The “culture war” is work avoidance. It keeps our attention away from the reality that our democracy is weakening when people in elected office follow guidance of the billionaires and not the best interest of their constituents. Instead of addressing this difficult challenge, there is hyperbole about the natural tension between moving forward as a pluralistic society and preserving our traditions. These tensions will always exist. Politicians who use the culture war to fire up their conservative base are doing a disservice to the USA.

Pussy Grabs Back

Human beings suffer.

They torture one another.

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that the farther shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,

The utter self-revealing

Double-take of feeling,

If there’s fire on the mountain

And lightening and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

It means once in a lifetime

That justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

• Seamus Heaney

“You were drinking. You were drinking. What did you expect?”

…you need to make your move now. You need to stand alongside survivors and you need to be allies in public. I know it is easy to be cynical. I know. But I’m optimistic because campaigns, like the one from UCLA, are shifting the conversation away from what women can do to prevent their rapes and onto the behaviors of the potential rapists.

Zerlina Maxwell