Books are arriving Tuesday.
It was this:
Yup. Official U.S. government information propaganda:
...Senate Democrats...can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government...
In that short excerpted quote, I swear, there are countably more lies, damned lies and overall mind-screws packed in, than there are words.
I knew already, of course, that Republicans were lying to blame Democrats for the SNAP crisis. The money was there to avert it temporarily, all along.
And that they were blaming immigrants, and regularly lumping together--by implication and by treatment--undocumented people, green-card holders, asylum applicants, Dreamers, and more, all in the vile title, "illegal aliens."
Only because it was news to me that trans people were also being blamed, something happened to snap.
gender mutilation procedures
At least four, stated or implicit, lies in those three words, arguably more. I probably don't need to lay them out for you. Something snapped.
And maybe this had something to do with that reaction too.
x
This article quotes the university president saying Lia was on the women's swimming and diving team, but she's not on this year's roster on their athletic department website. The NCAA banned her from being on the team when Trump first took office.
— Katelyn Boo-urns (@katelynburns.com) 2025-10-27T18:26:22.403Z
It was later confirmed that Smith took her own life.
And there is now more to the backstory. It's not that she was banned directly from competing. Middlebury College, to its credit, didn't bend the knee to some Executive Edict.
She was a model student—proof that when transgender people are allowed to live authentically, the benefits ripple outward. Lia double-majored in computer science and statistics, played in the Chess and Japanese clubs, loved music, and competed on the women’s swimming and diving team until she left, citing the pressure and isolation she felt as a transgender athlete who “didn’t feel welcome.” Her departure came amid a growing wave of anti-trans policies on college campuses, as states began banning transgender athletes in 2022—a wave that has only intensified since into national bans. That hostility marked the beginning of what every transgender person now recognizes: a coordinated effort to legislate us out of public life.
And maybe something snapped also, in part, because of all things:
Entertainment Weekly reported:
Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson replied to EW's inquiry about the LGBTQ-centric project with a statement against the network’s programming trends.…
"Under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, the U.S. military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos. Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral... [T]he weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn't care if you're a man, a woman, gay, or straight....[Officials] will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children."
Quite a mind-screw, considering Hegseth has systematically ejected virtually all women from the highest officer ranks, and absolutely all trans inividuals from the military completely, including recent graduates of the academies denied the opportunity to serve, and long-time service members arbitrarily deprived of pension rights.
Back long ago, when I had a job alongside feds myself, I knew a guy who had been in the Army in the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era. He was outed and fired from the Army and then had one hell of a time finding anything better than temp work with the less-than-honorable discharge on his record. (He eventually did.) So it hits kind of personal. Let's not forget all the service members who have been unjustly removed or demoted.
So that last thing was the impetus. I had to get the book that the Boots series is based on.
Didn't want to use Amazon, went to Bookshop.org, which facilitates finding books and ordering from a raft of independent bookstores. Happened upon a store in Massachusetts having a special on LGBTQ books, and ended up ordering six.
Not an ad, but if you feel like rage-ordering a book, it's an option and went smoothly.
There's an LGBTQ Literature series here on Daily Kos once a month, the last Sunday every month, 7:30 p.m. Lot of material for that now, coming up!
At the same time--I think LGBTQ issues could use more coverage here in the current emergency. Both literature and more than literature. May try every Sunday evening for a while and see how that goes. If it does.
If you got this far, thanks for reading.
DK library had this photo, reminscent of No Kings Day, our little local protest. A truck with TRUMP flags kept coasting up and down. Most ignored it, but one person stepped out in the street as the truck passed. Dancing, with a flag like this one. Lovely moment.
