114 Comments

It's so weird because just a little bit ago everybody was saying this wasn't happening, so why would banning it be such a big deal?

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Rod Dreher is gifted. It was a shame when he left TAC last March. Live Not By Lies is his greatest work and a must read.

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I credit Dreher for sounding the alarm years ago about what was coming, but I stopped reading him after he started heaping contempt on Trump supporters for protesting the "fortified" election. It seems to me that he was always auditioning to become the "reasonable, compassionate conservative" on the yet-to-air NPR roundtable show.

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That's a great point that I'd never honestly considered.

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There's a memo going around as I mentioned in a comment on this article. They've moved on from "it's such a small problem" to "they've always been here--but *now* you're oppressing them."

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Kind of like late-term abortion. It never happens except in the most extreme cases, right? So why are y'all getting upset about regulating it to limit it to only the most extreme cases?

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we are now seeing the psychopathology of the increasingly vaccine-damaged post-1986 population in full, ugly bloom.

it will get worse before it gets better.

funny how these damaged souls were outraged - as they should have been - when it came to female genital mutilation in africa but when it happens here it's all good.

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The New Left and their Holy Trinity of Race Gender Sexuality may be dishonest, incoherent, and vindictive, but you have to give them credit for being experts at propaganda and emotional manipulation.

They have managed to tap into the deepest maternal urges of the AWFL set, look at this Nebraskan mama bear, she is ready to lay down her life and career (and bring her entire state to heel) all in the name of protecting the sacred Trans child.

It really is an amazing display of fundamentalist zeal and willful ignorance. There is no possibility of error, no possibility that a child (!!) may be mistaken or under some unseen stress, no pause to start them on hormones and puberty blockers....the moment they utter the Holy Incantation ("I want to be born again, as girl/boy") they become sacred and infallible and the only possible proper response is adoration.

I laugh every day now about the "New Atheists" of say 20 yrs ago: they promised a more rational society and instead we have Math is Racist and a new Christ child has been born, the Trans child, chosen by God to lead us to a more inclusive, equitable future.

They/Them is Risen!

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Transgender issues afflict a tiny percentage of the population, at least they did until the Regime marketing campaign to f-k up the population as much as possible kicked into high gear. Most children who have questions about their “gender” grow out of it, according to reliable data from a number of studies. Most of the data that is used by activists to justify this scientifically flawed, cruelly aggressive is frankly crap. So mutilating little kids and destroying their hypothalamic - gonadal neuroendocrine axis with hormonal manipulation is malpractice at least and more likely a criminal offense. Waiting until adulthood is the only rational approach for that small group of people who actually might benefit from treatment, and who are not suffering from primarily other mental health issues. This is worse than genital mutilation practices in some Muslim countries. That medical institutions have been only too eager to administer these treatments and cash in on these interventions is a sad commentary on the state of medical ethics these days.

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Religion was an evolutionary adaptation. It's coded into our DNA. As a society, we forget that at our peril.

I say this as someone who has great antipathy for organized religion.

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I'm sure we're more or less saying the same thing here, but I'm not sure it's religion per se that people crave as much as they crave the Sacred. The Sacred may be the most important non-physical need, as it provides social organization and glue, ritual to bind a community, an Us vs a Them, plus personal meaning and a way for us to feel connected to something larger (most esp larger than our mortal limits).

Social Justice may be fish or fowl, cult or religion or ideology, but as we can see it has brought the Sacred roaring back with a vengeance. Once people have a Sacred cause, they are willing to kill or die for it. (Or as Nietzsche said: "If you have your 'why?' in life, you can get along with almost any 'how?')

The idea that societies could exist based on only money, status, and reasoned debate at election season is even more fantastical than an invisible sky god.

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We're saying the same thing; you're just far more elegant about it.

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And since we have a perpetual conversation because we have perpetual elections, it drives us insane. After the midterms, they segue right into the presidential election. It is so boring!

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When the ‘self’ is the god, ANY organized system that perpetuates this ethos become equally loathsome, religious or otherwise.

I am agreeing from the opposite side as I believe in absolute freedom of conscience and abhor any type of moral ‘legislating’.

I worship the Lord God because I want to.

Any system of religion that violates this first principle is corrupt and I reject.

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I’m sure, when the reckoning finally comes, Cavanaugh will be among the first to say “we should all put this behind us.”

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She'll be loudly pro-amnesty

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There’s so, so much jersey-changing (as el gato malo calls it in the covidian context) coming when the gender wave finally breaks and begins washing back out.

That’s my jaundiced but basically optimistic view. I do think the genderist edifice will crumble, but the biggest offenders will most likely slither away unscathed.

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Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

There must be a memo going around.

Public (with Michael Shellenberger and Leighton Woodhouse) released an article and video today. They were interviewing people on the SFSU campus (where Riley Gaines was assaulted and locked in a classroom for 3 hours) about the situation. The third person in the video is, well, not of this earth. But one of his arguments, when it comes to William "Lia" Thomas, is that there have always been transpeople in sports. We just didn't know it because they were too scared to come forward.

So basically, there have always been girls with bait and tackle running around the locker rooms, but they managed to hide their dangly bits from the vagina havers. That seems to be the new thing.

Yes, there might have always been trans kids, but we weren't always lopping body parts of them and putting them on medications that would sterilize them and compromise their health until they were old enough to understand what all that entailed.

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"Oh, right, nobody's ever liquidated the kulaks before. Yawn."

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There's been a handful of cases of female athletes having so high testosterone-levels they've been suspected of doping. Going by memory, it's something like maybe ten such cases in 50 years before the 2000s.

Those cases are the ones they now use as a cause célèbre, claiming these women were "trans"; in reality they just had naturally higher testosterone levels, making them suprior to other female athletes.

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The USA is transitioning to East Germany circa 1984.

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There used to be a day where women were the protectors of children. Now many are at the center of hurting them. Librarians are typically women- pushing crap books and drag shows for children. And so on. Disgusting. I don’t know what would cause some one to so passionately fight to dismember children?

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Zombrarians!

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Marxism, it's a hell of a drug

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And in this case Cavanaugh appears to a birth capable individual that gestated 3 clumps of cells that managed to grow into children.

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Apr 11, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Extreme pivot to "its always been happening and here's why it's good" in 3...2....

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Apr 11, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

No compromise. Do as I say or I will make it painful for you.

How about the NE Republican senators growing a pair and making her life painful.

We have to stop this nonsense.

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There's no possibility they aren't going to make her life painful. She'll never get anything passed again, ever.

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They didn’t run for office to legislate. It’s all cos play and posturing for their preferred social groups. I refer you to Nashville, TN as an example. They hijacked a legislative body illegally but it was for a “good cause” so it was okay and even celebrated. If it wasn’t they would be sitting in a putrid prison in pre trial detention for over three years.

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Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023

A Republican should preempt her filibuster with his own—maybe showing a loooonnnggg slideshow of the botched surgeries?

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Honestly, I'm not sure why we're complaining. A legislature that is unable to pass more laws means fewer new laws with all their crony regulatory capture and public choice dilemmas and principal-agent problems and unintended consequences.

I have a modest proposal: ALL our state and federal legislatures should be filibustered for, oh, say, ten years. Or until the current bipartisan leadership is all dead, whichever comes first.

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Very nice. The Filibuster is the only thing in the legislature that we should always be for.

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The only problem I see with this on the federal level is all the departments passing their "regulations" as if they're laws, so even a filibuster at the legislative level wouldn't help. See the recent EPA Clean Air Act shenanigans trying to phase out 2/3 of gas car sales by 2035. Then we're stuck with the years long battles in the courts, and that's iffy enough.

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Grow a pair?? Sounds like you’re in favor of sex reassignment surgery.

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I have lived in Nebraska for over forty years. Every state has nutters like Machaela Cavanaugh. Most states organize their government more sensibly than Nebraska which let's a single Senator tie up all legislative business for weeks. Let me introduce you to our unicameral legislature, where we famously, do it fast, do it over, do it wrong, or just plain don't do anything.

A single house legislature is a bad idea. There is a reason no other state has attempted one. In addition, we only have 49 senators. (New Hampshire has 400+ members in it's house of representatives)

I could entertain you all evening with stories of institutional folly that predictably reoccur during our, thankfully short, legislative sessions each year.

Just one. Nebraska was the first state to adopt the equal rights amendment. Because of our haste, we had a redo and were more careful to follow protocol the second time. Then a couple years later we repealed the adoption of the equal rights amendment. Which probably isn't valid either.

I could tell you about the time the unicameral abolished the death penalty for six weeks or so, but you get the picture. Machaela Cavanaugh is following a well-trod pathway to notoriety. Ernie Chambers, led the way. He was a barber from North Omaha who played the unicameral like a fiddle for 38 years. Tied it up in knots.

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Many thanks for this. Are you hearing people talking about her filibuster? What's the prevailing sentiment?

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Oh yeah. People are talking. One of the main reasons we have term limits for the unicameral was to force Ernie Chambers out. Term limits made the problems at the unicameral worse. Because sessions are only 12-16 weeks long, It takes years for a senator to become familiar with protocol and proceedures. By the time they can be effective legislators they are in their second term. Cavanaugh comes from a very political family. Her father represented the 2nd congressional district (Omaha) for two terms, he served in the unicameral first for four years. Way too liberal for Nebraska fifty years ago. Her brother also is a senator from Omaha.

I'd say most people wonder how one person can manage to do this? - that's the prevailing sentiment. Obviously she has a little help, 12 or 13 legislators have to support her.

It all shows how dangerous constitutional innovation can be. "Burn it all down" then build back better. Yeah right. George Norris was a powerful progressive Senator from McCook during the depression. He managed to force the unicameral and public power on Nebraska in those politically troubled times.

Public power has worked out okay mostly for counter-intuitive reasons. Basically we have electric utilities that pay no taxes, tap cheap federal hydro generation, and nobody messes with their mission politically, because they are political subdivisions subject to the voters. Nebraska has very little wind generation, because the tax increment financing and other tax incentives doesn't work without private investment.

Our power districts made a small fortune in five days, February 2021. We wheeled coal fired generation all over Kansas, Texas and Iowa when it was bitterly cold and the wind was not blowing. They paid through the nose to keep the lights on.

I've digressed. Nebraska is stuck with the Unicameral. With only 49 total Representatives in the whole government, the lobbying power of interests is magnified. Like I said before, what the Unicameral does best is make mistakes fast. It's structurally doomed to keep on making mistakes fast. One might say doomed, "to regularly look like a bunch of monkeys trying to f*** a football"

But that would lead to football allusions and Nebraska burnt down our famous university football program twenty-five years ago. "mediocrity is not an option" that's what the athletic director Steve Pedersen said before he burnt it all down, so he could build back better.

Now this is really funny. Our new state promotion for tourism reads, "Nebraska, it's not for everybody" You can read it for yourself if you ever drive through fly-over country and cross our state line.

The flip side? You get to know everybody if you live here. I was at the state fair one time and walking by I said hello to the governor, Pete Ricketts, "hello Governor"

He said "hello Bill" my daughter looked at me in amazement and said, "Does the governor know you?" "I guess he does" I was almost as surprised as she was.

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I didn’t realize that about NE.

In TX, if the Demwits run out of ways to stop a vote, they hop on an airplane and fly to IL. Then our Governor has to send out the DPS to round them up.

What strange ways to run our governments. But what is really sad is the fact a state government has to pass a bill to stop the mutilation of children or keeping men out of women’s sports or bathrooms. Yet the Demwits think that is okay and some type of natural right. 😳

As Mr. Spock might say “That is very illogical”.

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Why do they always look like that? Imagine if a Republican in a blue state held up legislation they way she did...

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She’s a woman, probably won’t get tired of talking.

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I haven't talked to my wife once in the last five years... I didn't want to interrupt her.

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Church ladies bear a remarkable resemblance to each other. 50 yrs ago she would have been in the Moral Majority, 100 yrs ago she would have been in the Temperance Movement.

"Think of the children!" is a time-tested way for prudes, scolds and other busybodies to inflict themselves on the rest of us.

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That is a very interesting point. I hadn't thought about it, but it's not about principles per se. It's about a certain rush of superiority. You're right.

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ideas and styles change (and hemlines!) but needs and motivations are eternal

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https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/finland-youth-gender-medicine

This is a must read. It showcases the insanity we are cultivating in America around gender. The Europeans are much more on point and following common sense and science, as opposed to following unstable mental patients and political opportunists.

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As usual.

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I hate to disagree with Chris Bray, but being Woke means never having to say you're sorry. We've seen this as gradually the Left is admitting it was terrible to lockdown the population and close schools for up to 2 years. Not that they'll even admit they were part of the Covid paranoid mob insisting on such measures. Let's just move on, they say.

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Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023

She’s taking advantage of the middle-America information gap on the trans issue. Normies probably think “gender affirming care” means “therapy to help the kids get used to being gay ballerinas or girl tug boat operators or whatever.” The drugs and surgeries are never mentioned by democrats.

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Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

There’s a lot of, for want of a better phrase, language arbitrage pervading genderspeak: many loose-jointed terms without consistent definitions that shapeshift for momentary advantage, allowing the proponents to further their anti-rational cause.

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Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023

Motte-and-bailey fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

"The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey").[1] The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position.[2][3] Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer can claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte)[1] or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).[4]"

It's everywhere in leftist "thought" and "argument". Abortion, equal rights, CRT, gender issues, queer theory, etc. etc. etc.

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Ach! Back to the loch with you, Nessie!

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Apr 11, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Her smile is all teeth--it doesn't reach her eyes. Which are a shark's eyes.

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Lifeless eyes, black eyes, doll's eyes. When she comes at you, doesn't seem to be livin'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML3rNypqHAc

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We're gonna need a bigger boat.

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Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023

Think we can get her to put a compressed oxygen tank in her mouth?

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It is such a simple test for sanity. There are male genes and female genes. Every cell in ones body contains either male genes or female genes. A human being is male or female at birth and remains so, of course, for all of their life. If a person has the male genes but doesn't want them and decides to live their life as if they don't have them that person is mentally ill. There is no other accurate characterization.

More broadly an individuals DNA is the DNA of a human. Surely if that individual declared they don't want to be a human but want to be a spider, live a spider's life, that would be recognized as mental illness. These two cases of not wanting to be what one is is overwhelming evidence of mental illness. One case is indistinguishable from the another.

Those who support the furtherance of mental illness in others are either themselves mentally ill or evil with intent. There is no nuance to be discussed. The nuance was left in the delivery room with the placenta.

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