AG Jonathan Skrmetti Discusses Tennessee's Trans Case at SCOTUS

by Rod Williams, Dec. 11, 2024- The above is an informative and insightful video. Sarah Isgur of The Dispatch interviews Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. They discuss Skrmetti's bio and how he became Tennessee's Attorney General and the scope and functioning of the office.

The bulk of the discussion is devoted to discussing the case just recently heard before the Supreme Court in which Tennessee's law banning gender transition medical treatment for minors was challenged. The nuances and complexity of the issue are explored. Tennessee is one of about 26 states that have placed restrictions on things like gender blockers, hormone treatment and surgery for minors for the purpose of sex reassignment. Skrmetti is optimistic Tennessee's law will stand. Also, this court case will likely be quite influential with various concurring opinions. 

Sarah then talks to David French. French is an opinion writer for the New York Times, and an attorney who has a long history of defending religious liberty. He has a history as a conservative legal activist and pundit but is a Trump critic and has fallen out of favor with many in Trump world. As you may know, he is a resident of middle Tennessee. I have had the privilege of taking a class taught by French at Lipscomb University. He is one of my favorite conservatives of the current era. 

The French segment is informative. I learned something. He clarifies the importance of the different levels of Judicial scrutiny. The three levels of scrutiny are strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny and the rational basis scrutiny. He breaks it down and explains it and how this applies and favors Tennessee in the Supreme Court case challenging the Tennessee bill protecting minors. 

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Tennessee Bureau of Investigations: Venezuelan gang in every major city in state

By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square contributor, Dec 8, 2024 - At a state budget hearing last month, the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, David Rausch, reported to Gov. Bill Lee that a violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), is operating “in all of our major cities. They are running human trafficking operations, that’s where they start. We are now talking with our peers throughout the country that they have a pathway to more violence.”

In response, Gov. Bill Lee, an ardent supporter of border security efforts, issued a statement on X saying, “The border crisis is exactly why Americans voted for change. It’s not political – it’s about safety & security. TN will support @realdonaldtrump as he secures our border while delivering key resources for @TBInvestigation to stop illegal criminals from operating in our state.”

Tennessee has long partnered with Texas’ border security mission Operation Lone Star. Earlier this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared TdA a foreign terrorist organization and Texas Department of Public Safety began creating a database to identify TdA members, characterizations, and arrests. No such database currently exists at the local, state or federal level.

TdA members are known for violence, and have been accused of murder, kidnapping, extortion, bribery and human and drug trafficking, and linked to more than 100 law enforcement investigations nationwide, The Center Square has reported.

In Texas, they’ve been connected to ATM and bank thefts, car jackings, execution style murders and assault of women and children, The Center Square has reported. Texas law enforcement officers have arrested more than 3,000 Venezuelan illegal border crossers; more than 200 are wanted, Abbott said. Multiple agency arrests are occurring in major Texas cities involving kidnapping, murder, drug and human trafficking.

TdA crime has escalated nationwide after more than one million Venezuelans were reported illegally entering the country under the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported.

Rausch has been sounding the alarm after TBI has been involved in operations involving TdA arrests over the past year.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, he announced a joint investigation involving the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, the Chattanooga Police Department, the state’s Human Trafficking Task Force and Homeland Security Investigations that resulted in the arrest of four men, including a TdA member. They were allegedly involved in a sex trafficking ring using a local hotel. The confirmed TdA member is also suspected of committing violent crimes in Chicago and New York City, TBI said.

When announcing the arrest, Chattanooga Police Chief John Chambers said, “I want to make sure it’s crystal clear that CPD does not have issues with our Latino community members in Chattanooga, CPD and its officers are focused on criminal activity not ethnicity.”

What makes TdA “different is they do move about,” Rausch said. “They remain transient until they get comfortable. If they get into an area where they feel like they are able to operate without impunity, then they will start to dig their heels in, as we have seen in some of the other communities. What we’re trying to do – and my purpose was, in introducing this information – was to ensure that all of policing in Tennessee understands we’re not going to let them get their foothold in Tennessee.”

In March, TBI announced that an investigation into a multinational criminal organization linked to human trafficking in Middle Tennessee led to the arrest of a second alleged trafficker in Murfreesboro. TBI worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, Metro Nashville Police Department, and the United States Marshals Service to make the second arrest.

The investigation began last fall after TBI Human Trafficking Unit special agents uncovered a trafficking operation that allegedly lured women from Central and South America to the U.S. and forced them into commercial sex acts to pay off their debt to get to the U.S. One of the alleged traffickers was arrested last year.

Rausch’s warning prompted several local jurisdictions to release statements. The Metro Nashville Police Department said, “This police department is well aware of Tren de Aragua and the criminal activity associated with its members. We have a heightened awareness for any such activity seen here.”

The Knoxville Police Department and Knox County Sheriff’s Office said they hadn’t identified TdA members but were closely monitoring their jurisdictions. Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said there was no indication that TdA members were operating in the county.

The Memphis Police Department confirmed TdA activity. It said, “There have been two incidents in Memphis regarding Venezuelan gang activities. In 2023, officers located graffiti in the Appling Farms Station area. Additionally, on November 19th, 2024, ICE ERO arrested Luis Alejandro RUIZ-GODOY, who had outstanding warrants through INTERPOL. He was transported to Louisiana for deportation. Investigators with the Memphis Police Department have been and will remain in contact with our local, state, and federal partners concerning any new developments with Venezuelan gangs.”

Chattanooga Police Department said “there was no evidence to indicate that the gang is actively operating in our city.” Two weeks later, TBI and CPD announced the multi-operation arresting sex traffickers, including a TdA member.

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House Republicans introduce bill to eliminate sales tax on groceries

By Kim Jarrett, The Center Square, Dec. 10, 2024- Tennessee Rep. Elaine Davis, R-Knoxville, has filed a bill that would remove the state's sale tax on groceries.

It's the second bill filed to end the tax. Democrats introduced a bill last month. The bills only remove the tax on food and food ingredients and not prepared foods, candy or alcohol.

Davis said her bill would not raise taxes or cause local governments to lose revenue. Local governments would have the option to impose a grocery tax.

"We have all felt the impact of rising food prices over the last few years, and working families have struggled to put food on the table as a result," Davis said. "Tennesseans know best how to spend their own money. Repealing taxes on essential items like food and personal hygiene products has been one of my top legislative priorities."

House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, backs the bill. Senate Democrats called the Republican bill a "publicity stunt."

"Republicans have had control in Tennessee for 14 years and they didn't eliminate the grocery tax. Instead, they cut BILLIONS in taxes for the wealthy and big corporations," they said in a social media post.

Democrats introduced the bill during the 2024 session but it failed.

Lawmakers passed a bill that suspended the state's grocery tax for three months in 2023 that returned an estimated $272.8 million to the taxpayers.

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Tip # 18 from The Rod Williams School of Drunk Driving: Avoid Sobriety Checkpoints.

by Rod Williams, Dec 9, 2024 - The Nashville.gov website today posted a notice that there would be a sobriety checkpoint on 8th Ave on the night of December 18. I live right off of 8th Ave and at this point have no plans for that date but if I were going to go out and if I was going to have more than one drink, I would play it safe and avoid 8th Ave. Avoiding sobriety checkpoints is tip number 18 from the Tips from the Rod Williams School For Drunk Driving.

Tips from The Rod Williams School of Drunk Driving

(1) Don't Drive drunk. That is the number one tip: don't do it. Getting arrested for drunk driving is only one reason not to drive drunk.  The most important reason is you could kill yourself or someone else.  If you are lucky and don't kill someone else or yourself, getting arrested for drunk driving could cost you your job, your election, your social standing, custody of your children or visitation rights, a lot of money, and maybe your marriage.

If you overindulge, there are alternatives to driving drunk. If you do get drunk, Uber or Lyft or get a hotel room or call a friend or family member and ask them to come get you. If at a friend's house and you have had too much to drink, stay the night.  

Lyft and Uber are affordable, fast, and convenient.  By now, most people who live an active life have probably used one of these services. If you have not used one of the services however, the way they work is that you page a ride using your phone. To do that you must first download an app. Don't wait until you're drunk to try to download the app. Here is a link to the Uber app.

(2) Pick the designated driver before you start drinking.  If you are not going to rely on a commercial service such as a cab or Uber, and you know you are going to be drinking and you are going with other people, then have a designated driver. I prefer being the designated drinker, but someone needs to be the designated driver.
 
Despite the above advice, I know there will be times when a person will have had too much to drink and not think they are too drunk to drive but will have had a sufficient amount of adult beverage that they could register drunk even though they don’t think they are drunk. I myself have probably driven many times when I would have registered drunk had I been stopped. I am not by any means advocating driving drunk, but if you are possibly driving impaired, I am providing these below tips to help you increase your chances of getting home safely without getting arrested.

(3) Know that you don’t have to be “drunk” to register DUI. You do not have to be sloppy, falling down drunk to register as DUI. If you think you should not drive, then by all means don’t. See the above tips. Often you will not know if you are drunk or not, so unless you know exactly how much you have had to drink and whether or not that would constitute drunk driving, then assume you are technically drunk. You do not have to appear intoxicated or have any of the symptoms that we think of as “drunk” to have a Blood Alcohol Content that legally makes you guilty of Driving Under the Influence. If you drink and you drive, you have probably driven “drunk.”

(4) Track your consumption and don’t have “one for the road.” That is what often happens. If during the evening you are having dinner with friends and you have a pre-dinner cocktail and wine with dinner and an after-dinner liquor with coffee, and a champagne toast, you might register drunk. Try to keep your alcohol consumption to a level that falls below the BAC limit.

On occasion, but not as often as I would like and certainly not as often as when I younger, I like to go to Lower Broadway to listen to live music and party. If I have 8, 12-ounce beers in a four-hour period I should have a BAC of about .068, however, if I have 9 beers in four hours that means I have a BAC of .085 and am legally drunk. “One for the road” could put me over the limit. Actually, I almost never have eight drinks in a four-hour period, but it has happened. 

A female can drink less than a male and a slender person can drink less than a heavy person. For a 115-pound female, three glasses of wine in two hours is drunk. Don’t try to keep up with the other people in your party. Know your limit. Skip a round. Drink slower. Some people assume that wine is less inebriating than tequila shots. That is not so. A 12-ounce beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of 100-proof distilled spirits have the same impact on an individual's BAC level.

Here is a calculator that will give you guidance on how much alcohol you can consume and an estimate of BAC. Please be aware that this is only a guide. If you are drinking on an empty stomach, your BAC may be higher than indicated in the calculator.

(5) You'r not a kid anymore. As you age, your reaction times can slow down, and you can lose the ability to effectively divide your attention between multiple activities. Aging tends to result in a reduction of strength, coordination, and flexibility. Face it, there are some things you cannot do as well when you are old as you could when you were young, drinking is one of them.  You may not be safely able to drink as much and drive as you could when you were younger.

(6)  Point your car in the direction of home.  Plan your trip. A good car should be able to find its way home, with a little help.  Avoid places where the police might see you. Plan your trip home so you do not have to circle a block and be concerned about traffic lights and stop signs. The less exposed one is to the police the less chance one has of getting caught. It is worth parking four or five blocks away from where you are going to reduce your exposure.

(7) Be aware that you are impaired. If you didn’t keep track of how much you drank then assume you are may have had enough to register drunk and use your best drunk-driving skills. "Thinking" skills, like perceiving and evaluating risks, or processing information are not easily visible to outside observers, but they are the first skills to be adversely affected by alcohol. Be aware of this.

(8) Stop the Party. You are having a good time. You are joking and singing and laughing. You hate to end the party, but if there is any chance that you are driving with an elevated BAC, then stop the party. 

Say, “OK folks, we need to straighten up. I need your help in getting us home.” Don’t sing or engage in distracting conversation. Turn off the radio. Don’t talk on the cell phone. Give driving your undivided attention. 

Don’t let anyone in the car have an open container. You may be perfectly capable of driving, but if a drunk passenger is yelling out the window, the police may stop the car and give you a drunk driving test. The moment you get in the car the party is over.

(9) Check the checklist. Have a mental checklist. You don’t want to get stopped because you failed to use your turn signal. I was once stopped by the police on lower Broadway and forced to take a Breathalyzer. I knew I had only had two beers in a two-hour period, so I was not concerned. The reason they stopped me is that I had not turned on my headlights as I pulled out into the street. This was in a previous car, years ago when headlights did not turn on automatically. The downtown area is well lit and this was just an oversight. The police are looking for excuses to stop you; don’t give them one. Seat belts? Check. Adjust the mirror? Check. Turn off the radio? Check. Turn on the headlights? Check.

(10)  One crime at a time! Do not commit other crimes while driving drunk. If stopped for suspicion of drunk driving, don't compound your problems by being arrested for drunk driving and something else.  Don't smoke dope while driving drunk. Don't get arrested for drunk driving and for speeding, or possession of a controlled substance, or contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or soliciting prostitution.

(11) Concentrate; pay attention. Be aware of your driving. Don’t relax. Keep both hands on the wheel. Don’t be distracted. Don't answer the phone. If you feel you must answer the phone, safely pull off the road. Don't even engage in conversation.  Make sure you do not weave. Are you staying within the lines? Drive just below the speed limit. Don’t tailgate. Pay attention to the car in front of you. If they put on their brakes, notice it. If you are approaching an intersection with a traffic light, pay close attention. Plan that traffic light stop. Don’t run a yellow light.


(12) Use your co-pilot. Ask the person in the passenger's seat to help you drive. Ask them to tell you if you weave or tailgate or go too fast. Make them pay attention to your driving.

(13) If you may be drunk, refuse the Breathalyzer test. Unless you are certain that you have had less than the number of drinks it would take to raise your BAC level to the .08 level, then common wisdom holds that it is a good idea to refuse the breathalyzer test. It generally is more difficult to convict a driver of drunk driving if no chemical tests are taken.

(14) Don't sleep it off in the car.  Should you find yourself drunk and think a nap will revive you or that you may just spend the night in your car, don't do it. Even if you are not driving, if you are in your car drunk, you can be charged with DUI.  See the guidelines above about alternatives to driving drunk. If you can't take a ride-share or call a friend, and you do end up drunk, it would be better to sleep it off in a doorway or park bench than in your car. 

(15) Tell the officer you have foot drop. If in doubt as to whether or not you can walk a straight line, don't do it. Some people can't walk a straight line even sober. Tell the officer you have foot drop, or a bad hip or have other conditions that keeps you from walking a straight line. It might work.

Rep. Bill Beck

(16) Use your influence to get the charge thrown out. Be a State Representative or other person (link) with important friends in high places who can get a judge to throw out the charge based on lack of probable cause for making the stop. Despite the police seeing you drive with wheels over the lane line and observing the smell of alcohol, slurred speech, and inability to walk straight and despite the arresting officer saying you were "absolutely hammered," the judge may rule the arresting officer did not have probable cause for making the stop.

(17) Avoid Sobriety Checkpoints. The city post where they will be conducting sobriety checkpoints, and the news media often reports it. If you know you will be drinking and driving, find out if there will be a sobriety check point where you will be traveling and avoid that route. To check where the sobriety checkpoints will be follow this link and look for announcements. 

(18) Pray. It can't hurt.

This is a tip suggested by one of the students of the Rod Williams School for Drunk Driving and I am incorporating it into the curriculum.

(19) If you are seeing double, close one eye. 

From now through January 1, 2025 there will be more parties and more excuses to drink and more drunk drivers on the road. Drive careful, don't drive drunk and stay safe. 

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United States Supreme Court Hears Arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, Tennessee's ban on childhood gender-transition interventions.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti

Press release, WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 4, 2027 – The United States Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a constitutional dispute regarding the authority of state lawmakers to protect vulnerable kids from risky and unproven medical practices.

The Office of the Tennessee Attorney General presented a robust legal and evidence-based defense of the State’s legislative response to the recent explosion of childhood gender-transition interventions. The law at issue restricts the provision of irreversible medical interventions to minors with gender dysphoria—a psychiatric condition marked by mental distress from a conflict between a person’s sex and asserted gender identity. 

“We are here defending Tennessee’s law protecting children from irreversible and unproven gender transition procedures,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti stated. “Tennessee’s General Assembly reviewed the medical evidence, as well as the evidence-based decisions of European countries that restricted these procedures, and ultimately passed this bipartisan law prohibiting irreversible medical interventions.  The plaintiffs in this case are asking the Court to take the power to regulate the practice of medicine away from the people’s elected representatives and vest it in unaccountable judges.

Challengers claim the Tennessee law’s prohibition of the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the purpose of “gender transition” discriminates based on sex and transgender status, which they say is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Tennessee argued that the law presents an across-the-board rule that represents a reasonable exercise of the States’ longstanding authority to regulate the practice of medicine within their borders.

"Our arguments were ultimately about constitutional clarity and common sense," said Attorney General Skrmetti. "Our Founders guaranteed States the right and responsibility to protect children, regulate the medical profession, and independently evaluate the evidence of the risks and benefits of practices to be regulated. We cannot allow ideology to override medical evidence at the expense of our right to self-government and our duty to protect our children."

To read a copy of Tennessee’s filing at the Supreme Court, please click here.

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Why Harris Lost and Trump Won

by Rod Williams, Nov. 26/2024 -It has been a little over three weeks since the election and Democrats have been engaging in a lot of Monday-morning-quarterbacking, soul-searching, second-guessing, and finger-pointing, trying to figure out how Kamala Harris lost the election. Other pundits and observers are also trying to explain the election outcome. 

Much of this analysis deals with strategic and tactical decisions of the campaign. I think little of it
matters. Democrats have always believed that the "ground game" and knocking on doors and making the phone calls and the personal postcards is how to win elections. Democrats were better than Republicans at doing that. l am not so sure people want a stranger knocking on their door or another phone call anymore. It appears that big rallies and dominating social media may be the way to win in the modern era. However, I am not convinced that that was a significant factor in the campaign.

If the outcome would have been close, then questions of whether or not Harris should have gone on the Joe Rogan show would matter. She lost by such a large margin, that I don't think it matters. Should Harris have chosen Josh Shapiro over Tim Walz as her VP pick? I don't think it really mattered. I think Shapiro would have been a better choice under normal circumstances. However, the Democratic electorate was not ready for a Jewish VP at a time when pro-Palestinian sentiment was running high in segments of the Democrati Party coalition. Facing down antisemitic Arab Americans and college students would not have been a distraction for the Harris campaign.

One of the opinions that I think does have merit is that Joe Biden should have announced he was not running for reelection much earlier and the Democratic Party should have had a primary. I still think Kamala Harris would have ending up being the nominee. The Democrat Party was not going to pass over a Black female who was the Vice President for someone else. However, a primary would have had the benefit of letting the public get to know Harris better. She would have had longer to come up with a decent answer as to why she flip-flopped on so many issues. She would have had a better chance to define herself and decide what she really believes. I am still not convinced that it would have made a big difference.

One of the most ludicrous conclusions I have heard some Democrats come up with is that President Biden should not have resigned, and the Party should have stuck with him. Granted few people have said that but some have. After the June debate it was clear that Biden was not up for the job.  I think Trumps victory would have been an unprecedented landslide, had Biden not stepped down. If Biden was not president, he would probably be in an assisted living facility. His cognitive decline could not have been hidden from the American people. I think it is almost criminal that his condition was hidden from the American people for as long as it was. His handler could not have kept it hidden throughout the campaign. 

Another conclusion that some Democrats have reached is that the campaign should have gone full-Bernie. Or some have expressed it as the party should have conducted a populist campaign. Maybe. The public does not understand economics, and everybody likes free stuff. As it was, the Trump campaign promises were estimated to add twice as much to the national debt as was Harris' campaign promises. Harris could have been more irresponsible than Trump and promised even more free stuff than Trump. 

Along with promising more free stuff, the campaign could have ginned up resentment of rich people. The campaign could have convinced the poor and the middle class the reason they were bad off is because someone else was better off.  Maybe that campaign would have worked better than Harris' more moderate campaign. I am not sure Americans are ready to have their private insurance taken away from them however, but I think "making the rich pay their fair share," could have resonated. The problem with this approach is that a populist campaign does not mesh well with a campaign of wokeness and identity politics and the more socialist of the Democrats are also the most woke. A populist appeal has to be framed as the people against the powerful. With identify politics there is no people but various slices of the people. I don't think the Democrats could have pulled off a populist appeal. 

One criticism of the Harris campaign is that it was unfocused and never found a theme.  The campaign started out as a campaign of joy and Republicans are just weird. For a while it seemed to be a campaign about abortion rights. It then switched to a campaign of Trump is a fascist and maybe America's next Hitler and this is a campaign to preserve American democracy. I agree the campaigned was unfocused, but I don't know that being focused on any one message would have worked. There are reasons much of the Harris campaign did not resonate. I am not sure improved messaging would have helped.

Another criticism of the campaign that I think has merit is that Harris lacked authenticity. While I think it may have merit. I think given who she is, it would have been hard to fix. If you are inauthentic, it is hard to switch to being authentic.  She never seemed at ease talking to people. There was the issue of her using a different accent depending on her audience. I understand why she did not go on Joe Rogan. Rogan is not a tough interviewer. He does not grill but simply has conversations. I am sure Rogan would have asked her about her about her flip flops on policy issues and she never developed a convincing answer. She could have said things like, “You know, in retrospect, maybe the taxpayers shouldn’t pay for gender-transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.”  She could have, but would not. She would not have been able to explain why she was wrong on so many issues then and what led her to change her mind. She seemed to me to be unable to be spontaneous and real. It seemed to me like she struggled to keep up a facade of a moderate.

From her 2016 campaign to her 2024 campaign, she went from favoring Medicare for all to a more centrist position. She went from opposing fracking to not opposing it. She was a strong supporter of the Green New Deal and then moved to the center. In 2016 she favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings. She went from that position to supporting the border deal that failed in the Senate, which is considered one of the toughest, bipartisan immigration measures in many years. As a senator, Harris was a co-sponsor of legislation that called for increasing zero-emissions vehicles and ultimately phasing out gas powered vehicles by 2040. 

In the campaign she said that none if those were currently her position. She never said why. She needed to explain what epiphany had occurred to cause her to see the light. She failed to do so. I think that was a factor in her campaign and why many did not like her, but even that, I don't believe was the deciding factor. I think most of the strategic and tactical analysis of why Harris lost is either just wrong or not significant or something that could not be corrected. 

A factor that I think may have been pivotal was Trump getting shot. When he rose from the ground with blood streaming down his face, raised his fist and screamed, "Fight! Fight! Fight!", that may have been the moment Trump won. The picture could have not been more dramatic. I suspect that is the moment some wavering Republicans were brought back into the fold and some young 'bros' became Trump voters. 

I think an important factor in Trump's win was policy and policy favored Trump. The two largest issues were immigration and the economy. On immigration, Biden should never have reopened the border and reversed Trump policies. Eventually he reimposed some of the Trump restrictions and brought down the rate of border crossings, but the country had already been flooded. It was too little, too late. I am not going to elaborate on the complexity of border policy hear and how Trump stopped Congress from passing a good bipartisan border bill. The important thing is that the people wanted illegal immigration brought under control and they believed Trump would do it.

On the economy, people believed the economy was much better under Trump than Biden and it was. Most people are pretty much ignorant of economics, but they care about the price of a gallon of gas and a dozen eggs. By the time of the election, we had a low unemployment rate, and inflation had been brought down to almost the 2% target. It didn't matter. There is a lag time between good news and people feeling it. There is also a lag time between economic policy and the effects of that policy. Often things like employment rates, and the size of the deficit, and inflation are the results of previous policy; not current policy. That is just the way it is, but in this case, it benefited Trump.

One policy issue that was supposed to benefit Democrats was the abortion issue. One would have thought it would have benefited Harris but it did not. In several states where a ballot initiative liberalizing abortion policy was on the ballot, abortion won but so did Trump. Most people are not single-issue voters, and they are not as ideological consistent as are politicians. 

An issue that one would have thought would have favored Harris and overwhelmed all other issues was the threat to democracy. For the first time in our history, we had a candidate who had attempted a coup, and who in his next term said he may suspend the constitution. That did not matter. Why? 

I think there was a foundational reason Trump won, more important than strategy or tactics or policy. I contend the reason Trump won is that Americans are sick and tired of wokeness. I think wokeness is much more than the dictionary definition of "a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality." Wokeness consist of DEI, political correctness, affirmative action, cancel culture, and an attitude of superiority and self-righteousness. 

Tennessee Democrat Party showcases its gender fluidity ideology in every
communication. This is from Jan. 14, 2022

Wokeness is divisive identity politics in which the population is divided into aggrieved groups based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, or other factors and each group is empower by being powerless and playing the victim.  Wokeness judges people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. I think identity politics only plays well to a small but vocal constituency. Many people in those groups do not embrace the identity. People of a Latin American background, as an example, were told they were "Latinx," and they didn't feel it. 

Wokeness is the deliberate conflation of legal immigration and illegal immigration and telling people that if they believe a country has a right to determine who may become a resident of their country that they are a bigot. 

Wokeness is approvingly watching BLM rioters topple statures, burn buildings, spray paint monuments and anything else within reach, burn police cars, and block interstates, and telling those who believe the lawless behavior should be prohibited and punished that they are racist, and we must understand the rage and be supportive of the behavior. 

Wokeness is saying that a child who decides he wants to be of the opposite sex is to be encouraged in his delusion and even advocating he has a right to transition. It is calling genital mutilation and chemical castration, "gender affirming health care."  And, if one disagrees, they are denounced as "transphobic" and a terrible person.

Wokeness is putting ones preferred pronoun following one's name in a communication. Wokeness is hectoring people for using the wrong pronoun. Wokeness is making it a crime or a disciplinary offence to "misgender."

Wokeness is silencing voices that are not attuned to the same insight as the liberal elite. It is labeling opinions with which one disagrees as "hate speech." It is shouting down conservative speakers on college compass. It is ostracizing and marginalizing and denying a platform to people with the "wrong" opinions. It is illiberal attitude toward free speech. 

Wokeness is an arrogance and moral superiority and demonizing those with a different point of view. It is viewing those who are critical of or question climate change as no better than holocaust deniers. It is saying of people you may even know well, that if they voted for Trump then they might as well be a Nazi. 

It is calling people who vote for Trump, “garbage.” It is condescension toward white rural voters and people of religious beliefs or certain moral beliefs.

I did not vote for Trump in this last election. I think he genuinely is a threat to democracy. However, the term "fascist" has been thrown around so much that it has been diluted of all meaning. It doesn't stick. There is a member of our Metro Council who routinely calls people fascist and there are a lot of people like her. I personally know people who called George W. Bush a fascist. They have stripped all power from the word. People do not like being told they are sexist, bigots, fascist and no better than a Nazi. In response, I think their attitude becomes, "I'll show you. I will vote for the guy you detest." 

Tell a people long enough they are "deplorables," "garbage," fascist, sexist, homophobes, xenophobes and bigots and inferior to your enlighten self and they will not take it anymore and strike back.  

I have had people with whom I am close say the reason Harris lost is simply because Americans are sexist and racist. It that is the extent of their analysis and their conclusion, I think Trumpism has a bright future. 

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