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What we shouldn't forget about GOP attacks on trans people, gays, teacher, librarians, liberals, etc [1]

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Date: 2023-05-22

They have a list of targets, and it keeps expanding

A recent post by DIgby looking at “Moms for Liberty” is shocking — but not surprising. READ THE WHOLE THING. Digby is excerpting from a CNN report about how Activist moms spy on each other in culture wars over schooling. I’m going to pull out several parts that struck me as particularly of note. This is coming from a Moms for Liberty member in Colorado Springs, Darcy Schoening

Darcy Schoening Schoening of Moms for Liberty explained why she viewed asking a child what pronouns they preferred was “indoctrinating” them into questioning their gender. “If you ask my children, who are 7 and 8, ‘What are your pronouns?’ They don’t even know what that is,” she said. “When you ask that, you’re planting the seed in their minds, that they maybe should identify as another gender or that identifying as another gender is hip or cool – ‘Hey, my teacher’s asking me, so maybe this is what I should do.’”

versus:

Naomi Lopez Naomi Lopez, one of the people gathered by Neighbors for Education, called that “ridiculous.” Lopez is a speech pathologist who works in a District 11 school. She’s also the mom of a trans kid. “That’s not happening,” she said of Schoening’s scenario. “We’re not going around saying, ‘OK, you know, I want you to think about it, what gender are you?’” When teachers meet new students, they ask how they want to be addressed, she said – a kid named Josiah might want to go by Joe. A kid could say they wanted to use a particular pronoun, and the teacher would respect that.

Schoening has more:

Schoening made a series of claims that are not true, but are common amid a backlash to advocacy for trans rights. For example, Schoening raised the idea that a tomboy – a girl who wore flannel and sneakers – would be told by a teacher, “You know, it might be time to gender transition. Let’s go talk to the school therapist. Let’s go talk to a physician. Let’s do this.” Schoening said she did not know any tomboys who’d actually transitioned after social pressure. But, she said, “Imagine the kids that aren’t strong enough to go talk to their parents and say, ‘My teacher is trying to gender transition me.’ We’re speaking for those kids. And those parents who aren’t made aware.” Further, Schoening claimed 8-year-old boys could get surgery to remove their penises, and that she feared her state would pass a law saying if parents refused to have their boys’ penises surgically removed, the state would take them away. She thought this issue would eventually go to the US Supreme Court.

emphasis added

Except that:

Medical guidelines do not call for gender affirming surgery on young children, and many health care providers do not offer it to patients under 18. Children diagnosed with gender dysphoria go through many years of care. In some instances, they can receive puberty-blocking hormones at the onset of puberty. These drugs are FDA-approved to treat children who start puberty at a very young age, but are not approved for gender dysphoria.

So who is behind what Schoening warns is happening, and why?

CNN asked Schoening if she was saying she believed there was some kind of high-level coordinated effort to make more children trans and gay. “There is,” she said. Who would be directing it? “Teachers’ unions, and our president, and a lot of funding sources,” she said. Why would they do that? “Because it breaks down the family unit,” she said. And why would they want that? “So that conservative values are broken down, and that we can slowly erode away at constitutional rights,” she said. There is no evidence of a coordinated plot to make kids trans.

emphasis added

See? Indoctrinating kids to become trans is just a front for destroying freedom.

So what’s really happening? Red States are passing laws that define any kind of gender-affirming care as child abuse, to the point of taking children away from parents and going after healthcare providers. You can argue that these people are misinformed (and who did that, and why, hmm?), that what they fear would be horrifying to anyone if it was true, and if so, their actions are not hard to understand. But behind the surface concerns about protecting children lies a much darker conviction: they are fighting unforgivable evil for their own survival — and ultimately any measures to fight that evil are justified.

This is just a reframing of the infamous blood libel trope extended beyond anti-semitism; it’s part and parcel of the authoritarianism threatening this country.

The right is engaged in a systematic campaign to dehumanize anyone who stands in their way. Right wing followers are held together by their fear of ‘others’ who are believed to be responsible for everything going wrong in their lives; their leaders cultivate these fears to keep them in line and blindly obedient. (I get so tired of having to refer to this excellent intro to how this all works, but here’s the link again.)

At some point, people talking about “protecting the unborn” are really focused on attacking people they see as baby killers, whose humanity can be ignored. The same for those they see as pedophiles and destroyers of families. And so on, for whatever culture issue is the topic of the moment.

It’s actually empowering — the idea that anything you want to do to these targets of your hate and outrage is justified because they deserve everything that you want to do to them. You can dismiss anything you don’t want to trouble your mind with, any qualms that maybe they aren’t entirely bad. It’s emotionally satisfying — the conviction that you are right and they are so, so wrong. In their hearts, they know they’re right. It’s why stochastic terrorism is now a thing.

It’s as easy as Bret Stephens dismissing the needs of people on government assistance while imposing bogus work requirements with the throwaway line “it’s politically, financially and morally preferable to subsidizing indolence.” Once you casually lump all people receiving government assistance as lazy, you can justify anything to punish them for being undeserving.

Frank Wilhoit sums up what conservatism is about as well as anyone:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

They learn nothing and they forget nothing. You can’t expect them to compromise their beliefs to accommodate yours, not when they regard your beliefs as completely wrong. You can’t expect them to pursue their goals with moderation if they gain the total power they seek. It will be their way or the highway — or worse. There’s no reason to believe America will never have reeducation camps, not when these people are already trying to subvert education from the beginning. Given how often the Right indulgences in projection, concentration camps are not off the table either. They don’t even see you as a human being.

This is about the gut. This is about emotional reasoning, driven by fear.

x You can’t use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn’t use reason to get into. — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) September 30, 2020

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “You can’t use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn’t use reason to get into.”

This is not something they are going to be persuaded out of, not quickly, perhaps not ever in some cases. Merrick Garland will not save us. Neither will Dark Brandon. Sitting this one out is not an option. This is going to take a sustained grass roots effort — and we’ll be fighting real astroturf along the way. We can fixate too easily on Congress and the White House, but let’s not neglect where it all starts.

Just as an exercise, if you don’t know already, make a list of who in government represents you . There’s no excuse these days when the Internet makes it easy — or should.

If you’ve never gone to a public meeting of some kind, do so at least once. Do you know who is on your school board? Town council? County Legislature? County Executive? Board of elections? How about your state legislature — who represents you there, and what does your district look like? Be very sure that if you’re not paying attention, those who are will be the ones calling the shots. If it’s people like Moms for Liberty, good luck.

Democracy is not a spectator sport. The world is made by the people who show up for the job.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/22/2170809/-What-we-shouldn-t-forget-about-GOP-attacks-on-trans-people-gays-teacher-librarians-liberals-etc

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