On the twenty-first day of January in the year of our Lord, two-thousand and seventeen, an event was held in Washington D.C. called the "Women's March." I could have formatted that as 1.21.17, but instead I used a common literary device called a periphrasis. It's the intentional use of excessive wording in order to focus the reader's attention. The date will be very important as we move forward. Hold on to it.
As you'd expect, your standard celebrity activists were present and accounted for. People loved for their ability to sing and dance were given a microphone and a platform to reach the masses. The gods and goddesses of our celebrity worship culture had a sermon to deliver, and without any discernment, the congregation absorbed the revelation.
Enter Madonna. The 58-year-old college drop-out felt she needed to educate the masses with her eloquent rhetoric as if anyone should listen to her simply because she's a hell of a choreographer. She then proceeded to have a 5-minute temper-tantrum that would be heralded in the days to come. A speech that started with the words; "Welcome to the revolution of love." ended with the performer reading the following words from her pre-written speech; "Yes, I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House, but I know that this won't change anything." So did anyone catch that? From love to explosives in under 5 minutes. I'm not sure I've seen a thought-train go that far off the rails so quickly (assuming there were ever rails to begin with). The minutes in between could have adequately been categorized as random and idiotic as if it were written by an elementary student with a cursory knowledge of adult life and a mild case of Tourette's. Here's a woman that's earned over 1.3 billion dollars in concert performances alone admitting that she's given thought to blowing up the home of the sitting US president. I can only imagine the suffering she's had to endure to develop this extremist ideology. It must have been brutal to have lived a full night under the iron first of the Trump regime and it's radical legislation to restrict women everywhere, but this march wasn't simply about women's rights. As I ventured further down the YouTube rabbit hole I ran across Ashley Judd's rant. It turns out that Trump's tenure has also destroyed the African-American populous. Unlike Madonna, Judd holds a prestigious degree in French from the University of Kentucky, which makes her exponentially more qualified to teach us all the correct way to interpret the world in which we live. Less than a minute into her well-informed (and seemingly unscripted) lecture she told the world that "Blacks are still in shackles and graves just for being black. Slavery has been re-interpreted as the prison system in front of people that see melanin as animal skin." For several minutes she went on about unequal wages for women in Hollywood, which then reminded me that she was once in a movie, and wasn't just there because she had a famous mother. Needless to say, I was thankful when it ended, and intrigued to see that the next speaker was David Bowie, especially considering his death the year before. It didn't take long to realize that it was just Scarlett Johansson, which was a relief since I didn't understand why a digital likeness of David Bowie was talking about his period. I couldn't stand too much of her speech since it was all about the massive defunding of Planned Parenthood under the Trump administration, and how that negatively impacted the lives of every woman alive. It's said that resolve is like steel that can only be forged under the heat and pressure of tyranny. Trump's reign of terror has unleashed the resolve of Hollywood and it's army of faithful soldiers. His political weaponry has been used to enslave minorities for far too long, and these women, all wealthy and famous, came together to demonstrate the collective steel of hyper-feminism. Now let's consider the periphrasis again, and mix in some obvious data. January 21st was the first full day that Donald Trump was the president of the United States. If there has been oppression of women, it has nothing to do with him. I feel ridiculous even pointing it out. Donald Trump, good or bad, has had no impact on anyone's life unless they were a contestant on The Apprentice. Nothing he's done as of January 23rd, 2017 could have affected wage inequality, prison demographics, or anything else worthy of a march. In the weeks and months to come he might get bored, watch Top Gun with Pence, and then try to fly Air Force One inverted over a passenger plane just so he can tweet out a pic of him giving it the finger, but as of now the most horrific thing he's done was have 3 Doors Down play at his inauguration. So why are the famous women of Hollywood uniting now? Did all this horrific oppression evolve in the 24 hours since Trump's inauguration? If it's been an ongoing problem then why didn't anyone march before? If Hillary had won, would there have been less of a specific minority incarcerated for crime? These questions are rhetorical of course, but they're all things people need to stop and ask before organizing a demonstration complete with pink toboggans. It's called critical thinking, and it's a dying skill set. I'll have more to say about getting your worldview from the court jester, but for now just focus on the timeline.
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