Morons Playing at Monarchy

This week, the United States watched the first convicted felon inaugurated as President of the United States. Every American should be in a fit of outrage, but nobody seems too fussed about 34 felonies in the face of every other horrific act Donald Trump committed to arrive at the Inaugural Ball.

Conservative media outlets scream their candidate won by a landslide, despite Trump receiving one of the slimmest margins of popular vote in American history. They also tout a narrow conservative majority in Congress guarantees their agenda will be concrete this time next month, despite many conservative politicians begrudgingly standing near their President.

The result, however, is a party more confident than ever in expressing overt hate and discrimination. Trump's executive order to redefine the concept of gender as sex, and negate the identity of every human ever, is a glaring example that enables further atrocities.

Less obvious fallout, such as the guilty verdict in a Cortland County, NY, criminal case - The People vs. Kevin Bruzee - are symptoms of a larger problem. Trump and his ilk have us all running in fear, conservatives included. It's easier - and safer - to hide behind somebody else's hate than to take a stand for what we know is right.

Unfortunately, taking a stand is the only way what is right becomes what is.

The People vs. Kevin Bruzee

My recent live stream details the shoddy evidence in the criminal case, and I won't repeat it all here. What I will repeat is a transgender man, Kevin Bruzee - who does not possess the parts necessary to commit certain sexual acts - was arrested, incarcerated, and tried for a crime he could not have committed.

Worse, Kevin Bruzee was found guilty on all charges. Not one out of twelve people in the jury believed there was reasonable doubt in a fantastic and impossible story. Not one would hold out for truth. Not one would stand up for a person they didn't know and claim the prosecution's case was a sham.

That Kevin Bruzee was found guilty shook my confidence in humanity. It shook my confidence in the justice system. It shook my confidence in the United States of America.

A guilty verdict makes me question not only whether the United States is going to make it through the next Trump administration…but whether the country even should make it through the mess it made in the last election.

How have we lost our way so badly that a man who has no parts to commit the crime could be convicted of it?

This is the hate and discrimination I mean above - and it isn't just Trump or his flunkies Musk and Vance and other sundry fools. It was twelve normal people living in Central New York who failed to see a case composed of bullshit.

How?

The politics of fright and hate

I feel raw, exposed, and isolated right now. I see my future slowly being torn down, yet nobody appears to sense this pressure directly.

Instead, each of us is busy coming to grips with the looming possibility the Trump regime will find our tribe undesirable, round us up, and put us into concentration camps for the crime of daring to live a life expecting the liberty to pursue our happiness.

Each of us is left to scratch and bite each other like rats in an electrified cage, frightened to the point we lash out out in political pogroms to target somebody else - anybody else.

And this - this is what happened to Kevin Bruzee. At least pogroms were honest hate, targeted hate, direct hate. Pogroms were hate congealed into greasy, physical action.

Should I be rounded up for a concentration camp, at least I will look in the faces of my captors. I will look in the faces of my executioners, and they will see my eyes of truth.

Kevin Bruzee had no such privilege. His noose of hate returned to their Central New York lives and probably had no other thoughts of a random transgender man they convicted for daring to live his life.

The price of justice

Obviously, I'm angry at Kevin Bruzee's verdict. I'm devastated. I feel betrayed by every concept of the United States I supported since I was a child.

The defense attorney - Zela Brotherton - tells me she has a plan. She says justice works, and it will work. She says most justice happens at the appellate level.

What it takes for that justice to occur is for brave people to stand up and point out where the United States - and twelve members of a jury - went wrong. And that's my job now. I am to be one of those brave people willing to stand up.

All I want, however, is to sit down. All I want is to live my life and to be left alone to do it. But my country does not appear to believe I deserve that privilege. Kevin Bruzee does not deserve that privilege.

I don't understand - and not because the verdict was a nonsensical conclusion to a nonsensical charade perpetrated by District Attorney Patrick Perfetti in Cortland County, NY.

I don't understand because polls show most people want politicians to focus on issues other than gender identity. Most people believe gender-affirming care is up to a doctor and a patient, not a politician. Most parents of gender nonconforming children are supportive - even across party lines.

What the hell is happening in this country that my desire to wear a skirt deserves a Supreme Court opinion on its validity?

What the hell causes twelve otherwise normal people to fail to deliver justice to a man clearly being railroaded for political purposes?

The cause is fear: rats turning on rats as Donald Trump and his political campaign electrify the cage bars through lies designed to divide us all.

Down with the king

I'm not ready to pay the price of justice. I'm not ready to stand up against morons playing at monarchy, a tech bro oligarchy unaware the rest of the world exists.

But I will stand up.

I want to talk about hope. I want to say everything will work out for the best - for the country, for me, for the transgender community, for Kevin Bruzee.

I struggle to find the spark of hope within. All I see are gleeful MAGA enthusiasts rubbing their hands together to claim my gender is their choice - the first step in the final solution of your life, their choice.

They appear poised and ready to loot all work done to build bridges among us and destroy all this country has ever stood for. And why? Just because they can.

That - that will be Trump's legacy: a country willing to shit where it eats as long as they feel morally righteous enough to ignore the stink.

But the joke is on them. When the rats have bitten and scratched the first wave of victims out of existence, another wave will be targeted.

There will always be another wave of rats.

It matters that we stand up. It matters that we get angry, because being angry means we perceive something is wrong. And until we know something is wrong, Trump and his ilk will continue to play with this country like the most debauched British king our ancestors fled.

It's time to remind the nobility we own the guillotine, and they are the minority.