Trans: The reality isn't simple.

     “For anybody who doesn’t know my well-established record on this issue let me be unequivocally clear: A man is a man and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.”
          House Speaker Mike Johnson at a Capitol press conference yesterday

     "The far left wants to allow biological males to beat the living crap out of women in boxing."

          Candidate JD Vance

Republicans have a useful wedge issue: Pretend a nuanced issue is black and white, then appeal to prejudice, calling it common sense. 

That is the trouble with reality. Sometimes it is more complicated than we let on.

Khelif

Imane Khelif, the Olympic boxer from Algeria who got JD Vance and others upset, has female external genitalia. She was born with a vagina and no penis, so she was marked as female on her birth certificate. Well, of course. She was raised as a girl and has always considered herself female. Her passport conforms to her birth certificate. She meets the Olympic criteria for being female, so she boxed as a female.

Life is more complicated than the usual gender categories. Her exact medical condition has since been examined in detail and, against her will, leaked to the media. She is alleged to have "five-alpha reductase deficiency," which means that despite her external appearance, she has XY chromosomes, internal testes, and no uterus. 

So in the minds of some people she is really male, and the external genitalia and birth certificate don't count. Conservative Americans insist that the birth certificate rules everything. Well, it says she is female. People want this to be simple.

Then there are the cases of people born with androgen insensitivity. It will emerge about once or twice at any given time in public school systems like those in Jackson County, Oregon. These women are identified as female at birth because they, too, had thoroughly female external genitalia: vagina, no penis. They each have XY chromosomes. 

A common characteristic of that condition is hyper feminine beauty characteristics: perfect complexion and faint or missing body hair. 

Gender isn't as simple as boy or girl. Birth certificates don't necessarily conform to chromosomes. Chromosomes don't necessarily match with phenotypes. Does Mike Johnson really want to insist that these XY women share a urinal and locker room showers with his teenage son? If he doesn't trust a birth certificate, does he now trust XY chromosomes? 

Sex and gender are not as clear and absolute as Mike Johnson and Republican attack ads would have it.

Democrats have made their own mess on trans issues, being too absolutist in arguing that gender is wholly a social construct and that gender is portable and self-identified. I consider quite reasonable Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton's statement that he didn't want his daughters getting "run over" by "formerly male" trans athletes on the soccer field. "As a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” he said, and indeed he wasn't. He got in trouble from Democrats. A Tufts University political science professor threatened to block students from volunteering in his office. A Salem, Massachusetts city council member demanded Moulton resign from Congress. Moulton's campaign manager resigned in protest, calling him transphobic for saying that.

Kamala Harris was silent while she was sustaining $150 million in attack ads calling her extreme and out of touch on the trans issues. Why? Because Harris did not dare say what Seth Moulton said, that there is a problem with older boys and men competing head-to-head in women's athletics. Democratic orthodoxy insists that gender is solely self-identified. They have analogized it to one's personal choice on sexual orientation, which most Americans agree is a zone of personal freedom. But gender expression involves and disadvantages others in some places, most directly in competitive sports. 

Democrats can fix this -- if they have the courage. They should embrace the nuance that is the reality of gender. In arenas of transgendered adults in normal civic life, use the template of generalized respect, live-and-let-live, and willingness to accommodate the differences between people. We know how to do this. We accommodate the special needs of the elderly, of nursing mothers, of the handicapped. Do the same here with bathrooms and gender.

Meanwhile protect women's athletics. This arena has been very positive for establishing the equality of women in American life. Males, especially after puberty, are in a different league than women. It is unfair to ignore that reality. 

If Democrats don't learn that lesson, then in four years Republican ads will teach the lesson again.

Democrats need to shed their ideological handcuffs. They should accept two realities simultaneously. One is that gender is complicated and requires nuance and respect. The second is that biology is real.

Let Republicans pretend this is simple. Eventually reality will win out.

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Musk ruined Twitter/X

Twitter/X is worse than Fox News.

It has become the comment section of a conspiracy site.

Twitter/X is an Elon Musk vanity project.

I had never been a heavy Twitter participant. The short bursts of characters that created a tweet used to be good for breaking news alerts. Serious people used it. I was curious about what serious people had to say.

Last night I gave Twitter -- now called X -- a test, in preparation for this morning's post. I decided to report exactly what popped up on my Twitter/X feed. There are two choices of settings: "Following" and "For You."  I clicked Following. Supposedly I signed up to get posts from people who pop up on my feed.

First a message from Elon Musk about D.O.G.E., his Department of Government Efficiency named after his DOGE cryptocurrency. I have never intentionally followed Elon Musk.

Then a video of a belligerent old man standing and yelling at another old man who was sitting in a booth in what appears to be a fast food place. The sitting man was wearing a Kamala Harris button, which is what generated the altercation.

Then a short video depicting the U.S. southern border, with Mexicans (provisioned by a Bud Lite stand) storming a wall. They are surprised when a giant robot machine that looked like Donald Trump stomped on the immigrants.

Then a post urging readers to boycott the coffee shop of a woman in New Jersey who said she didn't like Trump voters. 

Then there was a video of a British Member of Parliament involved in U.S. diplomacy saying his earlier criticism of Trump (calling him a blithering idiot and fascist) was no longer relevant and that he was looking forward to a productive relationship between historic allies. 

Then there was a short video of Elon Musk and Trump watching the Tyson fight. 

Then there was a video of a Chinese restaurant with narration making fun of how the restaurant made meticulous pancakes that were the size of breasts on Chinese women. The narrator adopted a Chinese accent for part of the narration.

I most certainly never signed up to "follow" these posts.

I clicked to go to the "For You" feed, which is the Twitter/X guess of what I might like. First up was a video of a younger Donald Trump saying he didn't drink alcohol. 

Then I got a video of NFL football players on the sidelines swaying with arms high, with voiceover narrative saying that players all over the country are mimicking the Trump dance. 

Then a three-minute video based on the premise that the FBI did the Oklahoma City bombing and that Bill Clinton covered it up. 

Then a series of tweets on the premise that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough killed an office aide. Re-tweeters and replies showed images of Hillary Clinton giving Scarborough the advice to make it look like a suicide. 

This morning I thought I would check my work. I opened up Twitter/X and clicked on the "For You" setting again. The first thing I received was a message from Musk. I don't dislike the message. I don't like debt, either personal debt, business debt, or national debt. Notice that Musk drew attention not to the debt that accumulated under Trump and his 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, but rather to the debt starting in 2020, which debt is primarily caused by a continuation of the 2017 Tax law during Biden's presidency.

Twitter/X is Elon Musk's. He can do with it what he wants. But the site isn't very useful anymore, except as a way to see what Elon Musk cares about.

Serious people are abandoning the site. 

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Do you feel confident now?

"I'm pickin' up good vibrations
She's giving me the excitations (oom bop bop)
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (good vibrations, oom bop bop)

Ah, ah, my my, what elation."
          The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations," 1966

Republicans are already singing "Happy Days are Here Again." Republicans are feeling the good vibrations of the Trump election. They feel confident again.

We measure two things when we measure "consumer confidence." We measure economic prospects and partisanship.

The graph of consumer confidence shows the two factors. Everyone got nervous in March of 2020. Lost confidence was a leading indicator of the full-on recession. Everyone could see what we faced. Airlines were cancelling flights, businesses were shutting their doors, and every source of authoritative news warned about confined spaces.

Notice the confidence lines after the 2016 and 2020 elections. They changed directions at the point of the election, not at the point when the new president took office. The pattern continued this month:

A close look at the graph shows asymmetry. Republicans changed attitudes more than did Democrats. Ryan Cummings and Neale Mahoney at Stanford measured and reported this asymmetry using data from the University of Michigan and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Our findings can be summarized by analogy: We find that Republicans cheer louder when their party is in control and boo louder when their party is out of control. . . . [This] explains 30 percent of the current gap between observed consumer sentiment and what you would predict using economic fundamentals.

Republicans distrust Democrats more than Democrats distrust Republicans. The data show that Republican excess skepticism of Democratic presidents is a perennial condition.

This gives Trump a natural advantage at creating a narrative of Democratic misrule. Trump can persuade. He sells. In his 2020 inauguration, Trump sold the idea that he inherited "carnage." Democrats were silent. No one argued that things were pretty good and getting better. Eight years ago Trump took office with steadily improving trend lines through the Obama era. (This blog had multiple posts showing this.)

"Carnage" seemed plausible to Republicans. Three months later, with essentially the same economy, he said it was the greatest economy of all time. That remains the memory Americans have of the Trump era. Asymmetry was in place. Democrats agreed that the Obama trend had stayed intact and things were better. Republicans saw things were good, finally, as could be expected under a Republican president.

This history and experience leads me to a prescription for Democrats. Narrative matters. Leadership matters.

     1. Democrats must not be silent this time while Trump reprises the "carnage-becomes-great" story. Democrats need to provide a vivid counter-narrative based on reality. Take stock of where we are: GDP, inflation, unemployment rate, interest rates, deficits, and the stock market. Make Trump own whatever reality unfolds. Don't let him sell a fairy tale.

     2. The next generation of Democratic leadership needs to step up now to audition for leadership and to tell a Democratic story. Trump had a lifetime to become famous and create a brand. Democratic leaders need to become familiar and trusted. Trump will roll over a tentative person concerned about being too forward, too early. The best leader for Democrats may not be the most credentialed one. It will be the one who becomes the familiar, trusted, interesting one. Voters want change and the current American political environment demands a performer.

This will be a struggle for dominance in narrative-creation. The next Democratic president will be someone who says popular things while appearing confident and tough enough to stand up to Trump.

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Easy Sunday: Crypto donations.

Money talks. 

Elon Musk gave an enormous amount to the Trump campaign: over $130 million. He was the number-two 2024 donor.

Fairshake, the leading crypto industry PAC, gave almost $300 million in the 2024 election. That is more than the next 19 biggest business PACs combined. 

I am accustomed to the "usual suspects" of industry PACs. That is the reason we have the mortgage deduction and tax free exchanges of real property. (realtor PACs.) That is the reason we have private health insurance instead of Medicare for All. (insurance PACs.) That is the reason that Medicare pays the highest prices in the world for drugs. (drug industry PACs.) Politicians who play ball with those industries get financial support. Ones that don't, get attacked.

There is a big new player: crypto. Here is a chart from OpenSecrets.org. Fairshake PAC dominated the donation chart.

Charts at OpenSecrets.org

Some PACs give approximately the same amount to both Democrats and Republicans. They have their industry-specific issues. These would include realtors, the insurance industry, and bankers. However, car dealers, Home Depot, and UPS give primarily to Republicans. Koch, Inc. gives exclusively to Republicans. Trial lawyers give primarily to Democrats.

The crypto industry skewed heavily toward Republicans in 2024. Biden has been skeptical of the value of cryptocurrency for anything other than tax avoidance, money laundering, and financing drug crime. Trump had been skeptical, but he made a switch when Elon Musk's and other tech people switched to him. Trump became the crypto-positive candidate.  Most crypto money went to Republican candidates.

I personally have been skeptical of crypto currency. I consider its un-traceability a disadvantage, at least for legal transactions. My attitude has been formed in part by the Beanie Baby rage of the 1980s. Worthless toys were considered valuable, until they weren't. Worthless companies sometimes get bid up in price. Then they go poof.

Available for "$18,000.00 or best offer." Also for $6.00

I am probably missing the boat, but I didn't buy tulip bulbs in 1638, and I haven't bought bitcoin now. I like investments in businesses that make useful things and can sell them profitably --  companies with earnings.

Some early investors made a fortune owning crypto currencies. They spent a tiny piece of that fortune helping elect a president and Congress. Maybe the world will find a use for an alternative currency. 

But isn't the U.S. dollar in some sense imaginary, just like bitcoin? Isn't money just a shared idea of value, symbolized by nothing but numbers on paper or a computer screen? Yes, money is an idea. But the U.S. dollar has a tether to a hard reality. I can use a dollar to pay the single biggest bill in my budget, my federal taxes. That gives it real value to me, so I will trade value in order to get it. So will other Americans for the same reason. That gives it reproducible, scalable value to the world, as long as there is a United States.

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Showdown

Who has the bigger mandate: Trump or Senate Republicans?

If both have a mandate, then there are checks on Trump's power.

Trump wants a free hand.

Donald Trump nominated Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Each is flagrantly unqualified. Everyone knows that, most certainly U.S. senators. Trump is forcing a showdown. It is a test of loyalty and courage. Does Trump have sole power or share power?

A showdown now is a smart strategic move by Trump. He is at the absolute peak of his power. He has a fresh mandate. The positions of both the Senate and House aspirants for leadership are new and weak. Neither can hold onto those positions if they face direct adamant opposition by Trump. 

Trump does not succeed by being broadly acceptable. The opposition and fury of Democrats is a feature that helps Trump. It assures his friends that Trump is on their side. What Trump does supremely well is squelch rivals within the half of America inclined to vote for Republicans. He humiliates rivals. He rolls over them. He claims that he --not them--represents the will of the people. Trump can mobilize Republican voters in a way no other Republican can.

Gaetz and RFK Jr. were chosen to carry out the showdown. If Trump's nominees were reasonable, well-respected, credible appointees, then it would mean nothing that the Senate consented to them. The GOP Senate's subservience would be untested. To demonstrate subservience, senators must be seen willingly giving up power in favor of Trump by letting poor choices -- Trump's choices -- take office, despite their own judgment.

Voters wanted a decisive, cruel president who would force others to buckle under to his will. They elected one. Later we will see if Ukraine, Russia, China, and Mexico buckle to Trump. He said they would. But for now we are seeing if Senate Republicans do. 

A recess appointment gives senators a mechanism that lets Republicans give up their power to advise and consent. Trump extracted promises to allow recess appointments from the three aspirants for the job of Senate majority leader. John Thune -- theoretically one of the establishment-oriented senators who respect the traditions and powers of the Senate -- won the job. He is now talking with his colleagues, testing the waters,  with the difficult job of somehow making any capitulation to Trump look bipartisan. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson is on board with Trump. Like Thune's, his hold onto power is fragile. He, too, needs Trump. He has just announced that he wants to keep secret any embarrassing and disqualifying information about Gaetz.

Eight years ago, Trump was haphazard and often ineffective in exercising and consolidating power. He has learned. His rivals for power in the GOP are weak. He is strong, but not overwhelmingly so. He presumably will leave office in four years. He is old. Rivals are looking ahead to a post-Trump world. And Gaetz and RFK Jr. were so very outrageous as nominees that maybe four senators out of 53 will say "too much."

If Trump loses this one, his cloak of invincibility will have a rip in a seam. And one torn seam leads to more of them. 

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Any misgivings yet?

Trump is communicating with blunt body language by nominating Matt Gaetz and RFK Jr.

We are in a moment of "cartoon physics."

We all knew the rules of cartoon physics before we could read. Four-year-olds who watch Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner know that when a character runs off solid ground into mid-air that gravity is suspended. Then, after of moment of humor for the audience -- because the audience knows something the character doesn't; what fun! -- the character looks down. He realizes he went too far. Then he falls.

Cartoon physics is also political physics. The reversal of fortune takes place when the politician catches up to the audience and realizes that his enthusiasm brought him too far and off a political cliff. We are in the momentum-off-the-cliff zone. Maybe the beaver can tiptoe back. Maybe it is too late. It is a moment of suspense for the nation. A few Republicans are looking down. We don't know yet if there is still solid ground of public support for where Trump is bringing us. 

I hear Democrats say that Trump voters are trapped in a cult of personality. Not all of them. A great many Republicans tell me they understand that Trump is a lawbreaking scamp, that he exaggerates and lies, and that his post-2000 election behavior was dishonest. They voted for him anyway. They don't like Democrats. They think that the border was mishandled, that inflation is the fault of Democrats, that the Afghanistan withdrawal was ugly, and that Democrats are immoderate on culture-war issues. They gave Trump a second chance.

The Wall Street Journal warns of "cranks and cronies."

Many Republicans never really believed that Trump would "burn it all down," as Steve Bannon urges. Many Republicans don't hate the FBI, the ATF, the SEC, the FDA, and the CIA. They eat processed foods. They vaccinate their children. Most got Covid shots and get flu shots. They aren't nut-jobs. They made common cause with MAGA  because that was how to have a majority that would stop a Democrat. But the nominations of Matt Gaetz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. go a step beyond expectations. 

Members of the Republican coalition are troubled by the nominations of Matt Gaetz, the fringiest Freedom Caucus disrupter as attorney general, and brain-worm RFK Jr. as head of Health and Human Services. RFK, Jr. frightens the drug, chemical, agriculture, oil, packaged food, fast food, and medical industries. Gaetz disgusts nearly everyone who ever worked with him. These nominees aren't just bold and outspoken. People who know them well call them kooks.

I had predicted that backlash would come, but later. I had presumed Trump would slow down to bring along the cautious ones in the GOP. That appears to be wrong. Trump populism was built around opposition to the establishment perspective of The Wall Street Journal. He owes Fox opinion hosts, not the WSJ. The populists in the party want to burn stuff down. Trump is racing forward.

To continue the cartoon metaphor, the U.S. Senate may rush to build scaffolding under the Trump beaver. They would "let Trump pick his team," as Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville put it. They would let Trump make recess appointments.

It may work. It may not. We are in suspense. If a few senators get the courage to break with Trump and refuse to confirm these two appointments, a fracture line will split the GOP. Trump's  honeymoon will have lasted fewer than two months.

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Bummed about the election?

Be of good cheer. Nothing endures. The wheel turns.

Sixty years ago the U.S. was escalating its war in Vietnam. 

The Vietnam War came to mind because I came across a bit of irony. In October, unnoticed amid the campaign news, a joint press release announced a collaboration between a Vietnamese developer and The Trump Organization.

The venture will focus on developing 5-star hotels, championship-style golf courses, and luxurious residential estates and unparalleled amenities in Vietnam. 

“We are incredibly excited to enter this dynamic market,” said Eric Trump. “Vietnam has tremendous potential for luxurious hospitality and entertainment, and we are beyond thrilled to work with this amazing family to redefine luxury in the region.” 

Six decades ago, a majority of Americans thought the Vietnam War was worth fighting. The U.S. had free elections that legitimized the peaceful transfer of power and we had a capitalist economy. Our Vietnamese enemy had strong-man autocracy and a communist economy. Time passes. Things change. 

During the worst of the fighting in Vietnam, I was of draft age but out of harm's way with a student deferment. I encountered the poem "Grass" by Carl Sandberg, written in 1918 shortly after the final battle of World War I at Verdun. 

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
                                             I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
                                            What place is this?
                                            Where are we now?

                                            I am the grass.
                                            Let me work.

Like many young people in the 1960s, I analogized the Vietnam War and World War I. So much suffering, and for what? In a short while, all the storm and emotion would be forgotten, the young lives ended, and people would look at grass and wonder what all the fuss was about. What happened here? Ypres and Verdun? What are they?

Soon: Khe Sanh and Hué? The Tet Offensive? What was that?

Today, Vietnam is a buzz of raw capitalism with developers building luxury golf courses. The grass will be doing its work on fairways and greens.

I don't want to minimize the rough patch that I expect for American democracy. Trump will barrel ahead with his attack on democratic norms and laws. Some of it will last a long time in the form of young and highly partisan judges. But the backlash will come. Indeed, it is already starting. 

But Trump is appointing provocateurs to key positions. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host Trump appointed to be defense secretary, has an agenda of fighting culture-war battles with the military. Trump named Tom Homan to return as ICE director. Horman wants a maximalist approach to deportation. Matt Gaetz, Trump's nominee for attorney general, has a burn-it-down agenda of payback against the people who investigated him and Donald Trump. On Wednesday Gaetz wrote on social media:

We ought to have a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people. And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!

I expect news of deportations. I expect investigations of prominent Democrats. I expect Trump to find trans people in the military to humiliate and dismiss. Americans signed up for this when we elected him. 

Trump's appointments demonstrate that he is bound and determined to overreach. He is still in campaign body-language mode. His appointments are a statement in themselves. The first 100 days, and maybe the first two years, will be uncomfortable for Democrats.  But Trump's overreach will create backlash and counter-forces.

Republicans in the U.S. senate see the trouble ahead that I predict. They are already trying to put the brakes on Trump by selecting Senator John Thune as their leader. They rejected Rick Scott. I don't expect the brakes to be very effective at first. Trump has his mandate. Trump's overreach will destroy it.

I am trying to take the long view. No election is forever. Things change. Get through this rough patch. The 2026 midterm election will be a great corrective. 

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