Mike, you obviously are not a conspiracy theorist, but rather someone who has critically assessed the harsh reality of the situation in the US during the "error" (sic) of Trump. Trump violates and deviate from so many aspects of life that involves:
Humility, Benevolence*, Altruism, and Magnanimity
and has replaced the above with Ego, Envy, Avarice and Ambition. A comprehensive description of King Donald is presented below.
“Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul-all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair.
Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn't, but has always been-arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshiped like gospel.
It is America's shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn't just lose its soul-it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.” Oliver Kornetzke, 9/3/25
Some of you, and I can guess at least one, will find fault with the above. Our Founding Fathers were prophetic and warned us about sorts like DJT.
"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have always been the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people." — James Madison, personal notes from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, June 29, 1787
⇢ wait & see if we do not have Trump declaring war on Venezuela
"Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases." — John Adams
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to, grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour."— John Adams
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy, yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty." —John Adams
"We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people." — John Adams
"Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people." — John Adams
"When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone." — John Adams
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." — John Adams
"Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." — John Adams
"The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many." — John Adams
The equation 2+2=4 is presented as simple, self-obvious truth.
I would add this equation:
c[i1 + i2] + p(CM) x p[Am + Av + R]= level of Totalitarianism under Trump
c= citizenry; i1 = ignorance; i2 = indifference; p = POTUS; Am = ambition; AV = avarice; R = revenge factor.
I think Adams was right in his grasp of the nature of political life. Can this Nation find its way back?
As a longtime fan of Orwell I can say that I am pretty confident that these people who quote 1984 have never actually read it. I’m also a bit amazed that so many of these Silicon Valley wankers seem to be LOTR fans but have completely missed the point that Tolkien was trying to make…I think that they just watched the films (which also missed the point in favor of big battle scenes) and never actually bothered to read the books. 🙄
3rd'ed. The guy's paranoid delusions are genuinely concerning. Just knowing people like him exist scares me. At the risk of turning this into an echo chamber of agreement, he doesn't belong here - and really shouldn't have a voice anywhere. That kind of illness should stay in the dark basement under his mom's house where it no-doubt emanates from.
I’m watching the interview with Karp you linked to. In relation to whether he's worried about AI getting into the hands of dark forces:
"I'm much more worried that we fail in America, and that we don't dominate [AI] are therefore there's like a lame, UN-driven discussion about human rights that obviously only serves people who somehow want to live in a world that doesn't work."
Wow. People who care about human rights want to live in a world that doesn’t work. If he means we want to live in a world that doesn’t work for billionaires and techno-f@sc1sts and warmongers, then he’s correct.
He also thinks that “anyone who is not deranged would acknowledge these things [that Trump has done admirable things.]”
One thing that he said as someone he would support is: “a president that can really credibly fight for workers…who is the person that actually believes and will implement things that will help the working class be healthier and wealthier.”
Which sounds good on the surface, but it comes out that what he wants is for people not to go to college and get "indoctrinated" (presumably with ethics, morality and critical thinking) and just train to be workers for Palantir. Sounds dystopian.
(IMO: How about people that are taught to be creative and create a different reality than one that build drones that kill children or surveil?)
And then the interviewer kept throwing in JD Vance as the one that fits the bill because of his humble beginnings. Definitely had an agenda there.
Dude, why on earth are you still on Xchan? There’s no reason to stay, as you’ve discovered Elon suppresses anyone with political views he opposes. Before I left my tweets were getting zero engagement, yet before Musk I would occasionally get up to 1000 likes. It’s a rigged game. Engaging there only legitimizes Musk’s fascist bs.
They're all rigged. And that's not conspiracy, just observation and a bit of common sense. Unfortunately, they've killed off the competition - as tech does, and now own all the attention and the open dialogue that was essential to democracy. Their power is 100% reliant on people using their platforms so we could all just log off. But nobody will. It has become too entwined in our lives and left people with no alternative.
MAGA loves a conspiracy theory — maybe you should stick with that. I trust you because I am not sure what you gain by speaking out — it seems that is becoming my lens — but, my uncynical side trusts you because I have read a lot of what you say and seen some of your videos, and, it makes sense to me.
“X” indeed. Too many have beaten me to what I was about to say, but I’ll say this- maybe because Twitter never made sense to me from the day it started. “Who the hell wants to know what I had for breakfast?” And so moved on, scarcely looking back while it became, to millions, indispensable. When I did finally look at it I was still baffled.
I know, “OK Boomer”, but even still, this final iteration as “X” has more or less caught up with my prejudices. I know many people, yourself included whom I respect and admire that still cross post there, but I won’t even leave a comment. If I want to be abused for my viewpoint I’ll go to the local red-hat tavern. No, no I wouldn’t- but i still wonder, is commenting there trying to hold the line of some kind, that wire?
Me too. I can remember the day I first heard about Twitter - it must've only been days after launch. As with all these things, it seemed like an exciting, innocent new thing. Like when Instagram was just about adding a vintage filter to your photos. And TikTok was just kids singing into their hairbrushes. But like you, I could NOT see the point. "Who cares what you had for breakfast?" And the original point, was the tiny character limit. A Tweet. And yep, I could not for the life of me, understand why you'd use it and immediately went from being an early adopter, to an early leaver. And I've never looked at it since. I still feel my life's better without it, even now when countries, presidents, and organisations use it as their primary announcement mechanism. I think we'd all be better off without social media for sure. There's other things going on, but it's certainly had a big role to play in the moral collapse we're seeing now.
I have been on Twitter — at first, it was good for seeing what people thought of Survivor. For a minute, I even wanted to post longer tweets, so I got a blue check. Now — it’s garbage. My feed is filled with R politicians and influencers, and the MAGA comments are off the charts in crazy and angry and mean. Substack seems to be the place I go nowadays — hope nobody buys it and completely fucks it up also.
Thanks. I pretty much felt left out, but after following the PC and Internet birth and boom since the beginning it made little sense. The way it morphed into a primary platform.. yeah, TikTok too- still amazes me. I guess the shittification was inevitable, I noticed it didn’t take long for the after rebranding for the true impact for most of the losers to vanish into history. (And the Wayback Machine, when I get nostalgic for Ask Jeeves.) I know Substack is holding off the wolves, but for how much longer? Even the crappy anyway “NextDoor” slid into, I think as Tiedrich says, “fuckity-bye”.
You might note that it was Trump's EO on "Restoring Biological Truth to Government" which explicitly -- and resoundingly, from the White House, no less -- championed a "2+2=4", supposedly your guiding principle, in asserting that "women are adult human females", in denying the [Democrat] Party's insistence, with thumbscrews, that "2+2=5", that "trans women are women".
WH: (d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
No way on gawd's green earth that any transwoman-- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- is EVER going to produce any of those "large reproductive cells". If there's no ova coming off the end of the (re)production line then, ergo, not a female. Q.E.D. Case closed, with prejudice.
That is NOT just a matter of "self-identification", a barking-mad "principle" that's the substance of Trump's quite justified insistence that government documents like passports reflect "sex at birth", not a fantasy, not part of a "paraphilia" of mostly male transvestites:
NYTimes: New Passport Rule Sends Blunt and Sweeping Message to Trans Americans; The Trump administration has said that the U.S. passports of transgender people must now reflect the sex on their original birth certificate, reversing a decades-old policy.
Or maybe you "think" that "THE New York Times" is just part of "The Matrix!!11!!", something cut from whole cloth by Trump's Ministry of Truth? 🙄
Whatever failings Trump might have in other venues -- and the [SCOTUS] jury is still out on several of them -- I kinda think -- on no small amount of evidence, on some quite "brutish" brute facts -- that they're small potatoes beside that case.
This again?!? Seriously??! Can you not see how deranged you sound when every response, regardless of the topic you're wading into, is all about evil trans people taking over the world? I don't like echo chambers. I'm happy to see open debate, but guy, you need to stay on topic, and at least try for some coherence. Your delusions are genuinely scary. It worries me there are people like you getting around in the world.
🙄 Bet you didn't read any of what I wrote, much less give it any thought.
But it's not really "evil trans people", but the barking-mad principle of "self-identification". Which Trump's policy on passports is putting a wooden stake through its heart.
Well, I'm happy for you if you can get something good out of Trump. I don't think many people can say that. If putting stakes into self-identifcation is important to you, Trump is definitely your man and this post sounds a lot less rabid. I did actually have a look at some of those links. But as mentioned, it's really not an issue that bothers me and there are some rabbit holes I prefer not to go down. I've completely forgotten what the original topic was now, but I'm going to leave it there.
But it is most certainly not just me who thinks that "putting the wooden stakes into self-identification is important".
The principle -- which neither Mike nor Kamala Harris in particular seem to have a clue about -- is part and parcel of the UK Supreme Court ruling about the UK's rather demented "Gender Recognition Act" and the SCOTUS rulings in the Skrmetti case, in them endorsing Trump's passport ruling, in Trump obliging Pennsylvania to rescind the sports prizes granted to transwoman "Lia" (William) Thomas who "self-identified" himself into women's (female's) swimming competition, change rooms, and clothes ("an abomination unto the lord!!11!!; Deuteronomy; cf transwoman Dylan Mulvaney, living -- according to Kamala -- "authentically as a woman" 🤨🙄...).
Those issues and rulings, and related ones, have had significant impacts far outside any "small circle of friends". Enough so to have tipped the balance in Trump's favour in the last election.
No doubt some rabbit holes there, but ones of more than just topical interest. Not really hyperbole to say that Western "civilization" hangs in the balance.
Apropos of which, any plans afoot to respond to my response to you in the Tik Tok thread? You might note I had a "seconder" -- "bingo", quote, unquote -- to the motions I tabled. Any further thoughts before a vote is called?
"Animal Farm ends with the pigs and humans indistinguishable from each other..." "Quiet, Piggy!" says the sitting president. Ooof.
Mike you need to abandon X -
it is a cesspool that is set up to minimize your information
Mike, you obviously are not a conspiracy theorist, but rather someone who has critically assessed the harsh reality of the situation in the US during the "error" (sic) of Trump. Trump violates and deviate from so many aspects of life that involves:
Humility, Benevolence*, Altruism, and Magnanimity
and has replaced the above with Ego, Envy, Avarice and Ambition. A comprehensive description of King Donald is presented below.
“Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul-all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair.
Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn't, but has always been-arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshiped like gospel.
It is America's shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn't just lose its soul-it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.” Oliver Kornetzke, 9/3/25
Some of you, and I can guess at least one, will find fault with the above. Our Founding Fathers were prophetic and warned us about sorts like DJT.
"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have always been the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people." — James Madison, personal notes from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, June 29, 1787
⇢ wait & see if we do not have Trump declaring war on Venezuela
"Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases." — John Adams
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to, grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour."— John Adams
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy, yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty." —John Adams
"We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people." — John Adams
"Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people." — John Adams
"When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone." — John Adams
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." — John Adams
"Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." — John Adams
"The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many." — John Adams
The equation 2+2=4 is presented as simple, self-obvious truth.
I would add this equation:
c[i1 + i2] + p(CM) x p[Am + Av + R]= level of Totalitarianism under Trump
c= citizenry; i1 = ignorance; i2 = indifference; p = POTUS; Am = ambition; AV = avarice; R = revenge factor.
I think Adams was right in his grasp of the nature of political life. Can this Nation find its way back?
As a longtime fan of Orwell I can say that I am pretty confident that these people who quote 1984 have never actually read it. I’m also a bit amazed that so many of these Silicon Valley wankers seem to be LOTR fans but have completely missed the point that Tolkien was trying to make…I think that they just watched the films (which also missed the point in favor of big battle scenes) and never actually bothered to read the books. 🙄
And while you are abandoning X might as well block the steers person👆
I only ban the irredeemable. I am a romantic, after all.
You are quite patient and optimistic. Admirable!
3rd'ed. The guy's paranoid delusions are genuinely concerning. Just knowing people like him exist scares me. At the risk of turning this into an echo chamber of agreement, he doesn't belong here - and really shouldn't have a voice anywhere. That kind of illness should stay in the dark basement under his mom's house where it no-doubt emanates from.
Seconded
I’m watching the interview with Karp you linked to. In relation to whether he's worried about AI getting into the hands of dark forces:
"I'm much more worried that we fail in America, and that we don't dominate [AI] are therefore there's like a lame, UN-driven discussion about human rights that obviously only serves people who somehow want to live in a world that doesn't work."
Wow. People who care about human rights want to live in a world that doesn’t work. If he means we want to live in a world that doesn’t work for billionaires and techno-f@sc1sts and warmongers, then he’s correct.
He also thinks that “anyone who is not deranged would acknowledge these things [that Trump has done admirable things.]”
One thing that he said as someone he would support is: “a president that can really credibly fight for workers…who is the person that actually believes and will implement things that will help the working class be healthier and wealthier.”
Which sounds good on the surface, but it comes out that what he wants is for people not to go to college and get "indoctrinated" (presumably with ethics, morality and critical thinking) and just train to be workers for Palantir. Sounds dystopian.
(IMO: How about people that are taught to be creative and create a different reality than one that build drones that kill children or surveil?)
And then the interviewer kept throwing in JD Vance as the one that fits the bill because of his humble beginnings. Definitely had an agenda there.
Dude, why on earth are you still on Xchan? There’s no reason to stay, as you’ve discovered Elon suppresses anyone with political views he opposes. Before I left my tweets were getting zero engagement, yet before Musk I would occasionally get up to 1000 likes. It’s a rigged game. Engaging there only legitimizes Musk’s fascist bs.
They're all rigged. And that's not conspiracy, just observation and a bit of common sense. Unfortunately, they've killed off the competition - as tech does, and now own all the attention and the open dialogue that was essential to democracy. Their power is 100% reliant on people using their platforms so we could all just log off. But nobody will. It has become too entwined in our lives and left people with no alternative.
I saw a telling meme recently: "The road to fascism is paved with people telling you you're overreacting." Please keep writing.
I saw a telling meme recently: "The road to fascism is paved with people telling you you're overreacting." Please keep writing.
I saw a telling meme recently: "The road to fascism is paved with people telling you you're overreacting." Please keep writing.
MAGA loves a conspiracy theory — maybe you should stick with that. I trust you because I am not sure what you gain by speaking out — it seems that is becoming my lens — but, my uncynical side trusts you because I have read a lot of what you say and seen some of your videos, and, it makes sense to me.
Can we talk about censorship during covid? Plenty of experts were censored that were right all along. There is so much hypocrisy with this regime, but will we accept it again, once "the other side" is back in charge? Do we get self-governance in ALL situations or only the ones that fit the Blue narrative? The 2-party illusion will be our downfall. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/opinion/covid-trump-skeptic-health-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.X08.kvge.2B6n1KXrHzDw&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
“X” indeed. Too many have beaten me to what I was about to say, but I’ll say this- maybe because Twitter never made sense to me from the day it started. “Who the hell wants to know what I had for breakfast?” And so moved on, scarcely looking back while it became, to millions, indispensable. When I did finally look at it I was still baffled.
I know, “OK Boomer”, but even still, this final iteration as “X” has more or less caught up with my prejudices. I know many people, yourself included whom I respect and admire that still cross post there, but I won’t even leave a comment. If I want to be abused for my viewpoint I’ll go to the local red-hat tavern. No, no I wouldn’t- but i still wonder, is commenting there trying to hold the line of some kind, that wire?
Me too. I can remember the day I first heard about Twitter - it must've only been days after launch. As with all these things, it seemed like an exciting, innocent new thing. Like when Instagram was just about adding a vintage filter to your photos. And TikTok was just kids singing into their hairbrushes. But like you, I could NOT see the point. "Who cares what you had for breakfast?" And the original point, was the tiny character limit. A Tweet. And yep, I could not for the life of me, understand why you'd use it and immediately went from being an early adopter, to an early leaver. And I've never looked at it since. I still feel my life's better without it, even now when countries, presidents, and organisations use it as their primary announcement mechanism. I think we'd all be better off without social media for sure. There's other things going on, but it's certainly had a big role to play in the moral collapse we're seeing now.
I have been on Twitter — at first, it was good for seeing what people thought of Survivor. For a minute, I even wanted to post longer tweets, so I got a blue check. Now — it’s garbage. My feed is filled with R politicians and influencers, and the MAGA comments are off the charts in crazy and angry and mean. Substack seems to be the place I go nowadays — hope nobody buys it and completely fucks it up also.
Thanks. I pretty much felt left out, but after following the PC and Internet birth and boom since the beginning it made little sense. The way it morphed into a primary platform.. yeah, TikTok too- still amazes me. I guess the shittification was inevitable, I noticed it didn’t take long for the after rebranding for the true impact for most of the losers to vanish into history. (And the Wayback Machine, when I get nostalgic for Ask Jeeves.) I know Substack is holding off the wolves, but for how much longer? Even the crappy anyway “NextDoor” slid into, I think as Tiedrich says, “fuckity-bye”.
🙄 Yadda, yadda, yadda.
You might note that it was Trump's EO on "Restoring Biological Truth to Government" which explicitly -- and resoundingly, from the White House, no less -- championed a "2+2=4", supposedly your guiding principle, in asserting that "women are adult human females", in denying the [Democrat] Party's insistence, with thumbscrews, that "2+2=5", that "trans women are women".
WH: (d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/
No way on gawd's green earth that any transwoman-- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- is EVER going to produce any of those "large reproductive cells". If there's no ova coming off the end of the (re)production line then, ergo, not a female. Q.E.D. Case closed, with prejudice.
That is NOT just a matter of "self-identification", a barking-mad "principle" that's the substance of Trump's quite justified insistence that government documents like passports reflect "sex at birth", not a fantasy, not part of a "paraphilia" of mostly male transvestites:
NYTimes: New Passport Rule Sends Blunt and Sweeping Message to Trans Americans; The Trump administration has said that the U.S. passports of transgender people must now reflect the sex on their original birth certificate, reversing a decades-old policy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/us/transgender-passports-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E8.KODF.GBVBR8X0A1ky&smid=url-share
Or maybe you "think" that "THE New York Times" is just part of "The Matrix!!11!!", something cut from whole cloth by Trump's Ministry of Truth? 🙄
Whatever failings Trump might have in other venues -- and the [SCOTUS] jury is still out on several of them -- I kinda think -- on no small amount of evidence, on some quite "brutish" brute facts -- that they're small potatoes beside that case.
This again?!? Seriously??! Can you not see how deranged you sound when every response, regardless of the topic you're wading into, is all about evil trans people taking over the world? I don't like echo chambers. I'm happy to see open debate, but guy, you need to stay on topic, and at least try for some coherence. Your delusions are genuinely scary. It worries me there are people like you getting around in the world.
🙄 Bet you didn't read any of what I wrote, much less give it any thought.
But it's not really "evil trans people", but the barking-mad principle of "self-identification". Which Trump's policy on passports is putting a wooden stake through its heart.
Well, I'm happy for you if you can get something good out of Trump. I don't think many people can say that. If putting stakes into self-identifcation is important to you, Trump is definitely your man and this post sounds a lot less rabid. I did actually have a look at some of those links. But as mentioned, it's really not an issue that bothers me and there are some rabbit holes I prefer not to go down. I've completely forgotten what the original topic was now, but I'm going to leave it there.
But it is most certainly not just me who thinks that "putting the wooden stakes into self-identification is important".
The principle -- which neither Mike nor Kamala Harris in particular seem to have a clue about -- is part and parcel of the UK Supreme Court ruling about the UK's rather demented "Gender Recognition Act" and the SCOTUS rulings in the Skrmetti case, in them endorsing Trump's passport ruling, in Trump obliging Pennsylvania to rescind the sports prizes granted to transwoman "Lia" (William) Thomas who "self-identified" himself into women's (female's) swimming competition, change rooms, and clothes ("an abomination unto the lord!!11!!; Deuteronomy; cf transwoman Dylan Mulvaney, living -- according to Kamala -- "authentically as a woman" 🤨🙄...).
Those issues and rulings, and related ones, have had significant impacts far outside any "small circle of friends". Enough so to have tipped the balance in Trump's favour in the last election.
No doubt some rabbit holes there, but ones of more than just topical interest. Not really hyperbole to say that Western "civilization" hangs in the balance.
Apropos of which, any plans afoot to respond to my response to you in the Tik Tok thread? You might note I had a "seconder" -- "bingo", quote, unquote -- to the motions I tabled. Any further thoughts before a vote is called?
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-tiktok-doctrine/comment/179065093