How did we get a president who advocates injecting disinfectant? 'Mrs. America' offers an answer.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Tue Apr 28, 2020, 10:08 AM - Edit history (1)

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How did we get a president who advocates injecting disinfectant? ‘Mrs. America’ offers an answer.

By Max Boot
Columnist
April 27, 2020 at 3:03 p.m. EDT

How did the United States come to have a president who thinks that windmill noise causes cancer, that global warming is a Chinese hoax and that mainlining disinfectant might be an effective remedy against the coronavirus?

In searching for the origins of our current madness, you can start by watching the historically accurate drama “Mrs. America” streaming on Hulu. It tells the story of the 1970s battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that pitted feminists such as Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale), Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) and Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba) against a woman named Phyllis Schlafly who would become the godmother of modern conservatism. Schlafly, who is portrayed with icy hauteur by the sublime Cate Blanchett, was a walking paradox: This champion of “homemakers” was herself a liberated woman who devoted most of her energy to political activism, not to looking after her husband and six children.

Schlafly’s victory over the ERA, an innocuous constitutional amendment guaranteeing men and women equal treatment under the law, was highly improbable. Before she joined the fight, it enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support, including from President Richard Nixon. She prevented ratification by launching a culture war in what are now known as the “red states.”

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Max Boot
Max Boot, a Post columnist, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a global affairs analyst for CNN. He is the author of “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam," a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Follow https://twitter.com/MaxBoot

[Arkansas Granny]

1. I would just cringe every time she would thank her husband for

letting her attend an event or meeting.

[MuseRider]

2. It felt like a

sigh of relief when she died yet here we are. Better but not equal under the constitution.

[The Blue Flower]

3. I still hate that woman

nt

[lagomorph777]

4. Phallus Shitfly