I think it is better to treat animals like people than to treat people like animals.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said in 2021, “We are effectively run in this country … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
My reaction when I read that was to ask, “What is the Latin for government by cat ladies?” My answer was to coin the term felefeminocracy.
I was not aware that America was run by cat ladies. Since we’re making things up, I suspect Sen. Vance is one of the people from “Men In Black” who are controlled by tiny aliens inside their heads.
Vance, to put it mildly, has a problem with women. He thinks they should stay home and raise children, and be forced to stay with abusive husbands. Never mind that his wife Usha is an attorney with a JD from Yale who served as a law clerk for Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts.
The busybodies of the far right think that rules—as Leona Helmsley said about taxes—are for the little people. Paleoconservative and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly went around the country for years saying women should stay at home. Evidently, she felt at home on the lecture circuit.
Vance also suggested that people’s children should be given the vote, to be managed by their parents. His reasoning is that people without children have no stake in the future of the country. He favors the nuclear family over the extended family prevalent in many cultures. He wants to eliminate diverse families (I’m looking at you, Pete and Chasten) and trap everyone in the 1950s sitcom “Father Knows Best.”
Before the looming Trump autocracy even starts, I might as well confess that I have no biological children. I do have lots of nephews and nieces whose futures I very much care about, and my partner has a wonderful son who calls me Daddy Rick. There are also a few LGBTQ+ refugees in Kenya who call me Daddy for helping them after they were forced to flee their homes and countries to avoid honor killings.
Some of those refugees have already been resettled to the United States. No doubt the man at the top of Vance’s ticket, Donald Trump, considers them vermin who are poisoning white American blood, even if they are here legally. When the ICE police are rounding up people next year in the promised mass deportation that was cheered by delegates at the Republican National Convention, don’t count on them to care who is documented and who is not. If you look like one of “those people,” out you go.
To be honest, I think I have more and better family values in my pinky finger than J.D. Vance has in his entire body.
There is no doubt in my mind that my cat lady friends would do a far better job of running this country than the likes of Sen. Vance. As for people being miserable, he seems pretty unhappy himself.
As shown by their demonization of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Trump, Vance, and their diehards think the only sensibilities that deserve respect are their own. Anything they don’t like should be mocked, vilified and possibly banned. It’s like going to a restaurant and insisting on ordering for the strangers at the next table.
Why don’t these people mind their own business? For that matter, what do they have against cats? Since wild speculation has apparently replaced evidence and science in this country, let me venture to guess that the answer lies in the aloofness cats are often known for, in contrast to the adoration exhibited by dogs. Cats probably remind Vance of the girls who ignored him in school.
Unlike Mrs. Vance, I do not have a degree from Yale. But my own alma mater, Villanova University, has a page on its website titled “LGBTQIA+ Resources.” This is in happy contrast with the time I risked expulsion by organizing a debate on gay rights at the Villanova Political Union in 1978.
Times change. We don’t have to let kitty-hating authoritarians turn back the clock.
The MAGA concept of liberty is that they are entitled to do whatever they like, and the rest of us must offer abject deference. Let’s give them a purrfectly dreadful time on Election Day.