Just below this post, is this one:
That post isn't limited to the left or the right, although right now, invectives are coming more loudly from the Populist right. They do come from the Progressive left as well.
I note that, as people may misinterpret the post below as being solely aimed at Populists. Indeed, Populists are likely to look at it that way, as they tend to be very shallow in their political analysis. All their opponents are members of "the Radical Left", they believe. Even Conservatives who oppose them are members of the "Radical Left".
Not hardly.
The actual Radical Left is in the news today through its capture of much of the Democratic Party, which started before the Populists became as influential as they currently are in the GOP. Indeed, as we discussed last week, the Progressives, which are not the same as the Liberals, have roots in the Democratic Party that go back at least as far as the collapse of the Progressive Party in 1912-1914.
I've often said here that Democrats don't lose elections, they throw them away.
When future historians go back and find the point at which Conservatives who were teetering on the edge of supporting Joe Biden determined to reluctantly give their votes to Donald Trump, they'll cite the issuance of this proclamation:
A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024
On Transgender Day of Visibility, we honor the extraordinary courage and contributions of transgender Americans and reaffirm our Nation’s commitment to forming a more perfect Union — where all people are created equal and treated equally throughout their lives.
I am proud that my Administration has stood for justice from the start, working to ensure that the LGBTQI+ community can live openly, in safety, with dignity and respect. I am proud to have appointed transgender leaders to my Administration and to have ended the ban on transgender Americans serving openly in our military. I am proud to have signed historic Executive Orders that strengthen civil rights protections in housing, employment, health care, education, the justice system, and more. I am proud to have signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, ensuring that every American can marry the person they love.
Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation. Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, they help America thrive. They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves. But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families — silencing teachers; banning books; and even threatening parents, doctors, and nurses with prison for helping parents get care for their children. These bills attack our most basic American values: the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to make your own health care decisions, and even the right to raise your own child. It is no surprise that the bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face is worsening our Nation’s mental health crisis, leading half of transgender youth to consider suicide in the past year. At the same time, an epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, especially women and girls of color, continues to take too many lives. Let me be clear: All of these attacks are un-American and must end. No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.
At the same time, my Administration is working to stop the bullying and harassment of transgender children and their families. The Department of Justice has taken action to push back against extreme and un-American State laws targeting transgender youth and their families and the Department of Justice is partnering with law enforcement and community groups to combat hate and violence. My Administration is also providing dedicated emergency mental health support through our nationwide suicide and crisis lifeline — any LGBTQI+ young person in need can call “988” and press “3” to speak with a counselor trained to support them. We are making public services more accessible for transgender Americans, including with more inclusive passports and easier access to Social Security benefits. There is much more to do. I continue to call on the Congress to pass the Equality Act, to codify civil rights protections for all LGBTQI+ Americans.
Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans: You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong. You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-eighth.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
Defenders of this will no doubt state that Joe is just honoring the "right to be yourself". Maybe he thinks of it that way. Indeed, the statement is sufficiently bland enought to nearly be calculated to attempt not to really offend.
This isn't how many will take it. Many will take it as "you are forcing me to accept a radical fraud about yourself and pretend it's okay".
And frankly, they're right. Words actually do have meaning, and not only the spoken ones, but what they suggest.
This comes down, in a way, to the essential difference between how conservatives, liberals and progressives see the world (yes I've left populists out of this intentionally). Only Progressives believe in the Existential Me, or the Isolated Absolute. Everyone else believes that you are part of a community. Indeed, Progressivism is, ironically, the ultimate extension of a belief that Progressives claim to hate, that being American Individualism written large. You can' be just what you want to be, and ignore everyone else.
In reality, Homo sapiens are a community animal with a fixed nature, and you can't.
I'd normally be reluctant to cite Jordan Peterson, the right wing Canadian pundit, but he is a psychologist and he and a reporter have an interesting podcast episode entitled The Biggest Medical Scandal Of Our Time. I'm not going to link it in, people can simply look it up, but it does a good job of pointing out the degree to which the entire transgender thing is simply a fraud. Peterson spends much of the podcast being outraged, as he's a very poor interviewer, but what you'd basically learn is that in the extraordinary rare instances in which gender confusion arises, it's confusion and nothing else. The basic proper course for minors is not to treat it, with most who are generally afflicted, according to Peterson, coming into adulthood comfortable with their genders, but being homosexuals.
I'm no doubt more radical yet, as I don't believe that transgenderism actually even exists, but is rather a psychological affliction that is limited to the Western world and expresses something else going on in our culture. It's deeply contrary to nature, as much of our society is in general. It's a reaction to some sort of unnatural stress, not an expression of nature.
There's utterly no reason whatsoever for the Federal Government to recognize transgenderism and the fact that it does, and that it's even crept into surgeries being allowed within the Armed Forces, is in fact evidence of how deeply woke some elements of our society have become. There's no reason to oppress people who express this, but going the next 100 miles and pretending everything about it is okay about it is frankly going a bridge too far, and most people instinctively know this.
People have become used to various months being declared to represent the history of one group of people or another. Originally, it was a few definable groups who deserved to have their history brought forward. Black History Month was a good example. March is National Women's History Month, which was as well.
November has become Transgender Awareness Month according to some, or there's a month in November that's been declared Transgender Awareness Week. Now we're all learning that March 31, the last day of National Women's History Month, is Transgender Day of Visibility.
Some time ago I heard a podcast by somebody, I can't recall who, who discussed how transgender mutilation of men into women goes an extra level in being an existential insult to women. That it's a fraud is self-evident. You cannot change your gender, you can only surgically and chemically attempt to partially mask your actual gender.
But what hadn't occured to me is that actual women go through, due to their natures, something that men can barely understand. To experience in your youthful prime an event in which your young healthy body suddenly starts bleeding monthly and your hormonal system subjects you to a raging hormonal cyclonic storm is something men do not experience and cannot grasp. To take pills and subject yourself to surgical butchery doesn't mimic that in any fashion. Women's entire bodies, after a certain point in their teens, remind them of our species elemental genetic roles. Boys have things turn on, but not in a way that can result in them bearing another human being, and in fact monthly demanding that they do so.
To have the Oval Office recognize something that, at this point, is basically hurled in everyone's face, and which all humans know at an elemental level to be existentially wrong, is insulting.
Do declare it on Easter Sunday is an insult beyond that.
That Biden did this is tone-deaf beyond belief. His defenders are pointing out that this day is "always Transgender Day of Visibility", which is absurd on its face, as it hasn't "always" existed. It's new, and it's misdirected. Noting those who fall into this self-declared group is worthwhile, but to sympathize with their plight and seek to address it honestly, rather than to verify that their condition is a dandy one. But this is what we do now since the Progressive Left has become so inserted in our society. We honor the afflicted in their affliction rather than seek to help.
Recently, an insulting event occured at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, in which a funeral that openly insulted conservative beliefs in general and the beliefs of the Catholic Church occured. The tone-deaf appearance by those whose duty it is to protect the beliefs of the Church were widely discussed on the Catholic Blogosphere. This, however, is wider yet.
No matter how imperfectly understood, a major element fueling Populist rage (and there are multiple ones, not just one) and horrifying genuine conservatives is the forced demand of acceptance of certain things that actually are part of somebody's "radical left agenda". While much of the invectives that cite that are baloney, this much is in fact true. When Justice Kennedy and his fellow robbed travelers insisted that Obergell didn't mean the onset of a societal revolution, they were obviously wrong at the time, and they set off the inevitable counter revolution. We noted then:
These justices have perhaps assumed too much if they've assumed that they can now act so far that Marshall would be horrified, and I'd be surprised if, long term, this decision doesn't either mark the beginning of a Cesarian court and a retreat of American democracy, or the point at which the roles of the Court began to massively erode in favor of a more Athenian democracy.
Either result is really scary.
Well here we are.
So, with Joe Biden, who supposedly is an adherent Catholic (which based on his public positions, he obviously is not), having signed a proclamation that places a day honoring something that repels conservatives and enrages Populists, and which actually does offer insult to Christian tenants in general, and which places the honoring on Easter Sunday in an election year, he's sealed his doom in the Fall. Those defending him that this "always" occurs on this day are essentially noting that Joe was too distracted to take note, which only fuels the fire that he doesn't know what he is doing. Never mind that Trump either doesn't know what he is doing either, his adherents already know that the Führerprinzip means he'll follow their lead, as it gets him attention. And indeed, they are already.
And this points out once again the tragedy of a moronic "two party system". There's no reason that real conservatives, or real liberals, should have to vote for these two fallen parties and their ancient, unappealing candidates.
Indeed, there's a good argument that thinking people shouldn't.
Related threads:
Conservatism, Democratic Party, Economics, Liberalism, National Conservatism, People's Party, Politics, Populism, Populist Party, Progressive Party, Progressivism, Republican Party
Agrarianism, Agriculture, An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, Commentary, Daily Living, Food, Friday Farming, Medicine, Men, nature, The roles of men and women, transgenderism, trends, Women
