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Welcome to the Matriarchy — Brought to you by Hera — Nicole Sallak Anderson
There’s been a shift in the framing of society’s ills. I’m sure it’s been going on for at least a decade, but since the pandemic, this change of public discourse has become more obvious. For a few years now, I’ve sensed something is different in the way the news and media reports the state of the world, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. As I was driving across the United States from California to Chicago a few weeks ago, it dawned on me what this change was-we’ve gone from accusation to blame. No longer are issues framed as the good guy vs. the bad guy, rather now the discourse is focused on the victim-various groups of people in need of retribution from a more nebulous foe. In the past, we’d name that foe with clarity: Muslims, Nazis, the Axis of Evil, rock-and-roll, drugs. The focus was on the bad people or influences, and how to eradicate them. Those of us against the bad guy were obviously good. It was basic and made organizing forces against the perceived evil quite simple. There is a bad guy, like Osama Bin Laden, and we bomb him. Or we label cigarettes with a warning about their dangers or rap music with Explicit Lyrics.
Nowadays, the message is one of shame and blame. You are the victim of some wrong, you can’t help it, and as a result, some sort of societal benefit has been withheld from you. This framing…
