From the Horses Mouth … so to speak

Each and every day there is someone in the news proclaiming to be an expert on gender affirming care. What I have yet to see is anyone who is a long term post-surgical transsexual, with the exception of Caitlyn Jenner, discuss the issues involved in that fateful decision. Now, admittedly I do not watch every news channel, and for a very good reason. Most of them have an agenda and the predominant agenda is based in a push to force a trans-gender ideology on much of the adolescent population in our public schools. I find that tragic.

In the early years of the 21st Century, I stumbled across a mid-nineties article in a medical publication that discussed the suicide rate among transsexuals. The numbers in that article were based on “actual” suicides not “attempted” suicides. There were a lot of statistics listed to shore up the basic findings of the study which the publication quoted. The one statistic that stuck out for me was that the suicide rate among the cisgender community was in the neighborhood 0.25 percent of the study population. In comparison, the rate among the trans community was roughly 10.5 to 11 time higher. Personally, by the time I was in my mid-fifties I had personally only known 2 people who had committed suicide. Within one year of involvment in the transgender community I had four people I knew commit suicide.

Consideration of suicide is something that has never been an issue with me other than to wonder what it would take for me to even mildly entertain the idea. So, when I read about the current rate of youth who have “considered” suicide as a reason for “gender affirming care” in the youth today I have to admit to a certain degree of skepticism stemming from the knowledge that teenagers have a tendency to be a bit dramatic. So, just how accurate is that statistic? Is it based on hospital records or the teenager’s word?

My biggest concern regarding the frequency of “attempted” suicide is the influence that the school personnel are having in the student’s lives. It’s my belief that school personnel have only 2 jobs. The first being to educate children in their care … not indoctrinate them. The second job they have is to keep the parents informed as to the progress their children are making and highlight failings as well as accomplishments. That is not what’s happening today.

Anyone who has followed what I write in this blog knows that I have been beating a drum about the dangers of the NEA for quite some time. It’s a danger that I recognized over sixty years ago when doing debate prep on the high school debate team. Even then I was aware of the fact that our schools and the teachers they employ had in reality more hours a day in which to influence the understanding that children develop than the time their parents have. Recent events regarding gender identity have proven that what I understood then was fairly accurate, without knowing the extent to which the teacher’s unions would go to usurp the rights and influence of the parents. In my mind it’s akin to kidnapping when a teacher who is entrusted with the care of a child goes behind the parents back to push what, in most cases, is surely a temporary fantasy.

What is going to happen ten or even as little as five years from now when that child realized what a horrible mistake has been made? I can’t imagine what the actual suicide rate is going to climb to. Unless I miss my guess, an entirely new form of legal remedies will develop in the form of suits brought against teacher’s union and individual teachers themselves and deservedly so.

There are those who will say to me that I’m just spewing sour grapes since I didn’t make that irreversible decision until late in my life because I was a coward. Maybe! But, when I made that decision, it was with a background of having lived a life as a boy, a man, a husband and a father, which gave me knowledge that could only come from that experience. I admit there are times that I wonder “what might have been” had I not made that irreversible decision. I also wonder at times what life would have been like had I made that decision then. And I seriously doubt that I am no different from every other post-surgical transsexual.

I have had the privilege of living 2 lives which is something that these children who are being groomed by teachers and sometimes by misguided parents who think they are being loving, will never know. In most cases those parents are not being loving at all. How many of these children who are being secretly transitioned are going to return to that classroom with an AK47 ten, fifteen or twenty years from now and indiscriminately open fire in anger. (and yes I’m aware that the recent case involving a former student at a Christian school appeared to be revenge for having not been recognized as who she thought she was).

The bottom line to me is that we are witnessing a tragic confluence of out of control so called educators and woke ideology. As far as I’m concerned, the first of many lawsuits against school administrators and teachers is long overdue. Gender identity should be left to the individual and the family together with a trained counselor.

So now you have it straight from the horse’s mouth… So to speak.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too

The old adage that “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” seems to ring loudly when it comes to trans athletes. One of the first things I had to come to grips with when I made the decision to transition from George to Georgia was that I would be giving up certain aspects of George’s life in order for me to make that transition complete. At least, that was what I felt I needed to do in order for me, as Georgia to live a complete and satisfying life in my new role.

What I see happening in sports today, especially women’s sports, is a bunch of men who, appear to be unable to compete successfully as men sacrificing their masculinity for the sake of winning at a sport, they are not able to win as men.

Is it possible that I am just totally off the rails here? Yeah, it’s possible. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong. But, appearances do have their way of affecting the way we see things don’t they. What I don’t see happening is any of them stepping up to the plate and making it known as to whether or not they have taken the irreversible plunge and actually having the surgery required for them to come as close as it is possible for any person with an X and a Y chromosome to change that Y to an X.

People who know me personally know that I have never, not once, tried to tell them that I am a real woman. I’m not and I never will be. But in the grand scope of my life, I am happy with the choice I made and have not once ever regretted that change. Well, maybe once but that is another story for another time.

To me, women are something to admire, to appreciate, to love and be loved by. I do not understand the mentality behind a person with double X chromosomes thinking that maintaining a male physique in order to compete with people who have XY in their genetic makeup is being female in any manner, shape or form. Sorry but that just doesn’t compute.

What they are doing doesn’t in any way shape or form further the cause of achieving acceptance by the society we live in. It does exactly the opposite. It has created a necessity for society to call for laws that shouldn’t be necessary. They have created an environment that is no longer working toward acceptance and understanding to one that is nothing short of just plain hostile.

In my presentations to college level classes I make a point early in the discussion that what those of us in the trans community is a mismatch in our bodies and our emotional makeup. I make a point that normal men, basically feel comfortable burping and belching and dragging their knuckles. It’s natural for them to want to be tough and ready to defend whatever might need defending.

On the other hand, women, in general enjoy being pretty and being defended by that guy who drags his knuckles and burp and belches. Are these two descriptions intended to be any more than broad generalities? Not at all. What they are intended to be is a basis for a discussion of what is meant by the term gender identity. What do normal people feel about themselves opposed to what people like me feel about ourselves? That is not an easy question to answer but I do think it deserves examination.

I can’t speak for normal people since I am very obviously not normal and to be honest, I can’t speak for the male-to-female transgendered athlete. It just seems to me that wanting to be female in spite of the body one is born with a person would want to be as much like a real woman as possible. That is what I aspire to. But how could those whose bodies give them such an extreme advantage over the very people they claim to be on the inside, want to overwhelm them in physical competition so completely? That, to me is just incomprehensible. That is just not what I see as in character for a natural woman.

I know I am not in actuality a woman. I never will be. I was born with the wrong body and even though modern surgery can modify my body to aid me in my quest to be female, nothing, absolutely nothing, is ever going to change that simple fact of nature. I’m not a real woman. Society is never going to be able to change that simple fact of nature. All the advertising gimmicks and the pop psychology of the media pundits is never going to change that fact of nature.

What has changed as a result of all the hoopla over gender identity and the misguided efforts of politicians and activists, is the level of acceptance society feels toward us. Instead of a swell of support for the mismatch of body and emotions we are faced with a backlash. The level of acceptance we had achieved has been set back decades and it angers me. The do-gooders in the press, in education and in politics, along with the activists in the transgender community, have for the sake of their own advancement made life for the rest of us much more difficult.

The results of the woke pressure for all of society to march to the drum of gay and transgendered activists has indeed caused a major problem in the social fabric of our nation. The sleeping majority of people who used to be content to let us be a part of society, albeit a small part, are now seeing our entire community as a major threat to them and their beliefs.

The backlash is best described as the empty plate where a big slice of cake used to sit, but has been eaten by a greedy child who is now crying because he now has no cake.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too!”

Unintended Consequences

There’s a phrase in our language that I find particularly apropos today. The phrase is “unintended consequences”. I really hope that the current climate which has enveloped the gender identity issue is not intentional, but that hope is most likely futile. What has happened is that the efforts of the vast majority of persons like me to be productive, contributing parts of society are rapidly being eroded by liberal activists whose only goal is to force the rest of society to accept their world view.

How in God’s name have we suddenly become the linchpin of this destructive Godless move to force, by means of intimidation, acceptance of the choices a relatively small segment of society has made? Those choices that have been quietly gaining acceptance for the last twenty plus years have now been set back by a small number of self-important individuals seeking attention.

I have been working and living my life free of the fear of intimidation for the better part of the last fifteen years. Today, thanks to the liberal left I no longer feel the sense of safety and freedom to live the life I have worked to create for myself and for others like me who simply want to be accepted as who we are. Different? Absolutely, but not a danger to the lives of society in general.

So, I’m angry.

I’m angry on any number of levels. The first level is anger at the relatively small number activists who have chosen this time to advance their own personal agendas on everyone they consider narrow minded, conservative Christians and anyone else that tends to agree with that point of view. It is a typical liberal philosophy that they know what is best for everyone else and if you don’t agree with them, you are a threat their existence … literally a threat to their existence as much so as Nazism was a threat to the Jewish people. Those liberals have been educated to think that way without question.

The end result is that the people in our country, indeed the entire world who do question liberal thought and the process by which they arrive at their conclusions, those people are labeled narrow minded bigoted anti-democratic (the government definition not the political party) Nazis. The fact that liberals resort to name calling is itself proof that they are incapable of constructive conversation, and they are incapable of that because they are incapable of constructive thought. Our education system has seen to that successfully enough to have reduced the numbers of thoughtful people to affect the outcome of a national election.

On another level of anger, I find the willing accomplices in our press are ensuring that the advancement of the acceptability of those of us whose bodies do not match our emotional makeup has been set back by decades. And it’s not rooted in the gender variant community as much as it is in persons like Anheuser-Busch’s Alissa Heinerscheid who fancy themselves as being more enlightened than anyone else.

I have no problem with anyone wanting to share their journey in life with anyone who cares to pay attention to them. After all, I did publish a book on my own journey. What little I have seen of Dylan Mulvaney, she does appear to be one of those people whose body and emotional mindset simply do not match. But the mere fact that she allowed herself to be shown in such an unfavorable light casts a shadow on her moral compass. She has contributed to the unexpected backlash besetting Anheuser-Busch … Unintended consequences.

It has been my experience that when we go about our lives like any “normal” person does, that our gender identity becomes pretty much a non-issue. Even people who don’t particularly approve of the choices we’ve made refrain from overt displeasure in our presence.

But the in-your-face approach that Bud Lite has employed with Dylan Mulvaney has created a backlash not only against Anheuser-Busch but against the trans community as a whole. This is what happens when people like Ms. Heinerscheid stick their noses in where they aren’t wanted and try to cram their ideas down other people’s throats. And it’s not just her.

Take the legislator from Montana, Zooey Zepher, who has managed to create a minor firestorm by trying to cram her gender identity issues down the throats of her constituent legislators and the people who voted for them. The mere fact that she was elected to the legislature should be proof enough that had she behaved like an adult and not a rabble rouser she would have probably accomplished far more. What she ranted about was a proposed bill that would ban “gender affirming care” aka gender reassignment surgery for children, which I assume means anyone under the age of eighteen.

Liberals like to cherry pick one or two individuals or circumstances, attach a label to them and then lump entire groups under that label. They simply cannot cope with genuine individuality. The term most often referred to in that case is group think. And group think bans any ideas, thoughts, conversations or efforts at open and fair debate. Liberals simply cannot fathom any idea that runs contrary to, or even slight askew to, the main body of thought which most cannot even track back to the actual origin of the idea.

And that brings us to the subject of group thought about gender identity. Any time I publish something related to my gender identity and/or my political preferences the criticism I receive comes from people in the LGBT(Q) community. It almost always runs along the line of thought that if a person is lesbian, gay bisexual, transsexual or (questioning) they have to be a liberal democrat, because after all they are the only ones who are accepting of the way we live our lives. That is just plain misguided thinking stemming from ignorance. Why is it that conservatives are always the boogie man? And we are now full circle back to group think.

The group has concluded that since they all think alike that conservatives must all think alike. Nothing could be further from the truth other than the desire live our lives independent of the constraints the liberal left would like to place on us, and a general distrust of government. The experience that I’ve had is that while some conservatives may disagree with my choices, they generally accept me as I am as long as I don’t demand acceptance. In some cases, they may choose to consider me misguided and seeking attention. Whatever their feelings on the subject they are almost always willing to have a conversation on the subject. Liberals will inevitably resort to name calling and insults rather than a discussion on merits.

Conservatives, in the LGBT(Q) community are more numerous than one might expect because they don’t wear their politics on their shirt sleeves. And they are most likely to be Christians which is another taboo for liberal progressives in the gay community. But that conversation is for another time. What I want to get across is the idea that conservatives of any life choice have been too eager to compromise in order to express a willingness to avoid confrontation. That has been construed as a number of traits, such as cowardice, lack of compassion, lack of intellect. That willingness to discuss issues has led directly to the liberal left branding us as weak and ineffectual. And they have been very successful in that endeavor.

It’s time for conservative to fight fire with fire … adopt a no prisoners attitude. Compromise has been a total failure and if that isn’t corrected immediately the demise of a wonderful form of government will be on our shoulders. It will be on the shoulders of all conservatives, normal and LGBT(Q). We are the ones who will have to shoulder the blame just like a parent who lets their child run wild without any discipline are ultimately to blame for the outcome of their children’s lives. Liberals do not respect compromise or reason. They only respect power.

Conservative willingness to compromise with the evil of liberalism has had all these “unintended consequences” that have brought us to the brink of collapse.

As for the “T” part of the alphabet soup label. Those of us who are not subscribing to the current disruption of our society by the noisy attention seekers; we need to let the world know that those people do not speak for us. We have paid our dues to be a part of society. The spoiled children who are rioting and their willing accomplices in education and the press have not paid more than a dime in dues to be considered as reasonable people. The backlash which is occurring should have been expected and would have been totally unnecessary. Just ask Anheuser-Busch if they are happy with their

.

The tragedy of Wokeism

What has happened? How could the country I grew up in, a country that stood for freedom of thought, freedom of expression; how could it get so totally screwed up? There is a myriad of opinions on that issue but none that really get to the root of the problem. How do I dare to think that I might have the answer? After all I don’t have a basket full of degrees in things like philosophy, political science, or even an associate degree from a community college. It’s because I have seventy-eight years of common horse sense, a record of observation and a knowledge of history.

With that said, what do my common horse sense and observations tell me?

Item #1. Wokeness. What a crock this notion is. As explained to me the term comes from the notion that if a person or idea is woke, that they are better informed and more enlightened as to the supposed wrongs committed by people whose skin is what society calls white. Or to put it more succinctly, if you’re woke it means you woke up to the fact that you woke up how privileged your whiteness has made you.

For those of you who are products of modern public education you probably are not aware of how many union soldiers died in the civil war. That number has been pegged at 110,100 who died in battle. Another 224,580 died of diseases contracted while in the service of their country. I guess you could say that Abraham Lincoln was the original woke person and furthermore those 334,680 dead would have to be considered woke as well. Not all of those were white. An estimated 40,000 black soldiers died in service to their woke white government.

So, my question is … how many of our present day wokers have died in service to the cause of correcting this supposed injustice?

Answer: Zero. (at least to my knowledge)

If there is a bottom line to wokeism I believe it is this: Wokeism is a terribly misguided notion that suffering of the average white American is going to be a justifiable penance and punishment for the acts of ancestors, they never knew. Ancestors who, by the way, felt they were as justified in the way they viewed their fellow beings of a different color as the wokers of today.

To that end, wokeism is insinuating itself into every single facet of the lives of average everyday people regardless of their skin color, their income, their pleasures (especially their pleasures because that’s where wokeism thinks that’s the most painful wound they can inflict) the education of their children, the cars they drive, the way they prepare their meals. The list goes on infinitum.

It’s all about one of the most basic drivers of human desire … Control! That is the driving force behind liberalism, progressivism and wokeism. And the adherents to those philosophies simply cannot imagine that their aims and goals are destructive to the human spirit. The mere thought of logical progression to their ends, being the destruction of the very society that nurtures those very freedoms which allow them to pursue their goals, never enters their minds. If it does the idea is quickly discarded.

Wokeism is a declaration that only certain people are enlightened enough to see the perceived injustices in the world. They feel that it’s incumbent on them to force their views on how to correct the wrongs as they see them. They are incapable of seeing that as an injustice itself.

Wokeism is an insidious ideology that has infected nearly every facet of our daily lives. Corporations like Coca Cola and Nike are front and center in the effort to force every person in our society to adjust their moral values to fit the new woke norm. And that’s just the tip of giant iceberg that has the potential to sink our mighty ship of state. An iceberg called trans inclusion.

On this I am infinitely qualified to write and speak about. Up until two years ago the community of which I am a part was quietly making headway in our effort to gain understanding and inclusion. I have long believed that what I have referred to as the alphabet soup of the LGBTQ (and whatever other letter you want to tack on) began to gain acceptance not because of the incessant demonstrations that were apart of the movement in years past.  It was because of the many who went about their daily lives without wearing their sexuality on their sleeves, just waiting for someone to knock that chip off their shoulders so they could have an excuse to claim victimhood. No! Acceptance came about because the thousands of our community just wanted to live their lives in peace went about being a part of society without making their sexuality the focus of their lives.

It’s not about what you are. It’s about who you are as a person. And that is what is being totally missed and tragically misconstrued by the woke movement in the form of the current trend of woke teachers and educators usurping parental rights. Wokeism is using this issue in an attempt to create an Orwellian society. Long ago I realized that our education system held the key to the future of our society and thus our nation.

Uneducated individuals in our schools, (and yes “uneducated” regardless of what degree a college or university may have conferred up on them) from the teachers to the school boards have determined that it’s their duty to take actions regarding the future of a child which cannot be reversed. The suicide rate among the gender community is probably the highest of any one group in our country today. And it is going to get even worse ten to fifteen years from now when those children who have been encouraged to make life altering decisions which they are ill equipped to make reach adulthood and realize that they can never, ever reverse that action.

What then is society going to do to hold those teachers and educators accountable for what they are creating? Unless I miss my guess, that answer is “not a damned thing”. Parents must, without a doubt, take action now to take back control of their children’s futures by getting involved and getting rid of anyone who sits on a school board and advocates for society to take control of children’s lives.

I can tell you from personal experience that there will always be that seed of doubt in the mind of a person who has made that irreversible decision, when life has its inevitable ups and downs. When that happens, only a person who has made an informed decision about what lies ahead for them will survive. Making a decision to “transition” to a life in a different sexuality is not the same as deciding that a person is gay. Deciding to life ones life as a gay person is reversible. Case in point, I have more that a few personal acquaintances that lived a gay life that are now happily married to someone of the opposite sex. That is simply not possible for anyone who has made that sexual/gender transition.

Wake up people.

Do I really wish I was three again knowing what I know now?

It’s a question I have asked myself often lately. The news today is rife with stories of teachers, well-meaning or not, encouraging children as young as five or six years old to express a gender identity different from their biological sex. To begin with, I don’t for a minute believe that any teacher should be making those decisions for any child. That is for the parents and the parents alone to address.

But just how do I feel when I consider what my life would have been like if the knowledge, I have today was available when I was five years old?

To begin with, that is virtually impossible for me to imagine, but I can be reasonably certain that I would have been totally confused and bewildered. I simply did not have the mental capacity to even begin to navigate the emotional minefield that one is confronted with, when the mere thought that one’s emotional configuration does not match the physical configuration of one’s body. I had trouble enough as a young adult trying to understand all the implications of what I was feeling. There was no way that I could have dealt with the confusion at the age of five.

So, what age is the right age to begin to deal with gender dysphoria? Short answer … there is no universal answer to that question. The simple fact is that for me, the right age was somewhere in my mid-fifties. Do I think that is the right age for everyone? Of course not. Are there periods of my life that I would like to re-live as Georgia; periods I would like to switch places with George? Absolutely!

But I need to ask this question: would I be better off today if Mrs. Baldwin, my first-grade teacher had taken it upon herself to decide that Georgie would be happier as Georgia and proceeded to implant that idea in my undeveloped brain without my parents’ knowledge? Oh, hell no!! She would have robbed me of experiences and memories that I have of George’s life that no amount of therapy could replace. She would have robbed me of experiences that could only have been available to George but that I can benefit from.

She would have made uneducated assumptions about me, about Georgie that she had no right to make. I don’t even think a lot of parents today have the background or the knowledge to make those decisions for their children. But that is exactly what way too many teachers, who are being goaded by the teachers’ unions (aka NEA and affiliates), are doing without parents’ knowledge much less their approval.

In my presentations to college classes, I preface everything with the statement that when I discuss gender identity there are very few and far between facts and that what I have to say in that regard is strictly my personal opinion. I have been saying that for twenty years and I say it still today. It’s for that reason that I find it terribly wrong for any teacher to take it on themselves to encourage any child to take on a persona that does not match their birth gender.

In a study done in the late 1990s it was discovered that the suicide rate among gender variant individuals was nearly eleven times that of normal individuals. There have been numerous studies done in recent years which points to possibly higher rates than previously thought. A quick review of the subject on Google lists a considerable number of studies on the subject but none address the actual number of actual completed suicides.

Obviously gender identity is becoming a more common topic of discussion, but it seems that it is being affected by a failure to address the need for extreme caution in guiding the young people in our education system toward irreversible actions. I have addressed the irreversible issue in my own life by referencing that decision to Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon. It cannot not be undone.

And if I have not made myself clear … No teacher has the right to encourage at the least or to facilitate at most, any gender variant behavior in any child with or without a parent’s approval. Teachers simply do not have the training nor the experience to involve themselves in such a critical issue in a child’s life. That is an irreversible procedure.

So, do I really wish I was three again, knowing what I know now? Nope! Not a bit! The joy I find in life now is the result of a life lived in two genders … two worlds, and guided by God’s impeccable timing.

How Do We Fit in?

In the last two years, our world has been turned upside down. On that, I’m sure most would agree. Attention has been turned toward the pandemic and all the ills that have befallen people from every imaginable walk of life. The number of people who have been unaffected by disease continues to shrink with each passing day. Issues that used to be important to us seem to have moved to the back burner … that is, until something occurs to vividly remind us of an issue that used to be important.

Case in point: The alphabet soup that has become the designation for every single sexual or gender self-identification imaginable. When I first became involved in the transgendered community the designation was fairly simple … L (for lesbian) G (for gay) B (for heterosexual and either lesbian or gay…in other words, have your cake and eat it too) T (for transgendered or transexual). Then someone added a Q (for questioning). A few days ago I saw an article that referred to the LFBTQ??? Community. LFBTQ???  I inserted the question marks because I don’t remember all the letters of the alphabet that followed, but there were at least 3 or 4 more.

Have people become so desperate for recognition as being different from everyone else that they will search until they find a designation that doesn’t fit anyone but themselves, and then create a persona to fit that newly defined category? It would seem to be the case. To make matters worse, those in superfluous positions of authority, i.e. the NEA and its state affiliates around the country have been actively promoting gender identity modifications in children as young as nine and ten years old without, I might add, the parents knowledge or permission.

Why? I cannot imagine why any person with even a modicum of integrity or respect for the self-image of a young person would want to influence their natural emotional development in a way that could adversely affect them for the rest of their lives. When I think of the kind of person that would do that I am drawn to and image of the wicked witch in the original version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Yesterday, on the radio I heard a letter written by a high school student that related her experience with looking for a group to be a part of. Athletics were not an option for her, and neither were the more common groups such as chess or debate clubs. Her counselor steered her into the LFBTQ??? Club. There she was encouraged to “explore” her gender and sexual identity. Luckily for this young girl she was intelligent enough to eventually realize that what they were encouraging was not natural for her.

I grew up in a totally different world. It was a world where the worst that could happen to me was that, had I been self-aware enough to question why I didn’t feel “normal”, was to have been told to grow up. Had I approached my high school counselor with anything resembling sexual or gender identity I’m not sure she would have had a clue what to say to me or my parents. That was probably a good thing considering the guidance that I may have received under the circumstances.

The basic issue of what role does public education have in the development of adolescents has been brought front and center in recent events in North Carolina as a result of two issues … Mask mandates and Critical Race Theory. Although these two issues are seemingly unrelated to the gender identity influence in elementary and secondary schools, they are part and parcel indicators of what our educations system has become … a petri dish for state control of what our children are taught and how their life choices are being influenced without parental knowledge or input.

I don’t want to sound like an “I told you so” but the fact is that even as long ago as my sophomore year in high school I be came aware of the dangers of the state having six to eight hours a day five days a week to influence the way the way the youth of our country think and process information. I even went so far as to suggest in one of my debate topics that all teachers be required to pass a stringent psychiatric evaluation before being allowed in the classroom. This is most critical when it deals with influencing how young people perceive themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity. The majority of educators in this country, I believe, do not sign onto these absurd policies but enough of them do subscribe to them to be a danger to our society.

It’s bad enough for public education attempting to make skin color an issue in young people who don’t see their fellow classmates in terms of their skin color. But gender identity is such a complex issue that no elementary or high school teacher has any business attempting to advise or influence a student on actions that will have lifelong effects on their future happiness or ability to live a productive satisfying life.

Wanting to fit in is a normal thing, but not being “normal” makes “fitting in” difficult at best and impossible at worst. We don’t need people with a political agenda making it more difficult with absurd notions of their idea of what’s best for another person’s child.

How long do we have?

What you are about to read has absolutely nothing to do with gender identity other than to make clear that whatever a person’s gender identity, life takes on its own direction, irrespective of that identity. Suffering is no respecter of gender.

Years ago, when I suffered a stroke at an age that things like that weren’t supposed to happen to me, I came face to face with my own mortality. As it turned out it wasn’t an end-of-life experience, even though it felt like that, as I was losing control of the right half of my body. When I regained full consciousness and began reliving the experience, as I lay there in the University of Utah Medical Center, and wondering what, if anything, was going to change in my life. As a result of what had just happened, I found myself thinking about the times I had wasted watching television. Oddly enough it was one of those wasted moments, that brought everything into focus.

I don’t even remember the name of the show, but I do remember that episode vividly. Ronny Schnell played the role of a radio DJ and Goldie Hawn had figuratively cornered him into being faced with having to propose marriage. Schnell’s out was to say that he couldn’t do that because his doctor had told him he didn’t know how long he, Schnell had to live. However, that ploy backfired because it only stiffened Goldie’s resolve to get married. Finally, Schnell confessed that what the doctor had actually said was that he didn’t know how long Schnell had to live … he was so healthy he could live to over a hundred.

Three weeks ago, today I woke up with a nasty dry cough and feeling rather puny. By midafternoon, the next day the Blue Magnet insisted that I go to urgent care. My vitals were not what they should have been, and I just assumed that I had contracted a dose of flue since I hadn’t had my flu shot yet. However, as a precaution a COVID swab was done and the next day my doctor notified me that I had a breakthrough case of after vaccination COVID-19. The doctor suggested that I consider a monoclonal infusion. She sent me the official information on the procedure and after reading it thoroughly I decided that the potential side effects weren’t worth the risk. In retrospect that might have been the wrong decision.

In the meantime, the Blue Magnet was tested with the same results. Her symptoms were minor, and she continued to work at home. I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate.

By the end of the first week, I was in such bad shape that Blue loaded me up and drove me to ER. I was miserable, and in a room full of miserable people, although in my opinion they weren’t in as bad a shape as I was. I genuinely felt that dying would be easier than getting well.

After waiting 4 hours I approached the desk to find out how much longer I would have to wait and was told that they didn’t know since I wasn’t considered an urgent enough case. The Blue Magnet, who had been waiting in her car the entire time decided to take matters into her own hands and drove to Walgreens for fluids and electrolytes. When she returned, I went to the desk and told them to take me off the list because I could get better care at home.

The next morning, I was still dehydrated, and my oxygen count was hovering between 87 and 90. Blue insisted on taking me back to the ER. This time I was immediately ushered to an exam room. Lots of tests and an IV later I was sent home. Two days later the scenario repeated itself. That time, after more tests and isolation ina  totally separate room, I was given the option to check into the hospital for 24 hours for observation. I chose to return home again.

I was finally beginning to recover bit by bit, but after a conversation with Home Depot’s Covid response representativ Andrea, my leave was extended another week and a half and I will return to work on the 18th.  As of this writing the only residual effect is shortness of breath and thus I tire easily.

The upshot of all this is a loss of faith in our government’s ability to be honest and forthright in the information they feed us via a media that has built a pedestal for Dr. Fauci to rest on. It’s obvious that the lockdowns don’t work anymore than the protocols that have been forced on us for the last 2 years. Yes, I’m aware that what I suffered, even after both initial vaccinations, might have been much worse without the vaccination., But that doesn’t keep me from being high suspicious of any pronouncement coming from CDC or any other government entity.

I am by now totally disgusted with the Biden administration and anything that comes out of it. We have been lied to, locked down, lost jobs and lost faith in the very institutions that are supposed to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The current resident of the White House is an incompetent human being whose sole interest is his perceived legacy. God help us and save us from people who think they are the only smart people in the room and therefore must direct every minute aspect of our lives, and the people who think that since every aspect of their lives needs to be controlled by government that the government should control every aspect of every life without regard to how long that life may have left.

Just to Clarify

A recent communication from a good friend pointed out that a description of some people, in my last blog as “stupid” was probably not the best choice of words and as a result somewhat detracted from the point I was trying to make. In retrospect he was probably correct. I undoubtedly could have been a bit more, well considerably more, diplomatic.

When I was in early sobriety and learning to assess my previous behavior in an honest and forthright manner, I was told in confessing my transgressions that when I followed up my confession with, “but” such and such or so and so did such and such to cause my behavior that I totally negated my personal responsibility in the interaction. So, no “buts” here.

I am angry. And I feel justifiably so. I will apologize for using the term “stupid” but not for the assessments that followed the term. I know that I am only a single voice in the choir and that I have, in that respect, a total inability to carry a tune. But I will not let that keep me from singing as loudly as I can.

All that being said, I need to express an opinion regarding gender identity politics and what I see as a major flaw the thinking of many in our community. That flaw is the idea that everything we express must be expressed from the platform of our gender identity.

When I first became involved the activities of the world of the transgendered, I of course was primarily concerned with being an accepted part of the community. Having always been outspoken about my political views, which by the way included my religious views, I saw no reason to suppress those views just because I was wearing a wig and a dress. I immediately found that, for many in the organization, I was a heretic. After all, conservative religion and politics were joined hand in hand in the denunciation of the transgendered community.

While that was true to a certain degree it was definitely an overgeneralization of the situation. If you have followed my blog over time, you know that I certainly have not let the opinions of those I disagree with stifle the expression of my views. If I had a bigger following, I would probably be banned from Facebook and Twitter, but so far, I have not.

Enter stage right, Caitlyn Jenner.

She is the embodiment of what I have felt and expressed in the past. She is what the transgendered community needs badly because what she is saying, to me at any rate, is that gender identity is not going to keep her from expressing her conservative political opinions. To date I have not heard anything from her that reflects her gender identity. She has been strictly focused on issues that have nothing to do with gender; issues that affect average people in her state. If her gender identity is brought up it’s the interviewer who brings it up and not her. So, what if her transgendered status draws attention. It has nothing to do with what she feels the people of California need from the point of view of a very successful businessperson.

She should be an example to the transgendered community to put gender identity aside and be a contributing member of society … like any “normal” person would do without making gender the issue.

My parents never expressed an opinion of anyone based on issues they had no control over, ie … skin color, sex, physical handicaps. As a result, I learned to look at the character of people in my life. Did Caitlyn have a choice to visibly express her gender identity? Absolutely! But she had no choice as to the set of emotions she was born with and that is what she is expressing in her appearance … and to my way of thinking, an expression of her character.

In closing this blog entry what I want to say is, to our transgender community, stop with the gender identity excuses for not living up to your potential. Stop with the gender identity excuses for thinking you are a victim. Stop parroting the opinions of those who are telling you that you are a victim. There are no victims here, only people who have been convinced they are victims by those who need victims to support their own self-centered aims of controlling other’s lives … since most of them, from what I see, have had trouble controlling their own.

A Lack of Morals?

When I was much younger than I am today, I lived with the sense that even though I didn’t agree what many people felt or believed about what our government should or should not do for us, I felt the best interest of our country and the freedoms it represented were their primary intent. If I hadn’t been disabused of that naïve belief before, I certainly am now.

What is happening in our country, in our capitol, in the hands of our elected leaders, (and I’m not referring to the ones that fall on the “red” side of either branch of our government) is nothing short of the worst possible scenario any screen writer or novelist could conceivably come up with. When I listen to the promises and the proposals that are being foisted upon us with regularity, I can come to only one conclusion. There is now a total lack of morals in the democrat party, with damn few exceptions.

Why on earth would anyone with a conscience want to burden future generations with the astronomical debt that congress has now saddled the country with? Why? It certainly isn’t because they sincerely want a better life for future generations. It is economically impossible for this country continue to add to our debt load without totally destroying an economy that has, up until now been the envy of the world.

It has long been said that people vote with their pocketbooks in mind. Well, how stupid can people get? Do they really think that all that money is going buy them more than what they can by today? Apparently, they do. You would think that if the average citizen had even a modicum of understanding of principle of supply and demand that they would soon figure out that what makes a dollar worth more is not having more of it. It’s the exact opposite. The supply of any commodity, including the dollar directly affects its value.

The democrats know that and that, to my mind, makes them criminals. They don’t care about anyone or anything that detracts from their power to control the lives of anyone they consider less than themselves or their ability to enrich themselves at the expense of the very people they claim to represent. So, how is it that supposedly educated people fall for the obviously wrong-headed ideas?

They are in fact, obviously very uneducated. Sure, they have college degrees of every sort, but the degrees are absolutely worthless when it comes to an understanding of real economics. The result is voters who buy into the notion that free college education, free childcare, free everything is actually free. That is what our education system has given us … a country filled with educated stupid people. And the democrats know it.

The democrats know that and that is why they are getting away with things like “woke” culture, whatever the hell that is. It’s supposed to mean that “woke” people have “woke” up to the injustices of our culture and history. In my opinion, it primarily means that they have “woke” up to one simple fact. With control of the media, career government employees and now congress and the white house they have “woke” up to the fact that they can lie about history and get away with it. If that isn’t a lack of morals, I don’t know what is. There is absolutely no moral basis for anything “woke” culture has produced. “Woke” culture is totally and completely void of any moral compass.

So, what is the solution for those of us who still have a moral compass? Maybe we need to follow Maxine Waters advice and “get up in their face”. The conservative moment has been too complacent and tried too hard to maintain a sense of decorum. Look at what that has gotten us.

We as a free people are at a precipice in history and if we don’t step back and take a few pages from the play book used by the democrats and their socialistic progressive allies we will be beyond redemption and our grandchildren will never know the promise of the United State of America.

A lack of morals? Without a doubt.

So How Did We Get Here?

So, how did we get here? How did we get from the nation that I grew up in, a nation full of promise, a nation capable of landing a man on the moon, a nation that looked at its faults with an eye toward actually correcting the faults and not perpetuating the faults? How did we get from a nation of hopeful high school and college graduates whose worst crime might have been hanging a disagreeable professor in effigy instead of reality, from a tree in the center of the campus? How did we get from there to a nation where students march in masse protesting something, they have no actual knowledge of, while cheering the burning of our flag and destruction of the dreams of small business owners in the name of racial justice?

On the flip side, how did we go from nation of law-abiding citizens who identify themselves as conservatives; from a nation of people who accepted the outcome of an election regardless of who won because we trusted the system that counted the votes to do it honestly and let the chips fall where they may. How did we get from no need for conservative voters to gather in-masse, to support a president who, in spite of all the good he did, was not re-elected under a cloud of suspected corruption of officials in 5 states?

We didn’t get here overnight. We didn’t get here in a year. We didn’t even get here in a decade. We got here after years of careful and deliberate efforts of groups who had a fear of individual accomplishment. People who achieve through individual effort are feared by others who only find comfort in group think and group function.

When I was on the high school debate team one of the questions was “Should the federal government aid in funding public education?” (I paraphrase that question). One of the primary arguments on the negative side of that question was that local education systems would become too dependent on that source of funding and the result would then be encroaching federal control of the school curriculum. In other words, if you’re going to accept our money then you must accept our directions on what to teach and what not to teach. What was never expected was how non-government entities would eventually have far more influence than state and national government edicts.

It wasn’t the fault of politicians in spite of what we have come to think of them. It was the realization by non-governmental entities that what they had in their possession was something far, far more powerful than any government. Think about it … Who were the majority of those marching in support of Black Lives Matter and the call to defund the police? They were students. Black, white, brown; the color didn’t really matter. They had been conditioned by 12 to 20 years of sitting in front of “educators”; a group that had under their influence, as Rush Limbaugh would say, “young skulls full of mush” for a minimum of four to six hours a day. How many hours a day does the average parent spend on the mental development of their children? One? Two, maybe?

So, what kind of ideas are being stressed during those four to six hours a day? Well, as I noted in my last blog, 96.1% of the political donations made by the NEA in the last fifteen years have gone to democrat candidates. What kind of world to democrats want for our children? The last ten days should be your answer. They want to squelch any form of dissent to their ideas and their ideas are based on their belief that the average person is not capable of making rational decisions about their own lives. In addition, to that arrogant opinion of the average person’s intelligence is the belief that anything, and I do mean anything, they have to do to gain and hold that control is justifiable as evidenced by the obvious irregularities in the election results in five states during the last election. They have no moral compass whatsoever.

If you want to know then, how we ended up with such corrupt victors in our last election, look not to the politicians, look to how the people who elected them and the people who got them elected arrived at their justifications for their behavior. Those were arrived at through years of being under the influence of educators who themselves spent years under the influence of those who went before them.

I ask myself how did two educated conservatives such as my parents raise two broad minded conservatives, my brother and me, and then a decade and a half later a relatively narrow minded extreme liberal like our sister? It was a matter of how we were educated, when and where. Our parents didn’t change, the education systems changed.

I said in my last blog that if we are to effect lasting change in our country it has to start in our schools by getting involved with the local school board and administration. Weed out anyone who believes that their job is to shape minds. It isn’t; it’s to teach the basics not the morals of the teachers. It’s the parents’ job to shape the minds of their children.