Year: 2023

A Few Features of Corporate Tyranny

In the above clip, Kennedy is describing a tyrannical arrangement, one in which the administrative state and its network of regulatory agencies permit powerful corporations to run roughshod over the public. The administrative state is a clear and present danger to the safety of the citizens of the American Republic. The government of this country, the federal government and the governments of several states, has become thoroughly corporatized and positively lethal. Not just to children. To all of us. 

Pharmaceutical corporations enjoy comprehensive liberality from the harm caused by their vaccines

If you believe that (a) corporations that profit from manufacturing pharmaceuticals should be immune from civil liability or (b) governments should mandate vaccines, then, really, you must believe both in tandem. If you find (a) problematic, as any decent and rational person would, but still support (b), then you are failing to see how (b) is not only the justification for (a), but (a) is the reason (b) exists. Corporations count on governments mandating the uptake of pharmaceutical agents on behalf of entities that cannot directly compel the people at large (but can of course force their employees to do so), and in exchange for these mandates enjoy freedom from liability when these agents injure and kill people. It’s a truly strange arrangements for a government that proclaims its purpose if to represent a free people and to protect their safety. What would be the reason for (a) without (b)? It’s not the false rhetoric of public health.

The question every citizen needs to ask himself, and then ask his representatives in government, is why it’s the job of the government to drive business to pharmaceutical companies. It’s not just vaccines, either, that governments strive to enable paths to profits. Governments have and are changing laws to justify using hormones and performing surgeries on children in emotional and psychological stress. The Biden Administration, which has embraced gender ideology, has hung the Pride Progress flag at the White House, its light blue, pink, and white stripes promoting an ideology that teaches boys that, if they like dolls, then they are a girl. When they want be fixed, governments making sure that there are available medical treatments that fix that problem.

The Progress Pride flag hangs from the balcony of the White House during a Pride Celebration in the South Lawn, hosted by President Joe Biden, in Washington, U.S., June 10, 2023.

Of all the features of the New Fascism I have described on Freedom and Reason, the one most resembling the horrors of National Socialism is the medical-industrial complex, these horrors pushed in the public realm primarily by the Democratic Party. Those who cannot see this are in a weird space, one that’s hard for me to understand. To be sure, I was in dark about some of this several years ago. But now that I am standing in the light, there’s no way I am going to lie to myself. 

My approach to the world asks two basic and interrelated questions about the claims people make or the things I see: Does this make sense morally? Does it make sense scientifically? If it doesn’t make sense scientifically, and I check to make sure that it doesn’t, then I reject it. If it does make sense, I accept it (provisionally for the science question). There are instances where, even if the science works out, it’s at odds with morality. Then it should not be allowed. Working this way puts me beyond the ideological standpoints in which most folks operate.

Speech Acts as “Systemically Harmful”: More on the “Weapons of the Weak”

In my May 18th blog Civic Spaces and the Illiberal Desire to Subvert Them, I updated the blog a few days later with a real world example of the hypothetical I used to illustrate the way in which colleges and universities, as well as 4k-12 schools, are operating more like reeducation centers than places of learning. The real world case concerns a Connecticut teacher who gave a student a zero on her final project proposal because she used the construct “biological woman.” Follow the link above to read about the case. While you’re there, please read the blog, too! Rather than do a second update, I have decided to blog anew a follow up to the case.

Melanie Rose Nipper, adjunct professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati

In “Adjunct who failed student for using term ‘biological women’ confirms story, plays the victim,” Dave Huber of The College Fix reported: “Though Olivia Krolczyk never named her professor, this past week The Cincinnati Enquirer did—and scored an interview with her in the process.” Melanie Rose Nipper is the professor in question. She is an adjunct in the University of Cincinnati’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department. According to the Enquirer, Nipper said she cried when she saw Krolczyk’s TikTok video about the issue. “It’s a lot, right? It’s a lot to handle.” She might have imagined how the student felt having her thoughts suppressed by a person in a position of authority. But that’s hardly a concern for woke authorities. They have a social control function to carry out. The rights of gender conforming students are arbitrary. The privilege of trans people is everything (as we saw in Queensland, Australia yesterday).

Nipper confirmed Krolczyk’s sequence of events but added, “Every final project proposal has to be approved by the instructor” and her review of the idea and Krolczyk’s language was routine in carrying out her duties as a professor. I, too, have students propose papers and projects, and we work together to get them approved (although some are never approved, this doesn’t stop the student from turning in a final paper or project—or getting a grade on the failed proposal). However, I never instruct the student in the ideological use of terminology. In fact, I guarantee students in writing (it’s on the syllabi for all my classes) that judging their politics is not part of my assessment of their work. All that I ask is that, if it is a science paper, which it usually is, they follow scholarly norms of scientific writing. I am there to teach them how to write scientifically, not how to write ideologically.

But Nipper’s pedagogy clearly has a different task and purpose, one that involves changing the way students express their thoughts, and in so doing changing thought expression in such a way as to prevent the accurate conveyance of those thoughts—if she cannot first deter them from proposing projects of which she disapproves. The Enquirer reports that, “when a student uses ‘an outdated terminology’,” Nipper “feels it is necessary to correct those mistakes.” “Not a zero for the course,” Nipper told the outlet; “a zero for an assignment.” For the record, I would never given a student a zero on an assignment unless the submission was plagiarized. I ask them to revise the proposal over a generous weeks-long process and then grade the paper on how well it meets the terms of the assignment.

Nipper believes classrooms “should be places for debate and discussion,” but not really. When “you are, intentionally or unintentionally, participating in a systemic harm of some kind,” she tells the Enquirer, then you need to be corrected. What does Nipper define as harmful? “Transphobic” language, which Nipper equates to white supremacy. In other words, observing that women are in part biological beings (female sex is a prerequisite for being a woman), and that biology matters in athletic competition, are for Nipper the same things as anti-black racism. To be sure, Nipper informed Krolczyk in her comments to the proposal: “This is unacceptable based on the community, the marginalized individuals that are at stake, and also the foundations of the course.” But this only makes the censorship goal explicit. Here the suppression of speech is being applied on the grounds that what is being said threatens vulnerable populations. Translated into real terms: some people find the speech offensive. This is not a valid reason to censor speech (see The False Doctrine of “Weapons of the Weak”).

All this for using the construction “biological woman.” Of course, this was probably an attempt to cancel the project because it challenged a belief the teacher had; Nipper was hoping to force the student to change the project proposal by failing it. But let’s stay with the construction for the moment and Nipper’s explicit motive. However redundant the construction “biological woman” is (and it is redundant), it is not “transphobic,” a propaganda term designed to make truth appear bigoted in the same way criticism of Islam is labeled “Islamophobic.” Certainly, used this way, that’s its function. Note how the teacher said she would regrade the paper (she gave the student’s proposal a zero) if the student cleansed the paper of “outdated terminology.” “I will happily regrade,” Nipper said. “You are not going to have any late penalties.” How lenient. Perhaps Nipper understood that canceling the project altogether was a perilous path. So Krolczyk would have to rewrite the proposal to conform with Nipper’s ideological standpoint, an action rationalized in terms protecting the weak, i.e., those who have all the major institutions of society in back of them.

This is not education. This is indoctrination. This teacher sees herself as overseeing a reeducation center where young people have to be reprogrammed to speak and write in the approved ideological manner. (We can’t rule out the power-tripping joy in all this for Nipper.) This is hardly an uncommon practice. This is systemic. What lies at the end of this road should concern all freedom-minded folk. The New Fascism uses the language of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It moves beneath the rhetoric of “social justice.” But like the term “woman,” justice needs no qualifier. So if you have kids you intend to send to college, teach them not to cooperate with the project to indoctrinate them. Make them stubborn and difficult. Start well before college. Teach them to do what the kids did at Marshall Simonds Middle School (see Kids Resisting Indoctrination).

I am proud of Olivia Krolczyk, the student who blew the whistle on this authoritarian teacher. More of her kind and maybe we can start turning around the rapid slide of the West into the darkness of totalitarianism. For the record, I am not calling for Melanie Rose Nipper to be dismissed or disciplined—unless this is a pattern. She needs to be reminded or educated about the free speech rights of her students, as well the principles of academic freedom. And if this is the policy of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, then the department needs to be reformed. This is unacceptable behavior for an institution of higher learning in an open and rational society with a bill of rights that explicitly guarantees citizens the freedom of conscience and the freedom of speech.

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Speaking of what happened in Queensland yesterday, here Giggle founder Sall Grover discusses new laws passed in the state of Queensland which allow residents to change their gender on a birth certificate:

“The important thing to understand with self ID laws is they have very little to do with the self,” Grover tells the host; “these are laws that are dictating how everyone else has to see someone. It is taking control over every citizens critical thinking faculties.” (I write about this in yesterday’s blog: Neutralizing the Gender-Detection Brain Module.)  

And that’s the problem. One may think of himself in way that is contrary to reality (and there is a reality), but to make others think in that same way is among the worst violations of human rights. It is wrong to compel others to live in unreality and we need to rise against this assault on our dignity and freedom and on the truth (which is singular). Please watch Grover’s interview. Follow her on twitter @salltweets.

* * *

The seriousness of this madness cannot be understated.

This is the reason that the most advanced European countries are shutting down “gender-affirming care”: the evidence isn’t there. How could it be? It’s crackpot ideology devised by a pedophiles and hacks (I have a major critique of the ideology pending). But the United States, with its for-profit health system, a system that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year for wealthy investors, went full-speed ahead—evidence be damned. (See Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; Feeding the Medical-Industrial Complex.) This rhetoric of “standard of care” is garbage language. It’s scientism. Standard of care is legitimizing propaganda constructed by the very industrialists who make billions off of exploiting emotionally and psychological vulnerable children. It’s just like the standards of the food industry.

Why aren’t the progressives calling out these hacks? I never thought it would be the Republicans who would be there for the people (no offense to Republicans), but they are. Progressives helped build this industry, so my question was rhetorical. Here’s another truth bomb:

The great tragedy in all this is that it took all these years and all these broken bodies before those in power starting pushing back—and many more will be broken in the meantime. And the industry may (likely will) survive the opposition. It’s the same with the pandemic. We knew—I knew—from the beginning that what they were terrifying people into doing was all about money and control, not about actual health care. Folks will never understand this until the develop a proper critique of corporate capitalism and get their heads out of matrix.

Neutralizing the Gender-Detection Brain Module

I almost never blog twice in one day. If there is more than one story that interests me, I usually them into a single blog. However, today I have to make an exception. This from the Johns Hopkins University’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) LGBTQ Glossary. This was all the range yesterday on Twitter. According to the glossary, you don’t have to be a woman to be a lesbian. You can be a “non-man.” You can be a non-man and have a penis (i.e., a man). This means that men can be lesbians. Gay men are still men, though. The definition seems to quite self-serving, doesn’t it? I wonder who could have written this?

From the new scrubbed Johns Hopkins University’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) LGBTQ Glossary

The backlash was swift and fierce. Now if you visit the page you get this: “While the glossary is a resource posted on the website of the Johns Hopkins University Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI); the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review.” So that’s what happened. Somebody down the line put that in there. Who did that?

Quite a few people on Twitter believe they have found the culprit: Paula Neira, Program Director of LGBTQ+ Equity and Education, Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity (and Assistant Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery). In the below tweet, Neira and Christy Blanco, who is on the faculty of the Hunt School of Nursing at Texas Tech, appear to contrive a misgendering scenario which allows Neira to clarify that he is a woman and that failure to recognize him as such reflects bigoted assumptions people (like you and me and our children) have about gender identity and how that can compromise the patient-nurse relationship. Neira wishes not only to gaslight patients whose evolved gender-detection brain module tells them that this is a man, but he wants to shame them as bigots for the results of natural history.

Let’s assume that this is the person who wrote the glossary. I think that’s a fair assumption. I believe we can also make some further assumptions. Neira is a trans identifying man (this we don’t have to assume), presumably heterosexual, but since he identifies as a woman, i.e., a subcategory of “non-man,” believes he is also a lesbian and wants to make sure that the sexuality of lesbians is not defined as exclusively female, which gives him access to their romantic circles. That gay men are not “non-women” is not a problem for Neira since he is not gay. All this taken together increases my confidence in an emerging profile. It’s a pattern recognition thing. Not infallible, of course, but rarely wrong.

Whatever makes Neira tick, there’s a lesson here: if the majority and sexual minorities who are detrimentally affected by the Orwellian transformation of language by the DEI and gender ideology crowd push back hard enough, the coalition can stop things like the erasure of lesbians (i.e., women attracted to women, with women defined as adult human females) and the redefinition of women as “non-men,” a definition that includes men (defined as adult human males). Neira didn’t pull this jargon out of his ass, after all. This is a concerted effort by the dominant institutions of our society to change the way we see and think about gender. They’re trying to reprogram us. I don’t think it’s going to work in the long run.

What these institutions haven’t realized quite yet is that the people have awakened. Not just the majority, who has been remarkably tolerant all these years (mostly because gender ideology flew under the radar obscured by acronym), but also because feminists and lesbians, who have been the most aggressively attacked by trans activists (and you can understand why, since both are founded on the fact that woman are actually-existing things), have decided they aren’t going to take it anymore and are mounting a resistance. John Hopkins was rudely awakened. A lot of institutions that operate according to the ethics of diversity and inclusion are in for a rude awakening. (Ironic, no, that the resistance is so diverse and inclusive?)

Did John Hopkins not think the Bud Light and Target controversies wouldn’t find them? Did they really believe like the progressive minions on social media the propaganda portraying the growing resistance as rightwing conservative MAGA types looking for an opportunity to roll more coal? Baristas at stores across the Starbuck US chain have been told they can’t put up Pride decorations this year, surprising given that Starbucks health insurance plans include not only “gender reassignment” surgery, but also procedures previously considered cosmetic, such as breast augmentation or reduction, facial feminization, and hair transplants. When Starbucks makes the move, it’s time to have a meeting.

This gif is from an independent media company based in Mumbai, India called The Swaddle. “Through our digital magazine and social-first multimedia work, we tell stories that challenge established narratives.” 

Sorry for being such a science nerd (sorry not sorry), but this article in The Swaddle, an independent media company based in Mumbai, India, “How Facial Recognition AI Reinforces Discrimination Against Trans People,” is fascinating—and frankly a bit absurd the way it’s spun. The Swaddle is just one of many publications that got caught up in a mass hysteria a few years ago when research emerged showing that AI consistently “misgenders” trans people while correctly identifying the gender of “cisgendered” people. It is nonetheless an opportunity to explore further the way elites are trying to change the way the human animals perceived and thinks about gender.

I don’t engineer AI systems, so this is a ignorant question (purposefully—for rhetorical effect), but I wonder whether AI’s ability to detect gender identity developed at all in a way analogous to way natural history developed this ability in humans. Probably not. I’m pretty sure not. Not at all. I’m guessing that the discriminatory apparatus is learned by having the bot view thousands if not millions of images of people (maybe it doesn’t require millions but far fewer instantiations of the two genders—and there are only two—to pick up the pattern). AI’s skill at gender detections is therefore not the result of millions of years of natural history in which the instinct to discriminate between genders was worked out in the dynamic process of natural selection but rather proof that machines can learn.

That humans have an evolved capacity to discriminate between gender categories is clear in the phenomenon many parent and teacher have observed where young children will ask in a situation of ambiguity (historically rare but increasingly not) if the person they’re looking at is boy or a girl; most of the time children assume correctly and, if people aren’t trying to deceive them, this frees them to worry about other things, such as whether Suzy is still a friend after the fight they had over a doll before nap-time. Put another way, children have an innate ability to discriminate between genders. Again, this is the result of natural selection, a process that began long before humans were even a species. This would have to have been the case or humans would never would have emerged—nor would their predecessor species.

So the convergence of gender discrimination in AI and human cognitive-perceptual systems comes about through different processes with similar results; whether evolved or learned, gender discrimination is a fact in pattern recognition systems. This is not a bug. It’s a feature. And it’s necessary, a matter I will get to in a moment.

This raises what ought to be a silly question: Are children transphobic? That’s as silly as asking whether AI are transphobic. Or whether I am, for that matter. It’s a misdirection play. What we need to ask is why activists and elites are trying to train AI systems to not recognize an obvious reality, i.e., to fail to see an objective pattern in nature, while at the same time trying to negate an evolved capacity in humans to see the same pattern, which they are presently trying to do through early socialization, gaslighting, and shaming.

This raises deeper questions about why reality is so undesirable to progressives and why there is so much loathing of the discriminatory apparatuses that inhere in the human animal. Why is the act or function of discriminating between categories such a terrible thing? What’s the agenda here? The capacity to discriminate between categories of things is essential for safely and successfully navigating the world around us. Humans are expert at seeing gender. So is AI, which like humans misgender trans people people all the time, which is another way of saying that AI correctly genders individuals despite their attempt to disguise their gender. In fact, humans misgender, i.e., correctly gender, people in their minds all the time while being compelled to act in bad faith and say things they don’t believe are true (things that are in fact untrue). Progressive morality is rooted in the ability to lie about reality. Again, what’s the agenda? Why are we being compelled to lie? Why is it a virtue to lie to oneself?

Rape Offender vs. Victim Demographics, United States, Crime Data Explorer, FBI, 2021

There is a system that does successfully prevent observers from recognizing gender, and this is found in the way statistics are reported by officials whose agencies are captured by gender ideology. A few years ago, the UK reported a sharp rise of rape among women—not rape of women but rape by women. What was going on? We know from statistics collected for more than a century and from across the planet that those who perpetrate rape are overwhelmingly men. In the above chart, we see that, for the United States, 93 percent of perpetrators of rape are men, while 90 percent of victims of rape are women. Because the reporting of statistics can deceive the observer by changing the definition of the category of thing, what the British public didn’t know was that those reporting the data were reporting men as women. The rise in rape wasn’t because women were raping more but because rapists are overwhelmingly men and when you define some men as women it generates a false perception about reality.

Here is the British government falsely signaling danger to those most vulnerable to this type of criminal perpetration. Why are governments producing false perceptions about the reality when reporting data necessary for public policy choices and the development of situational awareness by those who consume those data? (Imagine in the United States if black perpetrators of murder and robbery were redefined as white and you can see, if you have any understanding of what the actual data, of the distortions that can be introduced into public perception.) We have to ask why elites are trying to undermine the public’s ability to receive or access knowledge necessary for their safety.

I have to beat this drum. Why are being asked to lie to ourselves about the reality of the world? Why are elites lying to us about the reality of the world? Why are our institutions protecting those who wish to deceive us, as well as some who wish to deceive themselves (not all of them do, of course, but feigning convictions helps perpetrate the lie)? This isn’t a fight over bigotry. This is a fight for reality.

Kids Resisting Indoctrination

According to Newsweek, “The trouble began when a subset of students at the school began to lash out against the event, tearing down some of the signs and banners, or defacing them with ‘inappropriate’ stickers, These students also allegedly menaced other students and staff with glares and chants that included things like, ‘U.S.A. are my pronouns.’ Some taking part in the protest also wore red, white, and blue clothing and face paint, suggesting a level of coordination.” Oh, the horror of it all.

People are pushing back against the agenda. Now even the kids are pushing back. What did progressives expect? That the kids were going to sit there day after day while their school shoveled propaganda down their throats? Kids have a free speech right to protest. The Supreme Court upheld that right. The have a right to chant “U.S.A. are my pronouns.” They have a right to wear red, white, and blue clothing and face paint. They even have a right to coordinate their actions. All of this if protected by the First Amendment.

The kids wearing Pride were intimidated, according to reports (I suspect these accounts are exaggerated). How do administrators and teachers think the other kids feel? It’s intimidating to have administrators and teachers propagandize you all day long, telling you that you’re a bigot if you disagree. Folks are terrified to speak up against the agenda. I talk to people all the time who want to speak up but are afraid to. Progressives have put a massive chill in the air. That’s their goal. That’s intimidation.

Marshall Simonds Middle School a site of protest and resistance

These kids are brave even if they got a little carried away. Good for them. After the summer of 2020, I don’t think progressives have much room to whine about young people getting carried away. They politicize these kids and then expect them not to react politically. They’re not supposed to have their own mind. Progressives want sheep. But on this day they got something else. They want kids to be happy recruits to the cause of DEI. Public schools have created a toxic situation.

Schools should not be indoctrination centers. Take down the propaganda. Stop telling students what to think about issues that have nothing to do with why they’re there. They’re there for how many hours a day? Respect that. They’re a captive audience. Teach them how to think and be creative. Don’t divide them. Don’t sexualize them. Don’t teach them to resent each other.

As I have in past blogs, I would ask folks to consider whether it would be appropriate for the schools to hang Christian Nationalist flags and posters everywhere. No? Then Pride flags and posters shouldn’t be hanging there, either. Of course they shouldn’t. These should ideology-free spaces (Civic Spaces and the Illiberal Desire to Subvert Them; Whose Spaces Are These Anyway? Political Advocacy in Public Schools; Ideology in Public Schools—What Can We Do About It?; Dianetics in Our Schools). They’re children. Teach them the skills they need to succeed in life.

Progressives, stop exploiting children for your political agenda.

Feeding the Medical-Industrial Complex

There are charts one can find on the Internet with later endpoints, but the chart I share below is clean and high quality. All the charts show the same pattern, anyway. Would it surprise readers to know that the ratio between doctors and administrators is even greater now? I am sharing this to encourage you to think about a few questions: What is the relationship of doctors to the medical-industrial complex? What is the role of administrators? What is the medical-industrial complex?

A chart grabbed from the Internet. There are lots of these and the show they same pattern

What I putting down here this evening is something of a follow up to my blog from a few months ago Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex (see also my Disordering Bodies for Disordered Minds). This is also preview from an upcoming blog I’ve been working on concerning the intersection of queer theory and sexology, an ideology that is used to justify what the complex called “gender affirming care.” That blog is a lengthy one and what you will read here is some of a section that pulls things together towards the end. However, it stands alone as an analysis of that premise is known.

I ask in that forthcoming piece how one might consider the power dynamics embedded in social institutions and norms, and how these impact the lived experiences of individuals with non-normative sexualities and genders, by considering the following questions from above, repeated here for your convenience: What is the relationship of doctors to the medical-industrial complex? What is the medical-industrial complex? What is the role of administrators in this complex? In contrast to the postmodernists, who eschew objective analysis, I will answer the question from the scientific standpoint of historical materialism or critical political economy.

The medical-industrial complex is made up of a network of corporations that ultimately determines what counts as disease or medical conditions, what causes disease or medical conditions, what counts as treatments, and so forth. These are determined according to the imperative to accumulate capital, to generate income for investors and stockholders. The network of health care companies are intertwined with the network of health insurance companies, medical supply and technology firms, pharmaceutical companies, and the corporate-captured regulatory bodies that legitimize the system by appearing to monitor the behavior of the system for its benefits, efficacy, and safety. The health care industry generates somewhere in the range a trillion dollar annually. Two-thirds of the industry’s revenue comes from patient care. This makes generating more patients a lucrative business.

Administrators are bureaucrats of various rankings who run the hospitals and clinics for the network of corporations. Doctors are highly paid employees of the complex who, while appearing to have a significant degree of autonomy, are governed by the bureaucrats, their work rationalized by their schemes. Along with the engineers and scientists who work across the complex, doctors represent expert labor, with some in an expert management position. As employees and managers, doctors do the bidding of their corporate masters, a bidding many are eager to do because of the compensation—at least the amount of money they’re paid assuages the guilt those with a working conscience might otherwise feel exploiting the masses. The training they receive in accredited universities that dispense medical degrees is shaped by an ideology (“medical science”) determined by the apparatus of the complex—all this for profit generation. The more doctors push (unnecessary and dangerous) drugs, (unnecessary and dangerous) surgeries, and so forth, the more income is generated for the investors and stockholders. And so administrators push doctors to push these things.

As noted, because of the profit motive, health care companies are always on the prowl for more customers, and that means not only medicalizing more domains of human life, i.e., creating more diseases and conditions, but also aggressively diagnosing and treating the diseases and conditions they manufacture (the subject of the previous blog I reference above). For example, introduced in 1980 in the third edition, “gender identity disorder” (GID) was included as a diagnostic category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-3), which legitimized a new frontier for the complex. The DSM-5, published in 2013, introduced significant changes to the diagnostic criteria and terminology related to gender identity. In fact, the diagnosis of GID was replaced with “gender dysphoria,” or GD. The change from GID to GD depathologized gender identity and the focus was shifted to the distress or discomfort individuals claimed to experience due to a mismatch between their gender identity and their birth sex.

But what explains the introduction of gender identity disorder in the first place? According to the progressive narrative, during the 1970s, there was a growing recognition among mental health professionals that individuals who experienced distress or dissatisfaction with their assigned sex at birth and identified strongly with the opposite gender may benefit from specialized clinical attention—and the mental health industry could benefit financially from finding more patients with this condition. This recognition was influenced by the field of sexology, which advanced John Money’s invention of “gender identity” (this is the subject of the upcoming blog). Trans activists agitated for the inclusion of gender identity in the DSM: if they could get their desire to transition recognized as a psychiatric disorder, then doctors could prescribe hormones and conduct surgeries and insurance companies could pay for some or all of it. The inclusion of GID in the DSM-III was pitched as a progressive step toward acknowledging and providing a framework for addressing gender-related concerns within the mental health field. In reality, it opened a new area of profit generation for the complex. Once the transgender care pipeline had been established and normalized, GID was depathologized and gender dysphoria introduced, which came with more benefits for the complex. (Again, all this is dealt with in much greater detail in the upcoming blog.)

The point is that more patients are made this way and in many other ways and, in many cases, made patients for life because disease or conditions are caused by the treatment, and the treatment regime is a terminal one. This is especially true of so-called gender affirming care. More generally, the complex is vast and injures and kills millions of people annually (estimates indicate that, depending on how you define medical error, 250 to 500 thousand people are killed every year from medical error alone, and many times that are injured). Both sexology and queer theory rationalize as a progressive project to promote inclusivity and acceptance of diverse sexualities and genders the generation of corporate profits, and they do this by dissimulating the reality of pain and suffering in the practice of carving fetishes into flesh with quasi-religious rhetoric of “authentic selves.” Psychiatry have created many more paths to profit than this, as readers probably already know. Tranquilizers minor and major, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, etc. I have only scratched the surface. The revenue generated by the greater system is much greater that the trillion dollars hauled in by the health care industry.

From Republic to Empire: The Rise of the Deep State in Rome and America

I will be writing more about this in the future, but this seems the necessary starting point for readers to better understand my past blogs concerning the rise of the New Fascism: a brief account of the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire and the perversions that followed, with comparisons points to the deformation of the American Republic. While, after a long period of human suffering in Europe, the fall of the Roman Empire paved the way to modernity, a difficult path to be sure, modernity is now here and the regressive forces of progressivism and technocracy have imperiled it. Thus new perversions threaten the aspiration of our species for a superlative and lasting form of self-government. America is rapidly tumbling into dictatorships. Many of its signs are already here. The people must confront this.

Rome is the necessary starting point because of the lesson it provides for those of us who live in these tumultuous times and because, as many of you know, the founders of the American Republic drew inspiration from the Roman Republic when designing the framework of the American government, as well as the nation’s creed, which emphasizes democracy, equality, individualism, liberty, pluralism, and self-reliance, a list of ideals that, in practice, however imperfectly executed, has made America the greatest instantiation of democracy and freedom in world history.

Cicero Denounces Catiline, painting by Cesare Maccari, 1888

References to Roman history, philosophy, and political figures can be found in various writings of the founders. The Roman statesman and political philosopher Cicero, known for his defense of republican values, was frequently quoted and cited by the founders. The Roman Republic and Roman statesmen weren’t their only inspiration, of course. They also drew from other political philosophers and historical examples, such as the Greek city-states, and, crucially, Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu, the source of America’s humanist, liberal, and secular character. Nonetheless, it was the example of the Roman Republic that gave them the plan for a form of government that made the emergence of a dictator unlikely—or at least more difficult to achieve.

The founders admired in particular these aspects of the Roman Republic: the concept of civic virtue, divided government, or separation of powers, and its system of checks and balances. The founders sought to incorporate these principles into the new American system to prevent the concentration of power and protect individual liberties. Again, the promise was to prevent the rise of a dictatorship. Tragically, historical developments portend the breaking of this promise—if that promise has not already been broken.

One notable influence on the founders’ plans was the Roman concept of the mixed government or mixed constitution, which involved a balance of power between different branches or orders. The Roman Republic had three main branches of government: the consuls, the popular assemblies, and the Senate. The founders of the American Republic sought to emulate this balance by dividing powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. For example, the founders envisioned the United States Senate as a deliberative body akin to the Roman Senate, which represented the interests of the states, a place where the experienced and the knowledgeable deliberate on legislation, (This was the reason the states appointed the Senators in the original constitution.)

Additionally, the concept of civic virtue, derived from the Roman ideal of the virtuous citizen engaged in public affairs, was seen as vital for the success of the American Republic. The founders believed that a virtuous and educated citizenry would help ensure the stability and longevity of the republic. This is why, despite the fact that the founders were a mix of devout Christians and deists, and likely a few atheists, as well, they recognized the importance of those Christian values compatible with a secular framework.

Thomas Paine, the author of several notable works, including Common Sense and The Age of Reason was a deist and a freethinker. In his writings, Thomas Jefferson extracted the moral teachings of Jesus while omitting the Bible’s supernatural elements. Benjamin Franklin expressed skepticism about organized religion but emphasized the importance of morality and virtue. George Washington, an Anglican Episcopalian, referenced God in his public speeches and private correspondence but abstained from taking communion during services. John Adams was a Unitarian and frequently referred to his faith in his writings. These are religious persuasions compatible with secular government while providing blueprints for virtuous lives. (One must not in the telling of American history neglect the fact that Protestantism plays a major role in the emergence and evolution of the modern West.)

However, tragically, like the Roman Republic, the America Republic has been overtaken by Empire, which has allowed for the emergence of a dictatorship of the corporate state analogous to the undemocratic governing structures in the Roman Empire. The democratic-republican process established by the founders has been corrupted by a permanent political establishment, the administrative state, with a deep state that plays a role much like the Praetorian Guard in the Roman Empire. Moreover, like the Roman Empire, the American Empire is a military state devoted to world adventurism.

All this portends doom for the American project. It is therefore useful to understand the story of the perversion of Rome by the authoritarians who took it over from within, actions leading to its downfall and the submersion of Europe in the Dark Ages, a darkness that would only be cracked centuries later, first by the Renaissance, then by the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, which benefited greatly from the Protestant Reformation breaking the religious monopoly of the Catholic Church. Obviously, a comprehensive history of this matter is one for a book-length treatment. However, a sketch should suffice to get my main point across.

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The Roman Republic was a period of ancient Roman history that lasted from 509 BC to 27 AD. It marked the early form of Roman government, characterized, as noted earlier, by a system of checks and balances, representative assemblies, and the shared power of elected officials. During this time, Rome grew from a city-state to a dominant power in the Mediterranean region, which improved the region by civilizing the surrounding tribes, effectively putting the region on a course towards detribalization.

In the early years of the Roman Republic, political power was vested in two annually elected officials called consuls, who served as the highest authority in the state. They were responsible for leading the military, presiding over the Senate, and executing the laws of Rome. The Senate played a significant role in advising the consuls and shaping policies. The Republic also had a popular assembly called the Comitia Centuriata, which represented Roman citizens and had the power to pass laws and elect officials. Like the United States and modern European countries, underpinned by the capitalist mode of production, a class-based system, political power in the Roman Republic was organized on the basis of social class and wealth, with the wealthier citizens having greater influence.

However, over time, internal conflicts, struggles for power, and external threats posed by rival states and military conquests contributed to the transformation of the Roman Republic. As Rome expanded, power and wealth became concentrated in the hands of an ever fewer families and individuals, creating economic disparities and social antagonisms. This led to political tensions and unrest. Additionally, powerful generals emerged and sought to extend their personal influence and control over the political apparatus.

The Course of Empire: Destruction painting by Thomas Cole, 1836

The transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire took place in the first century BC. It was marked by a series of civil wars and political upheavals. Julius Caesar emerged as a prominent figure and, after a period of conflict, established himself as dictator for life. His reforms aimed to address social and economic issues and enhance his personal power. His assassination in 44 BC led to another power struggle, with his adopted heir Octavian, later known as Augustus, emerging as the dominant figure. Augustus consolidated power and established a new political system that effectively marked the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. In 27 BC, Augustus established the Praetorian Guard, also known as the Praetorians, an elite military unit serving as the personal bodyguard of Roman emperors in ancient Rome. The transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire represented a significant transformation in Rome’s political structure and governance, shifting from a republican system to a centralized imperial rule under the authority of emperors.

The Praetorian Guard played a significant role in the politics and power dynamics of the Roman Empire. Initially, the primary purpose of the Praetorian Guard, stationed in a fortified camp, the Castra Praetoria, located in Rome, was to protect the emperor and the imperial family. Over time, the size and composition of the Praetorian Guard grew and changed and its influence expanded beyond its original role. The Praetorian Guard’s proximity to the emperor granted the apparatus significant political influence and leverage. It became involved in imperial succession, often playing a decisive role in the appointment and removal of emperors. The Guard had the power to support or overthrow an emperor, as its loyalty could shift based on its own interests or the promises and bribes of aspiring emperors. Emperors who enjoyed the support of the Praetorian Guard could rely on its loyalty, but at the same time, they needed to maintain the favor of the Guard to ensure their own safety and authority.

The Praetorian Guard left a lasting impact on the Roman Empire, serving as a symbol of the military’s influence in politics and highlighting the potential dangers of a powerful and politically motivated military force lying at the center of government. This history demonstrates the complex relationship between military power and political authority within the Roman Empire, a demonstration useful for understanding the situation of America today as it degenerates into a New Fascism under the controlling influence of progressive ideology.

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Comparing the rise of empire in the Roman situation and the rise of empire in the American situation provides crucial insights into the nature of power and the role of institutions. To be sure, there are significant differences between the cases, not least of which is the dissimilarity between ancient economic systems and the advanced capitalist mode of production; but even as analogy, drawing a parallel between the Praetorian Guard in the Roman case and the administrative state in the American case offers a way to explore the dynamics of centralized authority and the potential risks and challenges that come with it. 

The Deep State choosing Rome’s next leader

As we have seen, the Praetorian Guard was an elite military unit initially tasked with protecting the Roman emperor and maintaining order in the capital city of Rome. However, over time, in a paradigm of mission creep, the Praetorian Guard gained significant political influence and became a powerful force within the Roman Empire. It often played a role in the elevation or removal of emperors and other officials through its ability to depose or support them. The Praetorian Guard’s power and political influence made it a potential threat to the stability of the empire but more crucially, it represented a major obstacle to the restoration of the Roman Republic and its democratic processes. 

The administrative state refers to the various government agencies and bureaucracies responsible for implementing laws, regulations, and policies. This permanent political class lies at the heart of the executive branch, which has in the United States grown significantly over time, with numerous agencies and departments involved in various aspects of governance, public administration, and regulation. This permanent class wield substantial power in the implementation and enforcement of laws and regulations. The administrative state’s expanding scope and influence raise concerns about accountability, regulatory overreach, and the potential for unelected bureaucrats to wield significant power without sufficient democratic oversight. The administrative state is powerful, prone to abuses of power, while at the same time subject to regulatory capture with the rise of corporate power. The military-industrial complex and the national security state apparatus play an outsized role in shaping the trajectory of American history and the fate of the people.

C. Wright Mills, professor of sociology at Columbia University, best known for his book The Power Elite, published in 1956, which examines the nature of power and its concentration among corporate, military, and political elites in the United States, helps observers analytically organize the evidence of power in their lives. In that book, Mills argues that power in modern societies is concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals who occupy key positions in dominant institutions. These three institutional spheres are interconnected and form a cohesive power structure that dominate and shapes American society. Mills argues that this power elite consists of individuals from upper-class backgrounds who have the resources, influence, and access to decision-making positions. The elite share similar backgrounds, educational paths, and social networks, which enable them to perpetuate their power and maintain their privileged position in society. Crucially, this elite operate in ways that are largely independent of formal democratic processes and institutions. 

In The Power Elite, Mills criticizes the increasing influence of the power elite in shaping public policy and the overall direction of society. He argues that the interests and values of the power elite diverge from those of the general population, leading to what David Held, in his 1995 book Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, referred to as a “democracy deficit.” Mills expresses concerns about the potential erosion of democracy and the concentration of power in the hands of a few, a concern given an update for the new millennium by Sheldon Wolin, a political philosopher at Princeton University, in his 2008 Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Wolin characterized the situation as “inverted totalitarianism.” Inverted totalitarianism represents a shift from the traditional notion of totalitarianism, which is characterized by an overt authoritarian rule, to a more subtle and less visible form of control.

Wolin contends that inverted totalitarianism is marked by the growing influence of large corporations and the power of the economic elite over political processes. He argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of corporations has led to the erosion of democratic principles and practices, as economic interests increasingly shape political decisions. Wolin highlights the role of what he calls “managed democracy” in maintaining the illusion of popular participation and political choice. He suggests that the electoral process and political campaigns have become heavily influenced by corporate money, leading to a narrowing of political options, and limiting genuine democratic participation. Wolin argues that political parties, which he refers to as “the twin-party system,” have become increasingly similar in their policies and allegiance to corporate interests. This is what I and others refer to as “the establishment.” 

The establishment works through the administrative state. Within the administrative state there is a deep state apparatus that ensures that the establishment obtains the leadership it desires. (Sometimes this fails, as in the case of Donald Trump in 2016. But this is rare and unlikely to happen again unless there is mass resistance to the current situation.) To control the domestic and external environment for the sake of corporate elites, the United States has established various agencies and organizations dedicated to national security. Two prominent agencies in this regard are the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), established in 1908 and repurposed by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1920s, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), established by the National Security Act of 1947 by President Truman. These and other agencies have over the last several decades been weaponized by the administrative state. (For more details on these agencies see Jon Stewart: Corporate State Stooge.)

The FBI is a federal law enforcement agency operating under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Its ostensive role is to investigate federal crimes, protect national security, and enforce federal laws. While the FBI’s jurisdiction extends internationally, it primarily focuses on domestic security within the United States. The FBI collaborates with various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to push administrative state control deep into the American governing apparatus and civil society. The FBI accomplishes this by leveraging its charge, a wide range of responsibilities including counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and cybercrime investigations. The CIA is an international intelligence agency that operates under the authority of the executive branch. Its primary mission is to collect and analyze intelligence information, conduct covert operations, and provide assessments to inform policy decisions related to national security. The CIA’s focus extends beyond domestic security to global intelligence gathering and analysis. But it is also involved in domestic politics, as we recently saw with the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. The work of these agencies is integrated with tat of the Department of Homeland Security (see MDM is the New WMD: DHS Issues a New NTAS Bulletin; The Weaponization of the Government; The “Control of Misinformation” and the Deterioration of the Integral State; Twitter Interfered in the 2020 Election).

Drawing a comparison between the Praetorian Guard and the administrative state highlights the potential risks associated with concentrated power and the need for appropriate checks and balances. The growing power of both indicate the shift from republic to empire. In both cases, the centralization of power introduces challenges to governance, including corruption, lack of accountability, and threats to democratic processes. Analyzing these parallels contributes to a broader understanding of the complexities and dynamics of empire-building and the management of centralized authority. Today, the American Praetorian Guard, i.e., the deep state, selects our presidents, the installation of the Biden regime only the most obvious instance. The deep state means to determine the outcome of 2024 election, as well (see Democrats Have Crossed the Rubicon). Thus these types of analyses are vital to America’s future as a model republic—at this point to the restoration of the American Republic so that it can serve as such a model—and so you can expect more.

Authoritarianism and Genocide in Historical Comparisons

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife Cheryl Hines

Cheryl Hines, the wife of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., shares that the one Kennedy’s statement that drove Kennedy to propose the separation announcement to shield her from abuse was Kennedy’s comparison between the Holocaust and CDC leader Anthony Fauci’s efforts to vaccinate Americans against COVID. Shortly after criticisms arose, Hines took to Twitter and tweeted the following: “My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was reprehensible and insensitive. The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. His opinions are not a reflection of my own.’” Kennedy explained his intention and apologized in this tweet:

Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, author of arguably the greatest rock opera in the history of that genre, The Wall, was also recently attacked for using Anne Frank as a comparison point. The attack was fierce and indicated that the Israel lobby is still alive and kicking, a presence quickly denied by corporate media. But there is a lobby and it is trying to silence Waters. Why? Because he talks about the situation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with moral clarity. More than this, elites of many stripes are desperate to censor his act because it draws attention to the authoritarianism world elites are seeking to impose on the global population—a world of war and want. Shamefully, the Biden Administration has affirmed the lobby’s propaganda. Here is Waters defending himself in a lengthy interview:

I understand why Hines said this, and my comments that follow are not a criticism of Hines. I am not implicating her in anything, albeit her words were quite harsh to her husband. (The attack on Waters is a different matter altogether. I will probably write more on this in the future.) But it does remind me that something needs to be said about using the Holocaust in historical comparison precisely because it has become a reflex among many people who are trying to be good people but don’t understand the importance of comparison in historical and scientific study.

I wrote about this years ago when defending William Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara, who got into trouble for making such a comparison. There I wrote, beware the argument that one can never use the Holocaust (or anything else) as a comparison point for understanding the manifestation of evil. History is full of authoritarian actions for which the Holocaust is representative. History is full of genocidal killing, again, for which the Holocaust is representative. No historical event is the same. To be sure, each have their own idiographic character. At the same time, however, historical events share commonalities just as they share differences, and they must be compared to sort all this out.

Roger Waters at a recent performance in Germany recreating a scene from The Wall

The basis for all rational scientific work is the comparison of similar things. Consider that each person is a case, unique in his individuality, but at the same time also similar in many ways to other persons. There are, moreover, groups differences. This is why we use samples from the population with the ability to draw inferences about the larger population and the groups that comprise it. It is same for historical and social analysis using historical case studies. Historical events, e.g., the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, etc., are the cases we use in multivariate analysis of the nature of revolution generally. What’s similar? What’s different? That’s why we compare. We’re trying to ascertain nomothetic principles that explain why revolutions happen—and why they don’t happen, or why they’re not successful, and so on. We are also trying to determine if there are nomothetic principle at all in historical and social events and trends.

Understanding the Holocaust specifically requires understanding the problem of authoritarianism and genocide generally, and we do this for a practical reason: to stop authoritarianism and genocide before these horrors happen or early in their development. Indeed, this is a moral imperative. We have clearly not taken the lessons of history to heart, because we can see these things rising again (some of us can, anyway)—and popular understanding of the character of fascism is terrifyingly impoverished.

To say that we cannot compare what the Nazis did in the early period of the development of the nationalist socialist nightmare to today’s situation with authoritarianism and war on a vast scale, i.e., the administrative state and the technocratic apparatus of global corporatism, is to say that we should blind ourselves to fascism. Who would think such a thing? It suggests that somebody doesn’t want us to make those comparisons. Why? Because it interferes with their agenda?

But we said “Never again” in the aftermath of the Holocaust. I thought we meant it. We have to mean it. And that means that no historical case is transcendent, cordoned off from examination, however horrific. Indeed, the more horrific the event or development, the more important it becomes as a point of historical comparison. So beware those who tell you to not think about the things you must think about if we are to make a better world for subsequent generations.

The Thomas-UPenn Episode: A Textbook Case of Institutional Gaslighting

In a significant development, Paula Scanlan, a whistleblower and former teammate of Lia Thomas, the UPenn swimmer, has come forward to shed light on the injustices she faced as a female Division 1 (D1) swimmer. Scanlan bravely shares her personal experience of being silenced by both the NCAA and her Ivy League university when she raised concerns regarding the inclusion of a transgender athlete on their team. Joining forces with Riley Gaines, she now actively advocates for the protection of women’s sports.

Transgender swimmers Iszac Henig  and Lia Thomas fist bumping. Henig made the decision to forgo masculinizing hormone therapy, like testosterone, in order to maintain eligibility for participation on the women’s team in swimming.

Scanlan tells her story in the below powerful video (the Daily Wire’s production team is top-notch). Her account is corroborated by others. Quite obviously, Thomas, despite being a man, was permitted to compete against women on the swim team. Scanlan is interviewed in the 2022 Matt Walsh documentary What is a Woman. She talks to Walsh from the shadows, her voice electronically masked. She is now coming forward. I share the Walsh interview at the end of this blog.

UPenn swimmer, Lia Thomas’ teammate and What is a Women whistleblower Paula Scanlan tells her personal story of being silenced by the NCAA and her Ivy League university when she dared to question the decision to put a transgender athlete on her team. Now, she joins Riley Gaines in the fight to protect women’s sports.

“You will regret this” is obviously a threat. This was an email sent by the UPenn athletic department to the women on the UPenn swimming team. This is chilling and wrong. But perhaps the more terrifying piece of this story is the weaponization of UPenn’s psychological counseling services to make the women “okay” with competing against Thomas. This is textbook gaslighting. Gaslighting is a psychological manipulation tactic in which one person or group of persons makes another person or group of persons question their own judgment or sanity.

Characteristics of gaslighting are distorting and twisting information; presenting false narratives to create confusion and undermine the target’s trust in her own judgment; belittling the target’s emotions, opinions, or thoughts, making her feel foolish or overly sensitive; shifting responsibility for actions taken onto the target, making the target feel guilty or responsible for a situation she did not choose; isolating the target from sources of support, further amplifying control over the target and making it harder for the target to explore her doubts or confirm her experiences and suspicions.

In the UPenn case, the women swimmers were being made to feel as if they suffered from a psychiatric malady because they didn’t want to compete with a man who identifies as a woman on the women’s team.

It is a mark of authoritarianism for an educational institution to silence students with threats or gaslight them. The logic of authoritarianism is inherent in the logic of DEI programming (diversity, equity, and inclusion), ideological weaponry designed by corporate state elites and technocrats to control the minds of professionals, students, and workers. DEI programs transgress fundamental human rights, including freedom of association, conscience, speech, and thought. As such, DEI is diametrically opposed to the principles of equality and fairness.

Central to the American Creed is the principle of equality of opportunity. This type of equality emphasizes providing equal access to education, employment, and other resources, enabling individuals to compete on a level playing field and pursue their goals based on their abilities and efforts. In its ordinary meaning, “equity” refers to an approach that seeks to address systemic inequalities and create fair and just outcomes for all individuals. In practice, equity goals recognize that different individuals may face disadvantages or systemic biases that hinder their access to opportunities and resources they need to be successful. The principles of fairness and justice therefore require providing opportunities, resources, and support to individuals based on their unique needs and circumstances.

In two cases, grouped and objective difference across our species require those differences to be taken into account in order to ensure equality of opportunity or equity. These cases are age and sex. Because men and women represent two distinct genotypes in our species, with men possessing physical and physiological characteristics that give them significant advantages over women in athletic competition, achieving equity required the creation of men and women’s sports (as well as sports segregated by age). Within those broad divisions, there is sometimes further segregation, such as the division of boxing into weight classes. Note that we do not segregate sports by ethnicity, religion, or race. This is because these are either not clearly objective categories or are obviously cultural groupings not produced by natural history.

Therefore, unlike strict equality, which focuses on treating everyone the same despite their differences, equity recognizes that individuals may require different levels of assistance or accommodations based on those differences in order to achieve true equality, which is the possibility of success at a given endeavor in light of the requisite dedication and talent to succeed. This is why equity goals focus on addressing systemic barriers that perpetuate disadvantage or marginalization. The fact that girls and women are at a distinct disadvantage in athletic competition with boys and men explains the marginalization of girls and women in sports. In order to address disadvantage and marginalization, girls and women are rationally segregated from boys and men.

It is vital to achieving the goals of equity to ensure that the groups so segregated are objectively-existing and not the result of subjective perception or abstract categories without clear referents in concrete reality. Thomas was permitted to compete against women despite being a man because Thomas’ claims the gender identity of womanhood. However, this is an entirely subjective claim. By definition, gender identity refers to an individual’s deeply-held sense of his own gender, which may or may not align with his sex. In other words, it is an internal and personal understanding of one’s gender. Gender identity is therefore distinct from biological sex, which is determined by objective anatomical and physiological characteristics. Gender identity is a result of self-identification not objective determination. In contrast, the women on the UPenn team are women because of their genotype, an objectively-existing thing common and exclusive to them. UPenn’s actions sacrificed the principle of equity, i.e., true equality, for the politics of inclusion, putting women at a distinct disadvantage.

DEI programming, particularly in academic or corporate settings, also stifles free speech and limits ideological diversity. By promoting certain viewpoints or restricting others in the name of creating inclusive environments, DEI does more than simply impede open dialogue and hinder the free exchange of ideas; it systematically violates the individual’s right to freedom of assembly, association, conscience, privacy, speech, and thought. Scanlan was also a victim of these oppressions. She describes how an editorial she wrote for the campus paper was accepted and published only to be removed within a matter of a few hours. She and her colleagues also had their freedoms of association and privacy violated by being forced to associate with a man in a woman’s only space, a situation in which the man could see naked women while exposing them to his naked body.

It is no exaggeration to say that the assault on sex-based rights is one of the great struggles of our age. It is moreover a defining struggle; if society cannot determine what a woman is on the basis of objective criteria and move to protect women as a group based on those criteria, then we cannot be a fair and justice society. The claim that inclusion requires trans women to be included in women’s sports rest upon a deceitful claim, that trans women are women. But as adult human males, trans woman are by definition men. Once this lie is exposed—and it is exposed simply by affirming the truth that men are not women—it is obvious that women’s rights are being assaulted. There is no rational argument for the inclusion of men in women’s sports.

Moreover, Scanlan is right about how this struggle is part of a much larger struggle for the future of liberty. Those who oppose sex-based rights are trying to impose an ideology on society by silencing the defenders of those rights. This not how a free societies operate. This is not how a society that proclaims women’s rights operates. This is in fact how totalitarianism and misogyny work. The totalitarians and misogynists wrap their authoritarian programs in the language of social justice, but the destruction of women’s rights is anything but just social or otherwise.

Democrats Have Crossed the Rubicon. Plus: Defining Deviance Down

A grand jury has indicted President Donald Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump is facing seven charges, including false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents is being conducted by special counsel Jack Smith, and a separate grand jury in Florida is overseeing the proceedings, distinct from the one convened in Washington, DC. The inquiry was initiated after the FBI was notified by the National Archives that classified documents were found among those returned by Trump following his departure from office. Here’s the indictment.

President Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association Convention in Indianapolis, on April 14, 2023.

I discuss the matter of Trump’s handling of classified documents and compare it to Biden’s handling of classified documents here: Is There an Equivalency Between Biden and Trump’s Handling of Classified Documents? I conclude that there is no case here. In fact, the raid on Trump’s home was an abuse of power. So why is this happening? This is lawfare. Lawfare involves the use of legal actions and strategies as a means of achieving political or ideological objectives. It refers to the exploitation and manipulation of legal systems, processes, or principles to gain a strategic advantage or undermine opponents. Lawfare can take various forms, including lawsuits, investigations, harassing and intimidating opponents, and leveraging legal frameworks to shape public opinion or policy debates. There are a few reasons why the establishment is using lawfare against the President of the United States.

First, the administrative state seeks to retrieve all documents related to Crossfire Hurricane. From July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a counterintelligence investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane. Its objective was to explore numerous connections between individuals associated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials and spies. The investigation aimed to determine whether these associates were knowingly or unknowingly coordinating with the Russian government’s interference efforts in the 2016 US presidential election. In reality, Crossfire Hurricane was a conspiracy by the deep state in cahoots with the Democratic Party, aided by legacy and social media companies, to overthrow a duly elected president. Elites suspect Trump may be in possession of documents that expose this plot and they want to documents back. (See The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President.)

Second, President Trump is the clear front funner in the 2024 presidential election. Because Trump is not a part of the establishment but instead represents the populist-nationalist movement to restore the republic and the principles of democratic-republicanism and liberal freedoms, his reelection is viewed as severely detrimental to the globalist project to dismantle the republican machinery and incorporate the American population into the transnational corporate state system. He must be stopped in order to save and advance the project. Thus we see the same frenzy that sought to overthrow his presidency during 2016-2020 in the present movement. Trump derangement syndrome is very real. But it is not a mental disorder (however mentally disorders those who suffer from it are). It is a project to derail populist-nationalism.

As a reminder, President Donald Trump was impeached twice during his tenure, with the first impeachment occurring in December 2019 and the second in January 2021. Democrats impeached Trump to discredit him and possibly convict him in the Senate, which would bar him from running for president again. They were also concerned during the first impeachment case that he would interfere with the deep state project to instigate a proxy war with Russia via Ukraine. (See History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War; The US is Not Provoking Russia—And Other Tall Tales; Payton Gendron, the Black Sun, and the Great Replacement Smear; Will WWIII Begin in Eurasia?)

The 2019 impeachment was related to the events surrounding Ukraine and is commonly referred to as the “Ukrainian phone call” or the “Ukrainian scandal.” A whistleblower alleged that President Trump had engaged in improper conduct during a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019. The complaint suggested that Trump had solicited foreign interference in the upcoming 2020 US presidential election and had also withheld military aid to Zelensky to force his cooperation. Trump calls it the “perfect phone call.” He calls it that because it was. It’s the president’s job to determine whether high ranking government officials are involved in scheme of international corruption, especially when they bear on matters of national security. Trump was aware that the Biden family was involved in business relations with several foreign countries, including Ukraine and China. Whether Trump understood that the establishment was planning to instigate a proxy war with Russia is unknown, but this likely plays into the scenario.

The second impeachment took place in January 2021 and was related to the events surrounding the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The impeachment charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” The impeachment process began after a violent mob, consisting of Trump supporters, stormed the US Capitol in an ostensive attempt to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College results, which purportedly confirmed Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The charge was irrational in that the president, who was exercising his First Amendment rights, specifically told the audience to be peaceful and law-abiding. His comments were recorded and they were entirely unambiguous. (“A republic, if you can keep it”; “He Summoned a Mob to Washington.” The Selective Application of the First Amendment; A Peaceful Transition of Political Power.)

Justice and reason prevailed and Trump was acquitted of all charges in the Senate. However, if it weren’t for the fact that he had become the heart of the Republican Party, and convicting him would have disillusioned the Republican base, Trump would have likely been convicted. Trump’s popularity puts establishment Republicans in a difficult position. They secretly think like Liz Chaney, who helped lead the January 6 committee farce in the House. But they have to publicly support him because he will be the next president—if the establishment doesn’t throw him in jail.

Finally, Joe Biden is the most corrupt president in American history and the conspiracy to install him as president and keep him in power is vast. I have written quite a lot on this (see Vice-President Biden and His handling of Classified Documents). You should note that Trump’s indictment comes down at the same time House Republicans have intensified their criticism of President Joe Biden and his family following their confidential review of an FBI document the agency has been desperate to keep from them.

After examining the FD-1023 form presented by the FBI within the secure confines of the Capitol Hill SCIF, members of the House Oversight Committee became more confident in their allegations of bribery and corruption. The evidence indicates Biden’s involvement in a bribery scheme with a foreign individual during his time as vice president involving millions of dollars. Emphasizing its credibility and legitimacy, House Republicans have revealed that the informant had been a paid FBI source for multiple years. Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida went as far as to assert that Biden is unequivocally guilty of bribery.

Daring Republicans to come after him, like a killer asking his accusers to produce a body, Biden quipped “Where’s the money?” when asked by a reporter for his response to Rep. Nancy Mace, a member of the House Oversight Committee, who had said earlier in the day that the allegations are “worse than has been reported so far.” Much worse. Keep in mind this is one case. Hunter Biden’s laptop is chockfull of evidence of corruption (see New York Post Drops a Bombshell on the Biden Campaign). The indictment dropped to distract the public from Biden family corruption. See Nancy Mace on the War Room here.

See my latest FAR Podcast concerning the election rigging network. Progressives are waging full spectrum war against the American People.

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Why are so many Antifa also pedophiles? And why do progressives heroize them? Remember when Kyle Rittenhouse shot a pedophile called Joseph Rosenbaum in self-defense and progressives turned Rosenbaum into a hero and made Rittenhouse out to be the bad guy? Tucker Carlson nailed it in his second Twitter program. Progressives are rationalizing pedophilia. What’s up with that?

I will be posting a blog soon showing that both anarchism and queer theory are obsessed with children. Their obsession is single-mindedly sexual. They’re so desperate to talk to children about sex and to sexualize them that they riot when parents intervene. The overlap between anarchism and gender ideology is organic. We might be able to separate these ideologies and practices analytically, but in the concrete it’s the same countermovement. I say countermovement because these people stand against all the progress society has made in safeguarding children.

Why these people are obsessed with children is obvious: it’s a sickness. Why progressives are mainstreaming the sickness is because the ideology operates on the praxis of “transgression.” I will show in the forthcoming blog that transgressive action disrupts social boundaries and rules and disorders collective consciousness, and this effect creates the state of confusion functional to the reorganization of society into a transnational corporate state. Progressives are waging a culture war against normal Americans—and normal Europeans, as well. This is why it was just announced that Biden will create a new position in the Department of Education to combat attempts at “book banning” at the state level. “Book banning” is the Orwellian euphemism for keeping pornographic materials in public schools libraries for the purposes of sexualizing children.

This has been going on a very long time, but it is only recently that a majority of Americans have began to detect that the managed decline of the West is just that: managed. Daniel Patrick Moynihan got a whiff that something was going on and recorded it in his 1993 essay “Defining Deviancy Down,” published in the American Scholar and covered by several news outlets at the time. Moynihan was an American sociologist, politician, and diplomat who served as a United States Senator from New York. In the essay, Moynihan argued that American society had reached a point where it was redefining deviant behavior as normal in order to cope with an increase in social problems and the breakdown of traditional social institutions. He suggested that society had become desensitized to deviant behavior and was lowering its standards and expectations in order to accommodate it.

Moynihan believed that this trend was detrimental to society, as it diminished the sense of moral responsibility and allowed harmful behaviors to persist without appropriate intervention. He argued that it was important for society to reestablish clear standards of behavior and to confront and address deviant behavior rather than simply accepting it as a new norm. This is the argument Tucker takes up in his Twitter video. However, Tucker has a better sense than Moynihan that what is happening here is intentional nor emergent. Matt Walsh is another voice who recognizes that this is part of a project to undermine Western morality.

And now the world is waking up. The above video is from a protest in Canada today where parents are confronting the lobby that is sexualizing children. These protests are happening across America, as well. See my recent blog Southern Poverty Law Center Defames Parents Invested in Safeguarding Children for videos from California and Maryland.

The Politics and Purpose of Affirming the Person

The Stuart Smally clip shared above is funny and enlightening—prophetic even (so is the one shared at the end of this blog). What happened to Al Franken in real life isn’t funny, though. It was a harbinger of things to come. You may recall that Franken was an early victim of the #MeToo moral panic, one in a string of mass hysterias that have plagued the western landscape of late. You may also remember from that hysteria the slogan “Believe women.”

However, what you may not have understood is that this was a propaganda project aimed at (or at least functional to) conditioning the masses to believe the subjective projection of individuals elites find useful for undermining the public’s grasp of reality, an essential part of perpetuating systems that serve their interests over against yours. We saw a similar thing with the slogan “Believe children” during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s, where impossible things believed by children were supposed to be taken on faith, not on evidence (as if evidence of demons were something that could ever be produced). We are being asked today to believe children when they believe impossible things.

Ask me about my pronouns buttons are asking others to affirm a self-image rather than a material fact

What I am about to say is obvious, but we often have call attention to the obvious to build mutual knowledge about it. The politics and purpose of “affirming the person” is a similar technique to the “believe the victim” technique. Both are designed to undermine your grasp of reality and your obligation of truth. It constructs a religious-like worldview and eventually demands you to live in it.

When a person asks you for your opinion of him, he is often not asking you to be honest and truthful with him. There is a popular joke about this. The wife asks you, “Does my butt look fat in these jeans?” You know how you’d better answer that question if your marriage is important you. (Seinfeld made a memorable episode about an ugly baby to note this phenomenon. “The Hamptons,” season 5, episode 21.) The man is asking you to affirm the way he wishes to think of himself and how he wishes others to think of him. He is asking you to validate his desired self-image. He wants you to participate in his desire—in his delusion. This is why, for some people, failure to affirm their fanciful image of self is akin to insulting them. If they are consumed by their self-image, they risk feeling erased when the answer returned is not validating. And they will let you know if that happens. Because it is your fault if it does.

Matt Walsh makes an observation on his podcast recently about the rapper Lizzo that was helpful in understanding what is going on here. Lizzo wears revealing clothing that accentuate her body, as well as writes and sings about her body. She puts herself out there for comment. As Walsh points out, when a person says “look at me,” she is asking for a response. Lately, Lizzo has been angered by some of the responses she has been receiving. You can guess which ones. She wanted people to affirm her belief that she is attractive and healthy. But some people disagree that she is either of these things.

Those who disagree with Lizzo’s self-assessment—or fail to affirm her obesity as attractive and healthy—are bigots. They’re condemned as “fatphobic.” This same thing happens to those who disagree with those who declare themselves to be another gender and then demand others affirm that self-declaration. If you do not affirm the person’s chosen gender identity, then you are a bigot. You’re condemned as “transphobic.” In other words, you’re indirectly blamed for an uncomfortable truth another person is trying to rationalize. Lizzo needs your help in rationalizing her uncomfortable truth and you’re not helping. Why aren’t you helping? What’s wrong with you? You must be a bad person. Lizzo is threatening to quit the music business and it’s your fault if she does because you did not affirm her self-image. It’s a case of emotional blackmail.

Here’s a case of what happens when somebody refuses to affirm the delusions of others and rejects the ideology that rationalizes these delusions. Ray Shelton is accused on this program of being hateful for refusing to deny the facts of biology. Worse, must worse, he has now been suspended from his job as an award-winning teacher for claiming that transgenderism is harmful. (I have appended the end of this blog with more details about Shelton’s case.)

Have you picked up on the fact yet that “affirmation” (Al Franken was ahead of the curve in mocking this idea) is the new word for “validation”? Remember years ago when a consensus emerged telling us that we shouldn’t rely on others to validate our feelings? Demanding validation from others marks an unhealthy relationship, what in therapeutic jargon is often called a “codependent” relationship. You are not responsible for other people’s feelings. A man who wants to make you responsible for his feelings is a man who wants to control you for his own sake. If we want to be free and autonomy individuals, the only feelings any man should have control over are his own. (If he doesn’t, then he has work to do.)

In other words, in a free society, people are emotionally responsible for their own feelings. When it becomes the business of governments and other institutions to make people emotionally responsible for the feelings of others, a situation of tyranny develops because persons in positions of power must decide for everybody which feelings are valid and must be respected, and which are not valid and can be discounted. When we are scolded for invalidating a person’s beliefs or feelings, we are being told that our actions send the message that a person’s subjective emotional experience is inaccurate, insignificant, or unacceptable. But maybe the person’s subjective emotional experience are these things! Shouldn’t truth decide and not some person empowered by state and law who would make us deny the truth and act in bad faith? You may tell the parents of an ugly baby that their baby is cute. But you shouldn’t be forced to.

When a desire or delusion is exposed as self-serving and controlling, and the majority pushes back against it, those who wish to keep the desire or delusion going find other words to use. This evolution of language works for ideological projects, as well, which is why developing a working knowledge of propaganda is vital for understanding the mind control tricks people play on us. As Orwell pointed out in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” propaganda often works through euphemism. And so we are not being told to validate those whose emotions and perceptions are unjustified or imagined; we are instead told to affirm those emotions and perceptions or else we are bad people who are hurting and even erasing others. But it is the same thing.

Orwell exposes euphemistic language as a tool employed by politicians and propagandists to conceal or distort the true nature of their actions and projects. Euphemisms mask the true nature and consequences of the actions they describe. Euphemistic language allows politicians to repackage morally questionable, personally injurious, and socially harmful practices in a more palatable and acceptable commodity. By substituting terms for other terms, the propagandist manipulate public perception and reduces resistance to the program. Orwell argues that the use of euphemisms not only obscures the truth but also corrupts the language itself, eroding the capacity for clear thinking and critical analysis. For Orwell, clear and honest communication is essential for preserving democratic principles and fostering meaningful public discourse. Indeed.

Sometimes, elites become so confident that they eschew euphemisms and say the quiet part aloud. Today, everything is ideological, and conformity to that ideology is effected through the punishing logic of the bureaucratic machinery, increasingly in a frank manner. They come to you in employee handbooks. You don’t have a choice if you want to thrive. But you won’t thrive. That’s not the goal of the program.

Consider the above video in which the chair of asset management and CEO of the transnational investment management and financial services firms BlackRock, Inc., Larry Fink, brags about establish and his campaign to legitimize in the corporate world CCP-style social credit systems that compel corporations to conform to political-ideological agendas. BlackRock can do this because the firm manages 8 trillion dollars in assets.

The Corporate Equality Index, the CEI-score, published by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ political lobbying group in the world, drives business to BlackRock. CEI isn’t the only social media score used. ESG, or environmental and social governance, is another benchmarking project. BlackRock in turn demands from corporations who want investment funds driven to them that they conform to the terms of these social credit systems. In the clip, Fink touts BlackRock’s project to force behavioral change through financial reward and punishment.

The Human Rights Campaign is one of the organizations socializing the idea that individuals should be compelled to act in bad faith by punishing them for failing to affirm the chosen gender identities of other persons. These are the organizations that also push the ideology that gender identity is not chosen. But it is not your responsibility to affirm anybody’s subjective identity. You may wish to judge a person by what the person says about himself. But if you wish to live in truth and not in the delusions of others, you judge a person by what he is and what he does. Rules that tell you must affirm or validate the subjective projections of others—that is, rules that punish you for refusing to participate in affirming the desires and delusions or others—are inherently tyrannical. 

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Ray Shelton is a gay man. He teaches—or used to teach—at Mark Keppel Elementary School. He has been named the Glendale school district’s “Teacher of the Year” twice and earlier this year won the PTA’s Golden Oak Award. After 25 years teaching elementary school, his employment was terminated for saying the following at a school board meeting:

“Two plus two equals four. The world is not flat. Boys have penises; girls have vaginas. Gender is binary and cannot be changed. Biology is not bigotry. Heterosexuality is not hate. Gender confusion and gender delusion are deep psychological disorders. No caring professional or loving parent would ever support the chemical poisoning or surgical mutilation of a child’s genitalia. Transgender ideology is anti-gay, it is anti-woman, and it is anti-human. It wants to take away women’s sports, women’s rights, women’s achievements—it is misogyny writ large. And I can also say this as a gay man, the gay people—”

At this point, someone muted Shelton’s microphone and a board member informed the teacher that his time was up.

A fellow teacher, Alicia Harris, filed a formal complaint against Shelton claiming that he was “showing off a swastika” during the school board meeting. Shelton says during the board meeting he held up four “Progress Pride” flags arranged in a pattern to form a swastika. He did this because this is a familiar meme on social media meant to criticize progressives by arguing that authoritarian measures to compel speech are fascist.