Pat Taub
GUEST POST By LISA SAVAGE
In the type of bloated, belligerent rhetoric that is his brand, 47 called a group of six Democratic Party congressmen and women out for “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Their offense: making a video aimed at active-duty military personnel urging them to disobey unlawful orders.
The six Democratic Congress people who filmed a video advising members of the military not to follow illegal orders
Presumably this is in response to 47’s deployment of National Guard troops to various cities, supposedly to quell insurrections there, but really to fan the flames of a red-blue civil war his donors are hoping we’ll have instead of the revolution we need.
Among the hundreds of National Guard troops deployed to Chicago in October
Inflammatory claims and threats are also good distractions from a) the U.S. assuming responsibility for the violent occupation of Gaza; b) the U.S. waging undeclared war on Venezuela; c) the devastating revelations expected in a release of more Epstein files; or d) all of the above.
But the real problem with the video that triggered him is the elevation of a group who reporter Ken Klippenstein calls “the National Security moms.”
Fueling the National Security Moms’ wave, is this book by a former national security advisor
Those of us who cling to feminist values such as a reverence for life and the systems that sustain it had already noted the perversion of women in government where only those who are veterans of the military, the CIA, or the FBI need apply. The Democrats in particular have pursued this strategy, but many notable warmongering women of recent years have been Republicans: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice being one of the old guard plus the current crop of Mar-a-Lago faces like Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Those of us who value and respect women’s crucial role in society are only mildly surprised at news that 40% of young women in the U.S. currently would prefer to emigrate and live somewhere else (Gallup poll, November 13, 2025). They’ve grown up amid the chief executive bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, pictures of him salivating over young teenagers, and recently calling a female journalist “Piggy” because she questioned him about Epstein.
But seeing women who dedicate their careers to serving imperial forces as the solution is deeply misguided. And using such collaborators to pinkwash the ugly face of U.S. aggression is deeply cynical.
Mikie Sherrill, former Navy helicopter pilot, recently elected governor of New Jersey
Maybe it’s just us grandmothers who remember that children, especially girls, and women suffer the most in any war. The majority of deaths in recent wars are among this group. It is women who labor to feed children with dwindling supplies under embargo in Gaza, and it is women and girls who are raped en masse in Sudan as a tactic to terrorize the civilian population.
A mother in Gaza and her young children enduring one of their countless displacements in the ongoing genocide.
Forget about being guided by National Security moms. They are not leaders, they are followers, trying to claw their way to the top of a vicious, misogynistic hierarchy. Cooperation and collaboration are the very basis of human development. Women have been cooperating to nurture the next generations for millennia, long before the recorded history of men and their wars.
It figures that the modern PR machine for the highly militarized and rapacious U.S. empire would try to coopt moms. Don’t let them.
Lisa Savage is a retired teacher, who continues post-retirement, to engage in organizing around pushing back on genocide and militarism. She blogs at: went2thebridge.substack.com
