People didn't talk about wanting a sex change, but loads of us hated our bodies and wanted to wake up in different ones. Given the option and institutional support and reassurance that transitioning would help us, many of us probably would have been convinced to do so

This is actually one of my primary concerns regarding transgenderism in the modern day. I think it's a tool in the toolbelt for when it's necessary. I also think it's a tool we reach for much more often than is necessary.

The comparable example I like to give is adhd. It isn't binary. You don't just have it or don't have it. Some people have symptoms that need no intervention. Some people have symptoms but are misdiagnosed as adhd. Other people get by with therapy alone. Yet others find medication necessary to be functional.

Giving gender affirming care to all people with gender or body dysphoria is like giving high dose Adderall to all people who have trouble paying attention in history class. It's the nuclear option, and you're using it on someone who may not even have adhd, or may not require such a strong intervention.

I know everyone hates this word, but starting with more conservative treatments first is the norm throughout healthcare for exactly this reason. We've made an exception for transgender people for political reasons, not scientific ones.

Keep in mind this works both ways. The progressive outrage machine is arguably even more active than the conservative machine. Look at the reaction to Sound of Freedom. An extremely neutral movie when you consider the politics of its content. But the main actor is a conspiracy theorist, so I guess that means the movie is a far right propaganda vehicle? By that logic most movies are far left propaganda vehicles.

A similar phenomenon has always followed Trump around. Media gets insane hits for anti-Trump content. Some people built entire careers off of reporting on his tweets. The more shocking and exaggerated they could make the content, the more money came flooding in. That's why so much of the coverage of Trump was sensationalized and uncharitable. It's also why moderates couldn't help but root for him. There's only so much the established powers that be can lie about someone before you want to support him regardless of his character flaws. It helped that his policies were generally great, focusing on anti-war and populist market adjustments.

This is why you should always take the news with a grain of salt. They're all out to make money, and they all have agendas.

lemmy.blahaj.zone are left wing extremists with zero tolerance for anyone who doesn't already believe what they believe. I'm not sure why they don't just defederate themselves. They've been openly upset that people who disagree with them on certain issues keep finding them through the all communities tab and, gasp, disagree with them in the comments.

I don't see how banning everyone who disagrees with you is easier than creating an insulated community of people who do agree with you, but I guess that's their preference.

Well, keep in mind how much footage there was of the capitol police letting "rioters" in and escorting them throughout the building as if they were on tour. I remember reading that there were opportunities to shore up the area out of concern there would be riots, since it was fairly obvious that there was going to be discontent, but the democrats declined.

I will make the standard disavowal that the riots shouldn't have happened, and those involved should be charged and prosecuted accordingly. But Trump very specifically said to protest peacefully during his speech that day.

My take on all of this has always been that the establishment hates Trump, sees him as a legitimate threat to their way of doing business, and have always exaggerated and highlighted anything they could to make him look like the most evil and incompetent person possible. I don't think you could neutrally look at all the evidence and think otherwise. I was a Democrat supporter before Trump came along. When I saw how united and unfair the portrayal of the man was by democrats and mass media, I realized the extent of corruption in the system, and more was slowly revealed over the next decade.

They want you to hate anyone who would upset the status quo. It's the same thing they did to Tulsi Gabbard. Anyone who is anti-war, pro-America, and is for populism and against globalism. Just watch for yourself. These people get fat off of selling Americans out to foreign interests and by feeding the war machine. They can't do that if we stop playing world police and start focusing on initiatives that improve the value of local labor. It requires us to rip up free trade deals and to stop funding military and PMCs, where a lot of elites make big money. That's why populists get shut out.

Jan 6 was a handful of people doing something stupid. They've turned it into a giant cross to lay on the entire moderate and conservative voter base. If you think that's reasonable, you're being tribal, not rational.

I agree with you overall, I just have a different solution. I don't think command economies work in practice. Demand economies are better because businesses aren't usually too big to fail, so they collapse when they aren't providing the products or services that are in demand.

My solution is populism with a demand economy. For all of his many, many faults, I believe Trump had the right strategy to lift up the working class. Bring back value to local labor by putting tariffs on foreign goods, that way local production becomes more profitable. Reduce (not eliminate) immigration to increase the value of promoting local workers.

Imagine a world where we weren't draining India for doctors, and instead we were forced to invest in our own populations. How much better could the lives of our citizens be if big business and government had to worry about how successful and happy our local populations are?

From a social perspective, I think reduced immigration combined with integration initiatives would go a long way. We need to find ways to get people together and communicating. I know for a fact that exposure to people with differing beliefs is the best way to de-escalate radicals. I've sat down with so many conservatives over the years and ended up tempering their opinions, just through casual conversation. We need that kind of humanizing discussion to be commonplace. It's not healthy to just expect hard left mainstream media and terms of service to censor ideas out of existence. We need to heal through open and good faith discussion.

I believe your goals are the right ones. I just don't believe the communist economic system is the right way to achieve them.