Not Here in River City, Part I: The New Normal

Oh, we got trouble, right here in River City
—Robert Preston performing Meredith Willson’s Ya Got Trouble in the 1962 film The Music Man

Eight years ago, I published an article called The Rise and Fall of the Weimar Transvestites and the Threat to Our Own Trans Community on my personal website and here on TG Forum. I described the vibrant and diversity-affirming culture of the then-called transvestite community in post-World War I Germany and how rapidly and completely it was politicized after the investiture of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. Immediately, National Socialists (Nazis) targeted Jews, racial minorities, atheists, socialists and communists, Gypsies, gay men and lesbians, and transgender people—and we all know what happened after that.

In the eighty years since the end of World-War II hostilities, Western Europe and North America have experienced a remarkable period of prosperity and peace. While things have been far from perfect, there has been no war on American soil. We send our sons and daughters to fight our wars on foreign soil: Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, but the United States has remained a peaceful and secure country. With the exception of occasional acts of terror, the American homeland stands unscathed. This is especially remarkable in the face of the development and production of potent biological and chemical weapons and tens of thousands of fission and fusion weapons, many of which are in the hands of countries hostile to the United States. This period of peace is due in no small measure to NATO, an alliance of (today) 32 member nations in Europe and the Americas that have pledged to defend one another in case of attack.

Most Americans now alive have lived through this time of tranquility and prosperity. Many of us have been sent to foreign wars or have seen our sons and daughters deployed overseas, but our society has been mostly in order. Most Americans—at least those who are white and in the middle or upper classes— have been able to find work and support themselves and their families, gain an education, eat well, marry and raise families, speak their minds, and pursue their interests in peaceable settings, and there has been support for the infirm, the elderly, children, and those with low incomes. Of course, things have been far from perfect. We remain a horribly racist country and we trivialize and denigrate women and sexual and gender and religious minorities, but we have had no wars, no genocides, and no famines, and outbreaks of diseases have been kept under reasonable control. Thanks to science and the hard work of scientists, we have fought back successfully against pandemics like smallpox, polio, AIDS, and COVID-19. Most of us have never gone hungry, never been unhoused, never been dispossessed. And because this peace and prosperity is all most of us have ever known, most of us have a hard time understanding or believing that all of this—all of it—could immediately go away.

The only Monty Python line that has ever reverberated with me is “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.” It’s true; no one does. You live a life of hedonism and gluttony in Pompei, in the shadow of the volcano Vesuvius, until you don’t. It’s 1918 and you’re a farmer in Nebraska and the fields are finally producing—and then you and your family get sick with the Spanish Flu and your parents, your spouse, and half of your children die. You’re a gay man in San Francisco in the ‘80s, living the good life, and suddenly most of your friends are dying of a disease that has not yet even been named. Or you’re a happy transvestite in Weimar Germany until one day you find yourself on a boxcar headed for Auswitz-Birkenau or Dachau.

Life is about change. Some changes are slow and easy to ignore; think global warming. Some are fast, but soon over—a tornado, a hurricane, a flood—and some, like what we are seeing under America’s 47th President, is immediate and far-reaching and will be devastating and long-lasting. Most of us know this, but few of us think about the inevitable eventuality of it all and where it will lead.

A profound political and social change is upon us. Most of us were expecting disruption but expected things would eventually return to what passes for normal. That has certainly not been my opinion, and it is not my opinion now. A change in all that we know and have known is upon us. It is coming hard and fast and will be harsh and punitive and long-lasting. I will not go here into Donald Trump’s many catastrophic shortcomings as a politician and as a human being, but he has been revered, supported, and enabled by Republicans, those on the far-right lunatic fringe, and American citizens foolish or naïve enough to not recognize a rattlesnake when they see one. Bad things are happening and worse will come.

I don’t know what will happen. I know only what happened in Germany in the 1930s and in other totalitarian regimes, and I see echoes of those times in the present-day United States. We have lost, for all practical purposes, our three-part system of governmental checks and balances. Our population, deluged by disinformation and misinformation, not believe what they are told and not their own eyes and ears. And a cadre of people headed by a megalomaniac are in charge of the country.

Certainly, transgender and nonbinary Americans, like immigrants, are the initial focus of the cruelty and hatred of the Trump Administration and red state legislatures that take delight in attacking us. We are certainly not the only targets, but we are the ones at the point of the spear. Why? Because we are a minority and because we are vulnerable. We, like the Jews in 1930s Germany, are handy targets. We’re not the only targets of course. Gay men and lesbians, people of color, disabled and elderly people, the poor, and eventually women, are all in the line of succession to be disempowered, criminalized, and erased. It’s coming. The United States of America as we have known it is crashing and burning, and only a miracle will save it.

Stay tuned for parts II and III in this series.

In part II, Transpocalypse, I’ll write in detail about what has already happened and what is in store for us. And in Part III, which does not yet have a title, I’ll address the critical matter of what trans and nonbinary people can do to protect themselves, their families, and The United States of America. In the meantime, stay safe. Resist. Vote, if you are ever again allowed to. Offer friendship and solace to your trans and nonbinary kin. Work one-on-one to help people understand that we are not a threat, merely the ones who are threatened. And most of all, don’t give up. Never give up. Not ever.

Category: Transgender Opinion, Transgender Politics