By Marilyn Quigley

Most of us have watched a beloved friend or relative slide gradually from logic into a world of pure nonsense. One elderly woman, who believes she is a chef, might flavor her cake with the Terro ant killer beneath her sink. A man in a memory care facility demands the car keys because he believes he is a Secret Service chauffeur. Fortunately, sane people give close supervision to people out of touch with reality.

However, across America, many deranged individuals in leadership are roaming free. Members of the Assumed Identity Cult (AIC) proclaim that mindset alone determines authenticity and selfhood. Put simply, you are who you believe yourself to be regardless of any evidence, or lack thereof, to the contrary.

Those who champion this ridiculous philosophy, a flawed spawn of the American ideals, must be exposed and their behaviors denounced.

A brief review reminds that legions of leaders in the AIC resemble “Looney Tunes” characters akin to Daffy Duck. The old radio program title “Let’s Pretend” guides their behavior and discourse. For instance, members of the Cult declare that if you identify as an American, then you are American and deserve to live here even though you entered the country illegally. The Cult creed proclaims you’re entitled to every resource and privilege available to “other citizens,” as well as sanctuary from law enforcement officers. Any who disagree or use the term “illegal” are racist and heartless.

Switching to the school zone, teachers and counselors scheme to hide from parents that Laurie is now called Luke at school, and they teach that as many as 72 genders are available for choosing. And let’s say you possess your original male genitalia but now proclaim yourself female. Good news — you are a girl to far-left ideologues. You’re welcome to join the girls’ team and shower alongside females while displaying your fully functioning male regalia. What those girls observe has nothing to do with who you are inside. The ladies need to read your mind.

Even more incredible, some educated people declare that men can become pregnant.

This is insanity, of course, to those with fully functioning brain cells. Furthermore, those born male or female (called “cisgendered,” for the unenlightened) have no standing to protest the invasion of private spaces. Any who do so are labeled transphobes and bigots.

People with advanced degrees are the most pitiful examples of the AIC. A current supreme court judge declared as a candidate (and was voted in anyway) that she could not define what a woman is because, in her words, “I’m not a biologist.” Her implication was, I’m not a mind reader. Psychologists, politicians, librarians, and children’s authors consider youthful gender confusion (a socially contagious fad right now) best cured by changing healthy bodies to match muddled minds. The worst of the worst are surgeons who have perfected their skills to “cut and replace” sexual organs. What’s to stop these unhinged professionals?

Not much, as it turns out with recent statistics.

Between January 2019 and December 2023, 13,994 minor patients received “gender reassignment surgery.” The number since then? Perhaps doubled.

Prestigious children’s hospitals across America have established entire divisions to support the Cult. For example, a recent opinion article in Newsweek by Raquel Rosario Sánchez reveals these disturbing facts: “The Boston Children’s Hospital released promotional videos aimed at girls advising them on how to bind their breasts and explaining what ‘gender-affirming hysterectomies’ consist of. … The Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. was caught on record stating it performs hysterectomies on 16-year-olds and younger girls distressed by their sex.”

Knowledgeable people are comparing current practices to the 50,000 lobotomies performed between 1949 and 1952 — another horrific experiment gone wrong.

All this begs the question: Why have so many distraught parents agreed to and even pleaded for the procedures? Because of two questions psychologists ask: “Would you rather have a living transgender daughter or a dead son?” and “Do you want to be blamed for ruining your child’s life?” With those as the only stated choices, parents — who are simultaneously being pushed to act before the onset of puberty — paste a smile on their faces and say goodbye to Alina as they welcome Asher. Grandparents are given an ultimatum: Either call this child by the chosen new pronouns and name, or forfeit all contact with our family.

Thus, relatives climb on the transgenderism bandwagon and trumpet the new normal of allowing mere children to make life-altering decisions. These kids are not old enough to sign a lease, get a tattoo, or comprehend the coming functions of their sexual organs and adult male/female relationships. But grownups whom they trust tell girls they may consent to irreversible testosterone treatment and breast removal; boys can undergo castration. Where are the adults in this parade?

America’s reputation for brilliant ingenuity has descended into that of demented absurdity. How this happened is debatable, but one possibility is the leftists’ skewing of the American ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and equality.

Democracy, among its many other functions, prevents rule by autocrats and exalts individualism. Continual distorted thinking can land on a wrong conclusion: Leaders who disagree with me are autocrats, whom I have a mandate to oppose along with their outdated belief systems. Allowed to decay, this idea can result in what we see before us.

Liberty is the source of the oft-spoken adage aimed at children, “You can be anything you want to be in this country.” This maxim, intended merely to boost confidence and encourage effort, is now misconstrued and abused by leftists. Furthermore, taxpayers are expected to finance sex changes, and citizens are encouraged to wave pink-and-blue flags celebrating this demented liberty of free expression as “The American Way.”

Opportunity, the foundation of the American Dream, assures that every American has the right to strive for wealth. Those medical professionals lured into “gender-affirming care” have found affluence in the burgeoning sex-switch craze. The sex reassignment market today is worth $3.42 billion.

Equality assures that “all men [implying women and children] are created equal.” Perverted, the ideology flips family hierarchy. To echo George Orwell, kids’ demands to “transition” are “more equal” in value than their parents’ decisions for counseling. In the same warped vein, illegal immigrant needs supersede the financial rights of legitimate citizens.

Thus, the daily news on every outlet reminds us of Langston Hughs’s poem, “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” The short verse concerning the hopes of African Americans offers several possibilities for the question of its title: Does the dream “dry up,” “fester,” or putrefy and “stink”? Does it “crust over” or turn into a heavily sagging load? “Does it explode?”

Similarly, what happens to the American ideals when unrestrained? Freedom, it seems, has itself been allowed too much freedom. Liberty, with its necessary boundaries now broken down, emits a stench. Democracy and opportunity, in some realms, have morphed into monsters akin to Frankenstein.

Is it possible that hordes of highly educated people have actually lost their minds, as it seems? More likely, they have lost their moral compasses, jumped on a “fad-wagon,” and descended into cultural madness in support of the “woke” psychosis.

Sane, moral, intelligent people in every profession, persuasion, and place must rise up and yell “Halt! Stop! Cease!” to their off-the-rails colleagues and leaders. Well-balanced Americans have allowed abnormal nonsense to take over logical thinking.

Identity-as-reality is insanity. It is past time for rationality, again, to become the norm.