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Trans-Actions: Is It Self-Identification, or Is It Cultural Appropriation?
If you latch yourself to leftist ideology, sooner or later its contradictions will force you to become your own enemy.
You’ve probably read about the stunning findings in a recent Pew Research poll, regarding how various politically affiliated Americans view human gender assignment. If not, you need to hear this, and, no, it’s not fake news (I wish it were). According to Pew’s report, a whopping 77 percent of Democrats with a bachelor’s degree or higher, “say a person’s gender can be different from the sex they were assigned at birth.” Okay, I’m an English major and not a scientist, but I hope to God none of these people are teaching—any—science to our children.
I understand psychology may play a role in how some humans feel about what gender they consider themselves. But does that change the biology of what gender they are scientifically? I’m not saying people who feel they are the different gender from from that which nature assigned them at birth are bad people. They feel what they feel; how can that be someone’s fault? However, does how a person feels, no matter how sincerely, change DNA or gender chromosomes?
This issue also brings up a glaring leftist contradiction—I know… no surprise. The far-left seems to argue that, aside from an individual choosing his or her gender, they also argue a person can change/choose his or her ethnicity or race to one that suits them. The strange thing is, leftists also simultaneously argue that individuals may not engage in “cultural appropriation.”
You recall cultural appropriation, right? Remember the clamor about colleges warning non-Mexican students not to wear sombreros and non-Indians not to wear feather headdresses on Halloween? You may also remember the Oregonian women who were harassed for selling Mexican food from their food cart—specifically because they are (non-Hispanic) white. The left says people must not appropriate cultures that are not theirs. But do they really mean it?
A few days back, on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson interviewed left-wing commentator and Catalina magazine publisher, Cathy Areu. She seems like a nice person, and she wore a sardonic smirk throughout the interview, so I couldn’t tell for sure if she was being serious about the issue being discussed: a blending of cultural appropriation and self-identification. Uh-oh!
Well, this nice far-lefty expressed to Carlson that she has no problem with a white Florida man, known as “Adam,” claiming he is not only transgender, now a female, but also transracial, an Asian. And, reportedly, he has culturally appropriated the identity of a Filipino woman. “Adam” now goes by the name Ja Du, loves Filipino music and food, and drives a purple Tuk-Tuk (motorized rickshaw used for transit in the Philippines).
Now, like Ms. Areu, I don’t have a problem with anyone who wishes to adopt some peaceful fantasy life for themselves, even if they choose to share it in public. There are many stories about individuals of one culture being adopted into another. Movies like A Man Called Horse and The Last Samurai come to mind. However, Ja Du’s case is a bit different.
Rarer, as in Ja Du’s case, are people who reverse the cultural adoption phenomena and, instead, proactively “adopt” another culture into their lives. And, even rarer still, again, in Ja Du’s case, are the trans-trifecta: transsexual, transcultural, and transracial. One person sexually, culturally, and racially appropriating a gender, ethnicity, and race not one’s own. So, is this cultural appropriation or self-identification? I’m confused.
Apparently, Ja Du says she knows a very nice, kind Filipino woman and wants to emulate her. That’s a great thing about America, you should be able to do whatever you want, live your life and lifestyle as you choose—pursue your happiness, as long as you don’t hurt others, take their stuff, violate their rights, or expect them to accept rather than tolerate your choices.
The problem comes when leftists attempt to elevate delusions—or we can call them eccentricities, even peaceful ones, and ascribe to them some quasi-scientific validation. I have no doubt Ja Du feels a genuine connection to Filipino culture, perhaps even truly feels Filipino. Many people feel a “connection” to cultures with which they share no biological, historical, or cultural ties. Since I was a kid, I’ve had an affinity for Japanese culture, but I’m not about to become a Geisha.
An affinity for a foreign culture can be a beautiful thing. What a sublime compliment it is for a human being to adopt an admired or even revered culture into his or her own life or lifestyle. However, while the far-left might agree with me about cross-cultural affinity being a good thing, they also accuse me of, at best, committing microaggressions and at worst, cultural appropriation, if I express my chosen affinity by donning traditional garb associated with a culture not my own. Which is it, self-identification or misappropriation of another culture?
So, lefties, is a person who expresses admiration of another gender, culture, ethnicity, or race, by emulating it, a virtue or an affront? Is it a matter of what the left believes is a person’s motivation by divining what’s on a person’s mind or in a person’s heart? Is that why it’s okay when liberal, transsexual, transcultural, and transracial Ja Du does it, but if a couple of white gals in Oregon do it, they’re cultural appropriating bigots?
And, now that we’re into the weeds on this subject, what if I’m half Mexican? Can I wear half a sombrero, poncho, or eat only half a burrito? Can I wear just one feather in my hair if I’m 10 percent Lakota or five if I’m 50 percent? Am I allowed to wear a full Cheyenne war bonnet if I’m of Sioux, Apache, or Wampanoag extraction? And don’t even get me started on who’s allowed to drink green beer on St. Patrick’s Day.
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Charlottesville and Durham and Hate… Against Cops!
Two recent news stories bring up some observations regarding the public’s view of law enforcement. First, the repulsive white supremacists—Nazis and KKK in Charlottesville, VA. and second, the nearly as repugnant radical, leftist agitators in Durham, N.C., including, the radical leftists Workers World Party, Democratic Socialists of America, and ANTIFA (anti-First Amendment… oh, I mean anti-fascists—yeah, right!).
Much derision has been heaped on the cops’ handling (or not handling) of the riots in Charlottesville, which resulted in the tragic death of a young woman at the hands of a mob of despicable white nationalists.
Even some conservative commentators are critical of the cops for not intervening in the violence. People need to remember something: it’s not the cops on the riot lines who decide when to act. Those officers were no doubt fighting with every molecule of their beings to tamp down the instinct to act. Police officers at potentially violent scenes like this, planned controversial events, are most often given orders for conduct and rules of engagement before being deployed. If officers are not acting to stop rioters, it’s because politically-driven superiors have ordered them not to act. I know it happens in Seattle, too—a lot.
In Durham, the cops also “failed” to act when protesters took it upon themselves to destroy public property and tear down a Confederate monument. Now, I have no love lost for the Confederacy that fought to preserve the vile institution of slavery. Think about it. I’m a libertarian! I believe in the sovereignty of every individual human being. In America, just because some piece of property offends you, you don’t get to destroy it.
For example, in Baltimore, authorities removed Confederate statues, but they are being reinstalled at nearby Civil War battlefields. This form of display is in a much better context, anyway. Rather than being publicly displayed in a town common or in front of a public building, which is an implicit act of honoring something or someone, the statues now serve a legitimate historical purpose: to remind us of what can happen when some Americans ignore the rule of law and a nation splits apart.
The Durham incident is also a reminder, once again, of who comprises the left: While watching the coverage of the radicals toppling the statue, I saw signs reading and heard the crowd chanting, “No cops! No KKK! No fascists USA!”
President Trump has suffered from asserting there were good and bad on both sides. Frankly, I’d like to hear more about what he meant by the “good” on the white nationalist side. But President Trump is infamous for words coming out differently than from what he’d intended. However, that anti-cop sign and chant, and the groups’ commitment to ending America as it exists, verifies the “bad” on each side comment. Equating the KKK and fascists with America’s cops is absurd, but some, even in the mainstream left, tolerate or accept, or, even further, endorse this notion.
There seems to be a noteworthy difference between right and the left. The left attempts to conflate white nationalists with all Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters. The problem is all of these right-wing groups routinely condemn Nazis, the KKK, and other white nationalist groups. To the contrary, the left, including the Democratic Party and a Democratic President, respectively, invited the mother of a robbery suspect who assaulted and then tried to take a police officer’s gun to their national convention and radical minority groups like BLM to our White House.
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Child Suspended for “Liking” Image of Toy Gun on Instagram.
The First and Second Amendments are under heavy attack by the radical left. We see this leftist nonsense to squelch free speech and abridge gun rights every day. The following story combines constitutional attacks on the First, Second, Fourth—and probably Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments against a public middle school student.
Now, I will concede that public school officials can argue that they have no idea what to do anymore—mostly, because of other public school officials who adopt stupid policies. We critics often say, “Just use common sense.” Well, much of the problem these days is that commonsensical school officials are not allowed to apply their common sense. In fact, school districts often mandate ludicrous policies that force officials to act in direct contravention to common sense or risk losing their jobs or worse. Remember the second-grader who got “dispended” because he threw an invisible grenade to rescue the world? Still, that does not mean we should stop fighting to make sure common sense prevails.
So, in this story on the NRA-ILA website, according to WBRC Fox 19 News in Trenton, Ohio, middle school student Zachary Bowlin got himself suspended for violating the school board’s “zero tolerance” policy. The policy prohibits, “violent, disruptive, harassing, intimidating, bullying, or any other inappropriate behavior by its students.” What heinous act did Zach commit to elicit such wrath from school superintendent Russ Fussnecker? After school one evening, at home, while perusing the Instagram social media website, Zach had the unmitigated audacity to “Like” a picture of an Airsoft gun—a toy. No, really!
For those unfamiliar with Airsoft guns, the name implies its function. It uses air to propel a soft projectile (the size of a pea). The guns are plastic and the projectiles (bullets) are designed not to injure participants. I know: my kids used them as toys when they were kids and I used them for training as a police officer.
According to the article, the photo Zachary “liked” was of a “plastic gun on the table, with the caption, “Ready.” You might wonder if this social media “like” was just one facet of a multifaceted set of nefarious circumstances that created suspicion about the student. Nope. That was it; Zach “liked” a picture of a toy on social media. WBRC reported, “Superintendent Russ Fussnecker essentially admitted that the school’s reaction was based only on the picture.”
Let’s look at the bright side: Zach is getting a civics lesson, thanks to his overreacting, overreaching school officials: One, his First Amendment rights were violated when the district punished him for expressing his point of view. He let people know he liked a picture (it could be argued that his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were also violated when he was suspended without due process). Two, the Second Amendment was effectively violated, being tarnished when a toy facsimile of a firearm became the focal point of Zachary’s discipline.
Now, for constitutional violation number three: The Fourth Amendment prohibition against unlawful searches and seizures. According to the article, “The next morning, Zachary told a WBRC reporter, school officials, ‘called me down… patted me down and checked me for weapons, then they told me I was getting expelled or suspended or whatever.’” Where was the warrant? Where was the probable cause? Where was the reasonable suspicion? (Where is the ACLU?) And, finally, where was the common sense?
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Seattle’s Anti-Second Amendment City Government: Once again, the ends justify the means and Seattle’s commitment to government transparency is a joke.
Yet another example of the left’s lack of government transparency and ends-justify-the-means tactics has oozed out of the liberal cauldron of the farcical but hazardous to liberty Seattle city government. An article, “Seattle Gun Tax Fails to Generate Projected Revenue, Succeeds in Burdening Rights,” (NRA-ILA, March 24, 2017), published by the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action provides further evidence that, in 2015, Seattle city government proposed a targeted tax on Seattle’s few remaining gun dealerships. Proposed as a so-called “sin tax” because, as Councilman Tim Burgess put it, “It’s time for the gun industry to help defray” the costs of criminal gun violence. What it was, was a poorly veiled attempt to eradicate gun shops in Seattle.
At least, if the council members admitted that eliminating gun shops within the city limits was their objective, one could respect the political honesty. However, honesty and the left rarely mix.
In 2016, I wrote a blog about Seattle gun shop owner Sergey Solyanik. He implored Seattle’s city council members not to enact a tax that would ruin his livelihood and possibly cause him to move his business out of the city (he did relocate from the city). He said, “the data that has been submitted by the proponents [of the tax] is completely fake.”
The Council didn’t care. After all, Solyanik doesn’t think like they do. That doesn’t make him a political opponent; it doesn’t even make him wrong. It makes him evil. So, he should suffer. The Seattle City Council which voted unanimously for the tax had an end to achieve and this illegal tax was their means.
Poor Mr. Solyanik was in their way—and, he dared to assert his rights. So, it was necessary that he be crushed under the Council’s jackboots—or Birkenstocks. I mean, why not? Even if the courts eventually declare the tax illegal, which, if you read the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, Washington State Constitution’s Article I § 24, and the state’s preemption statutes, they must, the Council will have achieved its goal: No gun shops in Seattle (I’ll say it again: drug dealers, addicts, and gangsters get more respect in Seattle than law-abiding gun owners and gun dealers do).
In promoting this anti-gun tax, City Councilman Tim Burgess endorsed ludicrous revenue projections of between $300,000 and $500,000 per year [i.e. “fake data”], which would go to “anti-gun” research at Harborview Medical Center.
Now, let’s peek at the City’s alleged commitment to government transparency: The City refuses to release the total tax collected. Despite record national and state gun sales, “Burgess confessed, ‘tax payments received by the City were less than $200,000.” Seattle won’t disclose the amount, citing a nonsensical notion of protecting taxpayer confidentiality. By releasing the total amount of tax collected? They must believe Seattleites are stupid. More likely, Seattle’s lefty liberal population doesn’t care when the City Council abridges other people’s rights, provided the government does not violate “their” rights. So, why should the Council worry about government transparency?
So, revenues fell far short of that projected half-million dollars. In fact, it was less than $200,000. Talk about vague, less than 200K could be anywhere from $199,999 to one cent. I’ll concede it’s probably more than a penny, but how much less than two hundred grand?
Whatever the results of future court rulings, liberal Seattle government accomplished its goal. It’s unlikely the court decisions will make any injured party (gun dealers) whole. Only by suffering a financial sanction will liberal cities such as Seattle ever cease their destructive drive to turn their citizens and business owners into game pieces on their own social-justice, utopian Monopoly Board. The only way that would occur, and the only way to prevent the City from attempting such nonsense again, is for Solyanik and other victims to sue Seattle’s socialistic ass off. I hope they can. I hope they do!
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For Radical Leftists, Anti-racist = Anti-police
The Left is adept at Orwellian manipulation of language. For example, they’ll tell you they are not “anti-police.” Then they’ll use euphemisms: “anti-police abuse,” “anti-excessive force,” etc.
Well, in a rare act of honesty and a rage against the adage, “it’s better to be thought a fool and remain silent than to speak (write) and remove all doubt,” the title of this article proclaims a true belief: Defunding Police—How Antiracist Organizers got Seattle to Listen (Unlike leftists, I’m not going to throw a tantrum or a riot in an un-American attempt to keep you from hearing a message with which I disagree. Please, read it—no, really; you have got to read this crap). It’s important to remain aware of their destructive social message and how radical leftist politicians aid in their successes to the detriment of a free society.
Antiracist? Not anti-police? Using “anti-police” would have been more honest.
So, in the radical left’s world, Anti-racist = Anti-police.
The only thing surprising about this equation is the lack of obfuscation—which is almost refreshing. Like Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, at least this publication, almost, says what it means: being against the police is the same as being against racists because the police are racist. I suppose I could be accused of putting words in their mouths, but how could anyone arrive at contrary conclusion?
Police equating to racist, of course, is insulting to cops, but the Left doesn’t like the police. Remember, they aren’t simply opponents who are fed up and have finally gotten up off the couch to protest tyranny; they are the enemies of a civil society. They just hate cops. That seems clear. They fight for policies that put police officers at higher risk because they have no respect for what cops do. They don’t care about police officers most of whom are among the finest citizens of any community. The cop-hater’s warped equation also insults people who think critically rather than ideologically. People who come to conclusions based on empirical facts rather than selecting “facts” that conform to a predetermined, ideological narrative.
Still, I hesitate to bring attention to such ignorance. But, the sad thing is, political leaders, such as the leftist collective running (ruining) Seattle gives racialist groups such as BLM and BTB (Block the Bunker) far more clout than their destructive ideas deserve. The radical left may riot to shut down their opponent’s right speak, but we truly need to listen to what the Left says, so we can oppose their ideas more effectively. Oppose their collectivist, Utopian myth whenever possible.
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Liberal Contempt for Others.
Libertarianism has been a part of me for so long sometimes I forget just how beautiful a political philosophy it is and how good it makes me feel to be a part of the continuing American Revolution. The left likes to lay claim to being the “radicals and revolutionaries” in this modern era. However, it is the original libertarians (classical liberals) such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other founding fathers who remain the true radicals, standing in opposition to tyranny whether from a monarch like King George III or the modern progressive left movement. And so are we also true radicals who accept the gift of being our Founders’ political progeny. Leftists are simply monarchists whose sovereign, rather than a king or queen, is the large, oppressive welfare state. They prefer subjects beholding to a welfare state to free citizens engaged in voluntary cooperation with a limited government conducted under the social contract.
Libertarianism is beautiful in its trust in humanity—in ordinary human beings—in others. To the contrary, the ugliness of the left that demonizes its political opponents as “evil” and dismisses others as too “stupid” to manage their own lives. The problem is when the left says others are, “too stupid to run their own lives,” “stupid” means anyone opposing the left’s political view.
I have Democrat friends and family who argue others simply can’t be trusted to run their own lives and need government to make decisions for them. I’m in jaw-dropping awe of such audacity–such contempt for others is frightening. I reply, “What about you? Should you be able to make your own decisions?” Most of them, of course, answer, “Yes.” But some concede it might be worth losing some liberty so that “stupid” others are protected from themselves. Remarkably, many on the left would rather lose their own liberty than allow others to retain theirs.
The left abdicates the gift bestowed by nature’s God, fought, bled, and died for by our forebears, and enshrined in our founding documents: Liberty! Think of the beauty of not only being able to live one’s life free from excessive government intrusion–to strive for human flourishing–but also of acknowledging others’ liberty.
Since the inception of civil society human political progress has been measured by its recognition of individual liberty. The history of the free world venerates the birth of democracy in Greece, the signings of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, and the framing of the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights). Personal liberty has been at the core of the history of the evolution of civilized society.
The miserable history of leftist progressivism is written in the economic and social destruction wrought by socialism and the murders of a hundred million others committed by communism. And where did Marxist-Leninist communism find itself? As Ronald Reagan said, “On the ash heap of history.” And where is American liberty still found? “On a shining city on a hill.” America!
I side with the beautiful: individual liberty and personal freedom. I like that if my side gets its (political) way, others can live as they choose—pursue their happiness. This view makes my political philosophy morally superior, anathema to the leftist philosophy where others do not live their lives as they choose—are prevented from pursuing their happiness. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in the film As Good as it Gets says, “The fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me.”
In conclusion, allow me to prove me point: if libertarian concept’s, with its sublime and egalitarian benefits and attendant free (fair) market capitalism, reign politically (even in a Republican-populist administration), leftists may live as they choose. Libertarianism may not be perfect, but it points humanity in the right direction.