In the morning thread, valued commenter Scout211 recommended a lengthy HuffPo piece authored by Christopher Mathlas:

Renton Sinclair’s mother is a former Miss Illinois who wants to force trans people out of public life. That’s exactly what makes her a rising star in MAGA World.

It’s long but very much worth your time, and there’s no paywall. A few brief excerpts:

Renton doesn’t talk to Tania [the shitty mom] anymore. But Tania is always talking about Renton these days, on podcasts and livestreams and stages across the country, from California to South Dakota to Pennsylvania. She often tells the story of how God appeared to her in a dream before her first child was born, telling her what to name her child, a name with Biblical origins…

Tania  joined this scrum of fledgling moral panic capitalists sometime during the pandemic. By January 2022, she’d lost her day job — a firing Tania has said stemmed not from her opposition to trans people but from statements she’d made against vaccine mandates and about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol…

The mom is a religious fanatic, but Mathlas is right to call her a “moral panic capitalist” because she has avidly monetized her estrangement from her own child. Thank dog he escaped that cruel, money-grubbing weirdo, who sounds like a cross between Kari Lake and the mother from “Carrie.”

What makes [Renton] angry is that the pain in these pages [his childhood journal] — their chronicles of depression and confusion, an overdose, and wanting deeply every day to die — is what so many politicians across the country want to inflict on trans people. To codify that cruelty he experienced, that sheer unkindness, into law. Like his mom, these legislators are uninterested in listening to trans people like Renton. To listen to them would mean seeing them as something besides a convenient wedge issue — the latest scapegoat to be sacrificed in a cynical ploy for votes and clout. To listen to them would mean to know the people they’re trying to disappear.

It’s all so vulgar and cynical, the Repub cultivation of this “wedge issue.” Mathlas goes into that a bit, recounting an idiotic public appearance by Trump in which he marveled delightedly at the crowd’s enthusiasm for his remarks denouncing “transgender insanity:”

“It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that. You see, if I’m talking about cutting taxes, people go like that,” Trump said, imitating a polite golf clap. “I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”

It is amazing that the Repub base are programmable meat-sacks that people like Ron DeSantis, Christopher Rufo, Chaya Raichik, etc., can wind up and aim at a small and vulnerable community. And of course that repulsive bag of liposuction clinic medical waste Trump is happy to jump on the hate bandwagon — any hate bandwagon — if there are votes and dollars in it.

Anyhoo, Renton sounds heroically well-adjusted considering the upbringing he had from his deranged nightmare of a mother. Check the story out if you get a chance.

Open thread.

Excellent Read (Open Thread)Post + Comments (65)