There is already more than enough hyperbole surrounding the transgenderism controversy, so this commentary will focus less on the moral and political aspects of the emotional controversy, and more on the sedate and sober implications of sociology.

Wait!  Just in case you're thinking, how boring, we're going to include an NSA (National Security Agency) report on UFOs.  No, really — even though the two may be unrelated, the principles governing one study are strikingly similar to the other.  

To anyone older than fifty years, the arrival of the transgender ideology, and the ferocity of its advocacy, is vastly more earth-shaking than many younger people, already having been exposed to leftist propaganda all their lives, will understand.  Many of them have suffered serious penalties for even the slightest, most reasonable doubts about that propaganda, but that is the case only because of the widespread acceptance of, and faith in, leftist dogma.  It is never to be questioned, not even in the slightest.  If you do not march in Nazi-like lockstep, then you are called, ironically, a Nazi.  

In 1965, a man named Lambros D. Callimahos was working as a cryptologist with the NSA.  He produced a seminal paper on how the United States should, and indeed must, for the sake of national survival, study what was then known as the UFO (more recently UAP) phenomenon.  As I read excerpts from that highly influential paper, I became struck as to how closely his words in the sixties could apply in the 2020s to the transgender movement — and, allow me to reiterate, apart from the moral and political aspects, which generate such intense emotion.  

First, Callimahos addressed the question of how many UFO reports might be hoaxes.  He said,  

If UFOs, contrary to all indications and expectations, are indeed hoaxes — hoaxes of a worldwide dimension — hoaxes of increasing frequency, then a human mental aberration of alarming proportions would seem to be developing. Such an aberration would seem to have serious implications for nations equipped with nuclear toys — and should require immediate and careful study by scientists.

The only hoax attributable to the transgender phenomenon is that men can become women, and vice versa.  This is not to say that gender dysphoria is not a serious medical and/or psychological affliction needing compassionate intervention.  It is to say that the correct treatment is rarely, if ever, irreversible mutilation or profoundly consequential hormonal treatment — especially by allowing naturally gullible and immature children to make life-changing decisions that are too often profoundly regretted.  

Clearly, to us old folks, society has already undergone a "mental aberration of alarming proportions."  The dilemma is no longer that of a young, impressionable child, but that of a largely delusional society.  

The next quote from Callimahos is equally prescient.  

If UFOs did turn out to be largely illusionary, the psychological implications for man would certainly bring into strong question his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. The negative effect on man's ability to survive in an increasingly complex world would be considerable — making it imperative that such a growing impairment of the human capacity for rational judgment be subjected to immediate and thorough scientific study so that the illness could be controlled before it reaches epidemic proportions.  

We may be beyond that point by now.  How much more delusional can a society become than to imagine that manhood and womanhood are merely subjective?  When we allow the rare exception to become the rule, to require society to kneel, as did (albeit voluntarily) Drew Barrymore before trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, then we are on the cusp of being compelled, by law, to act against our most strongly held beliefs.  

The final quote I will present addressed the question of what has historically happened whenever a technologically advanced civilization has encountered one less advanced.  In many cases, the less technological culture disappears, subsumed into the dominant one, losing its language and laws, contributing only subliminal vestiges of its heritage to the society that proverbially writes the history books.  Only in rare cases, such as in postwar Japan, can a conquered society retain most of its identity.  

Do the captivity characteristics of modern civilization cause a similar lessening of man's adaptive capability, of his health, of his ability to recognize reality, of his ability to survive?

In our case, we are the ones who have been conquered.  There is no overnight form of revolution, whether peaceful or not, upon which we can pin our hopes for a return to normalcy.  Imitating what Japan did, we must find a way to yield only what we absolutely must, and entrench, where we can, the principles that make America great.  

When eventually we do encounter alien civilizations, we will need those skills.

Image via Needpix.