Q-Anon tells us that Democrats are organized within a “deep state” of politically powerful pedophiles aiming to convert our children into their hapless victims. Mainstream Republicans, led by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, explain that those supporting Critical Race/Gender Theories (CRT) are trying to layer guilt on White children for slavery, Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination long since purged from our nation – despite massive evidence to the contrary – and are “grooming” young children to become part of our LGBTQ community, particularly to come out as “transgender.”
As with the Big Lie, they cite non-existent statistics and discredited “studies,” fabricate opinions into “facts” to support their cause against CRT, increasingly labeling books and lesson plans that contain what they believe to be distortions – indeed books and lesson plans that have been part of our national educational curricula for decades with no ill results – as corrupting young minds. The undercurrent of White Christian nationalism runs deep, a political belief that has resulted in reversing Roe vs Wade and a flood of anti-democratic Republican rhetoric echoed in CPAC meetings, hosting “races don’t mix” Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban as a featured speaker.
This amped up rhetoric of exclusionary mantra, “White Christians only,” the notion of non-whites “replacing” the legitimate White powers designed to rule the United States, is reflected in another horrific statistic, enabled by lax gun laws and a plethora of military-grade assault weapons (over 20 million by some estimates) owned by US civilians: political violence. But the hatred is hardly relegated to the radical right. The reversal of Roe vs Wade produced seething hatred from the left as well.
“FBI Director Christopher Wray said the U.S. has seen a rapid increase in political violence and domestic extremism during an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding such events are now ‘almost a 365-day phenomenon’ across the country… Wray told lawmakers Thursday [8/4] the bureau had opened a number of investigations related to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, saying there had been a ‘general intensification of violence’ from both sides of the issue after Politico published a draft opinion prior to the ruling.
“‘I think this is part of a larger phenomenon that we are experiencing in this country right now,’ Wray told Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). ‘I understand that passions run high, especially on an issue like abortion, but there’s just way too many people that seem to think that that justifies engaging in violence and destruction of property and threats of violence… I feel like every day I’m getting briefed on someone throwing a Molotov cocktail at someone over some issue,’ Wray continued. ‘It’s crazy.’
“‘From our perspective, I don’t care what side of the issue you’re on, I don’t care who you’re upset with or what you’re upset about, on abortion or anything else, you don’t get to use violence or threats of violence to act on it,’ Wray said. ‘And we’re going to go after that conduct aggressively. I feel very strongly about that, and I’ve communicated that very strongly to all of our field offices and our workforce.’… Wray made similar comments last year, saying the FBI’s domestic terrorism caseload had ‘exploded’ in just over a year and a half. A large portion of that work was related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol…
“Axios notes that just hours after Wray’s testimony, the FBI charged a man Thursday [8/4] with arson for setting fire to a Planned Parenthood building in Kalamazoo, Michigan.” Huffington Post, August 5th. So much of this rising hatred is specifically related to personal and private sexual conduct. That many Christians hold life begins at conception, and thus feel the law must likewise define life, are unconcerned that other faiths, like Judaism, believe that life begins at birth. After abortion, nothing fires up hatred like the notion that the left is luring (“grooming”) American children into a world of LGBTQ “perversity.” Particularly the call to “anti-Christian” transgender status, which in the eyes of the religious right is a “choice”, not a biological reality.
As we shall see, this “social contagion” theory gave “proof” to concerned right-wing Christian that their assumptions were justified and “can be traced back to a 2018 paper published in the journal PLOS One [an open access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) since 2006]. Dr. Lisa Littman, who at the time was a professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University, coined the term ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria,’ which she described as adolescents experiencing a conflict between their birth sex and gender identity ‘suddenly during or after puberty.’ These adolescents, she wrote, ‘would not have met the criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood’ and are experiencing dysphoria due to social influence.” Erik McGregor writing for NBC Today, August 3rd.
Unfortunately, Littman’s conclusions were just plain wrong as confirmed in a recently released survey: Sex Assigned at Birth Ratio Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Adolescents in the United States by Jack L. Turban, MD, MHS, Brett Dolotina, BS, Dana King, ALM and Alex S. Keuroghlian, MD, MPH, published August 3rd by the American Academy of Pediatrics in their journal. Their statistical report concluded that “Social contagion” is not driving an increasing number of adolescents to come out as transgender. “The study also found that the proportion of adolescents who were assigned female at birth and have come out as transgender also has not increased, which contradicts claims that adolescents whose birth sex is female are more susceptible to this so-called external influence…
“‘The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents,’ study senior author Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, director of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, said in a statement.” NBC Today.
The level of our passionate intolerance, a willingness to repeal democracy to force “my side as the only right side,” is unraveling the entire fabric that defines the United States of America. Given the constitutional bias favoring rural over urban voters (e.g., two Senators from each state regardless of population), a radical and unchecked Supreme Court plus rampant gerrymandering and voting restrictions, whether American democracy can withstand this onslaught of passionately held conspiracy theories and religious intolerance is very much in question. We hate each enough to kill each other! Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are smiling, hoping and biding their time.
I’m Peter Dekom, and that replacing democracy with the religious and intolerant world of White Christina Nationalism is so completely accepted by tens of millions of Americans is incredibly disturbing.
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