[Xmca-l] Re: I just think it's great, more than great,

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Um... I was not celebrating Hillary per se. I was celebrating that a woman has been nominated to a major party. I was celebrating a society that is finally accepting the possibility of a woman to an elected office of power, the highest in the land.


Is the actual candidate problematic? Of course she is, just for being a woman. Can we ever expect any candidate to be scott-free of problems? If that person is human, there will always some fault and there will always be someone finding fault, whether these faults are true or not.


How's that for an epistemology?


Are there problems with the entire political system? Sure! Are there problems with a 2-party government? Absolutely.


I maintain a resistance to cynicism though. If we want a better system we have to work for it. Overturning Citizens United and making it an amendment is a great goal. So would an equal rights amendment. I'm willing to work so those possibilities become realities! Would you?


Once those are in place, it would remain for us to see if the system would change into something more equitable. It wouldn't be up to any individual president. It would be up to us.


What happens in Haiti though is difficult for me to comment, even if it is theoretical. Do the people in Haiti deserve equality and liberty? Of course they do. But that's about the extent of what I could say.


I'm not really understanding what it means to say "the emphasis of the body as a sight [sic] for representing alternative discourse is absurd." It's sort of all we have, at the moment, are bodies, and these bodies have discourses between and among one another. These bodies are not perfect entity-beings, nor do they make perfect discourses. We must accept them as we find them. And we must nourish them and be kind to them.


Unless one identifies without having a body, I suppose.


In that case, I'm not sure what a site of discourse would be without a body. Kind of like is there a sound if no one is present to hear the tree fall in the forest? Like That?


Actually you make me laugh, Paul, to equate all people seeking electoral power to make change as being identical to being white men. Could that be a little fascist to say that? Because aren't you really saying that only white men can have power? You don't believe that, do you?


It may very well be that the culture of power is the culture of white men, but I don't think that it's that way essentially. Just because it has been that way doesn't mean it will remain that way.


Also, Hillary wears pantsuits, by the way. Is the pantsuit an emblem of power? Not sure about that. I find it funny that a pantsuit is even called a pantsuit. If that's the case, then all men wear pantsuits too! :) I would not mind to see any elected official no matter the gender, in a dress.


suit + man = man in a suit


suit + woman = woman in a pantsuit.


strange.


What I wonder is whether there is some confusion of association when considering the culture of power, the culture of fashion, and the culture of race. I don't believe they can be necessarily extricated like an onion, mustard, and pickle from my sandwich. Still, while they do seem to appear in the same dialogue-sandwich, they are not one and the same.


I want to see, if this candidate is elected, if she ends up being truly neoliberal. If she is, then her acceptance speech is chock full of many false promises and even lies. I still prefer her to the other condiment, I mean, candidate. If she is lying and making empty promises, then I would feel compelled to use the democratic process to fight her. The struggle continues, as Bernie says.


Unfortunately as is the case with all candidates, they can only offer to scrutiny their previous histories of what they have done in office, along with what they SAY they will do in office.


As far as being a hawk, it might be because she was a NY senator during 9/11. I think it would be easy for anyone to be a hawk in that scenario. It's odd that you say she is misogynist, but OK. I haven't seen it.


Calling people names without considering a person's history seems shallow. If you ask me.


I'm going to give her a chance, because she has done a lot for women and for children, not just in the US but in the world.


"Human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights."


Even to make that statement is a worthy incantation for what it would materialize on this plane of reality. It's an utterance I don't mind repeated into the future indefinitely, echoing through all forests and past all mountains and across all seas, every city, every town, everywhere there are human bodies.


Is it possible that if human rights were women's rights, and vice versa, that this would exclude men? Perhaps that is naive of me to think that it wouldn't. But I can't see how it would be. I'd like to think that accommodating for women would immediately mean accommodating for men as well. I'd be willing to reflect upon that, if only because, as historical fact, a declaration that all men are created equal hasn't immediately meant that women were included in the equation, and then again, all men did not mean all. In fact, how it landed: votes from black men were counted before white women's vote were counted.


So there's that.


It's great to have a democracy where we can all speak so candidly!


It's amazing. I love it. :)


Kind regards,


Annalisa