Hot Flashes
in a Cold Political Climate
There’s something surreal about hitting menopause at the same moment the world seems determined to rewind the clock.
Your body is shifting. Hormones that once ran the show are stepping back. The heat rises without warning. Sleep comes in fragments. One day you’re crying over something small. The next day you’re so furious you could chew nails.
And outside your front door, the same thing seems to be happening to society.
Not the hormonal part. The regression.
History has a rhythm to it. People love to say history rhymes. I’m not sure it does. It’s closer to a drumbeat. A steady, maddening pulse where humanity claws its way forward for a generation or two, drags itself out of the mud, expands the circle of who counts as fully human… & then the backlash begins.
Not quietly, either.
It arrives loud & sanctimonious, usually with a Bible in one hand & a donor list in the other.
The Men Who Promise Heaven
There is a special kind of arrogance in men who believe they have been personally deputized by God to rule everyone else.
You’ve seen them.
The televangelist grifters.
The politicians who quote scripture while stripping rights away from women, queer people, immigrants, & anyone who doesn’t look like them.
The pastors who preach obedience to earthly authority while collecting private jet money from congregations barely scraping rent.
They cloak themselves in righteousness while doing the most earthly thing imaginable: hoarding power.
Religion has always had two faces.
One is the quiet neighbor bringing food to someone sick. The volunteer running a shelter. The person who believes love & compassion are the point.
The other is the institution. The hierarchy. The gatekeepers.
The ones who tell you only their interpretation counts. Only their sect gets salvation. Only their version of God is real.
Whether it’s the claim that only 144,000 will enter heaven, or that unbelievers deserve punishment, or that women must submit & stay silent, the pattern is the same across traditions.
Control the story.
Control the bodies.
Control the future.
And when religion merges with political power, the result is rarely mercy.
It’s domination.
The Old Lie About “Small Government”
American conservatives have perfected a trick so simple it would be funny if it hadn’t cost so many lives.
They campaign on the idea of “small govt”
Less bureaucracy. Less interference. More freedom.
But the reality looks nothing like that.
The same politicians who rail against government spending are perfectly happy to pour trillions into war.
They’ll slash education budgets & then funnel billions into weapons contracts.
They’ll dismantle healthcare systems & then wonder aloud why mental health crises & addiction explode across the country.
They talk about personal responsibility while engineering structural collapse.
And the people who pay the price are almost always the same.
Young people raised in underfunded schools.
Working class kids told the military is their best shot at college & healthcare.
Teenagers promised opportunity who instead inherit lifelong trauma, physical injuries, & debt.
They come home from wars that never needed to happen, to an economy that has no place for them.
To housing markets that have priced them out.
To healthcare systems that treat therapy like a luxury item.
To a culture that thanks them for their service but quietly leaves them to drown.
It’s a pipeline.
Underfund the schools.
Glorify the military.
Promise benefits later.
Deliver austerity instead.
The Grindstone Economy
Meanwhile the rest of the country is pushed into the same machinery.
Work more hours.
Produce more profit.
Hustle harder.
Monetize your hobbies. Monetize your art. Monetize your joy.
Every piece of human creativity becomes a potential side hustle in the late stage capitalist machine.
Leisure becomes laziness.
Rest becomes failure.
And the same people preaching moral virtue are often the ones profiting from the grind.
Because a tired population doesn’t organize very well.
A population drowning in debt doesn’t strike.
A population convinced their suffering is a personal failing won’t question the system.
Menopause as a Kind of Clarity
There’s a strange gift hidden inside menopause.
The loss of patience.
When estrogen dips, so does the lifelong conditioning that told many women to keep the peace.
To be agreeable.
To smooth over conflict.
Suddenly the bullshit becomes visible in high definition.
The hypocrisy.
The grift.
The smug certainty of men who have never once had their autonomy questioned.
It becomes harder to stay quiet when you realize how many of these cycles have played out before.
Civil rights expanded. Then rolled back.
Labor rights won. Then gutted.
Reproductive freedom secured. Then dismantled.
Every generation seems to rediscover the same lesson: progress isn’t permanent.
It has to be defended again & again.
The Real Question
What exhausts people isn’t just the injustice.
It’s the repetition.
The feeling that humanity keeps making the same bad choices, handing power to the same types of leaders, believing the same empty promises.
How many times can a society fall for the myth that cruelty equals strength?
How many times will voters believe that austerity for the poor somehow creates prosperity for everyone?
How many times will religion be weaponized to justify domination instead of compassion?
The drumbeat continues.
Forward.
Back.
Forward again.
But history isn’t predetermined.
Cycles only repeat when enough people allow them to.
And sometimes the clearest voices pushing back come from people who have lived long enough to recognize the pattern.
People who have already seen what happens when power hides behind scripture, patriotism, or promises of order.
People who know exactly how fragile democracy can be.
Menopause may be a personal transition.
But it arrives with a kind of historical perspective.
You’ve lived long enough to know the tricks.
You’ve seen the mask slip before.
And once you see it, it becomes a lot harder to pretend the cycle is inevitable.
Today’s Assignment: Resist. Somehow. Someway. Somehow. Use your voice & push back.
~AK