If you want to learn just how infantile feminist politics at the dawn of the 21st century have come, you can do no better than to read a CNN story headlined “Congressional Sisterhood Is a Powerful Voice for the Voiceless.”
I’ll quote at some length to give you the flavor:
The women talked about it at the gym, caring for their children, over drinks and dinner and in the hallways of Congress.
More than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls were gone, kidnapped from their beds by an armed terrorist group, Boko Haram, who vowed to sell them into forced child marriages — all because the young women had dared to seek an education.
So, just a few days before Mother's Day, every single woman lawmaker in Congress signed letters urging President Barack Obama to push the U.N. Security Council to add Boko Haram to the al Qaeda Sanctions List.
It was a move Rep. Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican, said would send "a strong message to the administration and the U.N."
The sanctions would require all member nations to freeze the assets of those affiliated with Boko Haram, an Islamic militant group, and prevent travel through their borders.
"We are mothers, sisters and daughters and we were all feeling helpless and wanted to do something," said Rep. Ann Kuster, a New Hampshire Democrat.
Feeling helpless and wanting to do something are what passes for actually doing something nowadays. And here’s something else the mothers, sisters, and daughters should ponder: there is no shortage of people speaking out for the abducted girls. Sisters, the abducted girls don't need more “voices.” They need a rescue.
Everybody wants to get into the powerful voice act. Ditto lots of pathetic hashtags that show how we in the west think that feeling all the nice sentiments is what counts. Meanwhile, things aren't quite as copacetic in the jungles of Nigeria.
Cushioned in their gyms, over drinks and at dinner, or in the hallways of Congress, the sisterhood concentrates on how they are feeling and their noble sentiments (wanting to do something).
What would be better is if the “sisterhood” could wake up and realize that the “war on women” is not about whether Jesuits can be browbeaten into paying for contraception that already is inexpensive to make a point. The real war against women isn’t in the United States, Sisterhood. Maybe the Capitol Hill Sisterhood can do some research and learn that Boko Haram is likely far more vicious and far more inimical to civilization than they imagine over their drinks and workouts in a (no doubt taxpayer supported) gym.
“A strong message to the administration and the U.N.” is not going to do it. Give me a break.
Nobody is proposing going to war with Boko Haram. (I have to say this before POTUS claims that conservatives want "boots on the ground.") There may be little we can do. But let's do whatever we can and shut up already.
As for the Sisterhood's bold initiative to sanction those doing business with an Islamic terrorist group, one might regard it as too little too late. One might also wonder if Boko Haram will be even marginally affected by such sanctions. Not that I am against such sanctions. They’re the least we can do—and I mean that: it's the very least we can do.