RBG And Women's Rights

"In her fight for women’s rights, the then–ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg did something unexpected: She argued on behalf of men.

"'It didn’t matter to her if the plaintiff was a man or a woman,' says the Georgetown law professor Wendy Williams. 'Because in most of those cases, the discrimination against the man was derivative of a prior and worse discrimination against the woman.'

"Craig v. Boren involved Oklahoma frat boys, a drive-through convenience store, and gender-specific beer laws. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1976 decision was foundational in advancing equal rights for women and represented a key moment in the future justice’s career."

Click on the link below for a podcast on a fascinating historical event that was seminal in not only the career of RBG but the Women' Rights Movement:

How RBG Became 'Notorious'

Has Magical Thinking Won?

The history of humanity has mostly been dominated by magical thinking (ignorance, superstition, dogma, and religion). Thus, science-based thinking essentially has only been around for about .25% of our existence (500 years of science out of 200,000 years). Science since its beginning has had to battle against these negative forces, of which the most prominent example has been religion. The Enlightenment and the US Constitution have been in the vanguard of opposing these forces. 

In the USA, a minority of its people (conservative Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and ultra-orthodox Jews) began to gain power exceeding their numbers after President Nixon's perfection of the Republican "Southern Strategy." These political forces have slowly been gaining power to the point of causing the election of Donald J Trump as President. In other words, this aggressive magical thinking minority has hijacked one of the two major political parties. Since Trump's election, this power continues to gain strength, in spite of his total depravity and lack of fitness for the office. The clearest example of this power has been the appointment of several conservative Federal judges throughout the USA and two Supreme Court Justices. Most of us science-based thinkers have been on pins and needles regarding Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a strong liberal Justice in a conservative-majority Supreme Court. In my opinion, yesterday, September 18, 2020, was another "date that will live in infamy." Yes, strong words. However, just ponder the effects of magical thinking that suddenly now, in the face of massive fires in the West and a pandemic, have a clear path to political dominance for decades, for example:

• Evolution denial
• Climate change denial
• Medical science denial
• Economic and social inequality
• Theocratic authoritarian government
• Going against the political norms of representative democracy: Gerrymandering; voter suppression; support of non-representative Electoral College; abuse of Senate protocol.

Only "We, The People" can fight this evil through activism and voting. Now is not the time to back down.