Are we playing into the hands of the Right by criticizing the excesses of the Left?
I got an email from a reader that intensified some of the worries I have about criticizing the excesses of the Left. As Ive said repeatedly, I find it boring and unproductive to parrot the opinions of the mainstream media in criticizing the perfidies of the Republican Party, conservatives in general, and Trump. Ive voted Democratic all my life and consider myself a liberal and on the Left. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Presidential primary, and for Biden in the final election. But what comes more naturally to me when I write for this site, and gives me more chance to express my own views, is to criticize the Left for its excesses, which sometimes reach ridiculous heights. Besides giving me a niche I can operate in, I am pretty sure that the excesses of the Leftincluding the implicit desire of many for open borders (this is disguised), as well as the language police craziness, the inspection of everything, including French cuisine, for racism, and the calls to defund or eliminate the policeare turning people towards Trump and the Republicans. And Im not the first person to suggest that. To many, the failure of the blue wave to materialize in last Novembers elections was explained by this kind of Left-wing excess. Lately Ive been posting a fair bit about transgender rights, always trying to make clear that Im pretty much in line with what the mainstream Left thinks, but do think there are aspects worth examining of claims like a transgender woman is identical to a biological women. Those include sports, rape counseling, etc. (I dont give a hoot about who uses what bathrooms; we have multi-gender bathrooms in my department and theyre fine.) But any such discussion is often seen as taboo, and asking reasonable questions can brand you as a transphobe. The article below, which appeared in Right Wing Watch, warns how the Right is weaponizing the transgender issue against the Left. Click to read:  The article, which is pretty good, notes the rise in anti-transgender legislation throughout the U.S., which has been steep, and analyzes the reasons for it. Theyre familiar, of course: the mindset of the Christian Right that fears their daughters will be exposed to male genitals, a suspicion of those who dont conform to male or female stereotypes, and a desire to weaponize the pro-transgender position of the Democrats to defeat them. Nearly all this legislation springs from Republicans. And so I worryoftenwhether Im empowering the Right by criticizing some aspects of the pro-transgender wing of the Left (Ive dealt mostly with sports). I wont repeat my views here, but suffice it to say that despite my nearly 100% support of transgender rights, Ive still been called a transphobe and am regularly lectured on email and in nasty website comments (not posted) about my supposed bigotry. These fears were just activated again by the email from my reader, who included these thoughts (I have permission to quote):