Obviously, Facebook, and probably much of the techie universe for that matter, is enthralled by hair-on-fire climate alarmism. So much so that they put a “context warning” on a cartoon that was attached to one of my recent posts about the EV craziness sweeping the halls of power, a politicized professoriate, their young charges mobbing the public square, and the beautiful people in the culture. It’s crazy, just think about it. I’ll explain.
Some people are braving the hostility of today’s unofficial (and official) Inquisition who, like Galileo, just stepped forward to say, “Wait a minute!” There are voices out there other than the lefty Union of Concerned Scientists. One such voice is the Cornwall Alliance (https://cornwallalliance.org); there are others. They raise some glaring questions that few if any denizens in big media newsrooms would know enough to ask.
Right off the bat, Cornwall and most others don’t deny the existence of man-caused (anthropogenic) climate change – i.e., global warming. They assert, however, that the doom-mongering is not science. One should never say “the science says”. “Science” has no vocal cords. It’s a method that comes close to “trust but verify”, or “where’s the beef”, or simply “prove it”. Waiting for “science” to say something treats the whole endeavor as if it were a homogenized mass of one mind. May as well put up a huge picture of Mao to represent all of China, er “science”, in one fell swoop. People that wallow in “the science says” aren’t scientists and wouldn’t know which end of the telescope to use, or explain a hypothesis, or how to conduct a fitting test for one, the essence of science. Thus, it’s easy for the scientifically illiterate to jump to doom.
Such stunted science-minds would never consider, or ask, the following:
* What is the nature of the warming? Much of the available evidence indicates that the warming is concentrated in the upper latitudes and affects average daily low temperatures (mostly at night) and not the highs.
* What are the actual effects of the warming? Are they all bad? No, and on balance, they are likely to be positive. Warmer global temps in the upper latitudes extends the growing season and expands the amount of the earth’s surface for agriculture. The growing season starts earlier and ends later. Plants love CO2. Conversely, history shows that bad things happen with cooling (the Black Death, famine, for instance).
* What about droughts? They come and go, and are sensitive to localized conditions, like cold/warm water currents. El Nino is a result of warm ocean water; La Nina is born of cold. Warm water warms the air above it and warmer air has more room for more water vapor for more rain. The jet stream accommodates and sends it to one area and away from another. One place is in drought, and another can’t handle the deluge. The cycles are called “decadel” because they come and go every 7-12 years on average. Welcome to nature, and not a soccer mom’s preference for an SUV.
* Are the scare stories of an avalanche of “extreme weather” accurate? No, the evidence suggests that our current weather patterns haven’t varied from the historical record going back in time using tree rings and core samples. If anything, they prove that climate, and its short-term equivalent, weather, varies around a mean, sometimes quite dramatically, and also that climate (long term weather patterns of at least 30 years) has never been steady-state. The earth wobbles on its axis; the orbit slightly shifts; and solar radiation jumps up and down. And we have always put in and taken out stuff since we ventured out of the cave. Variation, like all of nature, is the chief characteristic of our weather and climate.
* Is the nation of Micronesia, or the Obama estate on Martha’s Vineyard, about to disappear in rising sea levels? No, because we are talking about inches in the single digits covering centuries if not thousands of centuries. It’s manageable. Talk to the Dutch who’ve been dealing with holding back the North Sea for at least a half of a millennium or more.
So, why are our science semi-literates in power so gung-ho to ruin our lives? Simple, for them, Chicken Little is a divine oracle. The apocalypse is nigh. For them, we can’t adapt our way out of the doom. For them, we must mitigate, and that means turning our lives upside down, declaring war on fossil fuels, and erecting the Soviet to oversee our wants and desires.
Actually, we can adapt, not mitigate, because their Chicken Little is essentially a witch doctor. A sea wall can handle a few inches of rise in coastal waters protecting Obama’s mansion investment on Martha’s Vineyard and Oprah’s luxurious enclaves in Montecito (Santa Barbara) and Maui. Receding ice sheets in the polar regions is more than compensated by more land open for farming and a longer growing season. Feeding more people sounds good to me. More greenery from more CO2 has a tremendous upside.
This war on fossil fuels throws common sense out the window. What do we gain (benefits) by handcuffing millions and billions of people to a crippled grid and treating the possession of an SUV as a war crime? What are the costs? The forced exchange of what works for what doesn’t will mean that more people will enter the ranks of the poor. Pencil it out. We’ll have less CO2 in the air and more filth and poverty on the ground. It’s insane.
Yep, this is our moment of insanity.
RogerG
Sources:
* Additional YouTube presentations on green matters, the other side to the debate:
1. Michael Shellenberger, “Why renewables can’t save the planet”, at https://youtu.be/N-yALPEpV4w?si=-frZCso5LEaCVNIj
2. “’What Percent Of Our Atmosphere Is CO2?’: Doug LaMalfa Stumps Entire Panel With Climate Questions”, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Ca.), 2023, at https://youtu.be/bJfrKNR3K2k?si=9Cn0wiMwaqa8DQfe
3. Stephen Hayward, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Global Warming”, 2014, at https://youtu.be/RZlICdawHRA?si=WiZZs82W58z6D0ns
4. A balanced assessment of EV’s: The Car Guys, “THE BIG EV LIE. Why They Won’t Save the Planet & All About Dirty Electricity”, 2021, at https://youtu.be/sytWLB4-W-M?si=34ck2aFrRkRiql9n
5. Pete Buttigieg’s slick glibness. Watch him skate around the immense problems associated with an EV life. One key problem is generating the electricity to make it all work. He talks about the grid but not about the sources for an immense expansion of the necessary generation of the electricity. “’Which Uses More Electricity…A Refrigerator When It’s Running Or Electric Car When It’s Charging?’”, in questioning of Buttigieg by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky), 2023, at https://youtu.be/avi9iBC8opU?si=LoSEVadXpLZK09J1
* This is not a comprehensive list but is a sample of a robust debate that exists outside attempts in the media to quash it. Real science cannot be suppressed.
They are coming for more than your family sedan. They are going to upend, disrupt the entire system that brings everything to your home, grocery store, et al. You’re going to be hit big time in your pocketbook and in every facet of your life. Get prepared for it is coming, if not stopped.
Is Biden determined to turn me into a Trump voter? Trump, no doubt, is the ugly face of my party, but Biden and his donkey party are trying to construct a totalitarian state on a preposterous green agenda. Animating the whole venture, as is true with all totalitarian crusades, is a belief system on how best to organize and control people. To gain popular traction, it’s best for all such crusades to contain a strong apocalyptic element, one powerful enough to justify stampeding the people into acceptance of its dictates and regimentation. It’s happening before our eyes, right now! Say goodbye to the republic and hello to the Soviet.
The EPA is the chief engine of the transformation from citizen republic to rule by all-powerful commissars. Under the guise of “climate change”, we are being ordered to scrap our already immense sunk costs in affordable and reliable transportation for the mirage of something that doesn’t exist, and if it does, it’s a catastrophe as a replacement. Prepare for a calamity, one that’ll conspicuously fall more seriously upon our children and generations to come. Your kids will be the real victims.
March is turning into a deadly month for the health of our constitutional republic. The EPA earlier in the month announced its intention to follow the template of California, one of a few states famous for turning many of its residents into refugees. Like the authoritarian clown car in Sacramento, tighter emissions for “light duty” vehicles (cars, trucks, many SUV’s) will be imposed from 2027 through 2032, eventually sealing the death warrant for the production of nearly anything with an internal combustion engine (see #1 below). Say goodbye to more than the citizen republic. Say goodbye to that thing in your garage that allows you to get the kids to school, or you to work, or pay a visit to grandma for Thanksgiving, for its life will be wrung out of it by regulating and taxing it to death in escalating licensing fees and costs for upkeep, parts, and fuel. Manufacturers will be forced to eliminate their production. The comrades in power plan to leave you with no way out but into their approved and glorified golf cart. This is nothing but totalitarianism “for your own good”. And, of course, they know better about what’s good for you. Right?
On the heels of that monstrosity, the commissars proclaimed a similar rule for the fleet of big vehicles that bring everything from produce to your grocery store to all things from an Amazon distribution center, everything that fills a shelf (see #3 below). It’ll be much worse for those people who choose to live outside the controllable and tight confines of an urban area. Think about it, all that stuff that was affordably made available at your fingertips will be crammed onto battery-powered big rigs (fuel cells create their own immense problems, see #2 below) of limited capacity, range, and tremendous recharging difficulties.
The mammoth costs of so-called “innovating” our way out of these imposed problems will only short-circuit the necessary wealth to satisfy other necessities of life. These blinkered potentates have no understanding of the gargantuan trade-offs that they are inflicting on us. Either that or they don’t care.
My bet is that they don’t care. Why? They possess a religious fervor for an ideology that justifies, in their mind, taking over more and more of your life. For them, they are busy saving the planet, even if it means destroying your standard of living. You see, their religio-ideology is founded upon a robust, promethean definition of “social cost” and “externalities”. Like a canon law in the church, their “church”, the two doctrines give overriding weight to real or imagined costs for all of society for everything that you do. Where’s the limits? Practically, there aren’t any. Thus, the creeds become the supreme, open-ended excuses for the EPA, or any commissariat for that matter, to do anything that they want.
In the past, it was national socialist race justice to prevent defilement of the “race”, or the dictatorship of the proletariat to cram equality of condition on all of humanity to prevent exploitation. Today, it’s saving the climate, leaving aside the lack of any credible, peer reviewed evidence that anything that they’re doing will positively affect a global atmosphere under which billions of people are acting independently and beyond the reach of the EPA. Pardon me for concluding that this is nothing but pure stupidity.
In the end, the Biden claque and his Democratic Party are seemingly intent on destroying our way of life and replacing our citizen republic with rule by totalitarian zealots. It’s Petrograd 1917, Berlin 1933, or Beijing 1949. Keeping this crowd in power would have us see the end of much that we cherish. So, if the choice is between the abominable Trump or this gang of totalitarian fanatics, one can be forgiven for preferring boorishness to Big Brother.
RogerG
Sources:
1. In Orwellian language, the EPA announcement: “Biden-Harris Administration finalizes strongest-ever pollution standards for cars that position U.S. companies and workers to lead the clean vehicle future, protect public health, address the climate crisis, save drivers money”, March 20, 2024, at https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-finalizes-strongest-ever-pollution-standards-cars-position
2. A survey of the literature on the shortcomings of fuel cells:
* “Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicles: Everything You Need to Know”, Car and Driver, 9/26/2022, at https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a41103863/hydrogen-cars-fcev/
* “A review of PEM hydrogen fuel cell contamination: Impacts, mechanisms, and mitigation”, ScienceDirect, 3/20/2007, at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775306025304
* “Fuel Cells”, University of Illinois, at https://publish.illinois.edu/fuel-cells/benefits-and-disadvantages/
* “How Fuel Cells Work”, How Stuff Works, at https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-cell.htm
3. The same Orwellian language for heavy-duty vehicles: “Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Strongest Ever Greenhouse Gas Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles to Protect Public Health and Address the Climate Crisis While Keeping the American Economy Moving”, EPA, 3/29/2024, at https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-finalizes-strongest-ever-greenhouse-gas-standards-heavy
4. National Review articles that provide excellent overviews of the issues:
* “Biden’s Vehicle-Emissions Gaslighting”, Luther Ray Abel, 3/20/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-vehicle-emissions-gaslighting/
* “Electric Vehicles: The EPA’s Fast Track to Fiasco”, Andrew Stuttaford, 3/25/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/electric-vehicles-the-epas-fast-track-to-fiasco/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=second
* “Biden Admin Imposes Strict Pollution Standards for Buses and Heavy-Duty Vehicles”, Caroline Downey, 3/29/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-admin-imposes-strict-pollution-standards-for-buses-and-heavy-duty-vehicles/
2024 is proving the nation to be rudderless. Much of what is happening must seem befuddling to the mass of adults still in possession of their wits. Our upper crust has merged with the Left, aligning with neo-Marxists without necessarily realizing it. The reaction on the Right is a vulgar gesture in the person of Donald Trump. Much of the media is an accelerant to both sides alongside dominant cultural institutions – the schools in particular, which are groomers of the Left. Much of the media has become unwatchable and unlistenable. The year 2024 is a time of the vulgar gesture versus the Left’s scheme of national extinction.
The nation’s suicide begins in the culture, especially cultural curators in the media. It’s easy to write off much of the legacy media for their convergence with the progressive Left. But the media on the Right has its own problems. As stated before, I listen to Hugh Hewitt in podcast form more regularly than any other, but even he has become increasingly disappointing. He’s a Republican booster, no holds barred, and that means a near subservience to Donald Trump if he is the nominee. It leads to stunted conversation and information.
Let me explain. A party is deserving of loyalty only if it remains respectable. The vileness of Trump is beyond question; it’s part of his schtick (Trump being Trump). Trump is disgracing the Republican Party making Hewitt’s subservience disgraceful for a now disgraced GOP. So, this plays out on Hewitt’s show by his steering of interviews, conversations, and information away from criticism of Trump, even among guests who are well-known for blasting the mercurial man of Mar-a-Lago. Airtime is almost exclusively filled with the monotony of anti-Biden banter to the exclusion of everything else. Trump’s and the GOP’s complicity in many of these matters is absent.
The stance of right-leaning media is probably a commercial decision. The talk radio audience is Trumpy in the extreme. Speaking of suicide, it’s commercial self-murder to tick off an audience that’s mostly limited to spewing Hannity or Tucker Carlson talking points. This crowd dominates the talk radio listenership and the GOP. At this juncture, the party and its fellow-travelling talk radio base has made itself unrespectable and undeserving of Hewitt’s kid-gloves treatment, which only ends up soiling Hewitt as he does it.
Don’t think for a moment that the Democrats are a respectable alternative. It used to be said that America is alone in not having a viable socialist party like the Labor Party in the UK or the social democratic party clones throughout Europe. Wrong. We’ve got the Democratic Party. An American social democratic wannabe will remain a nonentity because that space is occupied by the sprawling donkey party. Socialism has a following in the muddled brains of adolescents and among the party’s base and leadership. Peddling an ideological poison pill isn’t a prescription for respectability.
Now, let’s take a look at the latest Marquette Law School Poll. What does it say about the state of the race? Trumpers are giddy about Trump being up by 4 over Biden nationally. But Haley sends Biden packing by 16 (see #1 below). There’s more to this race than the betting-line favorites, much more.
The poll-takers asked a push question to force more of the fence-sitters into a choice between the two leading contenders. From the poll summary:
“These results include voters who initially said they would vote for someone else or would not vote but were then asked their preference if they had to choose one of the two candidates. In the initial question, 13 percent said ‘someone else’ or that they would not vote.” (see #1 below)
Got it? 13% had to be cajoled into embracing one or the other. How much of the rest of the 52% for Trump or 48% for Biden actually were facing the same dilemma but made a choice just to send the polltakers packing? These guys, both of them, are castor oil to the public.
Age is one problem . . . for both. In an ABC News poll, 86% of respondents say that Biden is too old to be president. No surprise there. It also applies to Trump. At an age of 77 at the time of inauguration, 62% think that Trump is aged out. Octogenarians behind the Resolute Desk doesn’t present a pleasing prospect for most Americans (see #3 below).
The reason is obvious. Biden is going from infirmity to dementia before our eyes, while Trump is getting cruder and more caustic by the day. Both are exhibiting crotchety-old-man syndrome. Biden leaves the podium in a daze after regaling us in slurred and attenuated speech and mangled memories. Trump has mentally locked himself into a junior high locker room.
If either one gets elected, will they survive the full four years? Biden has already had one massive stroke. Given his current semi-functional status, another one wouldn’t be surprising. Then, we’ve got Kamala, polling worse than Biden. She could amaze us, but nothing in her years in the public eye is encouraging.
Trump is different. He may serve in leg irons, which will present an interesting conundrum for the Congressional Republican Caucus. The Democrats’ lawfare stable has 91 whacks at him from Jack Smith to DAs and AGs in New York and Georgia. Do you want to bet that at least one of them won’t be made to stick by some dim-witted jury? A mass of the charges is despicable, agreed. But it’s a reality.
Think of it: America not much different from Nicaragua, or taking a page from Putin’s playbook. But I digress.
Anyway, Trump could free himself of the evil Jack Smith with a pardon, unseemly as it will be. Federal charges are within the president’s purview. State and local actions are an entirely different matter. We are probably on untrodden ground here. Since legal actions began before the inauguration, or sentencing awaits, what will happen if a felonious and possibly convicted defendant were to win the Electoral College? The Republican Caucus may have to decide if they really want to shield a convicted defendant from impeachment and removal from office. As for the Democrats, they stand in the wings in glee.
Sir Walter Scott, 19th century Scottish author, said it best: “Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive”. Are Democrats and the Trump gaggle in the GOP deceiving us as they make a clown car of our politics? We may have to replace the eagle with Bozo as our national symbol.
Trump is slightly up, Haley trounces Biden, but so what. She won’t get the nomination; Trump may serve in an ankle bracelet; or Biden will have to serve from a chronic care facility. When you think about it, nobody is doing it to us. We are doing it to ourselves. It’s a democratic republic; we are responsible.
How responsible? Each Republican primary, including the recent one in South Carolina, is proving that the rot has deep roots beyond the muckety-mucks. The parties are marching toward a general election ballot that I will leave blank at the top, and maybe elsewhere. No neo-Marxists and no Trumpers.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “New Marquette Law School Poll national survey finds Trump at 51%, Biden at 49% in head-to-head matchup; each leads primary challenger by more than 50 points”, 2/21/24, at https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2024/02/21/new-marquette-law-school-poll-national-survey-finds-trump-at-51-biden-at-49-in-head-to-head-matchup-each-leads-primary-challenger-by-more-than-50-points/
2. Thanks to Jim Geraghty of National Review for bringing the poll to my attention, “Oh, No Big Deal, Just a Survey Showing Haley Beating Biden, 58 Percent to 42 Percent”, 2/22/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/oh-no-big-deal-just-a-survey-showing-haley-beating-biden-58-percent-to-42-percent/
3. “Overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term: POLL”, Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 2/11/24, at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/poll-americans-on-biden-age/story?id=107126589
4. Thanks to Christian Schneider for additional information in “America Is Running Two Presidential Elections at Once”, National Review, 2/22/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/america-is-running-two-presidential-elections-at-once/
The term (radioactive personality) comes from the National Review editors’ op-ed on the eve of the Iowa caucuses (see below). Indeed, Trump is a radioactive personality. It bodes ill for the GOP in November.
No doubt about it, it’s true, and it’s true not because Trump drives the Left – which means the root-and-branch of the Democratic Party – nuts, but because everyone, even his friends and loyal supporters, recognize his self-absorbed boorishness and then run to a banal recitation of his accomplishments. The reprehensive demeanor is hard to avoid. This simple fact has profound repercussions. Going into this election’s primaries, Trump is the weakest rival to Biden in a general election, also, no doubt about it. If the Democrats should change their standard bearer, all bets are off for even the rosiest Trump scenario of a narrow victory in November.
How radioactive is he? His avid fans are giddy about his head-to-head slight lead (within the margin of error) in some major polls. Remember, he’s running against a guy who every day reminds the public that he belongs in a nursing home and not the oval office. In addition, look at the hash Biden’s party has made of the country and our national security. Everything from Abbey Gate (the deadly Kabul fiasco), inflation, the uncontrolled border, the assault on our standard of living in eco-totalitarianism, the neo-Marxism in DEI, the boosterism for transgenderism’s teenage genital mutilation in “gender affirming care”, the orchestrated annihilation of American education, et al, doesn’t leave much for the donkey party to run on, except the looming Trump ascendancy if he is the GOP’s avatar.
The tone for the general election is set. Biden’s speech last week in Blue Bell, Penn., made Trump the focus of evil in the world. It’s a replay of the strategy in the 2022 midterms. Did it work then? I don’t know, but the expected GOP banner year turned out to be The Great Disappointment. Apparently, it’s safe to assume that enough people fell for it. If anything, the person of Trump animates the Democrats and sends shivers down the spine of at least a sliver of Republicans. Not good for someone who’s already a close-run thing.
Biden’s “Jim Crow 2.0” speech from Sept. 2022 in the runup to the 2022 midterms
The polls tell the tale, and have been telling the same tale for quite some time. The second-place candidate in the Republican primary contest does significantly better than Trump in a face-off with Biden in the general. The crazy Trump indictments and other Democrat shenanigans have certainly contributed to a heavy sympathy vote among Republicans for Trump. While they have contributed to Trump’s political ballast among GOPers, once Trump gets out of the safe confines of the Republican primary, expect Democrats to cater to the electorate’s already deep disdain for the man from Mar-a-Largo, if only they can successfully distract the voters away from Biden’s catastrophes – a big “if”.
Follow the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of polls and follow them from 2023 on (see below for the latest). The trend is clear. At best, Trump eeks out a lead in the margin of error. The polling details vary (for instance, registered vs. likely voters) but the direction is obvious. Biden screws up, Trump improves, slightly! Yesterday (Jan. 10), the YouGov/The Economist poll registered a Biden and Trump tie at 43%. Both are stinkers with negatives in the mid to high 50s. The last time, December 2023, a general pairing of Haley or Trump versus Biden by the Wall Street Journal shows Haley smashing Biden by 17% with Trump squeaking out only a 4-point lead (see below). For the life of me, why are Republicans determined to make their election prospects so difficult? It makes me wonder if this is populist sadomasochism at work.
Nikki Haley (l)
I’ll leave the prognosis of sadomasochism to the field of psychology, but, at the very least, one must conclude that we live in crazy times. Trump is still radioactive, and Biden is a bumbler after having surrendered to his party’s neo-Marxism. Oh, America, why are we so gun-ho for mediocrities, and repulsive ones at that?
RogerG
Sources:
* “Republican Voters Can — and Should — Rethink Nominating Trump”, The Editors, National Review online, 1/10/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/republican-voters-can-and-should-rethink-nominating-trump/
* Latest FiveThirtyEight polling at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
* “Why Nikki Haley polls better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump does”, Steven Shepard, Politico, 12/9/2023, at https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/09/haley-electability-trump-biden-polls-00130926
The Protected: John Kerry windsurfingThe Unprotected: residents of East Palestine, Ohio, waving Trump flags, Feb. 2023
Peggy Noonan’s growing “political dynamic” of our times (from 2016):
“There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it …. The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created [emphasis in the original].”
Peggy Noonan in a speech from 2017
She’s right, and it should gall anyone with half a brain.
************
I had a little time Wednesday, 1/3/24, while exercising to listen to Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. He inspired me to take a third look at Peggy Noonan’s piece from 2016, “Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected” (see below). Hewitt used the article as a launching point to discuss the fall of Claudine Gay, the disgraced president of Harvard. His point was that the vast majority of working Americans don’t care squat about the problems of a Harvard president. If anything, the episode reminds the common person of the rank favoritism of those who have placed themselves above the mire that they have made for everyone else. Good point, but it only goes so far.
Lets’ face it, Gay was not hired for her high achievements in scholarship or administrative skill. She fit the new ideologically laced identity standards of our insulated, self-anointed aristocracy: black, female, immigrant-affiliated, and predictably left-wing. She fits the superficial bill. She was placed on a fast track to a fully tenured professorship, Dean of the Arts and Sciences, and the Harvard presidency. Yet, she’s an empty suit with a checkered resumé. It should rankle the parents of any working-class kid who was booted for the same infractions committed by the appointed sovereign of Harvard College, one whose academic accomplishments are extremely thin and plagued by charges of academic fraud, plagiarism (see below).
The disgraced Claudine Gay, and protected, at a Harvard graduation
Don’t think for a moment that she’s relegated to a bread line after her resignation. She’ll still garner $900,000 a year as a Harvard professor. She’s protected no matter how bad she’s been. If that doesn’t pore salt into the open wound of the “unprotected”, nothing will.
Yet, where does the recognition of this new political battle line take us? Nowhere, and fast.
Politically, it could easily end in a disaster. Are the animated “unprotected” sufficient in number to constitute a governing electoral majority? Recent history makes that possibility very tenuous. The Trump victory of 2016 was by the skin of his teeth. With narrow majorities for both parties in Congress during his term, it teetered wildly between Reaganite measures and Trump impeachment. By 2018 and 2020, the Republican congressional footprint shrunk. The expected GOP banner year of 2022 would go down as the Great Disappointment. It is apparent that a rebellion of the bellicose “unprotected” isn’t enough. Plus, you have to factor into the political calculus what is lost in a stance catering to the shrillest in those ranks.
And that brings me to Donald Trump. As a character on our political stage, he’s both the middle finger to the “protected” and repulsive, repugnant to large swaths of the voting public open to the GOP being the antidote to the left-wing lunacy coming from our so-called “betters”( the “protected”), the supporting mass of the Democrats’ progressivism. Is the goal of a political campaign to win or simply be a stage for venting? Losing leaves only the wallowing in wild conspiratorial excuses.
Chief among the excuses is the charge that the system is rigged. It is, and the complainers (the “unprotected”) are right to be up in arms. The pandemic brought it all into the spotlight. Protests for thee but not for me. Private and open schools for thee and closed ones and distance-learning for my kids. Then, parents learned of the hard-core porn and neo-Marxist indoctrination that were being inculcated into their children. The “unprotected” experienced the loss of one to two years of learning while the “protected” raced forward in their exclusive private academies. Small and medium businesses were shuttered and jobs lost leaving a monopoly for the bigs. Cops closing down church services as rioters were free to torch the downtowns and federal courthouses from one megalopolis to the next. 2020 to 21 was a disgrace, courtesy of the “protected”.
Though, admittedly, the rigged-system charge sounds eerily like the banal Marxist complaint, the one wholly embraced by the “protected” Left. When a complaint goes “systematic”, that’s carte blanche to tear down the society, the system, a totalitarian uprising. This time from the right, Donald Trump hinted as much when he suggested that his followers should not adhere to the niceties of the Constitution. To correct the alleged fraud of his election loss, on Truth Social in late 2022, Trump called for “the termination of all rules . . . even those found in the Constitution” (see below). He quickly took a rhetorical two-step away from it. But still, root-and-branch actions to upend the “system” was broached by a figurehead on the Right. The Constitution to the woke snowflakes is a white man’s slavery compact. For Trumpers, and Trump himself, it is a compact for sinecures of the “protected” Left and election fraud. For both sides, the ends justify the means. History is not encouraging about the repercussions of that tact.
I’m not quite ready for the Hobbesian life of solitary, nasty, brutish, and short outside the rule of law. Yet, that’s a possible destination for the country for both sides.
As we head into election season 2024, the faces of both parties – Biden and Trump – appear ugly to overwhelming numbers of voters. It’s a battle of the repulsive. FiveThirtyEight’s list of current polls consistently register disgust. Media and the incendiary commentariat focus on the head-to-head matchup. Trump is up, Biden is down, but regardless, 52% to 55% consistently view both with a jaundiced eye (see below). If Biden v. Trump II was pay-for-view, the investors would face a ratings disaster.
My worry is the down-ballot. If Trump should win, it won’t be by much, and he won’t have coattails, never has. If Biden wins, ditto. If elected, I expect Trump to be immediately impeached if the Democrats ascend to the majority in the House and Senate. If roles were reversed and Biden wins, Republicans will impeach not only Biden but his entire cabinet, leaving the VP to giggle and uptalk her way through the next four years. Unitary GOP government would give us more chief executive flamboyance and impulsiveness, and Trump isolationism and protectionism. Unitary donkey party rule will be an attempt to turn the country into California. Either way, the “unprotected” will get screwed either as part-and-parcel of them getting what they want – Trump elected and proving the failure of protectionism, isolationism, and chaos in the executive once again – or being the target of command-and-control social engineering after another Trump election failure and more donkey party eco-totalitarianism.
The “unprotected”, by themselves, don’t make an electoral majority. Their middle finger to the “protected”, in the person of Donald Trump, is repugnant to the vast center of the electorate. The goal of politics in democracies is to win and the “unprotected” don’t have the numbers by themselves. Trump is a divisive figure, not a unifying one. After all, he’s a middle finger, not a statesman. Thus, by default, given the narrow appeal of the orange man, the “protected” have a good chance of remaining protected and in power to continue to make hash of our lives. We need to move beyond a mere repeat of the same contest and practice a little more election calculus. The equation ends in the unavoidable conclusion: if the “unprotected” want protection, first, win elections!
RogerG
Sources:
* “Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected”, Peggy Noonan, originally published in the Wall Street Journal, 2/25/2016, at https://peggynoonan.com/trump-and-the-rise-of-the-unprotected/
* “Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?”, Christopher Rufo and Christopher Brunet, 12/10/23, at https://christopherrufo.com/p/is-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist
* “Trump Backtracks On Calling For ‘Termination’ Of Constitution Following Backlash”, Sara Dorn, Forbes, 12/5/22, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2022/12/05/trump-backtracks-on-calling-for-termination-of-constitution-following-backlash/?sh=7118d1d74161
* FiveThirtyEight latest polls at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Well, both parties have gone bananas. The Democrats have gone over to denigrating the entire corpus of western civilization. They are essentially Marxists in belief with their race/gender hucksterism and eco-central planning. Republicans are in a state of madness, consumed in a cult of Trump. If you are an actual conservative, and not a cult member, expect to be reviled and abused. It happened to Mitt Romney.
At times, I have been no fan of Romney. His decision to march with Black Lives Matter in 2020 was a low point in my esteem for Mitt. In February 2020, he was the lone Republican senator to vote in support of one of the two articles of impeachment. I found both charges to be rank partisan prosecutions, something out of Stalin’s playbook. But at least he had the wherewithal to express loathing for repulsive Trump behavior. Rumors have been rife among Republican congressional members and staff of their disgust for Trump but were paralyzed by fear for their personal and family’s safety if they came out of the closet. They have good reason to fear the cult.
One incident stands out. On January 5, 2021, one day before the January 6th riot, Mitt Romney boarded a plane in Salt Lake City for a flight to Washington, D.C. So, to were others who were flying to D.C. for the Trump rally that devolved into the infamous riot. He was met with boos and chants of “Traitor” and “lowlife” on the plane (see below). Is finding merit in one of the two impeachment charges, or expressing disapproval of Trump’s conduct, “treason”? Is disagreement with Trump a measure of “lowlife”?
Apparently, Romney is more attuned to popular sentiment than the Trumpers on the plane. Polls consistently show Trump’s disapprovals to hover around the mid-fifties. It’s just that at this juncture, Biden has attained a level of repulsiveness equal to or slightly exceeding Trump’s. So, in a contest limited to Biden v. Trump, Trump edges out Biden – and the celebrity pundits on Fox News are in a party mood.
They miss the point. In a contest against a clearly, mentally and physically wobbly opponent, Trump can only eke out a narrow lead within the margin of error. Don’t mistake these results for a suddenly growing and popular embrace of Trump. That would be a big error in judgment.
The most recent NBC News poll (see below), like all the others going back a year or so, show a consistent distaste for Trump and an overriding dislike of Biden to match. In this binary matchup, Trump is ahead by 2 points for the first time in this poll. But lying in the poll’s weeds are some other interesting findings. Any generic Republican facing Biden is 11 points ahead, and any generic Democrat forges 8 points ahead of Trump. A no-name Republican does 9 points better than Trump against Biden; a no-name Democrat enjoys a landslide vis-à-vis Trump.
For the Democrats, the task is simple: remove Biden from the ticket. They may do it. Democrats are nimbler on their feet. Republicans seem to be hellbent on running their Trump Titanic into the iceberg. On the other hand, he could win if Biden is on the ballot, but don’t expect any coattails if the Trump personality is evident down ballot. Trumpism is a personality cult, and a not very endearing one.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Kornacki: First Time In 16 NBC News Polls Over Four Years Where Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden”, Tim Haines, Real Clear Politics, November 20, 2023, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/11/20/kornacki_first_time_in_16_nbc_news_polls_over_four_years_where_donald_trump_leads_joe_biden.html
* Steve Kornacke on X about the NBC News poll at https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1726247457414414630
** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/
While listening to a podcast of the musical career of Simon and Garfunkel, up popped a segment of their song “Mrs. Robinson”. The verse struck me as oddly reminiscent of today. Think of the looming contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The verse:
“Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose”
I don’t expect much practical wisdom from rock stars, but this verse hits a chord. A verse from 1968 comes full circle to meet 2024.
A week ago, I happened to be watching an episode of Fox News’s “The Five”. A new Fox News poll had just been released showing Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden. Four of the five hosts were almost dancing a jig on the table about the results, as if votes had already been counted and Trump was preparing his coronation speech. Is Trump becoming popular, or, more likely, is this a choice between the most abhorrent candidates of all time?
Look at the candidates’ negatives. They are far and away more detested than loved. A smattering of polls from the Nov. 8-14 shows these guys to be stinkers (see below). Biden’s detestability hovers between 53% and 59%. Trump’s swings from 54% to 56%. Biden has achieved a level of loathsomeness slightly greater than Trump’s. And the hosts of The Five are dancing a jig over this?
The contest is a consequence of the parties foisting on the general voting public execrable nominees. The Democrats can’t come around to jettisoning their enfeebled sellout to the party’s neo-Marxist Left. The Republicans can’t shake their enchantment with a narcissistic lunatic. Now, the public has experienced both behind the Resolute desk and the bully pulpit. If the contest is reduced to this binary, then the choice is about the least reviled.
So, why does Trump appear to be allegedly riding high? Biden is in the seat of power, more immediate, before cameras, at the head of the nightly newscast, the subject of much conversation, and people get a daily dose of the failures of the party’s neo-Marxism: an overrun border, inflation, climate-change central planning, the unraveling of civilization, the group-guilt shaming, the international scene coming unglued, etc. The present soon overwhelms the past. Trump slides into background noise amid court appearances. As a consequence, if the election were held today, the possibility of a president taking the oath while wearing an ankle bracelet looms large.
What’s there to like?
It is said by many that people prefer Trump’s policies but personally dislike Trump. There’s a lot to that, but those cherished policies are a reflection of longstanding GOP platforms. Prior to 2015 and Trump’s grandstanding on Obama’s birth certificate, Trump had few if any policy ideas other than the border and trade protectionism. His ignorance was profound. In a 2016 debate, he couldn’t name the legs of the strategic triad. He was befuddled by the term “triad”. When he amazingly got elected as a Republican, he not surprisingly turned to Republicans to fill out his administration. From a guy who was a policy empty suit, many of his “wins” were crafted by the input of others who would later be insulted into oblivion. Bill Barr, John Bolton, Mike Pence, Kelly, McMaster, et al, and the congressional leadership who were the fount of these ideas such as Paul Ryan, won’t be around for a Trump second bite at the apple.
In a Trump term #2, who will he turn to, the clown caucus of Matt Gaetz and company? A person still possessing their wits would be a fool to get too close to Trump. Expect any future Trump presidency to be filled with “fighters”, fighters who are a bit too punch drunk: the clown car caucus moves from Congress to the executive branch; the extended universe of isolationists and sycophants; and the rule of the Democrats’ craziness would be replaced by those who romanticize 1932’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the American Firsters of 1940. Mmmm. What would that world look like?
I have to amend my prediction that Trump is a loser. Er, he is; you just might have to look down ballot for the misery. The guy has no coattails because he’s kryptonite at the state and local level. As long as Trump is far from you, he might be tolerable, even if you’ll only see him on parole or probation. Yet don’t count out that Democrat vote-harvesting machine so quickly, or the possibility that they’ll do a switcheroo replacing the enfeebled with a fresh-faced, milquetoast neo-Marxist from the party’s ranks.
RogerG
Read more here:
* For the latest polls turn to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/publish/home
A stone-faced Donald Trump pled not guilty to a 34-count felony indictment in a Manhattan courtroom in April 2023. Trump is the first U.S. president, former or current, to be charged with a crime.
I’ve been a Republican for almost the entirety of my adult life. As a conservative, where else is one to go?
Now, my party has a love-struck teenage fixation on Donald Trump. Regardless of the reason for the infatuation, he stands head and shoulders above the rest in the Republican 2024 field, according to polls. But that’s a sampling within a minority of the total electorate. While Trump is dearly loved among a majority of that minority, he is thoroughly detested in the general electorate. Nominating Trump will make the Democrats’ task so much easier.
The fact of broad disgust toward Trump is only one part of the bad political calculus for the GOP. The majority of a minority seems intent on making Trump the face of the party at a time when he faces multiple criminal investigations across many fronts – namely Atlanta and Special Counsel Jack Smith – some of them more serious than others. The majority of the minority callously sweeps aside these legal threats as if they were Russia Collusion all over again. That would be a mistake. Expect these existential threats to more fully hit the fan after he secures the nomination. For the three months of the 2024 election season, the party will be saddled with a criminal defendant at trial and quite possibly a perp-walk post-election, whether he wins or loses the election.
As for his down-ticket pull – remember the results of 2018, 2020, and 2022? – a criminal defendant to lead the charge only worsens the party prospects across the board, state and federal. An improbable win on election day would mean immediate impeachment and removal from office, with criminal sentencing later, by a decidedly hostile Congress. Thinking beyond the momentary thrill of the political lust, a GOP trainwreck looms.
The guy is abhorred in the general voting public, and that isn’t just an opinion. FiveThirtyEight lays out the evidence. In eight polls from June 27 to July 11, Trump’s unfavorables outrank his favorables by no fewer than 12 points. By July 18, the level of detestation ballooned to 16.1 points. He’s no more likeable than Biden (see below). For Democrats, if you’re saddled with political dead weight (Biden or any of the other substitute lightweights), bring your opponent down to your level, and that means assisting the Republicans in seppuku (suicide) – nominating Trump. A bad hand quickly becomes a winnable one.
At this moment, Republicans are choosing seppuku while the Democrats face their own existential threat from No-Labels. The group has a greater potential of siphoning off votes from Democrats uneasy about adolescent genital mutilation (gender-affirming care) without parental consent or knowledge, abortion at any time prior to the exit from the womb (maybe after), boys in girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, kowtowing to the CCP, the crime, the crime, and more crime.
No doubt, though, the Republican base is intent on making it possible for the Democrats to escape their vicious wrongdoing. The Democrats have to live down their noxiousness, but the great leveler is Donald Trump. Look at the numbers. They haven’t changed much and will only get worse for the GOP as we proceed to election day 2024.
Yep, Donald Trump is the Democrats’ best friend . . . and maybe their only hope.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Latest Polls”, FiveThirtyEight, July 18, 2023, at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
Transgenders going topless at the White House recently
Iran’s ruling class of fanatical mullahs regularly bashes the United States as the Great Satan. The question is, are we at this juncture trying to prove the rabid imams right?
American embassies display the LGBTQ+ flag throughout the world, including societies who maintain millenniums-old proscriptions on homosexual and other unconventional sex-related behavior. Such norms are deeply, culturally embedded and thus resistant to change by embassy flag waving or ambassadorial pronouncements. U.S. government interference in domestic affairs will probably be met with a native-born counter revolution. An Ibo tribesman walking the streets of Lagos might not give much thought to the rainbow flag on the U.S. embassy building, but once informed, chances are, he’ll meet the flag’s meaning with disfavor, and, by so doing, begin the long mental process of seeing America as the enemy of his way of life.
The pride flag on the US embassy to the Vatican, of all places
The view of the United States in these traditional societies may emerge as one resembling Babylon in much traditional Christian eschatology. Babylon symbolizes evil. God’s wrath awaits it in the last days. Similar apocalyptic scenarios exist in Islam. Certainly, discrimination, execution, and torture of homosexuality is an affront to decency, but don’t expect societies with little in common with San Francisco to be so gung-ho in embracing our sexual revolution.
Are we alienating more than the vast majority of the world’s population who live in traditional societies? On many fronts such as pushing pernicious pedagogy, glamorizing our hedonistic cultural revolution in our movies, the propagation of our faddish neo-Marxist “equities” nonsense (the woke stuff), greenie extremism, etc., America is at the tip of the spear. And, now, we have staked out the most extreme position on transgenderism and “gender affirming care” (GAC), far beyond where our European colleagues in western civilization are willing to go.
Consider: gender dysphoria is the only branch of health care in which a self-diagnosis is the basis of treatment. More commonly, your doctor’s most requested input from you is, “It hurts there.” Then, he would apply his training, knowledge, and experience. In many places today, anyone, a kid or adult, can come into a health care facility and express disenchantment with their gender and from there it could easily be a quick path to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and reassignment surgery – the so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC). It’s the kind of logic-jumping that one associates with an ideologue, for that is what transgenderism is. How do you turn the self-diagnosis of “I feel” into objective, physical, empirically-validated truth? It’s nonsense. It’s simply the possession of a strongly-held belief and it’s off to radical action. Caution, alternatives, and disagreement cannot be tolerated, the true signs of an ideology at work.
As one would expect, California has its fingerprints all over America’s newfound sexual extremism. As is true with all extremists, there’s no room for other views, which leads the radicals to try to control the state in order to criminalize disagreement. “Gender-Affirming Care” (GAC) is all the rage for America’s progressive ruling class. The treatment formula is simple: GAC = drugs and surgery, with a little psychological push known as “counseling” for good measure. Those who disagree may even lose their kids. California is busy passing laws to lay the long arm of the law on parents who dissent from the California legislature’s party line.
More about California in a moment but one thing must be made clear: unsurprisingly, many of its most enthusiastic proponents come from people who’ve “transitioned” or parents who encouraged their own children to embark on this irreversible course. The transgender Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine is the current US Assistant Secretary of Health, and vocal advocate of doing to kids what he/she did to himself/herself. To keep justifying his decisions to himself, and seeking solace in making it easier for others to follow the same path, he engages in outright lies when he says, “. . . there is no argument among medical professionals about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.” Anything goes for an ideologue. The lie is obvious, as you’ll see in a bit.
US Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine
Such arrogant and condescending overconfidence is displayed by California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson. So strongly does she seek reaffirmation for her encouragement of gender transition for her own child that she wrote AB 957. Her choice, her opinion of “gender affirming care”, is written into the bill, and parents who favor a different approach could lose custody of their children in divorce proceedings. If it’s such a good idea for custody battles in cases of divorce, there’s no obstacle to its application to all families. Previously, the California Department of Social Services issued a mandate for fealty to “gender-affirming care” (drugs and surgery) for foster-parent applicants. Anything goes for an ideologue like Wilson and California regulators. These zealots reside in a state whose governing class thinks – or, more honestly, wishes – that the issue is settled when most clearly it is not.
California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson
Wilson’s legislative monstrosity is the latest in a line of California-sponsored extremism on transgender experimentation, with our kids as guinea pigs, sometimes over the protests of the kids’ parents. Residing in another state is no protection. If your child in Florida is bombarded with hints of gender dysphoria on TikTok and is anxious about his or her parents’ reaction, that anxiety can find a release without parental consent or knowledge in an underground railroad to California under SB 107 (2022, effective Jan.1, 2023). Your kid arrives in California, God knows how, the state takes your kid into “protective custody”, the child can undergo “transition”, and the Golden State’s authorities are prohibited from notifying the parents if the offending state restricts the medicinal and surgical mutilation of adolescents.
In an act of life imitating art, California has turned itself into H.G. Wells’ “Island of Dr. Moreau”, a place where a Dr. Moreau creates hybrid animal/humans by vivisection. California has turned itself into an island where hybrid boy/girls with an irreversible chromosomal composition in almost every cell of their body will now be subjected to puberty blockers, constant and life-long infusions of cross-sex hormones, and extensive reconstructive plastic surgeries to create XY girls or XX boys. Call it human gender vivisection.
A scene from 1977 film adaptation of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”
Of course, the zealots need a crisis to stampede an unknowing public into accepting these drastic measures. An alleged epidemic of teen suicide fits the bill. There simply is no credible evidence that anything pushed by Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine or Lori Wilson – their “gender-affirming care”- has any positive effect on the suicidal tendencies of self-proclaimed gender dysphoric teens. Historically, the crisis-of-the-moment tactic is a favorite of radicals wishing to rationalize their extremism. But if you strip away the rhetoric, stare at the issue with strict rationality, it’s horrific.
A warning label should be affixed to California: “Warning: this state is dangerous to your mental and physical health.” One California State Senator, Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita, put it succinctly on June 13, 2023, in referring to Wilson’s bill, “If you love your children, you need to flee California.” Los Angeles resident and journalist Abigail Shrier, who is facing social persecution for not adhering to the party line, advises parents with children in schools afflicted with a transgender social contagion, “The moment you hear that [your child’s friends are transitioning or using “non-binary” language to describe themselves], get your kids out of that school!” To effectively do that, you may have to go state-shopping.
California State Senator Scott Wilk (R, Santa Clarita)
California has become a threat to the nation and world because what you see passing through the state legislature and across the governor’s desk is also the official outlook of the state’s fellow travelers running the show in the federal government. It’s going national. The loyal opposition is cornered in a narrow majority in one half of Congress. The executive branch and its ruling donkey party ape the donkey party’s super-majorities in the California legislature. And what they are doing is swimming upstream as our cultural amigos in Europe are having second thoughts about the transgender zealotry.
Clearly, for many in the European continent’s health care establishments, this rush to malform a child’s body has become deeply troubling. While formerly in the forefront of “transition” therapies in “gender-affirming care”, lately they have decided to pull back. In the UK, the brakes were put on it by a lawsuit. 23-year-old Keira Bell sued the National Health Service (NHS) and its Tavistock Centre gender identity clinic for improper care and treatment of her gender dysphoria beginning at age 16. Other young victims are waiting in line to take their crack at the country’s medical malpractice.
Keira Bell, as a boy after transition (r) and now after detransition
An independent investigation by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass chronicled practices at the clinic like the hurried and inordinate use of puberty blockers – by the way, originally used for chemical castration – which were prescribed for Bell after only three visits. In a report, the BBC’s Alison Holt wrote of Tavistock, “Former staff at the clinic have raised concerns that teenagers who want to transition to a different gender are being given puberty blockers without adequate assessment or psychological work.” It’s been a persistent complaint going back to at least 2009. A year of puberty blockers for Bell was followed by three more years of male hormones and a double mastectomy (breast removal). Indeed, “without adequate assessment” appears to be the nature of “gender-affirming care” at Tavistock and elsewhere, and the core complaint of the suing victims. Bell won. In the end, after the Cass report, the July 2022 obituary for the Tavistock Centre was announced by the UK’s National Health Service.
The Travitock Centre in London
Scandinavia, long a pioneer in transgender treatments, is having serious second thoughts and is making a mockery of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine’s boast of one mind among “experts” in lockstep support of drug and cutting-induced changes to a child’s body. The Dutch let loose the tiger of “gender-affirming care” (GAC) for children in the 1990’s, but now are saying “Whooooaaaaa”! They are in the process of revising their earlier enthusiasm for what later came to be called “The Dutch Protocol”. As Dutch researchers Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman wrote in their report on “The Dutch Protocol” about the use of puberty blockers, the first medical intervention in “transition”,
“More and more is becoming known about the long-term side effects of puberty blockers. They interfere with physical sexual development, hinder the development of the bones, can cause anorgasmia and infertility and interfere with the ability to make rational decisions.”
The Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians haven’t ignored the mounting evidence by 2022. A Finnish review of “gender-affirming care” recommended restrictions and a preference for talking therapy. Sweden’s medical authorities warn that the risks of GAC “currently outweigh the benefits.” Norway’s health care regulators expressed similar caution. French medical authorities chimed in with much the same worries. As it turns out, America stands out as the “wild west” in nearly unrestrained teenage genital mutilation in service of a radical ideology.
The appearance of a rising number of detransitioners and a growing recognition of a social contagion in gender dysphoria is making the contentions of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine preposterous. Many young people regretting the hash that people like Levine have made of their lives will end up ranking “gender-affirming care” right up there with the race theories of Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial Policy. Studies of detransitioners are all over the map but one U.S. study found that nearly 30% of transitioners stopped and reversed their medical interventions within 4 years, this in spite of the great social pressure to go through with it. For the push for transition, we don’t need droplets to spread a virus since the cell phone will do quite nicely.
Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial PolicyNorman Spack of Boston’s Children’s Hospital and an early enthusiast of “gender-affirming care”
The social pressure comes in the form of a social contagion. Unlike COVID-19 whose vulnerable are older adults, the vulnerable are the impressionable, the young who are digitally getting the gender dysphoria virus. All of a sudden, it’s tween and teen girls, instead of boys, who are overpowering the stats according to Lisa Littman, formerly of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and currently Director of The Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research. How did this happen? The culprit rides in that rectangular device planted in your teen’s pocket. Social media on that screen plays to the comorbidities of gender dysphoria such as teen girls’ insecurities, mental conditions like autism, an exaggerated sense of envy, etc. Gender-affirming care’s reliance on teen self-diagnosis skips over the real problems. The mask is mistaken for the real face and off we go into the mutilation of children.
Any adult worth his or her salt, particularly those who raised kids, would know that kids aren’t very good at medical analysis. But the official policy of the U.S. is to not know any better than a teen as we push the rest of the world to join us in treating children as lab rats. Worse: practice gender vivisection to create hybrid boys and girls out of our offspring. Imagine America as the avatar of teenage genital mutilation. I’m sorry but that’s not a good look.
RogerG
Read more here:
* California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson’s AB 957 can be accessed at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB957/id/2698894/California-2023-AB957-Introduced.html
* California’s SB 107 is described at “Newsom signs bill to make California a refuge for transgender youth and families”, Brooke Migdon, The Hill: Changing America, 9/30/22, at https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3668922-newsom-signs-bill-to-make-california-a-refuge-for-transgender-youth-and-families/. The bill can be read at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB107.
* An examination of gender dysphoric suicide can be read at “Does ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Trans Kids Actually Prevent Suicide? Here’s What The Data Say”, Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., Heritage Foundation, 6/15/2022, https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/does-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids-actually-prevent-suicide-heres-what-the
* Scott Wilk’s comment on the danger that California poses for the state’s children can be found at “State Senator Warns About New Gender-Affirmation Law: ‘If You Love Your Children, You Need To Flee California’”, Real Clear Politics, 6/15/23, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/06/15/california_state_senator_warns_if_you_love_your_children_you_need_to_flee_california.html
* The story on Keira Bell and the UK’s Tavistock gender identity clinic:
• “Tavistock transgender clinic could face mass legal action ‘from 1,000 families of children who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers’ weeks after NHS shut it down in wake of damning report”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 8/11/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11101661/Tavistock-transgender-clinic-facing-mass-legal-action-1-000-families.html
• “UK court rules against trans clinic over treatment for children”, Rachel Savage, et al, Reuters, 11/20/2020, at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-lgbt-transgender-trfn-idUSKBN28B3AV
• “NHS gender clinic ‘should have challenged me [Keira Bell] more’ over transition”, Alison Holt, BBC News, 3/1/2020, at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020
• “Shuttering the Tavistock”, Bernard Lane, Quillette, 8/5/2022, at https://quillette.com/2022/08/05/closing-the-tavistock-is-an-important-step/
• “Courage of the parents, patients and whistleblowers who refused to be silenced is revealed as controversial Tavistock children’s transgender clinic is to SHUT after damning report warned it was ‘not safe’”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 7/29/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11059641/Courage-parents-patients-whistleblowers-revealed-Tavistock-childrens-clinic-SHUT.html
* National Review has been forthright is presenting counter-arguments to the ones advanced by transgender activists:
• “California Is Losing Its Mind”, the editors, 6/14/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/california-is-losing-its-mind/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second
• “The World Is Turning against Gender Experiments on Children”, the editors, 6/13/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/the-world-is-turning-against-gender-experiments-on-children/
• “The U.S. Is an Outlier in ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors”, Madeleine Kearns, National Review Magazine, 5/25/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/06/12/the-u-s-is-an-outlier-in-gender-affirming-care-for-minors/
* The Dutch are beginning to recognize caution in regards to “gender-affirming care”: “The Dutch Model is falling apart”, Rose Kelleher, Genspect, 1/2/23, at https://genspect.org/the-dutch-model-is-falling-apart/#:~:text=The%20decision%20of%20the%20well-respected%20Dutch%20newspaper%20NRC,and%20impairs%20their%20future%20ability%20to%20have%20children.
• The Dutch rethink about GAC began with a report in the Dutch newspaper NRC: “Trans Care Must Also Meet Medical-Scientific Standards”, Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman, NRC, 12/30/22, at https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/12/30/ook-transzorg-moet-aan-medisch-wetenschappelijke-standaarden-voldoen-a4152945
* A review of the issue of detransition, though generally supportive of transgender treatments but acknowledging the persistent presence of large numbers of people who regret their “transition”, can be read here: “Take Detransitioners Seriously”, Daniela Valdes and Kinnon McKinnon, The Atlantic, 1/18/23, at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/detransition-transgender-nonbinary-gender-affirming-care/672745/
* Lisa Littman’s groundbreaking report on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read at “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria”, Lisa Littman, PLOS ONE, 8/16/2018, at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330
* More on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read in “Study of 1,655 Cases Supports the ‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Hypothesis”, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), 3/30/23, at https://segm.org/study-of-1655-cases-lends-support-to-ROGD
* Please read John McCormack’s rebuttal to “2,000 Mules” at https://www.nationalreview.com/…/06/12/sorry-trump-lost/
John McCormack
I have been asked to watch Dinesh D’Souza’s “2,000 Mules” by people who believe it to be gospel on the November 2020 election. I didn’t because spending the money elsewhere mattered more to me. Heaven knows, I got the gist from a host of Trump-friendly publications and websites without the added expense. Being a man on the right, access is no problem. After reading about many of the same sources referenced by D’Souza in the film, D’Souza’s argument ranks up there with anything written by the author Dan Brown (“Angels & Demons”, “The Da Vinci Code”, and “Inferno”, etc.). The only difference between the two D’s is that Brown acknowledges his work to be fiction.
There is a debate here that needs to be aired. Trump, the leading contender for the Republican 2024 crown, is running on … what for it … November 2020. His contention that the election was stolen is the centerpiece of his campaign, along with the long trail of verbal abuse directed at anyone he doesn’t like, normally people who haven’t shown sufficient obeisance. He made it the focus of his return to the center stage, so it deserves a careful examination. John McCormack gives one of the best and most concise critiques of the Trump claims that I’ve come across.
First, from the get-go, the notion that a massive, sprawling plot mostly across five states, maybe more, involving hundreds of thousands of fellow conspirators with none of this huge crowd being detected or slipping up boggles the mind. That alone, without seeing the film, should cause a person to be very leery. There are millions of spine-tingling stories across the internet of mysterious dark forces bringing down the world. How is this one any different? They, like all tall tales of expansive conspiracies, have to maintain an inhuman level of operational secrecy. The absence of at least a few dufuses to spill the beans among the hundreds of thousands of participants (voters, couriers, organizers) simply can’t pass the smell test.
Here’s one rule for rationally assessing conspiracy claims: believability is in inverse proportion to the number of participants.
The “mules” in the film are the 54,000 couriers (not 2,000) who allegedly stuffed ballot boxes in key locations. None has been fingered by Trump’s army of independent bounty hunters, nor law enforcement, to prove the existence of the plot. Nor will the producers and publisher divulge the names of the left’s NGO’s who are supposedly at the center of the scheme. Dominion’s $787 million lawsuit award hangs over the producers and publishers who might be inclined to name some. Apparently, millions of dollars for over-priced attorneys and the need to bribe some in the jury pool is a bit too daunting to run the risk.
The database for the story consists of cellphone pings and security camera footage on adjacent buildings. I’m reminded of the techie acronym gigo: garbage data goes in, garbage comes out. Data doesn’t stand alone; it is massaged by prior assumptions. So, if you go into the issue assuming something is fishy, don’t be surprised that in your imagination a fish pops out. But it’s not a fish; it’s the lingering smell in your nostrils from cleaning the garbage cans the day before. The pings could be delivery and Uber drivers and the surveilled clutches of ballots at drop boxes turn out to be a family member legally depositing ballots for the family.
Not that fraud doesn’t happen. Of course, it does. It occurs in every election, and is made easier by ballot harvesting, no voter ID, and shot gunning ballots through the mail turning election day into election season. But it doesn’t happen like this. When you have elections like this, elections begin to lose respect and you end up fanning the imaginations of the already unhinged. That’s the real lesson of 2020.
Let’s go back to election day being . . . election day, and 70% of the ballots cast in-person. Add voter ID and we might have more people accepting the results. We don’t need to follow a self-serving narcissist into another electoral defeat. The GOP’s self-preservation should trump Trump.
