In the news today: How far will the Supreme Court go to promote trans ingnorance and anti-trans bigotry? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Above: Protesters of Kentucky Senate Bill SB150, known as the Transgender Health Bill, cheer on speakers during a rally on the lawn of the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, Ky., March 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley, File)

Here's a repost an updated version of yesterday's blog on this topic which you can read here.

In addition to the legislators I wrote about yesterday, the newly elected trans member of the House Sarah McBride, and Leigh Finke, trans member of the Minnesota House, the trans people and their parents being interviewed on TV (at least on CNN) are also doing a great job of conveying their humanity to those willing to listen to them.

This is the crucial part. Who are the people who are willing to listen with empathy rather than entrenched prejudice based on a combination of ignorance and bigotry. How many of them are open to changing their minds?

There are so many people who consider others to be less than human because of their beliefs. This is especially true when if comes to members of the LGBTQ+++ community and in that group those who are transexual.

I am lucky enough to live in Oregon. If the Supreme Court rules against gender affirming care for adolscents my state and the other states in white below will turn red. 

This case isn't really about trans, it isn't about medicine, it isn't about saving lives, it isn't about  what people like Kristen Waggoner, President, Alliance for Freedom says it is as I write this. 

What it is is another battle in the war against woke. For the anti-woke zealots and bigots it is their Fort Sumter occupied by the Union. They are the like the South Carolina Militia bombarding it with artillery while local resident of Charlston cheered from the shore. This is considered the start of the Civil War. The believe they have to take as they did in 1861. 

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Thank you Sarah McBride and Leigh Finke, you are among our best people to lead the charge to stop the GOP's anti-trans vituperative juggernaut. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Sarah McBride, the first openly trans person elected to Congress. She will serve in the House representing  Delaware's at-large congressional district.

Update Dec. 4th:

Leigh Finke is also a spokeperson for the trans community. She is the first trans person elected to be a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. She was interviewed on CNN this morning as part of the coverage about the Supreme Court dealing with the decision on gender affirmng care for minors. The more people like her who can make the case for acceptance of members of the trans community the better.

This is a congressional district that includes the entire state of Delaware.

The photo above is from the Wikipedia page on the  Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) which was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. As far as Trump and his minions go, science be damned. They are loath to learn the facts about why people end up being trans or any of the other colors on the Pride flag. While he won't send actual storm troopers to destroy data I doubt any research into sexuality will be funded by the federal government under Trump.

I was a therapist for 40 years and I don't know why some children feel they aren't the gender some think they are or ought to be. When I refer here to gender I mean male or female, the designation that goes with being born with a penis or a vagina and all the assumptions made by society that assume male and female babies will grow up to be heterosexual. Remember that old term?

At 80 I am old enough to remember when there were no letters at all. People who weren't what was often called "straight" (progressives don't use that term anymore) were called gay or lesbian. Before that the term gay was frequently used to refer to men and women. Here's a history of how the designation with all the letters came to be.

In the 1990's when more and more letters were being added to LGBT the term cisgender was coined to differentiate these people from those who were transgender.

Now the letter list stands at LGBTQIAP+ or  LGBTQQIAAP. One can be forgiven for having to look up what each letter stands for (here for example).

I never gave much thought as to research into reasons why some people realized at various ages they weren't heterosexual and/or cisgender. I assumed it was biological. If they were clients I just accepted them for who they were and tried to help them with the problems that brought them to therapy. This wasn't the kind of political issue that could make the difference between electing a president who believed in American democracy and one who planned to become a dictator.

As a therapist I knew about, and was appalled by, the conversion therapy movement which was peaking in the 1970's when I recieved my MSW degree and went to work in community mental health. This was debunked and deemed harmful by the vast majority of the mental health community including people who were Freudians who, like me, saw that this was one of the things Freud was wrong about. He thought it was caused by something that went amiss in early childhood. He thought the same thing about schizophrenia which we now know has a biological cause.

I assumed that we didn't know absolutely positively for sure what led to various kinds of sexual identities but I knew that most experts strongly leaned towards a genetic and biological explanation. Below is what they say.

Here's the Google search.

Most people know about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany (see Wikipedia). I suppose that we can say that we've come a long way in the United States in that homosexuals are not actively persecuted. Still, until 2003 homosexual activity was illegal (read article).

We've even come a long way since I was a child and the grownups probably speculated behind closed doors about Liberace, Boy George and Pee-wee Herman. Today gays and lesbians simply have been too well intergrated into our society and culture. Now we have Elton John, Ellen DeGeneres, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, and Pete Buttigieg. 

We're a celebrity culture. Trump would never have been elected president the first time if it wasn't for "The Apprentice" and his movie cameos. Of course many of his picks for high positions in his administration gained prominence on Fox News.

Unfortunately, of all the known trans celebrities until now none have achieved the celebrity status of people who are garden variety gay or lesbian. Here's a list of 70 trans celebrities.  I know who Laverne Cox (who was in Orange is the New Black)is and Chaz Bono (Sonny and Cher's son) and they have been outspoken advocates for trans rights. How many of the other 70 do you recognize?

Finally we have a trans person, newly elected member of the House, Sarah McBride, to lead the charge for trans acceptance and trans rights. Thanks to the ignorant bigot Nancy Mace with her large dangling crucifix earrings she is getting far more attention in the media than she otherwise would have.

Nothing says "I'm holier than thou" than giant crucifixes hanging from your ear.

McBride has been catapulted to being a major  spokesperson for trans rights. Here's a Google News search for her. She comes across not only as articulate but as, dare I say, completely normal. Yes, normal.... a normal smart woman. How normal is she? This is from her X page:

The latest poll indicates that there are 92,329 binary and nonbinary transgender people ages 16 and older living in the US. This has beeen made to seem like an extraordinary number even though it is out of 335,893,238 people living in the country. Read: Largest survey of transgender people in the US reveals key insights at a time when trans rights are under attack.

Consider the Gallop poll shown here and below (click to enlarge):

It should be a no-brainer to see why Trump and the far right selected transgender people as the group out of all of these to use to scare people. Simply put with an illustration (below) they are the only colors on the rainbow flag that involve medical treatment and ultimately surgery.

Of all the letters or Pride flag colors all of them involve, in addition to one's identity, actual behavior. 

Trans is different. Even the word "trans" in chemistry means the "molecular structure in which two particular atoms or groups lie on opposite sides of a given plane in the molecule." With a person, in order to get to the other side of the "plane" gender affirming surgery is necessary.

Someone can live a life as any of the other letters or colors and never have to be treated by medical specialists in this area. While to varying degrees all of the other letters, or the colors in the Pride flag, have been used as ammunition against so-called "woke," Republicans have had the most success with the colors representing trans.

Because children often realize that they don't belong in the body they were born with before they are old enough to get medical treatment on their own this has helped the Republicans with their campaign of lies about progressive schools allowing children to have a gender reassignment operation against the parents will.

I'd rank Trump's anti-trans rhetoric right up there with his anti-immigrant scare rants with swaying the election his way.

We need Sarah McBride and more transgender people to tell their stories about their experiences growing up knowing that their body gender didn't correspond with the gender they knew they really were. They need to humanize the experience.

As someone who represents the most demonized and fright-inducing member of the LGBTQ+++ community she is well postioned to be an advocate for all the other people and their loved ones and friends who are fighting the measures being taken in states and school systems across the country to remove LGBTQ+++ education fro the curriculum.

While Trump and many of his inner circle aren't capable of empathy, hopefully some of those who voted for him are, and they will get to know Sarah McBride and admit to the errors of their ways.

Listen to Sarah McBride here.

Update:

It must be noted that perhaps in most instances, parents and their teenaged children are the ones to seek medical help with gender transition such as hormone treatment. This is case about to go to the Supreme Court.

Excerpt:

NASHVILLE — The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider for the first time whether states can ban certain gender transition medical treatments for young people — a closely watched case brought by three transgender teens, their parents and a doctor, all seeking to ensure health care access they say is critical.

At issue is a Tennessee law barring transgender minors from using puberty blockers and hormones, treatments the state characterizes as risky and unproven. Lawmakers said the state should instead encourage adolescents to “appreciate their sex, particularly as they undergo puberty.”

The court’s ruling might have implications for the more than 100,000 transgender adolescents living in Tennessee or one of the 23 other statesthat has banned using the drugs to treat minors with gender dysphoria. The question of whether and how to medically treat young people whose gender identity is different than their sex assigned at birth has become a polarizing issue, one President-elect Donald Trump seized on in advertisements targeting transgender people during his campaign.

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Trump won't turn the FBI into the KGB or the Gestapo. He'll turn it into the TBI, by Hal M. Brown

Perhaps because there have been reports that say that going back 20 or 30 years Donald Trump was, most likely unbeknownst to him, being groomed by Russia's KGB to be an asset, the news these days says that he is planning to turn the FBI into his personal KGB.

Yesterday I wrote that Trump was certainly going to turn the FBI into his personal Gestapo (here).

I just as easily and perhaps more accurately could have said the was going to turn it into his personal KGB. I wondered what the differences were between these ruthless agencies of oppression and punishment which were used to stiffle dissent in dictatorships. Here's what I discovered:

The Gestapo and KGB were both notorious secret police organizations known for their brutal tactics and widespread surveillance. The Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany, operated during the 1930s and 1940s and was responsible for enforcing Nazi ideology and suppressing dissent. The KGB, the secret police of the Soviet Union, operated during the Cold War era and was known for its extensive network of informants and its ruthless tactics in maintaining control over the population. Both organizations were feared for their ability to infiltrate and control every aspect of society, leading to widespread fear and paranoia among the citizens they targeted.

Methods of Operation

The Gestapo was known for its brutal tactics and widespread use of torture to extract information from suspects. Gestapo agents often relied on informants and surveillance to identify individuals deemed as enemies of the state. Once targeted, individuals could be arrested, interrogated, and sent to concentration camps or executed. The Gestapo also engaged in propaganda and censorship to control public opinion. Similarly, the KGB employed a range of tactics to maintain control and suppress dissent. This included surveillance, wiretapping, and infiltration of dissident groups. The KGB was also known for its use of psychological warfare and disinformation campaigns to manipulate public perception.

From This vs. That.

My sense is that Trump will draw the line at sanctioning assassination and torture, but that he will use the FBI to make the lives of his enemies miserable. Even if he can't see them convicted, let alone tried, for crimes which if found guilty would end them up in prison he will enjoy watching them sit in court like he had to do in the E. Jean Carroll trial.

Trump will not turn the FBI into the KGB or the Gestapo. He will turn it into something far more personal and unique to him. While Putin and Hitler used their national police departments to thwart and when possible eliminate any opposition to their governing they did this to instill in fear and deter people who might be considering acting against their government they did it not out of an abiding, a deep seated, need to get revenge against them. 

In most instances it wasn't personal. An exception might be opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza who was been sentenced to 25 years in jail in Russia for charges linked to his criticism of the war in Ukraine and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenk.

With Trump I expect that in many, if the majority, of the cases it will be personal. Trump is like a bloodthirsty predator that has been kept confined for four years. Even though he's been free to roam around he's like a vicious beast who has been kept in a small zoo cage for people to gawk at. He's about to be freed. He sees potential victims who having been taunting him. There's no cage to stop him from devouring them, from ripping them limb from limb.

Doesn't literally have to hunt them down himself. He will have thousands of armed agents with the power to arrest people 24 hours a day whether they are at home in bed, watching their kids playing sports, or at work. 

You might as well coin a new name for this cadre of hunters. While they might now be called FBI agents it may simply be called the TBI. 

Of course they will not just investigate. Just like the KGB, which stands for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, which translates to “Committee for State Security," they were more than a mere committee. (The KGB has been replaced by the FBS, which is translated to the Russian Security Service). Like our FBI, the Russian federal police do more than investigate. Once they find a criminal to arrest they may break down doors and drag people who resist into custody.

It may not be long before politicians and others including journalists, and even bloggers, have knocks on their doors with agents flashing badges like these:

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Of course Trump will make the FBI into his Gestapo, they raided Mar-a-Lago. Between this, Stormy Daniels, and E. Jean Carroll he's had his pants pulled down in public. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

The highest American military rank is a Five Star General. I wouldn't be surprised if as Commander in Chief he starts wearing a uniform with six stars.

The following blog has adult language.

With Trump his self-worth is all about his self-image as Mister Macho the Lord High Pussy Grabber Emperor of the Manosphre and star of the MAGA Mega hit Phantom of the Phallocentric Opera.

He now has his Himmler in Kash Patel who he's decided will be able to turn the FBI into his personal Gestapo.

Currently the agency's mission is to "protect the American people and uphold the Constitution and it's top priotiries are as follows:

• Protect the United States from terrorist attacks
• Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations, espionage, and cyber operations
• Combat significant cybercriminal activity
• Combat public corruption at all levels
• Protect civil rights
• Combat transnational criminal enterprises
• Combat major white-color-crime
• Combat significant violent crime

In case you haven't noticed there's nothing above about punishing a president's political enemies.

The appointment of Kash Patel is yet another decoration on the icing already on the Trump kakistocracy cake he has been belligerently baking to usher in his version of an American Nazi country.

Trump is on a malevolently manic quest to prove what has obssessed him since he came of age.  He has based his self-image on being a tough guy who could dominate women and have them fawn over his masculine magnificence. This is where Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll come in to understanding why he is intent on turning the government into a retribution army with himself as the Commander in Chief with the newly minted rank of Six Star General. He wants to be actively engaged in the war against his enemies so he might as well has an outfit to fit the part.

Some psychology

First it was Stormy Daniels mocking his manhood by likening it to a toad character in the game Super Mario Kart.

As a Google News search (here) shows this was a widely reported story. If Trump, the business mogul, reads Business Insider he may have seen this article.

As if this wasn't enough, Trump ended up having to sit through the E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse and liable trial where he had to make sure he conveyed a combination of boredom, disgust, and anger all the while knowing full well he was guilty and would have negative press coverage including unflattering drawings of him published.

He managed one small victory out of this with his mug shot photo being on t-shrts and posters,  but he still had to spend time he'd rather be using to hold rallies and playing golf sitting in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable courtroom in a city that had long since turned against him.

You can look up Trump emperor has no clothes on Google News (here) but you already know how this comparison of the delusional narcissistic emperor and Trump became a meme. It even let to an artist making these statues Below: From the Wikipedia page with this name:

Is it any wonder that Trump is out to prove that he has to rise above both Washington, the country, and the world as the biggest, meanest, most manly manly man ever to emerge from between his mother's loins causing the obstrectics nurses who are now Trump voters to swoon.

Addendum: I would add that Patel has said that he will use the FBI to go after the members of the media who enabled Biden to win illegally. He said this would be both criminally and civilly. As far as I can tell, the FBI doesn't investigate civil crimes unless they involve civil rights violations. Is he going to say Trump's civil rights were violated? That would be a precious piece of prevarication.

Personal: When I was a reserve police officer in Mason Michigan I was on the area muti-agency hostage team because I was also a psychotherapist and the director of the Mason Mental Health Center. We met once month with ranking police officers from the larger departments, the State Police psychologist, and FBI agents. Once we met at the Lansing Airport where FBI agents passed around types of equipment they would use in hostage situations on airplanes including firearms. On another occasion an FBI agent made an unannounced social visit to my house in an unmarked red mustang which had been confiscated in a drug raid. He showed me what he had in the trunk. Not only was there an assortment of firearms but all kinds of electronic gizmos for surveillance. I can't image any of the agents I met ever doing what Kash Patel and Trump want them to do.

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Could Elon Musk become vice president, and eventually president? By Hal M. Brown

CORRECTION: Amend everything I wrote below. A friend on Facebook just pointed out that Musk can't be president because he isn't a natural born citizen.

Last night I posted a second blog for the day: "The quickest exit for Elon Musk will be if he steals Trump's thunder. If he goes is this is a good or bad thing? "  It featured 11 AI images of Musk like the one below. The image above is also AI.

This morning I got to thinking about how Musk could end up as vice president and be positioned to become the next president. If the United States had a President Musk the richest man in the world would become the most powerful man in the world. 

Musk, the star man, has boldly gone where no man has gone before.

He has actually moved into Mar-a-Lago. 

I wouldn't be surprised if he manages to not only have a White House office but a bedroom there. Perhaps Melania can move into her parent's house. Then Musk could have her bedroom. 

Historically there have been 10 very influential First Ladies (see list).  Eleanor Roosevelt is probably the best known. Musk could end up being the first person Trump sees in the morning and the last person he sees at night with pop-in rights to the Oval Office thoughout the day.

If the sun could shine in the White House he'd literally be Trump's shadow. He'd be the shadow president. He'd have to be careful not to throw shade on Trump and he'd have to play his ambition cards very close to his chest. One thing I think he has in common with Trump is that he doesn't have a true best friend. Perhaps they could, for the first time in their lives, have a true best friend. 

One thing he has in common with Trump is that he seems to spend as much time posting and re-posting on his X page (here) as Trump does on Truth Social. You can follow Trump's posts there without subscribing on the Trump's Truth website (here). The two posts below show that they are perverse peas in a pod.

Below is his Thanksgiving card to the nation.

When I see how uninhibited Musk is in the scene below I can see how this lack of restraint is attractive to Trump. Trump tries to losen up physically as evidenced by his attempts to dance.

Musk often is pictured wearing his "Occupy Mars" t-shirt. I have to note that I am not totally against trying to settle people on Mars, but I think it is telling that instead of Musk having a shirt that says "Colonize Mars" his says "occupy" as if it is a country we are going to war against.

I assume he was the only man at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Thanksgiving party wearing a t-shirt. This time it was an "X" t-shirt. Again, below, we see Trump expressing affaction toward his pal.

When I see photos like the one below I see more affection coming from Trump than I see him expressing for anyone except Barron. This includes Melania. 

When I look at the photo below I wonder what is going on in J.D. Vance's mind.

I think it is fair to say that Vance wasn't happy when he saw the photo below:

Below: This was on TikTok (here). I don't know if is real or AI but it went viral (read article) so it hardly matters. Vance, if he saw it, can't be happy about it.

While there has been considerable speculation about who would be more dangerous to democracy a president between Trump and, should he die or become seriously ill, J. D. Vance. 

I haven't seen anyone address the possibility that Musk could become vice president and thus be positioned to become president either during the next fours years or in the next election.

Trump can fire anybody in the Executive Branch except Vance. Presidents can't fire vice presidents. They either have to die or resign for the president to nominate a new vice president:

25th Amendment: Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

If Trump wanted to replace Vance with Musk he'd have to persuade Vance to resign, or get rid of him in other ways - Considering the Supreme Court decisions on presdiential immunity I'll leave it to you to ponder on what methods he might employ if Vance didn't agree to leave gracefully.

I haven't give any thought to how differently Musk would govern than Trump, or J.D. Vance who seems to be 100% behind implementing the 2025 Project. Neither Trump nor Vance have what I'd call a social conscience. Musk's biographer says "Elon Musk doesn't have a natural feel for empathy or emotions, says his biographer who's followed him for three years" (read article in Business Insider).

My friends and I have concluded that J. D. Vance would be at least as dangrous to democracy if he was president as Trump. We haven't dicussed who would be a president who is more dangerous to democracy between Trump, Vance, and Musk. I have only begun to think about it today.

I think all three would want to govern in a dictatorial manner. I think Trump would be the most ruthless and bloodthirsty dictator intent on revenge against his enemies. Trump is sadistic. Vance and Musk don't really seem to enjoy watching people who cross them suffer. They may have enemies but I haven't seen examples of their wanting to inflict pain on them and want to enjoy seeing their lives ruined.

Addendum:

On graph of how boring a president could be, Trump will not be boring, anything but. He's a perfomance artist. Between the weave, the nicknames, the hyperbole, those he picked to be at his Madison Square Garden rally, and his willingness to do the outrageous (like some of his Cabinet picks) he's a Pandora's box of provocation. Vance would be a boring snoozer. Musk is also a performance artist. He might be even less boring than Trump. 

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