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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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His Excellency Joe Biden has declared March 31st a certain ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’, which has generated derision due to its simultaneity with the Western date of Easter Sunday. If this happened outside of Holy Week, it likely would have prompted the regimented groans from the right side of the isle, and that would be that; coincidentally, however, this ‘holiday’ (which has been declared such since 2009) happened to fall on the holiest day of the year for Christians, the group which is perhaps the biggest collection of resisters against transgenderism. Naturally, this has created a lot of controversy. Trump and his team even issued a statement calling for Biden to apologize for his ‘blasphemy’, which is probably a unique event all things considered (when’s the last time you’ve heard of a politician smear another one for blasphemy? In 2000+24, no less?) Such personalities as Caitlyn Jenner and Musk have responded with similar negative attitudes.

Now, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that Biden didn’t make this decision himself. It was definitely his team which did this, in order to show his support for the ‘marginalized’, even as he has declared this day one for ‘visibility’ years before in his term. It raises the question, though, on whether or not Biden actually has these thoughts of support for these people and their identities, with this support even superseding the remembrance of Christ’s resurrection (keep in mind that Biden is an 80 year old ‘devout Catholic’, allegedly). I really doubt he does, but I’m more interested in what he actually thinks about these developments. And, how would his team react to the fact that the black community would significantly oppose this, given their high rate of religiosity? Does Biden still think this is 1969, where if you were transgender you would probably lose your job and become exiled from all institutions in society? Thoughts?

I had earlier classified Biden as an "old dog who still knows some tricks" in his vigorous efforts to keep petrol prices low.

I now retract this statement. What on Earth are they even thinking? This is political incompetence of the highest order. Surely they know that this is going to poll negatively? Does Trump win Hispanics by 20 points this time? The inmates are running the asylum.

I don't think Biden did have anything to do with this (apart from the 'sign the paper' bit). This is what people were talking about a while back here where they don't care if Biden is old and losing it, just re-elect him and the Administration will do all the actual governing.

Well, here's the Administration doing the governing, how do you like them apples?

As was mentioned, this clashes with Cesar Chavez Day so congratulations on pissing off at least part of the Hispanic voting bloc, and it certainly does seem like some of the shadowy figures doing the real governing while Joe is the figurehead do have an agenda going on. They just got careless this time round and stepped on the toes of one of the other "we are the party of women, gender and sexual minorities, and brown and black people" groups under the umbrella.

As was mentioned, this clashes with Cesar Chavez Day

Holy shit! They are even dumber then I thought. Political malpractice.

Yes, I think this is clear evidence that Biden himself is a non-entity and that his staff is running the show. No one who has ever run for office would ever be so out of touch.

You are over egging this entirely. Approximately no-one cares about Cesar Chavez day, and 31st March has been both for quite some time without any problems. And it was established after the day of visibility itself (2009 vs 2014)

I predict this has basically zero impact on political outcomes and calling it political malpractice is exaggeration to the point of nonsense.

I don't know if Biden was involved or not (experience says he likely said yes when asked by a staffer should we do x) but its essentially about as small a deal as you can imagine.

All the actual polling, shows this issue to be an issue nobody outside of two parts of society care about - the normal reactionaries who hate all change and very specifically, conservatives and centrists who live in D+70 districts. Since a lot of conservative and centrists writers live in those areas, it becomes this supposed huge issue, all while in the real world, there's like 20 kids in all of Utah who supposedly want to play on the "wrong" high school sports team.

This doesn't mean people in red states care or are pro-transgender, it's that simply saying something is connected to transgenderism is enough to move their vote. They tried that in the various abortion referendums as a scare tactic, and it didn't work.