This is to every single person who told me I was “hysterical” for predicting the rise of theocratic based fascism in the United States as long as 11 years ago (before Trump even announced his candidacy)
This is for every single person who told me “that can’t happen here”.
This is for every single person who said our institutions would save us.
The entire time, conservatives have said in advance, publicly, precisely how they would undermine everything, destroy every safeguard, seize control of every institution.
Even if a given court rules Trump in contempt of violating a court order, who’s going to arrest him now? Who’s going to enforce anything?
And now we have the first concentration camp since WWII. We have citizens being threatened with deportation. Kids being denied medical care. An entire group of human beings being actively erased from existence and history (that’s called “genocide” for you who are too f*cking stupid to get it).
Some of you are just NOW finally asking how do we mobilize against this to “save” our country? You should have mobilized a decade ago. In waiting til now to realize this, you’ve already lost. The United States of America is already dead. And you can’t face that, can you? You killed it by your inaction, your refusal to listen to what they openly said.
For those that can get out, do it as soon as you can. For those that can’t, your lives and the lives of your descendants for generations will become a living hell.
You were warned and ignored every warning. You deserve what’s coming. Those of us who told you don’t deserve this but we’re the direct targets. Our blood will be on your hands too. Trump didn’t do this alone. You let him.
Carry that guilt to your grave. And to every spineless Democrat in Congress seeking “common ground” with these fascists? May you burn in hell.
Americans need to start to seriously discuss the possibility of the balkanization of North America, of the dissolution of the United States, and what that can and will mean for the world.
The image above is for illustration purposes only. I doubt any of us could accurately predict what a shattered United States would ultimately look like. But imagine the USA with no predefined political borders. What happens when Republicans so completely neutralize the federal government that it becomes a hindrance to the states instead of a help?
California is one of the largest economies in the world. Add in Washington and Oregon and you have a high tech state that would be the 4th largest economy in the world. These three states have existing military bases of all type. Naval bases, Marine Corps bases, one of the major submarine bases for the US Navy, and several Air Force bases, and multiple US Army training facilities would give “Greater California” a head start on forming its own military.
Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world. Add in Louisiana, possibly Oklahoma, and maybe a bit of New Mexico and southeast Colorado and it would be a powerful nation in its own right.
The American south is its own cultural hub, if you presume white supremacy is some form of culture. And those states are still stubborn enough to try to go it alone, poor as many other third world nations, and that’s what the American south. call it the Second Confederacy, would be if the US shattered – a third world nation with third world education and third world healthcare.
The northeast, say from Maryland and Pennsylvania up to Maine, would have a lot of incentive to hang together. With New York state and New York City as the center of everything, it would be a global financial power.
The Great Lakes states are hard to think about, but if they chose to hang together, they’d bring a lot of economic clout to the table. If not, states like Minnesota, Michigan, maybe Wisconsin, and even Illinois (especially Chicago) might find themselves petitioning to become part of Canada.
The northern Great Plains States – Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska have a total population of 5.5 million people approximately. It’s an empty region of the world and if the US collapsed, it would be reduced to becoming the vassal of whatever nearby power chose to absorb it.
Idaho has become white supremacist central though. There are even movements to get the eastern half of Washington state added to Idaho to create a “white nation” for the racist contingent that love that part of the country. No, I’m not saying everyone from Idaho is a racist but there are a lot of them there.
Remaining states? They just sort of fall out where they might. West Virginia might try to join Kentucky and Tennessee as part of that Second Confederacy. Virginia might opt to go with the northeast instead of the Second Confederacy. Arkansas and Missouri likely would be part of that Second Confederacy or, if they’re smarter than that, maybe try to become part of Greater Texas.
But all this is just speculation. How it falls apart remains to be seen but make no mistake, the United States is, right now, today in 2024, a failed state. It’s a failed state where justice doesn’t get applied equally. It’s a failed state where Merrick Garland failed in his most basic duty to uphold the law. It’s a failed state where, in direct contravention to our history and constitution, the Roberts court declared Trump a king-like figure. It’s a failed state where The Heritage Foundation announced quite bluntly that the election of 2024 was a revolution, “bloodless of the left allows it to be”, to turn the US into something it was never intended to be.
And part of The Heritage Foundation goals is to destroy the administrative state centered in Washington, DC. They want to ultimately end it. But if they do, what reason do blue states like California or New York have to stay in the union? What does the union do for these states? More to the point, what do all the taxes that blue states pay and red states take do for those blue states? Especially when they have their own pressing issues?
The Heritage Foundation is playing directly into Vladimir Putin’s hands. Putin has been waging war on the west for over 20 years, seeking to do to the USA what the USA did to the USSR – to use internal dissidents and points of contention to break apart the larger union. When people ask me why would Putin do this? It’s simple. The lesson of the dissolution of the USSR is that a shattered Soviet Union wasn’t allowed to retain nuclear weapons except in Russia. Every other former Soviet state was pressured to disarm from nukes.
Likewise, a shattered USA would face extreme pressure to get rid of its nukes. And in losing its nuclear weapons, Putin removes the United States as a global superpower without firing a shot. The Northeastern US would likely align closely with the European Union. The Greater California nation would be focused on the Pacific rim. And America’s global focus would be gone.
The Heritage Foundation won’t accomplish all this overnight but I can’t see the United States surviving past the year 2040. And with Trump trying to legislate by decree, especially in controversial and bigoted ways, with Trump threatening to drag us into war with Mexico, Canada, Panama, and Denmark, more and more blue states are going to start asking “What do I get for remaining part of this insanity?”
And the answer is, increasingly, nothing. The blue states get nothing for staying in the union, so why stay?
Someday soon, probably within the next 10-12 years, some governor of California is going to throw the first stone. He or she will quietly negotiate a treaty with Japan or maybe even with China, then tell Washington that the state of California is no longer remitting federal taxes to Washington anymore.
And when that day comes. Or when Minnesota petitions to become part of Canada, or when New York says “no more” to GOP lunacy, that’s when the US will finally shatter.
So if you’re considering places to move, consider places that are more likely to be good countries on their own than bad ones. Because some places, like Texas, might just become a realized version of the horrors of Gilead, from The Handmaid’s Tale.
Choose wisely. It’s coming because the United States is already dead and all that’s left now is a twitching warm corpse.
Over and over again, I encounter late life transitioners who are absolutely desperate to hold onto their conservative and Republican credentials. This tells me they’ve not really started to transition yet because if they had, if they had been out among other women and learned and seen what other women put up with from the right wing Neanderthal mouth breathers in the GOP, they either could not be Republicans or they have hearts of ice and stone filled with hate for their fellow human beings.
The GOP has lied about everything it touches. The GOP courted KKK votes in the south beginning with Richard Nixon, via the “Southern Strategy” as created by his campaign adviser, Kevin Phillips. This article is from 1970 from the New York Times where they interviewed Kevin Phillips to understand how he won the South. Now either all those hateful white supremacist George Wallace style voters all, down to the last man, woman, and child, suddenly had a conversion and began supporting civil rights for people of color… OR they were attracted to the GOP via a series of code words and phrases that signaled white supremacy and dismissal of the black man. Which seems more reasonable to you? Yet very few older white MTF transitioners ever know about this, let alone accept the truth of it.
The GOP has never once balanced a budget on budget cuts as they claim. The budget being balanced in the 1990s was a compromise of budget cuts in some areas, and substantial tax increases in other areas, including on the highest bracket income earners. But you won’t hear Newt Gingrich or Republicans admit that. Republican states are among the poorest in the USA with the states taking the most federal handouts being Republican 9 times out of 10. On the other end, blue states (Democrat controlled) pay more to Washington than they take back. So who’s the real deadbeats here? Sam Brownback’s Kansas application of libertarian right wing nonsense now has the state running deficits of incredible proportions for such a small and relatively poor state. Even other Republicans in Kansas want to reject that nonsense now. Likewise, Scott Walker has done no favors to Wisconsin or its residents, cutting the state university budget by $450 million just so he can spend $400 million on a new sports stadium. Yet very few older white MTF transitioners ever know about this, let alone accept the truth of it.
The Republican Party in 2015 introduced over 110 anti-LGBT bills in states and the US Congress. Zero were introduced by Democrats. The Republican party introduced in states and the US Congress over 200 anti-LGBT bills so far in 2016. Zero were introduced by Democrats. The GOP just passed the most anti-LGBT party platform in its history, calling for the repeal of marriage equality, for open discrimination against transgender people, and for reparative therapy to be used on LGBT people, both children and any adults committed for being LGBT, despite the fact that no major medical organization considers being gay or trans as a mental health issue anymore. Yet very few older white MTF transitioners ever know about this, let alone accept the truth of it.
That same party platform carries open unscientific lies, claiming children in LGBT households are more prone to drug use, criminal behavior, and mental health issues, yet the scientifically proven truth is exactly the opposite. Yet very few older white MTF transitioners ever know about this, let alone accept the truth of it.
Over and over again, I get the impression that older white MTF transitioner believe that this is just about their body. Take the hormones, get surgery if needed, and you’re ok, right? WRONG! If you are a woman, you need to learn about women’s experiences. You need to get out and make friends with cisgender women. You need to understand how often we get raped. You will rapidly find that you suddenly have more friends who’ve been raped than you ever openly knew before in your entire life, because male privilege was hiding that from you. You will discover that women get treated as sex objects whether we want this or not. You will find men talking over you and getting angry if you try to interrupt to take back the floor. You will find men looking at you, not as a human being, but as a piece of meat to be evaluated to be fucked or raped.
And once you begin to understand what it is to be a woman in today’s society, you begin to understand that your worst enemy are conservative white men – exactly the group you were part of before. You begin to grasp that, as an older white male, you were part of a sick, twisted, ugly privileged self-centered group of people who want the entire universe to revolve around them. You, as a trans woman, begin to relate directly to the crap that your friends of color, both trans and cis, are experiencing, and all the crap that goes with that. You begin to understand that suddenly you’re worth less in the marketplace, just because you are a woman, and if you fight back about it, you’ll get fired.
So what I see, every god damned time I encounter a “fresh off the boat” brand new older white MTF transitioner is someone who thinks they can somehow, magically remain a part of that privileged, self-centered, lying brigade of white men who think they deserve to control everything.
I got news for you, honey. You’re a woman now and in their eyes, you ain’t shit. So get with the program and start educating yourself. Make lots of cisgender female friends then listen to them! Listen to their health care issues, how white male doctors dismiss issues that those same doctors would take seriously with a white male. Listen to them as they try to tell you that Old White Guys™ want to control their vaginas. Listen to them as they try to explain how hard it is to raise kids when the father is a deadbeat and the social safety nets have been torn to shreds by Old White Guys™. Listen to them as they tell you how Old White Guys™talk over them or dismiss their ideas, then turn around and agree when a man says the exact same thing you did just a few minutes before.
And once you start to listen, once you start to learn, unless your head is so far up your ignorant ass that you’re already dead from suffocation, you will start to open your mind and realize that the biggest enemy you have, right now, today, in 2016 are Republicans. I wish that was not the case, but that’s the truth. Maybe someday the GOP will decide to focus on liberty and “live and let live” as they did once a long, long time ago.
But that day is not today and that year is not this year. If you are a transgender woman and you’re voting Republican, you’re still trying to hide behind your white male privilege. And I can guarantee you one thing – eventually they will turn on you too.
Recently, the Antioch Review has published an article full of hateful lies, stereotypes, and absolutely incorrect medical information about transgender people titled “The Sacred Androgen” (link marked as “nofollow” so as not to boost the page’s rank).
And in addition to Brynn’s article, I sent the following email to Christina Check who is listed as the contact for The Antioch Review. I encourage all of you to do likewise. The more they hear from us, the more they may realize they have done something ugly and horribly wrong, and perhaps retract and apologize for that piece of garbage they published.
My letter to the editor lies below this line
Really?
If you had published such a pile of garbage laden pile of tripe about black people, your offices might have been buried under angry responses from across the nation already.
If you had published such a garbage laden pile of tripe about gays, you would have been dragged through the major press and rightfully pilloried publicly destroying your reputation.
Yet you think you can get away with it against transgender people?
Your author uses every bad stereotype, ignores all the current medical evidence including neurobiological evidence that has led the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Association of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association all to conclude that:
Your author asserts that transgender people are mentally ill while mental health professionals say that being transgender is not a mental illness. Your author then goes on to support reparative therapy which has been proven to increase suicidality, and never ever “cures” anything.
Your author cites the 41% suicide attempt rate as proof of mental illness and ignores that mental health professionals cite that as proof of the deep systemic hatred and oppression our culture has displayed towards transgender people. Mental health professionals say YOU need to change your attitudes towards trans people, and not that trans people need to change.
Your author launches into rape culture objectification of women and then tries to use that as a reason to see trans women with disgust.
Your author tries to assert that trans women are just gay men but ignores actual biological evidence that trans women are as different from gay men, in the brain, as they can possibly be.
The above microscope slides are just one of many studies demonstrating that trans women have brain structures very similar to cisgender women and nothing at all like gay men.
In short, your article, “The Sacred Androgen”, is hate speech targeted at a minority group that is being actively attacked and oppressed today in popular media and by right wing politicians and churches for being different. Yet the medical community, across the board, supports trans people and who they say they are. There are only a few old fossils, like Paul McHugh, Bailey, and others who get regularly trotted out by the right wing to support these hateful views.
With the publication of “The Sacred Androgen”, The Antioch Review demonstrates that it is not a rational nor respectful publication and that anything it publishes should be ignored, discarded, and that the Review itself should be driven into the ground as a purveyor of hate speech.
You should be ashamed of yourselves but bigots never are. Just like racists have been hiding in the closet for the last 40 years until Trump came along, bigots never give up their ugly ways and we now know that The Antioch Review is a publication of bigots and bigotry.
The right wing has been on the warpath against transgender people using the bathroom of their expressed gender, as opposed to the gender assigned at birth. In that entire discussion, I’ve seen the conservatives find one single incident in Canada several years ago where a man pretended to be transgender to get into a women’s homeless shelter and assault them. One incident.
Conservatives are notorious for telling us that criminals don’t obey laws, and point to gun free school zone laws as proof. Yet now, somehow magically, criminals are going to obey a law that says to not enter a women’s restroom? And that’s the justification for violating the rights of transgender women, because some non-trans man will maybe do something wrong?
I suggest they focus on an area where there is proven sexual assault. I suggest they pass a law mandating that women and children are not allowed in churches since pastors and church staff have a proven record of being sexual predators of both women and children.
Here’s a list of recent stories in the last few months. This is just a few months of quick stories collected together. Imagine how bad it must be for a full year! Imagine all those women and children being violated by religious authority figures! So if Republicans want to really protect women and children, pass a law barring anyone who works in a church from having contact with women and children. (I say this in jest, in case anyone is stupid enough to believe I mean it, but I say it to show how stupid these laws are.)
You must be logged in to post a comment.