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You've Aggravated Everyone and His Mother, Tucker
Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson was presumably delighted that he got the exclusive "scoop" when it comes to broadcasting the footage from the 1/6 insurrection. Given the response to his first "report," however, he might now be regretting his supposed good fortune.
As we noted yesterday, Carlson offered up a propagandistic take on 1/6 that was utterly counterfactual. His staff found some footage of people who were not, say, breaking into the Capitol through windows or raiding Nancy Pelosi's office or fighting with cops, and he used that to support the narrative that the insurrection was just a peaceful demonstration that got "slightly chaotic."
As it turns out, people were listening and watching. And most of them were not amused. A non-exhaustive list of where the anti-Carlson blowback came from yesterday:
- Congressional Democrats: This, of course, comes as no surprise. Taking the lead for
his colleagues was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who
delivered a speech
on the floor of the Senate that excoriated both Carlson and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The conclusion:
I condemn Mr. Carlson for siding with the enemies of democracy. I strongly condemn Speaker McCarthy's actions and fiercely oppose his decision to share this footage with Carlson.
Schumer, of course, is not generally known for his fiery rhetoric. But even he is driven into a rage by Carlson.
I urge Fox News to order Carlson to cease propagating the big lie on his network and to level with their viewers about the truth. The truth! Behind the efforts to mislead the public conduct like theirs is just asking for another January 6th to happen. - Capitol Police: The current chief of the Capitol PD is Thomas Manger, and he absolutely
blew his top, since downplaying the insurrection denigrates the service of CPD officers in general and the death of
Brian Sicknick in particular. The Chief sent an e-mail to his entire force yesterday; it begins like this:
Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack. The opinion program never reached out to the Department to provide accurate context.
The rest of the e-mail is just as angry. Manger also said that he did not approve the airing of the vast majority of the footage Carlson showed.
One false allegation is that our officers helped the rioters and acted as 'tour guides.' This is outrageous and false. The Department stands by the officers in the video that was shown last night. I don't have to remind you how outnumbered our officers were on January 6. Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk to rioters into getting each other to leave the building
The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments. - Senate Republicans: Senate Republicans suspect, quite rightly, that this nonsense will rebound to the
detriment of the Republican Party. And so, many of them were not happy yesterday. Taking the lead was Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had a copy of the e-mail Manger send to the CPD. McConnell waved the e-mail around in front of
reporters, and
declared:
"with regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the
chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th." North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) was even more
blunt, describing Carlson's presentation as "bull**it" when talking to a reporter. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said: "I thought
it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today." Mitt Romney (R-UT) added: "It's a very
dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it's
anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country."
- House Republicans: The GOP members of the House are not being quite as open in their
criticism, but most of them
aren't happy,
either. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) spoke for many of his colleagues who would not go on the record, decreeing: "It's
definitely stupid to keep talking about this... So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you're trying
to feed Democrat narratives even further?"
- Foxers: The other entertainers at Fox are not willing to turn against one of their own, at least not on the air. But it was noticeable yesterday that none of the other shows on the channel were talking about the 1/6 footage. In fact, they clearly didn't want to touch the story with a 10-foot pole.
Naturally, all of this has left Kevin McCarthy holding the bag, to a large extent. He didn't really want to release the footage, but he was (and is) beholden to the Freedom Caucus nutters. Yesterday, the Speaker told reporters that he doesn't regret releasing the footage to Carlson, and that he's glad to be an advocate for transparency. Uh, huh. Is there anyone who actually believes that? You can always tell when McCarthy is lying, because his lips are moving.
As to Carlson, he also doubled down, taking apparent delight in what he called "congressional hysteria" over his report. Of course, he's an even bigger liar than McCarthy is (except maybe in text messages to Fox colleagues). Carlson's self-preservation instincts are very strong, and he knows enough to know that: (1) it's not wise to piss off the entire Republican establishment, (2) if the entire Republican establishment is this angry, then the base (i.e., Carlson's viewers) are likely also unhappy. Further, rewriting the history of that day is just toting the water for Donald Trump, and yesterday, thanks to the latest Dominion filing, it was also revealed that Carlson "passionately" hates Trump. So, it would not be terribly surprising if Carlson's first segment on the 1/6 footage ends up being his only segment on the 1/6 footage. (Z)
Time to Expand the House?
Size matters. At least, that is the argument of The Washington Post's Danielle Allen in a piece about adding more seats to the House of Representatives that was brought to our attention by reader D.E. in Lancaster, PA.
Allen points out that, first of all, every major democracy in the world except for the U.S. has substantially expanded the size of its legislature since World War II in response to population growth. In the U.S., the Senate has stayed level, excepting the four seats added for Alaska and Hawaii, due to the terms of the Constitution (although an amendment to give each state four senators might actually pass). And the House has stayed level, excepting occasional (and temporary) increases for new states, due to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. As a consequence of this, the average member of the House represents far and away more people than legislators in any other major democracy. To put a somewhat finer point on it, the German Bundestag and the British Parliament (to take two examples) both have more members than the House, despite the fact that those nations have less than a quarter of the U.S. population.
Allen proposes four benefits that would come from an expanded House:
- Responsiveness: Right now, the average member of the House has over 700,000 constituents.
Needless to say, that means that they are not very responsive to any individual constituent, or even any particular
group of constituents.
- Oversight: The executive branch has gotten much larger and more complex since 1929. And
yet, the same number of Congresspeople are overseeing that. More members of the House would mean that members would be
spread less thin, and could keep a closer eye on the executive branch.
- Money: Smaller districts would require less extensive campaigns, and thus less money. That
would hopefully reduce corruption while also lowering the bar for entry, making for a more egalitarian field of
potential candidates.
- Diversity: Smaller districts would also mean more majority-Black, majority-Latino, majority-Asian, etc. districts, which would mean a more diverse Congress. Alternatively, it would require the makers of gerrymandering software to improve the product.
Allen knows what she's talking about, and we generally think her four points are on the mark. The only one we are not 100% sold on is #3; money tends to go to swing districts in very large quantities. And regardless of how many members there are, there are always going to be a fair number of swing districts.
Meanwhile, one benefit Allen does not touch on, at least not directly, is what might be called de-polarization. Right now, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, there is no "centrist" wing. There are almost certainly members who are centrist by temperament, but if they express that with their words or their votes, they are made into pariahs. See, for example, former representative Adam Kinzinger. If there were far more members in Congress, there would be a much better chance that a viable a liberal wing of the Republican conference and a viable conservative wing of the Democratic caucus could emerge. If it's only a couple of people, it's easy to give them the outcast treatment. If it's 75 people, that doesn't work as well. And if there really was a centrist group within each party, then Congress would operate much more like it did 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
Allen does not specify, incidentally, how large she would like to see the House become. Assuming we take the 435 seats from 1929, and increase that the same amount that the overall population has increased, then that would put the House at about 1,175 members. This is roughly the number that is usually bandied about.
So, is there any chance this might happen? Well, it's at least plausible in the sense that it would not require a constitutional amendment (unlike changing the Senate). All it would require is that Congress pass an update to the Permanent Apportionment Act. That said, we see at least three major barriers:
- Power Sharing: Generally speaking, when people have power, they are not enthused about the
possibility of diluting that power overnight by inviting hundreds more people into the club.
- Tradition: Americans are unusually resistant to change, and this would be a big one. One
physical manifestation of this, which would be a very big deal, is that the current Capitol building is not set up to
accommodate a meeting with 1,000+ people (and even more for joint sessions, as during the State of the Union). Would
people be able to tolerate a significant expansion and renovation of the Capitol building? It's happened a number of
times in the past, but it would surely be highly controversial today.
- Presidential Politics: Fully addressing this point will require an entire item of its own, which we will do in the near future. However, the short version is that influence over the presidential election would shift in the direction of big states and (a little) in the direction of the blue states. There are a lot of members of Congress that would not be pleased about this.
In short, even if it's a good idea, don't hold your breath. (Z)
Don't Doubt that DeSantis Is for Sale
Perhaps the single most impressive thing about Donald Trump's rise to political prominence is that he convinced tens of millions of voters that he was a class warrior fighting for the little guy against the big, bad corporations. After all, he's a multi-millionaire (and alleged billionaire) and one who has aggressively exploited the tax and other loopholes that benefit rich people at the expense of everyone else. And once he became president, Trump continued to exploit loopholes in order to monetize his high office six ways to Sunday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is supposedly very smart—much smarter than Trump (not that that's a high bar to clear). However, the Governor does not seem to have a single idea about political branding that he did not steal from Trump lock, stock, and barrel. And so, his plan is to cast himself as (another) class warrior fighting for the little guy against the big, bad corporations. As we noted in our item last week about DeSantis' new book (which is his de facto platform):
DeSantis' spat with the Walt Disney Corporation will be a major part of DeSantis platform. The whole story shows how the governor stood up to a woke corporation and vanquished it (although the part about the Reedy Creek Improvement District being reinstated this year didn't quite make it into the book). This chapter demonstrates: (1) how tough DeSantis is and (2) how much he opposes all this "LGBTQ+ sh*t" floating around. More generally, there is a lot of popular opposition to big corporations and this incident suggests DeSantis is the guy to take them on. We'll believe that when he goes after big corporations known for their right-wing views, such as Koch Industries, R.J. Reynolds, Hobby Lobby, Papa John's, Chevron, Dillard's, or Chick-fil-A.
In short, it really doesn't pass the smell test that DeSantis is willing to go mano-a-mano with corporate America.
And indeed, just a couple of days after we wrote that, there was news that makes clear where DeSantis really stands when it comes to corporate interests. To start, understand that there are few corners of the business world where unfettered greed is on display more often than it is in the world of sports ownership. Certainly, elite pro athletes are very well paid. But team owners are constantly scheming to limit exactly how well paid they are, while also doing whatever they can to screw over the non-elite athletes. The owners are also pleased to shake communities down for massive subsidies while taking advantage of every tax dodge in the book. Oh, and when the owners sell their teams, often because they've been caught in the middle of some sort of scandal rooted in racism or sexual misconduct, it's invariably at a huge profit. For example, the Phoenix Suns were purchased in 2004 for $400 million (technically, $200 million in payment and $200 million in assumed debts), and they just sold for more than $4 billion.
Anyhow, minor league baseball players have been criminally underpaid for... well, forever. At most levels of the minors, the athletes are expected to put in massive amounts of time practicing, staying in shape, playing games and traveling. And their wages for this are generally in the very low five figures. Sometimes it's even the high four figures. On average, outside the very top level of the minor leagues (AAA), players earn less than $2/hour.
That, of course, is far below minimum wage, and so a consortium of minor league players filed suit a couple of years ago, claiming they are entitled to, at very least, the federal minimum wage. Thanks to some lobbying ($4 million worth), the owners got Congress to adopt a rule exempting ballplayers from the federal minimum wage. But Judge Joseph Spero of the Northern District of California ruled that players are still covered by state-level minimum wage laws.
This is where Florida comes in. The minimum wage there is $11/hour, and will soon go up to $12/hour, which is considerably more than the $7.75/hour federal minimum wage. There are quite a few minor league teams in Florida and, in addition, about half the teams in baseball conduct spring training in the state. If team owners have to pay minimum wage to minor leaguers, this could cost them several million dollars a year. That does not seem much for people whose teams are worth several billion, but it apparently it is. We really aren't good at understanding the seemingly pathological need that so many ultra-rich people have when it comes to holding on to more money than they can ever possibly spend.
Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, the Florida legislature began consideration of a law that would exclude baseball players from the state's minimum wage law. If the new legislation passes and is signed into law by DeSantis, then the minor leaguers would be out of luck. And Cubs owner Dan Ricketts (who is notoriously sleazy), to help improve his side's "luck," made a $1 million contribution to DeSantis' PAC the day after the legislation was introduced. Oh, and incidentally, the fellow leading the lobbying effort? DeSantis' former chief of staff.
This is hardly the first time that the Governor has made clear that when money speaks, he listens. To take another example, the stunt in which immigrants were relocated from Texas to Martha's Vineyard was executed by an airline owned by a friend and supporter of DeSantis. The no-bid contract for that "service" awarded an amount of money vastly larger than makes any sense; enough to have flown every one of those migrants first class on any airline with hundreds of thousands of dollars left over. Or DeSantis could have opened the contract for competitive bidding by charter airlines and most bids would have come in at about 10% of what DeSantis got for his friend.
The bottom line is that DeSantis is no more an anti-corporate crusader than Trump is. You could have guessed that, but now you have hard evidence, too. (Z)
The Decline and Fall of Twitter?
Western Union asking Alexander Graham Bell "Why would anyone want to hear the messages they get from other people?" The Edsel. Kodak inventing digital photography in 1977 and then deciding there was no money in the technology. The Apple Lisa. Blockbuster declining to buy Netflix for $1 million, because they couldn't imagine anyone would want to receive DVD rentals through the mail. The New Coke. Decca Records deciding that four lads from Liverpool did not show enough promise to make it worthwhile to sign them to a contract. Betamax. The people who decided that Donald Trump would make an excellent partner for their casino venture. These are some of the biggest business missteps of all time. And, more and more, it looks like Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter will be joining the list.
When Musk canned a huge percentage of Twitter's workforce in order to save money, he was warned that because of the "duct tape and bubble gum" approach that was used to construct and expand the platform, it would grow increasingly unreliable. After all, there aren't enough people left to patch holes as they present themselves. And guess what? Twitter has become increasingly unreliable. Surprise! Who knew? The platform had four different major outages in the month of February, and it started the month of March with yet another. Musk took to his Twitter account, during one of the increasingly infrequent occasions that things were working properly, to complain how "fragile" the software is. But he does not seem to have a plan for improving upon the situation.
Whether he admits it publicly or not, this is a big problem for his new business venture. After all, the trendline is headed in the wrong direction; if it's one major outage per week in February, then how many outages per week will there be by, say, July? And the more often people visit and find it broken, the more likely they will decamp for more reliable pastures. It is also the case that much of Twitter's usage is driven by time-sensitive stuff (like, say, journalists who use it to break news first). If people whose content is time-sensitive can't be sure Twitter will be there when they need it, they'll start looking for other options, too.
Meanwhile, the financial picture for Twitter is getting increasingly grim. Musk took on a lot of debt to cover the purchase, and to service that debt, he needed to find ways to grow Twitter's income. His primary initiative on that front was "Twitter Blue," wherein people could pay a monthly fee for various perks (including the "verified" check mark). Twitter Blue has been a train wreck, inviting all kinds of abuses. Meanwhile, it is generating... $2 million/month. For someone worth north of $100 billion, that is a rounding error.
This means that Twitter's core revenue source remains advertising. But that money is headed elsewhere at a rapid pace. Since Musk took over, ad revenue is down by more than 40%. In part, that is because Musk has made himself radioactive, and someone that many businesses don't want to be associated with. In part, it is because the audience on Twitter is smaller, which means fewer eyeballs to sell to advertisers.
We haven't got the faintest idea where this is headed. That is to say, we are not sure how far Twitter has to decline before it's no longer technically and/or financially viable. We also don't know exactly how Musk has set things up, and whether he can decide to cut his losses by shuttering the platform and selling its assets. If he did that, he would certainly lose the Tesla stock he put up as collateral. But would he be on the hook beyond that? Our guess is "no," in which case he might well reach a point where it's better to cut bait rather than to keep fishing.
Meanwhile, there is the question of what will replace Twitter. Or, probably more accurately, what is already replacing Twitter. Musk's platform had the benefit of being, in effect, the first provider in its market segment. So, it was able to attract pretty much every user who might be interested in a service like this. What seems to be happening now, however, is the same basic thing that happened to television. Instead of there being a "new Twitter" (or a "new ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox"), it appears that everything is splintering. Some people (mostly 40+ people) are leaning into Facebook. Some (mostly younger people) are moving on to more "hip" options, like TikTok or Instagram. Some are choosing echo-chamber boutique platforms like Gab or Truth Social. Some are migrating to Mastodon.
In short, it looks like the Twitter of 2016 is gone forever, and will not be replicated by the Twitter of 2023 or by any other platform. Assuming that the positive aspects of Twitter (like putting people in touch with life-saving information, or allowing journalists to connect with sources) can still be accomplished with that platform or with some alternative, then this seems to be a positive thing to us. Having a poorly moderated forum where individuals could potentially reach hundreds of millions of people with all manner of propaganda and dangerous falsehoods was not a good thing for the country or the world. (Z)
Tennessee Bans Drag Shows
There are, we are sorry to say, no shortage of news items about people on the right rushing to capitalize on the bugaboo-du-jour, which is trans people. Obviously, trans hostility has been a significant element of Republican politics for a long time, but it's noticeably picked up momentum in the last week or so. Is that because of CPAC? Because Donald Trump has been carping about trans people? Because of those "here's our messaging this week" memos produced by the RNC? Could be any of these things.
In any event, just as there was a rush to see which red state could impose the harshest limits on abortion, there is now a rush to see which red state can impose the harshest limits on trans people. And the state of Tennessee has just taken the lead in this little race. Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law a bill that forbids gender-affirming care for minors. That is something that many states already have, of course. So, to give the Volunteer State a little extra edge, Lee then signed the United States' very first ban on public drag shows. Other red states are expected to follow suit.
The logic here, which comes straight out of the 1950s, goes like this:
- People who dress in drag are all trans
- Trans people are all sexual deviants
- Sexual deviants are all pedophiles
Ipso facto, by transitive property (and trans property), drag queens and trans people are pedophiles. Every bit of "logic" here is wildly incorrect, but people nonetheless buy it all, lock stock and barrel.
Having laid that out, we can now present you with a picture of one of the country's most visible pedophiles, namely Governor Bill Lee:
This is from his high school yearbook, and was taken at a football game back in 1977.
Needless to say, you can't have a pervert serving as governor, so Lee will undoubtedly be resigning his office post haste and getting help for his disorder. Oops, wait, maybe not. In fact, the Governor has already explained that there is a huge difference between dressing in drag at a football game and dressing in drag on stage. Lee says it is clear that the former is just lighthearted, while the latter is sick and wrong.
Hm. Forgive us, but we are not grasping the distinction here. A distinction that, by the way, could now be the difference between going to prison and not in Tennessee. Maybe we are not clever enough to understand. Alternatively, and we are just spitballing here, maybe these politicians who are capitalizing on voters' very real anti-trans biases are just venal opportunists and demagogues who do not believe for one minute the anti-trans rhetoric they are verbalizing and enshrining into law. (Z)
Why the Trans Hate?, Part II
Yesterday, we noted that reader P.R. in Arvada had set us a letter wondering why there is so much hatred directed at trans people, and that we'd gotten a lot of responses to that. In fact, the responses were too substantial to really do justice in the Sunday mailbag. That's why we decided to run a selection of them during the regular week instead.
When we laid out the plan, we said we'd run two days' worth of responses. So, in theory, this entry should be the end of the line. However, as a result of yesterday's entry, a response that was "substantial" is now "massive." We are going to take that as prima facie evidence that there's a lot of interest in this question. So, like a hit Broadway musical, we're going to extend the run at least through the end of the week. Here's another group of reader responses:
- B.P. in Pensacola, FL: Trans hate is decidedly and unquestionably unchristian and
anti-scriptural. This is not complicated. A lot more could be written but here's a quick summary of why.
One of the most transformative moments in the early Church was the admission of non-Jews into the "The Way," as it was then known. Before that point, and even after being kicked out of the Temple, the earliest Christians viewed themselves as fundamentally Jewish. Then came Peter's dream as recounted in Acts 10. In brief, Peter had a dream where, three times, he was presented with foods that were forbidden for Jews, including foods declared in Leviticus to be "abominations." Peter refused and each time a voice said "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." The three occurrences of the same event is, of course, symbolic. He awoke and was soon presented with three (again symbolic) men who were non-Jews. He met with them, ate with them, and invited them to stay with him. This was unlawful for a Jew, as these people were ritualistically "unclean" and so association with them was forbidden, and lodging and eating with them even more so. He was questioned about it, explained his experience in the dream and that he had realized it meant that the message was intended not just for Jews, but also for those who were "profane" under Jewish law. Then, the Holy Spirit poured out upon all Jews and non-Jews alike, and they were baptized. The significance of this is lost on many today because we (well, many of us) don't think of others as ritually unclean or forbid association with people of other faiths—but at the time this would have been a really, really, really, big deal, and if the followers had not been ejected from Judaism, they certainly would have been as a result of this outright flouting of Jewish law.
Shortly before this, in Acts 8, is the story of the Apostle Philip's encounter with an "Ethiopian eunuch"—in effect, a transgender person. Again summarizing, after speaking, the eunuch expressed a desire to be baptized and Philip baptized him. The story is unclear about whether the eunuch was Jewish or not as he had "come to Jerusalem to worship" but was from Ethiopia.
So, to treat others as somehow unclean or "abominations" is squarely contrary to the lessons taught in the earliest days of the Christian Church. It is biblically unsupportable by those who consider themselves "Christians" and is exactly what the message of the early church condemns. - R.T. in Arlington, TX: As bona fides, I am confident in my faith as a Christian, and at
this moment I am walking alongside and loving my young adult child, who is making tentative steps to transition M to F.
I am neither encouraging nor discouraging my child's actions because it needs to be the child's initiative that drives
this and not a reaction to me. I want to allow for the possibility that the journey could be one way or a round-trip.
(No, the pronoun issue hasn't been resolved between us yet, but don't judge us.)
I think the matter is more primitive than A.S.W expressed yesterday. Hate in any form is not rational unless it is a response to being threatened. I see a universal part of human nature is to need to belong to a bigger whole. An identity as an individual is important, but just as important is an identity as "Us." Logically, you can't have an Us without there being a Them. I agree with the other commenters that I don't see trans people as a Them with the capacity or inclination to harm Us. Some of the haters understand they aren't threatened personally, so they project the threat onto other people's children and take on a societal responsibility to protect children from Them. The actions of individuals do get perceived through the Us/Them lens.
With that said, human history does have examples of an emerging Them that was evil, harmful, and threatened Us. World War II seems to provide the clearest example that we can relate to. Whether you call it hate, defiance, or opposition; the emotion and its effects have a place. We also have examples of times when the danger of Them went unopposed by Us for a long time and the lack of action made things worse because Them got stronger. Hate and Love have their places. My questions for my fellow travelers here are "Who is part of your Us, and how does that make you feel about Them?" and "Do Them present enough threat to your Us to deserve your hate?" Those questions apply to both trans supporters and detractors. - M.H. in Seattle, WA: Certainly the right is driving up and leveraging hatred of trans
people, but as the polling you cited suggests, this is a trend that isn't confined to the right and is likely not being
driven by the right-wing echo chamber.
I would suggest that the trans activist community has managed to alienate significant portions of the center and even the left. Roe v. Wade is overturned and the trans activists drive abortion rights groups to avoid using the word "women." If one is concerned about rape culture, it is not unreasonable to ask that women's restrooms be penis-free zones and to do so is not to be anti-trans but rather anti-people-with-penises, but that is not how the trans activist community will paint it. "Gender is a spectrum" ideology has as an implication that a gay man might not be fully a man. Moving from informing people of their preferred pronouns to asking everyone what their preferred pronouns are is arguably more welcoming to the trans community but it also sends a message that everyone should reconsider their gender.
Marriage equality for homosexuals gained support through the normalization of homosexuality within society and the growing understanding that accepting homosexuals and marriage equality did no damage to the heterosexual majority. Accepting trans people into society should have been able to follow a similar path. There would have been some areas, like women's restrooms and women's sports, where a balance of interests would need to be considered, but for most of society it should not have mattered. Older people might have trouble using "they/them" to refer to singular people, but that's a grammatical issue not a trans issue and it's one that gets resolved naturally over time as language evolves. But what we've gotten instead is a more aggressive movement that can seem to target the majority's sense of gender and personal identity much more than gay rights ever did, and the discomfort with that creates exactly the sort of environment where the right can productively energize and leverage anti-trans hate.
More succinctly, when one puts things in terms of "you are either with me or against me," one may drive a lot of people who would not otherwise have gone there to choose "against." - J.T. in Marietta, GA: Here's a factor I haven't seen discussed yet that I think has
contributed greatly to the growing negative attitudes towards trans people:
Terrible marketing and PR.
Bear with me for a moment. The statistics you published show pretty dramatic decreases in acceptance of trans people. The time frame you include matches pretty well with the rise of trans activism. Therein lies the problem. Most people in the U.S. traditionally default towards a "live and let live" attitude. But a small segment of loud extremists have created negative associations with trans people through their aggressive attempts to police language and demand instantaneous change to longstanding cultural and social traditions. Anyone who evidences the slightest disagreement with their agenda is instantaneously labeled a transphobe. This is a terrible way to win minds and hearts. In fact, it has the opposite effect, and turns people off to their cause. I mean, I've always supported people's right to live their lives as they please, but these extremists drive me crazy. I think a lot of people have been similarly affected. You can't blame the recent negative shift of opinion solely on Fox News and opportunistic politicians.
Sexual science has spent the last two generations trying to get people to understand the difference between sex and gender. Trans activists have largely ruined any progress that has been made by their insistence that "trans women are women," and that changing gender means your sex has been changed, too. The radical stance taken on juvenile gender-affirming medical care and the instant labeling of any alternative as transphobic has been particularly damaging to the overall image of trans people.
And now, I'm ready for the inevitable accusations that I, too, am transphobic. - E.V. in Austin, TX: If you go on social media, you will find no small number of
insinuations (almost invariably condescending and sanctimonious) that a person is transphobic and evil for failing to
ask for pronouns, failing to use terms like "birthing person" and "chestfeeding," playing Harry Potter video games, etc.
I think part of the shift in Republican intolerance towards trans people in the polls is a vicious cycle of culture war
escalation, where conservative-leaning moderates react to being attacked, out of umbrage or spite, by becoming
entrenched opponents of trans rights. (Particularly when they don't know any trans people personally, so that the issue
is more an abstract proxy battle in the culture wars rather than an issue affecting the lives of real people.)
- D.V. in Columbus, OH: The item on trans hate this week really struck a chord with me, as I
discuss often about this sort of thing with "soft" nonbinary, "hard" nonbinary, and transitioning transgender friends.
Yet, I also have family and other friends that are either unaware or confused, while others are unfortunately apathetic
or even self-centered on the subject of trans people and the idea of gender fluidity and misgendering.
To me, the first two camps actually have the potential to be persuaded on things. The completely unaware and the confused simply need a proper explanation and an analogy that helps them to empathize even if they do not fully understand.
The third group of apathetic individuals, however, are the Fox Propaganda watchers, and generally put this into a selfish place of something akin to "why should I have to call you a certain thing if it's annoying or inconvenient to me?" or the like. Some are good individuals that have maybe been exposed to bad information or misconceptions, but some are actually more towards a hateful place as well (family, of course, because they wouldn't be friends of mine otherwise).
This whole thing got me thinking: What is a good analogy for us to help to explain/persuade the people in the middle to be empathetic and/or accepting of transgender issues in a convincing yet logical way? Also, Democrats sure could use some ideas as well, as we're terrible at messaging already!
Off the top of my head, I thought about kids with former athletic parents being made to play sports when they're more into comic books or something, but I wanted to see what else I could find. A decent reddit post I found provided a few good ideas, namely stuff like being forced to write with your right hand as a left-handed individual, being forced to use a typewriter at birth instead of a paintbrush, and being forced to use Mac OS instead of Windows OS. However, I'd be very curious as to what some readers could come up with!
If readers have answers to D.V.'s question (that is, suggestions for analogies), we will work them into the conversation. Also, and we will explain our thinking on this in greater detail when that day comes, but we would like to run an entire day of responses from trans and/or nonbinary people. So, if you are trans and you have thoughts, or if you already wrote in but we don't know you're trans or nonbinary, please send us an e-mail. In any event, more responses tomorrow! (Z)
The Word Cup, Part XIII: Group F vs. Group H (Presidential Candidates, 21st Century)
Yesterday, we ran the results for Group F, presidential candidates' slogans from World War II to the end of the 20th century. And several readers caught an error we made; the two entrants that advance to the knockout round are actually "I Like Ike" and "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" In other words, the Chicago Daily Tribune isn't the only outlet to falsely award victory to an opponent of Harry S. Truman.
Here are the results for the last group of presidential slogans. Don't forget that we've decided that any matchup decided by less than 5% of the vote will count as a tie (winners in bold):
| Slogan 1 | Pct. | Slogan 2 | Pct. |
| Hope | 88.7% | Feel the Bern! | 11.3% |
| Hope | 99.7% | Jeb! | 0.3% |
| Hope | 50.8% | Make America Great Again | 49.2% |
| Feel the Bern! | 81.9% | Jeb! | 18.1% |
| Feel the Bern! | 40.1% | Make America Great Again | 59.9% |
| Jeb! | 4.4% | Make America Great Again | 95.6% |
That produces these results for Group F:
| Slogan | W | L | T |
| Hope | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Make America Great Again | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Feel the Bern | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Jeb! | 0 | 3 | 0 |
Jeb! took a beating. And, for that matter, so did Jeb. "Hope" and "Make America Great Again" make the cut, with Hope as the higher seed. That means the next round will be two Democratic slogans against two Republican slogans.
Here are reader comments on this round:
P.W. in Tulalip Nation, WA: Though both are extremely notable and consequential, "Hope" begat "MAGA," therefore, "Hope" trumps "MAGA." Irony, anyone?
B.A.R. in South Bend, IN: For me, "Hope" will always win out over "MAGA." While the latter has definitely been impactful, it has been in a very negative way. The former helped a transformative candidate win in my conservative state, the first time since LBJ did it in '64. And THAT is sayin' something!
J.M. in Stamford, CT: This was hateful but I have to be honest with myself. #1 MAGA. As you say, I'm not a fan in any way but who can deny that this slogan, and not just the movement or candidate it represented, has burned itself into the political vocabulary of our era. Hands down.
#2 Feel the Bern. Again, not a fan. But at least it's witty and affectionate and self-mocking and very very clear. As as you say, representative of at least a minor political movement on the left side of things.
#3 Hope. I'm a huge Obama fan but I don't associate the slogan "Hope" with his campaign even though it seems I ought to. I think the poster had far more impact than the word.
#4 Jeb!. Clearly stupid last and only in the contest because you still love to mock the guy and his gormless campaign. I agree that "I'm With Her" was just as stupid, and "Build Back Better" is only a tiny bit, well, better. But do stupid, misguided slogans even really belong in a contest about impact?
D.L-O. in North Canaan, CT: I voted for "MAGA" over several other slogans as most impactful. Much as I hate the slogan, in the spirit of fairness I can't argue against it as much more impactful, unfortunately in a negative way, than Jeb! or some of the other slogans on the list.
S.R. in Raleigh, NC: Hope defeats Feel the Bern—Let's face it, the point of a presidential campaign slogan is to get the candidate elected. "Hope" did that and "Feel the Bern" didn't, so we know who wins this.
Hope defeats Jeb!—See above
Hope defeats Make America Great Again—Looking at the slogans only, these two have a few things in common. Neither is terribly original, neither really says all that much, and both managed to get their candidates elected. So why pick "Hope" over MAGA? The official reason I'm giving is because Obama got re-elected and Trump did not. But I think everyone knows the real reason is because Trump is a **** ******* **** **** ************.
Feel the Bern defeats Jeb!—FtB might not have helped Sanders' campaign, but at least it didn't torpedo it.
Make America Great Again defeats Feel the Bern—MAGA got its candidate the White House (albeit with a little help from the idiotic Electoral College), while FtB didn't even get its candidate the nomination. Also—and I freely admit this is dark—if we're talking about impact, one has to acknowledge that MAGA is the only one in this group that literally has a body count.
Jeb! defeats Make America Great Again—I make no bones about it: This is a sympathy vote. Please clap.
J.H. in Tulalip, WA: And here I thought "Please clap!" was Jeb's slogan.
Here is the newest ballot. We'll be doing the final rounds starting on Monday, so you've got until Monday at noon to vote. As always, we welcome comments on this round.
Also, we are still accepting suggestions for possible subjects for this year's NCAA Bracket-style competition. (Z)
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