Cargo cults won’t revive the economy

My friend Martine’s sister had a miscarriage a few decades ago.  When she returned to work, desolate over her loss, her boss grilled her to make sure that she hadn’t had an abortion. 

This is what the Republican contenders want to return us to?

Or maybe they don’t want women to earn paychecks at all, to send us back to the kinder, küche, kirche, which I loosely translate to “barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.”  Is the Republican party a cargo cult?

After World War II, Rosie the Riveter gave up her job and returned to raising her family.  She succeeded at that as well, bearing so many children that we experienced the baby boom.   Pent-up demand and the introduction of so many tiny new mouths turbocharged the economy.  The US prospered, particularly  white male heads of  nuclear families. 

The term cargo cult is now considered derogatory.  It describes stone age people who observed the riches that arrived in cargo to the occupiers of their lands, particularly in the South Pacific.  When the occupiers—the military or the colonists—left their land, the cargo stopped.  

These people had no experience of modern economies, of how goods are produced and distributed.  All they knew was that they wanted the modern riches back.

So they reproduced what they saw the occupiers do.  They gave orders into disconnected telephones.  They fashioned telegraph wires out of vines.  They built life-size airports out of straw.  They hoped that if they acted like the Europeans and Japanese, they’d bring the cargo back.

People who behave like this are called a cargo cult.  In a pre-literate society, it’s understandable.

On the other hand, educated men should know better.  “The US economy thrived in the 1950s.  Women couldn’t control their fertility in the 50s.  If we could only put the genie back in the bottle and send women back to the kitchen, the prosperity will return.” 

“It’ll be especially good for us, since women will be too busy with children to compete with us for jobs.”

(They may be thinking that women won’t be able to compete for public office, either.)

Educated women and men who recognize post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies need to stand together and say, “We won’t vote for people who think that turning the clock back will revive the economy. Literate and capable workers and voters, including the ones with uteruses like Martine's sister, will.”