There are a couple of great quotes which sum this up:

• “The only thing new under the sun is the history you don’t know.”
  Harry Truman (rephrased from a biblical source)

• “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
  George Santayana

When I look at Trump, and the truly revolting and stomach turning sycophants surrounding him, the entire MAGA movement causes these phrases to cycle through my mind. Putting a demented, narcissistic, stupid old man into the White House to play act as our Mad King is such a terribly cliched response to their inner fears and greed that it makes me want to laugh (if I wasn’t so busy crying).

Surprisingly, who I actually feel a little bit sorry for is Trump himself. Unlike his first term, he is now only surrounded by pathetic ass kissers who are constantly telling him lies about how “great” of a job he is doing, all of whom do so just to maintain their own positions of power and wealth. Trump’s core personality is incredibly vulnerable to this kind of manipulation, with his bottomless need to be validated and told he is loved by others even though he never can truly believe it about himself. This makes him the worst type of person to put into a position of power, while at the same time making him the exact type who seeks it out.

Of course, Trump is the one who only allows these types of people around him. As his mind fails and the inner trauma comes more to the surface, he seems to only be able to actually listen to the comforting lies. They appear to soothe him, and alleviate at least for a short time the pain he secretly feels about who he really is. In true Mad King fashion, his entire court is now only those who are evil enough to play along to enrich themselves, much to all our dismay.

But the Mad King story always ends badly, both for the pretend king and his poor citizens. From everything we can see so far, the mid-term elections are shaping up to be the end of this particular era of Trump insanity, and I am more hopeful today than I have been in a very long time. Trump and his supporters are trying hard to keep the Mad King in power, and it is terrifying how close they have gotten to making that a reality, but the system seems to be holding as far as I can tell.

If you look back in history, this same saga has played out many times. King George III of Britain went mad, and he too had die hard supporters trying their best to keep him in power despite of it. Charles II of Spain was so disabled that he was incapable of ruling, causing the rich and powerful around him to prop up his reign to the public while they actually governed without any challenge or interference with their plans.

This is also a popular theme in literature. Game of Thrones had the Mad King Aerys Targaryen who burned people alive, executed women and children, and fully planned to burn the capitol to the ground. He was surrounded by people propping him up for their own ends, each plotting and scheming on how they could manipulate the Mad King to enrich themselves.

Shakespeare explored this same idea with King Lear, perhaps the gold standard when it comes to describing Mad Kings, as the broken and raving old man divided up his kingdom based on how others flattered him (sound familiar?) In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pig Napoleon rewrites history, murders his own subjects, and becomes an outright tyrant. He too had the support of many other animals who gave him blind obedience and enthusiastic participation with the regimes propaganda.

In both literature and real history we see this Mad King archetype play out in human societies, with Trump and his MAGA supporters just being the current pig Napoleon and his bleating sheep. Maybe it is a good thing that so few Republicans know any actual history (or any facts at all for that matter), otherwise they might at least have enough sense to stop repeating the same obvious mistakes, and we wouldn’t be able to see them so clearly today through the lens of history and literature.

Please-oh-please do your part and vote this November. We have this one chance to right this ship, or at least keep it from going down completely in the next two years, and if the polls can be believed then a good two thirds of us are at least sane enough to recognize the Mad King and his supporters for who they really are.

But it doesn’t work out that way.

Polls show Trump still has the support of about 35% of Americans, and that just blows my mind. He treats them so badly, often worse than he treats the people he says he hates, and the 65% of us who remain at least a little bit sane are starting feel like we are living in some kind of bizarro world where “one plus one equals negative cat” and nothing makes sense. I know it is embarrassing to admit you were fooled, but at some point even the most die-hard MAGA has to decide if they want to actually survive, or die fighting for someone who doesn’t care about them at all.

And it’s not just America. If you look at other countries and other times this same percentage shows up. Before Hitler took over the country completely, the Nazi party only got 37% of the national vote, and Mussolini was thought to only have true support from about 20-30% of Italy before he came to power.

Even in smaller groups, like just Republicans in Minnesota, this one third percentage makes itself felt. In the recent gubernatorial Republican primary, Mr. Pillow himself Mike Lindell got 32% of the vote. This is so insane it defies belief, as the man has completely lost his mind over the last decade, and the idea that this many people think he would be a good governor is impossible to understand. Again and again we see this large minority of people acting absolutely bonkers when they make political choices, and it doesn’t seem to make any sense.

People can’t be this stupid … can they?

There are, of course, all the obvious reasons people make dumb choices. Poor education, religious craziness, homophobic beliefs, greed, misunderstanding the true cause of suffering in the world, and a terrible upbringing that teaches people from a young age to harbor racist thoughts. All of these are things we believe are at the core of MAGA and the crazy politics of today, but I think we need to take a bigger view of this persistent trend in a minority of human beings to really screw things up.

The Urge to Destroy

The founder of psychology Sigmund Freud famously described human behavior geared towards destruction as our unconscious “death drive”. He considered it a fundamental aspect of human nature, manifesting as aggression towards others.

Later psychologists built upon his work to describe what has become known as malignant aggression, sometimes thought to be brought about by greed or experiences of pain, depression, impulsivity, and anxiety. When there is no healthy way of dealing with those feelings or experiences, humans often resort to wanton destruction as a way to cope.

It is hard not to see MAGA this way. Voting for and supporting Trump must have felt to many as just a way to tear it all down, a terribly misguided attempt to deal with the fear and trauma they didn’t know how to handle in any other way. It was always doomed to fail, especially with someone like Trump, but in some ways all of us are feeling this same urge to break the American political system and hope it is replaced with one that actually works for the people of this country.

Connected strongly to all of this is how our brains actually work. Although it feels like we are consciously and rationally making decisions moment-to-moment, what is actually happening is the sub-conscious part of our brain decides something, and the conscious mind rationalizes it AFTERWARDS by making up a story to justify the decision.

This happens constantly in all of us, and if you really watch a Trump supporter you can almost see the process in real-time whenever they are confronted with actual facts. They likely don’t even know the true reasons why they support Trump, and that it is their fear, anxiety, and greed built deep into their sub-conscious which makes their conscious mind rationalize the insane things he does. They feel like they are suffering, and in an absence of any other hope they turn to destruction as the last coping mechanism built into their minds.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense

One thing we know about nature is that it absolutely thrives on variety. Everything about surviving as a living creature on this planet depends on three things which have been honed by billions of years of evolution:

1. Genetic mutations must occur at a steady rate to allow a species to respond to changes. Too few mutations and you might die off if things change quickly, too many and not enough will survive when the environment stays steady.

2. Behavior in animals is just as subject to evolution as everything else. Aggression, fear, sociability, intelligence, and everything else about how a species acts is a key factor in determining survival, and these traits must also vary widely and change to allow for survival in any condition.

3. Creatures must be born and die at a rate that allows for these changes to have a meaningful chance to improve survival in changing conditions.

When we look at humans through this lens, having a part of the population which ignores all facts, actively tries to hurt others, and just believes anything they are told because they want it to be true might actually increase survivability in some circumstances. Perhaps historically it has led to greater social cohesion, or for large groups of people to work together when facing a threat. Nature doesn’t care about the morality of our actions, it is just our genes mixing things up constantly both physically and behaviorally so that there are always survival options in a population when things inevitably change.

That a third of humanity behaves in this way is an interesting adaptation, and its persistence across time tells us that it has at least some survival benefit. That’s not to say it isn’t incredibly frustrating to the rest of us, but ignoring it won’t make it go away either. Nature doesn’t plan anything, it’s all just random changes, and whatever helps in that moment of time sticks around, and whatever doesn’t is gradually lost.

What we really have to face

Given all of this, what is it we really have to think about when it comes to the future of this country? I think it comes down to:

1. Understand that many people who support Trump’s craziness don’t do so out of careful reasoning, but because of inner thought processes they are not fully aware of driving an urge for destruction and change. Without the educational and social structure necessary to support them in healthier ways, it is just a natural response.

2. Being a crazy blind follower who ignores reality is heavily baked into the human genome. Religion is completely explained by this alone, not to mention the absurdity of homophobia, racism, and many other forms of prejudice. As long as this trait offers some survival benefit for at least some population of humans, we will never be free of it as a species.

All of the pundits arguing on TV about Democrats and Republicans always seems to skip over the why of it all. They talk about liberal policies and conservative values, as though each of these things is somehow independent of the human animal each of us actually is. Few give much thought to the evolutionary pressures which led us to being so numerous on this planet today, and how this, more than anything else, determines how we form our societies.

In truth, when people are hurting they lash out in destructive ways, and are incredibly good at telling themselves a made up story about why they are justified in doing so. It is no mystery why this problem has become so much more prevalent in recent years, as the draining of our educational system, health care, and social safety nets have pushed more and more Americans into desperate behaviors that are linked back to our most primitive instincts. When this is tied into that third of humans who are also prone to magical thinking, we get a leader like Donald Trump in the White House, and the madness he has brought down on all of us.

So do yourself a favor and stop asking what the right is doing to this country, but why are they able to get away with it at all? What are the forces in human nature that allow this kind of behavior to flourish so strongly right now? I seriously doubt our species changing even more into one that acts with certainty upon things that are false is the answer, but mother nature has fooled her doubters many times, and she cares only about survival. Right and wrong don’t matter at all.

It didn’t go well.

Actually, to be fair, with one we were able to at least agree that Trump’s corruption is out of control. He thought that since Trump believes Biden was incredibly corrupt, Trump took that as permission for him to steal even more from the public, and to his credit it bothered him. Personally, I think this is the sole reason Trump ran for office in the first place, just one more scam in a lifetime of stealing from others, but I was willing to take what small common ground there was between us.

But the other was so deep in the MAGA cult that nothing really seemed to break through. At one point I said, “Trump is the dumbest guy to ever walk through a government building in D.C.”, to which he replied, “name one thing Trump has done that is stupid?” After I stopped laughing at the question, I said “okay, how about that Canada is going to become the 51st state?”

His answer was interesting, if predictable, “Trump said that as a ‘joke’ to annoy the liberals!” I think this is a fascinating response, and it illustrates what we are up against when it comes to MAGA. I pointed out the massive loss in tourism his comment caused, how it pissed off our biggest trade partner, and the billions of dollars of lost exports when Canadians boycotted buying American products. I then asked him this simple question, “do you think all the people in this country who lost money because of his ‘joke’ feel like it was a smart thing to say, or that the country benefitted in any way from the billion dollar cost of his comments?”

He grumbled some kind of an answer which didn’t really apply, and then refused to engage anymore on the topic. When I thought back over the exchange, I came to realize something more deeply than I ever had before: MAGA really believes that no cost is to big a price to pay for fighting the “real” enemy of this country, their fellow liberal or progressive citizens.

That is a enormous difference with our politics today versus what it used to be. We’ve always had differences over the proper way to govern, but in the past we were Americans first no matter what our views. MAGA’s tolerance of Trump makes so much more sense when viewed through the lens of “we just need to fight the liberals!”, and the insanity of him stealing from them, taking away their health insurance, screwing up every important foreign relationship, giving huge tax breaks to the ultra wealthy, and all the rest really does seem to a Fox News indoctrinated citizen as a small price to pay in their battle against the true enemies of this country.

That is what we are up against. Not arguments over policy, not the wisdom of foreign intervention, but the perception built so carefully by rich elites and their media machines over that past few decades that conservatives and liberals don’t want the same thing - a prosperous and happy nation. It was kind of shocking they really believe there is a desire in liberals to actually hurt the United States, instead of just a good faith difference of opinion on the best way to help the nation.

I don’t know how to fix this, but understanding why we are in this situation is always the first step. I’ve been confused for years over why MAGA would support Trump at all, a bloated plutocrat whose whole life has been everything they say they are against, but it finally makes sense when you consider what they have been taught to fear about our country. And to give him credit, there is no one who attacks the left more effectively than Trump.

The saddest part, both for them and all of us, is that MAGA is just being used by the rich in what amounts to the biggest scam of all time. It’s not a new tactic, pitting people against each other to control them for your own gain is as old as humans, but at least some are beginning to break out of the cult and see what is really happening. So far it seems like we are going to get a real election this November, probably our last chance to stop the madness, and I remain hopeful that enough Americans see what is actually going on to stop the descent into the hell of a Trump empire.

At the end of the day what I feel most is sorry for MAGA, in the same way I feel sorry for people who lose their life savings after they were taken in by a scam artist. I felt sorry for this particular guy I was arguing with too, as his life seemed so full of false beliefs and hatred over things that weren’t real that it must be a miserable way to go through life. But it is never easy to convince people they’ve been fooled, and as a friend told me “you can’t logic people out of an opinion they didn’t reach through logic.” That sums up MAGA pretty well, and in my future dealings I plan to keep it in mind when forced to interact with those who are so tragically trapped inside their false political bubble.

These periods correspond to a massive improvement in the lives of the average American. Democrats pretty much created the middle class during this time, along with:

• Social Security Disability (1956)

• Food Stamp Program (1964)

• Civil Rights Act (1964)

• Job Corp (1964)

• Medicare & Medicaid (1965)

• Head Start (1965)

• Voting Rights Act (1965)

• Fair Housing Act (1968)

• Women, Infants, & Children, WIC (1972)

• Supplemental Security Income, SSI (1972)

And if you look back over the last 125 years, it is easy to find other times Democrats have delivered for the citizens of this country:

• Federal Reserve - Woodrow Wilson, 1913

• Social Security - Franklin Roosevelt, 1935

• Fair Labor Act (setting minimum wage, 40 hour work week, and banning child labor) - Franklin Roosevelt, 1938

• Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) - Barak Obama, 2010

• Infrastructure Act - Joe Biden, 2021

It is difficult to find anything similar when Republicans are in charge. You would have to give credit to Eisenhower for creating the Federal Highways (1956), and Nixon for the EPA and OSHA (1970), but both of them did this during Democratic control of congress. The only actual benefit to the average American in the last century that is entirely a Republican initiative is Medicare Part D (adding prescription drugs), which George Bush did along with a Republican congress in 2003.

What we have consistently gotten when Republicans are in charge is a massive increase in wealth inequality, and a mountain of national debt. From 1955 to 1995, peaking slightly after 1973, the richest 1% took home about 10% of all income while the bottom 50% received about 20%. After 1995 to present day, this has completely flipped. The richest now get the 20% while the bottom 50% is very close to that 10%.

Since this is what actually happened in the country, you have to wonder “why does anyone who isn’t rich think Republicans are in their corner?” This belief by some Americans really seemed to get traction in the Nixon and Reagan eras when they began using the term “welfare queens”, all to convince the public that people benefiting from these Democratic programs were scamming them, but it is still surprising that people fell for this given how much better their lives had become due to Democratic initiated programs.

With the way Republican politicians have been behaving lately, I’ve begun to wonder if they haven’t accidentally cleared up some confusion in the public about who they are and have always been, and what this might mean for the future of this country. I’m not the only one thinking this, Senator Rand Paul made a comment recently how his party is being so stupid they could easily bring Democrats back into power for decades if they don’t knock it off.

Republican Lesson #1 - Corruption is everywhere in politics, and we are okay with it!

It is absolutely stunning how much open corruption there has been lately with the Trump regime and the rest of our politicians. There almost seems to be a mad scramble in D.C. over who can commit the most crime, and they all seem convinced with Trump in charge none of them will ever pay a price for it.

I realize there has always been some amount of back room deal cutting, padded contracts, nepotism, and favoritism in our political system. That is just a fundamental part of human nature, and it is practically impossible to stamp out entirely. But what Republicans have done since Trump’s election is completely remove the brakes on the system, and we have this uncontrolled descent into the madness of openly stealing from the public coffers and scamming people out of their savings. People in power can now apparently commit crimes right out in the open without any attempt to hide it, and there is no chance our corrupt Department of Justice is going to do anything, or that the horrific Supreme Court will try to reign it in (just the opposite).

The Epstein files are another example, even though they aren’t primarily about money. Congress and Trump were forced by their supporters into passing a law mandating disclosure, and then they actively blocked and slow walked implementing their own law, convinced the voters will forget or move on to something else before it matters. This is another form of corruption, hiding and protecting themselves and their donors, and it is equally destructive to the Republican brand as their other corruption. It is hard to imagine this not sticking to them long after the details of what they are doing have been forgotten.

For the average citizen, who maybe isn’t following the news super closely, the message sinking in across the country is, “All Republicans, and especially those who support Trump, are corrupt as hell, hiding the truth, and stealing from us”. That lesson will be hard for many to unlearn, even after Trump is gone and Republicans scramble to convince their voters that they either opposed it, or didn’t know. But once people stop trusting you, especially with money, it is practically impossible to get that trust back no matter what you do.

Republican Lesson #2 - We don’t care about anybody except rich, white, straight, Christians.

I tend to suspect all politicians of being in their rich donors pockets, but the way Republicans are so callous and uncaring about citizens who are not wealthy is really shocking. The “Big, Beautiful, Bill” was their opening salvo, and they just keep on hammering home the point that if you aren’t rich, then you should just fuck off and die already.

Republican Representative Nehls recently said when asked what he was doing about the affordability crisis, “Affordability — What are you talking about? I'm going to go there tomorrow, well, over the fourth. I'm going to get me a couple of big lobster tails.” This is such an insane message to tell the people who are struggling, those who must choose between feeding their children or buying gas, that it is along the same lines as Marie Antoinette’s comment on the poor to “let them eat cake”. Add to this the Republican support of Tariffs and the idiotic war in Iran, and they seem determined to crush any and all who aren’t in their rich white mans club.

If there is one thing I definitely will give to Democrats, they are generally not the racist, homophobic, transphobic, poor hating scumbags so many Republicans are. I’m not sure why this is the case, what it is about being a liberal that suppresses this human behavior, but the awful war against immigrants, people of color, other religions, and the LGBTQI+ community is a stain Republicans will have a difficult time convincing future American voters they don’t fully still support.

Republican Lesson #3 - Maybe “socialism” is worth a try?

For so long the beating heart of the Republican message has been: Socialism is the same as Communism and will destroy America! Trump doubled down on this during a recent speech, basically equating all Democrats with “communists that must be destroyed”. This has been an incredibly effective message to keep real progressive change from happening in this country, despite it always being both wrong and stupid.

We have always had socialism here. Everything from the Post Office, public schools, and the road system are all socialist, not to mention the incredibly popular Social Security and Medicare programs. These are all things most Americans love about this country, unless you are one of the rich who don’t need it or can make money by it going away. American people actually love socialism, but seem strangely confused by Republicans connecting it to that dreaded term - communism.

New York mayor Mamdani, who proudly calls himself a socialist, has had an incredible performance since his election, and the recent primary upset wins of multiple socialist candidates is a truly pivotal moment in this country. Add to this the popularity of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others who are pushing out an openly socialist message is a remarkable turning point for what may be possible in the United States. Young people in particular love and support socialist ideas, and they do not have the cold war baggage of us old folk that is often brought to the surface when “socialist” and “communist” are equated in the same sentence.

With Republicans being so incredibly clear about who they are over the last couple of years, and making their main argument to America that socialism will destroy us, it is easy to make the intuitive leap of, “well, Republicans suck, so whatever they say is bad must actually be good right?” That is not the message they wanted us to learn, but that’s what happens when you screw over your own voters to benefit yourself and your rich donors.

It’s not about us liberals

I have no illusion that what I think about our politics matters in the slightest. I’m a lefty, liberal, socialist, progressive trans woman who has known for 30 years who Republicans really are, and I was never going to vote for any of them no matter what happened.

But our political future is not determined by people like me, it is those in the middle, the right leaning Democrats, left leaning Republicans, and the huge number of Independents that control our fate. These are the people who often don’t follow politics closely, or are sort of wishy-washy around issues of gender, LGBTQI+ rights, race, and the governments role in our lives. By teaching these people in a way that is so crystal clear that Republicans:

• Are corrupt as hell, and will do everything they can to protect themselves while stealing from you.

• If you aren’t rich, white, straight, and Christian, Republicans don’t give a shit about you.

• Want you to forget about history, and just be so afraid when they say “socialists are communists!” you vote for them to keep the commie hoard out of your town!

Never has the Republican identity been so clear as it is today, and it is not one that the majority of this country wants anything to do with. They lost us liberals long ago, and I truly believe their tactics of culture war and “communist” fear mongering has lost all real power to affect the key middle demographic, especially among young people.

The road ahead continues to be frightening, but there is some signs of hope that true democratic socialism can come to America, and we can finally get a government that is actually “By the people, and for the people” (Abraham Lincoln).

So I thought it might be useful to explain the name during this Pride month, and why I, as a trans woman, called it The Ugly Tranny.

Tranny as a dirty word

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s in rural America, the worst thing you could call someone was “queer”. It pretty much guaranteed a fist fight right on the spot, and I remember how shocking it was when someone used it out loud.

But then things changed. Even the letters everyone uses nowadays, LGBTQI+, has queer right there alongside lesbian, gay, bi, intersexed, and trans, as the community reclaimed the term queer and made it a point of pride to identify that way. I love this idea, taking a term away from people who use it to try and hurt others, and stripping away its power to cause harm.

I look at tranny as sort of like our version of the “N” word. It definitely isn’t a good idea for me to use it, but for actual black people to say it in song and speech is kind of inspiring, and I think it shows their attempt to reclaim a term that was widely used to cause harm for a very long time. I want tranny to become the new “T” word, something we can use with pride when we connect with each other and speak our truths about the world and our experiences.

And I refuse to be afraid or let others hurt me simply by writing a word or making a sound in my direction. Screw that. Let’s take it back like we did queer, and be unafraid to use it as I have tried to do in a small way when naming this substack.

I don’t mind being “Ugly”

There is an old joke that goes like this: What are the three phases of being a trans woman?

• Phase One: That dude looks strange.

• Phase Two: That guy looks REALLY weird!

• Phase Three: Damn, that woman is ugly.

I still laugh at that. Unless you transition very early in life, like right at puberty, the effects of male hormones are going to influence how you look as a trans woman. Surgery can help, and in our society once you have boobs few even bother to wonder about your gender identity, but the older you are at transition the less traditionally beautiful a typical trans woman will appear.

I’m okay with that. For me and most trans women, it was never about trying to win a beauty contest. The inner pain and turmoil we feel until transition makes any minor concerns over appearance practically a non-issue. That’s not to say we don’t want to be as attractive as possible, but if this was ever your biggest concern then you probably never had the courage to go through the process in the first place. If I had to rate it, I would say transitioning was 99% about just being accepted as the woman I am, and 1% about being seen as pretty after.

So call me ugly all you want, just as long as I’m an ugly woman! That was a trade I was willing to make every day of the week, and twice on Sundays :)

Can I be the Tranny Granny?

Like most older women with kids, one of the things I’m most looking forward to is having grandchildren (come on kids, get busy!) I always liked the term granny, as I think it captures who I am pretty well, and combining that with tranny tickles my funny bone something fierce.

I am 100% sure if one of my future grandchildren introduces me as their “tranny granny”, I will burst out laughing no matter where I am. It sounds funny, perfectly captures my essence, and I would be filled with pride if they were able to say it without a shred of concern over the nasty way it has been used in the past. That is my goal in naming this substack, to give what has become a powerful word back to the people who are or love trans people, and can use it to protect, promote, and improve the community.

I completely understand how tranny can be used today to hurt people, and naming this substack The Ugly Tranny was bound to push a few buttons. Making changes to the cultural zeitgeist is always difficult, and I have no illusions that my small substack will be anything other than a minor footnote in that effort. But we have to start somewhere right?

Thank you for reading this post, your friendly Ugly Tranny really appreciates it!

But what is really the true source of human happiness? Studies show that it is definitely not money, as being too poor or too rich are both equally destructive to personal contentment with life. Poor is easy to understand, as not having enough to survive in the world is a massive daily struggle that blocks everything else out. Being rich is oddly just as bad, as your whole life becomes centered around getting and keeping your wealth, and you start viewing every interaction you have with others with a deep suspicion and mistrust of your fellow humans motives.

Sex is important early on as we have a strong biological instinct to reproduce, but this fades as you pass your child bearing years. Power over others, as we see so commonly as the prime motivator in our politicians, is often just a cover for seeking out more wealth, or a driver of darker human impulses like control, violence, and fear, none of which lead to true happiness for anyone involved.

So what is the secret ingredient to a good life? I’ve learned it comes down to just one simple thing - being creative.

Everyone is creative in some way or another. You might be lucky enough to have a job that lets you express your creativity, or you could do it in your off time through hobbies or volunteering. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have some outlet for their creative impulses, and as long as their basic needs are met this becomes one of the greatest sources of happiness in their life.

As an engineer, I’ve been very lucky to have a job that lets me be creative much of the time. People often say to me, “you have such a strong work ethic!”, but that has never really tracked with how I feel about my job. To be totally honest, I find my work incredibly fun and satisfying, and I’m secretly astonished they pay me to do it. That’s not to say it isn’t boring at times, as writing instruction manuals or doing hundreds of hours of testing can be tedious, but mixed into it are those moments when I’m lost in creative thought on how to do something. Days go by where I barely notice I’m at work at all, and at the end when I’ve created something new, I have never been happier as a human being. I think I’ve been chasing that feeling for the last 40 years, and even now, towards the end of my career, it still feels as good as it did when I first started.

I would bet there is something in your life where you get the same feeling. It could be from writing, knitting, working on cars, drawing, building a fence, planting a garden, or just taking care of your family by coming up with creative ways to meet their needs. Human creativity is an amazing and wonderous thing, and something everyone needs to experience at least occasionally to feel contentment with their life.

But this is where the danger of A.I. and human happiness collide. Being creative is hard work, as it forces your brain into new and different ways of thinking, and the very effort you must make mentally to grow, learn, and accomplish something is what leads to the happiness you feel after. I have seen so many use A.I. to shortcut this process, bypassing the effort creativity takes for the quick fix of an A.I. generated answer, leaving most feeling nothing at all when they are done.

You see this in students using A.I. to generate test answers, people asking A.I. to design their web page, or office workers having A.I. generate the “perfect” response to an email. It can be faster and easier, no doubt about that, but you have bypassed your chance to be creative and tap into that true source of human happiness. Little by little, bit by bit, using A.I. like this chips away at those tasks that allow people to be creative, and it is hard not to shudder at the slow and inexorable rise of misery those caught in this trap will experience about their lives.

Of course, in a perfect world A.I. would just be used to eliminate the drudgery or to boost those without a lot of knowledge into a place where they can be more creative. Having A.I. help you edit something if you aren’t good at that, or just using it as a source for pointing you in the right direction for your own creativity could be good for human society. Unfortunately, with humans being humans, an awful lot of the time it is replacing rather than helping people tap into their inner wisdom, and A.I. companies seem hell bent on completely eliminating human creativity in their quest for A.G.I. (Artificial General Intelligence).

Do yourself, and the world at large, a favor and don’t let A.I. take from you the only thing that will really lead to a happy life, being creative. It is hard to notice sometimes, as we are all so busy and the joy we get from being our truly amazing human selves is often subtle day to day, but months or years down the road when you look back on your life, you will truly be grateful that you didn’t take the easy path and let A.I. do your creative thinking for you.

In both cases, it has nothing to do with their behavior, it is strictly about your pre-conceived notions about what kind of person or place it is. This is the very definition of prejudice, you are literally pre-judging something without even thinking about the specific circumstances and actions, but many only see hatred of Israel because of their faith as bigoted, and anything short of unwavering support is a sure sign you must be an anti-Semite. This is because we tend to associate prejudice only for negative views, when it is just as prejudicial to view everything someone does in a positive way too.

The reason the U.S. is so blinded by Israel seems to come down to:

1. We have this left over savior complex about helping to rescue the Jews during the World War II atrocity, and great sympathy for what they endured.

2. Israel has been extremely effective at manipulating U.S. politics and public perceptions.

3. Generally speaking, the U.S. is pretty tolerant of religious views, and it strikes us as wrong on a fundamental level for Israel’s neighbors to hate them just because of their faith.

4. And let’s face it, Israel being full of white people in a place that is largely not, gives them a strong boost in popularity in this country.

The really strange part is that we, as Americans, have known how dangerous and wrong it is to mix religion into politics from the very founding of this country. Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in making sure the Bill of Rights prohibited the founding of a national religion, with the phrase “a wall of separation between Church and State” becoming one of his best known. Jefferson could look at history too, and knew what horrors mixing religion with politics would do to our fledging nation.

It is of no surprise that when you look at the world today, those governments with a national religion make up the majority of places who regularly experience war and terrorism. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and many others, especially in the middle east, all fall into this category, and although North Korea is not religious in the traditional sense, their forced worship of the leader is certainly similar.

So if your desire is to live in a place with few rights and a constant threat of war, violence, and terrorism, your best bet is to find yourself a place with a religiously dominated government. One of the most frightening parts of Republican ideology is this completely idiotic belief that the country would somehow be better off if we formed as a Christian theocracy. No where in the world, in all of human history, has this ever resulted in a more prosperous and happier society.

Trump, of course, seems to embrace the idea of the merits of a religiously based government, which at least partially explains his support for Israel. Even though Trump is about as religious as my dog, he and all the nut job Christian right wing politicians see it as a short cut to taking over the United States, as bad as that would be for the country and the world. I would call this view treasonous to the very idea of America, but many seem to want to embrace it.

One interesting thing is how politicians of these religious governments use religion to justify their actions, and even Trump tries to do that here too. It is never really about religion, but it makes it very easy for them to call upon the obscure teachings of their faith to justify almost any action they want to take. 99% of the time the real reason is just a personal quest for money and power from the leaders, and whatever safeguards their society has to stop them are much easier to breach when they use “faith” to justify it. Frame everything you want to do as a crisis for your national religion, and you will immediately gain a broad base of support from the indoctrinated citizens.

So where does that leave the average person? Well, if you want to be safe, say nothing or only positive things about Israel no matter what they do. This will keep you from being called an anti-Semite at least, and might even let you score some money from the enormously powerful Israeli groups in this country. They are being quite clever by labeling any criticism of Israel as only coming from hatred of the Jews, since this stops a lot of debate from people who don’t want to be called prejudiced.

My problem is I just don’t give a shit what religion Israelis have, or for that matter the religious views of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., or any other place in the world. You want to worship an invisible man in the sky, a five armed elephant, or a galactic overlord named “Xenu”, then you do you boo. I might walk away when you try to tell me about it, but I certainly don’t hate you because you think these things. It might make me wonder about your reasoning skills, but I’m usually polite enough not to say it to your face.

But your actions are important. You want to attack hospitals, day care centers, and starve civilians then I’m going to have a problem with it, and I’m not afraid to say so. Bring up your religion all you want, it isn’t going to blind me to what you are actually doing in the world, and calling me names like anti-Semite to try and get me to stop is just childish. I would have to care far more about religion than I do for that label to apply, and I think this is true for a majority of Americans.

So please treat those who blindly support Israel when they commit atrocities just as bad as those who hate Jewish people only because of their religion. It is all equally wrong, disgusting, and terrible for the world, and their transparent attempt to use their religion to silence debate around their actions justifies our true contempt for what the government of Israel has become.

Sigh.

No, he doesn’t, and no, he won’t, and my patience for that kind of delusional thinking has always been thin. When I look at MAGA and their love affair with Trump, it so much reminds me of the kind of abusive relationship many people stay in year after year. He treats everyone terribly, but the specific way he shits on his own supporters and still manages to keep them in his camp is really remarkable.

Just to touch on some of the lowlights:

• Giving tax breaks to the rich while stripping away their health coverage.

• Imposing tariffs that increase the cost of everyday necessities and destroy markets for farmers and other U.S. industries.

• Massive corruption designed to put money directly into Trump’s pocket out of tax dollars.

• Starting illegal wars that drive up energy costs, and sacrifice the lives of the very people who support him.

• Incredible scams, mostly on his own supporters, including Trump Bitcoins, Trump Watches, Trump Rx, and Trump Phones (just to name a few).

• Rounding up every brown person he can find to deport and crippling the agricultural industry, raising prices further. Not to mention taking billions out of the social safety net that they contribute and never get back.

• Destroying federal emergency programs that help tornado, hurricane, and fire ravaged areas.

• Trying to give himself and his family immunity from tax fraud prosecution for all time.

Despite all of this (and much more), they still “love” him, with recent polling giving him more than 90% approval among self-identified MAGA. Why? What sort of abuse does he have to heap on their narrow heads before they finally say “no more!”

I’m not an expert in domestic violence, and that is definitely what MAGA’s relationship with Trump looks like, but overall they stay because:

1. They fear retaliation from their social group, and the government itself, if they leave.

2. A trauma bond has formed between themselves and Trump, with the cycles of him stating his affection for them alternating with the abuse he heaps upon them creating a strong emotional attachment.

3. They choose to keep believing him when he lies about it not being so bad, or says things will change and get better (just like every abuser does), often because they don’t understand what alternatives they have to improve their lives.

4. Being part of MAGA has isolated them from others, and they fear they have no place else to turn.

5. Leaving means facing they were wrong, and that is difficult for most everyone.

6. Some are financially tied to MAGA, especially Republican politicians, and leaving means dealing with the loss of that income.

“But”, you might think, “he isn’t actually physically abusing them, so is it really domestic violence?” My answer to that is, “What is worse? Beating someone up, or taking away their health insurance so they die of a heart attack they can’t afford preventative treatment for? Or costing them so much money just to survive that they end homeless after they lose their house?” I know which one of these I would rather endure, and it is all domestic violence.

I’ve heard many say that those in MAGA are part of a cult. I don’t think that’s accurate, as it looks a lot more like domestic violence to me. Not that this is particularly helpful since convincing someone to leave an abusive partner can be just as hard as deprogramming a cult member, but calling it what it is can be helpful in understanding how to fix it.

Like I said in the beginning, I’m not great at tolerating the excuses those being abused make for their abuser. I know it is complicated, but mostly I just want to start screaming at them for not being stronger. And that’s what I want to do with people in MAGA today, as unhelpful as I know that would be.

If you are someone who can truly understand and be kind to the victims of domestic violence, and not just be angry that they put and kept themselves in that situation, I salute you. Please make your voices heard, as it will be one of the only ways we can get those trapped in the cycle of Trump’s abuse back into the world as free Americans.

On the other hand, this is the real world we are living in, not an idealistic utopia. There is no one more than me that wishes none of this mattered, but that doesn’t make me blind to human prejudice as it exists today. Only 28% of congress is currently female, despite being more than half the population, and barely a quarter identifies as non-white, compared to the 40% of the country who identifies that way. From a sheer numbers game, your likelihood of getting elected is cut in half if you are female or a minority.

Kamala Harris losing to Trump is a perfect example. I liked Harris, or at least thought she would be a typical standard politician and not cause a fucking apocalypse like the moron in the White House is currently attempting. But even though I voted for her, at the back of my mind was this worrying doubt that being both a woman and a minority would be more than the population could tolerate. There was some nervous talk about it at the time, but you didn’t see much debate over the wisdom of picking a black woman in the media or democratic circles. Most liberals don’t think it is even a legitimate topic to bring up, and conservatives are still somewhat cautious about appearing openly racist or misogynistic to a population they want to support them.

Being a member of the LGBTQ community is even worse. Only 13 members are currently openly queer in congress, or around 2.4%. This is almost four times less than what exists in the U.S. population, despite being a group that is typically very engaged in politics and has a strong desire for representation.

“But”, I hear you thinking, “what about Barak Obama? America electing him proves we don’t need a white guy right?” I don’t think so, as there were some very unusual factors that came together just right to allow the prejudiced in this country to look beyond his race:

• Just objectively he was a damn good looking man. It’s kind of crazy how attractive he was, and no matter what we want to believe, this mattered in the voting booth for both women and men.

• 2008 was a horrific time for the country after the failures of Bush. The Iraq war and the financial collapse were enormous driving factors that got Obama elected.

• Although Obama was an incredibly talented politician, he also had one real benefit that few others possess - he was VERY new on the scene. He had only been a Senator for two years before running for President, and there just wasn’t time for him to make a lot of bad decisions he could be judged on.

• As disturbing as it is to think about, because Obama was only half black the racists had this bizarre notion that the “white superior” part of him would obviously be in control. This is incredibly stupid, but I’ve seen this argument made on the far right in many different forums, usually while pointing to how little Obama did during his terms to actually improve minority conditions in the country.

Here is my fear: liberals will do what they always do and pick someone without regard to race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, and then act surprised that they have a much more difficult time than they should getting elected. Shouts of “racist”, “homophobe”, and “misogynist” will be heard far and wide when this person is criticized by the right, making zero real difference in the voting booth for the average American who tunes out 95% of this.

For the people in this country who are politically active (a depressingly small number of Americans), it can feel especially good when you use your vote to send a message you think is important. Liberals like it when we can vote for a woman, or for someone who is a minority or a member of the LGBTQI+ community. Not only do they normally have the same values and goals as us, but it feels like a small way of saying “look how progressive I am!” to our friends and family, and it is a rare lefty who doesn’t like to shout this out to the world from time-to-time.

Conservatives get their own special pleasure when they vote for the straight white guy, and can use their vote to “keep those ‘others’ in their place!’ This is not always on a conscious level, for either the left or right, but I would argue it is a huge factor in determining how a person votes. Maybe even the biggest factor for some.

Here is my plea to the Democratic party - please, for once in your life, do the smart thing and really think about what prejudices the average voter has when you pick a candidate. I know we have our values, and they are incredibly important, but if we lose this country completely in the next election then how much does it matter that you stuck to your principals?

If it were just up to me, I’d find the smartest, minority, trans woman who had good ideas and values and put her into the oval office. That would be great from my perspective, but it is a fools errand to actually pick someone who matches this description. I absolutely hate that this is something that matters, but things are just too dire and desperate to not consider it next time around.

So I’m gonna hold my nose and vote in the Democratic primary for the straightest whitest guy that can be found, and try my best to ignore his support for corporations and the rich, lies about being religious, and the mediocre performance he will surely demonstrate on the issues I care about. Why? Because the alternative is going to be a Republican who, if elected, will almost certainly finish destroying what’s left of this country after Trump shuffles off his mortal coil.

A.I. is turning out to be a lot like that. Some good, some bad, and a lot of fears and worry among a population which, let’s face it, doesn’t really understand how any of this stuff works anyway. And I very much include the CEO’s and upper management of technology and other companies in that statement.

Recently, I was asked to look into this problem that A.I. almost caused:

1. A part went obsolete on a product the company I work for makes. This just means the manufacturer no longer sells it, and a replacement or re-design had to be done to keep building the product. This is a very common occurrence in the electronics industry, and I’ve spent a lot of time finding replacements or work arounds. Let’s call this part the “X1B”.

2. Because A.I. tools are very popular nowadays for finding replacement parts, when the production department used it to try and find a substitute, A.I. confidently proclaimed: there is no direct replacement for this part, you will likely need to re-design the product.

3. As you might imagine, this caused quite a stir in the company, as this was one of their major products. But since A.I. had been very helpful in finding other replacement parts that seemed to work fine, they had little reason to think it wasn’t right this time too. Production proposed we re-design the product to fix the issue: a $500,000 cost and a year long delay.

4. Other engineers (all younger than me!) were asked to look into it, and they too used A.I. and other sources to see if this was needed. They tried different A.I. engines, searched in more traditional ways, and all came to the same conclusion: the A.I. was right and we needed to do a re-design.

This is where I came in. As a final check before committing the resources and money to re-design the product, the company asked me to check one last time and see if there wasn’t any other choice. Here is my journey from that point, and I think it very much illustrates what A.I. is, what it is not, and how this new tool will eventually work into a changed human society.

I take the easy route first

Like every other engineer, I started with A.I. tools first and asked the same question, “Is there a direct replacement for the X1B?” It spits out the same answer: there is no direct replacement for this part.

But this confused me. I had used the X1B many times, and it was a very popular part in the electronics industry. I had used a slightly difference version, the X1G, in a brand new design just a year earlier, so it didn’t make any sense that the company that made it would just stop without providing a replacement.

Being older (and a lot more skeptical of A.I.) than my fellow engineers, I went back to the old way of doing things - I manually searched for parts that matched the needed functions. I didn’t care if it was the same manufacturer, I just wanted to find something that would work in it’s place. After a bit of looking around, I came across something obvious: there was an “X1BB” made by the same company as the “X1B”, and it looked like a perfect fit to me!

My first fight with the A.I.

Turning back in confusion to the A.I., I asked “why won’t the X1BB work in place of the X1B?”. It soon replied: the X1BB is not the same size and does not have the same pin configuration as the X1B.

“Aha!”, I thought, “that makes sense”. But still being the skeptical soul that I am, I went to the manufacturer site and called up the actual description of the X1BB to check if it was right. It was not!

What seemed to confuse the A.I. were the trailing letters. The “B” in “X1B” was the size and pinout of the part, and the company that made it kept this for the “X1BB”. The last “B” is still the size, but the first “B” was supposed to indicate that this was the second version of the X1 itself. The A.I. seemed confused by there being two B’s in a row. It didn’t check any of this, it just assumed the trailing letter or letters must be the size, and this didn’t match.

What this shows is how humans can easily break A.I.’s usefulness. They didn’t have to name their part like this, and it is confusing, even to humans. If they had originally named it the “X1-B”, and then the replacement “X1B-B”, the A.I. would likely not have gotten so confused. Since A.I. is not intelligent and doesn’t really understand what I am asking, the very way we create new information that we feed into A.I. will need to change if we want it to be more useful in the future. This is an enormous task, as humans are very inconsistent across all their endeavors, but if we really want A.I. to be the useful tool it can be, then this is something everyone needs to think about going forward.

My second fight with the A.I.

Once again I turned back to A.I. and said, “You are wrong, the X1BB is the same size and pinout as the X1B, do you still think it won’t work?” The A.I. thought about it, and then responded: of course, you are right and thank you for correcting me. However it still won’t work as a direct replacement because the internal address of the part is different.

“Okay”, I thought, “that would be a problem if the address is different”. I again dove back into the documentation to check this and, once again, it was wrong!

This was almost the same problem as before. Different versions of the X1 came with different internal addresses (the X1Q was different), so again the “BB” versus the single “B” confused it, and it was sure that this would be a problem. It didn’t understand from my previous correction that this wasn’t an issue, but at least I felt like I now had a handle on where the A.I. was screwing up.

This illustrates a second problem with A.I., it doesn’t change what it does just because you correct it. Based on what I told it, any human would have understood that the “BB” and “B” version were much more similar than it’s set of data would suggest. But this would have taken a re-working of the A.I.’s training data to make that change in it’s logic, and this is not what A.I. does in response to humans using it. More than anything else, it is this lack of ability to actually learn in the moment which makes A.I. useless in this kind of situation.

My final fight with the A.I.

As I was now curious if the A.I. would give in and admit it was wrong (or I would have even taken an apology at this point!), I posed one more question, “no, you are wrong again. The address the X1BB uses is the same as the X1B”. It quickly replied: thank you for correcting me, I see now that the address is the same for the X1BB. However, the X1BB inputs don’t work the same as the X1B, and you will have to verify this difference will work in your design.

Part of me thinks it was just humoring me about the first two issues and still doesn’t agree the part was the same size or address, but this last point did worry me. If the part functioned electrically in a different way, that could be a major problem. It might or might not work, and I had to figure it out.

So I dug into the actual design and all the documentation. After about an hour of work, I discovered two things:

1. The A.I. was again wrong, the parts worked identically.

2. The manufacturer of this part really sucked at documenting their work.

The documentation for the original X1B did a poor job of describing the part. You had to dig deep into the 100+ pages of information to find details about how the inputs functioned. But whoever wrote the X1BB information was a bit better, and they described the issue the A.I. thought was a problem on the very first page.

This was the whole source of this A.I. complaint. The first page of the documentation for each part, which describes the overall function, was just better and more detailed on the X1BB compared to the X1B. It was this difference in information that made the A.I. throw up an issue, not the actual function of the part itself. You had to dig deep to really understand what the part did, something the A.I. didn’t do. Once again, different humans doing things in different ways can easily break A.I.’s usefulness.

Garbage in, garbage out

This very old computer term perfectly captures the challenges of using A.I. People seem to sometimes think that A.I. has some sort of other thought process or access to information that real people haven’t generated, and it just isn’t true. A.I. is just a fancy search engine, and as powerful as it is, beneath it all are just your billions of fellow human beings feeding in an endless stream of badly formatted, contradictory, and sometimes outright false information. If enough people know about something, A.I. is pretty good at giving you true information, but when it comes to specific details like this problem, it is not good at all at telling you the facts.

I don’t blame A.I. for being wrong, anymore than I would blame a spell checker for taking it’s best guess at a word I completely mangle. The problem society seems to be facing is that:

• People don’t understand that A.I. responses are just a synthesis of your fellow human beings thoughts and opinions, often with different formats, details, and sometimes completely missing and contradictory information.

• If you don’t really understand the topic you are asking about, then A.I. is not going to magically level you up to the point that you do.

Both of these things caused my company to almost make a $500,000 mistake. Production believed A.I. would be a shortcut to really knowing if a replacement was available, and other engineers missed that it was the original manufacturers different way of naming and presenting information that caused A.I. to give completely false answers. It was only my long experience, and the ability to actually understand that the data was from other humans and had to be viewed from that perspective, that let me see the A.I. response to this problem for what it was.

Are these insurmountable problems with A.I.? Maybe. At the end of the day, what the A.I. of today tries to be is a bridge between messy, inconsistent, emotional, lying, ignorant, badly behaved humans and the computer world. It is a problem that engineers have been working on since computers came into existence, and as impressive as A.I. can be, when we really dig into it the problem is incredibly hard to solve. A.I. will probably get better, but it is hard to imagine a day that it will completely overcome the limitations of the data we have used to make it perform.

Garbage in, garbage out, and there are few things that have been fed as much garbage as A.I. My advice, just like when your spell checker changes a word, act with skepticism when using A.I. and trust yourself when things don’t seem quite right. It might be faster and easier to ask, but despite the confident way it answers you, A.I. is not much better than your fellow humans when it spits out an opinion.

As a family we have tried several things. We have treated Father’s day as my day, and just called it my own new Mother’s day, but the kids seemed to feel this was kind of disrespectful to me and it didn’t last long. Making a completely different day also didn’t work, as it was easy to forget and didn’t really feel special for anyone. The kids have always been happy to celebrate all their mom’s on the actual Mother’s day, so this is entirely my issue, and really centers around how I and many trans women feel about motherhood.

To say it simply, most trans women think being able to bring a child into the world with your own body is the most amazing thing there is. When I was younger, I had so many dreams about doing that very thing, and I would wake up incredibly happy before a crushing despair came over me. One of the greatest tragedies for trans women is that we will never be able to do this (unless modern medicine makes enormous and unexpected strides), so I generally counsel all trans people to freeze sperm or eggs before transition as it is as close as you are going to get to being able to give birth to your own biological children.

I know there are all kinds of mothers in the world, most good and a few very bad, and you don’t have to give birth a child to be wonderful mother to them. But one thing I am certain of is if we were capable of giving birth, many trans women would be counted among the most amazing mom’s on the planet.

So let me give my own salute and well wishes to all the biological, step, and trans moms out there on this Mother’s day. There is nothing in the world quite like being a mom, and no matter how you get there or what struggles you have faced, the amount of love, comfort, support, guidance, and just being a welcoming presence for those children in your life is worth more than anything else I’ve ever seen in this thing we call life. Take a bow, moms, you deserve it!

The most frustrating part, at least to me, is that almost none of the topics raised have anything to do with actual trans people. If they were, then at least there would be a chance to educate society. But it is mostly red herrings, made possible only by the publics general lack of knowledge when it comes to trans people, that makes it politically effective to talk about in the current moment. I so often see these things and wonder to myself, “what the hell does that have to do with the reality of being trans?” That’s just before I remind myself that most of these politicians KNOW it is stupid, but are very aware of the power it has over their uneducated voters.

So in an effort to dispel some of the myths, let’s talk about a few of the hot button trans issues of today, and what the real truth is for trans people.

Myth 1 - Men will pretend to be women so they can get access to places to assault them.

This myth is one of the most harmful, often centered around bathrooms, and comes from two core ideas:

1. Men are far more likely to perpetrate sexual violence against women, and they do so in staggering numbers in this country. Given any additional opening, they will exploit it and hurt more women.

2. Any “man” who dresses up as a woman is a sexual deviant, and thus much more likely to be a perpetrator of violence against women.

That men commit the majority of sexual violence against women is easy enough to believe. Any cursory glance at criminal violence statistics will show this is true, and it gives this myth a strong starting point. Men and women both understand this, and the anxiety and fear it brings up in the average person is very real.

However, there is zero evidence that men who want to harm women would pretend to be one to get access. That’s like a Nazi pretending to be Jewish to get into a synagogue, it just isn’t going to happen, and study after study proves this. And don’t even get me started on the bathroom issue, which is one of the least likely places a woman is going to be assaulted. Rapists are the scum of the earth, but that doesn’t mean they are so stupid as to try and attack someone in a place with only one door, people coming in and out constantly, and friends or relatives likely waiting just outside.

The second idea around cross dressing is just flat out wrong. Wearing the clothes of the opposite sex is a well understood behavior in psychology, sometimes called being a transvestite, and is done for many reasons. Sometimes for performance (as in Drag Queens), but most often for sexual gratification as around 3% of the male population regularly engages in this behavior (looking at you Christi Noem’s husband). This is not for violent purposes, they just find it sexually stimulating, or sometimes a fun and semi-outrageous thing to do.

Trans women are not at all connected to either of these ideas. Even if you believe trans women are not actually women, you have to at least concede they think they are, and committing violence against another woman is absolutely the last thing they would do. It would be like attacking yourself, or a straight man targeting another straight man for being straight. The idea is ridiculous, even though it has a firm root in our culture.

And trans women don’t dress as women for performance or sexual gratification purposes either. They do so because (a) it is who they are, and (b) it is part of a long process of transitioning that often includes living in your identified gender for a period of time. The medical community uses this as part of their tests to see if you really are trans, and many of us had to endure a long period of looking like a “man in a dress” before we could move forward in the process.

The funny thing is that I, and a lot of trans women, will often use makeup and dress as feminine as possible in the beginning just to get our identity recognized by the world around us. Once that becomes less of an issue, we fall back and do what most other women do - dress as comfortably as possible as often as possible. I haven’t used makeup in years, and 90% of the time just wear a t-shirt and pants. In a strangely ironic way, this actually makes you pass better in the world as a woman, as no one pays attention to just another typical female going about her business.

Myth 2 - Trans people want “trans for everyone”

If you ask any actual trans person what they think when somebody comes out as trans, the answer is almost always the same, “wow, I feel so sorry for them”. Being trans is just brutal - physically, medically, and psychologically - and not something any of us would wish on another person. It would be like finding out someone has a congenital heart defect and saying, “wow, they are so lucky!”

Being trans is a serious medical issue, not something you want other people to endure. This myth seems to stem from a few ideas circulating in our culture:

1. Transgender is something people choose, not something they are born with.

2. The only explanation for the greater acceptance of trans people today, especially on the left, is a concerted effort by liberals and the trans community to “convert” as many people as possible.

3. Religious people, who have taken on the idea that they are doing God’s work by trying to convert others to their religion, think that everyone does this all the time for what they believe too.

Much like being gay was viewed as a “choice” several decades ago, it is the trans communities turn to be run through this same process. I have little doubt two decades from now we will look back as a culture and see how stupid this was too, but for now we have to live with the idiocy.

I will agree that there is a part of the liberal left which is sometimes, shall we say, a little overzealous in their defense of trans people. Fearing to express doubts or rushing the process, especially when young people are exploring their identities, because they don’t want to be perceived as bigots is a worrying and unhelpful trend. I always counsel slowing down, acting from a place of love and understanding, and utilizing true medical expertise is the right path for anyone struggling with gender identity.

And always remember that trans people are as varied as every other kind of person, and it is very complex to sort through the issues and struggles each person faces. But this reality does not make a quick sound bite for politicians to use, so we too often end up on both the left and right without a true understanding of what it means to be a trans person. Instead, we fight over extreme positions on both sides that are wrong, and it leaves the average person confused and fearful.

Myth 3 - Liberals want to take away little Jonny’s penis!

Trump’s lie about “children go to school and come home trans without the parents knowing!” had a disturbing amount of traction in the last political cycle. The idea is so ridiculous that at first I just ignored it, but that became impossible as more and more people seemed to actually think this was happening.

Why did this lie work so well? I think it comes down to:

1. Extreme distrust on the right for an educational system which, despite the politicians best efforts, is still trying to teach actual facts and reality to students no matter what their parents want. This includes learning about gender and trans issues.

2. Broader social trends which have decreased the power of men in society, leading to much fear in conservatives over the fate of their preferred patriarchy.

3. The shift in liberals towards embracing trans as the next “it thing” they can use to prove their progressive attitude, and really piss off the right at the same time.

All of these have come together in our current climate to make this incredibly stupid lie sound palatable to MAGA. I’m not sure they actually believe it is happening, but because it captures so many of the core fears they have about knowledge, men’s roles, and their desire to oppose the left it has become something they could get behind.

What is really happening for young people today is a tale as old as time:

• Education has gotten better around LGBTQI+ topics, and learning about these issues is happening sooner. This allows more trans people to recognize themselves at a younger age, which is a very good thing for them personally.

• As always happens, youth culture is far ahead of their parents, and the exposure young people get to LGBTQI+ issues through music and movies is extensive. This too helps trans people discover their identity at an earlier age, and the greater acceptance they feel from their peers (and sometimes their parents) makes it easier to express that identity sooner.

Republicans always sound to me like the preacher in the Kevin Bacon movie Footloose, as in “if we ban dancing, then our kids will never do anything we don’t like!” This kind of thing never works, but parents keep thinking it will, despite the millions of examples of kids always doing the exact opposite.

One thing I do fear is that right wing hatred of trans people will backfire and lead some to go down a road they really don’t fit with just to rebel against their parents. Not only will this be bad for them personally, but it will hurt real progress on trans issues. It’s ironic, but the very fact conservatives have elevated trans issues to this degree may lead to it becoming even more commonly expressed by young people, and this could devastate many lives if we aren’t careful.

Actual trans people are mostly just ignored

When I was in college there was a student committee formed one year for putting on a Pride festival. I found out they were doing some trans specific things and had a sub-committee to orchestrate it, so I showed up to the meeting to see if I could be involved and help out.

Two things became immediately apparent: there wasn’t a trans person except me anywhere to be seen, and the people on this sub-committee weren’t interested in hearing from one. The mostly gay and lesbian members were very fired up about doing trans things as they perceived them, while politely telling me “we don’t really need you” when I offered to help. I was shocked at their attitude, but it did show me something I see over and over again in both liberal and conservative circles: find a provocative issue and milk it for all it’s got, no matter what the cost or the reality for the people actually affected.

This is not a new phenomenon. You see it on all male panels debating women’s reproductive issues, or when a bunch of white people start talking about the plight of minorities in America. Those involved may or may not actually care about the issue, but it is always more important to them that they get to USE the subject for their own purposes before any other consideration.

The cultural debates of today around trans issues has all of these same features. Far left and far right non-trans people use it to score points against each other, blindly ignoring the actual cost incurred for their in-the-moment political gain. They will all quickly move on when the next hot topic becomes a reality, leaving us poor trans folk to pay the check on the culture war scars for their political point scoring.

Perhaps, though, this is what it takes for a society to come to terms with something. A lot of nonsense and harm from both sides, before it lands in the predictable place of just being another aspect of our culture that few think about. Being gay or a lesbian seems to have made that transition as it is practically a non-issue nowadays, which is a very good thing, but it would be interesting to speak to someone from the 50’s and 60’s and see if they could have predicted during their difficult times that this is where American culture would end up.

I suspect they would be shocked and surprised, and I hope someday that new trans people will feel a similar way when they learn all we went through to move the culture forward. But I’m an optimist at heart, and I’ve seen this same cycle many times over the last 50 years. That’s not to say it isn’t irritating that few involved in the current trans debates are actual trans people, but that’s how these things always seem to go.

It’s fricking exhausting to be feeling both of these things for the last year and a half, and after the recent White House Correspondents dinner shooting I had the same thought I had after the Butler Pennsylvania attack on Trump:

• Either be sure to get the son-of-a-bitch, or STOP TRYING TO SHOOT HIM!

This awful middle ground, staged as it may have been, where people try and fail is making me crazy. It gives him a boost in his approval, talking points he and his sycophants will drone on about for months, and even though his bloated pathetic ass fell flat on his face when he tried to flee, he is still likely going to get some kind of credit from the manosphere for “surviving” it.

And not to be nitpicky, but has there ever been a dumber plan than the one formed by the White House Correspondents dinner shooter? Just run through the metal detectors on a different floor than the event and then do what exactly? Did he seriously believe that was going to work? It’s just ridiculously stupid, and strains credibility to think that this is the best plan this highly educated guy could come up with. Best case scenario he was trying to commit suicide by cop, worst case this is all the secret service would let Trump do when he staged the whole thing.

I know these are disturbing thoughts, and political violence is something I’ve never believed in or would support. At the end of the day, though, despite being someone who would never willingly hurt anyone and firmly believe that the death penalty is absolutely wrong, these attacks on Trump don’t fill me with much sympathy for the man.

Why is Trump so different that I would entertain these thoughts so easily? I think it comes down to:

1. Defense of Others: When someone is actively trying to hurt the vulnerable, we have a long established legal and moral justification for using deadly force against them. Trump, and most Republicans for that matter, try every day to strip away health coverage, legal protections, and the social safety net for much of America, all while they protect the wealthy and MAGA criminals. These are such vile and evil acts, and will directly lead to great bodily harm and many actual deaths, that Trump may be known one day as the biggest mass murderer in U.S. history.
   Just his shutting down of USAID has already caused more than 750,000 deaths (500,000 of those children), and is expected to rise to 14 million dead because of Trump by 2030. Hitler and Stalin would be jealous of the sheer body count this guy is stacking up.

2. Greed and Corruption: To make it so much worse, the reason he hurts people is to increase his own wealth and power. It has never been about genuine policy differences with Trump, it is always just naked greed and narcissism driving his actions. The motivations are so awful that it makes it that much easier to despise him, and for people to start considering murder as a solution.

3. Desperate Times: I’m an old woman and I’ve never seen anything like Trump. He is such an enormous threat to America and our system of government, something I’ve sworn to uphold and defend twice in my life, that many feel an urgent longing for something that can stop the darkness he is bringing to this country. We hoped that Congress or the courts would protect us, but they haven’t delivered in any meaningful way, and desperate people will do almost anything to survive.

I keep seeing politicians and media talk about the need to “tone down the rhetoric”, as though it isn’t Trump himself who spews 90% of the vile crap that circles the internet. But it is not talking points spurring on the violence against the Trump regime, it is their direct actions to hurt everyday Americans and the people of the world that is driving this train. You simply cannot do so much evil without it stirring up an equal amount of hate, and no amount of “just not bringing it up” is going to help calm things down.

I’m not saying someone should harm Trump, and I hope they don’t and our system of government works to stop him. What I’m saying is that if he does die, I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand why someone did it, or that it wouldn’t be a good thing for America and the rest of the planet.

• The military is already in place in government centers of power.

• They have ALL the really big guns, and are well organized to use them by people trained to obey orders.

• Generals, and even lower ranking officers, are usually quite impressed by their own skills, intelligence, and competence, and equally unimpressed by the civilian leaders voted into office.

It was quite frightening to learn that the military kept Trump out of the situation room during recent activities in Iran. I don’t blame them for doing so, I’m sure he’s a nightmare on every level during active operations, but it is a very troubling sign for our country. Watching Trump, and the ridiculous Pete Hegseth, fumble every aspect of managing the military (including firing those at the top and issuing insane and illegal orders) must be incredibly difficult for military leaders to stomach.

It is easy to imagine certain thoughts are starting to form in the brass. “We have to take over to keep Trump from destroying the country!”, or “Congress is completely broken, we are the only ones who can bring back order!”, and “Trump has made it so bad that liberals are going to take over and destroy the military if we don’t stop it!” are likely percolating in many uniformed heads. Underneath it all, unspoken but always there, is a lust for power, order, and control that every military mind I’ve ever encountered believes in with all their heart.

Don’t think it could happen in the United States? Well, let’s look at history:

1. Argentina was taken over in 1946 by a series of military leaders, with Peron being the most notorious. This was preceded by economic instability, violence, and a desire to go backwards to when the country was perceived as better (sound familiar?)

2. Brazil was captured in 1964 and endured two decades of civilian torture and censorship, caused largely by a failing economy and the countries conservative resistance to progressive social reforms.

3. Greece fell to a military dictatorship in 1967 from fears that the upcoming elections would “empower left-wing politicians and threaten traditional conservative and military support”. This is scarily close to what we might be seeing this November in the U.S.

4. Spain fell hard for more than three decades to the military dictatorship of Franco starting in 1939. What caused it? Deeply divided politics, social unrest, and the conservative factions wanting to cement control of the country.

These are just a few of the hundreds of examples in both recent history and further back. Militaries are a powerful and sadly necessary force, but they can also be very dangerous to the society that creates them. The biggest triggers of a military coup seems to be:

• Highly partisan and divided politics.

• A struggling economy.

• Right wing conservatives, of which the military has more than most, fearing a loss of power that would come with new elections.

• Incompetent and corrupt civilian leadership.

• Civilian protests with the corresponding police violence used to suppress them.

We have managed to hit all of these triggers hard in 2025 and 2026 because of Trump, and it is terrifying. After 250 years the U.S. has become quite complacent in believing our military is no threat to us, but don’t you believe it. Pumping almost a trillion dollars a year, year after year, into this massive organization is incredibly dangerous to a free society, something almost no one seems to want to accept. With Trump’s continuing slide into dementia, combined with a Congress and Supreme Court that has completely failed to reign him in, is setting all of us up for a very dark possible future.

This is not a new or unthinkable fate for America. The founding fathers were extremely worried about such an event, and they tried to make it less likely by creating a Constitution that put civilians in charge of the armed forces. But we have never been so foolish as a nation to elect someone like Trump before, and as bad as his first term was, this second go around is exponentially worse, especially from our militaries perspective. I cringe each time he ramps up the insanity, as it just keeps putting more and more pressure on the system of government we often take for granted. Something is going to blow, and it won’t be pretty for any of us.

As always, vote, write, speak out, protest, and do all you can to support each other. It has never been more dangerous to do these things, but it is all that most of us can do while we wait to see just how bad things are going to get in America.

I think he might have had a point.

Not that I’m blind to what America has been for most of it’s history. For a very long time we have existed under the corrupting influence of the rich and corporations, especially military contractors and oil companies, who personally benefit from us engaging in these acts of war. Combine that with blatant racism and some truly weird religious views that think destroying Iran will bring about the second coming of “Jesus”, and our illegal and insane attack on Iran starts to make sense, at least from their perspective.

I’ve been reluctant so far to comment on the war in the Middle East. I don’t really feel qualified to judge what is happening, and even though I’m a veteran myself I’ve never shot at anyone, plus I don’t know a lot about the region. I only know what is available to the general public about what is happening, as filled with lies and misinformation as these sources so often are. I’m just a simple engineer, LGBTQI+ activist, and long time trans woman trying to understand the world around me, not an expert in foreign policy.

So what I, and I think most people, can do instead to understand what is happening is fall back to the truest thing ever said about human beings - it’s always about the money! If you ignore the lies, bluster, and ridiculous chest thumping toxic masculinity of Trump and Hegseth, and dig deep down into the source of the vast majority of evil in the world, it always comes down to someone figuring out a way to put dollars in their pocket by hurting others. This is as true for the Iranian leadership as it is for the U.S., China, and Russia, and it applies to everything from war, toxic chemicals in our food, religious controls, and the destruction of the environment.

There has always seemed to be two kinds of people in the world:

1. 95% of people everywhere in the world are decent, caring, empathetic, and really just want to have a good life for themselves and their families. They don’t hurt others on purpose, even if it would benefit them, because they know either through education or feel it at an instinctual level that it is just wrong to do that to your fellow human beings.

2. The other 5% don’t think that way. Whether they are missing some crucial element in their psychological, neurological, or educational makeup is hard to say, but for whatever reason it doesn’t bother them to actually harm other people for their own gain. How these people justify doing so is as big of mystery to me as I’m sure it is to you, but they exist in our society in a frighteningly large number, and they tend to rise to the top in positions of power.

As you might expect, this 5% are the ones who actively seek financial, corporate, religious, and political positions as a way to increase their own wealth. We start to throw around terms like “psychopath” and “sociopath” when their behavior is really obvious, but since many can be quite charming and skilled liars we often fail to see them clearly, at least until it is too late.

Although Trump is unquestionably in this 5% of morally bankrupt people, if there is one thing I appreciate about him is that he is just too stupid to really lie effectively. He has charm, no question about that, but his feeble attempts to lie in a way that is actually plausible are laughably dumb. About half of the U.S. population has always seen him clearly, while around 30% are either just plain crazy or stupid enough that no matter what he does they won’t understand it. But it is this last 20%, on which all of our federal elections turn, who are finally beginning to grasp just what a horror show they have put the whole world in by voting for the orange idiot in 2024.

When I look at the world, both today and historically, it always comes down to this 5% battling it out with each other for money and power at the expense of the 95%. Part of it is our own fault - there is something in human nature which seems to want a sociopath to be in charge in case decisions have to be made which we know we couldn’t make ourselves, but might be necessary for us to survive (or will benefit us in some tangential way we don’t want to dirty our own hands with). This fear based instinct is very human, but the price we pay at every level of human society for elevating these kinds of people into power is very steep. We try to pass laws that prevent them from doing irreparable harm to the 95%, but as we have seen so often in the Trump era it doesn’t always work.

Is America fairly called the “great Satan”? I wouldn’t argue with that statement, but I might expand on it to say instead “the leaders of most every country are sociopaths that act in a ‘Satanic’ way when they hurt people for their own gain”. Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Israel, and the U.S. are all obvious examples of this, although most other countries have leaders who show a more subtle version of these same traits. We all put them in there, both because of our fear and because they are the ones who really seek out power, and they keep playing the game they believe is the purpose of the world and it’s people.

So look at our corrupt politicians, corporate CEO’s who deny sick people health coverage or poison our food and the environment, and religious leaders who command great personal wealth while their followers suffer in poverty, and see them for who they are and why we have allowed them into power. Is the suffering they cause worth it for the temporary feeling of safety you might get in knowing we have a crazy psychopath on our side too? I don’t think it is, but history seems to indicate that the frightened people of the world disagree.

Sigh.

This statement perfectly captures what Starfleet Academy and liberal media fails to understand about the public:

• If you aren’t gay, you don’t really want to watch a “gay show”, much in the same way people who aren’t vegetarians, don’t want to see a show about just eating vegetables.

People don’t care anymore if an interesting character is gay or not (and hooray for that social progress!), but for some bizarre reason liberal media companies still think it makes them relevant or, god forbid, “edgy” to show a gay relationship in 2026. This is so lazy and harmful to the LGBTQI+ community that it makes me want to scream, and I’m not the only one.

Despite what this actor said, it is hard to imagine Season 2 of Starfleet Academy being gayer than Season 1 was. Some hard core man-on-man action might ramp it up a bit, but if I wanted that I would rent a porno like every other person on the planet, and skip the middleman (so to speak).

The incredibly frustrating part is their use of the Star Trek universe to push out this dated and uninteresting narrative. Star Trek has so many worthwhile themes:

• How society deals with massive technological changes.

• Showing responsibility for those under your command.

• A love of science, engineering, and the importance of education and knowledge in solving problems.

• True exploration and the courage it takes to face the unknown.

• What loyalty and friendship means.

• Tolerating and accepting differences between species.

• Dealing with hostility in others and the universe.

While a character being gay could have some role in these, especially if it was done in an interesting way that dealt with discrimination or interspecies complexities, just flat out dudes banging dudes (this time in space!) has nothing to do with Star Trek. The actors seem convinced that the fact they are portraying gay characters is what kept the audience away, instead of the reality that it is just boring to watch one moony eyed guy lust after another in every episode. We don’t care! What we actually want to know is where the hell is the science in this science fiction show!!!

Instead of Starfleet Academy, they should have called it Starship Fabulous - The Crazy College Years! At least then they might have appealed to the audience they were targeting, and left us old Trekkies out of it. L-Word was a gay show, Will & Grace was a show with gays in it. Both excellent, but they advertised what they were and delivered on it, and didn’t try to pull a bait-and-switch like Starfleet Academy.

I love the idea of LGBTQI+ inclusion, but PLEASE stop trying to use us to make yourselves sound “woke” or relevant in the world today. You clearly don’t understand anything about what it means to be a member of this community, and every time corporate America pushes this nonsense out into the public it just drags us all backwards in the quest for true equality.

• The ridiculous chest thumping posturing of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and others as they murder people around the world.

• Constant physical and economic aggression by the U.S. towards both our allies and our perceived enemies.

• War on trans women (although cis-women aren’t really doing too well in the Trump era either).

• The rise of the manosphere with shows like Joe Rogan, Logan Paul, Nick Fuentes, and many more.

• Bizarre worship of rich and successful men, and the protection given to the pedophile class in treating them like they really haven’t done anything wrong when they hurt women.

All of these disturbing trends are what we would think of as toxic masculinity, embraced by our culture in a way that it hasn’t for the past five decades. It is interesting to note that the three cultures that recently went to war - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - are all ideologies that have a deep streak of misogyny baked into them (although some are better at hiding it than others). It is easy to connect the dots between these religions and the aggressive physical contests that destroy so many lives and the peace of the planet, both today and historically. After all, you don’t really see too many wars started by Buddhists do you?

As a woman who transitioned more than 20 years ago from male-to-female, I find it so odd that neither cis-men nor cis-women seem to understand why toxic masculinity exists in the first place, or what role it has had in human society. If it were up to me, every trans woman on the planet would immediately be given a PhD in “men’s studies” after transition, as we seem to be the only group that fully grasps the what and why of male behavior.

Consider the life of the average trans woman, especially for those who transition later in life:

1. You are born physically male and treated as such as a young person.

2. Puberty is a huge shock as the torrent of male hormones start to drive many of your behaviors.

3. Most spend the first 20-30 years of life trying to figure out how to be a “man”. Since internally we are not, we have absolutely zero instinct for it, and it is an enormous struggle to try and pretend as though we are.

4. After you transition and lose the influence of male hormones, everything suddenly makes sense. It is not always easy to be a woman, but at least you aren’t fighting against your very nature, and the difference comes so naturally that it feels gloriously easy compared to your previous life. Who you are in society as a woman compared to who you were pretending to be as a man is so great that it is easily the most remarkable aspect of transitioning, although often the least talked about in our appearance and genital obsessed culture.

Several times in my teen years I mentioned to male friends, “don’t you find it hard to figure out all the rules about being a man?” They looked at me like I was speaking complete gibberish, and I quickly stopped bringing it up as they clearly had no idea what I was talking about. Pretending to be a man when you are not is the ultimate deep immersion in a secret acting role you live 24/7, and doing that for 30 years is enough to make anyone an expert in the field of “men”.

While most men understand the effects of culture and their hormones on their behavior, they have a hard time understanding or imagining life without it. Someone I know well, who is a terrific young guy, told me, “it’s crazy what goes through my head. Someone just looks at me funny and all of a sudden these images of bashing their head in swells up inside me”. Many comedians joke that women have NO IDEA the deeply disturbing thoughts that are constantly cycling through the male brain, like a little devil on their shoulder that never shuts up, and would stay away from all men if they ever found out.

I had those same thoughts and drives too, at least until I stopped taking the incredibly powerful drug testosterone, and they disappeared like a crazy person’s dreams. The difference was so profound it shocked me, as we too often ignore the primitive effects of biology on people’s behaviors. Perhaps we are convinced that in today’s modern society we are too enlightened to be subject to any of that, but it just isn’t so.

Women don’t seem to get it at all what men are enduring on a daily basis. It is hard to understand testosterone unless you have experienced it, and there seems to be little sympathy in female society for the drives and behaviors male hormones can create. Women tend to think everyone who is “normal” thinks like they do, and any outward male trait of aggression is just a sign of an unevolved man who hates women and needs to grow up.

You might find it odd to hear this from me, but there are many aspects of what testosterone creates in men that I find noble and worthwhile. Not all men show these traits, and women can and often do act this way too, but deeply rooted in masculinity are behaviors like:

• Being willing to physically stand up and protect those you care about, sometimes to the point of giving your own life in the defense of others.

• Truly taking on responsibility for something you think is important.

• Having a strong drive towards success and work that can result in improvements the whole word benefits from.

• The focus and drive for mathematics, science, and engineering which even today is still a heavily male dominated field.

All of these are things we can and should celebrate in society. The truth is that men and women really aren’t that different, but we are affected by our hormones in ways that encourages behaviors differently between the sexes. I love male behaviors that are expressed as strength, protection, honor, and a drive for success that has so greatly benefitted human society for so long. Separating these good traits out from war, aggression, greed, destruction, and the oppression of women is tricky to do, something all societies have struggled with for a very long time.

Masculinity is not the problem. Having a society that gives as many men as possible the opportunity to turn that energy and drive from testosterone into productive and positive outlets is, and no amount of feminist or liberal media “man shaming” over their biology is going to help. Just the opposite, in fact.

Keep in mind that the drives and energy men experience as part of their biology is a terrific resource for any society that uses it effectively, we just have to keep the negative side effects under control too. This can only be done with understanding, compassion, and smart social policies (not exactly America's strong suit lately).

And always remember this - if you want to know why men do something, just ask your nearest trans woman :)

But history tells a different story. Despite the incredible harm despots like Trump, Hitler, Napoleon, Mussolini, Alexander, Genghis Khan, and many others have caused throughout human history, most of the non-targeted citizens of those societies lived on after it came crashing down. The people of Rome were convinced that if their Empire ever fell, the world would be plunged into eternal darkness never to rise again. Many Germans thought Hitler was all that stood between them and complete annihilation, and the Japanese were convinced that without their God emperor Japan would fall to utter ruin. None of these things happened, of course, even though it was an understandable fear of the people living during those times.

I’m not trying to minimize what happened then, or what Trump is doing to us now. It was and is awful in a way that defies belief, and the suffering of the U.S. population and the rest of the world because of Trump is all too real today. But history is long, and human beings are resilient, so something else always rises up from the ashes of destruction. If you believe, as I do, that “the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice”, then newly born societies from the terrors of the past are generally better than the ones that came before. It very much sucks that this is what it takes for many to move on from their static and stuck past, but that doesn’t make it less necessary.

We have to stop thinking that America failing is something that happened because of Trump’s election. He is simply the most blatant example of where we went wrong as a country, and if it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else like him. Since World War II the United States has lost its way, failing ourselves and the world in multiple ways, and today is just the inevitable consequences of our foolishness:

1. It really started with the formation of the military industrial complex to defeat the Nazis. While necessary at the time, it also created enormously powerful corporations which both benefited from war, and had the incentive to control the politics of the country to make us as fearful and war like as possible.

2. Seeing how effective these military companies became at getting government contracts and controlling the country, many other companies also began lobbying and getting into politics. By the 1960’s money, bribery, and corruption were already getting out of control, and multiple idiotic Supreme Court decisions, especially Citizens United in 2010, opened the flood gates even wider making it so much worse.

3. Once our politicians became simple extensions of the will of their biggest donors, all was really lost for the average citizen. Tax cuts, deficit spending, bloated military budgets, failing to provide universal health care, and stripping away domestic programs were all seen as necessary to funnel more money into supporters pockets. It didn’t matter how much we went into debt as a nation or how much we destroyed the country, the decades long looting of American was all that mattered to those who knew it wouldn’t be them who had to pay the bill when it came due.

4. The rest of the world, especially other western democracies, also directly benefited from our insanity and whole heartedly embraced it. They were able to spend far less on their own militaries because we were driving ourselves into the poor house, and this let them be far more generous with their own citizens. Even America’s enemies benefited, as it made the corrupt enrichment of their own oligarchs much more plausibly necessary.

5. None of this happened overnight, it was a slow and gradual process over decades. The end result has been massively increased corruption at every level, made legal by the bought and paid for politicians, all to benefit the corporations and rich donors. Trump is just the most naked expression of where we have ended up, as he is either too stupid or simply finds it unnecessary to hide what they have all been doing to us for a very long time.

Why was it possible for this to take place in the U.S.A.? Well, as hard as it is to accept, we are the ones who are responsible. It was easy to grow up in the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s ignoring the whispers over the stain of corruption spreading everywhere inside the country, as we were living in what turned out to be a pretty easy time in the history of America (at least if you were white). We had access to cheap overseas products, enough money to buy a house, and jobs were plentiful. It took little effort to ignore the corruption, destruction of the environment, moving jobs to other countries, and letting brown people cut our grass and pick our fruits because it was cheaper. Politics was something only rarely thought about, usually just every couple years, and even then it didn’t seem to make much difference who won.

Although not everyone, most of us just let this happen, because there was still a “middle class” and we were basically okay, working and raising children, and we let ourselves be lulled into thinking that we were the “best” country on earth and nothing bad could really happen. My generation, Gen X, is especially to blame for the attitude of indifference and acceptance that led to things getting this bad. Millennials and Gen Z are pissed off, rightfully so, for where we have let this country go.

But there is an upside:

• I, and many of my fellow Gen Xers, are finally waking up to just how badly we fucked this up for everyone.

• Trump is so bad, and so completely naked in his corruption, that it is impossible anymore to pretend the United States is something it is not. We are a failed state and a third world country in so many ways, and it just can’t go on like this anymore. Something has to change, and there has never been a better time to make real progress in America.

• The rest of the world is finally seeing the U.S. for what it is. Bloated, corrupt, lawless, and only surviving because they keep on pretending and propping us up. They no longer seem as willing to do that, for which I am very thankful.

• Newer generations are getting old enough to make their voices heard, and they seem to be filled with such anger over the state of the world that maybe they, unlike us, will have the courage and ability to really fix this country.

I gain hope when I speak to young people and hear how little they believe the lies I have embraced my whole life. I was far too comfortable focusing on the newly invented internet, hundreds of channels of television, and just accepting the constant “America is the best country in the world!” messaging that began in elementary school and never really stopped. Gen X is often called the Silent Generation, which I often attribute to us being so overwhelmed and distracted by the explosion in media and technology like no others ever had before us. It is hard to focus on what matters when you are desperately trying to catch up the amount of new information in the world, a problem young people don’t seem to have.

To the newer generations, to which all our hope must now turn, let me say from the bottom of my heart - I am so sorry. I didn’t know it would turn out like this, but that is no excuse for my benefiting from it and turning a blind eye to what led to the destruction we are now experiencing with Trump, the economy, and the environment. People tried to warn us, Al Gore especially, but we were too comfortable and found it easier to think about other things and stick our heads in the sand, just hoping nothing really bad happened.

I have great faith in young people, and as much as it sucks you are left with having to clean up our mess, I promise to help as much as I can. Maybe you think it is too little, too late, but I sincerely hope you will let me try.

In the past it was easy to just simply support the troops. They are largely innocent in our politicians shenanigans, and during the wars I have been alive for it was not that difficult to believe that our motivations were pure, at least for the most part. Freeing Iraqis from Saddam’s tyranny, war against the horrific Taliban regime, or even fighting the spread of communism in Vietnam and Korea made some sense to me. Earlier conflicts like World War II were even clearer good versus evil battles, with us being on the side of good.

In all of these past conflicts, I would get very angry when a member of America’s military lost their life. Any soldier dying felt like a direct attack on all of us, and as a veteran myself I greatly sympathize with those who are killed or wounded in these conflicts. It is a very American thing to support our troops, and I have done it proudly all of my life, even though I understand that blind support of everything our military does is just another form of the primitive tribalism we all carry with us.

But like everything else that is going to shit in the Trump era, he is now threatening to destroy even this fundamental citizen behavior. When another country kills an American soldier while defending itself from our attack, or even going after civilians when they cannot overcome our military strength, what are we supposed to do then? Without broad public support that they died for a good cause, we are trapped between wanting to support our troops, and despising the corrupt political system that led to it in the first place. Never in my life have I really had to face the issue Trump is forcing on us with his attack on Iran, and it fills me with so much dread and sadness that it feels almost overwhelming.

Knowing that Trump doesn’t care at all about the lives of our fighting men and women, and he will cheerfully sacrifice all of them if it earns him an extra dollar in his bloated bank account, makes this so much worse. They are, after all, “suckers and losers” in Trump’s mind, and how he is using them just like he is using all of us to corruptly enrich himself and his friends is simply the next step in his sociopathic destruction of America and the world.

Will we, once again, treat the soldiers who return from Trump’s insane wars with the contempt many in the military felt when they came back from Vietnam? Will we all be labeled traitors if we don’t blindly support military retaliation against any country that dares to defend itself from us? I suspect both of these things will come to pass in the not too distant future, with liberals hating the soldiers carrying out these wars, and conservatives hating those of us who dare to break from supporting our tribe no matter what it does.

At the end of the day, this is just another case of Trump corrupting something that used to be good about this country, and sticking more knives into America’s side as he grubs for money and power. Please do all you can to speak out against this terrible new path of the Trump regime, vote against any politician who supports it, and always remember that 99% of soldiers are every bit as trapped as we are in the fascist idiocracy that is America today.

Even though telling lies has always been a part of who Trump is, and increasingly what MAGA Republicans do too, it is starting to feel lately that they just don’t hit anymore with the same impact and degree of shock they used to. In the early days, especially of his second term, watching Trump and his moronic cabinet tell lies was a lot like slowing down as you drove past a car crash. It was horrific, and yet spell binding in a way that made it hard to look away. Each outrageous new falsehood fired me up with righteous indignation, and it felt like maybe this lie would be the one that made his supporters finally wake up to who he has always been, and free them from the spell he has cast over conservatives in this country.

But it hasn’t really happened that way. There is some loss of support for Trump as his lies about the economy and inflation don’t match up with what people see in their bank accounts, and how this has caused a drop in his polling is sadly not that surprising since most Republicans are incapable of caring about an issue unless it affects them personally. But even now, after more than a year of his nonsense, he still maintains more than 30% support from voters, which is astonishingly high when you look at how corrupt he is and how bad he has been for everyone except the rich elites.

Trump is giving a State of the Union address on Feb 24th, and frankly I couldn’t be less interested. It will just be more lies, and watching the Trump regime car crash has gotten so monotonous over the last year as to tip into flat out boring territory. I just don’t care what he is lying about anymore and find it physically sickening to listen to any of it, and I’m certainly not alone. The only real value in his lies is you can be about 90% sure the opposite is true for whatever he says, and that is easy enough to pick up from shows like Meidas, Dave Pakman, and even Breaking Points (if you ignore about half of what Saagar says).

Maybe to put it in terms our reality show President can understand, your sixth season really sucks, and I’m bored watching you and your pack of messy bitches run around causing chaos and harm wherever you go. Your antics were never funny, but I have to admit in the beginning it did make me angry and engaged enough to watch.

Trump continuously telling lies is not sustainable, because as much as it shocked all of us in the beginning, he has forgotten the most cardinal rule of show business - you can’t keep on doing the same old schtick forever and expect to keep your audience. Shame on you Donald for forgetting what you should have learned doing The Apprentice, after all it was the only thing you ever did in life that you honestly succeeded at.