This could go into the history of issues used historically by the nativist right wing in this country in its various iterations from the beginning of American time.
You know the question, one way or another: “Are you now or have you ever been…?”
But it is really very simple why this is happening now.
It is the nationwide Republican war on children who are in, or believe they are in sexual transition, and then by extension such people when they reach the age of majority.
And their parents. And their doctors. And their clergy. And their friends. And, of course, Democrats. Why Democrats? Well isn’t that the point of creating horror and fear? Defeating Democrats?
But why this, why now?
When did it start, did you hear about it before last June?
No, you did not.
But then the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, suddenly taking away from Republicans the one issue they could rely on for 50 years to tar their opponents, portray them as evil, as enemies and use to galvanize their base voters – all that good stuff and worse.
Suddenly abortion was not the issue to rouse the Republican base but only the Republican base. Suddenly it did the opposite.
All at once with Dobbs abortion became the overriding isssue – the political issue above and beyond all issues — for everyone else.
It became an issue that immediately began to show – in state elections — on state constitutional referenda, in high state court elections and the 2022 congressional elections – that the vast majority of voters disagree with Dobbs and the resuilting rigid, cruel anti-abortion state laws pressed by Republicans.
Reeling politically – and the midterms proved that – Republican strategists needed to come up with something else to galvanize their malleable, fearful, easily led believers.
They came up with “trans”, with the charge that Democrats are working to turn children trans, that doctors are their agents in this plot, that trans children and their parents are dangerous and being used and manipulated. All of that reeking political horse manure began to be spread across the fertile ground of resentment politics.
The phony trans politics did not really begin to take off until the mid-terms showed Republican professionals they had a big, big problem. They had lost their galvanizing issue, they needed to find a new one.
As with everything else they had manipulated for generations, it would sell if they could make their voters believe it was about one of two things, black people and or sex – sex that three letter dirty word in their constituency’s vocabulary.
They’d focused on crime in the elections, which among white people is political code for black people. It hadn’t worked nearly so well as the famous Willy Horton ad in 1988.
Then, what else to pivot to going forward? Sex and how to make their voters really cringe with alarm about it? Make it about trans. Make that seem threatening, dirty, foreign, a plot, a monstrous unnatural evil aimed at the sanctity of their voters lives, hearths and homes.
Make men cover cross their legs and women cross their arms across their chests at the very thought of it and pass laws to ban eveything and anything trans with a peculiar, perverse focus on children.
When nearly two dozen states introduce and pass like legislation it is not spontaneous, it is a deliberate manipulated campaign. Everyone who has ever been near politics knows that.
This has been and is a campaign by seasoned political pros in the national and state Rpublican party apparatus. You can be sure it’s been polled, given to focus groups and scripted for the legislators who have taken it up.
Well, what of it?
First there is nothing to their malicious, malignant campaign, it is a lie, medically, socialogically and legally a lie. Second it involves the most personal and for many the most painful realizations, choices and decisions in their young lives or the young lives of their children – choices that belong to them and them alone in privacy with their families.
And how many people are we talking about? Published estimates place the U.S. transexual population at less than one-half percent (0.005%), perhaps 600,000 people. Perhaps. Of that number how many are children?
The whole campaign is artificial, drummed up, wicked and evil in its dimension.
But it is no accident. It is a purposeful national campaign by Republican strategists and their henchmen in Congress and state legislatures to turn attention away from what is now a completely losing political issue for them, abortion, to something else that can be used to manipulate and bring out their vote.
That’s why this is happening and all the attendant garbage with it – book banning, attacking the entire LGBQT population, commercial boycotts, and of course the preposterous focus on “drag queens” – these are all part of the campaign package. When except in the movies is the last time you ever saw a drag queen?
The Republcian war on transexuals and LGBTQ people sadily is all too American – as American as NINA, as the KKK, as Joe McCarthy – as American as the most rancid cheese and the stalest apple pie.
And it was entirely predictable after June 20202.
Peeling the Onion 