January 6 — and Transphobia — Make Some People Feel Empowered
They enjoy the illusion that they’re the deciders.
Earlier today, I wrote: “The Republican Party’s ongoing attempts to overturn the 2020 election and subvert democracy, and its attempts to eradicate transness and queerness, are facets of the same phenomenon.” I asked readers to provide their own connections, so I suppose I ought to provide one too.
I didn’t have anything particular in mind, but I took a walk under the trees, and a few things surfaced.
These Connections Felt Easy to Me
Five ideas surfaced quickly for me. These felt obvious.
Neither Trumpism nor transphobia belongs to the reality-based community
In 2004, when I was in journalism school, the phrase “reality-based community” came into play. A Bush administration official had said that reality-based judgments are
“not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality...We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
After a decade of that, the party was set for Trump to enter, and by now we’re deeply into the…
