Inauguration Blues

I’m behind enemy lines, and I don’t like it. SIGH

So as a member of the renaissance faire community, a lot of my acquaintances and many of my friends are to the Left. Since I’m selling my goods to them, I have a reason to keep politics out of my social media, and out of my business. I’m a firm believer that no one should do political stuff at their business… you’re there to sell stuff, not stump for your favorite politician. Do that on your own time. But I digress.

I can’t just “be Right.” This puts me in a very uncomfortable spot. I suppose it’s useful for Vine, because I can bring information over here and let you know what’s being said off to the Left of social media, but I still don’t like it. This morning, it was everyone talking about how “the gays” will need to go back into the closet, and “I’m not going back into a closet!” Felicia, I don’t believe anyone told you to go into a closet, and Trump isn’t anti-gay, and has NEVER been anti-gay. But whatever.

There’s this need to lump sexual orientation (gay, lesbian, and bisexual) in with gender orientation (girl, boy, undefined). It’s how we ended up with LGBTQIA+++ instead of the original LGBT. Many of the gay folk and the “I changed gender because I had to, and I’ve stayed under the damn radar and WANT TO CONTINUE staying under the radar” crowd are pissed as hell with the TQIA+++ folks, because they’ve ruined a lot of stuff that the older people have worked damn hard for.

So when Trump said his bit about the government recognizing only two genders, male and female, I knew what he was talking about. His executive order on the topic, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism…, is very explicit. Forms, specifically government forms, will list biological sex. I can see that there may be some issues going forward, with long-standing people who changed their gender (not sex) many years ago and have been living discreetly and happily as the gender they’ve chosen, are suddenly being forced to change all their paperwork. It may be that the order will be understood to ignore those few people who sincerely make the transition. I like to think so. But nothing in the order says people can’t choose to be whoever and whatever they are. It just says that for government and federal forms (which include medical ones) and for single-sex spaces like changing rooms and bathrooms, biological sex will be more important. Again, this may be a problem for a few people who are well integrated into society in their new gender… I suspect no one is upset about a biological male who looks like, acts like, walks like, and sits to pee like a woman using a woman’s bathroom. We’re upset about bearded individuals with intact male genitalia hanging out, changing with our teen girls.

But people on the Left have grabbed onto that and are in a froth. I am not.

That was the only part of his speech that concerned (but didn’t bother) me. I’m happy to hear we may be taking back the Panama Canal, though according to the Left people on my social media, the Panamanian people are going to fight us tooth and nail and we should think hard before we “commit our military to a fight they can’t win.” I’m not sure they understand how tiny Panama is. I mean, the population of the entire country is less than half of the population of New York City… If we want it, we’ll take it back. I’d just like to make sure we dot our “i’s” and cross our “t’s” before we do so, is all. I adore classifying Mexican drug cartels as terrorists, because it opens up so many amazing channels for getting rid of them. I have visions of them at Guantanamo Bay…

Basically, right now the Left is melting down over “us going to war” and the dismantling of all Biden’s “hard work” (their words, not mine). They’re concerned that we’ll be putting people into concentration camps. They’re absolutely 100% certain that Musk did a Nazi salute last night, and that Trump’s preparing ovens as we speak. Still, the rhetoric from the Left is not as extreme or panicky as it was during the first time Trump got in. I think in the back of their minds, they know that they’re not going to be damaged if they stay within the law. They worry the laws will be changed under them (and that’s a valid concern, especially since that’s what they were doing for the last four years). They’ll survive.

On February 3, I begin my weekly posts of “which of these freedoms have you lost since Trump became president?” I intend to do them pretty much every week, or possibly every 2 weeks. I don’t want them to be ignored. I want them to be dreaded, because they can’t come up with anything to point at. What’s most important is, I don’t think they understand that if they DO lose a right, and can vocalize it to me, I will bring it up to others and we’ll discuss it and see if a) it’s real and b) it’s moral/right/lawful. If it’s real and it’s wrong on some level, we’ll talk to congress critters and see what needs doing. The Left doesn’t expect that. But it’s literally the RIGHT thing to do.

I’m happy Trump is in. I think we’re going to have a bit of a bumpy ride for a bit, but it helps that many of the Left are self censoring and self isolating themselves into Left only camps. As people abandon Facebook and Instagram, it becomes more polite, less angry, and more educational. We’ll see how it goes. Any bets on how long it takes for BlueSky to implode?