"The Bitches are Coming!"

Who will lead the next American revolution?  Will it be cell phone-wielding youth, calling their Facebook friends to arms?   As their college tuition bills grow and their job prospects shrink, there should be more than enough fuel to light that fire.  Or maybe it will be their high school buddies who decided to “Be all they could be,” but came back home with traumatic brain injuries, PTSD or absent a limb or two.

Compulsory military service in a pointless war politicized my generation.  But with no draft, I don’t expect to see a revival of the popular bumper sticker, Question Authority, any time soon.    Instead of worrying about being killed in an inhospitable desert far from home, the young dream of making a killing on Wall Street.

Perhaps the revolution will be led by card-carrying union members – you know – those radical socialists who teach our children, issue our marriage licenses, put out fires and keep our streets safe.  Don’t you just love how that phrase – card-carrying – sounds so subversive when you apply it to people who belong to the ACLU or a trade union?  How come it doesn’t have the same bite when I call someone a “Platinum American Express Card-carrying Republican?”

Maybe the Boomers will comb some Grecian Formula through their hair and get up off the couch when the Republicans take away their Medicare and Social Security.  Lots of Boomers are under 55.  They won’t benefit from the GOP’s transparent attempt to avoid a senior voter revolt by promising that nothing will change if you’re 55 or older.

In my fantasy, the next revolution will be testosterone-free.   The Republicans will go too far, as they always do, in interpreting their “mandate.”  They’ll cut Planned Parenthood and Women’s Business Centers and the Women/Infant/Child (WIC) nutrition program.  They’ll keep hacking away at collective bargaining rights for public service workers and teachers (mainly women).   The Supreme Court will throw out a few more pay discrimination cases like Lily Leadbetter and the Walmart class action lawsuit.

And one day, women who are tired of making 78 cents on the male dollar, tired of doing the majority of the child care and housework, tired of seeing their children killed in senseless wars and their tax dollars  spent on corporate welfare instead of better schools will say enough!  The crones and bitches (among whom I proudly count myself) who have lived long enough to recognize that being well-behaved gets you nowhere, will  drop their toilet brushes and raise their voices and say: Enough!

And perhaps a young man named Paul will take out his smart phone and tweet:  The Bitches are Coming! The Bitches are Coming!