Trump has peaked

[oldwomanwhoruns]

Trump has peaked

Surely the gender nutters have to reverse ferret now? Surely?

DeSantis is an interesting figure, 30 years younger the Trump & Biden with an exemplary 15 year record in the Navy (retiring at the rank of Lieutenant commander). He went to Yale and Harvard and played for Yale’s Baseball team.

He’s everything, Trump aka ‘Cadet Bone Spurs’ would like to be, basically.

Plus, DeSantis has been an elected politician for ten years already, starting in Congress before becoming Governor of Florida, all his dirty laundry has long been rifled through.

DeSantis chose a Latina woman, Jeanette Nuñez, as his running mate/ lieutenant governor & his wife Casey, is a TV presenter and makes for a very personable potential First Lady. He’s very popular with socially conservative black and Hispanic voters (who the Democrats take for granted).

Trump is WILD with jealousy and desperately trying to take DeSantis down. Today’s video on Gender is Trump blatantly copying DeSantis’ homework.

Can you imagine how furious Trump is that his biggest rival this time around is known for images like this?

And just the one marriage, unlike Trump!

Absolutely. He’d say anything, absolutely anything, to get votes. He doesn’t have any genuine beliefs at all. I remember how he was pro-choice (or didn’t care either way) until he realised that to get Republican votes you need to be pro-life, so off he went in that direction.

This is a thread that could be on AIBU don’t you think?

Trump is such a public figure and generally unpopular here that it could say, AIBU to agree with Trump about this?

Then people who do not know what has been happening, and who never go on FWR because they don’t think of themselves feminists, would get a glimmer

DeSantis is an interesting figure, 30 years younger the Trump & Biden with an exemplary 15 year record in the Navy (retiring at the rank of Lieutenant commander). He went to Yale and Harvard and played for Yale’s Baseball team.

His military service is very helpful politically, but this exaggerates it somewhat. He joined the navy in 2004 and was discharged in 2010, so six years on active duty, not 15. And you're not considered to have retired from the military unless you've done 20 years of service.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_DeSantis

I follow many left-leaning, ‘progressive’, often US-based accounts on Instagram.

Believe me, when I say the thousands and thousands of comments are anti-Trump, and even dragging JKR into and aligning her with him, on this message from him.

We think light is finally shining on the topic. But is it? It’s very hard to keep the hope up when I see that.

Thanks for correction - it’s easy to miss nuance/details/misinterpret when you are thousands of miles away!

Trump is a misogynist, so his support on this is for completely different reasons than the views most here hold (and in any case Trump doesn't hold values other than self-worship, as far as I can see).

It's a bit like him wanting the meat he eats as veal to actually be veal rather than pork identifying as veal. Many American right-wing men hold equally dehumanising ideas about female people as the inclusive lot which calls as by our body parts.

So no, Trump doesn't care about women's rights here. He just wants to win again.

In the US, the extremely polarised political situation does mean that it becomes much harder to convince those not on the right in politics that women's traditional rights and concerns do matter without looking like someone who supports Trump etc.

The problem is that now both political extremes view being a woman as a bundle of sexist stereotypes, but progressives can't accept that this is happening to them, too. So they will hold on to their righteous crown as justice fighters for the most marginalised minority ever, while also accepting the idea that women's names, words, spaces, awards etc. can all be erased. They justify this as fair because they are still for the reproductive rights for all people, not only for men, but also for vulva people and womb-carriers and gestation-capable people etc.

Sigh. The situation in the US is ghastly.

Thanks for correction - it’s easy to miss nuance/details/misinterpret when you are thousands of miles away!

Thanks for taking the correction so graciously. As a Yank, I have a vested interest in following this all very closely.

it occurs to me that lots of American women are probably having an ‘Oh shit, not HIM’ moment that is very similar to the one Boris Johnson prompted in many of us last year.

Perhaps it might be somewhat cheering to hear that while his comments did definitely make some of the left dig in even harder, it also helped to break the weird spell of unspoken, but completely common beliefs.

The grownups on the UK left are only now beginning to panic and back pedal, but the they did get a little bit worse before it started to get better.

Hopefully similar will happen in the US, and now that Trump has blasted the subject out into the open, someone like Tulsi Gabbard will, in comparison, now sound very reasonable, even though some of her positions are more or less identical to those Trump is reciting in the video

These clips are from March and April 2022

Does it really matter if he is saying something because he believes it or if he just thinks voters will like it?

There is something to be said for a political figure who has some basic coherent system of seeing reality, just because it seems more likely such a person will make reasonable decisions. With someone like Trump you always wonder of he ill just change direction with the wind.

But in the more immediate pragmatic sense, part of the job of political leaders is to see what people want and care about, and to offer policies related to those things. Sometimes even if they personally aren't so attached to the issue. Or to put it another way, a political leader who says, fuck what the people think, I am just going to do what I think is right, doesn't know his job. Yes, it would be nice to see someone do that because they believe in democracy, but wanting to be elected also works.

Nor is stealing a rival's policy ideas a new thing, every political leader does this.

That being said, DeSantis really does have an advantage, or many advantages, in part because he seems more authentic.

I have come to think that the kind of people who just think if Trump says it, it must be bad, are kind of hopeless. When you dig down, may of Trumps political policies were barely different from Obama's, including ones progressives freaked out about. And Biden has also continued with a good number of them. If people won't actually look at things apart from partisan associations, I don't really think there is any hope for them to think about the issues. Which is depressing in terms of what will happen in the US I guess.

Meanwhile, in the U. K., let us do what we can by signing this petition to Parliament to update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic ‘sex ‘ is biological sex. (Scotland has just ruled that it isn’t.)

It is an official Parliamentary petition and anonymous.

If there are 100,000 signatures Parliament will consider a debate.

To sign and share,
⬇️

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243

If he gets in (a strong possibility I'm told), then this could be huge. It came from America, it ends in America?

If it happens through Trump, then it could end with Gilead. No middle ground.

Exactly. Given that most people know humans can’t change sex, and just pretend twaw to be polite, it’s an open goal for any politician to simply agree.

I don’t doubt that Stalin knew the Earth goes round the Sun, and Thatcher knew humans can’t breathe under water. That doesn’t mean I’d agree with them on other issues. It’s ludicrous to pretend that recognising biological reality inclines anyone towards a particular political outlook.

This is total hyperbole. That is not something that is going to happen in America. Trump is a selfish asshole, who will do whatever it takes for his own aggrandisement but he is far, far from the bogeyman. While he certainly bears some responsibility for the over-turning of Roe V Wade. Lets not forget that the Democrats never enshrined a right to abortion in federal law when they had the repeated opportunity to do so. As keeping it in the hands of the supreme court meant it was something they could use as an election tactic. And that Ruth Bader Ginsberg refused to retire when asked under Obama's term, so that she could be replaced by a Democratic nominee. Her own ambition for her place in history mattered more to her than securing the rights of other women.

The simple fact is that the whole situation is far more nuanced than the current, extremely polarised, discourse allows people to understand. And right now, the Democrats are doing more to damage the rights of women than Republicans. Abortion bans are awful. I'm Irish, Ive spent most of my life living under one of the most restrictive western regimes, that equated the life of a pregnant woman with that of the foetus. But giving male rapists access to women in prison is worse. It just is. Women restricted by abortion bans can move. Women trapped in a fucking cell with a rapist, which has happened, have no options whatsoever. If anything is Gilead, that is.

Whatever you think of Trump, this statement is important. What he believes is unfathomable and probably changes second to second, BUT - the team around him must believe that this is a vote winner and have persuaded him to take this public stance.

For them to believe it is a vote winner is what matters. They won't have taken this stance without evidence to back them up. I don't know what that evidence would be (focus groups, newspaper articles, social media, reading sacrificed chicken guts thrown on the ground, whatever) but they must be basing it on SOMETHING. He's a populist who believes in telling people what they want to hear, and his team have concluded that the electorate want to hear a rejection of identity politics and queer theory.

Yes he has mouthed the TWAW mantra in the past. I doubt he believed it then (I sincerely doubt he believes anything) but that was how the wind blew and he wanted to ride that wind. I'm sure he doesn't believe a word he said in that video, but his team think that's the way the wind is blowing NOW.

We can only hope that the Democrats cop on to this and tack course to the new direction. Until now they've been in a purity spiral competing to be the most pious (remember, the US is still religious compared to the UK), if Trump succeeds in dragging the narrative away from that then the stranglehold transactivists have will be loosened.

Sterilising people, saying there are no such thing as women only birthing people, then telling the sterilised they can use surrogacy to get a baby is very Gilead too.

Just saw this myself - dammit I agree with Trump.

But he's right, and for once his usually blunt language might actually resonate. Chemically and surgically mutilating children is quite the statement.

Times coverage of Trump and DeSantis:

Donald Trump puts gender ‘madness’ on front line of right-wing culture war

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f43cc942-a24a-11ed-befb-a61c39e55892?shareToken=523b77cc3e373a818fdccbc12b14dc8d

Ron DeSantis takes on colleges to end ‘trendy’ diversity programmes

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9b478dea-a218-11ed-befb-a61c39e55892?shareToken=f9aba2e7cd0325d7a2c87fbfbeeed34c

Those left-leaning people are bound to have an immediate reaction like that. I'd worry more if they didn't. Right now they'll be polishing their halos and feeling all righteous and smug.

In the meantime, right-leaning Americans will be emboldened to start asking questions at their children's schools. Things will start to be challenged.

Trump's speech explicitly called it child abuse. That's a phrase that will get through to most people, whichever way they lean. And he linked it to "taxpayer's dollars", a dog-whistle for many. The medical industry will also have sat up and taken notice of his threat to bar them from making money from those taxpayer's dollars.

Coming hot on the heels of the opiod epidemic, with the Sackler family making billions from creating OxyContin addicts and covering up that they knew it would happen, the salvo at Big Pharma (and hospital networks) covering up long-term effects and getting rich from vulnerable patients - that part of the speech was very well-crafted. Regardless of your politics, I think that part will seep through. It doesn't blame trans people, it points the finger at big business doing down the Ordinary Joe. Hand in hand with the notion of suing the industry who did this to people - it's a litigious country.

You've observed the knee-jerk reaction to this speech. Doubts will creep in and the conversation will shift in all but the most devout genderists. The medical industry will be considering their position too. That may be more important in the end, since they seem to be the back-seat drivers in all this. Them being dragged into the light - that will definitely happen

Perhaps there would be less focus on “culture war” issues if the Dems offered anything material to ordinary people such as jobs, homes, or health care. They are determined not to do that. So hell mend them.

Those are two really interesting articles, thank you Rex.

DeSantis does sound more rational, and well thought out, but the bluntness of Trump will be appealing.

DeSantis has identified schools and colleges as the place to reverse the ideology.

One of his detractors has said:

He added: “Simply put, ‘indoctrination’ is not occurring in college and university classrooms and if it were, someone — anyone — would have been able to provide at least one example.”

And this is exactly what I mean. Because all the examples are going to come thick and fast now. Starting with the Loudoun county rape denial.

From the second link:
Gothard said: “We are fighting so that Ron DeSantis’s authoritarianism, his disdain for the protections of the constitution and his flippant way of stepping on the citizens that he is supposed to be representing doesn’t move to a national scale.” He added: “Simply put, ‘indoctrination’ is not occurring in college and university classrooms and if it were, someone — anyone — would have been able to provide at least one example.

‘Disdain’ and ‘authoritarianism’ is shown to female swimmers having to compete against Lia, to female prisoners, to parents of children being transed.

‘Simply put’ indoctrination is happening
in schools.

No wonder people can’t but help listen to Trump and de Santis.

It's monumentally stupid to say it's not happening because you've got no examples, when you know there are examples. Loads.

I'm in Ireland rather than the US but we're both behind the UK in terms of standing up to TRAs. A few weeks ago I bumped into a relative who I would describe as nearly apolitical. We got talking about secondary school choices and within a couple of minutes, it was clear she was extremely concerned about trans ideology in schools. She made a comment about it, then held back, I suspect because she knows me as being very liberal/progressive. I asked what she meant and the the floodgates opened up. She had a lot of concerns and very strong opinions.

And she's clearly not terminally online like I am because when I used the word terf, she thought I said turf. She hasn't gotten her opinions from reading mumsnet, Abigal Shrier, Kathleen Stock, lurking on Kiwifarms, listening to Triggernometry or Blocked and Reported. Enough of this is leaking into the mainstream that people who aren't looking for it, like most of us here, are getting increasingly concerned and angry.

I've felt for a while that sentiment on this would bubble away quietly, that the majority would wake up in seeming isolation and gradually would become suddenly in what would seem like an instant. And I think we're very close to that now. It's going to come as a massive, massive shock to most TRAs who live in a media bubble and are largely unaware of how the majority feel and the level of anger that will hit the mainstream before too long. TRAs don't know it yet but they are accelerating into a wall.