Comment by Capricorn2481
6 hours ago
This is a great example of a well put together, level-headed analysis, that I still think misses some key facts about how right wing propaganda works.
> Tolerance of mass border crossings was probably a more directly fatal error, representing a final decoupling of the democratic party from their ideological roots in the labor movement which was always militantly against illegal immigration
Both Biden and Obama turned away more immigrants than Trump did in his first term. And Clinton is the kind of denying asylum. The idea that we just had completely open borders and nothing was being done about is a fabrication.
> Something like 0.6% of people identify as transgender in the United States(1). They are vastly over-represented in the media, in left wing political programs, and in the general zeitgeist at large relative to their population size
If you actually pay attention to who is talking about Trans people, it is the right. Liberal media may be occasionally baited into arguing about it, but to say it was a major platform is a perception the right crafted. Fox was talking about it 24/7 leading up to the election [1]. Musk and Trump were tweeting about it constantly. They ran political ads saying they wanted to convert your kids to trans ideology. It's gotten so bad that our current president just harasses women that look kinda manly, saying they are trans.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-covers-transgender-issue...
If the Democrat leadership weren't going all-in on this ideology despite the demonstrable harms it's causing, the Republicans would have almost nothing to say about it.
As an example, replacing sex with "gender identity" in prisons policy has inflicted considerable harm on women prisoners, who have been sexually assaulted, raped and impregnated by male prisoners who were transferred to the female prison estate on the basis of their supposed "female gender identity".
Feminist groups like WoLF spoke up on the horrors of this first, and the Republicans followed when they realized they could capitalize on this politically. But really it shouldn't have happened at all.