Educating Sis, Hating For Hatred's Sake

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY BIG SISTER always go well, except for the one time she copped an attitude, I told her where to go, and she went. Actually she only slammed the phone down, which I trust did not involve the smart phone smashing into the deaf and dumb floor tyles. That would have truncated our communication, at least for a few hours. Later I called back and we exchanged apologoies. She likes to talk about what she and hubby had for lunch, and what they sang in church: I prefer to delve straight into politics. She feigns interest, but says she really doesn't give a rat's behind about fulfilling her obligation to help govern the country by remaining fully informed about current events, that she relies on me to do it for her, but she says, flatteringly if insincerely, that she enjoys my "educating" her. (I try). When I mentioned that Trump's monstrous lie has precipitaed a new genre of hate speech, that words have consequences by precipitating action, and that Nancy Pelosi was fortunate to have not been home, sis sliiped a bit, verbally and morally, and retorted that she was almost sorry she wasn't. That set me off, an dwe weer poised to go 'round and 'round, but I deferred. There'll be time for that later, after I cool down a mite. Lovingly, gently, respectfully I inted to tell sister that nobody who has ecver expressed hatred for Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton has ever given a substantive reason for "hatin' on 'em", but only the standard, tired insults perhaps intended as a bromide: "she's a bitch". I will submit to my sister that she cannot name a single public affairs position or opinion, ar a single legislative agenda item either alleged bitch has ever proposed or supported which justifiably engenders hatred of them. Nor nary a parking ticket nor overdue library book on either gentlewoman's record. The people who hate Hillary and Nancy are expressing, perhpas unwittingly, nothing but sheer mysogyny. Don't like they way they look, don't like the way they talk. Don't like strong, mouthy women who don't "know their place", and have the audacity to seek and gain political power over men. Standard conservative stuff. This I did mention to sis, and she immediately embraced the notion. Actually, she straight up said that she, (my sister) simply does not like women, and considers them much less nice than men (an opinion she inherited from our mutual mother which, arguably, contains at least a kernel of validity, if nothing more defensible.) Maybe men are by nature more gentel than women in public affairs, maybe not. It matter not. AS bertolt Brecht succinctly wrote in a poem: "I make friends with people. And I wear a derby on my head as others do. I say: 'They are strangely stinking animals'. And I say; 'No matter, I am too'". And that, as we say, just about says it all.