Wednesday, March 10, 2021

The Politics of Identity

A recent headline I read states that the South Dakota Governor is going to make it state law that if you are born as a biological male or female you will only be permitted to participate in sports of your biological gender. In other words, if you are born as a male you will not be permitted to participate in any sporting events outside of those designated for males. Even if you identify as a female you will not be allowed to participate in women's sporting events if you are biologically male. This is not an entirely bad idea and I shall explain my reasoning below.

There are only 2 sexes, male and female, where human beings are concerned. However,
there are current scientific studies that suggest there are more than 2 genders. As with all things in the scientific world, you will continue to have debates on who's study is the most significant and has the most relevance about the subject being discussed. You can Google the subject and probably find equal amounts of studies for and against the subject. For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to stick to the obvious and avoid the more contentious topics.

A person's sexual self is determined while still in the womb. A baby born as a male will remain, biologically, a male for their entire life. The same can be stated for females. They can choose to identify as the other, "opposite" if you will, but what they choose to identify as does not change the biological FACT that they are still a male or female. What it boils down to is that even if a man self identifies as a female their biological makeup remains that of a male. Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlin, is still biologically a man and still has the genetic traits of the sex he was originally born as. This cannot be changed no matter how much a person wishes it were so. 

If a man self-identifies as female is it right to permit this person to participate in sporting events where the majority of the participants are biologically female and do not identify as anything but that? Is it right to permit a transgender male to participate in sporting events against normal female athletes? Knowing that a transgender male has an advantage over those female athletes due to his biological differences would you be willing to allow your daughter to participate? I would have to say no only because it gives an unfair advantage to the transgender athlete. So why is this even being discussed in the halls of government? Why is this subject such a contentious issue when, in reality, the answer is quite simple?

Rather than allowing trans athletes to participate with those who do not self-identify as the other sex allow them to participate in their own events trans athlete versus trans athlete. Level the playing field and keep the athletes "honest" by making them compete against others on an equal footing. We allow males and females to participate separately in their own events so why not do the same for those who self-identify as Transgender or anything other than the gender they were born as. This would not be racist/sexist or any other "cancel culture" word of the day. This would allow an equal and level playing field for all involved.



Saturday, February 27, 2021

The Dichotomy of American Politics

Dichotomy: "a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different."

Recently the United States went through its Presidential election cycle and the people chose former US Senator and Vice President Joe Biden to succeed Donald Trump as the 46th POTUS. Trump represented the Republican side while Biden is a Democrat. The difference between the 2 is stark when placed side by side. Biden is a career politician having served in the US Senate for 36 years and as Vice President under former President Obama for 8. Trump is not a politician by any stretch of the imagination.

Trump's style of running the country, and all that entails, was more of a caveman swinging his club while pounding his chest to declare he was the boss. Biden on the other hand knows the ins and outs of D.C. politics and the behavior of those in D.C. as well as the media display this with the ease of a New York mafioso telling you what is going to happen and what will happen to you if you don't follow his "advice".

Nothing makes this more apparent than the behavior of the mainstream media aka MSM. While covering Trump they could find little to nothing positive to say on the nightly newscasts. Meanwhile, their behavior towards Biden has been more of a kid-glove approach. As an example, Trump's actions involving illegal immigrant children was decried as inhumane by the MSM and others. Never mind that the photos used of the "cages" were from Obama's time. Even though the photos were not from Trump's time they were used to stoke the flames of outrage. 

Biden meanwhile has resurrected a similar policy with little to no outrage by the same media. Several prominent voices have spoken out against it but the MSM hasn't made it a nightly issue. Biden has reopened a detention center for unaccompanied illegal immigrant kids that has received little outrage outside of a few prominent voices. When Trump did it it was making headlines and was a daily topic by the media pundits. It was decried as inhumane and it needed to be stopped immediately. The outrage regarding Biden's actions has not even reached the same level as when Trump did it. It reeks of a double standard.

Let's move on to another prominent politician who has recently come under fire for accusations of sexual assault as well as issues regarding his COVID 19 policies.

Democrat Governor Cuomo of New York has recently been embroiled in a scandal involving his COVID 19 nursing home policy. This policy forced New York nursing homes to accept COVID 19 patients from hospitals. This put those elderly residents of these homes at great risk and it appears the policy was ill-advised. What is currently being reported is that the Governor and his staff may have undercounted the actual number of nursing home deaths as a result of his policy. The numbers provided to the Federal Government may have been lower than the actual total. The Attorney General for New York, herself a Democrat, has even stated this. To go along with this problem now 2 former female members of the Governors's staff have accused him of sexual harassment. Where is the MSM during all of this? They're busy making a major issue out of Senator Ted Cruz's trip to Mexico during the winter storm that caused serious havoc in Texas. Senator Cruz is a Republican so the MSM has to make him look like the Devil all while ignoring the "dumpster fire" that is Governor Cuomo's scandals.

Where are all the prominent liberal women who spoke out against Justice Kavanaugh when unproven allegations of sexual assault were made against him during his hearing to become a Supreme Court Justice? Strangely these women are all silent about Cuomo. Where is the outrage from Hollywood regarding Governor Cuomo? Yeah, all I hear are crickets. Had this been a Republican Governor the MSM would be all over it from now until 2022 but Cuomo is a Democrat so it's not given the same level of reporting on any of the liberal media outlets.

The purpose of American politics is simple. Keep the people divided and never let them see the truth of what is going on in D.C. Keep the die-hards in each party foaming at the mouth and when necessary let them off the chain to cause chaos. If that fails the cancel culture brigade can step in and "cancel" any dissenters. The longer they keep us divided the more they can subvert our political process to the point that soon we will be controlled much like the characters in Orwell's book 1984.

Don't believe me? Keep sitting back believing either of our two big political parties cares about you and watch what happens. 



Thursday, January 7, 2021

The United States of Chaos

Perhaps at no other point in our countries history could one name evoke such opposing feelings within the people. One name that could cause both hatred and admiration for a person in equal measure. It's hard to imagine a President being able to cause such diametrically opposed reactions from the people he is supposed to govern but Donald J Trump has been able to do that with ease. His ability to cause such division is not entirely his doing but it begins with him. The majority of news media outlets have done him no favors as they have been opposed to him from the start. The Democrats have done everything they could to stymie his agenda and even some Republican members of Congress have been opposed to him as well. Don't let them fool you. They are as much to blame for the current state of this country as Donald J Trump.

Now we have elected a person who has been involved in the D.C. political machine since before I graduated High School. He will be no different than those who occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Ave before him. His promises are as empty as any other politician no matter the political party. If you expect things to change you are in for a major let down. The only difference between him and Trump is Biden will not be as controversial as Trump. Biden is a politician where Trump was not. Biden knows how the political game works. Trump didn't care. Outside of that nothing will truly change in any meaningful way for we the people.

We the people also have ourselves to blame for allowing this to become the inferno it has become. We continually elect the same people to the Senate and House every election. We continue to elect the same washed up political hacks to occupy the office of President. Trump was an aberration to this continuous disaster that we call an election. He was elected by people that wanted to flip the bird to the established political process. In some ways it worked and in some it failed. Our current state of chaos shows the failure. The success can be seen in places like the Middle East where there is new ground being broken between countries that were previously enemies but are now beginning to become allies. Yes I am referring to the treaties signed by Israel, Bahrain and the UAE. Those are major success stories for the Trump Administration. Unfortunately they are overshadowed by the current chaos as seen on the 24/7 news cycle.

It is our job to cast the ballot that ensures we elect those who would choose to actually represent us in D.C. Those who would work for us and not the K street lobbying machine or the big party political machine. Neither of the 2 big political parties work for us and they have failed to do so for decades. Once a person is entrenched in their D.C. office they become nearly impossible to remove. The big party political machine begins to rumble every election cycle and we are led to believe that the incumbent candidate is either the best person to occupy that office or they are labelled as the son of Satan by the opposing party's candidate. The incumbent will throw a few bread crumbs to the people and hope it is enough to get reelected. The opposing candidate will do the same hoping to take that office. It's time to put a new fear into these candidates and the incumbents. It's time to start looking further down the ballot and voting for candidates who aren't Republican or Democrat.

We need to start electing 3rd party candidates thus ensuring neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can hold a majority in either Congressional chamber. European countries have succeeded in governing in this way. Why can't the United States? Those countries require a political alliance between a major party and smaller ones. Should the smaller ones disagree with the way the major party is working they can opt to leave the alliance and thus cause new elections. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a recent example of what happens when you anger your smaller alliance members. They nearly quit on her which would have forced new elections and, quite possibly, Merkel would have lost her position as Chancellor. Israel recently went through something similar and Netanyahu is barely holding on to his position as PM due to his alliance. We don't have to take it quite to that level but if we begin to elect 3rd party candidates it could create a unique situation where neither major party can claim a majority and thus force them to work with the other parties involved to get their agenda passed.

We also need to make it easier for other political parties to be able to get on the Presidential candidate debate stage to offer their point of view. This has been a major obstacle and it is one the 2 big parties will not change without a serious fight. It's time to give them that fight and change the narrative. Control of this should not be left to the 2 dominant parties.

Think about that the next time you cast a ballot for ANY political office whether it's in D.C. or in your State government. There are more candidates than just those at the top of the ballot