Transgender Issues

Political Violence and the Selective Acknowledgment of It

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

Political Violence comes in more shapes and sizes than Pokémon. And yet, it’s only ever a specific variety that most people seem willing to acknowledge, and then only when it suits the narrative they prefer to frame. When someone is killed in an act of direct Political Violence, hand-wringing, condemnation of physical violence, and proclamations that we are better than this inevitably follow closely behind. This is true, even (or especially) when the violence in question was a direct response to less overt forms of violence. You see, those more subtle forms of violent action are insidious in that people can easily dismiss them if they’re so inclined, but are often (if not always) more harmful.

Willhelm Frick, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, and several others who were sentenced to death following the Nuremberg Trials had never killed anyone, and had (to the best of anyone’s knowledge) committed no acts of direct violence. In fact, Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Martin Bormann were among the minority, in that they had committed acts of direct violence and murder during their tenure within the Nazi Party. But, in 1946, we recognized that Political Violence comes in many forms, and the guilt of the 12 men who were sentenced to execution was not open to debate. Adolf Hitler, himself, has never been connected with evidence that he personally murdered anyone aside from possibly Eva Braun, before taking his own life. The same can be said for Joseph Goebbels, though he and his wife killed their six children and then themselves. These men, and many others, had been complicit and had knowingly issued propaganda and orders that led to the deaths of countless others.

Would anyone like to present the defense that these men were killed (or killed themselves to avoid being killed) because of their political opinions? Is that the extent of cultural relativism that we should be applying to the architects of the Holocaust? That’s what I keep hearing lately: that people shouldn’t be threatened, persecuted, or harmed over a difference of opinion. All I can assume is that many people need to better acquaint themselves with the definition of “opinion” before they start concerning themselves with differences between them.

Opinions are just assumptions or judgments that an individual develops regarding any particular topic. They can be informed or uninformed, but they’re little more than a subjective viewpoint with greater or lesser value depending on the expertise and the degree of authority invested in the individual sharing said opinions. Critiques of policy and ideology are political opinions. Whether they’re right or wrong, they’re opinions, and people are entitled to their own. Hate Speech, however, is not an expression of an opinion. Hate Speech is an attack, using dehumanizing and demeaning language to target an individual or a group of people based on features of their identity: Ethnicity, Nationality, Skin Color, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and so on. Hate Speech targets (often immutable) characteristics of the individual or group, for the purpose of expressing bigoted, biased, and prejudiced perspectives. Thus, we have the difference between those who condemn the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Government, compared to those who condemn Jewish people or the people of Israel as a whole. One is a criticism of policy and the actions taken by a group, and the other is a condemnation of a group of people based on either Ethnicity or Nationality, depending on whether we’re talking about Jewish people or Israeli people. There is a massive difference between the two things, and yet we see colleges and universities losing funding because certain people want to conflate these two things with false equivalence.

Hate Speech is, in reality, a form of Political Violence that gets shrugged off as nothing more than a difference of opinion, typically by those who are not impacted by that violence. Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric paved the way for the Holocaust, along with the more recent Genocides in Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Sheltering Hate Speech under an umbrella by treating it as if it’s nothing more than another legitimate opinion that one is entitled to share is just part of the weaponization of public discourse. It promotes discrimination and violence, especially when it’s combined with disinformation/misinformation campaigns designed to reinforce the bigotry involved.

Still, one might, of course, look at those guilty men I referenced above and argue that they were guilty of War Crimes. Therefore, the sentences were both just and appropriate. But, by the same standard, our current Administration should also face a tribunal.

Despite no evidence supporting the claims and the US Intelligence Apparatus contradicting them, the Trump Administration confidently states that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and that a U.S. strike on a foreign boat in international waters was justified because that boat was carrying cocaine to our border (sans evidence). By any standards, the killing of foreign civilians in international waters is (by definition) a War Crime. The Trump Administration is hardly alone in this. Every President in my lifetime has been guilty of actions that should constitute War Crimes. Why are we not holding ourselves to a higher standard than we held the Nazis in 1946?

But, of course, it’s not just War Crimes that we’re dealing with today. The current Administration repeatedly flaunts International and American Law, violates the Constitution, and works to erode the mechanisms of Democracy within America. Men like the late Charlie Kirk have been instrumental in both endorsing and encouraging those actions, as well as being directly involved in helping to place Donald Trump in the position of authority he presently holds.

Charlie Kirk fostered an environment of White Christian Nationalism throughout his time in the public eye. It takes little effort to find several instances of outright Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, and myriad other forms of Bigotry in his Podcasts, Social Media posts, and Public Appearances.

He repeatedly expressed a baseless and racist endorsement of the Great Replacement conspiracy, wherein non-whites were coming to America (and other Western Nations) to replace whites. Just last month, he claimed, “The Great Replacement of white people is far more sinister than any redistricting project.” The Great Replacement theory is directly linked to several acts of Political Violence, targeting non-whites. More importantly, the Great Replacement is virtually identical to the White Genocide conspiracies that have been core aspects of neoNazi ideologies for a long time now.

Charlie Kirk accused Transgender people of being predators and actively encouraged his listeners/viewers to bully and harass them. Transgender people, while making up a tiny fraction of the population, are somehow substantially more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people are.

He couldn’t even manage to consistently maintain his performative support for Israel and condemnation of antisemitism, despite knowing that he needed to tow that line because it might be a bridge too far for some of his audience. Nevertheless, he still managed to spout off tired old antisemitic talking points about Jewish people controlling everything from higher education to Hollywood, pointing the finger at Jewish financiers of “Cultural Marxism,” and acting aghast at Jewish people promoting anti-white hatred despite wanting white people to do away with that same kind of hatred against them.

To pretend that isn’t often Political Violence is tantamount to saying that violence perpetrated against Jewish people by German citizens in 1940s Europe was not Political Violence. When the apparatus of government endorses, however tacitly, the dehumanization of a group of people, it requires extensive mental gymnastics to pretend that the acts of violence perpetrated against that group of people are not acts of Political Violence. It also requires an impressive gymnastics routine to pretend that the propagandists who spread the dehumanizing message aren’t complicit in the outcomes.

Was it not Political Violence when Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injured more than 50 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL? He may have claimed to support the Islamic State, but his motivations (even according to his father) were based on the same anti-LBGTQ+ sentiment we hear expressed by White Nationalists regularly. Since LGBTQ+ rights (and the existence of LGBTQ+ people) are treated like a political football, that would make any violence arising from homophobia and anti-Trans perspectives Political Violence. And this is State-Sanctioned violence, because Republicans certainly dedicate a lot of bandwidth to demonizing LGBTQ+ people, while Democrats often turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated against them. And, whether Liberals want to accept it or not, neglect and dismissal are forms of Political Violence as well. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Men like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and even Donald Trump have a particular skill, even if they lack any others. They can extrapolate from their own insecurities, fears, and failures to develop a form of demagoguery that plays on those same weaknesses in an audience. This only works when the demagogue is in the majority, because for some people, there’s always an undercurrent of resentment and fear associated with imagining the loss of the power that comes with being the majority. Some of that, I’m sure, arises from the assumption that (if the roles are reversed) they will be treated as poorly as they have treated the minority group(s) within society.

Men like Kirk taste fear and weakness in their audience the way a shark tastes blood in the water, and they’re just as predatory about it. They stoke that fear with misinformation and cruelty, dehumanizing anyone who isn’t part of that majority group, and assuring the audience that they can rest assured of their superiority. They make them feel threatened by the outsiders, regardless of the fiction required to do so, because they know these people won’t risk eroding the false confidence they’ve built up by digging too deep or tugging at threads that could unravel everything.

And, as that manipulation leads to the inevitable results, they hide behind the shield of Free Speech, insisting that they’re just asking questions, voicing their opinions, or engaging in healthy debate. We’ve seen this happen several times in the past, with January 6th, 2021, as one of the most vivid examples. The architects of the direct Political Violence are smugly distancing themselves and feigning a sense of horror at what’s happening, as they assume no one will recall how openly they encouraged all of it.

One way or another, there needs to be consequences for the Political Violence perpetrated by those who conveniently, like cowards, hide behind a misapprehension of what “Opinion” means. And, just as important, people need to learn that calling for violence against one’s oppressors and those who have wished or encouraged violence against them is not at all the same thing as wishing harm on people just because they have a different opinion. Malcolm X wasn’t the same as the white racists who fought to maintain segregation and oppose the Civil Rights Act, because he called for reactionary violence. He was already the victim of Political Violence, and was only speaking the same language as those who perpetrated that violence. If you threaten someone or encourage others to act violently toward them by dehumanizing them and manipulating others into thinking they are a threat, you are not expressing an opinion. That isn’t merely a matter of differing political viewpoints.

Regarding the present situation, and the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s apparent assassination, we don’t even know if it was an act of Political Violence. It stands to reason that it probably is, but it’s just as likely to be someone who agreed with him on most accounts as it is to be someone who was politically opposed to his ideology, stripped of the Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric. After all, the same people storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, were the same people most vocally supportive of “Back the Blue” perspectives, yet they assaulted police officers without any compunction. When one promotes an atmosphere of hate and fear, in which violence is encouraged, we’re just as likely to see that violence turned upon people in the same group, the moment fractures appear. It’s worth keeping that in mind.

The Nazi Narratives Helping Conservatives Sleep At Night

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

Conservatives sure do have a knack for claiming (accurate) accusations of Nazi parallels in their policies are hyperbolic while distorting historical facts to make (flimsy) accusations of Nazi comparisons with their opponents. What’s truly impressive is that they also do an excellent job of turning an aggressively blind eye to blatant Nazi corollaries.

The Weimar Republic, before 1933, was exceptionally progressive in many ways, even by today’s standards. Germany had been a global example of what we would consider LGBTQ+ inclusion. It was where, in the 1920s, the first Transgender magazine was published, and where some of the world’s first medical transitions were performed. These, and other factors, led to Berlin becoming a beacon for the global LGBTQ+ community.

All of that changed as Nazi control spread and ultimately dominated the political realm in Germany. Suddenly, Transgender women’s gender identities were denied, and they were treated as men acting out some perverse impulse or displaying some manner of mental illness. Additionally, homosexuality was treated as a crime, and the punishments were frequently more severe for those who engaged in what was categorized (at the time) as transvestitism.

While there were distinct differences in how Gay and Transgender people of persecuted ethnic/cultural groups were treated when compared to Gay and Transgender Aryans, there remained an overarching atmosphere of suppression and repression throughout the regions where the Nazis assumed control. Gay men and Transgender women were met with bigotry, intolerance, and hostility (regardless of Aryan status). But those who fit the narrow, White Nationalist aesthetic were often afforded certain leeway, as long as they kept their indiscretions quiet and hidden.

This, of course, did not mean that they were safe. There was ample State-Sanctioned hostility and violence directed toward those marginalized groups, and in particular, those who remained open about who they were by engaging in relationships or gathering in public. And, while Aryan Gays and Transgender people weren’t immediately sent to Concentration Camps, the imprisonment they experienced was far from humane, and the legal rights they were afforded often seemed more performative and conditional than legitimate.

The Nazi State’s assessment of Transgender individuals was neatly summed up in 1938 with the following sentiment: “Their asocial mindset, which is often paired with criminal activity, justifies draconian measures by the state.”

This was a massive departure from the previous German Government, which had allowed Transgender people to legally change their names, form their own organizations, and even receive gender-affirming medical treatments. Those changes came quickly. In 1933, Officials in Hamburg passed along the following dictate: “Police officials are requested to observe the transvestites, in particular, and as required to send them to concentration camps.”

Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science was quickly dismantled, and Hirschfeld himself was sent into hiding. And that was emblematic of those times for anyone who was part of what we recognize as being LGBTQ+ today. They were forced to hide who they were or face State-Sanctioned persecution.

Naturally, now that an ostensibly Transgender person perpetrated a school shooting, there’s talk at the highest levels of American Government of restricting access to firearms for individuals who don’t identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. Never mind that the vast majority of these crimes are committed by straight, white, cisgender males.

Of course, any time Democrats seriously propose firearm legislation (which never involves disarming gun owners), disingenuous Conservatives start claiming any efforts tangentially related to gun control are evidence that “The Left” is behaving like Nazis, who they insist had disarmed the German population before taking over. But as is true every time we hear Conservatives talking about the past, their arguments are ahistorical at best.

They’re right in saying that the Nazi Party implemented rigid gun control measures, but where they’re entirely incorrect is that the gun control was selective and that there were established regulations already in place.

Following WWI, the Weimar Republic had originally attempted to ban firearms altogether, in large part to comply with the Treaty of Versailles. But that legislation had been both massively unpopular and poorly enforced, and those restrictions had been relaxed by 1928, when permitting and registration took the place of the attempted ban.

But by 1935, the Nazis had largely succeeded in using those registration records in an effort to remove from (and restrict firearms for) Jewish people and members of opposing political parties. Of course, this only included the guns that had been registered, and there were many (purchased both before and since WWI) that had never been. Regardless of this, even if every citizen in Germany had been a proud gun owner, there would have been no chance of standing up against the might of the State by the time the Nazis seized control.

By 1938, the Nazi Party relaxed or outright removed firearms restrictions for Party Members, Government Workers, and those with Hunting Permits. Of course, all of those people had one thing in common, in that they were not the kinds of people the Nazis were targeting. In fact, they went so far as to outlaw the ownership of any weapons by Jewish people (and not just firearms). They were already systematically raiding the homes and businesses of Jews and Political Opponents, confiscating weapons from those people.

The Nazis utilized existing firearm registration records in Hungary, Poland, and France as a means of strategically confiscating guns from undesirables as they advanced into those nations as well.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that the Nazi Party wasn’t particularly fond of homeless people. Like Gay and Transgender individuals, homeless people were branded as “asocial,” and were afforded the same lack of liberty as others branded as such. The Nazi solution to homelessness went into effect almost immediately, and in 1933, the mass arrests started. This process was accelerated as the 1936 Berlin Olympics approached, because the Nazis wanted to present a clean facade for the visitors from other nations.

Soon enough, it wasn’t just homeless people, but anyone unemployed or begging, prostitutes, as well as drug addicts. Anyone deemed to be unsavory in the public eye was summarily rounded up. Persecution, sterilization, and one-way trips to Concentration Camps awaited anyone unfortunate enough to fall outside of the strict social norms imposed by the Nazi Party.

To maintain that social order, armed and uniformed political and military forces patrolled the streets wherever the Nazis were in control, not only in the territory taken through conflict, but in the cities of Germany as well. These police actions served to intimidate the population, suppress political opposition, and all but eradicate civil unrest of any kind. I suspect it’s unsurprising that Party Leadership was thrilled to proclaim the low crime rates they’d achieved.

It took until 1935 for the Nuremberg Laws to go into effect, at which point all Jewish and Roma people were stripped of their German citizenship. Before Kristallnacht, the Nazis focused on the forced deportation of Jewish people, but by 1941, those avenues of escape were officially blocked. The Roma people were classified as enemies of the State and treated as criminals as soon as the Nuremberg Laws went into effect.

If this doesn’t sound familiar to you, then you haven’t been paying attention. And if it sounds familiar, and you agree with any of it, maybe you should just accept that you might have been a Nazi as well. My recommendation is that you own it. Wear that title proudly, because they certainly did. Plus, as a bonus, it will make it easier to round you up when the next iteration of the Nuremberg Trials comes about.

You may notice that, aside from some pretty awful policies the Liberals have employed regarding homeless people, and the abhorrent treatment of Indigenous people, none of these things run parallel to any Liberal Administration within our lifetimes. I suppose it makes sense that members of the KKK and NeoNazi groups have been showing up at rallies for Conservative Candidates, because they’re not thrown out of those gatherings.

Transgender Transference…and Why You Should Know Better

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Several aspects of the anti-trans stance are deeply upsetting and demonstrably harmful, while being based on a misunderstanding of biology, psychology, and sociology. I take exception with many of them, but perhaps what bothers me most in anti-trans arguments is when people bring up the fear of predatory men taking advantage of transgender access to their gender-appropriate restrooms. What they’re talking about in these scenarios isn’t even a transgender issue.

None of what they’re expressing a fear of is at all the responsibility of the transgender people in question. The people they’re talking about are predatory men taking advantage of social and legal systems to prey on the vulnerable. How do the people expressing these fears not recognize that they’re not describing a fear of trans-feminine people, but of cis-male rapists? It’s a poorly constructed argument in the first place, but it becomes even more so when we take a moment to think about what’s actually being protested.

But for a moment, let’s take the argument at face value and pretend that it is transgender people who are the basis for this fear. We’re going to make believe that they’re describing actual transgender people, because I would love to know why they aren’t equally vocal about protesting several other things that are certainly more common.

Do these same people want to bar individuals from becoming clergy, or to keep their children from attending church services, because there are so many documented members of the clergy who similarly take advantage of the social and legal structures in place to prey on vulnerable people? It’s a well-documented problem in the Catholic Church, where billions of dollars have been paid out in settlements to thousands of victims, in America alone. They might respond by telling us that they’re not Catholic, so it’s not relevant to them. Well, there were hundreds of Southern Baptist clergy, church leaders, and volunteers who faced accusations of sexual misconduct in just the last few decades. Tens of millions of dollars have been paid out to victims of sexual abuse within the Lutheran Church as well. Tens of thousands of victims all around the globe have come forward within the Jehovah’s Witnesses as well, though most get ignored within the church because of the “Two Witness Rule” in place. The same is true for essentially every other religious organization in the world. Yet I don’t hear the same vocal anti-clergy arguments to protect children who might venture into a church. Even as the Department of Justice insists that Priests can’t be compelled to violate the sanctity of confession to report people who are abusing children, there’s no swell of populist cries of injustice.

Where are the people demanding that no one be allowed to become a Scout Master? All the way back in 1994, nearly 2,000 child molesters were documented within the Boy Scouts. These were retrieved from files maintained by the organization itself. Why are these individuals who have used that organization’s hierarchy to prey on children not considered a threat? Is it perhaps because these are all boys who are being molested? If that’s the case, I sincerely question the morality of anyone taking that stance. But, that’s okay, there are documented instances of Girl Scouts being sexually assaulted as well.

What about all of the documented instances of law enforcement being caught up in child pornography and sexual assault cases? Where’s the outrage concerning those predators? There’s a fairly horrific study from 2022, delving into 669 cases of police sexual violence. Of course, being that it’s law enforcement perpetrating these crimes, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever have a suitable estimate of just how frequent those infractions are. Where are the demands that people be barred from pursuing careers in law enforcement because some people have taken advantage of those positions of authority?

According to the National Institutes of Health, transgender people are no more likely than the general population to commit acts of sexual violence; they may actually be less likely to do so. However, they are more likely than cisgender people to be VICTIMS of sexual assault.

So, if any of this is about protecting children, there should be far more coherent arguments leveled against those aforementioned occupational transgressions than against transgender people. Being allowed to live their lives and exist in the spaces that are comfortable and appropriate for them isn’t hurting anyone, and there has never been a shred of evidence that it has. But, again, the men sneaking into women’s restrooms aren’t transgender in the first place. They’re, as usual, cis-male predators who are exploiting whatever structures they can to prey on those they choose to prey on.

By that standard, should we be persecuting police because a man dressed as a police officer committed political assassinations in Minnesota just a short while ago? It’s precisely the same logic, and just as flawed.

But, assuming the worst, let’s say that transfeminine predators are hoping to use public restrooms as hunting grounds. They are a small fraction of a percentage of an already small percentage of the population. Even the most liberal estimates indicate a maximum of about 1% of the U.S. population identifies as transgender, and not all of them are transfemme. So, we’d be looking at a fraction of a single percent of the U.S. population that identifies as transfeminine, and then a fraction of that fraction that might also be inclined to perform acts of sexual violence. Statistically, you’re far more likely to have a cis-female predator in the same restroom.

Seriously, all one needs to do is think for a second before they let their biases and prejudices make them sound like more of a fool than they already do. Transgender men and women are not inherently predatory, violent, or perverse. We need to stop marginalizing them further.

The Sins of the Media Are To Be Laid On the Masses

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I believe in the Fourth Estate. I’m passionate about that belief, and I’m passionate about the role the Press is intended to play in a Free Society. Journalists have to hold those in power accountable and provide for an informed electorate. My colleagues have heard my rant often enough that they probably want to slap me whenever they know it’s coming. I occasionally find myself struggling to remind the people I work with that our responsibility is to elevate the level of discourse. It doesn’t matter whether we’re reporting on Congressional Legislation, new medical procedures, or anything else. Our role isn’t dissimilar from that of educators. We have to inform the people who rely on us, whether they like or agree with the information we provide.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten how important we are in keeping corruption, abuse of power, and malfeasance at bay. Some of us have become puppets of the very figures we’re meant to guard against, some have grown complacent, and still others have pivoted from providing information to providing entertainment. I’m not saying that education can’t be entertaining, because I’m a fan of John Oliver, John Stewart, Samantha Bee, Michelle Wolf, Cody Johnston, and others like them. But it’s a fine line to walk, and few do it well.

I won’t place the blame squarely on the Journalists who have lost their way. It’s the audience that craves drama, conflict, turmoil, and childish or boorish behavior. It’s the audience that drives engagement. It’s the audience that ultimately determines where advertising dollars are spent.

But we do bear some of the blame.

I first started working in Broadcast Television (and specifically News) back in mid-2000, when I was 21 years old. I began with the basics of operating studio cameras, controlling the teleprompter, floor directing, designing/assembling graphics, and so on. I left the industry in 2010, not entirely of my own volition. Eleven years later, in 2021, I was back again, and here I am today. I’ve spent approximately one-third of my 46 years working in that industry, and roughly half of my adult life. I’ve witnessed several changes over the last 25 years, and not all of them have been positive. I’ve seen faith in the News Media eroded, sometimes with good cause and other times because the average person doesn’t understand what goes on behind the scenes and beneath the surface.

When I left the industry in 2010, it was close on the heels of the Station Manager passing along a mandate from himself and the ownership of the station (several wealthy and influential families in the region) that, if a story had a political angle to it, we were to lean right in our reporting. I wasn’t part of the Newsroom at that station, but I didn’t think that was at all acceptable. I admit my morale and overall attitude toward station operations deteriorated after that. Unfortunately, that trend of rightward deviation has only persisted. But if you ask people on the street, a substantial number of them will claim that the News Media are biased and promoting a Leftist Agenda.

Perhaps it’s the fault of American audiences that they’re unable to recognize that there’s no such thing as left-leaning Media in the United States unless we’re looking at publications like Mother Jones and The Nation. Since most people don’t know that those outlets even exist, it’s a fair bet that most Americans have no idea what they’re talking about when they insist on a Leftist Bias in the Media. At best, what they’re referring to is a Liberal Bias from Media Organizations like MSNBC or CNN. Of course, those same people are likely to refer to the Associated Press, Reuters, NPR, and other politically unbiased Media Organizations as being left-leaning. Ultimately, it comes down to either accepting Propaganda over Reality or having a deep misunderstanding of Political Theory.

At best, it can be argued that there are Democratic (Liberal) and Republican (Conservative) Media Outlets. But even the Liberal ones tend to dismiss and disparage any Leftist or Progressive policies proposed by Democratic Party members. They do as much harm to actual Progressive Ideals as the Conservative Media does. The Liberals and Conservatives have far more in common than they don’t, in that they’re both invested in maintaining the Status Quo and shutting down any attempts to question it. The problem is that the Politicians and the Media are controlled by the same interests, because they control the money.

Of course, money has always been the worst influence on the Media. The earliest Newspaper in America had an advertisement in the first issue. And Advertisements have followed News from periodicals to radio, and from radio to television. And now, advertisements have jumped from television to social media platforms and websites.

The first advertisement on TV was way back in 1941, and they’ve become increasingly prevalent since then. The growth of television as an industry, and Television News as a result, led to the Federal Communications Commission enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, starting in 1949. It was intended to keep the burgeoning Media Outlets from misusing their power and promoting biased agendas. The Fairness Doctrine required that Media Outlets examine controversial public issues and provide airtime to opposing viewpoints.

As with several major errors made in the United States, it was brought to an end with a poor decision made under President Ronald Reagan (and his FCC Chairman), who dissolved the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Of course, the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t perfectly implemented. But there’s no denying that the purpose was noble and good, to hold off the prevalence of echo chambers and purely partisan News coverage. Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine is seen by many experts as the biggest contributor to the fractured, partisan environment we have today.

Naturally, one of the other major contributors to the decline in quality of News coverage was the advent of the 24-Hour News Cycle, after Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980. Much like the Internet today, it fed a desire for immediate updates and instant gratification. People didn’t want to wait until scheduled times to learn what was happening, especially when major events were transpiring. This need to cater to an audience’s obsession with instant gratification promotes mistakes, the sharing of bad information, and a lack of proper vetting. The need to be “first on the scene” because the audience will tune in elsewhere has done so much harm.

We in the Media are at fault for much of the misunderstanding and misapprehension we witness in the world around us right now. As an industry, we need to both acknowledge that reality and actively work to compensate for the damage we’ve caused. Now, I’m not talking about the explicit Partisan Propaganda of organizations like Fox News and Newsmax or Huffpost and MSNBC, but the otherwise unbiased news sources that do their best to provide balanced coverage. It’s not entirely on our shoulders, but we do bear a substantial portion of the blame, if only because we’ve been too uncritical for altogether too long, and that willingness to avoid being openly critical of various subjects and stances has allowed us to be backed into a corner that we seem to be ill-equipped to escape.

Of course, the lion’s share of the blame falls on the increasing tendency of politicians to turn every social, medical, and cultural issue into a political one. The people who watch it happening, without questioning how or why these things are suddenly “political” topics when they never had been before, are also at fault. It has left even the most legitimate media outlets with no simple way to address any of these topics. Instead, we dance around the issues, struggling to find opposing sides and lending them credence by providing them with a platform that they don’t merit. We hold off on sharing critical information because we haven’t been able to obtain a statement from someone with a viewpoint opposing whatever it is we’re trying to share. If we neglect to do so, we get called out for being biased.

We risk losing advertisers.

We risk litigation.

But in failing to inform, we risk losing the credibility we have left.

Fringe perspectives should NOT be provided the same degree of coverage. That’s the simple truth of it. But when a topic becomes heavily politicized, it becomes more challenging to navigate what should otherwise be a straightforward assessment of data, statistics, and known facts. When people refuse to accept that what they already believe to be true is not, we have no easy way to address that flaw. The political figures who insist on turning everything into a political battlefield know precisely what they’re doing, and we know WHY they’re doing it.

They force a dialogue that shouldn’t be a dialogue at all.

We saw it repeatedly during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It wasn’t exclusively the News Media at fault, because Social Media was a major source of much of the misinformation that was spread, and attempts to provide Fact Checks were perceived to be biased.

There are still people today who believe that the medical field was pretty evenly split on the topics of Vaccine Safety and Vaccine Effectiveness. Globally, based on a study of more than 40,000 nurses across 36 nations, fewer than 21% of nurses rejected the COVID-19 Vaccine. The most pronounced interval was between March and December of 2020, when Pharmaceutical Companies were initially testing the vaccines.
As early as June of 2021, according to the American Medical Association, 96% of practicing physicians were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and an additional 1.8% of them were actively planning to receive vaccinations.

Unfortunately, the way the media reported on the topic gave people the sense that a large number of Medical Professionals were speaking out in opposition to the vaccine. This is a negative side-effect of the overcompensation involved in attempting to provide multiple sides of an argument with equal coverage. If we intended to provide balanced coverage, we should have given the anti-vaccine proponents roughly 5% of the coverage, compared to 95% of the coverage focusing on the medical consensus.

This is something we need to address.

It’s something we need to atone for.

What would previously have been simply a matter of focusing on medical consensus became a partisan issue, requiring more even-handed coverage of opposing sides when there are not equivalent claims made by both sides.

This is, of course, not isolated to the COVID-19 Vaccine. We’ve seen this happen with topics from Abortion to Gender Identity, none of which are inherently political topics. And they should not be.

These are subjects best left in the hands of the relevant professionals and experts, not politicians.

Abortion didn’t become a political issue until the 1970s, and Gender Identity started down that path in the UK in the 1970s as well. But didn’t become a major political issue in America until roughly a decade ago. Vaccination (as a whole) was a largely apolitical topic until more than 15 years ago. But, as these topics went from being personal and medical decisions to political ones, the News Media was forced to adjust how it covered them. The number of lies, discredited studies, and hate-based propaganda talking points we allowed to slip through has been disorientingly massive. We were supposed to be maintaining the public trust.

I’m sorry to say that we failed.

But we don’t have to continue failing.

Scissors by Simon McHardy and Sean Hawker

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When the National Health Service rejects a trans femme her request to have a vaginoplasty performed, Daphne’s state of mind takes one hell of a hit. Already prone to self-harm and taking her frustrations out on herself, this blow might be the last straw.
But what happens if the offending penis doesn’t want to go without a fight?
What follows is both heartbreaking and ridiculously gruesome, as one might expect from the pairing of Simon McHardy and Sean Hawker. In true McHardy and Hawker fashion, these two provide a graphic and absurdly over-the-top argument in favor of gender reassignment surgeries being more readily available to those suffering from gender dysphoria. Of course, this is not for the squeamish.
As strange as it might seem, I almost think this should be recommended to anyone with transgender friends or family, or those hoping to understand why it’s important to treat transgender health concerns (both mental and physiological) as seriously as any others.

You can pick this up for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Scissors by Simon McHardy and Sean Hawker