A RALLYING LIE

It’s supposed to be about issues, I keep telling myself. 

 

The man has no platform. He doesn’t want to talk issues. He’d have to defend them. Hell, he’d have to know them.

 

How can anyone disregard Project 2025 when he offers nothing to counter or clarify?

 

Instead of a platform, we get distraction. We get headline-making provocation.

 

And, for the most part, after a day of “outrage,” we shrug it off. There’s always a new provocation to get worked up about. The barrage of distractions should sink the man and his shot at the White House, but instead, he keeps trending, keeps getting the attention he craves.

 

There. That’s my preface. I know all this. You know all this too, right?

 

And yet one provocation that arose again last week—he’s down to re-spinning his greatest hits now—requires that I not shrug it off even though we were pelted with new provocations over the weekend. (Seriously, America, aren’t you exhausted?)

 

It’s Donald Trump’s repeating that schools are aiding and abetting—even actively initiating—gender changing procedures for minors that I cannot let go by with a shrug or a “Oh, that’s just Trump” non-analysis. (You really are exhausted, America.)

 

Speaking with Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump said, “Who would want to have — there’s so many — the transgender operations: where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn him into a male — to a female — without parental consent.”

 

Like so many Trump comments these days, I have to reread or replay the quote first. The 78-year-old man has gotten less coherent in his rambles, but this statement is Trump at his clearest. And what he says is utterly preposterous. If anything, the quote should establish that Trump is not of sound mind. A generous take on it would be to say he’s woefully broadened and distorted the ongoing issue of pronoun preferences and whether teachers must have parental consent to address students with non-cisgender corresponding ones.

 

But even that should be damning. How can the presidential candidate for a major political party misstate or misunderstand an issue so badly? But he banks on the fact he’s not fact-checked by his supporters or even by begrudging non-fans in the Republican Party who still attempt to defend or deflect what the man says. 

 

“Oh, that’s just Trump.”

 

Yeah, that’s just the man on the ballot seeking another term as President of the United States. Shake yourselves, America. “That’s just Trump” is not an acceptable reaction. Donald Trump has been interviewing to get his job back for four years and, wow, this is not someone you hire. No, not even to run the fry machine at McDonald’s. 

 

You know this. And your crazy uncle/neighbor/co-worker knows this, too. They go along for the sport of it and, when I say “sport,” I’m talking the fake kind, that staged wrestling which made a household name of performers like Hulk Hogan. Fake sport, fake news, fake facts. (Damn Kellyanne Conway and her “alternative facts.”) 

 

Schools are not helping kids get hormones or operations to change gender. Trump knows this. He openly lies. And that’s deemed acceptable by fifty percent of the voting public. (Really, America? How is this possible? If you distrust politicians so much, why do you give a free pass to the most intentionally distrustful of the lot?)

 

This particular lie rankles me so much because I spent my career as a teacher and school principal. If there were even one case of school officials in some way transporting a student to a healthcare facility or otherwise enabling a gender-changing surgery, it would be all over the news. The teacher would be named. The school would be known. The school district would have to investigate, dismiss the school staff member and go into damage control. I would be horrified of such a case which is the reaction Trump is eliciting…just without such a case. 

 

This nonsense freaks out his base. They don’t understand gender pronouns much less actions to align one’s body with the gender that feels authentic. They have been plenty worked up over boys going into girls’ bathrooms and running against them at track meets. Now this? Surgery?! Without parental consent?! Outrageous! And not happening.

 

Trumped-up outrage causes more negative feelings toward people who identify as trans or nonbinary. It damages the greater LGBTQ+ community. It further tarnishes public education. It creates another dent in the trust and respect that teachers work so hard to gain. (Respect is far from a given anymore.) 

 

Trump doesn’t care. Trump was never a product of the public school system. Mr. Bone Spurs attended the private Kew-Forest School from kindergarten to grade seven, then went to private boarding school at the New York Military Academy. 

 

The disparaged groups are all traditionally Democrat-leaning voters. His allegation is a safe lie. No losses in terms of voters. It’s better than safe. It’s a rallying lie. Vote for Trump or those teachers are going to be out of control! Whole classes are going to have their genitals transformed during math! Fear the Woke. Vote them away.

 

This is gross. It’s pathetic. And…it’s working.

 

It undermines truth in reporting. It feeds conspiracy creators and spreaders. I’m glad CNN reported this yet again. In this article, CNN does an exemplary job debunking any allegation that schools are complicit in gender-changing medical care for children. Read it. Pass it on to your crazy uncle/neighbor/co-worker. They won’t read it, but they will have a clear takedown of Trump’s allegation within reach. Maybe, just maybe, curiosity will tweak them before they double down. It’s indeed a reach but it beats being resigned to not just playing with the facts but playing with all-out fiction.

 

And then look to see where Trump stands on issues. If you find nothing but a shell or a total void, know that's as good as it gets. Know that Trump will improvise presidential leadership just as he has improvised his campaign. Vote to make this circus roadshow go away for good. Let the exhaustion end.