Let me start with a quote from a recent blog: “President Obama publicly opened the discussion when he called for a full and steady focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S.T.E.M.) These are key to our future; this is the direction we need to take.” Barack and I agree on a lot of topics. As a sound-bite for today’s eye-blink attention span, this seems reasonable, likely to most of us. 

I was a teenager in the 1960s. (I know, hard to believe.) Those were socially turbulent years, and my white middle class privileges – liberal parents and a progressive religious upbringing in a NYC suburb – converged with romanticized radicalization, the hippie movement, and counter-cultural fervor to form a customized petri dish of rebellion.

I have new-found respect for Mitt Romney; strange bedfellows, no? It’s a narrow and opportunistic point, I'll admit. I appreciate – and agree with – his recent “trickle down” phrasing. What a perfectly concise way of explaining one of the key reasons most people dislike Trump; my marketing brain is envious. Romney spoke of Trump’s “trickle down racism, trickle down bigotry, and trickle down misogyny” in articulating why he can’t support Trump. Trickle Down Hate. And while I’m not writing specifically about Trump, he does make the perfect stooge; everyone is familiar with his insecurity, his inflated ego, and the ignorant vomit he frequently spews.

 I read a Slate blog yesterday titled The Cultural Alienation of Anti-Trans Americans. The blog’s gist is that, while some Christian conservatives would like you to believe that we are in the middle of an important ideological war over the validity of the trans identity, the war in fact has come and gone. Christian conservatives lost, and anti-trans Americans are destined to fall further out of the cultural mainstream, onto the fringes of society.