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<td>2024-11-21</td>
<td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td>
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# Thoughts on the American Election
I've been waiting to write about the recent U.S. election. I've generally avoided writing about politics on this blog, other than [my own pet causes](../Blog/2024-05-30%20Individualism%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Not%20Caring.md), with the reason being that modern politics is such a shit-show, I lose my mind concerning myself with it. It's just not good for my mental health. So while I did once [write about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump](../Blog/2024-07-14%20Mulling%20Over%20a%20Failed%20Assassination.md), I've resisted writing about much else in that arena.
As I wrote in that post, it's not actually a Trump presidency that worries me, but the *reaction* to it. After he won in the Nov 2016 election, the entire world seemed to lose its goddamn mind. Public conversation exploded with accusations of racism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, and all the <u>Really Bad Things™</u>. It instigated the inversion of the political spectrum, where the left was now wanting to [segregate society by race](https://nationalpost.com/opinion/black-only-race-segregation-on-canadian-universities), and were [destroying small business ventures](https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/what-is-parler-and-why-has-it-been-pulled-offline-idUSKBN29H2EA/) in favour of multinational conglomerates. They tried to prohibit elements of society from existence by ostracising anyone who votes incorrectly, and any [small facial expression](https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/22/covington-catholic-analyzing-video-incident-indigenous-peoples-march/2644511002/), [hand gesture](https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/) or [awkwardly told joke](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5738391/PROFESSOR-RICHARD-NED-LEBOW-innocent-joke-lingerie-insidious-culture-censorship.html) would be sufficient to have a person fired and excommunicated from all social circles.
[Movies](2024-06-12%20VHS%20Directors%20Cuts%20and%20Digital%20Fig%20Leaves.md) and [books](../Blog/2024-05-26%20The%20Cycles%20of%20Censorship%20in%20Comics.md) were deemed unsuitable for consumption and either edited or removed from circulation, and the people who enjoyed them were castigated as misogynists or racists.
The most damning is the recent antisemitic activity coming from young leftists, demonstrating on University campuses and marching in the streets. This activity was previously the domain of the alt-right and *actual* Nazis. Here you had, on the one hand, publications castigating anything they can as far-right, [including health and fitness](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma), and on the other hand, left-wing demonstrations espousing antisemitism and [actively excluding Jews from University campuses](https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/21/us/columbia-university-jewish-students-protests/index.html), and [attacking them in public](https://time.com/7176312/jewish-identity-symbols-antisemitism/).
This behaviour gets excused because of the actions of the Israeli government. Ignoring for now, whether or not Israel is justified in its actions (that argument is beyond the scope of this post), it's very strange to me that the term "Islamophobia" was coined so as to put a name on the bigotry of associating an entire group of people with the actions of a few, in this case Islamist terrorists, but when it comes to Jews, it's perfectly okay to blame *all* people of one religion for the actions of a single government. Not only this, but it's excusable to attack them, harass them, block their entrance to Universities and public buildings, and otherwise make them feel unwanted in their own country and neighbourhoods.
The left has gone full-circle, marching with the same hateful message as white nationalists who only a few short years ago were chanting "Jews will not replace us" in their own demonstrations.
Meanwhile, Republicans, including Donald Trump, were [condemning the actions of white supremacists](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump/) attending the above rally.
>[!quote]
>*"As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America.*
>
>*"And as I have said many times before: No matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws, we all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other, and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry, and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans.*
>
>*"Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."*
>
> — President Donald Trump, [August 14, 2017](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump/)
In 2021 a [Gallup Poll showed that the majority of Republicans support same-sex marriage](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004629612/a-record-number-of-americans-including-republicans-support-same-sex-marriage).
In spite of all the screaming, rioting, crying and carrying on, Republicans, and the Right in general, are *not* the evil people who Democrats claim them to be. And I think what's happened is, as they were learning this, the Left needed to invent new ways to castigate them as evil, and so attempted to change the discourse around things like police brutality and transgender issues. [Police forces around the world now needed to be "defunded"](https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/26/politics/kfile-kamala-harris-praised-defund-the-police-movement-in-june-2020/index.html), and an entire ideology was created around transgender issues. What started with using female pronouns for MTF (male to female) transsexuals out of politeness, and vice-versa, ended with having us believe that:
1. Medical transition is not necessary to be considered trans.
2. Gender is separate from sex. Gender is an identity expression, whereas sex is biology.
3. Gender claims supersede biological sex, to the point where the gender/sex distinction is effectively meaningless. Indeed, we are to accept that transwomen (MTF transpeople), for example, are *literally* women, no matter their biological sex.
4. Anyone who says they are the gender that is opposite to their sex must be afforded every courtesy of sharing changerooms, prisons, shelters (including women's shelters) and participating in sport (including contact sport, professional or amateur) with those whose sex matches their gender, no matter if they've had surgery to change sex or not (see #1 & 3).
5. Children should be transitioned, including medical transition, whenever they claim to be trans.
6. Questioning any of this, wanting a conversation to discuss if these are good ideas, is damnable bigotry, worthy of harassing employers, and ruining lives.
Not only does this all sound completely insane to normal people who don't spend all their time online, it conflicts with many other left wing causes we already must be on board with to avoid cancellation. After all, how can we accept abortion as a woman's issue when men can also get pregnant and have abortions? How can Donald Trump be accused of misogyny for the "grab them by the pussy" comment when men have pussies too? A man exposing his penis to a girl on a playground is sexual harassment, but in a locker room it's fine?
This ideology was foisted upon everyone so suddenly it made my head spin. In 2016 I had just learned what a transwoman was. That is a MTF transperson. Very soon after that I learned that transwomen would like to simply be referred to as women. It helped them blend in and have normal lives like everyone else. I was perfectly fine with this. Everyone was, I think. Nobody really cared about it. I still am fine with it. But because I'm unsure about everything else included in the ideology, I'm a bigot to be excommunicated from the left entirely.
The left was [closing businesses for "cultural appropriation"](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portland-burrito-cart-closes-after-owners-are-accused-of-cultural-appropriation_n_5926ef7ee4b062f96a348181) if non-Latinos were serving burritos, while at the same time attempting to change their entire language because it was gendered. (Who'd have guessed that Latinos despise being called LatinXs?)
Every excuse you could think of was used to accuse people of bigotry. The [definition of racism was even changed](https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/06/11/merriam-webster-is-changing-the-definition-of-racism-to-reflect-systemic-oppression/) so as to be able to accuse more people. Beloved movies and literature were dismissed as racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., and the people who enjoyed watching them, of course, were as well. The TV show [Friends was now transphobic](https://www.them.us/story/friends-is-transphobic), and even [Mary Poppins was accused of wearing blackface](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/movies/mary-poppins-returns-blackface.html) by the New York Times!
In endorsing all of this, the Democratic party has made themselves out to be raving lunatics, screaming at people for imagined crimes against all moral virtue, with normal people giving a **wide berth** and hurring about their business. They've become soapbox Christians screaming to everyone that they're going to hell unless they find Christ—or rather, find intersectional feminism.
I could go on here, but we all lived through it. To come back to the point, this all really started in earnest when Trump was elected the first time. Before that, the craziness was really just a fringe movement, mostly online, and was given no attention. When Trump won, that fringe was able to say "see!? We were right all along!" and have enough people believe them to flip the world upside down, and change political parties of the left forever. What began as an attempt to convince everyone that voting for Trump was not just a political difference of opinion, but a sign of utter moral repugnance, ended with alienating a large portion of the Left, myself included. And I was terribly afraid that if Donald Trump won again in 2024, it would just kick-start this insanity all over again.
I think I was wrong.
There seems now to be a reckoning of sorts. Don't get me wrong: there is also a lot of crying, accusations of bigotry, people threatening to leave the country, and tirades about breaking up families too, but there is also some retrospection happening that I didn't expect. Many on the left now are *finally* admitting that their accelerating craziness the last eight years is what won Donald Trump the presidency.
[Transpeople are blaming the ideology](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt8IQb0ZGB0) for the backlash against trans rights, and are worried that may interfere with their ability to get hormone therapy in the U.S. Those with genuine body-dysphoria, more and more, are asking for trans activists to stop with the madness, because once the general public finally has enough of it, some very hard-won rights will be rescinded, such as medicaid-funded hormone therapy.
Self-ID corresponds to point 1 in my trans ideology list from earlier. Both Brianna Wu and Kelly Cadigan are transwomen.
If the Democrats continue to double-down, screaming about Republicans and the Right in general, being racist, transphobic bigots, calling Trump "literally Hitler," continuing the idea that everyone right of centre is a fascist and other such nonsense, the Right will continue to win in 2028 and beyond. If they can't simply listen, and have a conversation like normal people, then they will continue losing ground, and things like the [Capitol restroom controversy](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johnson-says-supports-banning-transgender-women-using-fem-rcna181016) will continue. Proposed changes to better accommodate people will only ever be seen as more Left-wing ideological insanity to be ignored. There are sane solutions to all of the issues I've pointed to here, including the conflict between trans' rights and women's rights, but we can't even discuss it without Democrats endorsing the idea that just talking about it is unforgivable bigotry. **This** is what won Trump the presidency in 2024, and this, if not rectified immediately, will also win another Republican presidency in 2028.
When I was young and in my 20s, just as the 1990s were on the way out, I remember feeling very optimistic about the world my generation was ushering in. We rejected labels. The gay/straight spectrum was getting blurry, and I felt that even the words "gay" and "straight" would some day become irrelevant. People started to understand that you loved who you loved and that's all that mattered. So if you were heterosexual and preferred the opposite sex, that was fine. But there wasn't a need for the label "heterosexual". You loved who you loved and that's all that mattered. If you were gay and preferred the same sex, that was fine too. But the label "homosexual" didn't matter. You just loved who you loved. Masculine and feminine were becoming less important too. There were gay people coming out of the gym completely ripped, looking more masculine than most of the straight guys they worked with.
Skin colour mattered less. The colour of a person's skin was becoming as meaningful as a person's eyecolour or hair colour. Language was changing. The "n-word" was starting to take on a meaning of friendship rather than oppression. I saw examples on TV where, in the generation coming up behind me, kids white, black, and in-between, were freely using that word with each other, and they all knew it only meant "friend." I was still uncomfortable using it this way, but it made me smile knowing that after I was gone, all the power behind that word would be also be gone, lost to history. I imagined actual white supremacists trying to use it to hurt people and completely failing, because it didn't have that meaning any more, its power utterly depleted.
People were more at ease with each other than ever before. This world I was envisioning wasn't here yet, but it was easy to believe that it was just on the horizon. 9/11 and the Bush years were depressing, but when Obama became president, I felt that horizon coming ever closer. In 1998, no one would have guessed that the first black president would be elected in just 10 years. Yet here he was.
People were championing reason, education and science with the New Atheist movement. The New Atheists ushered in a renewed battle for gay rights, and saw that the only argument against the right for gays to marry was a religious one. Same-sex marriage came to the forefront of national conversation as the last *real* fight for civil rights. The right for gays to marry was the only privilege left prohibited for one segment of society that everyone else was able to enjoy. There was even a catch-phrase: [Gay Is The New Black](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gay-civil-rights_b_1168897).
We won this fight. And we won it not by screaming and calling people bigots, but with *reasoned argument*. We actually discussed the issue with those who were against it. We didn't shut them down, bully them off social media platforms and try to get them fired from their jobs. We *convinced* them that gays deserve to have all the rights and privileges of everyone else.
[Reasoned argument is pretty much impossible now](../Blog/2024-08-25%20Debate%20is%20a%20Luxury%20of%20the%20Past.md). Even an attempt to convince someone of your own point of view could be construed as "platforming Nazis". All my hopes for the future have been washed away in the oppressive tidal wave of modern progressive orthodoxy. The Left stole my optimism. It stole a future in which everyone could participate. We have been going backwards for 10 years.
I loved being part of the Left. I loved being progressive. I loved the feeling of being a part of something good for my country and the world. But the Left doesn't want me any more, and I no longer think progressivism is good for anything but pretentious arrogance. Hopefully, with the humbling defeat of this last election, the Left will continue to show the humility that some in its ranks are expressing, and begin to turn itself around. Progressivism needs to return to what it once was. The world needs it, and I need it.
I'm going to end this with the ever-eloquent Sam Harris speaking on the subject. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says here, or with the alarmist extremes with which he talks about Trump, but there is almost *nothing* here I can point to and say he got wrong, and he puts as much emphasis as he can on the moralistic self-aggrandising of the Democratic party, and their demonisation of every-day Republican voters. It's worth a listen, and if you made it this far into reading this post, I humbly suggest you do. As Sam says in this episode of his <u>Making Sense</u> podcast, "If you [the Left] keep this up, you're going to get President Candice-fucking-Owens some day. Wouldn't that be a perfect rejoinder to this stupidity."
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>[!note] Update 11-26-2024
>One final note here. A video has resurfaced of Trump talking about the trans issue from 2016. I include this as a case-in-point demonstrating that, for the most part, nobody cared about a lot of this culture war nonsense 10 years ago. Before the far-left turned this into an ideological battle, we really weren't fighting about any of this. As evidenced right here, Trump himself didn't see an issue with transpeople using whatever bathroom they felt comfortable with. This is back when it was understood that "trans" meant an *actual transition*, before anyone could just proclaim themselves trans and include themselves in all the LGBTQ+WHATEVER rainbow games.
>
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