American Mujahideen

Kabul has fallen. Ashraf Ghani has fled Afghanistan. The Afghan army, recruited and trained by America to defend the government it installed and supported, has crumpled like a cheap suit. It didn't fit the country. Burkas are the new must-have fashion.

Meanwhile, as the Taliban demands that Afghan women be masked, in America our political extremists insist that they not be. Not women or children or men. As we are all too painfully aware, the masks that our freedom fighters decry are the ones that save lives. 

As to keeping women in their place, American zealots have other methods for that: don't let them have control over their reproductive choices; don't give them child-care assistance; don't give them equal pay. "Keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" wouldn't be far off the mark as the rallying cry for the American Mujahideen.

Zealots. Is that too strong a word? Aren't they just standing up for what they believe in? Isn't that the American way?

I suppose so. But what they believe in is white-male-paternalism. Not that different, really, than the theocracy of Afghanistan, Iran and many other parts of the world. It masquerades as religion, but what it is really about is men. Men controlling other men, certainly, but most of all men controlling women. If you control the womb, you control the future.

Donald Trump built a big following by stoking fear that Mexico was sending us its criminals and rapists. They're coming for our wives and daughters. They must be met with unmerciful force. Our future as a purebred race is at stake. Sound familiar? It worked for a guy in Germany eighty five years ago.

The quest for religious purity driving the Taliban is no different than our quest for ideological purity in American politics. And it has the same root. Fear of the other. Fear he will rape our women.

The refusenik politics of today is not about libertarianism or religious freedom, it is about keeping women in their place. It is the desperate and terrifying death rattle of the dying hegemony of the patriarchy.

Testosterone and hatred combine to create a powerful stimulant, though. Those on it (including the women who, for whatever reason, follow men there) are hard to stop. Perhaps it is they, not the women who unselfishly give their bodies and lives to the next generation, who need to be kept under wraps.