President Trump announced Wednesday that the "United States Government will not accept or allow [t]ransgender [sic] individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."  The announcement came via Twitter (tweets available at the links in this paragraph), with Trump basing his decision in part on "the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

A few clarifications are in order here.

First, when Trump uses the word "transgender," what he means is men – people with Y-chromosomes in their cells – who think they are women and women – people with two X-chromosomes in their cells – who think they are men.

Second, when Trump mentions "medical costs," he is probably referring to controversy surrounding the concept of taxpayer-funded hormone injections and surgeries for people attempting to make themselves into members of the opposite sex.  These presumably include taxpayer-funded cosmetic surgery to mutilate the genitals – but not to change the chromosomal makeup in every cell, because such an operation does not exist and, being impossible, cannot ever exist.

The New York Times is in high dudgeon:

Mr. Trump elected to announce the ban in order to resolve a quietly brewing fight on Capitol Hill over whether taxpayer money should pay for gender transition and hormone therapy for transgender service members. The dispute had threatened to kill a $790 billion defense and security spending package scheduled for a vote this week.

But rather than addressing that narrow issue, Mr. Trump opted to upend the entire policy on transgender service members.

That sounds a little like upending the entire health care industry to address the narrow issue of a few million uninsured.  What's a little upending to the NYT?

The impact of Trump's announcement on soldiers suffering from delusions about their sex remains to be seen.  The NYT notes that "[s]ome 2,000 to 11,000 [of 1.3 million] active-duty troops are transgender ... though estimates ... have varied widely, and are sometimes as high as 15,000."

On the other hand, the impact of media outlets buying into "transgender" language mutilation is daunting.  The NYT has different pronouns for the same person from article to article.  Teen Vogue tells kids there are not males and females, but only prostate owners and non-prostate owners (warning: graphic content and excruciating feminism).  We're commanded to believe that not only are an Olympian gold medalist in the men's decathlon and a Navy SEAL women now, but they have always been women.

Ze's sex is what zir tells you it is.  As Anthony Kennedy put it, "[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life."

Insanity is a real concept.  It's not doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results – otherwise, we wouldn't have appeals courts or the parable of the unjust judge and the importunate widow.  What insanity actually is is a mindset that denies objective reality.  The man who eats things that are not food is insane.  The woman who pours drain cleaner in her eyes because she "should have been blind from birth" is insane.  And so is the man who thinks cutting off certain parts of his body makes him female – except this last gets enabled by every journalist, editor, and publisher who hears him say "I am woman" and proceeds to call him one.

Trump is doing the right thing here: people with aggravated mental disorders should not be tasked with defending our country.  What the journos playing games with pronouns – especially conservative journos dropping the ball big-time on this – need to understand is what Johns Hopkins ex-chief psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh has tried so hard to make clear: the compulsion to consider oneself a member of the opposite sex needs to "be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery."

America needs soldiers with a solid grip on reality.  And America's publications need basic biology and basic English grammar to remain in our skill sets if we're to be taken seriously.

Drew Belsky is American Thinker's deputy editor.  Contact him at drew@americanthinker.com.