since Germany since World War Two. It’s still a little teeny war. It’s Russia versus Ukraine, where Russia has captured a strip of Ukraine that’s about 450 miles long by about 80 miles deep. It’s about 15% of the country. Compared to World War Two, it’s not much, but it could go to shit, could get worse. Orban of Hungary is a strong man. Kim Jong Un is a strong man. Is Belarus happy to be under Russia’s thumb?
Jacobsen: Belarus is Russian favouring.
Rosner: Okay, more shit could happen, especially if people’s brains are all shitty now, whether from social media or whether COVID cooked their brains just a little bit. The solution will be slightly dystopian: if it is a solution at all, eventually AI will become smart enough and powerful enough that we will harness ourselves to AI and hope that the human-AI combo is a force for reasonableness. Not fucking Skynet-style Armageddon, the end.
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