People Republicans Hate, Vol. 1-7

Also: Big League Tár, Sammy Two-Pops, and slavery in the U.K.

March 9th, 2023

Every year, millions of Americans seek gender affirming health care—hormone treatments, breast enlargements, breast reductions, cosmetic surgeries, hair implants, penis enlargement, boner pills—almost entirely without more than the normal hassle and difficulty inherent in our broken health care system. But what a small group of far right zealots would like you to consider is: what if we denied a tiny and incredibly vulnerable subset of these people the care they need, because we are hateful, soulless ghouls? Mother Jones’ Madison Pauly obtained 2600 pages of emails that maia crimew (of TSA No Fly List fame, uwu) describes as “principally regarding an attempt to pass a trans youth transition treatment ban in South Dakota in 2019, spearheaded by Republican rep. Fred Deutsch and sen. Lee Schoenbeck,” and which detail the deliberate efforts of a group of activists and legislators to build the anti-trans movement that is gaining national power and attention today. So if the sudden rash of state level anti-trans hate legislation seems weirdly coördinated and organized, that’s because it is.

In TNR Pablo Manríquez created an instant classic Betteridge’s Law headline with “Republicans Hate ‘Transgenderism’—but Is That All They Hate?” Of course it’s not all they hate, “trangenderism” isn’t even a thing. They plainly hate transgender people, along with gays, women, anyone with a skin color below the “Okay” line on the Family Guy race card, and everyone else listed in Volumes one through seven of the “People Republicans Hate” Appendix to this newsletter, which may be consulted at the Library of Congress Monday through Thursday during business hours.

But we’ve learned from the last couple email and text dumps that in the process of fomenting all of that anger, they’ve whipped up the rage the point where they themselves are now afraid of what they’ve created. Prior text message dumps showed that shortly after January 6, even Trump end-gamers like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham realized they’d built a monster. In theory, a large audience should empower you to influence the public debate. A huge audience can give you the power to dictate it. But there’s also the threat that your audience could capture you, at which point you no longer control anything. They do. And that’s what’s happened at Fox.

Balko also points out that the things Michael “eradicate transgenderism” Knowles is saying are “pretty . . . Hitlery,” and he’s not the only one to bring up the word “genocide” to describe the goals of America’s growing fascist and transgender-eliminationist political / media coalition. But Emily Gorcenski wrote about the roots and weaknesses of the “Ten Stages of Genocide” model that frequently appears in infographic form, and suggests that transgender people in America face what looks much more like a civil rights struggle than a genocide, which is good news because we have a decent track record of steady improvement in civil rights struggles but zero success predicting or preventing any genocides so far.

While transgender people are being targeted and persecuted by hateful laws, and while we are victims of hate crimes at an alarming rate, we do not have “significant, ongoing destabilization that affects the dominant group and the outgroup, and for which there is no clear solution.” And while many column-inches have been spent on the death of American democracy, the reality is that the many hundreds of anti-LGBT bills introduced in the last several years have been effectively killed by democratic processes, and many of those that have become law have been stopped by the courts. It is difficult to argue in the face of the evidence (Texas killed 75 of 76 anti-LGBT bills in 2021!) that America has shifted into a strong autocracy, as Pruitt’s model would require. The opposite appears to be true: the Democratic party had a historically strong mid-term performance in 2022. Analysis of multiple models of genocide paint a vastly different picture than the infographics we spread around Twitter.

Meanwhile, Sarah “Fuckabee” Sanders legalized child labor in Arkansas, and across the pond, I guess the Tory government just legalized… slavery?

The Drift party report names a total of one (1) person at the party, which is about as useful as a traffic report that doesn’t name any roads. “Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance” ayyyyy. Real banger of an editor’s note at the end of that one. If clutter is cool now do we all have to buy a bunch of extra clutter to spread around to keep up with the #aesthetic? Wait, we’re calling this “cluttered?” Get on my level, amateurs. Techcrunch just posted a baffling article from an alternate dimension where Sam Altman’s three year old eye-scanning orb crypto scam Worldcoin is a real thing, instead of an ongoing disaster that we’ve known for a year is getting its local eyeball scanning contractors harassed and arrested in Africa, for absolutely no business purpose. Apparently Sammy Two-Pops is raising money for it now, before everyone realizes OpenAI doesn’t have a viable business either. And speaking of crypto, Silvergate Bank collapsed. Is that good?

Today in Crabs:

Finally: I have no idea what to make of this Lindsey Adler and Ben Cohen report that “Tár” director Todd Field invented Big League Chew bubble gum. It’s one of those facts that simultaneously feels like it has to mean something and can’t possibly mean anything.

Today’s Song: Allison Lorenzen and Midwife, “Glycerine”

Happy Gentlemen’s Friday, don’t forget to take a mint on your way out. If you subscribe, I have a fashion show and an open thread for you tomorrow. If you read Tabs for free, listen: you are valid, and I treasure your attention which is the most precious thing you have to give in this life. But no open thread for you, sorry.

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