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There's actually a very easy choice of "embrace individual responsibility" and stop blaming people for the actions of other just because they're in a tangentially related group. Most people of basically any demographic you can think of are law abiding citizens, even the black population with the highest rate still only has a third with a felony conviction of any kind, yet alone violent felonies.
Individual responsibility cuts both ways. Criminals should not be defended and forgiven because "oh but they're just poor" or "but society left them behind!", and innocents should not be blamed for the acts of criminals. Whether they be responsible gun owners who haven't inappropriately used their firearms or a trans person who hasn't committed violence.
That would be a solution I could get behind, if the last fifteen years hadn't featured a nonstop deluge of handwringing about the dangers of young white men becoming radicalised by far-right/incel content, and how this poses such a grave threat to our society that we need to suspend freedom of expression and browbeat young white men into submission with artfully produced agitprop about how loathsome and contemptible they are (which no less than the prime minister of the UK erroneously referred to as a "documentary" on two separate occasions).
If it's legitimate to speculate on the societal factors that led to Elliot Rodger, Nikolas Cruz etc. to commit their horrific crimes, it's legitimate to speculate on why this guy did so. If young white men are susceptible to radicalisation by social media echo chambers, I see no reason why young white trans-identified men couldn't be also. Being trans should not be a get out of jail free card.
I mean, I'm ok with letting those past things go if the lesson is learned that we need to focus on individual culpability rather than blaming entire demographic groups when someone fucks up. Unfortunately, I don't think that lesson is likely to stick.
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LOL, this is like on Star Trek when they presented Nomad with an irresolvable paradox, except instead of making him get a higher-pitched voice and explode, it made him quote Ronald Reagan.
Not much Reagan has ever been wrong about. Well, maybe Iran Contra but that's really only because he subverted Congressional will. He was right that the US should be supporting anti communist forces, he just should have accepted it wasn't viable at the time. Maybe acknowledged the aids crisis a little faster too but really, what would even the best president on that have been able to do? I can't see much different, they're politicians not doctors and medical researchers.
Iran-Contra was a crime, but not a mistake - it succeeded in its goals. Failure to take Iran seriously as a long-term enemy was a mistake, though not, I think, a big one at the time - focusing on defeating the USSR and leaving hostile non-aligned countries alone was obviously the correct big-picture call.
From a general right-wing perspective, Reagan's biggest mistake was no-fault divorce. From a right-populist perspective, it would be GATT.
From a factual perspective, Reagan was wrong bigly about Star Wars (it couldn't be implemented with 1980's technology) and where the US was on the Laffer curve (the Reagan tax cuts blew out the deficit in a way their supporters claimed they wouldn't), but in both cases the consequences were of the "trillion dollars here, trillion dollars there" type rather than anything potentially catastrophic.
Well yeah that's what I mean. Iran Contra was an issue because he subverted Congressional will illegally, not because he was wrong about helping anti communist forces.
Maybe from the big government right wing perspective, but the libertarian sided right wing view doesn't have much issue with leaving a relationship for any reason you want. Why should the government be involved with any of that to begin with? It's only "necessary" because the government insists on tying things like tax breaks and benefits in relation to marriage. We didn't need big government to affirm love before, and big government is not the solution for affirming love now.
Another great example of how capitalism and populism don't co-exist as ideas very well.
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