Friday, February 02, 2018

How Do They Feel Now?

Several months ago -- November 6, 2017, to be accurate -- a news story broke on the Internet. I am looking at the version on LinkedIn:
Bombshell: Hillary Clinton ‘Pedophile Sex Tape’ About to Be Released ?.

Career criminal Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, Email-Server scandal, busted for Treasonous Uranium One deal with Russia, and now this... ?
...
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has confirmed that a “sickening” pedophile sex tape featuring Hillary Clinton is about to be released to the public...
The story was written by "Dr. Jorge Mata Torres, International Univeristy Professor." In it he relays the blockbuster fact that a videotape was found on Anthony Weiner's computer showing Hillary Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin engaging in some kind of sexual behavior with an underage girl. You can find this story all over the Internet.

The videotape was going to be released in November. Now it is February, and still no tape.

The thing that I want to know is, how do the people who believed that story feel, now that there is still no video? I see on the Internet that they still believe that Hillary is part of a Satanic child-molesting and human-trafficking ring, but does it bother them at all that the evidence keeps not appearing?

A skeptical lefty such as myself might start to think that maybe there is no such video. Maybe, just maybe, Hillary Clinton is actually not a Satanic pedophile human-trafficker. I mean, where's the tape? Somehow the conclusion persists rock-solid, but the proof seems to have gone out for a drink and never came back.

Or -- here's another example, closer to home. A few years ago a group right here in our little suburban county put out a statement (well they put out lots of statements, but here is one) that said:
If someone chooses to identify themselves as of different genders on different days, our local government, in its infinite wisdom, thinks that is a group that needs special protection in every workplace, in all public areas, like theatres, and, seemingly, even in their choice of which bathroom to use. A "get out of jail free" card for sexual predators who are caught in the wrong public bathroom or public shower.
The county had passed a gender-identity nondiscrimination bill and these people wanted a referendum to relegalize discrimination. They had petitions and stood at shopping centers and churches all around the county, telling people that a Montgomery County gender identity nondiscrimination bill was going to make it legal for predators and pedophiles to lurk in the ladies rooms, molesting our wives and daughters with impunity by claiming to be women and using this new law as a "get out of jail free card."

The thing that I want to know is, how do these people feel about the fact that, in the ten years since the bill passed, there has not been one single case of any man going into any ladies room in our county, doing anything prurient, and claiming to be transgender?

Why were they so sure that would happen? What kind of mind latches onto a hateful falsehood like that and leaves the house, day after day, to stand in a parking lot with petitions, frightening strangers with their lurid fantasies?

Those are good psychological questions, but they are not, to me, the most interesting ones: I want to know how those people feel now.

The Citizens for a Responsible Whatever rallied the masses, whipped up countywide fear that perverted men would dress as women and lurk in ladies rooms if the bill passed, and it passed, and they did not lurk. They had tens of thousands of signatures, including thousands of illegal ones that caused the referendum to be thrown out -- they had a lot of people upset. Dozens of churches collected signatures in Jesus' name to allow good Christians to discriminate against our county's transgender citizens. It was a pretty big deal at the time. We were one of the first "bathroom bill" regions, with shower-nuts stopping random citizens to tell them that men would be walking right into the women's bathroom and claiming to be women while they leered at innocent wives and daughters and grabbed them and who-knows-what-horrible-thing.

It didn't happen here, and it didn't happen in any of those other places, either. It was a totally fabricated story, a lie based on prejudice, intended to stir up discrimination.

It is possible that those people sit at home in the evening now shaking their heads, ashamed, staring vacantly at the TV and muttering, "Wow, we sure were wrong that time." Maybe in order to make up for their error they have organized a new "tolerance" group that passes out flyers in parking lots promoting tolerance for people who are different from themselves. Not just gay and trans people, but also immigrants and refugees, black people and Muslims, the homeless, fair pay for women, clean the Bay and other wholesome and positive things. Maybe those same people, who swore the county would become an attraction for pedophiles and predators who would hide in the womens' bathrooms and showers, have thought about it and realized they were wrong, and now are trying to atone for their previous bigotry by doing good things, being kind and loving and helping others.

They were not just "kinda" wrong, they didn't just misunderstand or make a mistake, they spent a lot of intentional energy on making life harder and more dangerous for transgender people. They spread malicious lies, provable lies. None of what they predicted happened and now I wonder how they feel about that.