The Patriot Post® · Not in Kansas Anymore

To say that we live in strange times is the understatement of the century.

Take Minnesota’s DFL — the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party. It now finds itself represented by figures such as Leigh Finke, born Chris, who dresses as a woman and recently argued that “trans kids” need access to pornography because that is where they receive sex education. Statements like that no longer shock the political class; they are absorbed into the churn of the news cycle. But they should shock us. They reveal how far we have drifted from any shared understanding of reality, responsibility, or restraint. What was once unthinkable is now debated as policy, and what should be instinctively rejected is rationalized in the name of progress.

I do not believe in “transgenderism” as a coherent biological reality. I believe it reflects a profound psychological disorder that, in recent years, has become a social contagion encouraged and normalized by elements of the far left. What is remarkable is not merely the phenomenon itself, but the political machinery that has rallied behind it. The modern Left increasingly builds policy atop contradiction, sustained by organized cognitive dissonance. In philosophical terms, it claims to have resolved René Descartes’s mind-body duality entirely in favor of the mind: feelings are sovereign; biology is incidental. When the body becomes negotiable, chromosomes become irrelevant, and reality becomes optional.

That shift is not benign; it is destructive — especially for individuals struggling with genuine gender dysphoria. Their suffering is real, but instead of careful treatment and compassion grounded in truth, political forces elevate and weaponize their distress. The individual becomes secondary; the movement becomes primary. The goal is not healing but cultural, institutional, and legal power — severely troubled people become symbols, and symbols become tools.

This is the grand illusion of our moment: the promise of “freedom” for a tiny minority, not by allowing individuals to live as they choose and accept the consequences, but by compelling the majority to affirm what it does not believe. We are told that dissent itself is harm and reality must yield to affirmation. Just as Dorothy clicked her ruby slippers and returned from Oz to Kansas, society must now believe a man can simply declare himself a woman and “return” to a state of being that never biologically existed — and that society must not merely tolerate this claim but codify and enforce it.

We are most definitely not in Kansas anymore.

The term “Orwellian” is overused, but it applies. In 1984, the state’s slogans were “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.” The Ministry of Peace oversaw war. The Ministry of Love conducted torture. The Ministry of Truth rewrote history. Contradiction was not a flaw in the system; it was the system. Power required citizens to believe what was manifestly false. Today, we are told that liberty requires compulsion, that inclusion requires the exclusion of dissent, and that science requires the denial of biology. Male and female, once rooted in chromosomes and reproductive function, are redefined as mutable “identities,” adjustable like costumes at a comic convention. When reality becomes fluid, law becomes elastic — and elastic law expands power.

Democrat Rashida Tlaib proposed a “Transgender Bill of Rights,” but when government creates a new protected class, it must define that class. What is “transgender”? A medical diagnosis? A self-declaration? A temporary emotional state? Law cannot function without definition. If something is illegal or protected, “X” must be defined, codified, interpreted, and enforced. Once defined, that definition will evolve through courts, agencies, and bureaucracies. Each ruling refines “X,” and each case expands its boundaries. The permutations multiply, and with each permutation, power shifts from individuals to institutions.

Follow that logic to its endpoint. In a society governed increasingly by regulatory detail, identity becomes something to certify. To claim rights attached to a category, one must prove membership in that category. If government dispenses rights on the basis of identity, government must adjudicate identity. The state becomes the arbiter of who you are. That is not liberation; it is administrative control.

This dynamic exposes a deeper issue: whether law alone can sustain social order. There are two forms of control in any society — external and internal. External controls are laws and regulations. They define behavior and attach consequences. They matter, and they deter, but they are not sufficient. There are illegally parked cars every day, and there are, tragically, murders despite severe penalties. Law restrains, but it does not transform the human heart. Internal controls are values — moral standards, cultural norms, conscience. My internal controls, shaped by Judeo-Christian principles, prevent me from kicking down my neighbor’s door and stealing his television. The law may punish me if I do, but if no one is watching, the ultimate restraint is internal.

The American constitutional system assumes such internal restraint. It is rooted in the concept of natural law — immutable standards beyond the reach of passing political fashions. Remove that foundation, and governance becomes arbitrary, and arbitrary governance cannot sustain legitimacy; it can sustain compliance only through coercion. Government by fad or whim is arbitrary and capricious, and arbitrary power, if pushed far enough, ultimately rests on force.

Am I arguing that debates over bathrooms, pronouns, or identity will single-handedly usher in totalitarianism? No. But when a society begins to subordinate objective reality to ideological affirmation — and then demands legal enforcement of that affirmation — it sets in motion forces that centralize power and erode liberty.

Strange times indeed.