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GOP Rep blames Angela Davis, Cape Malay, BLM, and feminism for the "breakdown of the family" [1]

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Date: 2024-06-09  

On Thursday, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) appeared on a local podcast from Wautoma, WI. He used his time to blast a laundry list of offenders. Their sin? They had undermined America. And left it a country not conforming to his standards. In doing so, he played the game, ‘Tell me how old you are without telling me your age.’

Grothman started the ball rolling by announcing he knew what his constituents’ primary concern was:

“I think the number one thing is they feel the breakdown of the family.”

After blaming this familial disintegration on "people all along [who] wanted to destroy the family,” he showed he was no spring chicken when he got specific and pointed the finger at:

“The 60s, the feminist movement, Cape Malay was anti-family, a goal of the feminist movement was to get the man out of the family. Angela Davis, you know, superstar radical during the 60s. One of her goals was to destroy the family, and of course, then you move up in time, even the Black Lives Matter movement the founders of Black Lives Matter. A goal was to destroy the family.”

Let us have a look at his list.

The ‘60s: I’m guessing he is referring to the hippies, sexual liberation, drugs, the counter-culture, anti-establishmentarianism, the generation gap, and whatever else the 67-year-old wished he had done as a teenager but did not — or did do as a teenager and regrets. Granted, he would have been 15 in 1970 — so his 60s spilled into the next decade.

The feminist movement: Like most older white conservatives, what pisses Grothman off about feminism and marriage is the feminist demand that women no longer be destined for unpaid domesticity. The movement did aim to destroy the ‘women as chattel’ marital arrangement common in the 1950s. And they wanted women to have the right to control their economic destinies with a paying career. A right that could delay marriage. But feminism did not demand women stay single — unless they wanted to.

Note: every movement had its radicals — Andrea Dworkin say. But even this uber-feminist was married twice — although she identified as a lesbian. She was hardly the only lesbian who choose to marry a man (see below). Regardless it is hard to argue she maintained an anti-marriage position from her actions.

Cape Malay: I have nothing. I looked it up. All I can find is a Muslim community in South Africa. I also asked my wife, but she had not heard of it. If anyone has anything, please educate me in the comments.

Angela Davis: There is a blast from the past. I doubt most 20-somethings today could pick Ms. Davis out of a lineup. And she was not hard to pick out of a lineup.

In addition, while Davis was a political radical , a member of the US Communist Party, a fierce advocate of abolishing the ‘prison-industrial complex’, a feminist, pro-gay and other social justice issues, anti-war, anti-imperialism, a critic of America’s anti-terrorist policies and America’s broken immigration system, she does not seem to have spent a lot of her oratorical capital telling people not to get married.

Indeed — and I am burying the lede — Davis, who later came out as a lesbian, was once married. While I can find no evidence that Grothman ever was. And he does not mention it in on his website .

Dear God mate, this is the most egregious case of “do as I say, not what I do” I have heard since the last conservative hypocrisy.

Black Lives Matter ( BLM ): This organization’s stated policies are to make America safer for its Black citizens, defund the police, end qualified immunity for the police, and get reparations. If Grothman thinks they aim to destroy marriage, he is either privy to private information, a liar, or deluded. The reader can decide which.

Grothman is not just a hypocrite and wrong about other people’s aims. He lies about his signature issue. When Gallup asked Americans an open-ended question to identify the country’s top issue, 3% identified “Ethics/Moral/Religious/Family decline.” Putting Glenn’s #1 in 11th place.

But facts do not prevent Grothman from developing his fantasy. He continued his imaginary conversation with constituents:

“When I asked them why they think there was a breakdown of family, they say vaguely, a decline in the importance of religion, but actually, there are people all along wanted to destroy the family.”

In Glenn’s willful delusion, he claims the government — presumably when in liberal hands — has a policy to destroy families. Why are liberals doing that? What benefit accrues to the Democrats by destroying the family? I do not know. And Grothman does not say. Luckily for Glenn and his kind, the base hears the dog whistle. And they do not need it to make sense.

“So you say, how could the government weigh in to, you know, to make sure we, we didn’t have two parents in the home? Well, they could do it through programs that began during the Great Society in the 60s and continue to be expanded today, in which you get low-income housing. You get food stamps, you get daycare, you get cash. You get all these things provided. You don’t get married to a man with a decent income.”

In the white conservative imagination, welfare goes exclusively to Blacks. The subtext is that the government mugs hard-working European Americans and the proceeds of the crime are used to featherbed the lives of African Americans.

It is Reagan’s racist welfare-queen argument. And it is still absurd. No one is getting rich off the American taxpayer except for people who are already rich. The poor will stay up shit’s creek until they can scrape together enough cash to buy politicians like Grothman — which (duh) will never happen.

Grothman also does not mention and probably does not care to know, that 50% of SNAP (food stamp) recipients are working Americans.

This dismissive ignorance is nothing new for Grothman. His low IQ ramblings earned him a spot on the John Oliver list of “people who somehow get elected.”

Explaining his opposition to equal pay for women, Grothman said,

“You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job — maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday — may be a little more money-conscious.”

Glenn also conflated pro-choice with hostility to men. (Note ‘gals’ just in case you missed that Grothman is even older than his years.)

“I know a lot of gals who are having kids out of wedlock, and I love them. I’ve been outside abortion clinics and I’ve encouraged them. Our country is not going to survive if we continue this war on men.”

And he ‘knows’ that Planned Parenthood is racist.

“Given the racist background of Planned Parenthood and not liking people who are not white, I wonder if one of the reasons Planned Parenthood likes to do these sex-selective abortions is (they) disproportionately are done on people of an Asian background."

Loud-mouthed camera hogs like Marjorie Taylor Greene get the national attention. But beneath the headline maniacs are an army of quieter nutters who everyday inflict their antiquated racist lunacy on the local population.

And America has discovered that what was once considered the lunatic fringe is now mainstream Republicanism.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/9/2245589/-GOP-Rep-blames-Angela-Davis-Cape-Malay-BLM-and-feminism-for-the-breakdown-of-the-family?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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