Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Politics and governance are full of meaningless gestures. The problem with such gestures is that many Americans don’t realize they’re utterly meaningless. Instead, they infuse them with massive amounts of unearned importance and then proceed to freak out when government makes a contrary but still meaningless gesture.
That is what is happening today as the Left reacts to President Trump’s rescinding of Obama’s guidelines to public schools as to which bathrooms “transgendered” kids can use. In all fairness, this is actually the first logical thing Trump has done since taking office, even though the move is still meaningless.
Back in May of 2016, Obama issued that directive to schools via presidential fiat (what else?), and then had it quickly put on hold by a federal judge – the guidelines were never widely implemented and carried no weight beyond a threat to cut federal funding that was likely beyond Obama’s power to accomplish without congress anyway. And now, the guidelines have been repealed. Zero actual change.
From the reactions on the Left, one would have never guessed Trump’s proclamation changed exactly nothing.
“’We all know that Donald Trump is a bully, but his attack on transgender children today is a new low,’ said Rachel Tiven, chief executive of Lambda Legal, which advocates for LGBT people,” Daniel Trotta wrote for Reuters.
Nothing like hyperbole to spin up the snowflakes. For their part, the Trump regime said they were pressed to act now because of a pending Supreme Court case that pits a “transgender boy,” Gavin Grimm, against the Virginia school district that wants the student to use the bathroom that matches her plumbing.
“’I’ve faced my share of adversaries in rural Virginia. I never imagined that my government would be one of them. We will not be beaten down by this administration,’” Reuters quoted Grimm as saying.
The many levels of stupid here are akin to a rotten onion, it just gets worse and worse as you get closer to the core. First, no one is beating Grimm or any other confused kids down by telling them they can’t just use whatever bathroom they want. Second, or, really probably first: who in fact gives a damn who uses what bathroom and where? I understand that people, generally social conservatives, do care about this, but then social conservatives care about a lot of dumb shit that isn’t any of their business. Seriously, it’s just a place for kids to relieve themselves and smoke cigarettes; why not just make them all co-ed and solve the “problem” that way. Third, Obama’s guidelines were dumb and pointless to begin with and were only issued to gin up the ultra-left base for Hillary.
And, let’s try to remember that this entire stupid issue goes back to one stupid, liberal democrat city council, that of Charlotte, ND., that tried to tell private business owners in the city that they have to let anyone use whatever bathroom they wanted. This prompted the state to pass a law that overruled Charlotte’s city ordinance. This then was spun up by the media into a furious shitstorm of stupidity that resulted in calls for boycotts and other idiocy; ultimately culminating in Obama’s idiotic guidelines to schools.
Conservatives have couched their argument against Obama’s guidelines as one of state’s rights, and of course they’re not wrong; the federal government has no business issuing blanket, one-size-fits-none rules for the entire nation to follow. It should be up to each and every individual local school district to decide how to handle the relatively rare case of a kid not believing they’re the gender they actually are. Of course, this whole thing could be have been completely avoided by getting government out of the indoctrination of schoolchildren. But then, of course, after a few generations of people actually becoming educated, the federal government would cease to exist – and that just won’t work for the oligarchs.
So, expect stupid fights about stupid shit concerning schools to continue, while the schools themselves carry on churning out kids who don’t know much about anything when they graduate.
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