Bleeding Transas

Irregular Warfare and the American Soul

The language of liberation and abolition run deep in the American soul, from the decision to secure the blessings of liberty and break free from the British Crown, or the calling of abolition which struck deep in the soul of the nation’s very founding between its slave holding states to the South and its more emancipated brethren in New England. In the lead-up to the War Between the States, one could see the conflict brewing years before any shots were fired on Fort Sumter. One needn’t look any farther back than the struggle inside the Kansas territory during the 1850s, known by most as “Bleeding Kansas.”

What would emerge from these questions of human bondage and political balance of power would be a multitude of armed standoffs, killings, and paramilitary action involving armed and radical abolitionists, free-state settlers and supporters, as well as slave-state settlers and supporters known to have come from Missouri as “border ruffians.”

One doesn’t need to do too much research to find familiar names and faces in American history, such as the infamous John Brown, who killed five in the Pottawatomie Massacre. Or, on the pro-slavery side, an earlier event with the Sacking of Lawrence, where anti-abolitionists had destroyed the publishing house and home of the future first governor of the state, Charles L. Robinson. Such violence that made the territory and trouble known as Bleeding Kansas would be relatively minor, with accounts ranging to be 59 to 100 individuals losing their lives for their respective causes — a drop in the bucket compared to the bloodshed that would follow in the 1860s.

While 2023 is not like 1853, I cannot help but go back to the ideas of irregular warfare, para-militarism, and other topics that now tear at the American soul. Just as the nature of slavery and popular sovereignty tore the nation asunder, the issue of “transgender children” will very much evoke the same kind of response and death as did the question of slavery in Kansas. Just a few days after the tragic death and martyrdom of six Christians in the Covenant School, the President of the United States gave a statement on the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” proclaiming:

On Transgender Day of Visibility, we celebrate the strength, joy, and absolute courage of some of the bravest people I know. Transgender Americans deserve to be safe and supported in every community — but today, across our country, MAGA extremists are advancing hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families. No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.

This is also in the midst of the rapidly developed (perhaps indoctrinated would be the better word) fault lines that rest on the trans question.

This is on top of the fact that there are groups such as “Rainbow Reload,” an anonymous member of which was described by NPR:

Obviously a fake name, Guardian says he’s fearful of his family being targeted. His hat, worn backwards, says Make Fascists Afraid Again. He’s been around guns his whole life and sees them as a way to protect queer people and queer spaces.

In a time when parents are being arrested for protesting against the obvious pornography taught in public schools, dysgenic activists are permitted to storm state capital buildings. Now, in the fight against the idea of a “forced puberty,” echoes of “liberation” and “abolition” ring in a direction so far from the American promise. These once-American concepts have transitioned into something so hideous and ugly that one would have to lie to himself to say that they “pass” for American.

There are some of you reading this who might find this comparison obtuse or forced, but look at that Bud Light and tell me what’s being forced here. I would hasten you, Dear Reader, to consider what we’ve seen the last several years. From the final season to the original run of Will and Grace, a decade would pass and one could find I Am Jazz in one’s television programming. The ghost of fascism, the ultimate form of genocidal rage and terror in the eyes of every post-1945 American, echoes in the progressive mind as anyone who opposes his child’s transitioning is labeled a “Nazi” or just another “loser,” like those who lost in 1865.

With armed groups, threats for future action, and countless others celebrating the death of three children and three teachers, something tells me that these issues will result in even more violence in due time. To those saying that “they didn’t read the room” with respect to the lives lost, and the “transgender day of visibility” still going on right afterward, should tell you that the lines have already been drawn and America is facing once more a form of irregular warfare on an issue that strikes at the soul of America’s future, a future that determines the fate of its progeny for decades to come.