While exploring Rape Crisis Edinburgh’s website I began to wonder if all UK rape crisis centers are for everyone as opposed to for women.

A look at Rape Crisis South London promptly dispels that worry.

Specialist South London sexual violence support for women and girls who have experienced rape and/or childhood sexual abuse.

Boom.

Our services are in response to the needs of survivors and the disproportionate nature of sexual violence committed by men against women and girls. We believe sexual violence to be both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality and are committed to a feminist, empowering model of working.

Thank fuck for that.

There is such a thing as rape of boys and of men, but that doesn’t mean that raped women can’t or shouldn’t have somewhere to go that is just for women.

For one thing it’s men doing the raping of boys and men, and for another thing it’s nothing like the onslaught against women. Men are bigger and stronger than women, so 1. it’s much easier for men to rape women than vice versa and 2. it’s much easier for men to resist being raped than it is for women. In short men don’t need rape services the way women do, and promoting the fiction that they do is profoundly insulting to women.

I’m relieved that some rape crisis workers understand this.

In case you’re thinking Edinburgh Rape Crisis has improved in the wake of all this attention –

Who[m] We Support And Our Services

Women only services

We have been trans inclusive since 2008. This means that we have a diverse group of women and non-binary workers and volunteers.

In a survivors initial meeting, the worker will give a clear overview of the services that we offer, including our trans inclusivity. This meeting will be held by a woman who has always lived as a woman and will include exploration of the type of support a survivor wishes and would benefit from. This conversation will also explore any concerns or preferences a survivor has around the support, and who they receive it from. The survivor is then supported by someone who meets their needs. It is important to us to provide safe access to all survivors of sexual violence, and we will continue to do so.  

It’s fascinating, this sniffy from a great height pitying categorization of half the population as “women who have always lived as women.” In an organization that exists for the purpose of supporting rape victims.

Then the real spit in the eye:

Our women only times at our centre located at 17 Claremont Crescent are:

• Mondays 5pm -7 pm,
• Tuesdays 9am – 1pm,
• Fridays 9am – 12pm/noon .

Golly, nine whole hours every week. How very generous.

Ouch. That’s gotta sting.

I particularly like “Perhaps you should reframe your trauma.”

I think “Dear Sandy” should become the instantly recognizable label for a decisive, lethal retort.

The guy who dumped soup on a woman yesterday because he doesn’t like her opinions is…you’ll never guess…in the Equality & Diversity trade. I guess it’s the “but not for you” kind of equality & diversity.

A recent Southampton Solent graduate, I have remained at the university as their first Student Equality & Diversity associate – in short it’s my job to engage with students about their experiences of university and hopefully help to make the campus that little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone.

Unless they’re feminist women, in which case he’ll assault them. That little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone.

In my personal life I am a working stand-up comic, amateur journalist and committed social justice activist – all passions which feed into the work I am currently lucky enough to be doing.

It’s amazing to me how glibly this goon trots out the Platitudes of Virtue while priding himself on not letting women speak up to defend our rights.

He has a BA in comedy writing and performance.

She WHAT???

Why not just give the journalist keys to the rape victims’ front doors?

He’s out on conditional bail.

A Yorkshire man charged has been charged with assault during a demonstration in Sheffield city centre.

Ben Lindsay, 34, of Fitzwilliam Street, Barnsley, was arrested and charged with two counts of assault by beating during a demonstration in Barkers Pool, earlier today (Saturday, September 21).

He will appear before Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on November 25, after being released on conditional bail. South Yorkshire Police issued the following statement, it said: “Man charged with assault after incident in Sheffield city centre.”

It’s almost as if men are not allowed to assault women for saying things the men don’t like. Is there any justice in the world?

Oh for godSAKE.

Mommy: “Frus iss noneven a question, she’s a girl, she’s a female, so of course she’d use the locker room, why would you send another female into the men’s locker room? That……it………iss juss that simple thought.”

Not the sharpest person on the planet, but hey, she’s onboard with the ideology, so that’s what counts.

Brave 7 foot hero caught and handcuffed.

And that, gang, is what we call the money shot.

The Charlotte Observer:

Liam Johns, the transgender man known for his LGBTQ activism in Charlotte and for sharing his pregnancy journey in a 2019 Charlotte Observer series, died on Sept. 14. He was 35. Johns was undergoing dialysis for kidney failure and was on the national kidney and pancreas transplant list when he passed away, said Chase Hayes, a friend and former partner, in an interview with the Observer.

Maybe the kidney failure was nothing to do with any “trans health care” he had, I don’t know, but it’s difficult not to suspect a connection.

In 2018, Johns gave birth to his first child with his partner at the time, who now goes by Freya. In 2022, he gave birth to their second.

As millions of men do every day.

Johns in 2016 protested against House Bill 2 — North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” — which said people had to use the public bathroom that matched the sex on their birth certificate.

As people had been doing all along, until trans ideology popped up to shout that we have to do it differently now.

“I won’t back down ’til HB2 is gone. I’m 100 percent human and deserve 100 percent equality,” Johns said in a 2016 interview with the Observer. “When our community’s lives are under attack, we stand up and fight back.”

Yes but it’s not about equality. Nobody is saying trans people don’t deserve equality. It’s not “equality” for men to use women’s spaces or for women to use men’s. Notice, for instance, that in both of those scenarios it’s women who are at risk. Men in women’s “public bathrooms” put women at risk, and women in men’s put women at risk. See how that works? And talking about equality is irrelevant.

Janice Turner on why men who like to look at child abuse don’t go to prison:

Anyone shocked that Huw Edwards didn’t go to prison hasn’t been paying attention. The sentencing magistrate wasn’t dazzled by his BBC stardom or cutting him slack because of his liberal politics or long-repressed homosexuality. To put it bluntly, the newsreader’s offences were at the very bottom of the paedophile league table.

Edwards had 41 child abuse images on his phone, seven of which were category A, the very worst kind. Compare him with other recent cases: a TV comedian found with 35,000 images on multiple devices, a rabbi from Pinner with 1,694 (189 category A), or the Chesterfield scout leader with 6,440 images (756 As). They all, like Edwards, received suspended sentences.

In fact eight out of ten stay out of prison. That’s because there aren’t enough prisons.

There are 850 arrests a month for child abuse image offences and, according to the child safety institute Childlight, 1.8 million British men have admitted to viewing such material online.

It is almost entirely a guy thing, Turner says.

The problem is not just too big for the criminal justice system to absorb but too endemic for most of us to comprehend: your old boss, your friend’s husband (who seemed such a great guy), the man who announced the Queen’s death are secretly aroused by grotesque crimes.

Their excuses are legion. Edwards cited variously an overbearing father, attending Cardiff University not Oxbridge, a health condition that narrows his arteries and — since a woman must be culpable somehow — emotional estrangement from his wife.

So random. He might as well have said octopus, Plato, spinach, North Dakota. What in literal hell is the connection? You’re unhappy or stressed or overworked so the solution is…to look at images of children being tortured? Not drink or coconut cream pie or drugs or long walks in beautiful scenery but…staring at tortured children? HOW DOES THAT HELP?

How is that consoling or pleasurable or compensating or cheerfully distracting or a happy reward? How is it in any way a consolation for misery or exhaustion? I do not get it.

But read court reports and several excuses recur: mental health, depression, overuse of prescription meds, alcohol and, above all, “stress”. At which women shake our heads, since however bad our day, we don’t think it would be improved by watching naked, terrified little girls.

Or naked terrified little anythings. If these incomprehensible men are comforted by pictures of boys being tortured they probably also like seeing animals tortured. The rest of us, meanwhile, literally cannot bear such pictures, of boys or girls or animals or anyone sentient.

The reason men who’d claim to be loving fathers can pore over images of abused children is because they delude themselves they’re not “real”. Professor Fry says they commonly say “but I didn’t hurt the child myself” as if it is a victimless crime. “But many survivors say that knowing their images are being traded millions of times is as traumatic as the abuse itself.” Sometimes, a clip becomes such a dark-web viral hit that grateful paedophiles send money to its creators in jail or try to track down the children who appeared in it. (If they haven’t “disappeared”, as many do.)

Surely Huw Edwards, a man who appeared on primetime TV in millions of homes, must know better than anyone that a person on screen is human too — that they suffer, because they are as real as you.

Screen goes dark.

The tomato soup boys are at it again.

Big man arrested.

Tall fella.

Classy, Don – he blamed Jewish voters for his hypothetical loss of the election (you know, the one that hasn’t happened yet).

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that “the Jewish people” would be partially to blame if he loses in November, escalating his persistent campaign trail criticism of Jewish voters and insisting that Democrats hold a “curse” over them.

“I’m not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%” support in the polls, Trump told Republicans in Washington at an event billed as opposing antisemitism. “If I’m at 40, think of it, that means 60% are voting for Kamala (Harris), who, in particular, is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad.”

…

In the first of two speeches to Jewish groups on Thursday, Trump warned an audience that included GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, who introduced him onstage, that the upcoming US election is “the most important” in Israel’s history. He claimed that the Jewish state would be “eradicated,” “wiped off the face of the earth” and “cease to exist” if Harris wins the presidency. But the former president appeared preoccupied with what he described as ingratitude from Jewish voters…

Yeah, he gave them everything, and what did they do in return? We don’t know, because they haven’t done it yet, but let’s get good and mad at them anyway, just in case.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on You can’t turn the world upside down by forcing people to stand on their heads.

Very cathartic comment. There’s just one eensy expansion I’d add to this bit:

It’s not the “ridiculousness” of “identifying as something that you’re not” that’s the issue. It’s the fact that that it is unhealthy and dangerous to do so that is the problem.

The thing is, the ridiculousness of it is per se inherently unhealthy and dangerous. Why? Because the ridiculous identification isn’t its own, separate, isolated thing. It isn’t devoid of connection to the rest of the world, as it might be if it occurred in a literal dream. No, this identification is by its nature something that affects perceptions and actions. In other words, it’s among the premises in the logic of our daily lives. And there’s a serious problem with truly ridiculous premises: the existence of even one demolishes the entire system. No, really, admit even a single contradictory premise into your logical system, and the whole thing explodes. From the premises (i) Socrates is a man and (ii) all men are mortal, we conclude that (iii) Socrates is mortal. But if we add (iv) Rachel Levine is a woman, then ex falso quodlibet Socrates is immortal and drinking bleach is a great home remedy for constipation. (And simultaneously not a great home remedy for constipation!) Accepting the ridiculous is necessarily dangerous, because it destroys our ability to recognize danger.

It’s exactly the sort of danger that trans activists bully women and girls into accepting. Markers of possible and probable threat must be ignored, women. Repress your natural instincts for self-defense, girls. Act as if nothing is out of the ordinary when the bearded manwoman in fetish gear enters your intimate spaces. If you react at all before the actual moment of a violent attack, you prove that you’re a retrograde, transphobic bigot. You wouldn’t want to be one of them, would you? That’s a good little lady.

The outlook is grim.

Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise.

Since 2018, a team of scientists forming the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, has been studying Thwaites — often dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” — up close to better understand how and when it might collapse.

Their findings, set out across a collection of studies, provide the clearest picture yet of this complex, ever-changing glacier. The outlook is “grim,” the scientists said in a report published Thursday, revealing the key conclusions of their six years of research.

Because sea level rise. Much sea level rise.

The scientists predict the whole of Thwaites and the Antarctic Ice Sheet behind it could be gone in the 23rd Century. Even if humans stop burning fossil fuels rapidly — which is not happening — it may be too late to save it.

It’s so not happening. What humans are doing instead is enthusiastically burning more and more and more fossil fuels, as fast as they can, before something stops them.

When everything is turned inside out:

It started with a dachshund in a dress, and ended with a legal case that has cost taxpayers thousands. Elizabeth Pitt, 63, a social worker, has won her 10-month legal battle against Cambridgeshire County Council for harassment and direct discrimination, after she was investigated for being transphobic.

Money and time well spent, yeah? No.

The case started back in 2022 when Pitt attended an LGBTQ meeting. “We were talking about doing a presentation to the whole county – everyone from bin men to admin staff – about how to support LGBT rights,” she says. “I made the point that I’m a lesbian and I’m not attracted to men who identify as women. I was reported for being transphobic and had a call from HR but it never went anywhere.”

I have to wonder how this “transphobia” is understood. Is it transphobic to say you’re a lesbian and not attracted to men, or is it still transphobic even if you never mention it?

I also wonder how and why it’s “phobic” to be not attracted to Xs. Surely we all have lots of people we like, admire, love, hang out with, talk to, go on adventures with, value, without wanting to have sex with them. Don’t we? Don’t we have friends, comrades, colleagues, allies, cousins, siblings, whom we value for reasons that just aren’t about sex?

But in January 2023, Pitt was in another LGBTQ meeting on Zoom in which a younger male colleague had held up his “gender-fluid dog” in a dress. “I joined the meeting late, so I wasn’t even in the meeting when the dog in the frock happened, but apparently one of my colleagues said ‘He’s got a c–k so he’s a male,’” she recalls. “I was told what had happened and the tone of the meeting had been set. At one point I asked ‘Does anyone believe there’s more than two sexes?’ and was told ‘Yes it’s a spectrum’. I said ‘I don’t believe it’.”

How would that work, if it were true? If a partially male person made a partially female person pregnant would the baby be even more partially female or male? At what point on the spectrum does the possibility of reproduction drop off? Just curious.

Pitt says she doesn’t like to use pronouns as she believes they’re sexist and homophobic, and said that she resented having to use them in documentation at work and would actively remove them.

Oh good grief, Telegraph. Of course she uses pronouns. What you mean is she doesn’t like to use specialty luxury customized pronouns as ordered by Trans Activists. There are 6 non-controversial pronouns in that very sentence.

After the meeting, Pitt, who qualified as a social worker in 2007 and specialises in the gap between health and social care, says she tried to get on with her job, but she was reported for voicing gender-critical views. One colleague was said to be left “shaking in disbelief” and another complained that it gave them “anxiety dreams”.

That’ll be because they’ve been trained to freak out this way. The reality is that trans “oppression” is a luxury form of pseudo-oppression, so its adherents are trained to overreact to everything, to compensate for the absurdity of their cause.

She was then banned from the LGBT network. “I was totally shocked and incensed,” she says. “I don’t like that men who identify as women are in lesbian spaces, both online and in real life. You’ve got men who identify as women going to lesbian gigs. You’ve got women who identify as men going to gay saunas. These spaces are sacred. If you’re not gay you don’t understand it. But being a lesbian is protected in the Equality Act, which I knew very well from my work as a social worker. They were bullying me. It’s a mind game to turn it around and make me the oppressor and the transphobe. And they couldn’t actually tell me what I’d said or done that was transphobic.”

Reversal. Dirtiest trick in the book.

A friend suggested Pitt crowdfund the money to take her case to court. She eventually raised over £51,000. “So many people understood and supported me,” she says. “Thousands of people made small donations, whatever they could afford, but there were also a few big donations around £1,000 and £500. Martina Navratilova and Sharon Davis supported it on Twitter. A lot of sportswomen got behind me, I think they understood the unfairness of it, and the fact that I believe men who identify as women shouldn’t participate in womens’ sport.”

After months’ of hearings, the case made it to the tribunal, but Cambridge County Council conceded liability half an hour before the case was due to go to court. A spokesperson for CCC said: “After taking full and detailed legal advice on the merits of the case and the issues involved, the county council admitted legal liability and didn’t further defend the case. We strive to create a safe, inclusive and compassionate environment for people to work in and recognise this needs to be balanced with everyone being entitled to express their own views and beliefs. We will reflect carefully on this final outcome, as well as undertaking a review of our policies and procedures accordingly.”

Do that. Do that very thing. Do it a lot, and urge everyone else to do it too.

The Times also (along with the BBC) reports on the Rape Crisis Scotland outrage in a cautious timid obfuscating way.

Rape Crisis Scotland boss apologises for Edinburgh centre failings

What failings were those then?

Subhead:

A review had heavily criticised the support service run by a trans activist, which failed to provide women-only spaces for 16 months

The issue was and is not the “trans activist” part; the issue was and is that he’s a man.

Why do they refuse to say this up front? If even the Times and the Telegraph won’t say it how can we expect the Guardian and the Beeb to say it?

The lede:

Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, has apologised “unreservedly” to abuse survivors damaged by a support service in Edinburgh run by a trans woman accused of harassing staff with gender-critical views.

Still not good enough. We know what that means but not everyone pays close attention to the issue, so saying “run by a trans woman” is not clear enough. It’s their job to make it clear enough.

Brindley also insisted that services offered around the country must provide “women-only” spaces.

She was speaking after Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was heavily criticised in a review and Mridul Wadhwa, its former chief executive, was found to have “failed to set professional standards of behaviour” and not understood “the limits on her role’s authority”.

Under Wadhwa, the Edinburgh centre failed to provide women-only spaces for 16 months.

Now there the Times befuddles the low-information reader all over again. The Times fails to spell out that Wadhwa is a man, and calls him “her” inside unattributed quotation marks. If you don’t already know Wadhwa is a man, you won’t learn it from this reporting.

She told the BBC that while there was no reason why transgender people should not work in rape crisis centres, the services must provide women-only spaces.

She reiterated that Rape Crisis Scotland, the umbrella organisation for 17 local centres, had no active hand in Wadhwa’s appointment but said there had been “no reason” not to agree to it, because Wadhwa had significant experience of working in the sector.

She should be booted out and never allowed to work in a rape crisis anything ever again.

Brindley said she “absolutely recognised” that women-only spaces were a priority for many women using rape support services. Critics, however, highlighted that Brindley had failed to define what constitutes a woman.

As does the Times in much of this very story. The obfuscation creeps in everywhere.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Cat exits bag, takes a bow, retires from stage.

You push an idea that makes it look ridiculous, makes the idea of identifying as something that you’re not look so ridiculous and preposterous and obscene….

It’s not the “ridiculousness” of “identifying as something that you’re not” that’s the issue. It’s the fact that that it is unhealthy and dangerous to do so that is the problem. Pointing out the ridiculousness is an act of desperation to get those authorities and institutions which support and enforce trans ideology to recognize the impossibility of the ideas they are forcing on society. In my own comments here at B&W, I’ve used examples like changing species, becoming invisible, or claiming to be made of antimatter. These are extreme examples intended to grab attention, to grab the lapels of the powers that be to try to shake some sense into them, because gender ideology’s core claims, that humans can change sex, and that one can be born into the “wrong” body, are just as extreme and impossible. But to even say any of this is deemed “hateful,” “bigoted,” and “transphobic.”

It is anything but kind to force society to accept the unhealthy, dangerous, impossible, and yes RIDICULOUS tenets of trangenderism. But it’s not the silliness and ludicrousness of the basis for these claims that is the problem (though that should have been enough to dismiss them tout court). It is the danger posed by the continued enactment and enforcement of their demands to the health and well-being of individuals and their families, as well as the ongoing corrosion and destruction of public institutions, and democracy itself. These dangers are not hypothetical or conjectural. They can be measured by the price paid in flesh and blood, women’s freedom and safety, the stifling of public discourse, and the surrender of goverments and corporations themselves to the inordinate power and influence of transgender ideology. They have brought the Trojan Rainbow Gender Unicorn into the heart of governance, business, and media and have used these captured entities to defend their claims and demands by attacking their opponents, going Full Orwell with the power of the police, the courts, and the media. Sex is “assigned at birth.” Criticism is genocide. Resistance is hatred. Stealing anything and everything belonging to women is a “right.” Lies are truth. Mutilation is medicine. Fantasy is reality. Tell me again that we’re the “baddies.” It is not hateful to resist something that is itself hateful. And yes, gender ideology is hateful. And harmful. Just ask women. It is not unkind, evil, or bigoted to refuse to accept and repeat lies.

Genderists accuse their opponents of using “protecting children” or “protecting women’s rights” as some sort of ruse or smokescreen to camouflage the “true purpose” of resistance to their agenda: “hatred” of trans people. Yet genderists are the ones who have to distort and reinvent language itself to hide the truth of their own agenda from the unsuspecting and the gullible. Even from themselves. It’s all euphemisms and lies. We didn’t invent “top surgery.” They’re the ones who have to hide the fact that at the core of their belief system, they’re supporting and promoting the mutilation and sterilization of children, and the destruction of women’s rights. That’s a lot to hide, and a lot to force everyone else to swallow. Yet to a frightening degree they have, for the moment, succeeded. But they have not won. And they never will, because you can’t defeat reality. You can try to hide it, paper it over, and punish those rude enough to point out the true state of things, but that reality will always be there, effortlessly demonstrating the dishonesty and impossibility of their position. You can’t turn the world upside down by trying to force everyone to stand on their heads. You will never fool gravity. And given the harms that have already been inflicted upon both children and women by trans ideology, I’d say that that’s a pretty good goddamned reason to oppose genderism. How do they argue for it? How do they make their case. That’s right, THEY DON’T. Because they can’t. That’s the whole point of “NO DEBATE!” They have nothing but bullying, lies, and emotional blackmail. They oppose any studies of the actual rates of success of the supposedly “lifesaving, gender-affirming care” they champion. They force women to call their male assailants “her” or “she” and force women in prison to be housed with dangerous, male criminals convicted of violent, sexual crimes because these sexual predators suddenly claim to be women. If it wasn’t cruel sadism, it would be laughable.

CIVIL SERVANT 1: Hey, let’s put violent, male rapists into women’s prisons!

CIVIL SERVANT 2: Yes, what a great idea! Make sure they put on a wig and some lipstick first, so nobody will notice!

CS1: Nobody important anyhow!

CS2: Women? PHHHFT! As if!

BOTH: HAHAHAHA!

You’d never accept it as satirical fiction; it’s just too over the top. Any editor having this cross their desk would fire their client and send them packing. Yet here we have the state-sanctioned, judicial and carceral equivalent of enacting Swift’s proposal to barbecue and eat Irish babies.

Is any of this “kind” or “good”? With this kind of track record, WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULDN’T OPPOSE GENDERISM? Would they have been able to force any of these horrific results without lies, bullying, and intimidation? These are but a few of the signal “victories” of self-styled, trans “rights,” “social justice warriors.” How are these outcomes “just” or good for “society”? They aren’t. But they did get the “war” part right, because war it is. Call it a “culture war” if you will. But as far as society goes, this is a war of self defence, because they shot first.

This again. The BBC needs to learn to call it out as well as stop doing it itself.

Charity boss apologises to rape survivors over crisis centre failings

But declines to step down, so her apology is fake as a 3 dollar bill.

A charity chief executive has apologised “unreservedly” to rape survivors affected by failings at support centre in Edinburgh.

Bollocks. She has nothing but reservations.

Sandy Brindley, of Rape Crisis Scotland, said she found out the centre was not following national standards last October and paused referrals 11 months later when the review said safeguarding was a problem.

So she did nothing for 11 months. What a peach.

She told BBC Scotland’s Drivetime programme there was no reason why transgender people could not work in rape support centres, but that services must also provide women-only spaces.

That’s the part where smoke came out of my ears, yet again. The issue is not “transgender people”; the issue is men. She knows this of course, she just refuses to stop cheating and sidestepping and playing games this way. Fuck her apology.

There’s a very interesting thing here at the beginning.

I haven’t watched the whole thing, but the bit that grabbed me is all I need. The guy on the left of the screen, apparently Jonathan Lis, says this:

This is an attempt, by people who hate trans people –

Sharp interjection from the woman in the navy blue blazer, who is (I think) one of the hosts: “What?!”

Lis goes on:

You push an idea that makes it look ridiculous, makes the idea of identifying as something that you’re not look so ridiculous and preposterous and obscene that obviously no one would ever believe that it could take place in schools –

There. That’s what interests me. Look what he admitted. That trans people are identifying as something that they’re not.

Oops.

Originally a comment by Steven on But every dot was connected.

Stories are what they have instead of thinking.

There are, perhaps, two fundamental ways that humans understand things

– tell me a story

– show me a picture

Republicans have always communicated in stories. Stories are accessible, and relatable, and compelling; far more so than, say, policy proposals or white papers. This is one reason that Republicans keep getting the votes of people whose interests they oppose: they tell them stories that they want to hear.

Even more powerful than stories are keywords or tropes: short phrases or words that have come to stand for a whole story. Willie Horton. There’s a bear in the woods. They’re eating the dogs.

One advantage of speaking in tropes is that they serve as dog whistles: they give the speaker plausible deniability if they later want to disavow the substance of the story.

An even bigger advantage is that the use of keywords validates the story. When a single word or phrase evokes a whole story, the listener tends to accept that story uncritically–after all, it’s a story that they already knew. (If they didn’t already know the story then the keyword wouldn’t mean anything to them.)

The Republicans’ problem is that–for whatever reason–they aren’t getting much traction with their stories right now. Back in the day, people really were afraid of communist subversion, but no one is taking the Haitians-eating-dogs thing seriously. Even the boy who was killed by an unlicensed immigrant driver is seen as a tragedy, not the vanguard of an invasion.

Trump’s problem is that he can not, in fact, connect the dots any more. Through some combination of indiscipline, desperation, and dementia, his parole has fallen below the minimum threshold necessary to generate the keywords and sequence the stories. Even his supporters are sitting there and thinking, WTF? Or just getting bored and leaving. (Boredom being a sure sign that Trump is no longer evoking interesting stories in their minds.)