I’d argue, in fact, that there are many, many more than 112 ways to express your maleness or femaleness. Just as every person is unique, so is the expression of gender. The combination of a sex and a singular personality is always unique. And what is well worth leaving behind is a crude, binary sense of gender itself. Unlike sex, it really is a spectrum. And it can be crushing for gender-non-confirming kids and adults to live up to stereotypes of their gender; and it can be horribly restrictive for everyone else. There will always be social and cultural group differences in the aggregate, for sure — more men, for example, will, on average, prefer watching sports than women. But a woman who loves football is absolutely no less a woman for it.
Andrew Sullivan, “Two Sexes. Infinite Genders.” https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/two-sexes-infinite-genders
Category: Quotes
“Acting Like a Winner”
I think Trump understood perfectly well that his lock-stock-and-barrel ownership of the GOP base would lead to this kind of deafening symphonic repetition and amplification of his completely spurious claims of election fraud and Democratic corruption, and that this would function to shore up his credibility and extinguish any serious doubts among Republican voters. I mean, why would they all lie about it?
However, I suspect that most Congressional Republicans who signed on to the Big Lie were just craven, myopic, opportunistic dipshits either too dumb or too corrupt to give a second thought to the risk that their repetition of Trump’s lies would add volume to a massive chorus of voices singing the same tune. If you’re the kind of “conservative” oaf who thinks that insufferable “sanctity of democracy” stuff is just moralizing bullshit Democrats use to rig elections against Republicans by making it easy to vote — if you’re the kind of debased right-wing partisan fully reconciled to the reality that the secret to electoral GOP success is owning smug libs and trolling self-serious Dems — well, then you probably thought you were just acting like a winner.
It’s simply what one does! You go on TV and say whatever Trump said. If you’ve got a bit of panache, you’ll make it your own. You’ll find an original way to insinuate that Black people in Philadelphia either don’t or can’t count. You’ll shuttle back and forth between operatic fake umbrage and a shit-eating Polident grin as you declare that real Americans are being silenced and disenfranchised. But you probably weren’t considering that the collective strength and credibility of the Republican choir’s one voice would add up, in the minds of Republican voters, to decisive confirmation that the election really had been stolen and that the certification of Biden’s fraudulent victory really would amount to a coup.
And then Trump incites a seditious mob animated by lies you actively promoted and they trash the Capitol while you’re in it pretending to contest electoral votes for lulz, because you’re a winner. Whoops.
Will Wilkinson, “Weasel vs. Manaic”, https://modelcitizen.substack.com/p/weasel-vs-maniac
What does a Christian nation really look like?
If “the earth is the Lord’s” and we are His stewards, then obviously some livelihoods are “right” and some are not. Is there, for instance, any such thing as a Christian strip mine? A Christian atomic bomb? A Christian nuclear power plant or radioactive waste dump? What might be the design of a Christian transportation or sewer system? Does not Christianity imply limitations on the scale of technology, architecture, and land holding? Is it Christian to profit or otherwise benefit from violence? Is there not, in Christian ethics, an implied requirement of practical separation from a destructive or wasteful economy? Do not Christian values require the enactment of a distinction between an organization and a community?
Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land
Justin DaMetz 