Katie Hill, Revenge Porn and the Hypocrisy in US Politcs

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Among the headlines in the US at the moment is the resignation of Katie Hill, an up and coming young Democratic Congresswoman from California. Hill resigned after it became known that she had an affair with one of her campaign workers and nude photos of her, taken without her consent, were published in the media. Hill’s husband, who she is in the process of divorcing, claimed that he was hacked and had nothing to do with leaking the pictures although it appears likely he was looking for some way to discredit his wife. Hill has referred to him as an abusive husband.

Rather share my own views on that I will allow a woman to speak for me, Caroline Reilly writes in the New Statesman , “Sending nudes to someone who turns out to be untrustworthy would be no more a mistake or fault on my part than getting into bed with someone who turns out to be predatory or violent – and implying in any way that it is only perpetuates the culture that allows predators to exploit nude photos by sharing them non-consensually. And as with sex, when people exploit and rob someone of their consent by disseminating their nude photos, it’s a crime. What Hill’s ex is doing to her is sexual violence. When rabid, uptight congressmen froth at the mouth over the possession of even more photographs of her, they are revealing themselves to be sexual predators and they should be treated in accordance.” 

Driven from politics by revenge porn Source:LGBTQNation

Let’s reflect for a second on the impeachment process working through the US body politic. We have a president in the White House who is clearly a degenerate and sexual deviant. He has boasted about how, as a wealthy individual and celebrity he can sexually abuse women with impunity. He is a misogynist and a racist, of this there can be no doubt. Who would have thought we would have a president of the United States endorsed by the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and various fascist and white supremacist organizations? This is not enough to impeach Trump, a process the US ruling class and politicians in both parties would rather avoid.

Instead, the one and only reason the impeachment process has begun at all is because Trump allegedly pressured a leader of a foreign state to investigate a political opponent whose own credibility when it comes to corruption and political impropriety is highly suspect.  When Trump pointed his figure at the Reuters reporter and said that,  “Biden and his son are stone cold crooked, and you know it………and so do we…” it will strike a tone with many American people because it is what they perceive US politics to be, mistaking class allegiance on the part of the representatives of both parities for character flaws and corruption in the criminal sense.

It is a testament to the inherent racist and sexist nature of US capitalism that this serial sexual abuser is still in office. And what sort of party is it that has not expelled him? It shows how deep the far right, and the Christian right in particular has embedded itself in the Republican morass.

Hill has publicly admitted that her relationship with a staffer was “inappropriate” but attacked the “double standard” when it comes to sexuality: “We have men credibly accused of sexual assault who are in boardrooms, in the supreme court, in this very body and, worst of all, in the Oval Office”, she said this week as she placed her final vote to begin impeachment proceedings before resigning.

What does it say about the attitude of the body politic or both parties to women’s rights?  One can be a racist and a sexist and still be president of the USA but don’t ask foreigners to help you defeat a political opponent at home. What is it like to be a Latino or immigrant form Mexico or Central America here in the US? Trump has emboldened the most backward sections of US society. They have always been there, he has just given them confidence to come in to the open. This is not necessarily a bad thing; let us all see them.

All the palaver about how great our political system is and how free we all are in the US compared to the rest of the world. “Make America Great Again” says Trump, parroted by his supporters ad nauseum. We all know what that means, undo and roll back all the gains working class people, women, people of color, immigrants, organized labor have made over the decades.

This does not mean there aren’t some genuine and courageous figures that have entered politics, many of them seeing no alternative but the Democratic Party. Ilhan Omar, the Somali representative from Minnesota is one. She has been savagely attacked by Trump and his supporters, accused of hating America and being a terrorist and supporter of the terrorist attacks on 911. I faced some minor instances of this myself. It seems democrat rights for some are OK as long as one doesn’t challenge their myopic view of the world. What normal person would not be impressed with Omar’s questioning of the killer Elliot Abrams, Donald Trump’s envoy to Venezuela with regard to his role in El Salvador and US support for fascist death squads.

The US ruling class as a whole does not want to impeach Trump as it further undermines the aura of almost divine guidance constructed around their so-called democracy. My guess is that that other Wall Street party will try to prolong the process in the hope the electoral process will work better this time as long as they can get enough dirt on Trump. The Wall Street Journal makes it clear, “Impeachment is never something to be celebrated. It risks doing grave damage to public confidence in government and worsening America’s already polarized politics. An election that cast Trump from office would be the soundest and most enduring rebuke to this presidency.”
The more sober bourgeois are wary of damaging their precious bourgeois democracy further in the eyes of the US working class. Some 100 million boycotted the process in 2016. No party seriously appeals to this bloc.

The pathetic whining of the Democratic Party power says nothing in the face of this crisis for fearing of stoking the anger that exists beneath the surface of US society; the problem with Trump and some sections of the US ruling class is that they are moving too far too fast and are overconfident. This party can in no way shape or form be described as an opposition.

We are living in volatile times and we are witnessing a global resistance to the violence of the market and capitalism. How quickly movements can arise. Ecuador, Lebanon, Chile, Hong Kong, and in the Amazon basin as indigenous people confront capitalism’s destruction of the rain forest and their culture. Millions of young people are leading the fight against the catastrophe of climate change. In terms of time frame, these movements seemed to have arisen out of nowhere. The endless wars, hunger, environmental catastrophe, this is what capitalism offers for the future. As a mural in Derry Northern Ireland where I visited last week points out, “Only when the last tree has died and the last fish been caught and the last river been poisoned will we realize we can’t eat money.”

I know next to nothing about Katie Hill except that I applaud her courage and the tenacity she has shown in the face of a violent assault on her as a woman in the patriarchal quagmire of US politics. She ended her speech saying, with regard to the struggle of women for social equality, “We will not stand down. We will not be broken. We will not be silenced. We will rise, and we will make tomorrow better than today. Thank you, and I will yield the balance of my time – for now but not forever.”

There is much to be positive about.