John Leslie pens a piece entitled The rise of right-wing violence in Trump's America. While I'll agree with him that there is right-wing violence, it's not at all clear to me that it's "rising." If anything, it seems to me that racial violence, at least, is declining under Trump. Recall that under Obama we had the Ferguson riots, Dylann Roof's massacre of Black churchgoers, along with the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Here are the results of a relevant Google search from 2013 - 2016. At the top of the list is a piece by Steve Chapman, written in July, 2016, about how pundits thought race relations had worsened under President Obama. By comparison things seem better today.
Of course Mr. Leslie omits left-wing violence--antifa, BLM-inspired murders of cops, strong-arm tactics on campus to prevent free speech, and left-wing antisemitism, often but not always disguised as a plea for Palestinian rights.
My own view is that violence on both sides--while still existent--has declined under Trump. Obama was infuriatingly preachy, all but daring right-wing fanatics to do something stupid & evil, while at the same time winking at racial violence from the left. Trump is neither preachy nor winking. For him violence comes from both sides in roughly equal measure.
The second Democratic talking point comes from Autumn Rain and Erwin Freed entitled Trump administration attacks trans rights. The article is a mess, claiming that Trump is somehow stepping on fundamental human rights.
The lede sentence:
The New York Times reported on Oct. 21 that the Trump administration is “considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a government effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.”I partially agree with Rain and Freed that the new definition is too restrictive--genitalia at birth may not actually be the most relevant criterion. But I strongly object to transgender people becoming a protected class under civil rights law.
For all the initials, LGBTQI, only the first two or three account for any significant portion of the population--perhaps 5%. The remainder comprise much less than 1%--perhaps as few as 0.1%. They are not a big enough community to deserve special civil rights treatment.
We don't accord such privileges to blind or deaf people, even though we try very hard to be accommodating, They have to fit in with the rest of society as best as possible. Why should trans people be treated any differently?
Rain & Freed make some completely ridiculous claims.
A popular “common sense” notion is that genetics are rigidly sex-specific. Men and women are said to only have XY and XX chromosomes respectively. Over the last couple of years the renowned journal Nature has published many articles that put to bed the idea that human bodies exist as either purely male or female at any level.Our authors cite no references from Nature, and I seriously doubt the truth of their assertion. It is long known in genetics that the female gamete contains an X chromosome, while the male gamete contains either an X or Y chromosome. Yes, there are times when it goes wrong, e.g., hermaphrodites, or people with XXY chromosomes. But these circumstances are very rare, and to my mind represent a kind of birth defect. Courtesy and accommodation are in order; a complete rearrangement of social customs is not.
Then there's this:
Not only do people come in all different shapes, sizes, and anatomical make-ups but so do their genes! A person who was assigned female at birth, identifies as a woman, and easily is seen as one may have XY chromosomes in her bladder, or even internal testes.People come in all different shapes and sizes because (in large part) their genes are different. And the number of individuals with XX chromosomes who have XY chromosomes in their bladder must be vanishingly small. Indeed, I doubt such folks exist at all.
For this we're supposed to change English grammar and invent a bunch of new pronouns. Nor is it reason to let men, however disguised, use women's washrooms. Separate toilets protect women (real ones) from male predators. Though I'd change Trump's standard: if you have a penis, you can't use women's lavatories. Doesn't matter what you had at birth.
So why does this auger a Republican victory in 2018?
If SA were simply a voice in the wilderness, a tiny little grouplet with silly ideas all its own, then it would make no difference at all. Unfortunately their opinions reflect the left-wing of the Democratic party. I know they reject that assessment--they think they're "radicals" who advocate something completely different from the Dems.
But they're wrong. Be it on race, class or gender, along with immigration and environmental issues, their opinion dovetails perfectly with progressive Democrats. There is nothing original in anything they write. The problem with this progressive vision of the world is that it appeals only to about 20% of the population--disproportionately from the upper middle class.
The rest of us call it political correctness, a widely unpopular imposition on American discourse. Deviate even slightly from the correct terminology and you're dubbed a racist, sexist, homophobic, white-supremacist. Through the Obama years this trick worked--any slightly contrary opinion was excised from polite society simply because the language wasn't up to snuff.
Trump ran and won on opposing political correctness. For SA and their Democrat friends, this means he must be a racist, sexist, homophobic white supremacist. He's none of those things, however lewd, rude & crude he may be.
Mr. Trump stands on an anti-PC, cultural platform.
- Traditional mores have value, and they should not be overturned on a lark.
- Immigration is fine, but we should only admit people who love us. Which, contrary to SA, is not restricted to white people.
- We do not need to accept large numbers of indigent, illiterate refugees from failed states such as Honduras, however miserable they may be.
- The US does not have to keep the world safe for democracy. Nor (now that we're energy independent) do we have to defend the Persian Gulf or world trade routes.
- We need to reduce our dependence on China, not for economic reasons, but rather for security.
- Progressive values are an attempt to remake society in some idealistic image--call it socialism. This effort will always fail--see Venezuela for a recent example.
- The wolf at our door is not climate change or some other phony-baloney progressive boogeyman. Instead it's poverty. We're not guaranteed to be a rich country. That means we need to let productive people (e.g., frackers) go about their business with as little red tape and taxes as possible.
Political correctness is resoundingly unpopular in this country--opposed by 75% of the population. Socialist Action, by trumpeting the PC banner, helps in its own small way to get Republican voters to the polls.
Thank you!
Further Reading:
