Nationalism, Transgenderism and the Road to Collectivism
02/18/2022
I’ll bet ya thought the NOBULL writers and editorial staff had somehow fallen victim to “cancellation” by Google, Microsoft and whatever other tech companies have control over the internet and email messages. Well, no, such cancellation has not occurred yet, primarily because we just aren’t that important with our distribution in the tens (I could say hundreds, but it would only be about 300).
Truthfully, there has not been that much to say that isn’t said every day on cable news and conservative web sites. And, frankly, I have been completely unable to commit to any one of a hundred different explanations that have arisen to tie together what is happening in America at this time. Is it George Soros and his Open Borders, the New World Order, the Great Reset, the Obama takeover of government agencies, a coup by our “Intelligence” Agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI), a Chinese infiltration of all facets of our government, or is it all just Donald Trump’s attempt to put a fascist government in place.
So many explanations, so little time to sort it all out. And this is not to mention the role the media is playing in overloading us with information or is it misinformation. I don’t know, none of us really knows. In fact, the one thing I’m sort of sure about is that there is a lot more going on than we will ever know. The problem with that is that we have no idea how crazy the people are that are doing all these things that we don’t know about.
This NOBULL, therefore, will consist of those few notions that have emerged from the confused brains of our vast and diverse staff. So, without further ado, let’s talk about Patriotism vs Nationalism.
I
In the United States, until Donald Trump, we did not hear the word “nationalism” used very often. The word we heard was “patriotism”. When Trump used the slogan Make America Great Again, and emphasized a philosophy of America first, the “Progressive” Left, as they are wont to do, tried two tactics. The first was to say that MAGA meant that America was not already great. When that failed because everyone knew that the AGAIN part was in relation to what Barack Obama had done to America’s standing in the world, the second attempt was to convert patriotism into nationalism.
The Left with the help of the media, then made patriotism synonymous with Nationalism. They made it appear that Trump was declaring America to be better than all other nations. We know that not to be true because he asserted that every nation should, in their international diplomacy and domestic policy, put the needs of their own nation and its citizens first. The Left then tried to claim that all expressions of patriotism were nationalistic and meant “my country, right or wrong” and, therefore, ignored the problems of the nation. Finally, as none of that worked, the Left fell back on the tried and true. They converted patriotism to nationalism and then associated nationalism to fascism, national socialism (Nazism) and finally to white nationalism. So, if you were a patriotic white person, you were either a fascist Nazi or a racist white nationalist.
He who controls the words and their meaning controls the nation. Patriotism has become unfashionable and even abhorrent to some because it has come to mean nationalism, racism, exclusionism, white supremacy. It is my purpose in these next few paragraphs to reclaim the word patriotism so as to resist the Left’s attempt to eliminate it by perverting its meaning.
Patriotism is NOT pride in your government. Patriotism is not pride in the land occupied by the government, called our country. Patriotism is a pride in and a willingness to defend the VALUES upon which the nation and its government are founded. Patriotism is a feeling of oneness with all other citizens who hold in common a belief in and commitment to those values.
There are those who would eliminate and vilify the notion of patriotism. They would like to destroy the values that knit a nation together, destroy the borders that define an area and people committed to those values and thereby dilute the strength and commitment to those values by introducing people who have no experience as citizens operating under those values. They attack and undermine the values of the nation, declaring that those values are not shared and by dividing the citizens into warring tribes within the nation. They redefine patriotism as nationalism in order associate it with separatist and fascist movements. But patriotism is first and foremost about the values upon which the nation is founded.
Patriotism then is the recognition that while our differences may be small or large, it is our commitment to a common set of values that binds us together. The Left would have us believe that we are not patriots committed to a defined set of values but rather nationalists. Nationalism, they declare is merely and identification with a socially constructed group rather than a belief in and commitment to an established, consistent set of values. The Left wants us to believe that everything is a social construction, from our gender to our nation.
That is why it is the Constitution that is more important than the government that it establishes. It is the Constitution that defines the VALUES upon which the government is founded. And it is to the Constitution rather than the government to which patriotic people hold their greatest allegiance; not to the government but to the values upon which that government is meant to be founded.
II
Okay, now let’s talk about sex. Well, not so much sex as gender. Is there a difference between sex and gender? Linguistically, there is. People whose sex is male have the gender boy or man. People whose sex is female have the gender called girl or woman. For the overwhelming majority of people, sex is genetically determined by your chromosomes and your biochemistry which, in turn, determine your anatomy. For a very very small number of people, there are genetic anomalies where sex is unclear. In those few cases, parents or doctors decide whether to raise the child as a male or as a female.
The transgender community has capitalized on these anomalous situations to make the case that when the sex of a child is indeterminate, then the child can be raised as a male or a female and therefore their gender becomes a social construction of whatever sex is chosen. Therefore, they argue, while sex is biological and fixed, gender is a social construct and is mutable. And from that argument proceeds the argument that individuals can “construct” their genders for themselves.
Perhaps we should pause here for a moment to define a social construct. Social constructs, we are told, are things that society creates as opposed to things that exist naturally. Things that are not social constructs would still exist even if people did not exist. A mountain is not a social construct but a country with borders is a social construct the argument goes. On the surface, this is a distinction that appears to make a difference. Given a little thought, however, we might reasonable ask if a mountain really is a mountain IF there are no people existing to see it and compare it to other elevations. You can see that the notion of “social constructs” can quickly evolve into deep philosophical discussions, which, by the way, would depend heavily on “social constructs”. To my mind, everything is a social construct, constructed in one way or another by the human mind. And if everything is a social construct then there is nothing else to compare it to and it becomes a meaningless concept.
If we dispense with the argument that gender is a social construct, we are left to ask what is going on in a person whose sex is male but whose mind tells him that he is a girl or a woman. (Note: all the following discussion can be reversed to speak of females who come to see themselves as male.)
I have had this discussion now with many men and women who are not transgender. Finding out I am a psychologist, they want to know what I think. So the first thing I ask people to begin the discussion is for them to tell me, as men and women, what it FEELS like to be a man or a woman. To date, no one has been able to identify the FEELING associated with being the gender that is consistent with their sex. I then ask if men cannot tell me what it feels like to be a man and women cannot tell me what it feels like to be a woman, then how on Earth can a man tell me what it feels like to be a woman or a woman tell me what it feels like to be a man.
I run this little experiment to demonstrate that if someone suggests that they feel they are not a gender consistent with their sex, that there is no such feeling. In point of fact, the expression from a man that he has always FELT like a woman is not a feeling at all but a belief. People often use the word “feel” when they mean “believe” (e.g. “I feel like I am right”.
Now here are some counter-arguments from some transgender folks. They argue that only people whose gender is not consistent with their sex can have the feeling. What feeling? The feeling of being in the wrong body. I asked one person, a male, what that feeling is like and the response was: “It’s like waking up, seeing your penis and screaming ‘where is my vagina?’”. What must be going on in the mind of a man who is appalled at having a penis that he has always had and not having the genitals that he has no experience of ever having?
I have asked transgender people to tell me what it is that tells them that they are in the wrong body. People know things through thoughts, feelings, and sensations. When I ask what thought, feeling or sensation tell them they are in the wrong body, they are able to talk about the dysphoria associated with being in the body they have. Dysphoria, the uncomfortable or negative feelings that come with believing they are in the wrong body. But what thought, feeling or sensation leads to that belief. They are unable to say. But even more to the point, a man thinking or believing he is in the wrong body still must answer the question of why he thinks that the right body is a female body. How does he know that?
Transgender people identify with people of the opposite sex. It is a psychological matter of identity and nothing to do with biology. Their gender identity does not match the sex they are born with. The diagnosis used to be gender confusion. It was changed for political reasons. There are many possible explanations for why such gender confusion may exist. But it has been and to my mind remains a mental health issue. And the primary reason is because transgender people cannot explain or answer reasonable questions about their internal thoughts, feelings and sensations.
Some transgender people think it is unfair to be asked how they know they are a gender different from their biological sense. They say that if people whose sex and gender are consistent can’t say how they know, why should a trans person be required to know. The answer is plain. Trans people are stating they are in the wrong body while the others are not. So there must be something that tells them why their body is wrong and how they know the opposite body is right. Additionally, on a political basis, trans people are asking others to accept things that do not make sense, ie, that males can become women, that men can menstruate, that men can have babies, that males can participate in women’s sports and freely expose their genitals in women’s locker rooms. They should have to explain what it is they want the rest of us to understand if they want the world to accept their “new” definitions.
Words have meanings. The Progressive Left wants to create an entire new vocabulary. By creating a new vocabulary, they create a different society. The Progressive Left claims its purpose is to be inclusive. But their definition of inclusive means to do away with all boundaries; boundaries between nations, boundaries between sexes and genders, and ultimately boundaries between individuals. The purpose is an insidious one. The purpose is to create a society not based on the individual but on the collective. No boundaries between individuals means one world, one collective government, one collective mind free of individual freedom, individual dissent, and individual will. It’s called collectivism and that is the goal of the Progressive Left.
