#too transgender for orthodoxy also

[rabbitprayer]

No desire to convert to catholicism but the desire to kind of pretend that no schisms ever happened.

[communistkenobi]

hi, you recently wrote a great post (https://www.tumblr.com/communistkenobi/716670514910871552/conversations-about-representation-have-always?source=share) abt representation, which i agree with. what media would you recommend as having well done representation, not just individualistic tokens?

(making the link clickable here for reference)

Thank you! But honestly I don’t have any great recommendations lol. Disco Elysium feels like a pretty obvious answer, but that game is specifically about social systems and structures and so its premise sort of demands that macroscopic view of a fictional world. I have a pretty narrow media diet and therefore feel unequipped to give good recommendations in that regard. I think this might also be an issue of western media in general, given that it is produced in and comes out of liberal capitalist hegemony, so that context prescribes a political orthodoxy that is the exact issue I’m talking about in that post. I know that’s not helpful though sorry lol.

Also sorry x2 this is going to be a complete sidebar and not an answer to your question. What I had in mind when I originally wrote that post was trying to describe my sense of - idk alienation? Is maybe the correct word? When I see trans characters pop up in media or even when people headcanon characters as trans. It’s not wrong to do those things or represent trans people in media - obviously not - but often in genre settings like sci-fi or fantasy there is no engagement with gender as a social system outside of a trans character being there. Modern western binaristic gender identities are left fully intact, except for this small space carved out for a trans person. And because my own conception of trans-ness is so deeply tied to modern social circumstances and historical contexts (capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, settler-colonialism, orientalism, etc), I find myself unable to relate to trans characters who appear in those settings because in order to relate to them you need to set the groundwork for like, how does a transgendered relationship to gender work in this setting? How does a character go about transitioning, or expressing their trans-ness in a social capacity? What gendered expectations do these characters respond (or not respond) to? And if you’re duplicating modern western gender norms in those settings (which is almost invariably the case), how does that system interact with other social systems of control and domination in this fictional universe?

And like idk if that feels like asking for too much, but even when I see trans characters on screen or on the page (which is incredibly rare already), I don’t really feel represented by them because the boundaries of their trans-ness stops at their individual body, and so you end up reproducing essentialist ideas about gender just by virtue of the fact that nothing else in the setting is troubled or complicated by the presence of a trans person. The appearance of a trans person means there is a social system that fails groups of people, that an oppositional relationship to binaristic gender is possible in this world, but that’s never reckoned with - at least not in the media I have ever encountered. So I default to almost wanting trans-ness to not appear in media because at least then gender in these universes is a fully “settled” matter and I don’t have to think about it beyond that. Which isn’t a fun experience either, but it’s at least easier to avoid thinking about it in those cases.

Anyway sorry my answer to your question is that I don’t have a good answer. If people have good recommendations they can feel free to offer them in the replies, but I probably won’t be able to speak to those at all

[libtard-blazkowicz]

Why liberal? Why no further left? In my experience, libs only care about trans rights as long as they also don't hurt conservative feelings. Liberals make too many excuses to fight for inclemental change because "queer and womens rights aren't popular enough" (libs I know and lots of online libs). Libs compromise with evil too often. As a non-binary person I am even afraid to come out to liberal friends. Leftist friends? Not afraid at all. Now I know you know liberal policies still hurt queer, PoC, and immigrant lives so you must ask yourself if you actually align with liberal policies or if you just call yourself liberal cause it's the opposite (hardly) of conservative.

"Only the far left has the best interests of women and queers in mind" that's a point of view that is held exclusively by college kids in America. Leftist governments in South America are not exactly running circles around liberal America in terms of LGBT rights and women's rights.

Usually when leftists say that liberals in the Democratic party cowtow to Republicans, what they mean is that Democrats don't exercise dictatorial power. America is a country with checks and balances, and a popular electoral system. If you don't want Republicans to be ruling, vote against them. There were people (me included) saying we shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because she's not leftist enough. Now Roe v Wade is gone due to Trump winning against her. Biden appointing federal judges is also very important in the prevention of anti trans legislation.

Also for your particular situation, I think I think what you're describing is sort of a double edged sword. While it's good that western leftists are generally aggressively pro LGBT, it often causes LGBTs who are not anarchocommunists to feel excluded. Dogma and forced conformity is a big problem with leftists.

Tolerance of others is often associated with familiarity. I believe it was a pew research poll that showed the most likely people to be accepting of transgender people, are people who themselves know a transgender person in their personal life. It's easy for leftists to be tolerant of queers, because all of them know a queer, and queer liberation is part of their orthodoxy.

It may feel scary at first, but your family won't stop loving you. They might be unfamiliar with nonbinary identities or even trans people in general, but they'll understand with time.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 4, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) proposed giving at least $3000 annually per child to American families. This suggestion is coming from a man who, when he ran as the Republican candidate for president in 2012, famously echoed what was then Republican orthodoxy. He was caught on tape saying that “there are 47 percent of the people who… are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Romney’s proposal indicates the political tide has turned away from the Republicans. Since the 1980s, they have insisted that the government must be starved, dismissing as “socialism” Democrats’ conviction that the government has a role to play in stabilizing the economy and society.

And yet, that idea, which is in line with traditional conservatism, was part of the founding ideology of the Republican Party in the 1850s. It was also the governing ideology of Romney’s father, George Romney, who served as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, where he oversaw the state’s first income tax, and as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard Nixon, where he tried to increase housing for the poor and desegregate the suburbs. It was also at the heart of Romney’s own record in Massachusetts, where as governor from 2003 to 2007, he ushered in the near-universal health care system on which the Affordable Care Act was based.

But in the 1990s, Republican leadership purged from the party any lawmakers who embraced traditional Republicanism, demanding absolutely loyalty to the idea of cutting taxes and government to free up individual enterprise. By 2012, Romney had to run from his record, including his major health care victory in Massachusetts. Now, just a decade later, he has returned to the ideas behind it.

Why?

First, and most important, President Joe Biden has hit the ground running, establishing a momentum that looks much like that of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt had behind him stronger majorities than Biden’s, but both took office facing economic crises—and, in Biden’s case, a pandemic as well, along with the climate crisis--and set out immediately to address them.

Like FDR, Biden has established the direction of his administration through executive actions: he is just behind FDR’s cracking pace. Biden arrived in the Oval Office with a sheaf of carefully crafted executive actions that put in place policies that voters wanted: spurring job creation, feeding children, rejoining the World Health Organization, pursuing tax cheats, ending the transgender ban in the military, and reestablishing ties to the nation’s traditional allies. Once Biden had a Democratic Senate as well as a House—those two Georgia Senate seats were huge—he was free to ask for a big relief package for those suffering in the pandemic, and now even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who had expressed concern about the package, seems to be on board.

FDR’s momentum increased in part because the Republicans were discredited after the collapse of the economy and as Republican leaders turned up as corrupt. Biden’s momentum, too, is likely gathering steam as the Republicans are increasingly tainted by their association with the January 6 insurrection and the attack on the Capitol, along with the behavior of those who continue to support the former president.

The former president’s own behavior is not helping to polish his image. In their response to the House impeachment brief, Trump’s lawyers made the mistake of focusing not on whether the Senate can try a former president but on what Trump did and did not do. That, of course, makes Trump a witness, and today Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the lead impeachment manager, asked him to testify.

Trumps’ lawyers promptly refused but, evidently anticipating his refusal, Raskin had noted in the invitation that “[i]f you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.” In other words: “Despite his lawyers’ rhetoric, any official accused of inciting armed violence against the government of the United States should welcome the chance to testify openly and honestly—that is, if the official had a defense."

The lack of defense seems to be mounting. This morning, Jason Stanley of Just Security called attention to the film shown at the January 6 rally just after Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke. Stanley explained how it was an explicitly fascist film, designed to show the former president as a strong fascist leader promising to protect Americans against those who are undermining the country: the Jews. Stanley also pointed out that, according to the New York Times, the rally was “a White House production” and that Trump was deeply involved with the details.

Trump’s supporters are not cutting a good figure, either. Today, by a vote of 230-199, the House of Representatives voted to strip new Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her assignments to the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee. It did so after reviewing social media posts in which she embraced political violence and conspiracy theories. This leaves Greene with little to do but to continue to try to gin up media attention and to raise money.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had declined to take action against Greene—although in 2019 he stripped assignments from Steve King (R-IA) for racist comments-- and only eleven Republicans joined the majority. The Republican Party is increasingly associated with the Trump wing, and that association will undoubtedly grow as Democrats press it in advertisements, as they have already begun to do.

McConnell has called for the party’s extremists to be purged out of concern that voters are turning away from the party. Still, the struggle between the two factions might be hard to keep out of the news as the Senate turns to confirmation hearings for Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland.

Going forward, the attorney general will be responsible for overseeing any prosecutions that come from the attempt to overturn the election, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will question Garland, has on it three Republican senators involved in that attempt. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been accused by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of calling before Trump did to get him to alter the state’s vote count. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) both joined in challenging the counting of the electoral votes.

It is hard to imagine the other senators at the hearing will not bring the three compromised senators into the discussion. The Republicans have so far refused to schedule Garland’s hearing, although now that the Senate is organized under the Democrats, it will happen soon.

Trump Republicans are betting the former president’s endorsement will win them office in the future. But with social media platforms cracking down on his disinformation, his ability to reach voters is not at all what it used to be, making it easier for members of the other faction to jump ship.

In addition, those echoing Trump’s lies are getting hit in their wallets. Today, the voting systems company Smartmatic sued the Fox News Channel and its personalities Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, along with Giuliani and Trump’s legal advisor Sidney Powell, for at least $2.7 billion in damages for lying about Smartmatic machines in their attempt to overturn the election results.

Republicans rejecting the Trump takeover of the party are increasingly outspoken. Not only has Romney called for a measure that echoes Biden’s emphasis on supporting children and families, but also Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) today released a video attacking the leaders of his state’s Republican Party after hearing that they planned to censure him for speaking out against the former president.

“If that president were a Democrat, we both know how you’d respond. But, because he had ‘Republican’ behind his name, you’re defending him,” Sasse said. “Something has definitely changed over the last four years … but it’s not me.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[stars--n--stripes-blog]

Anti-feminists continue their unapologetic efforts to destroy women’s sports at all levels.  Not satisfied to just ruin high school girls’ athletics, they are setting their sights higher.

This week’s headline indicated that Juniper Eastwood, a University of Montana cross-country runner, will become the first transgender (i.e. biological male) athlete to compete as a female in division I cross country.

Anyone want to bet against him completely dominating his sport?  No disrespect intended towards Eastwood, but he is a biological male.  This means that, no matter how much testosterone blockers that he takes, he will still have a massive built-in advantage in strength, speed and athleticism.

As a recent report from Journal of Medical Ethics indicated, “Science demonstrates that high testosterone and other male physiology provides a performance advantage in sport suggesting that transwomen retain some of that advantage. To determine whether the advantage is unfair necessitates an ethical analysis of the principles of inclusion and fairness.”

Another study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that the “effect of the hormone treatment in relation to reducing leg muscle strength, is almost negligible for men who transition to become women.”

The reports were largely unnecessary, since there is already overwhelming anecdotal evidence of these facts since middle-of-the-pack male athletes who identify as women are dominating female high school sports wherever they are given that opportunity, regardless of whatever drugs they are taking.  You hardly ever see the reverse, since a female who identifies as a male cannot compete in male sports.

The Journal of Medical Ethics reluctantly admitted that transgender females have a built-in advantage but then, fearful of the liberal backlash and unwilling to challenge liberal orthodoxy, implied that might be a wonderful thing in the interest of inclusion and fairness.

This is also why you see headlines like the one in Slate that recently trumpeted that ”Betsy DeVos may force high schools to discriminate against trans athletes.”

Apparently, protecting women from having to compete against men is a horrible act of discrimination.  While DeVos may be viewed as a cross between Cersei Lannister and Darth Vader in liberal circles and within the insanely liberal department she heads, she is adopting both a logical and feminist position.  She is trying to protect girls from having to compete unfairly against biologically stronger and more athletic men.

No matter how you spin it, that is exactly what is happening.  The best female high school athletes in the country in twenty states are now routinely being demolished by boys who identify as girls.  One would think that feminists would throw their full support behind DeVos, but they despise her for it.

Liberal support largely boils down to their embrace of “intersectionality,” which is all the rage in academic circles.  Intersectionality was a concept introduced in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights activist and legal scholar.  In practice, it sets up a hierarchy of grievances, where the highest consideration and support must be given to those with the highest grievance score.

On the hierarchy of grievances, a false (transgender) female scores higher than an actual (cisgender) female.  Faux feminists rush to throw their support behind biological males as they destroy women’s sport while the real feminists, most of whom are now conservatives, try to protect women.  It’s toxic liberal virtue signaling on steroids.

Anyone with common sense understands that there are only two biological genders, regardless of how many genders liberals deem to exist.  I realize that Joe Biden is out searching for that elusive third gender, but he isn’t going to find it. At the same time, presidential candidate Julian Castro is trying to protect transgender female’s right to an abortion, proving that no position is too ridiculous to adopt in the grievance sweepstakes.      

The fact that males are better athletes than females has nothing to do with privilege and everything to do with science.  As a general rule, the average male is stronger, faster, and more athletic than the average female.  They start receiving a massive amount of testosterone at puberty resulting in a significant athletic gap.  Again, any C-grade freshman biology student should understand this reality.

On a typical high school track team, the worst-performing male athletes regularly record better times than the best-performing female athletes. When I was in high school, we boasted the best female cross-country runner in the country.  She was an absolute running machine, but had she been on the men’s team, she would have been the fourth best runner.   That’s no small gap.

When Martina Navratilova, not exactly a conservative icon, complained about the blatantly unfair situation, she came under such withering attacks from her former allies that she eventually apologized. No one is allowed to wander off the insane liberal plantation.  She should have stood by her words because they were 100% true.

She said, "…a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires.  It's insane and it's cheating… I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair."

But, the new feminist position is that we should cheer as men destroy women’s sports.  This is an illogical and anti-woman outrage.  Most of the true remaining feminists based upon the classic definition of fighting for women’s rights and equality are now conservatives.

By Fletch Daniels

[therealpreacherman]

Florida Bishop-Elect Responds To Concerns Over Positions On Race, Sexuality, and Equality

https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2022/06/16/florida-bishop-elect-responds-to-concerns-over-positions-on-race-sexuality/

My concerns are for anyone in church leadership are orthodoxy and inclusion. Bishop Coadjutor-Elect Holt defines marriage as between one man and one woman. As you all know, I believe that marriage should occur between two consenting adults, regardless of the sex assigned to them at birth, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Because of this, I could not support his election. 

I grew up in an environment where same-sex attraction was never something you would admit to for fear of shame and ridicule. In 2012, I went to a church that openly campaigned for an amendment to the state constitution limiting marriage to only a man and woman, which is a concept I endorsed at the time. I was verbally attacked during a growth group (think Sunday School) at my church for being against the amendment, not because of the reasoning behind it, but because it was badly written piece of legislation that no one was being given full access to the entire language. Even with that reasoning, I had a religious target put on me for not being 100% in line with my church (Parkwood Baptist, #Gastonia, NC). Christianity, to them, was not just following Jesus, but also towing the Republican Party line. Secretly, I hoped that fighting for the definition of marriage to be between a man and a woman would somehow help me in my struggle. Of course, it did not.  

In 2015, my world fell apart in spectacular fashion and I found that I could no longer be silent. God had lead me out of that church and into a deeper place where my faith and love for God was not nullified due to not being straight. I came to believe that being attracted to members of the same sex does not make me less of a person and does not condemn me to hell. I rejected the interpretation of the "clobber passages" in the Bible and began to accept that God loves me as I am. I came out of the closet as bisexual on New Years Day, 2016. I've honestly never looked back.

That same year, I met the first openly transgender person that I had personally known and jumped in full force campaigning against HB2, the infamous North Carolina "bathroom bill" that barred any person from using a public restroom that did not align with their sex assigned at birth. As a life-long conservative, I also watched in horror as the Republican Party moved closer and closer to nominating Donald Trump for President. I was a proud part of the #NeverTrump movement. Ultimately, HB2 passed and the economic fallout was disastrous for North Carolina and Governor Pat McCrory lost his bid for reelection. HB2 was partially repealed in 2017 and ultimately expired in 2020. We all know what happened with Trump.

With all of this being said, I believe in nothing less than full equality for LGBTQ+ people, both in the life of our country and in the life of our faith. I think there is way too much doubt here in regards to how Bishop Coadjutor-Elect Holt sees LGBTQ+ people and I do not think he should be considered as a Bishop because of this.

[kalamity-jayne]

misogyny is actually a key component of abortion rights. so calling out misogyny IS important.

Uh, yeah no shit. Never said anything to the contrary. I agree with you on both points. So what are you're actually trying to say here? How does this have anything to do with my original point (that y'all spend an inordinate amount of time and energy fixating on trans people)?

Wait, lemme guess, you think a trans woman merely existing is inherently misogynistic. If that's what you believe you might as well take the mask all the way off and just say you hate transgender people.

And before you say you hate TRAs not trans people, we all know you guys use thoss terms interchangeably. Also before you say you don't hate trans people because you have trans masc friends, bullying some self loathing trans man into drinking the radfem Kool aid aint exactly love and as soon as they stray too far from terf orthodoxy y'all turn on them. Plus reserving your hate for trans women and amab nonbinary folks doesn't make you less of a bigot.

As I've said to every other terf here, your obsession with trans folks says more about you than any trans person. I mean look at your blog, you post alot about trans people and whenever I see a post that's obviously terf bait you seem unable to resist engaging and like, 90% of the time you, specifically you, are the first person to respond. It gives any casual observer the impression that you don't have a whole lot else going on in your life.

I encourage to let go of your obsession with trans people so that you can heal from whatever trauma has brought to this sad state of arrested development. Bigotry is like quick sand and friend, you're knee deep in it. Get out before it's too late.

Fix your heart.

Roe V. Wade is going to be overturned here in the united states, it seems inevitable at this point. Meanwhile terfs have been coming after me over a post I did about voice therapy 🙄. Abortion is going to become illegal in about half of the country and so called "radfems" are still obsessing over trans people. Priorities amirite?

[berniesrevolution]

Silicon Valley has long preferred to remain aloof from national politics, but the Trump era has altered that stance.

In recent months, tech luminaries have repeatedly clashed with the president, criticizing his executive order on Muslim immigration, his ban on transgender troops, his “many sides” equivocation on white supremacists and his Tuesday announcement that he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lets young undocumented immigrants remain in the country.

A politically awakened Silicon Valley, buttressed by the tech industry’s growing economic power, could potentially alter politics long after President Trump has left the scene. But if the tech industry becomes a political force, what sort of policies will it push?

A new survey by political scientists at Stanford University suggests a mostly straightforward answer — with one glaring twist. The study is the first comprehensive look at the political attitudes of wealthy technologists, whose views have long been misunderstood to the point of caricature by many outside the industry. The findings of the study, which is currently under peer review, were presented last week to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

The survey suggests a novel but paradoxical vision of the future of American politics: Technologists could help push lawmakers, especially Democrats, further to the left on many social and economic issues. But they may also undermine the influence of some of the Democrats’ most stalwart supporters, including labor unions. And they may strive to push Democrats away from regulation on business — including the growing calls for greater rules around the tech industry.

Over all, the study showed that tech entrepreneurs are very liberal — among some of the most left-leaning Democrats you can find. They are overwhelmingly in favor of economic policies that redistribute wealth, including higher taxes on rich people and lots of social services for the poor, including universal health care. Their outlook is cosmopolitan and globalist — they support free trade and more open immigration, and they score low on measures of “racial resentment.”

Are Technology Entrepreneurs Libertarians?

As it turns out, not really. According to a recent survey, they don’t mind being taxed, but do mind having the government meddle in their business. Less than one quarter of them identify with being a libertarian and almost two thirds of them agree with“the government should not tightly regulate business, and should tax the wealthy to fund social programs.” This position uniquely resembles neither Democrats nor Republicans.

On most culture-war issues, they are unrepentantly liberal. They oppose restrictions on abortion, favor gay rights, support gun control and oppose the death penalty.

Now for the twist. The study found one area where tech entrepreneurs strongly deviate from Democratic orthodoxy and are closer to most Republicans: They are deeply suspicious of the government’s efforts to regulate business, especially when it comes to labor. They said that it was too difficult for companies to fire people, and that the government should make it easier to do so. They also hope to see the influence of both private and public-sector unions decline.

“You would think that people with enough money to influence the political system would obviously use that influence to increase social and economic inequality in ways that benefit them,” said David Broockman, an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a co-author of the study.

(Continue Reading)

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In the year since the 2016 election, we’re never stopped speculating about the reasons behind the results. Twelve months ago, CNN outlined 24 theories of the election, U.S. News and World Report offered a restrained five, and even the British media got in on the act. But it seems that there are as many hypotheses now as there were then.

All elections are subject to interpretation, and developing an explanation for an election outcome is always a political process. But election stories usually fade away as the business of governing takes over. Not so for the 2016 election. Election narratives continue to play a recurring role in President Trump’s rhetorical strategy (to the extent that it’s a strategy). And what people believe about why Hillary Clinton lost to Trump has the potential to shape both parties going forward. Here’s a look at just how this election has lingered, and why.

Trump has been preoccupied with the election result

Throughout 2017, Trump has talked about the “reason I was elected” and connected that to policy aims. This is a pattern that’s proven durable throughout American history: From Andrew Jackson to Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, presidents have tended to talk about having a mandate when they’re pushing the boundaries of the presidency or they need to defend themselves to critics.

In Trump’s case, just two weeks into office, he used one of his regular radio addresses to defend his executive order establishing the first “travel ban,” with a connection to the election: “The forgotten men and women will be never be forgotten again, because from now on, it’s going to be America first. That’s how I got elected, that’s why you voted for me, and I will never forget it.”

But Trump also does something much less common for Oval Office holders: crow about his electoral victory. One of Trump’s favorite lines in speeches last spring was some version of, “We may not have had a path to 270, but we had a path to 306.” (Trump’s claims to an electoral mandate have themselves had some unusual elements — he incorrectly stated that he had the largest Electoral College victory since Ronald Reagan. And, technically speaking, he received 304 Electoral College votes, not 306.) He has also brought up the election in some odd contexts, like a speech at the Boy Scouts Jamboree and in response to a question about anti-Semitism during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Why has Trump’s attention remained on his election longer than his predecessors’? Trump’s idiosyncrasies are surely part of the story. But also, defining the meaning of an election gains special relevance when the legitimacy of the presidency, and the political system in general, is in question — even, possibly, for the president himself. Trump, and Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders, spent much of 2016 calling the system “rigged,” and Trump won the White House while losing the popular vote. In the face of those factors, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Trump would want to reinforce his win.

Republicans are facing an identity crisis

Trump may have no doubts about how to interpret his electoral success, but for Republicans on Capitol Hill, it’s been a challenge. It’s not all that rare for a majority party to have some tug of war over priorities, but Trump and the 115th Congress have had a particularly hard time figuring out a direction. One aspect of this has been figuring out whether the 2016 victories translate into public support for the party’s usual policy priorities; support for Trump’s many contrasting stances or personal brand of politics; or merely a rejection of Clinton as a candidate and/or fatigue with Democratic control of the White House. In the last case, the policy implications are a lot more limited.

On multiple occasions during the 2016 campaign, Trump broke from Republican orthodoxy, including on issues such as free trade and health care. His win thus raised questions about what party adherents want the GOP to stand for versus the beliefs of those in power — and who should answer to whom. This is a reflection of the long-standing struggle over the party’s identity and what policies it should advocate.

Not only did the election result not resolve these disputes, but it’s provided an opportunity for a more full-fledged split over policy. There were some claims that the election was a mandate to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but multiple attempts have proven unpopular and unsuccessful. Republican lawmakers have also challenged Trump’s views on foreign policy and pushed back on his approach to the military, including his announcement banning transgender military personnel.

The party has been left with more questions than answers. The GOP-controlled Congress has largely pursued traditional Republican policies. But, again, those efforts have mostly been unsuccessful. Do Trump’s voters want a more distinctly Trumpian agenda? Trump is deeply unpopular, so maybe not. But if that’s the case, then what do they want the Republican Party to do?

The Democrats have an identity (politics) crisis, too

For the losing side, figuring out what went wrong and reconsidering its policy positions, campaign practices and internal procedures is a normal preoccupation. Clinton herself has weighed in, publishing a book succinctly titled “What Happened.” Her own explanation emphasized sexism, as well as Russian interference, media narratives and, in some cases, her own statements.

As part of the effort to reconsider the agenda, we’ve seen Democrats move left on policy issues since the campaign, especially single-payer health care. And in the category of addressing internal procedures for selecting candidates — deciding “who will run the party and how,” in the words of political scientist Phil Klinkner — we saw the struggle over who would become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. The competition between former Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota for the top organizational position became a proxy battle for the Clinton wing of the party and that of her primary rival, Bernie Sanders. (Ellison was subsequently appointed deputy chair in an attempt to smooth over the party rift). Last week, a controversial piece by former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile allowed Democrats to revisit some of their 2016 feuds about Clinton’s candidacy.

But more unusual is a wholesale reconsideration of which voters make up the backbone of the Democratic Party. The most explosive and potentially consequential argument about the election result concerns how the Democrats should deal with the party’s loss of support among white working class voters and whether they should overhaul their political game plan as a result.

Historian Mark Lilla, among others, has argued that the party should try to find more unifying themes rather than engage in “identity politics” — a term used to describe political messages designed to stress the concerns of racial and ethnic minorities, women and LGBT Americans. These narratives suggest that the party has gone too far in embracing cultural issues, alienating crucial constituencies, and should instead focus on economic and class concerns.

There’s been considerable pushback against this view, however. The modern Democratic coalition has relied heavily on group appeals to build both a coalition and a political message. Minority voters are a core constituency for the party. A decline in black turnout was as much a part of the 2016 loss as were the party’s struggles with white rural voters. How the Democrats interpret the 2016 loss has the potential to affect what the party stands for, how it campaigns and what kinds of candidates it nominates — not just in 2020, but for decades to come.

Interpreting election tea leaves hasn’t stopped with the 2016 race. This year’s special elections and primaries have taken on new significance as referenda on Trump, the Democrats or the Republican “establishment.”

Indeed, throughout 2017, the public has remained preoccupied with the election outcome. According to a recent poll, 42 percent of voters don’t regard the results as legitimate (a development that is consistent with recent trends of declining voter confidence in the legitimacy of the voting process). Last week’s indictment of Trump campaign officials opens up this line of questioning even further.

Will we be this preoccupied with the 2020 presidential contest? It’s hard to imagine at this point that future elections will have candidates as distinct or outcomes as surprising as 2016. But other considerations suggest that interpreting elections is a way for parties to make sense of their fates and for politicians to respond to declining legitimacy. As long as these factors remain pressing, we might expect election narratives to keep playing a big role.

[the-merricatherine]

To White Radicals: Your Role in Revolution with Non-White Radicals

From the conception of race, to its fetishization and implementation throughout the globe in oppressing who was originally considered non-Human via capitalism and social death, Whites have also had their share in the fight for their liberation. This materialized in wars such as the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and even the Bolshevik revolutions that resulted in the first socialist of the postfeudal world. Where existing states with similiar characteristics to socialism are not included, White radicals are often shielded or find their discovery often times obscured by the oppressive orthodoxy of nany Leftist theories. Not all of these battles for white freedom resulted in socialism, and none resulted in freedom for Blacks and Native Americans. Nevertheless, they were battles fought against tyrannical modes of state rule, such as “taxation without representation”. Within the current systems of oppression — neocolonialism, cryptofascism, the protracted genocide of non-white people in every country on Earth — it is only that much more difficult for a white radical to perceive their own oppression as powered by anti-blackness and anti-indigineity. The fight for higher wages, better standards of living, and general equality are in fact also obscured from white radicals, regardless of economic background, based on this fact. Many white radicals of today come from middle class backgrounds, not nuch different from the New Left of the 60s and 70s. They do not face racial oppression, nor do they face the hardships of America’s growing working class (working class defined by those able to make living wages). Their oppression is somewhat abstract, and globalized. They seek an end to the tyranny that is capitalism, often times heavily inspired by the plight of non-white populations not only in the past, but in the present — locally, and globally. Terms like “wage slave” are thrown around, when in fact they are prime examples of non-White suffering and trauma being appropriated into a romanticized vision of self that White radicals have never experienced nor have had the bad luck of being descendent from. In other words, the metaphor of the genocided Native and that of the enslaved Black, are mobilized into indenties for White movements regardless of how true to life they are. The oppressions white radicals currently face are not racial and nuch less often due to class exploitation, and are therefore more abstract and removed enough from the face of poverty in America — sometimes enough to make it even seem removed from white lives. Nonetheless, white radicals have a growing importance in the global revolutionary movement. I stress importance, because their value can be very good, or very bad. A quickly growing amount of organizing boosted since Trump’s presidency has been cultivated by non-Black, non-Native radicals inspired to take a stand against neocolonialism both without and within America: in the Phillipines, against Israel, in India, Venezuela, and within Black, Brown, and Native American communities in North and South America. The current colonial officers (policemen, the National Guard, and government officials themselves) offer no laws that non-White people are due to respect, for theur lives are constantly under surveillance and the threat of pain and death that reach metaphysical heights. And you experience none of this as a collective peoples. Unconsciously, white radicals see the riots of Ferguson and other decolonial uprisings as heroic, often times getting mixed in the process. They look up to us as a source of inspiration for their organizing and their virtues. It can be said that without Black death, even grouos such as the ISO would have no stake in building as quickly as they have been. We are their heroes, the same way many look up to Cuba, Vietnam, and Rojava. So the question remains: How is it that a white middle classed anti-fascist can identify with one of us poorer, racially unentitled folk and yet uphold a system of white supremacy with capitalist and even slaveocracy-like motives? They can not, and they never will be able. Yet they persist in showing up, albeit sometimes and somewhat ineffectively (Occupy), to do the best they can. The answer to the above question then is that while a white radical can only identify as anti-fascist, or anti-imperialist, they are not constituently anti-racist. In fact, most telling key word in this identification is “white”. We know that the US was founded and currently thrives on an unstable base of protracted Black and Red genocide and social death, the kind that turned Africans in to Blacks, and Natives into Reds. Knowing that this is a historically material fact, one can declare that this illegitimate country is white supremacist. And because your identification is “white”, you must understand that you inherently benefit from white supremacy — maybe not economically in obvious ways, but always ontologically, for even the trajectory of success a white person can achieve always overshadows that of a non-white person in America. So while a white radical may be anti-fascist, they can and often do practice white supremacy. And this is not by accident. The word “racist” has for too long now been used as a descriptor to identify a person who practices racism. However this implies that there isn’t a global system of hiearchy stemming directly from white supremacy that materializes in systemic, overt, andindividualized situations of racism and colorism. So no, not everyone can be racist. There are racists, and there are non-racists, and all racists benefit. Therefore, whites are placed ontologically above all non-whites while this system of white supremacy exists. Thetefore, in order for a white radical to truly be revolutionary is throwing this entirely unnatural way of being to the wayside, they would also have to learn and adopt the ways in which they can be anti-racist and decolonial. I stress the potential of “best they can” because it is impossible for a white person to not reproduce systems and ontologies of systemic racism that radicals such as myself have faced within Leftist spaces — from being told that I am “appropriating womanhood” to being told that I can’t speak about ny experiences growing up in a South Bronx ghetto because I am not Jewish (implying ghettos are constituently an anti-Jewish invention of the past). And so it may seem as if I am suggesting that white radicals have no use, yet I assure you that this is not the case. In emulating non-white originating methods of organizing such as breakfast programs, white radicals are ineffectively appropriating and seizing non-white liberation for their own. When they fight using these tactics, whether it has a Black or Brown or Native face, the goal of the tactic will always fall short of our liberation due to the simple fact that white radicals are not acknowledging their inspiration, and in effect, not acknowledging the decolonial, anti-imperialist vanguard of liberation for all mankind: non-White people. They make stands against the alt-right, stands against Nazis, rightfully deciding that they offer no platform, while in the same motion refusing to give non-white people a voice of their own. How? By simply not seeking out non-white, radical opinions to speak for them as the vanguard of Anti-Fascist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist movements in North America. And this is a shame that ought not be permanent. What can white radicals do? Many white radicals are least vocallyappear to be sincere in creating an ontological space for Blacks in response to the Middle Passage’s methodical approach to creating Black placelessness — the lack of origin (and therefore land) beyond slavery for many African-Americans. They seem sincere in protecting immigrants escaping poverty in second, third, and fourth world colonies: hands off Latin America, withdraw from the Black and Native inter-colonial masses, hands off women and transgendered folk like myself. We can catalyze the materialization of the more pristine moral standards your problematic favorites often times only expressed. But in order to do so, we need a voice of our own. And with our voice, a coherent movement can be built through the synthesized criticisms and improvements we make on those problematic favorites. If you can’t allow us the space, some day we will have to take it ourselves. But if you can give us free fun training, free security culture workshops and the like, we can work together to build. And so we must ask our accomplices, those willing to adhere to the principle of “liberation at any means necessary “, those race traitors and class traitors, to consider our autonomy on the matter, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Consider that many of us are not able to organize for a plethora of reasons: because we will not be able to walk off court as easily as you do, our trials often will go in televised, our deaths are many more than what is videotaped and doled out across the internet like trauma porn, with Native deaths by colonial policemen being at least 50% higher this year than last year… All of us lives behind the frontlines of racism. So, here we have a situation in which White radicals are doing most of the organizing, while the rest of us were born into surviving a constantly country-revolutionary environment, moreso than white radicals of today. White Leftists, primarily, ought to align themselves with the anti-imperialist struggles not only around the world, but also within their own backyard — with non-white radicals struggling to organize within our own spaces. Secondly, they ought to make decisions on who they recognize as comrades: Do you recognize the puritanical platitudes of Jacobin, or do you recognize the revolutionary and high-key nuance of Bobby London and Frank B. Wilderson? Are you invested in the NeoZapatismo and Naxal movements, or do you spend your time wearing transantagonistic knit wear for neoliberal Nasty Girl marches? These are direct opposites. These are dichotomous choices are to be made because they are direct opposites, the spectrum itself leaning to either. The rest of us, non-whites, want to destroy this system of oppression entirely, some of us live the experience without a peep of consent ever muttered from our mouths since birth… And the rest, benefit off our suffering by taking up too much space with social capital, and by being inspired by our deaths and suffering. After white revolutionaries make these choices, they have an obligation to act. After you make revolutionary choices, white radicals can be made truly revolutionary through unhinged support of Black, Brown, and Native struggle against oppression. We demand that white racists, and racist policemen withdraw. When we are attacked by colonial officers, when a rapist is within our ranks, when a racist is identified by one of us, the white Leftists of academia, Antifa, and all other revolutionary whites ought to respond by defending us. Recognize us as your revolutionary muses. Let us show you what our liberation will look like . In the end, it comes down to you giving us the gun, literally, or we will someday find ourselves taking it. And if you can’t give us one, it is your obligation to support self-defense of the Black, Brown, and other non-White colonies we live in through activities like crowdfunding and carpooling for gun training, breakfasts and dinners, education, and most importantly, safer space where we will be able to do it all on our own. Allow us a voice where white supremacy doesn’t. Validate our call outs, stay out of our call-ins. Allow us consent, respect our humanly-deserved autonomy. If anything, we know more about what our communities want than you ever will. Most of us have already voiced our preference of what you may call communism and socialism over our current capitalist society. That is the only common string we need.

[ericfruits]

Can Donald Trump work with Democrats?

LEGEND has it that when Ronald Reagan was president, he often ended a day of wrangling with the Democrats who then controlled Congress by calling Tip O’Neill, the House Speaker, to ask, “Is it after six o’clock?” That signalled it was time to end the partisan bickering and have a glass of whiskey together. Such shows of cross-party amity in Washington have grown rare. But the deal that Donald Trump cut with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Democratic House and Senate leaders, to lift the debt ceiling, fund the government until December and allocate $15bn in disaster relief has led some to wonder whether bipartisanship is staging a comeback.

Mr Trump seemed to promise as much. The adulation heaped on the deal by those who usually excoriate him reportedly thrilled the president, a teetotal non-smoker whose chief addiction is praise. “I think we will have a different relationship,” he said afterwards. “That’s what the people of the United States want to see.”

Theoretically, opportunities for future deals abound. On September 13th Ms Pelosi and Mr Schumer claimed to have struck a deal with the president to shield undocumented immigrants brought to America as children from deportation. Mr Trump and Democrats have both suggested trillion-dollar infrastructure plans; congressional Republicans are less free-handed with the public purse. Messrs Schumer and Trump have mulled ending the debt ceiling, a statutory measure that limits how much the government can borrow to pay its bills; conservatives like the leverage it gives them. The president’s former strategist, Stephen Bannon, proposed raising taxes on high earners to pay for middle-class cuts; many Republicans oppose raising taxes on anyone for any reason. And perhaps equally important for a president indifferent to policy and reliant on personal relationships, Mr Trump has a rapport with Mr Schumer—like the president, an outer-borough dealmaker—that he lacks with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, the Republican leaders in Congress.

But optimists should not break out the purple bunting yet. The deal was a reminder that Mr Trump is not beholden to Republican orthodoxies. He was also unwilling to risk the chaos of a debt-ceiling breach, or the political blowback of a government shutdown when his own party controls both Congress and the White House. But he still wants a government-funded border wall, huge cuts to social programmes and a rollback of environmental regulations, all of which are anathema to Democrats.

Congressional Republicans know that Mr Trump’s voters like him more than the party; they are right to worry that this gives him room to manoeuvre. But for all the teeth-gnashing from Messrs Ryan and McConnell, this deal suited them too. They had no interest in a shutdown or a financial meltdown. The deal averted both outcomes, and it isolated the party’s troublesome far-right flank in Congress. Opposing this deal would have meant opposing Mr Trump, which is precisely what their voters do not want them to do.

But congressional Democrats have no such room; the Trump-loathing of their base constrains them. For them, one reasonable decision will not erase his long list of previous convictions—equivocating over the violence in Charlottesville, banning transgender people from military service, opening the door to the deportation of Dreamers—racked up just in the past few weeks. Democrats do not want to head into next year’s elections with Mr Trump crowing over his bipartisan victories. They want a millstone to hang round the neck of every Republican office-seeker.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Just one of those things"

http://ift.tt/2h43Pq3

[marymosley]

Penn Professor Faces Calls For His Removal After Questioning An Anti-Racism Statement

We have been discussing efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views of the basis or demands of recent protests including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard.  It is part of a wave of intolerance sweeping over our colleges and our newsrooms.  Now, an effort has been launched to fire University of Pennsylvania Professor Carlin Romano and to kick him off a prestigious literary group because Romano questioned the language of a proposed statement on racism in the publishing industry. 

Professor Romano is an attorney who teaches at Penn’s Annenburg School for Communications. He became the latest target in academia when he questioned the language of a proposal anti-racism statement. Romano has publicly declared support for the movement and has written in the past of the need to diversify the publishing industry.  However, he wrote to object to statements that he felt failed to acknowledge the past efforts by people like him and to paint the entire industry as racist.

There was a time when such criticism would have been welcomed on boards and faculties.  This is not “those times.”  NPR described described Romano’s comments as “racist” without giving examples to support such a career-ending allegation.  The line that is being most cited in other coverage is Romano stating that the statement failed to acknowledge how white editors fought to be more inclusive and “[m]any of the writers cited in the letter‘s own list would never have been published if not for ecumenical, good-willed white editors and publishers who fought for the dedication of black writers.”  He also noted the difficulty in past efforts to diversify because “[w]e professors especially know that accomplished black undergraduates rarely want to go into book publishing because it pays so badly.”  He even objected that the statement misspelled the name of Ahmaud Arbery, the black man shot and killed by armed white residents in Georgia.

None of that sat well with those who drafted or supported the proposal.

That led to another Change.org petition demanding that Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication “prohibit Carlin Romano from teaching at Penn this fall or ever again.” An even broader effort seeks to remove him from the prestigious National Book Critics Circle, which declared that it is “facilitating a special membership meeting” to vote on the removal of Carlin Romano from its board after dozens of board members called for his removal.

Once again, we come to these disputes from the perspective of a free speech blog.  I am less concerned with the merits than I am with the right of figures like Romano to voice dissenting views.  In this case, Romano did not challenge the need for a statement for greater diversity. He objected to the failure to acknowledge past efforts and the painting of the entire industry as racist.

Any such questioning of such proposals is now treated as de facto racist — followed by the now inevitable Change.org petitions.  We discussed recently however that Change.org did not allow such petitions by conservative students objecting to a Cambridge professor stating (and then repeating) that “White Lives Don’t Matter.”  That petition (which did not even seek the professor’s termination) was declared “bullying” and removed from the site. However, petitions targeting Romano for objecting to the language of a proposal as unfair is viewed as entirely acceptable by Change.org.  Ironically, I support both academics in their right to such free speech as well as those posting these petitions. It is the clearly biased position of Change.org that is disconcerting from a free speech perspective.

Romano has expressed disbelief in being targeted by such petitions. He is a  former NBCC president and its current vice president of grants and, in the email, prefaced his criticism by noting that he has “probably written more articles and reviews about Philadelphia’s black literature and traditions in my 25 years at the [Philadelphia] Inquirer than anyone living, black or white.” In addition, he told The Daily Pennsylvanian: “I am pro-Black Lives Matter. I am in favor of greater diversity in the book publishing business. I am not racist, not by a long shot.”

That appears entirely immaterial. Boards members are resigning rather than serve with an academic who objected to the language of a Black Lives Matter proposal.  I have no objection to people criticizing his rhetoric or his position but, rather than seek clarification of his remarks or address his concerns, the demand is for removal.

The response is similar to the effort to remove University of Chicago Professor Harald Uhlig as senior editor of the prestigious the Journal of Political Economy and a similar effort to remove Harvard Professor Steven Pinker from the Linguistic Society of America.

It is also similar to the successful effort to push writer Andrew Sullivan out of New York Magazine and Vox.  Sullivan noted:

And maybe it’s worth pointing out that “conservative” in my case means that I have passionately opposed Donald J. Trump and pioneered marriage equality, that I support legalized drugs, criminal-justice reform, more redistribution of wealth, aggressive action against climate change, police reform, a realist foreign policy, and laws to protect transgender people from discrimination. I was one of the first journalists in established media to come out. I was a major and early supporter of Barack Obama. I intend to vote for Biden in November.

It did not matter. Sullivan reported that colleagues said that they felt unsafe working in the same building with him because he questioned aspects of current protests or demands.

My principal concern is not that Romano will be fired at Penn. I am hopeful that the faculty will stand by a colleague regardless of their disagreement with his position. Rather, my principal concern is that this campaign has already succeeded in adding to the already a glacial chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom. It is likely that this board will remove Romano if recent examples are any indicator. Few professors want to risk the possibility that they will be next to be called a racist or subjected to a Change.org petition. Indeed, in his letter, Romano references an unnamed board member who was too afraid to voice objections to the proposal’s language.

The level of fear and intimidation on faculties today is alarming. It is part of a concerted effort to deter anyone who would express dissenting views particularly of BLM as an organization or demands made in these protests.  I have heard from many professors around the country who say that they simply cannot risk being targeted and labeled a racist.  So they remain silent.  That is the point of these campaigns. When someone like Romano speaks out, they are quickly isolated, targeted, and condemned. The message is clear. There is a new orthodoxy on campuses that cannot be questioned, even by those who have expressed support for Black Lives Matter as a movement.

This anti-free speech environment is being fostered by the silence of professors and reporters who have adopted a purely pedestrian view as colleagues are abused or fired.  The silence will not ultimately protect those who remain.  It is a campaign that will devour its own in the loss of academic freedoms and free speech.  Free speech dies in silence and the current silence is deafening.

  Penn Professor Faces Calls For His Removal After Questioning An Anti-Racism Statement published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[ringoworld]

If you talk to the clinicians at the Tavistock Clinic in London, the NHS centre for the treatment of gender-variant children, they’ll tell you that all the factors I mentioned may be at work, but the evidence base is still incomplete, that they need more time and data before offering explanations. (They’ll also tell you that quite a lot of the children referred to them as ‘transgender’ will in time ‘desist’ and decide to live in their original gender.) The government now intends to commission research into all this. You might think that sounds sensible and mundane. You would be wrong. According to Tara Hewitt, founder of the Trans Equality Legal Initiative (TELI), prominent campaigner for transgender rights and an adviser to numerous public bodies including the NHS, the proposed research is ‘absurd and offensive’. The project should be ‘dropped in the bin — it’s simply not an inquiry that needs to happen,’ Hewitt reckons. This is the quintessential trans-rights response to scrutiny: even looking for facts about children’s welfare is transphobic. Just accept that trans girls are girls and trans women are women. End of debate. If you haven’t heard that mantra ‘trans women are women’, you will soon, for it is the orthodoxy of the moment, a phrase even politicians are expected to repeat as proof of their embrace of trans-equality. And woe betide anyone who suggests that donning a dress and a new name doesn’t magically render a male body female. Biology is transphobic too.

James Kirkup, The Spectator.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The Russians have an expression: words are deeds. Indeed, words contain a mesmeric power, and while this power can be used for good, it can also be used to harness dark and pernicious forces. For as Orwell understood all too well, words can be hijacked by a corrupt ruling class and used to indoctrinate, manipulate, and deceive. In order to understand how the liberal class has come to be so beguiled by the forces of reaction, one must take note of the unprecedented liberal hysteria over racism, sexism, and homophobia. Indeed, the more liberals remain transfixed with this unholy trinity, the more indifferent they become to the terrible suffering inflicted by capitalism, as they are drawn further and further to the right, and pulled ever more deeply into a vortex of amorality. This is not to suggest that racism, sexism, and homophobia do not exist, but rather, that these words have been co-opted by a ruling establishment which has succeeded in duping the faux-left into embracing policies that are deeply antithetical to the interests of American workers, patients, and students. In politics either one believes in unions, single-payer, and public education or one doesn’t. Either one opposes imperialism, or one does not. The problem with anchoring a political discourse around who opposes racism, sexism, and homophobia and who (allegedly) doesn’t, is that these words are inherently ambiguous to the point where they can be manipulated to mean almost anything. All too often, the racists, sexists, and homophobes can simply comprise anybody who has the temerity to challenge liberal orthodoxy. In an article in U.S. News and World Report titled “The Problem with Hillary-Hate,” Joanne Cronrath Bamberger bemoans the criticism of her hero, arguing that, “Pundits and journalists alike continually refer to her as corrupt and untrustworthy, even though the things people point to for support either are false or they can’t say why they use those words because, well, it’s just a feeling they have”. “We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary famously blurted out when asked about the brutal murder of Gaddafi. While this may never be mentioned on CNN, Libya was a country that had a high standard of living, and had attained a sound nationalization of its health care and education systems. Gaddafi infuriated the Western elites by attempting to establish a gold-backed dinar, leading NATO to unleash a barrage of merciless savagery and violence on a country that is now in a state of complete and utter lawlessness, yet this fails to elicit even so much as a shrug from the sanctimonious imaginary left. For these acts of barbarity pale in the decaying liberal mind with an accusation of sexism. Bamberger continues: Disagree with her policies all you want. Propose different plans that are better. But continuing hate-based commentary about Clinton implicitly says to us all that it will also be acceptable to throw the next woman presidential candidate – viable or not – under the bus with detestable accusations and made-up charges. To let that kind of hateful disrespect for any woman continue allows it to become our cultural norm. This lamentable mentality is illustrative of how the sexism card can be used to stifle criticism – not only of an extremely corrupt politician – but of foreign policies that are nothing short of genocidal. In an equally inane article in the HuffPost by Maya Dusenbery, titled “Medicine has a Sexism Problem, and it’s Making Women Sicker,” the author (who has rheumatoid arthritis and a female rheumatologist), writes: While I’ve been a feminist writer for years, before I got sick, I hadn’t given much thought to how sex and gender bias has skewed what we know and don’t know about health and disease and how it affects the quality of medical care that patients receive. But after my brush with the autoimmune epidemic – an epidemic that seemed strangely off the radar of both the public and the medical system – I started to explore it. What I’ve discovered is that a lack of knowledge about women’s health, and a lack of trust in their reports of their symptoms – entwined problems that have become remarkably entrenched in the American medical system – conspire to leave many women misdiagnosed, dismissed and sick. Hospital errors are the third leading cause of death in this country, and thousands of Americans continue to file for bankruptcy due to medical bills they cannot pay, while little Cuba has had constitutionally mandated single-payer since 1959, yet these are mere trivialities. The real problem with our health care system is that it is sexist. If sexism is the son, racism is the father, and no one loves talking about racism more than liberals. Regrettably, they know nothing whatsoever about it. Last April, Milo Yiannopoulos was driven out of a New York bar by a pack of vituperative liberals who repeatedly yelled “Nazi scum get out.” That Milo is a flamboyant homosexual, married to a black man, and has a Jewish maternal grandmother surely makes him the strangest Nazi that ever lived. Whether one agrees with what he says or not, is neither here nor there. The point is that it is simply far too common for anyone who disagrees with fundamentalist liberal dogma to be beaten with the truncheons of racism and sexism. That the real Nazis are in Kiev, and that they violently seized power in a coup which was wholeheartedly backed by the Obama administration is, to quote John Pilger, beyond irony. In an article in The Washington Post titled “The Racist Backlash Obama Has Faced During His Presidency,” by Terence Samuel, the author writes, “From the very beginning, Obama’s ascendance produced a huge backlash that was undeniably racist in nature….” This was an administration that destroyed Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, supported death squads in Syria that led to the destruction of over half the country, slaughtered thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, passed the National Defense Authorization Act, set aside a trillion dollars to modernize our nuclear weapons arsenal and brought relations with Moscow to their nadir. Moreover, these genocidal polices were paid for with trillions of dollars, while a vast swath of American society is either uneducated, unemployed, or without decent health insurance. Yet these acts of brazen criminality and barbarity are incidental. So let’s ignore the content of Obama’s character, and just talk about the color of his skin. At a lecture at Trinity College Dublin in June, Hillary said, “Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as the leader of an authoritarian, white-supremacist and xenophobic movement….” What is striking about these remarks is that much of Hillary’s presidential campaign was anchored in Russophobia – undeniably one of the most dangerous forms of racism – and which contributed to an ideology that led to the murder of twenty-seven million Russians during the Second World War. Liberals wield an extraordinary amount of power in the public schools, and regard themselves as valiant crusaders against racism. Yet while they repeatedly and vociferously maintain that the ethnic studies programs and the multicultural curriculum are the antithesis of racism, they are actually the quintessence of it. For these policies have fomented an unprecedented degree of segregation in our schools and in our society. Indeed, virtually any attempt at elevating the level of education for poor students of color – especially in the humanities – will invariably land a public school teacher in the doghouse with a liberal administrator. In this schizophrenic order that would make Orwell blush, the real racists are now holier-than-thou anti-racists. Accusations of homophobia have also become quite useful when it comes to duping insouciant liberals into embracing reactionary policies. In an article in The Guardian titled “Iranian Human Rights Official Describes Homosexuality as an Illness,” the author bemoans the fact that, “An Iranian official whose job is to protect human rights has described homosexuality as an illness, after a UN special rapporteur expressed concerns about the systematic persecution of Iran’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.” What a pity that the editors of a once respectable newspaper are happy to print anti-Iranian propaganda, so as to foment liberal bloodlust for yet another regime change. The author also fails to question why one of Washington’s best friends in the Middle East, the Saudi monarchy, a regime that delights in decapitating people as punishment for “sorcery and witchcraft,” is permitted to impose a theocracy infinitely more reactionary and medieval than the one in Iran, and can do so without even the faintest trace of rebuke from the Western media. And what of the Washington-backed jihadi death squads in Syria and Libya? What is their record on gay rights? Indeed, the same question could be raised regarding the rights of women living under the yoke of these barbarians. But they are “the good terrorists,” and so all is forgiven. In an article in The Guardian by Peter Tatchell, titled “World Cup Fever, Gay Rights Abuses and War Crimes – It’s an Ugly Mix,” the author writes, “I’m here for the World Cup – but unlike thousands of fans, I won’t be cheering on this festival of football. LGBT+ people and many other Russians suffer state-sanctioned persecution and far-right violence. These abuses need to be challenged.” The decision of Washington to unleash Neo-Nazi and other far-right paramilitaries on the Donbass that have murdered thousands of ethnic Russians, Moscow’s military intervention in Syria that saved the country from the fate of Libya, and the fact that Russians enjoy free health care and superior education, are of no interest to Western propagandists. Russians are simply terrible people, and what better way to get liberals to embrace Russophobia (not to mention the annihilation of the planet), than to talk about the country’s lack of gay rights? This is not to say that identity politics and multiculturalism have been a failure. On the contrary, they have been a resounding success. However, contrary to fundamentalist liberal dogma this success lies not unto the heart of the left, but under the iron heel of the right. Increasingly, those who have been indoctrinated to view the world through the warped prism of identity politics are incapable of seeing political reality for what it is, but for what the ruling establishment desires it to be. For they have been enshrouded in a veil of blindness. That liberals have severed all ties with The Civil Rights Movement, unions, intellectual inquiry, and anti-imperialist sentiment is incontrovertible. The ongoing fervor and cultlike zealotry over racism, sexism, and homophobia has ushered in a new era of witch-hunts, and is indicative of a liberal class that is increasingly unmoored and unhinged. The psychosis of contemporary liberalism has defiled and contaminated our very language, and caused the national discourse to be paralyzed by a deranged political philosophy that has fomented a war of all against all, while allowing the elite to use liberals as attack dogs to vilify, intimidate, and silence all who oppose the machinations of capitalist power both at home and abroad http://clubof.info/

[furynewsnetwork]

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*The pronouns chosen and used throughout the article see original word choices of Grace Carr of the Daily Caller News Foundation and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Libertarian Republic, its staff, editors, or founder.*

Grace Carr

An entire family in Arizona says every member now identifies as transgender.

“It feels like you’re getting to live for the first time,” said Daniel Harrott, who lived most of her life as a woman and is now transitioning to male, according to KJZZ. “And my children are getting to be who they’ve always wanted to be,” she added, explaining that her family of four is happier now that they are all living according to the identities of their choice.

Harrott’s 11-year-old, Mason, is a girl but decided she wasn’t her biological gender and now goes by a boy’s name and sports boy’s clothes. Harrott’s first child, 13-year-old Joshua — who is wheelchair bound — was born a male but now also says he is not of the right body and is choosing to become a female. Joshua says he was only 6 or 7 years old when he knew he was a girl.

The children’s mother, Daniel, is engaged to Shirley Austin, a man who identifies as a woman. Daniel said that Josh came out as transgender first, followed by Mason, after which Daniel felt it was okay to accept her male identity. Following their identity changes, Daniel met transgender Shirley, who joined their family to make up a family of four transgenders.

“The whole family is in transition,” Austin said.

Both Daniel and Shirley were previously married to partners opposite of their biological sex, and both had children in those marriages.

“They’re trans, and I know it’s true – because I am, too,” Daniel said, telling KJZZ that her son Joshua had wanted to join the Girl Scouts, which made her start to think the whole family must be transgender. (RELATED: Boy Scouts Of America Is Now Allowing Girls To Join).

Daniel posits that transgenders have been in her family for at least 100 years, and recounts that people used to call her great aunt a cross-dresser.

  One of the world’s leading experts in childhood gender dysphoria, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, lost his jobfor challenging the new orthodoxy that children know best and for presenting evidence that most children with gender dysphoria eventually overcome the feelings without transitioning. (RELATED: News Station Nixes Kids Documentary On Transgenders Because Non-Binary Filmmaker Thinks It’s Harmful).

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[dareread]

Meet Scott Yenor.

Yenor is a mild-mannered, bald, bespectacled professor of political science at Boise State University, a college known more for its blue football field and run-and-gun offense than for its history of philosophical debate. Yenor’s intellectual credentials are spotless: He has never received complaints from students or faculty about his classes or his papers. He’s a teacher and a thinker by trade, fully tenured.

But Yenor, you see, is also the devil.

At least, that’s the new public perception of Yenor at at Boise State. That’s because Yenor published a report in 2016 with the Heritage Foundation titled, Sex, Gender, and the Origins of the Culture War. The central thesis of the piece was simple and rather uncontroversial in conservative circles: that radical feminism’s central argument decrying gender boundaries between the sexes as entirely socially constructed has led directly to transgenderism’s attacks on gender itself as a social construct. As a philosophical matter, this progression is self-evident. Yenor’s report was academically worded and rather abstruse at times, filled with paragraphs such as this one:

For Beauvoir, the common traits of “immanent” women result from pervasive social indoctrination or socialization. Beauvoir identifies how immanence is taught and reinforced in a thousand different ways. Society, for instance, prepares women to be passive and tender and men to take the initiative in sexual relations. Male initiative in sex is “an essential element” in patriarchy’s “general frame.”

Yenor later translated his extensive report into a shorter, less jargon-y article for Heritage’s Daily Signal, titled, “Transgender Activists Are Seeking to Undermine Parental Rights.”

Again, his contentions were not merely consistent with mainstream conservative thought—they were self-evident to those human beings with eyes and the capacity to read. (Ontario, to take just one example, has recently passed a bill that could plausibly be read to identify parental dissent from small children seeking transgender treatment as “child abuse.”) Yenor’s rather uncontroversial article was then posted at the Boise State Facebook page.

That’s when the trouble began.

Leftist students took note of Yenor’s perspective. And they seethed.

Actually, they did more than seethe: they complained, they demanded that the piece be taken down, and they insisted that Yenor had personally insulted them. All of this prompted the pusillanimous dean of the school, Corey Cook, to half-heartedly defend Yenor’s right to publish. But then Cook backtracked faster than Bobby Hull defending a breakaway, saying:

Our core values as a School include the statement that “collegiality, caring, tolerance, civility and respect of faculty, staff, students and our external partners are ways of embracing diverse backgrounds, traditions, ideas and experiences.” As has been pointed out by several people in their communications with me, the particular language employed in the piece is inconsistent with that value.

Cook didn’t say exactly why Yenor’s writings had violated this inconsistently-enforced value. In fact, Cook’s attacks on Yenor violated this value far more significantly than Yenor’s original writing. But as shoddy as this statement was, other leftist faculty members thought Cook didn’t go far enough—even though he had pledged to “begin reevaluating our approach to social media.”

And so a knight arose to challenge Yenor’s nefarious, patriarchal dragon: Francisco Salinas, a man with the Orwellian title “Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion.”

Salinas believes that diversity and inclusion do not include perspectives disapproved by Francisco Salinas. Thus, he took up his fiery pen and wrote a post on the school’s website dramatically titled “Connecting The Dots.” Salinas explained that the Yenor controversy had preceded white supremacist rally and murder in Charlottesville, Virginia by a day. This was not, Salinas concluded, a coincidence. “Their proximity in my attention,” Salinas wrote, “is no accident.” How so? Let’s let Salinas sally forth:

There is a direct line between these fear fueled conspiratorial theories and the resurrection of a violent ideology which sees the “other” as a direct threat to existence and therefore necessary to obliterate. It is not an absolute succession and it is not a line without potential breaks or interruptions. Not every person who agrees with Yenor’s piece is likely to become an espoused Neo-Nazi, but likely every Neo-Nazi would agree with the substance of Yenor’s piece.

And so Yenor went from mainstream conservative thinker to neo-Nazi in the blink of an eye. Not just in the mind of Salinas, mind you—but in the minds of Yenor’s fellow professors and members of the student body, too.

A flyer suddenly began appearing around campus, reading “YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS SCOTT YENOR.” The faculty senate took up a measure that would initiate an investigation claiming that Yenor was guilty of some ethereal “misconduct.” Here’s what faculty senator Professor Royce Hutson wrote:

A large majority of the senators feel that the piece espouses deeply homophobic, trans-phobic,and misogynistic ideas. Additionally, some feel that the piece may be academically dubious to the point of misconduct. In response, the senate has created an ad hoc committee to draft a statement that repudiates the ideals expressed by Professor Yenor, without explicitly censuring Dr. Yenor, and reiterates the Senate's endorsement of the BSU's shared values as it relates to his piece.

Yenor was forced to hire an attorney. His fellow professors cast him out like a leper. In Yenor’s words, his colleagues engaged in “ritual condemnation and ostracization.”

If this reads more like a tragicomic Kafka novel than an honest discourse about ideas at one of our nation’s institutions of higher learning, that’s because it is. Except that it’s real: Yenor wanders the halls of an institution to which he has dedicated his life, condemned for a crime nobody will specify.

Unfortunately, Yenor’s experiences aren’t rare. Professors are now routinely hauled up before courts of inquisition in true revolutionary fashion for offenses contrived post facto for the sole purpose of ensnaring anyone who dissents from the current leftist orthodoxy.

Northwestern University’s Laura Kipnis—who isn’t even conservative—has been sucked into the maw of a Title IX case for having the temerity to write about “sexual paranoia” on campus and asking for evidence before condemning professors or students to the wilderness for mere allegations of sexual misconduct.

Professor Keith Fink found himself ousted from his part-time role at University of California at Los Angeles; Fink lectured on free speech and employment law from a conservative perspective. No real reason was given for UCLA’s failure to renew his contract.

Professor Bret Weinstein was forced to quit his position teaching at Evergreen State College after he refused to comply with a racist mob demanding that white professors not teach on a specified date.

Professor Nicholas Christakis resigned his administrative position at Yale’s Silliman College after he was abused by students who didn’t appreciate him telling them that they should get over their fears about diabolical Halloween costumes.

And people wonder why academia is leftist.

The suffocating leftism in American universities has arisen in large part because they are run by a self-perpetuating clique. To be excluded from such cliques can be professional suicide. And the price of admission is ideological conformity. Moreover, public pressure from students and outside media often prompts administrators to join in the chorus—better to be part of the mob baying for heads than to join a controversial thinker on the guillotine. The few conservative professors left tend to keep their heads down and pray for anonymity.

But that’s just the start of the problem. Decade after decade, the treatment of conservative professors has gotten worse as the leftist hegemony has grown stronger. And as older conservative professors have aged out of the population there are no sponsors for up-and-coming conservatives who want to join the professoriate.

As Yenor explains, “The process of getting a Ph.D. either makes conservatives into ‘careerists’—which means that they have to toe the line on sacred cows of the left—or conservatives at the undergraduate level see what academia would be for a career and decline to join.” So the self-perpetuating caste grows ever stronger. And louder. And more virulent. Anti-intellectual bullies like Francisco Salinas—enforcers of the revolution—exist on nearly every campus.

Conservatives tend to think that it can’t get much worse on campus. But it can. And it will.

The purge is on. When even Scott Yenor can’t be left alone in the middle of Idaho to write obvious truths about sexual politics, it’s a warning to every conservative professor in America that if they speak freely on intellectual matters they’re not doing their jobs—they’re risking their careers.