Identity Theft

In the technological age, we all worry about it.  Some notorious actor snatches your social security number and obtains credit in your name, screws up your credit which takes years to remediate. 

But there is a more pernicious kind of identity theft going on, and it is being perpetrated by the radical left.   It is stealthy and gradual, and it is being accelerated by COVID-19.  Our past, present and future selves are being slowly erased so that, if we do not resist, our individuality will inevitably melt away into an amorphous mass, as if you had tossed an ice cube into the ocean.  Let me explain how this is happening and what it means for our basic humanity.

We are planning animals, and as Americans, we are doubly so.  We are an optimistic and forward-looking people.   It is in our nature.  We set goals, priorities, obsessively keep calendars and to-do lists.   We budget and project.  We can suffer through a long, brutal winter if we know that spring will eventually come.  The initial call from government was to stay at home for 30 days to “flatten the curve,” and not overtax our health care system.  In several states (mine included), that has been extended almost indefinitely.  Under the Illinois 4 phase plan, there is no definitive end, and, therefore, our ability to plan has been completely obliterated. 

The second pilfering of our identity comes with wearing a mask.  One of the cultural aspects of Islam that I reject entirely in the West is the wearing of a face covering by women.  In the West, we are a free and open society.  Our facial expressions are an integral part of our identity.  That is exactly why many were calling for face coverings to be outlawed with respect to Antifa.  Now, with COVID19, face coverings are being mandated—again, for an indefinite period of time---even though scientific evidence that face coverings prevent transmission is scant.  The face covering in Islam is highly symbolic, that of  submission, and many Americans are chafing at this requirement.  It turns us into faceless beings, unrecognizable to one another.  The other day, for instance, I was in the grocery store and I thought I recognized a woman but wasn’t sure at all (it turned out not to be who I thought it was) because of her face covering. 

Indefinite lockdown steals our ability to plan—our future identity.   Masks steal our present identity.  And now the rewrite of history is stealing our past identity.

The identity theft of our past is vital to us as Americans.  Because we are a polyglot nation, a melding of different nations and cultures, we are held together by a philosophy and history.  That history gives us a common anchor, a touchstone that we all share no matter where our ancestors came from.  As Bono put it, “America is more than just a country, it’s an idea.”  The creation of America was embodied in our foundational documents: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.  Books about our founding carry titles such as “The Glorious Cause,” “Miracle at Philadelphia,” and “Empire of Liberty.” Two of our initial leaders—George Washington and Thomas Jefferson willingly gave up public office and yearned to be private citizens. 

Gradually, the Radical Left has attempted to eradicate our past.  It began with the tearing down of statues of confederate leaders in the South, and continued with the renaming of buildings in higher education that had any connection with slavery.  Yes, slavery was a blight on our history.  The Founders knew it, although it took almost a century to eradicate it. But it was not why the nation was formed.

But now comes the 1619 Project, which attempts to distort and rewrite the history of our Founding, by claiming among other things, that the Revolution was fought to preserve the institution of slavery.  No established scholars of the period were consulted with respect to the 1619 Project, and many, like Gordon Wood, have criticized it harshly as being without merit.  Yet, it won a Pulitzer Prize, which is the legitimization it needs to be taught in our school systems.  Our past is a vital part of our identity and it is being stripped away and rewritten.  And, instead of portraying our Republic as a guardian of liberty and the worth of the individual, it is being recast as a perpetrator of heinous crimes (while simultaneously looking the other way on the crimes of Communist China).

Finally, I must say a word about the Transgender Movement.  This is not to be confused with transgender individuals, because there is separate and apart a movement that has crept into many facets of public life in an attempt to gain intellectual currency.  While transgendered people account for a tiny fraction of the population (.03-.06%), the Transgender Movement has gained an outsized voice and influence in public life. 

The underpinning of the Transgender Movement is that gender is a social construct.  It seeks to blur the distinctions between men and women and attacks gender norms and gender identity.  Most notably, the Transgender Movement has attempted to destroy this aspect of personal identity through restroom conventions separating men’s and women’s facilities, allowing biological boys and men to compete in girls’ and womens’ athletics and access to their locker rooms (currently being litigated), and demanding adherence to their social conventions (preferred pronouns).  It has sought to normalize “gender fluidity” through early indoctrination with “Drag Queen Story Hour” throughout the country in the library systems.

Our gender is an important aspect of our identity, and always has been.  But the Transgender Movement demands that we forsake it.   It demands that the 99.5% of us that are not hazy about our gender identification adhere to their social norms and conventions.  If you do not, you are vilified as “transphobic.”  The Transgender Movement is politically allied with the Radical Left, and has the backing of the ACLU.

Recently, the American Writers Museum featured a presentation by trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, but accompanied by comedienne Kathy Griffin.  When I inquired why Kathy Griffin was featured, I received a milquetoast reply about Griffin being a “friend” of Boylan's

My response to their membership renewal request was as follows:

Thank you for your reply, which is disingenuous. We all know why Kathy Griffin has gained some public notoriety and it has nothing whatsoever to do with American Literature.  I have been unable to find a coherent paragraph that she has written. 

It is sad to see a new institution whose programming initially featured the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frederick Douglass, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemmingway decide to feature Ms. Griffin and slide into political agenda pushing of the most grotesque kind.

I joined AMW as soon as it opened and promoted it among my contacts.

Count me out.

The Transgender Movement (again, separate from transgendered persons) does not seek a seat at the table, but is a rent-seeking organization that wants to run the table and push its interests ahead of everyone else’s.  It is most personified by PA health director Rachel Levine, who moved her mother out of a nursing home just as she issued the order to introduce COVID19 infected seniors in.

I write this so that you will pay attention.  The Radical Left is opportunistic.  It seeks to empower the State by eroding our identity, our uniqueness as individuals and as a country.  It wishes to extend the lockdown to turn our future into chaos.  It seeks to erase and rewrite our past.  It wishes us to be faceless and genderless.

Don’t let them do it.  It is identity theft.