Trump vows to stop ‘transgender lunacy' and make two genders official US policy

Germany is also moving further right so I am mentally preparing to flee or fight when shit hits the fan

The US population is just struggling too much to care, that's part of the playbook: keep people poor and the rich rich, so that the economy will be the main driver of votes, and of course the sitting party is always to blame for the bad (or perceived bad) economy, so people vote for the other party no matter what. The same thing is brewing in east germany with AfD stemming basically from the same economic problems, and you'd think they know a thing or two about fascism there.

As horrifying as it is, wars are good for the economy because governments are printing money like they're no tomorrow to build weapons and ammunition, it creates tons of jobs. It'll come at the cost of a depression when tomorrow finally comes, but that'll be the next party's problem, and people on average can't see much further than the tip of their nose. Then they'll vote the fascists back in to "fix" the economy again, just in time for the economy to start turning and take credit from the previous administration's policies. People don't want progress because progress involves compromises while they're hurting right now, they don't want to compromise for the right thing.

Nobody would care about trans people, immigrants, green energy, electric cars, etc if the lower middle class was wealthy. People care because of the perception it's taking away things from them in a time of need where they can't afford it. For trans people that's DEI being perceived as favoring against them, for green energy that's going the more expensive route they can't afford/it's cheaper to set their trucks to run coal and not have to put AdBlue in or replace a clogged up DPF. They want regulations gone not because they don't care about the environment, but because they hurting right now financially and it's costing them right now.

it's a reference to a poem about the rise of the nazi party in the 1930s

Also, I looked up that list you posted, as some of the entries seemed very strange to me, even for the time.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reasons-admission-insane-asylum-1800s/

In general, this document might be more accurately described as "a list of some reasons why people were believed to have eventually developed illnesses that led to their being admitted to the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane" and not a list of "symptoms" or "reasons" why people were admitted to that hospital.

It's an extremely funny list, but shows more that psychoanalysis in that time was pretty stupid, not that people were being put in an asylum for showing these behaviors.

I don't mean focus on medical situations as a wildcard to just practice any sort of (pseudo) medicine on people. It's about rights being given, not taken away.

The reason I mentioned this, is that the erasure of gender from official status might have as a side effect that rights related to gender (for example pregnancy leave) have to be defined in a way that doesn't link it to gender. By no means do I want some sort of medical laws or such that force things upon people, it's more about rights linked to a person's medical conditions.

In that sense, I see having a penis, or a uterus, or something else as just one of the medical characteristics of a person, just as for example their blood sugar, eyesight or mental state. Rights and care should be based on that, and not on a F/M on an official document.

We won't.

It might look likely through the lens that is appropriate for the rest of the "democratic" world but that lens is not reliable for Germany. In the rest of the "democratic" world, the extreme fascists are hidden much like a dirty secret and so any noise from them that slips through is hugely amplified because it signals the existence of a much larger and more significant fascist movement. In Germany, the extreme right are in clear sight and much more of their noise gets through and the lens that amplifies that noise makes it seem that they might win.

That same democracy will ensure that they do not. In Germany, we can see them for what they are and their seats in parliament represent a more accurate measure of their support base. That support base is tragically large and significant but not enough to give them more than seats in parliament: they do not have a majority and would only form a majority through a coalition with other parties and, here, the transparency is a disadvantage: other parties who stand to be part of the next coalition won't join with the AfD.

Our democracy is not a two-party system. They will not win by jerrymandering or by playing the game. They cannot even sneak power by having a better candidate for key seats because individual seats are won through "first votes" while winning a majority in parliament would require them to take a majority of "second votes" – the system would put those "better" candidates in their seats while correcting the share of seats, overall.

The reason that they are given any space at all is also to their detriment: in Germany, there is exactly one way a political party can be blocked and that is if they contravene the constitution: Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar, usw.

This is why we tolerate their presence and one sees the noise they make: they haven't – yet – violated that consequentially, and so they cannot be blocked. Blocking the AfD would be great – I'm all for it, in isolation – but it would compromise something about German democracy and the cure would be worse than the disease because it would only silence their noise: the movement would proceed apace and their movement is, itself, a symptom of a greater problem: there are people who are ill served by the status-quo and the AfD seem to be an "alternative."

If the AfD ever did gain power, however, they simply could not do what they insinuate because that would tear it and the constitutional court would smash them. This is also true if they form part of a coalition: that coalition could not execute on the plans they hint at.

Now, "unantastbar" is a fantastic German word that cannot readily be translated to a single English one but one aspect of it implies immeasurability. The AfD could never pass legislation that discriminated against LGBTQ+ people because that would necessarily divide "people" into two groups and apply a comparator between them and that cannot be done if people's worth is immeasurable. The constitutional court knows this, as do the defence teams who have surely prepared this argument for the day when it becomes necessary.

Germany is by no means perfect and even German democracy is flawed in some ways but, largely, Germany is a good place to live. There are many archaic laws that persist – the gendered language and gendered baby name things count among a legacy of problems – but, largely, these are being progressively overturned. (Albeit slowly.)

Sometimes, we make a few steps forward and then a few (hopefully fewer) backwards but, largely, I think Germany is on the right track.

Na. The Nazis most probably will be strongest opposition party, but the government will be populist.

Currently we aren't at a point, where the fascists(AfD) gonna form a coalition. Its very likely that the conservatives(CDU) will be the leading party. However, they still have to get a majority so they will have to form a coalition with either the populist authoritarian right(BSW), the green party or the social democrats(SPD). The liberals(FDP) and the left may not pass the 5% hurdle and therefore won't have any influence on the politics. FDP, SPD, and the green party are the currently governing Partys(even tho the FDP blasted the coalition and doesn't do anything anymore) Currently it may be possible that CDU and SPD(which have ruled a lot of times before) are able to form a coalition by themselves, although it currently isn't very likely that this is possible. So they need a third party to coalate with. This will be either the AfD (they currently aren't a a point where they will work together), the greens or BSW. The chancellor candidate for the CDU announced that he doesn't want to coalate with those, so its probably going to be CDU, SPD and BSW. In theory the SPD should be able to hold back the CDU from destroying alle progressive work that has been done in the past 4 years, but sadly they have a history of betraying everyone to be able to govern for 4 more years.

So in short, we will likely have a right conservative government, but we won't have fascists(yet). It will devinetively get worse the next 4 years.

The world wants teachers, doctors, and other specialists, but it can be very difficult to leave without money or higher education. You could look into masters and PHD programs internationally and try to leave via study to employment.

Yeah, I think (but am not 100% sure) this still applies, although you only need one gender related name, all other names are free for you to choose. And if you have the diverse gender designation you obviously probably don't have to choose a gender related option.

Anyways, the fascists are very close to get the majority vote here so maybe not the best idea to come to Germany either :(

I'm not sure, tbh. I think that only applies to baby names, but I'll be sure and check later when I'm home

More progressive than Nordic countries or Israel?

Thank goodness. I haven't done research into trans rights in many countries yet, so I was sincerely afraid that the UK might be as good as it gets 😰

Better than Russia, worse than Spain... kind of sad to see the EU average so low.