For laughs, I watch a bunch of YouTube videos of satirists, comics, and homemade videographers embedding themselves at Trump rallies and stumping the rallygoers with logical questions. Amid the blank stares of respondents, one word seems to be used over and over, research. When asked why they believe Trump won the election, invariably, they begin and end their reasoning with; I did my research. The word research is becoming as hard to define for many on the right as the GOP red meat interpretation of woke. Research is a systematic investigation free of what is known as expectation bias. If a result does not meet your expectations, denying the truth is not research. Standing in a field talking to a red-hat-wearing Bubba or repeating conservative talking points is not research; it is the accumulation of information.
Lest you think I am stereotyping Trump supporters as all riding around in pickup trucks with gun racks and little brown jugs, unfortunately, that mentality has also infiltrated the suburbs. For Trump supporters, diversity, equity, and inclusion means wearing your red hat with the bill to the right, left, or backward. When CNN provided a venue for a Trump rally, masquerading as a town hall—last month, the audience laughed out loud or applauded rape jokes, government default hypocrisy, and a lie higher than a border wall when Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Again it would be easy to dismiss the rabble-rousers who have always existed. People covering their heads and windows in tinfoil or getting messages from Mars in their eye-teeth have always been there; we just looked the other way and did not allow them to take center stage.
On the second of a series of scheduled CNN town halls with Republican candidates, Nikki Haley took her turn at bat sh*t crazy. Mixed in with the predictable disinformation, she said transgender girls participating in girls’ sports is the women’s issue of our times, leading girls to commit suicide; “The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” she claimed.“My daughter ran track in high school. I don’t even know how I would have that conversation with her. How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker room? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year,”said Haley. I am sure she did her research.
Aside from the fact that Nikki Haley believed that a high school senior was unaware of trans kids, it may have been valuable to have her read a book (not in Florida, of course). The number of trans kids participating in sports is less prevalent than in-person voter fraud, despite what the research of the rioters and insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol would tell you. I have not done any research, but there are instances of girls competing with prepubescent and adolescent boys. Thirteen-year-old Mo’ne Davis was the sensation of the 2014 Little League World Series. I am pretty sure some Dads were upset that their sons were competing with a girl, but I would venture to guess they were more upset Junior was being struck out by Mo’ne. In sixth grade, the best player on our kickball team was a girl. In the words of Denzel Washington from the movie Remember the Titans, “Let the kids play.” They have plenty of time when they grow up to buy Trump gear.
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