I enjoy your writing and appreciate your perspective. That’s why I’m a paid subscriber. Sometimes, however, I feel that you start to stray into a form of “ both sideism” when you’re staking out the middle or moderate ground of an issue. Political scientists and historians who have been studying our political parties for the past few decades appear to have reached the consensus that the right wing as constituted in the present day Republican Party has grown extreme. The Left wing as constituted in the Democratic Party has for the most part remained the same. Bernie Sanders and AOC, two people most view as “ far Left” hold views of government that aren’t very different from FDR, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson or Walter Mondale. In the social and cultural realms Democrats have indeed broadened their views from the 1960’s on to embrace the civil rights of African Americans, women, and LGBTQ+ . While fringe left wing groups in the 1960’s and 70’s were indeed radical like the Weathermen and Black Panthers, they were never embraced by the establishment of the Democratic Party. And while Communists and Socialists have been part of the Left wing for more than 100 years, they have always been small and for the most part out of the mainstream. When we look at the modern Republican Party it’s a very different story. Over time, they appear to have embraced a good portion of Christian /Evangelical Nationalist thinking. This has been coupled with a semi Libertarian view of government that has come to hold the most extreme views. Government is viewed as so evil that on taxes, for example, where each Republican member of Congress has taken a pledge to NEVER vote to raise taxes regardless of the needs of the country. On the cultural and social fronts they have gone against almost any movement to expand the rights of every group and have attempted to make the country adhere to a religiously conservative framework. So applying a “ both sides” are wrong but in just different ways philosophy to our political parties, as I feel sometimes you tend to do, I believe fails to fully recognize how radical one of our parties has indeed become. Had we followed the desires of most Republicans, as a woman, I would still have to get my husband or father’s permission to get a credit card, we would still have White and Colored separate drinking fountains, and my gay and lesbian friends would still be hiding their basic identities, just to cite some few examples. So please, in your journey for moderation and rationality, please do not paint “ both sides” with the same brush. The Left has any number of faults. After all it has to include a wide variety of viewpoints, but I believe it in no way matches the radicalization of the modern day Republican Party that has grown more and more strident in its views and narrow minded in its beliefs. Equating both sides makes it harder to recognize the seriousness of the threats to an open and democratic society.
Thanks for your response, but I must disagree. The Democratic Party has taken a disastrous turn on the issues that matter most in a democracy--the cultural issues. You hint at the problem when you say that Republicans have "gone against almost any movement to expand the rights of every group." Groups don't have rights in a democracy; people do. The absence of rights for black people was a disgrace and thankfully we rectified that--but liberals then made the very same mistake by trying to enforce their vision of a society based on group identity. Their arrogant attempts at social engineering alienated a great many people, including me. They disdained traditional values; they tried to "understand" criminal behavior; they tried to impose a neutered, politically correct language (think Latinx) right down to pronouns. I am appalled by the violence done to our culture by the left...and frightened by the extremereaction from the right. That isn't an attempt at "both-sides" thinking. It is what I truly believe. You should give some thought to your inability to understand and appreciate that.
I guess we’ll disagree as I continue to appreciate your writing. I don’t doubt that you truly believe that the Left has done greet harm to “ traditional values” in the country. I would agree that as in all major cultural changes there are excesses, and often those on the Left were voiced by various groups who were not part of the Democratic Establishment or part of any formal party platform, but were used to paint all Democrats as nit pickers of so-called politically correct nomenclature. It was a way to convince people that the Left were “ elites” and “ looked down” upon regular folk. As for picking on “Latinx” ( a common one that is made fun of), my daughter, who is not Hispanic, just attended an Orange County Latin judges association meeting and she was surprised to hear that they referred to themselves as Latinx! So what one group wants to call themselves at any given moment may not be what another group of the same background may agree with. When I was in college, people of Mexican descent were referred to as “ Chicanos.” It’s not that big a deal. “Black” was in and then out as “African American” took its place, and now Black is back in and both are fine. That should be the worst the Left has to imprint on American culture and values! I think you’re being way too harsh on the Left when compared with what I believe are major sins on the Right. Yes, we now seemingly all agree that the Civil
Rights Acts of the 1960’s were too long in coming, but few people calling themselves conservatives were in favor of any of it. The country eventually accepted that there were gay people living amongst them, but it certainly didn’t come out of the “ traditional values” of the Right and it would have never happened had activists on the Left not kept pushing for it. I could go on and on. Political Correctness was mocked and in many ways turned on its head, but its origins were a push for people to simply respect one another and to acknowledge that the ways we had acted towards various groups ( yes groups) in society were no longer acceptable. If, for example, asking that people call someone “ gay” instead of “ fag” was politically correct then I think it was a traditional value amongst many others that deserved to die. The same thing happened with “ woke.” It was purposely turned around to be used as a cudgel with the false claim that learning about the darker episodes of American history was for the purpose of making White people feel guilty, when in truth Woke was the hope that by learning all aspects of our history we could do better as a country going forward. Of course there are extreme thinkers on the Left. But they are small in number to what has seemingly become a majority of the thinking on the Right and which is particularly exemplified by the current Republican Party. And unlike the few extremists on the Left, the right holds real political power and in a frightening way. Whatever the cultural excesses of the Left, I believe they pale in comparison. Some acknowledgement of that would be helpful.
You say so much good, but then you draw a connection, a line, between transgender or those people that have gender fluidity and the killing of Charlie Kirk. That is bewildering. How about drawing a line between those people that are unclear about the eating of meat, or about the benefits of burning fossil fuels, of or the benefits of vaccines? What exact evidence do you have for bashing gender fluidity and linking it to violence? And do you know that some people are born chromosonally one sex but are hormonally expressing as if they are the other sex? You lose me when you go there, that is not the middle. Most of us "in the middle" also would prefer for people to be non-fluid regarding their gender, as we would also prefer for people not to be born with ADHD, or with constant hormonal imbalances, or with depression. And please be clear, as you have been both sides on this, do you think that a couple that is the same sex, marries, has/adopts children is less worthy than a couple that is opposite sex. You have written both ways on this. I am dissapointed with you on this issue, but your call to have the Democrats go on a "tour" about transgender as a mea culpa to Charlie Kirk is offensive. What does the Goddess say on this?
I draw no line between Kirk's assassination and transsexuality. I do point out that those considering a sex change tend to be more troubled than those who do not. Sometimes this results in violence--a story told all the way back to Dog Day Afternoon. We should be aware and careful about this. To answer your other question: It is undoubtedly true that children with father-figures fare better; it is also undoubtedly true that most gay couples prove to be fabulous parents. Think about it. Slightly conflicting, but both true. We need to be able to process complexity if our ways of thinking are to be accepted by the mass of people.
Thank you for the reply. Again, I ask you to consider the fluidity of what we call gender. I know this from personal experience, not me personally, but people close to me where the hormonal gender and genetic gender differed at birth. Gender is more of a fluid continuum than most people understand. I only came to understand that when it came to my family. All good now, but boy did I get an education that there are many people that have had a TRUE gender battle undergoing inside of them for years. On the issue of the slightly conflicting dual statements, I agree, they may be both true. But you said "father figure" not father. Do you really know the studies that show that kids with two parents that are male/female have better outcomes than children that have two parents of the same gender? I do not, happy to review them. I did what we all do, checked ChatGpt and yup, confirmed that there are no mainstream medical/social science peer-reviewed studies that show what you say. Actually, there are some studies from the Netherlands that show that children from same sex marriages perform better.
John--The studies are there. Obvious. And the Democrats should have been responding to them ever since Pat Moynihan pointed it out in the 1960s, on much less evidence. As a result, they have been lying about traditional family structure. The public not only noticed this, but was offended by the obfuscation. Hence, Trump.
Thank you. I appreciate this.. I will read the book. I wish the Democrats who can’t define what a woman is step back on gender ideology that impacts women and our civil rights to our own sports, prisons, private spaces for safety. Many of the adults who self identify as women are deviants and male. You can look at an incident this weekend with USA cycling race in CA- women protesting for the women’s race which had three males in the race (one who won of course) and they were threatened by intimidation and threats of violence. Gender ideology doesn’t work in law and society and shouldn’t be introduced in schools as it directly impacts usually same sex attracted and/or autistic students. It’s regressive!
You have nailed it, Joe, identifying the MAGA movement as a wide-scale pogrom, the first to be bolstered by social media and, um, cynically exploited by a segment of the Jewish population. That certain elements of the liberal establishment needed to be slapped on the head is undeniable - but aligning with these modern day Cossacks is unforgivable - looking at you, Alan Dershowitz. It does not serve the long term interests of the State of Israel or the Jewish people to suppress free speech or engage in this campaign of retribution and hatred.
And, yes, the election in ‘26 will be won by the party that works less hard to lose it. The Republicans are doing what they can by bringing on ruinous stagflation, arresting every Hispanic they can find and declaring war on science. The left wing is currently countering by clinging to their censorious lecturing tone, ever eager to demonstrate their moral superiority.
Gay marriage and acceptance was essentially a rights issue, about which a broad swath of Americans could agree (the exception, ironically, being self-proclaimed Christians, clinging to fear). The trans issue is primarily a mental health issue, much more complex and less amenable to certitude. Yes, there is fluidity; no, we don’t have to send our kids to the surgeon at the first sign of complexity. Left to their own devices, most kids labeled “trans” will grow up to be perfectly normal gays and lesbians and Bis - there are a lot of choices out there and there is no need to manipulate our bodies, our selves in order to be part of the latest trend. Here, as in so many areas, the Dems need to set aside performative morality and simply let feeedom ring.
On his album “Oh Mercy,” Bob Dylan had a song that asked the question, “What Good Am I?” Maybe we could all give that album from almost forty years ago another listen. https://youtu.be/4uheKys6BMs?feature=shared
I enjoy your writing and appreciate your perspective. That’s why I’m a paid subscriber. Sometimes, however, I feel that you start to stray into a form of “ both sideism” when you’re staking out the middle or moderate ground of an issue. Political scientists and historians who have been studying our political parties for the past few decades appear to have reached the consensus that the right wing as constituted in the present day Republican Party has grown extreme. The Left wing as constituted in the Democratic Party has for the most part remained the same. Bernie Sanders and AOC, two people most view as “ far Left” hold views of government that aren’t very different from FDR, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson or Walter Mondale. In the social and cultural realms Democrats have indeed broadened their views from the 1960’s on to embrace the civil rights of African Americans, women, and LGBTQ+ . While fringe left wing groups in the 1960’s and 70’s were indeed radical like the Weathermen and Black Panthers, they were never embraced by the establishment of the Democratic Party. And while Communists and Socialists have been part of the Left wing for more than 100 years, they have always been small and for the most part out of the mainstream. When we look at the modern Republican Party it’s a very different story. Over time, they appear to have embraced a good portion of Christian /Evangelical Nationalist thinking. This has been coupled with a semi Libertarian view of government that has come to hold the most extreme views. Government is viewed as so evil that on taxes, for example, where each Republican member of Congress has taken a pledge to NEVER vote to raise taxes regardless of the needs of the country. On the cultural and social fronts they have gone against almost any movement to expand the rights of every group and have attempted to make the country adhere to a religiously conservative framework. So applying a “ both sides” are wrong but in just different ways philosophy to our political parties, as I feel sometimes you tend to do, I believe fails to fully recognize how radical one of our parties has indeed become. Had we followed the desires of most Republicans, as a woman, I would still have to get my husband or father’s permission to get a credit card, we would still have White and Colored separate drinking fountains, and my gay and lesbian friends would still be hiding their basic identities, just to cite some few examples. So please, in your journey for moderation and rationality, please do not paint “ both sides” with the same brush. The Left has any number of faults. After all it has to include a wide variety of viewpoints, but I believe it in no way matches the radicalization of the modern day Republican Party that has grown more and more strident in its views and narrow minded in its beliefs. Equating both sides makes it harder to recognize the seriousness of the threats to an open and democratic society.
Thanks for your response, but I must disagree. The Democratic Party has taken a disastrous turn on the issues that matter most in a democracy--the cultural issues. You hint at the problem when you say that Republicans have "gone against almost any movement to expand the rights of every group." Groups don't have rights in a democracy; people do. The absence of rights for black people was a disgrace and thankfully we rectified that--but liberals then made the very same mistake by trying to enforce their vision of a society based on group identity. Their arrogant attempts at social engineering alienated a great many people, including me. They disdained traditional values; they tried to "understand" criminal behavior; they tried to impose a neutered, politically correct language (think Latinx) right down to pronouns. I am appalled by the violence done to our culture by the left...and frightened by the extremereaction from the right. That isn't an attempt at "both-sides" thinking. It is what I truly believe. You should give some thought to your inability to understand and appreciate that.
I guess we’ll disagree as I continue to appreciate your writing. I don’t doubt that you truly believe that the Left has done greet harm to “ traditional values” in the country. I would agree that as in all major cultural changes there are excesses, and often those on the Left were voiced by various groups who were not part of the Democratic Establishment or part of any formal party platform, but were used to paint all Democrats as nit pickers of so-called politically correct nomenclature. It was a way to convince people that the Left were “ elites” and “ looked down” upon regular folk. As for picking on “Latinx” ( a common one that is made fun of), my daughter, who is not Hispanic, just attended an Orange County Latin judges association meeting and she was surprised to hear that they referred to themselves as Latinx! So what one group wants to call themselves at any given moment may not be what another group of the same background may agree with. When I was in college, people of Mexican descent were referred to as “ Chicanos.” It’s not that big a deal. “Black” was in and then out as “African American” took its place, and now Black is back in and both are fine. That should be the worst the Left has to imprint on American culture and values! I think you’re being way too harsh on the Left when compared with what I believe are major sins on the Right. Yes, we now seemingly all agree that the Civil
Rights Acts of the 1960’s were too long in coming, but few people calling themselves conservatives were in favor of any of it. The country eventually accepted that there were gay people living amongst them, but it certainly didn’t come out of the “ traditional values” of the Right and it would have never happened had activists on the Left not kept pushing for it. I could go on and on. Political Correctness was mocked and in many ways turned on its head, but its origins were a push for people to simply respect one another and to acknowledge that the ways we had acted towards various groups ( yes groups) in society were no longer acceptable. If, for example, asking that people call someone “ gay” instead of “ fag” was politically correct then I think it was a traditional value amongst many others that deserved to die. The same thing happened with “ woke.” It was purposely turned around to be used as a cudgel with the false claim that learning about the darker episodes of American history was for the purpose of making White people feel guilty, when in truth Woke was the hope that by learning all aspects of our history we could do better as a country going forward. Of course there are extreme thinkers on the Left. But they are small in number to what has seemingly become a majority of the thinking on the Right and which is particularly exemplified by the current Republican Party. And unlike the few extremists on the Left, the right holds real political power and in a frightening way. Whatever the cultural excesses of the Left, I believe they pale in comparison. Some acknowledgement of that would be helpful.
Thank you! Saved me from writing a response. Sometimes I wonder if paying for this drivel is worth it.
thanks Joe
Outstanding. Thank you!
You say so much good, but then you draw a connection, a line, between transgender or those people that have gender fluidity and the killing of Charlie Kirk. That is bewildering. How about drawing a line between those people that are unclear about the eating of meat, or about the benefits of burning fossil fuels, of or the benefits of vaccines? What exact evidence do you have for bashing gender fluidity and linking it to violence? And do you know that some people are born chromosonally one sex but are hormonally expressing as if they are the other sex? You lose me when you go there, that is not the middle. Most of us "in the middle" also would prefer for people to be non-fluid regarding their gender, as we would also prefer for people not to be born with ADHD, or with constant hormonal imbalances, or with depression. And please be clear, as you have been both sides on this, do you think that a couple that is the same sex, marries, has/adopts children is less worthy than a couple that is opposite sex. You have written both ways on this. I am dissapointed with you on this issue, but your call to have the Democrats go on a "tour" about transgender as a mea culpa to Charlie Kirk is offensive. What does the Goddess say on this?
I draw no line between Kirk's assassination and transsexuality. I do point out that those considering a sex change tend to be more troubled than those who do not. Sometimes this results in violence--a story told all the way back to Dog Day Afternoon. We should be aware and careful about this. To answer your other question: It is undoubtedly true that children with father-figures fare better; it is also undoubtedly true that most gay couples prove to be fabulous parents. Think about it. Slightly conflicting, but both true. We need to be able to process complexity if our ways of thinking are to be accepted by the mass of people.
Thank you for the reply. Again, I ask you to consider the fluidity of what we call gender. I know this from personal experience, not me personally, but people close to me where the hormonal gender and genetic gender differed at birth. Gender is more of a fluid continuum than most people understand. I only came to understand that when it came to my family. All good now, but boy did I get an education that there are many people that have had a TRUE gender battle undergoing inside of them for years. On the issue of the slightly conflicting dual statements, I agree, they may be both true. But you said "father figure" not father. Do you really know the studies that show that kids with two parents that are male/female have better outcomes than children that have two parents of the same gender? I do not, happy to review them. I did what we all do, checked ChatGpt and yup, confirmed that there are no mainstream medical/social science peer-reviewed studies that show what you say. Actually, there are some studies from the Netherlands that show that children from same sex marriages perform better.
John--The studies are there. Obvious. And the Democrats should have been responding to them ever since Pat Moynihan pointed it out in the 1960s, on much less evidence. As a result, they have been lying about traditional family structure. The public not only noticed this, but was offended by the obfuscation. Hence, Trump.
here you go, Joe https://thebigmiddle.substack.com/p/rejecting-violence-building-consensus
Thank you. I appreciate this.. I will read the book. I wish the Democrats who can’t define what a woman is step back on gender ideology that impacts women and our civil rights to our own sports, prisons, private spaces for safety. Many of the adults who self identify as women are deviants and male. You can look at an incident this weekend with USA cycling race in CA- women protesting for the women’s race which had three males in the race (one who won of course) and they were threatened by intimidation and threats of violence. Gender ideology doesn’t work in law and society and shouldn’t be introduced in schools as it directly impacts usually same sex attracted and/or autistic students. It’s regressive!
You have nailed it, Joe, identifying the MAGA movement as a wide-scale pogrom, the first to be bolstered by social media and, um, cynically exploited by a segment of the Jewish population. That certain elements of the liberal establishment needed to be slapped on the head is undeniable - but aligning with these modern day Cossacks is unforgivable - looking at you, Alan Dershowitz. It does not serve the long term interests of the State of Israel or the Jewish people to suppress free speech or engage in this campaign of retribution and hatred.
And, yes, the election in ‘26 will be won by the party that works less hard to lose it. The Republicans are doing what they can by bringing on ruinous stagflation, arresting every Hispanic they can find and declaring war on science. The left wing is currently countering by clinging to their censorious lecturing tone, ever eager to demonstrate their moral superiority.
Gay marriage and acceptance was essentially a rights issue, about which a broad swath of Americans could agree (the exception, ironically, being self-proclaimed Christians, clinging to fear). The trans issue is primarily a mental health issue, much more complex and less amenable to certitude. Yes, there is fluidity; no, we don’t have to send our kids to the surgeon at the first sign of complexity. Left to their own devices, most kids labeled “trans” will grow up to be perfectly normal gays and lesbians and Bis - there are a lot of choices out there and there is no need to manipulate our bodies, our selves in order to be part of the latest trend. Here, as in so many areas, the Dems need to set aside performative morality and simply let feeedom ring.
On his album “Oh Mercy,” Bob Dylan had a song that asked the question, “What Good Am I?” Maybe we could all give that album from almost forty years ago another listen. https://youtu.be/4uheKys6BMs?feature=shared
Here's my take for what it's worth. https://themjkxn.substack.com/p/for-what-its-worth