March 28, 2024

The peculiar political moment

The marbles are loose, y'all

We’ve arrived at a peculiar political moment.

It might be fair to say we’ve been in one for quite some time.

But within the last few days/weeks, those elected to represent us have shown time and again an egregious inability to govern with any common sense, decency or intelligence to boot.

While no, I’m not surprised by this development, I believe it necessary to bring a few things to attention.

Our President decided to take it upon himself to demonstrate his ability to make a power move and try to drastically shift policy.

By taking to social media to note that he intends for his administration to root out all transgender individuals from the military (an impossible task at that, by the way), Trump has made a non-issue an issue. As the acknowledged largest employer of transgender people in the nation, the U.S. military had begun its shift toward inclusion of transgender individuals.

Military leaders were not flocking to Trump to exclaim how it was needed to shut out transgender individuals because they were some nuisance standing in the way of their jobs.

Far from this being about making the military better, more efficient, or whatever distraction of a fake excuse defenders of Trumps’ declaration will declare this all to be about, transgender people are not a problem.

They’re not a problem in your military. They’re not a problem in your bathrooms. They’re not the problem that people imagine them to be.

That understanding of the transgender “issue” is rooted in false notions of what it means to be transgender, the likes of which not nearly enough people try to even understand. You might not “understand” why people are transgender or struggle to come to terms with their gender identity, but fanning the flames of hatred and ignorance gets no one anywhere.

This is a game for Trump. He only wishes for this to rally his base, and for him to look strong while making something of a definitive decision.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Department of Defense as a whole showed how blindsided everyone was by this statement by Trump.

“There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said. “In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions.”

It should be blatantly obvious to anyone who picks up their daily paper, sits at their computer, picks up their phones, and decides to read a few articles that no major figures in the Department of Defense were clamoring for this change.

Trump did it because he felt like it.

Later on that day Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief (which basically means “friend of the court” brief in which new guidelines or policy decisions are suggested in this case) in which the brief suggested that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not protect discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Title VII without question does protect employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. That is fact.

All this means is that the current White House administration wants to ensure those who have lost employment due to their being queer have no case in court.

This administration is playing board games with people’s lives for the sake of what, exactly?

As if this were enough, time to revisit the issue of health care.

Repeal, replace, redraw the bill. Re-smash all of our heads into our desks because Republicans have had years to try to figure out how to craft the bill they want and they just tried to smash through some scratch paper with some different colored crayon drawings, some Elmer’s Glue and macaroni.

And now the Trump administration is looking into possible investigations that white people have been discriminated against in college admissions process. It’s like one ongoing kindergarden finger-painting, but the kids mean better.

Well, I’d at least give the kids more credit for trying to be creative.

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Contact the writer:

@Kaleb_M_Carter

email: kacarter@crestonnews.com