Category Archives: LGBT Issues

Let’s Talk Maga!

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(A video version of this post can be found at:    https://www.instagram.com/p/DdhIrUwBKHu/?hl=en)

Today I’m going to piss off some people. Why, because I’ve watched, for years now, the insane ramblings of MAGA, Christian Nationalist adherents, and White Supremacist Organizations. All are either political movements or attempting to influence societal sensitivities. They tend to overlap and cross pollinate each other.

For today though, let’s start with MAGA – the Make America Great Again supporters. The Statista MAGA Support Tracker puts the number of followers at around 19% of U.S. adults (roughly 51 million people ) while a Quinnipiac University poll put the number closer to 32% of general voters (roughly 56 million people). Either way you look at it, that’s a lot of people, upwards of 16% of the total population of the United States.

You have to look at the generally accepted core beliefs attributed to the typical MAGA supporter. Here are six of the most popular:

1 – They believe in America First with a focus on domestic problems and shunning international pacts or engaging in foreign wars.

2 – Economic policies such as favoring tariffs and schemes to restore American manufacturing.

3 – Immigration Controls – tightening the southern border with a physical wall, shedding the country of illegal immigrants, and a robust program of deportations.

4 – They favor a return to what is considered past ideologies surrounding traditional family values and gender roles. The word progressive is distasteful to them.

5 – They are generally distrustful of media sources, traditional politicians, and federal regulations.

6 – They hate anything which would seem to diminish American Nationalism.

And of course, MAGA views Trump as the savior who will create this new utopia for them all. I recall an elderly couple buying a book on Trump at Barnes & Noble who asked me why they knew he was going to win. I shook my head. They said because he’s been appointed by God. I kind of felt the earth shake under my feet.

We must look at the destructive nature of the core beliefs I’ve outlined.

1 – A firm belief in America First is a narrow worldview. That’s not to say we shouldn’t do things to protect our economy and the health and welfare of our citizens, but we also occupy a firm footing on the world stage. To strictly adopt the former while ignoring the latter is simply to invite the diminishment of our global influence in favor of allowing other national ideologies from exporting their influence to our detriment both in trade and as threats to our ideal of democracy. We must engage in international discussions and alliances and protect our monetary dominance. Without that, the economy we love to boast about will come crashing down around us. It would set our country back a hundred years.

2 – I also believe in our attempts to restore the strength of American manufacturing and Made in America pride. Somehow we became a service nation and exported our capabilities because the captains of industry wanted higher profits. Now, Trump wants to punish the world for accepting what we gave away by imposing tariffs on what we buy back. MAGA seems to support that idea. Since Trump took office in 2025, the government has collected $362 Billion in Customs Duties. MAGA seems to ignore who pays that bill no matter how many reels and posts trying to make the point clear circulate.

The American companies who import the products subject to a tariff pay the fee to the CBP – the Customs and Border Protection agency. People, we live in a supply and demand economy. If a company can’t buy an American made product to supply the demand, they will import it. If they have to pay the tariff, do you think they’re going to eat the cost of it? No, they will increase their price and pass it on to all of us. Your proof of concept should be obvious when you go shopping. So here is where we stand: first the government collected the $362 Billion dollars into their checking account; second, the importers who paid those fees are charging us for the policy; three, because of the Supreme Court ruling in February, the government has paid back around $115 Billion dollars of the $166 Billion they were ordered to pay to the importers on record – companies like Walmart, Apple, and Amazon. I ask you, have you seen significant reductions when you go shopping at Walmart? Has the price of your new Apple iPhone dropped a bunch? MAGA, wake up.

3 – Immigration and deportation. This is the most egregious government program endorsed by MAGA. First, when you give a huge number of people a badge and a gun, you wind up with the kind of goon squad now known as ICE. That’s currently 22,000 officers running amok and who have arrested in excess of 300,000 people while managing to murder a couple of them along the way. As of July, we were holding 65,765 people in detention of which 70.6% had no criminal record.

For a short time in my life, I supplemented my income by working as an armed courier on armored trucks. I witnessed firsthand how a large number of my fellow couriers were frustrated wannabe cops who thrilled at the idea they could proudly carry their gun and push out their chest to show off their badge. They would go into stores like 7-11 and brandish their credentials claiming they were “on-the-job” and expected free coffee “on-the-arm”. You think this same mentality is any different from those recruited to ICE? The Department of Homeland Security maintains they provide a significant amount of training including arrest techniques, defensive tactics, conflict management and de-escalation, firearms and marksmanship, proper use of force all over a period of 56 days with 28 days on-the-job training. By comparison, real police officers receive up to 6 months of academy training followed by up to 6 months of field training. And by the way, apparently, 74% of MAGA Republications are in favor of ICE wearing masks. MAGA..yeah, wake up.

4 – The return to traditional family values. In this regard, MAGA adherents who generally seem to have a lower level of education, are only capable of seeing issues in black and white. They somehow seem to believe the fairy tale of the Leave it to Beaver type style of family dynamics and pray for a return to those times. Truthfully, that was always an American myth despite how charming it was. Men were to lead the family as the breadwinner and the mother was to be a stay-at-home domestic servant. Women were to be submissive to the husband. Can you wonder where the “your body, my choice” entitlement came from? I hate to break it to you, but humans are far more complicated than that. It’s more than two genders, and not as simple as stating a human with a penis is a male and human without one is a female. There is an entire range of human psychology and emotion that span the difference.

MAGA takes offense at this. What the hell does it matter to you if someone falls onto the LGBTQ spectrum? They aren’t trying to take away your antiquated notion of what a family should be, they just want to live peacefully and happy with their own system of beliefs. Give is rest will you?

5 – MAGAs distrust of the media. How can you have faith in media sources when the President himself lies with every utterance that flows from his mouth and is then backed up by idiots like Mike Johnson, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, and lest we forget Donald Trump Jr.? The lesser educated and dedicated followers will hang on every word when Trump refers to something as fake news. The Trump administration has driven the media world to a point where telling the truth from the lies is increasingly impossible. What other President has actually sued media outlets because he didn’t like what was being reported. Trump has sued The New York Times, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, and CBS. Just look at the repercussions at CBS thanks to Bari Weiss and her right-leaning anti-woke platform. Look at the devastation that occurred with 60 Minutes, the most revered news program of the past 58 years.

MAGA hates federal regulation. Remember how incensed they were over the mandate to wear a mask or get a vaccine during the peak of Covid? Oh, what the hell, only 1.24 Million Americans died. They opposed EPA limits on CO2 emissions and restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, because, you know, those resources will just last forever and won’t contribute to global warming which their supreme leader calls a hoax. They hate the notion of DEI, because why should someone other than a white, natural born American have to compete with any other diverse form of human? They are hateful toward those who are woke. And for those who randomly use the term “woke” – it simply means having a sensitivity to social and racial injustice. Yeah, that’s an awful thing.

And let’s not forget their disdain for normal politicians, men of integrity like Biden and Obama and John McCain, men who have no record of being impeached or having been indicted and found guilty of 34 felonies, who aren’t mentioned in the Epstein files 1,500 times, gone bankrupt six times, or who love to grab women by the…well you remember.

And finally, number 6

6 – Their aversion to anything which might threaten their sense of American Nationalism, the foundation of which stands on both Civic Nationalism and Cultural and Racial Nationalism. While traditional Civic Nationalism calls for the values of freedom, equality, and individual rights, the Trump era has warped this into a form of neo-Civil Nationalism by leaning far to the right in espousing an anti-pluralist society. As for Cultural Nationalism, it’s clear that MAGA is so for deportation of immigrants because it compromises their belief that the common cultural heritage should be defined as ones which stem from the Western European colonization of America and not from the infusion of culture from Muslim, Mexican, Central, or South American countries. Just look at the uproar over politicians like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Abdul El-Sayed, and Zohran Mamdani. It doesn’t matter to them if they are beyond capable of doing spectacular work in service of their constituents, they threaten their idea of Cultural Nationalism because before you know it we’ll all be living under Sharia law. MAGA, get a frigging grip!

When Hillary Clinton used the phrase “basket of deplorables” in her 2016 run for the presidency, the election in which she won the popular vote, there were two groups: one included the Trump supporters who felt let down by the government in the past and wanted a change, and the other was the group of “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or Islamophobic” people – essentially the core group of MAGA. People took offense at that statement and she apologized to the first group for having included them in the term, but guess what, her description of the other half was dead-on accurate and far more polite than they deserved then or deserve now.

I told you I was going to piss some people off today.

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Harry Potter: Is It Time To Disapparate?

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As many who share a love of all things Harry Potter, I have been following the backlash toward JK Rowling over her recent twitter posts. Last night, I caught an article in Marie Claire written by Kathleen Walsh. To be honest, it hit hard especially in relation to a blog post I just published dealing with my take on current affairs. Unfortunately, whatever I write will disappear into the void of a blog-post black hole; I don’t have anything resembling the bandwidth Walsh will enjoy by publishing in Marie Claire.

The last statement of her first paragraph ends with: “We must end our Harry Potter fantasy now.” I didn’t care for the tone as I’m not one to be told what I must do, but because I’m invested in the discussion, I waded through the wordy article and then the referenced JK Rowling essay. I’m sensitive to transgender issues, I wrote a post five years ago after research and interviews on the subject. It’s a complicated matter. The shades of existence between traditional male and female standards aren’t the straightforward colors of a Pride flag, but more like a Jackson Pollack painting – the permutations seem infinite.

The problem is not everyone “gets” it. Just like Black Lives Matter, how many people respond with a dismissive All Lives Matter retort? People older than millennials generally grew up without a clear understanding of LGBTQ issues. How often do you still hear gayness is a choice? If they aren’t even capable of accepting how someone can be gay or lesbian, how are they going to absorb transgenderism with all the new acronyms, pronoun assignments, and the multitude of sexual preferences?

As with racial concerns, transgender issues require education. We need more people to believe, like the sign in the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests said: I understand I don’t understand, but I stand with you. Instead of encouraging this, we witness name-calling and character assassination. As I said in my post, argumentation is now performed from the platform of absolutes. If you say one thing counter to the paradigm someone subscribes to, you’re branded a person to be shunned, ignored, and trashed, destined to be a societal pariah. We have many who deserve that moniker: Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, David Duke – people who clearly exhibit fundamental evil. I cannot, and will not, label essentially good people with similar epitaphs.

JK Rowling was wrong in her assessment, but to consider wholesale verbal flogging and boycotting is the opposite extreme. People are now scrutinizing every sentence of all seven books picking any piece of evidence to support the notion Rowling is transphobic and racist. I will say this: there is not one author or one book ever published capable of withstanding the application of everyone’s personal agenda. Instead of accepting the good Rowling has done and continues to do while giving her the opportunity to enrich her education on the subject of transgenderism, we see vultures circling, anxious to devour the flesh of one of the much-loved authors of our time.

My own path to acceptance and to the degree I understand homosexuality, transgenderism, and race was a difficult one. In some cases, it resulted in a 180-degree reversal of thinking and feeling, but I got here, and I’m still learning. I am not a religious person, but for one rare occasion, I will quote the Bible: let s/he who is without sin cast the first stone.

As for Harry Potter – the books and the movies – will I end the fantasy? No, not now, not ever.

Sorrows to the Stones

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Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;

Who, though they cannot answer my distress,

Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,

Titus Andronicus, Act III, Scene I

Sorrows to the Stones is a work in progress, novel title, but the quote from which it derives best defines the place for where my understanding of humankind has landed.

The late Dr. Karen Erickson, former Dean of the school of Arts and Sciences at Southern New Hampshire University and advocate of the Master of Fine Arts program once said the job of a writer is to observe and become the spokesperson of what those observations reveal. Writers hold the mirror of humanity, of society, and permit the reader to focus on what it means to be a participant of life.

I’ve had ample opportunity to observe over six and a half decades. I watched John Glenn launch in 1962, felt the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis, experienced the emotional shock of the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations. Observed the unfolding civil rights movement as integration and school busing blurred the strict segregation of African-Americans, the landing on the moon, daily reports from the battlefields of Viet Nam on the evening news. The freedom marches of 1963 and yet we succumb to riots like that in Los Angeles three decades later and now again with the murder of George Floyd.

I’ve seen the widening divergence of our two-party political system. Where a Venn diagram once showed the majority of red and blue dots in the center, now has solid white space between red and blue balloons. Gay rights and LGBTQ issues finally made it to the table of discussion, yet it seems even more dangerous to be anything other than a male or female heterosexual. Society had forged inroads to acceptance, but like a failed launch, the rocket has come crashing back to earth.

I observed the Islamic world through five years in the Middle East, seen unrelenting poverty of third-world nations where Philippinos, Yemenis, Pakistanis, and Asians made the equivalent of pocket change in comparison to their western counterparts. I’ve seen children in Africa with only a single outfit of clothing, herding flocks of goat and camel down barely paved roads. Soccer balls were the currency of youth on the streets of Asmara.

Then there was the election process of 2016, a turning point – my observations now hyper-focused with a clearer imperative. The simple act of writing stories faltered in the context of relevance. The stay-at-home version of existence thanks to Covid-19 allowed more time to scan posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where the conduct of argumentation performs from the platform of absolutes. There is a tendency toward a lack of attention to perspective and the breeding of over-simplification. Smart phones provide the means by which bad behavior proves the point but also becomes a weapon to brand anyone and everyone with a scarlet letter. Someone is offended in one way or another at every moment. We live with daily character assassination, some warranted; many questionable. Civil wars of all issues, no matter the magnitude, rage and divide. Leadership tears at the fabric of our country and feeds the virus of disease that diminishes all progress. Worse, the creation of a permissive environment where racist and supremacist attitudes projecting hatred and narrow-mindedness are tolerated with tacit encouragement at the highest level.

I was fortunate not to be born in a time or place that would have subjected me to the likes of Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini. I have not been starved or suffered the threat of horrific death by bombings, political purges, or prejudice. I have faced many issues and difficulties, but for all that live a decent life. It doesn’t mean, however, my observations are any less accurate, nor is my perception of where we are heading, and it’s scary.

The brief respite the planet has enjoyed from human interaction has demonstrated some remarkable changes. Fish can be seen in the canals of Venice, carbon emissions are down, air quality is up, water is cleaner, animals stray farther from their limited habitats. It paints a clear picture of the damage we do and what we’ll continue to do once the pandemic passes. The DNA of human nature is rife with destructive tendencies. The media does a good job in demonstrating this with every article, news report, breaking headline, and interviews with every talking head imaginable. One cannot experience a half hour news program without feeling doom, even with the occasional uplifting story designed to restore a sense faith and hope eroded by our steady diet of reality.

I don’t know where we go from here, but from my observations and conclusions, it doesn’t look like a very good place. So, I share my woes with the stones…for their concern seems more genuine than that of my fellow man.

 

Photo by Nikhil kumar on Unsplash