It’s almost as unfathomable as putting forth a candidate who is openly stupid, evil, and cruel.
Committing your party to promulgating an ideology that is so obviously based on lies is not a winning strategy. It gives your opponents a weapon that they can use against you, and for which you have no honest response. Unless and until left-leaning parties realize that trans “rights” are not in the least progressive, they open themselves up to well deserved criticism for propping up dangerous, misogynist, bullshit. For the right, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Consider the abortion issue. Using “women” and “girls” when discussing abortion is associated with significantly greater support across party lines. To use Genderists’ dehumanizing language despite this demonstrates where their real priorities lie.
By the same token, knowingly pushing Genderist (or other generally divisive) policies, ideology, and rhetoric prioritizes support for those things over victory. That would be justifiable in a world where they don’t simultaneously claim that Trump is an existential threat. We’re asked to put some things aside and hold our noses to vote for candidates we may dislike, and Democratic politicians must do the same. If Trump truly be the threat they claim, then they would do so willingly. They don’t, which suggests that they don’t actually see Trump as the threat they portray him to be.
Here in OZ we have one party for, one party against. At the election next year, I will vote for the party that is for, not because I agree with that policy, but because electing the other mob would be akin to handing Australia over to Trump.
I’m 72 and have voted in every election since I was 18, and I have never been 100% in agreement with the policies of those who got my vote.
I’m also reminded of the JFK quote …ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
A few words from a far ranging speech when politics was about who could make the country, and the world, a better place. A time when safety nets, social security, universal healthcare, workplace health and safety, decent wages, women’s rights, and more were the agenda of the times. The mood was one of joint success, shared rewards.
How it happened, I am not 100% sure, but I do know that Murdoch, the Chicago School, and their fellow travelers had a large hand to play.
Now, we have moved to a time where we ask not who can protect me from harm, but who can do most harm to those I despise.
Rev, I’m not sure that’s true. I do think the issue is not one that cost them the election; there are too many other things going on. But Trump’s campaign was hitting the trans issue hard in the last week or so; ads that said the Dems want men to play on women’s sports teams were frequent.
I wonder what would have happened to trans if they stayed away from the sports issue? Suddenly they’ve got the visibility they claim to want…and it’s pissing people off to see women playing against men…and being told to shut up if they complain.
Sports is too visible, too prominent, and too important to too many people for the trans issue to go into it quietly. They did at first, but now they’re moving into much better known and more popular sports.
That being said, I was not happy to see that our abortion amendment was about ‘patients’ and ‘people’ and women were never mentioned once. That issue failed. The one to enshrine an anti-abortion clause in our constitution passed.
…knowingly pushing Genderist (or other generally divisive) policies, ideology, and rhetoric prioritizes support for those things over victory.
The bolded part is the part I don’t get, and is the core ingredient of the dictum I’ve noted here on a number of occasions: “Every organization that embraces trans ideology turns to shit.” How is it that these institutions (or at least some sufficiently powerful, decision-making fraction of them) have been able to so completely delude themselves that genderism is in any way progressive, and are willing to maintain that belief in light of the manifest harms to women, children, lesbians and gays, (whom one would expect to be the normal beneficiaries of progressive attention). They can’t not know that these harms are happening.
Depending on their degree of support for the trans “rights” that are causing these harms, they have to discount, downplay, or ignore them. They also now have a vested interest in getting others to do the same, whether it be through (mis)information, or actual enforcement. This deliberate institutional suppression and disregard for the injury and distress caused by their support of trans “rights” will often run counter to the organization’s original mandate and reason for being. It inevitably results in a bewildering, Kafkaesque “opposite world” of inherently contradictory and antithetical consequences for the “allies'” own operations. We end up with self-censoring news media failing to report fully and honestly about gender issues; prison systems offering incarcerated male sexual predators more female victims. Health systems eroding the clarity and accuracy of communications by removing the word “women” from bulletins nominally meant to alert women of health risks; sports federations forcing women and girls to play alongside and against men, thereby risking injury and disability; rape crisis centers refusing to offer exclusively female care or spaces; organizations originally established to win and protect the rights of gays and lesbians which have dropped same-sex attraction in favour of enforcing a homophobic same gender attraction based agenda. All of these end points are perverse inversions of the original, normal functions of these bodies. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. TWAW.
Again, I return to my real question. I can almost see what the gender zealots within these bodies and agencies get in return for essentially destroying the credibility and reputation of the organizations they’ve shackled to the cause of trans “rights”: woke cookies and the happy glow of militant self- righteousness in fighting for a Good Cause. I imagine that people have betrayed more for much less than that. But what’s in it for the captured and subservient institutions themselves? What’s the payoff? Why do they let this happen in the first place? Why do they let it continue, once the price being paid (by both the institutions and the innocent victims they’re supposed to ignore) becomes clearer? How far will sunk cost fallacy take you away from what you’re supposed to be doing before you finally admit the costs are truly sunk? How does an organization benefit from having its purpose turned around 180 degrees to make it go backwards? Who outside of trans activism (and the trans medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex), actually benefits from associating themselves with this cause?
Without Trump, I’m not sure I’d have really picked up on the gender stuff.
Oh, not in any direct way. But those years of the Trumpsters glibly telling blatant fucking lies in every press conference, every speech, they sensitized me. And then I saw the genderists lying like that, so glib and blatant and utterly indifferent to how obvious the lies were, and I couldn’t UNsee it.
YNnB: As to why organizations (and politicians, and celebrities, and and and …) continue to support the Genderist project in the face of all the evidence that it’s harmful in general, harmful to women, homosexuals, children, and the mentally impaired, and harmful even to their own interests, I’ve been thinking that it’s probably a similar mechanism to how ESG has gotten such a stranglehold on corporate behavior in recent years. The capital investments available for those who meet ESG requirements are tempting, and the requirements themselves seem minor if you don’t think them through very far. For companies with business models that require large upfront infusions of capital to fund financially risky projects, such as film and video game makers, ESG monies can represent enough to approach something like financial security.
The problem is that ESG requirements actually aren’t trivial. They have a deleterious effect on a company’s market performance, both because of compromised product quality that serves something other than customer demand and because of change to internal structure that make responding to customer desires more arduous. All that’s left to them when a product fails to perform as it should is to rely ever more heavily on capital gotten from maximizing ESG scores. In the end, such companies are left entirely beholden to those entities who determine ESG metrics, producing substandard goods (as instructed by their masters) for dissatisfied consumers.
That sounds an awful lot like a command economy to me.
I mean, how often have you wondered why companies keep making hyper-woke stuff despite general consumer hostility toward that kind of thing? You’d think that corporations, being primarily concerned with profit, would prioritize that and not keep making shit that people aren’t buying. You’d think that politicians, being primarily concerned with the maintenance of their own power, would prioritize that and not keep supporting policy agendas that actively turn off and demoralize the very voters they’re nominally trying to court.
It’s almost as unfathomable as putting forth a candidate who is openly stupid, evil, and cruel.
Committing your party to promulgating an ideology that is so obviously based on lies is not a winning strategy. It gives your opponents a weapon that they can use against you, and for which you have no honest response. Unless and until left-leaning parties realize that trans “rights” are not in the least progressive, they open themselves up to well deserved criticism for propping up dangerous, misogynist, bullshit. For the right, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Actions reveal real beliefs and values.
Consider the abortion issue. Using “women” and “girls” when discussing abortion is associated with significantly greater support across party lines. To use Genderists’ dehumanizing language despite this demonstrates where their real priorities lie.
By the same token, knowingly pushing Genderist (or other generally divisive) policies, ideology, and rhetoric prioritizes support for those things over victory. That would be justifiable in a world where they don’t simultaneously claim that Trump is an existential threat. We’re asked to put some things aside and hold our noses to vote for candidates we may dislike, and Democratic politicians must do the same. If Trump truly be the threat they claim, then they would do so willingly. They don’t, which suggests that they don’t actually see Trump as the threat they portray him to be.
How many votes did the Dems’ support of trans people cost them?
Probably not many.
Here in OZ we have one party for, one party against. At the election next year, I will vote for the party that is for, not because I agree with that policy, but because electing the other mob would be akin to handing Australia over to Trump.
I’m 72 and have voted in every election since I was 18, and I have never been 100% in agreement with the policies of those who got my vote.
I’m also reminded of the JFK quote …ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
A few words from a far ranging speech when politics was about who could make the country, and the world, a better place. A time when safety nets, social security, universal healthcare, workplace health and safety, decent wages, women’s rights, and more were the agenda of the times. The mood was one of joint success, shared rewards.
How it happened, I am not 100% sure, but I do know that Murdoch, the Chicago School, and their fellow travelers had a large hand to play.
Now, we have moved to a time where we ask not who can protect me from harm, but who can do most harm to those I despise.
Rev, I’m not sure that’s true. I do think the issue is not one that cost them the election; there are too many other things going on. But Trump’s campaign was hitting the trans issue hard in the last week or so; ads that said the Dems want men to play on women’s sports teams were frequent.
I wonder what would have happened to trans if they stayed away from the sports issue? Suddenly they’ve got the visibility they claim to want…and it’s pissing people off to see women playing against men…and being told to shut up if they complain.
Sports is too visible, too prominent, and too important to too many people for the trans issue to go into it quietly. They did at first, but now they’re moving into much better known and more popular sports.
That being said, I was not happy to see that our abortion amendment was about ‘patients’ and ‘people’ and women were never mentioned once. That issue failed. The one to enshrine an anti-abortion clause in our constitution passed.
Wasn’t that second guy fired and criminally charged?
Only when he got caught stealing women’s bags at airports a second time. The first time was just a mistake [oopsie, head tilt].
The bolded part is the part I don’t get, and is the core ingredient of the dictum I’ve noted here on a number of occasions: “Every organization that embraces trans ideology turns to shit.” How is it that these institutions (or at least some sufficiently powerful, decision-making fraction of them) have been able to so completely delude themselves that genderism is in any way progressive, and are willing to maintain that belief in light of the manifest harms to women, children, lesbians and gays, (whom one would expect to be the normal beneficiaries of progressive attention). They can’t not know that these harms are happening.
Depending on their degree of support for the trans “rights” that are causing these harms, they have to discount, downplay, or ignore them. They also now have a vested interest in getting others to do the same, whether it be through (mis)information, or actual enforcement. This deliberate institutional suppression and disregard for the injury and distress caused by their support of trans “rights” will often run counter to the organization’s original mandate and reason for being. It inevitably results in a bewildering, Kafkaesque “opposite world” of inherently contradictory and antithetical consequences for the “allies'” own operations. We end up with self-censoring news media failing to report fully and honestly about gender issues; prison systems offering incarcerated male sexual predators more female victims. Health systems eroding the clarity and accuracy of communications by removing the word “women” from bulletins nominally meant to alert women of health risks; sports federations forcing women and girls to play alongside and against men, thereby risking injury and disability; rape crisis centers refusing to offer exclusively female care or spaces; organizations originally established to win and protect the rights of gays and lesbians which have dropped same-sex attraction in favour of enforcing a homophobic same gender attraction based agenda. All of these end points are perverse inversions of the original, normal functions of these bodies. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. TWAW.
Again, I return to my real question. I can almost see what the gender zealots within these bodies and agencies get in return for essentially destroying the credibility and reputation of the organizations they’ve shackled to the cause of trans “rights”: woke cookies and the happy glow of militant self- righteousness in fighting for a Good Cause. I imagine that people have betrayed more for much less than that. But what’s in it for the captured and subservient institutions themselves? What’s the payoff? Why do they let this happen in the first place? Why do they let it continue, once the price being paid (by both the institutions and the innocent victims they’re supposed to ignore) becomes clearer? How far will sunk cost fallacy take you away from what you’re supposed to be doing before you finally admit the costs are truly sunk? How does an organization benefit from having its purpose turned around 180 degrees to make it go backwards? Who outside of trans activism (and the trans medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex), actually benefits from associating themselves with this cause?
Without Trump, I’m not sure I’d have really picked up on the gender stuff.
Oh, not in any direct way. But those years of the Trumpsters glibly telling blatant fucking lies in every press conference, every speech, they sensitized me. And then I saw the genderists lying like that, so glib and blatant and utterly indifferent to how obvious the lies were, and I couldn’t UNsee it.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Historians […]
YNnB: As to why organizations (and politicians, and celebrities, and and and …) continue to support the Genderist project in the face of all the evidence that it’s harmful in general, harmful to women, homosexuals, children, and the mentally impaired, and harmful even to their own interests, I’ve been thinking that it’s probably a similar mechanism to how ESG has gotten such a stranglehold on corporate behavior in recent years. The capital investments available for those who meet ESG requirements are tempting, and the requirements themselves seem minor if you don’t think them through very far. For companies with business models that require large upfront infusions of capital to fund financially risky projects, such as film and video game makers, ESG monies can represent enough to approach something like financial security.
The problem is that ESG requirements actually aren’t trivial. They have a deleterious effect on a company’s market performance, both because of compromised product quality that serves something other than customer demand and because of change to internal structure that make responding to customer desires more arduous. All that’s left to them when a product fails to perform as it should is to rely ever more heavily on capital gotten from maximizing ESG scores. In the end, such companies are left entirely beholden to those entities who determine ESG metrics, producing substandard goods (as instructed by their masters) for dissatisfied consumers.
That sounds an awful lot like a command economy to me.
I mean, how often have you wondered why companies keep making hyper-woke stuff despite general consumer hostility toward that kind of thing? You’d think that corporations, being primarily concerned with profit, would prioritize that and not keep making shit that people aren’t buying. You’d think that politicians, being primarily concerned with the maintenance of their own power, would prioritize that and not keep supporting policy agendas that actively turn off and demoralize the very voters they’re nominally trying to court.