Nobody was called a laborphobe
Mike Haubrich on being a Democrat and a gender skeptic:
I am the local party unit secretary in Minnesota for the DFL, which is an anachronistic reference to a 1940’s merger of the Democrats and the Farmer-Labor parties. Very few farmers in Minnesota belong to the DFL anymore as Minnesota is as reflective as the rest of the country in the rural-urban divide between Democrats and Republicans. Most labor unions work with the DFL, but I think that fewer members of the rank and file follow along with it. There are conflicts between environmentalists and labor, especially up on the Iron Range, as many people depend on iron ore extraction and refining for their livelihood.
Nothing is absolute, of course, and as someone who grew up in the rural northwestern part of Minnesota I witnessed much cooperation among people who vehemently disagreed on politics. Among the Blue-Green (labor-environmentalists) Alliance there were people who worked together to find solutions to both needs, those of jobs and protecting the environment. Nobody was called a laborphobe and kicked out of the party for hating mining. There may have been some angry words, and even drunken fist-fights near Silver Bay in the 1970’s, but Democrats remained Democrats even when they called each other crazy.
Gender, however, has created a whole new dynamic.
I read a good article today on Tablet.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/great-transitioning
I found the comment about democratic values evocative. When a group is screaming “No Debate!” one of the things they’re telling us is that they’ve left democratic values behind.
The Democrats in Minnesota and elsewhere are stuck having to appeal to younger voters who largely have bought into the gender woo. TRAs are well-aware of this and do make any Democratic politician who isn’t all in for TWAW a target for their ire. As a result the Democratic Party is very much captured by gender woo, so the only way this will change is for a scandal to erupt, which will hurt the Democrats politically of course. Oh well.
Good comment, Papito. The only problem is that the lockdowns actually aren’t really new and experimental. It has been done for centuries with diseases such as the plague.
And I think there are a lot of good reasons to give up on optimistic visions of democratic social transition.
But the rest of it -spot on.
I feel the same way Mike does. I am a lifelong Democrat, though I have wavered at times with becoming an independent, due to what I see as wishy-washy corporatism endemic in the Democratic Party. I am a Democract of the Bernie Sanders persuasion. Being an independent means not voing in primaries so I have held off switching. I cannot possibly EVER vote Republican, not even for “moderates” like Larry Hogan, so I am stuck too, feeling like an outcast because of all the uncritical gender nonsense.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is. Not voting for Democrats means we get people who are overall much, much worse for everyone. It would help if the news media could report on gender issues fairly and critically, with an eye toward the truth and not refexively supporting the whole trans agenda.
Right, Amy, that’s my quandary. My daughter will need social support due to her disability, and the state currently is among the best at providing it, but if the Republicans have their way with it they will decide that many in her position are not worth the taxes on their second homes. And also, abortion rights are always shaky. And climate change, I could go on.
I understand why people are pissed at the Democrats and don’t get upset when they don’t vote for them because of it. I realize it’s difficult for them, too.
@J.A. There were a pair of things that made me angry about the article in the Pioneer Press. One was that the reporter downplayed the existence and experiences of detransitioners. That was part of the reason that I called him out in my comment. The other is that Walz claimed that the laws in other states were being passed by bullies based on little evidence. He is being fed that info, most likely by Finke, who is proving to be a very dangerous legislator indeed. What the hell are “gender expansive” people? Those who pick and choose from the list of 72 genders?
Well said, Mike. I feel a similar quandary, both politically and socially. I’ll continue to vote Democrat (as the saying goes, they’re not perfect, but the other side is crazy) because there are too many urgent issues where the Dems are closer to the right side, even if they’re often maddingly ineffective. And I’m too cowardly to attach my real name to any TERFish commentary because I’d probably become a pariah to most of my friends and some of my family. But I really don’t get why people don’t see just how regressive the trans ideology is.
From an article you quote:
“What’s that, officer? Why, no, I’m not pouring arsenic into this well. It’s, uh, marzipan. Yeah, that’s it, marzipan.”
As a Democrat who doesn’t like seeing his party score an own goal on this issue, the best strategy is to focus on those aspects of gender woo that are most vulnerable, like sport and single-sex spaces and services that are seeing obvious males claiming to be trans intrude on them. Ask U.S. medical and mental health professionals what they think about the Cass Report in the U.K., and the restrictions being put on transitioning minors in Norway, Sweden and Finland because of the lack of evidence that hormonal and surgical treatment is effective and safe. Help financially support legal cases brought by detransitioners for medical malpractice. In short, do what they’ve been doing in the U.K. for years and not only resist but fight back and win, like Maya Forstater did. Or as Dr. Jane Clare Jones puts it, “Pull…”.
P.S. – one interesting thing to note is that last year the Biden administration proposed changes in how Title IX was being interpreted with respect to gender being considered the same thing as sex. I wrote my own public comment questioning the wisdom and fairness to women for doing this, and I wasn’t the only one. Well, nothing has happened yet and we’re now seeing Biden emphasizing economic issues and downplaying culture war issues, so maybe Biden knows gender woo is a loser for Democrats, at least nationally. Biden isn’t stupid, but he certainly knows he needs younger voters to win re-election in 2024 (if he runs) and that he can’t afford to alienate them with respect to gender woo, which has become pervasive in the under-30 liberal demographic that has been voting Democratic.
iknklast, there’s lockdowns and then there’s lockdowns… What we actually did wasn’t consistent with prior planning or practice.
Not even during the influenza epidemic of 1918 did they close down all the public schools, despite the flu being more dangerous for children than is COVID. One-third of the world had influenza, but the average US school closure was 36 days, which was sometimes made up in the summer.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28246/w28246.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8439454/pdf/pone.0248925.pdf
My kids missed zero days of school, because they were in private school. My friends’ kids missed more than a full year of school (the “remote schooling” was a joke), because they were in public school. Yay us, but the decision to keep the public schools closed wasn’t based on danger to the kids, or even the teachers, and anyone who pointed that out was pilloried.
Has everyone forgotten already that the hospitals were totally overwhelmed? It doesn’t matter which country, whether run by the country for the country, or by business for profit, any spare capacity had been pared back for years, to save costs; so when the pandemic hit there were no extra staff available to deal with the massive influx of very sick people.
By having lockdowns, the spread of CoViD was slowed, reducing the numbers of seriously ill people needing care each week, and the number of people needing care for injuries from accidents was reduced, too.
It was only three years ago; it’s way too early to start re-writing history with a rosier view.