Dictatorship of the minority is at hand

By Don Frost

            In a democracy, the majority rules. Even little kids know that. When playing sandlot baseball they settle disputes by the majority rule. That used to be a founding principle at the very core of the American republic. No longer. We have entered a new era, the dictatorship of the minority.

            Recently I was asked to update my medical records with my primary care doctor. It was pretty routine stuff – name, age, marital status, emergency contacts, etc. Then I came to a multiple-choice question that set my head spinning. The form requested that I specify my gender. My choices were male, female, and unknown.

            What is happening to the country? To the world? Seriously, “unknown”?! This was a no-nonsense questionnaire. It was not a joke. If more proof was needed, that questionnaire dispelled it: We’re living in a world gone mad!

            Yes, I am well aware of LGTBQIA2S+: lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, queer and/or questioning, intersex, asexual, two-spirit, and more, all under the umbrella term “the identity movement.”

            Oh, come on! If you have a penis, you’re a boy; if you have a vagina, you’re a girl; if you have both, you’re a hermaphrodite.

            If you discover later in life that you don’t like the sex you were born with, that you’d rather be the other sex or that you prefer to have your sexual desires met by one of your own sex, that’s your personal issue. If you’re a girl and wake up one morning and feel like being a boy, that, too, is your personal issue. If you feel like being a girl again the next morning, that, too, is your personal issue. Why drag 97% of the rest of the world into it? You’re part of a minority. Get used to it.

            The “unknown” choice on my medical questionnaire was an unconscionable pandering to “the identity movement”; to people confused about which sex they want to be from one moment to the next. Heaven forbid that they be faced with a mere two choices on a medical form. They might be “offended.” They certainly can’t be expected to roll with it; to make whatever mental adjustments are required. Instead, they insist the entire world – the majority – must make the adjustments.

            Persecute these people? Of course not! Publicly ridicule them, humiliate them? A vile thing to do! Shun them? A heartless, pointless thing! Stone them? A cold-blooded, wicked idea! Yes, there are cretins who would do those very things. Still, must the world jump through hoops to appease the minority? More important, will all such appeasement teach mental defectives basic decency, common humanity? There will be ice cream parlors in hell before that happens.

            All of this – “unknown sex,” “sex ambiguity,” etc. – would be easily dismissed with an eye roll and shake of the head but for one thing: The dictatorship of the minority is dragging government into areas where it has no business being, some providing actual punishments for those unwilling to pander to such “politically correct” nonsense.

            Senate Bill 219 in California would have literally jailed nursing home employees for up to a year if they habitually used the wrong pronouns. It wasn’t for calling a man “her” or a woman “he.” It was for failing to pluralize them; for not referring to individual men and women as “they, them, their.” Under Bill 219, that would officially be a “crime” called “misgendering.”

            The radicals in “the identity movement” would have the world believe that such terms as “men” and “women” are artificial constructs; that there really are no such things as men and women; that all humans are neutered, ie., nothing. Nonsense like that has given rise to such idiotic phrasing as “person with a uterus” instead of “woman.”

            Dr. Michelle Morse, New York City’s chief medical officer, was taken to task for referring to Hispanic and black women as “mothers.” What’s that? you say. What’s wrong with that? Well, perhaps you need to have your consciousness raised, for it was her practice to refer to white women as “birthing people.” That damn near cost Morse her job. It appears, if only for the moment, her apology for “inadvertently gendering black and Puerto Rican birthing people” kept her on the city payroll.

            The dictatorship of the minority comes under the heading of people telling other people what to do, say, think, and believe with all their hearts and souls. It affects even children.

            Colorado recently passed a law that says it’s perfectly all right – that is, it’s no longer illegal – for children to play and walk outside without parental supervision. It wasn’t all that long ago that children routinely walked and played outside without some adult hovering nearby.

            Colorado found it necessary to pass such a law because under a previous law parents were being accused of neglect if their kids walked or played alone outside. That law resulted in 221,000 calls to the state’s child abuse hotline in 2021, most filed by alert neighbors to report children playing or simply walking to school alone.

            It’s a mad, mad world and it’s being driven by the minority while the majority cowers in terror of “offending.”

Putin’s war on Ukraine civilians isn’t new

By Don Frost

            The heartbreaking scenes in Ukraine of Vladimir Putin’s bombing and infantry campaign are sickening. Isolated homes smashed. Executed civilians lying dead in the streets. Apartment buildings reduced to ruined shells. People – young and old – scrambling to escape with their lives and a few meager belongings. Children lying in hospital beds crying for parents, now dead. Lives, hopes, and dreams shattered.

            The buck stops with Putin. He should be tried as a war criminal. But back to that in a moment. First, it should never be forgotten that America visited similar destruction on Germany and Japan in World War II:

            Dresden, Germany, population 625,174: In coordinated raids, British and American bombers hit the city with high explosive and incendiary bombs from Feb. 13-15, 1945, less than three months before Germany surrendered. An estimated 22,700 to 25,000 civilians were killed and 1,600 acres of the city’s center was destroyed.

            It should be noted that fire bombings over a wide area create a firestorm so intense they suck the oxygen out of the air and people die by suffocation.

            Tokyo, population 3.49 million: The firebombing March 9-10, 1945, five months before Japan surrendered. It devastated 16 square miles and killed 100,000 civilians, leaving one million homeless. In total 67 Japanese cities, largely built of highly flammable wood and bamboo, were firebombed during the war with results similar to those suffered by Tokyo.

            Hiroshima, population 255,260. An atomic bomb, Aug. 6, 1945, obliterated five square miles of the city center, killing 70,000 to 126,000 people outright. Thousands more died of radiation sickness in the years that followed.

            Nagasaki, population 195,290: An atomic bomb, Aug. 9, 1945, obliterated four square miles, killing 39,000 to 80,000 people outright. Thousands more died of radiation sickness in the years that followed. Six days later Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender.

            There are two objects, two goals, when waging war: (1) Destroy the enemy’s ability to continue the conflict and (2) destroy the enemy’s will to continue the conflict. It was the latter goal that led to our bombing campaigns of WW II, and Putin’s bombing campaign in Ukraine.

            During World War II we were fighting implacable enemies. First, we tried precision strategic bombing where we would hit specific military targets – factories, munition works, infrastructures. Yes, civilians’ were killed in those raids, but they were not the target. They were “collateral damage” before the term was invented. This strategic bombing failed to destroy Germany’s ability to continue the conflict. We were forced to give priority to the second object of war: Destroy Germany’s will to continue the conflict.

            Ditto Japan, a nation in which surrender was anathema to the national psyche. On islands across the Pacific individual Japanese commands fought literally to the last man rather than surrender. The Japanese mounted banzai – suicide – charges rather than surrender. At sea they attacked our ships with kamikaze – suicide – air attacks. Defeat was obvious and inevitable. Japan was losing the ability to continue the conflict, still it would not surrender. We were forced to give priority to the second object of war: Destroy Japan’s will to continue the conflict. Over Hiroshima and Nagasaki we reluctantly used the ultimate terror weapon, atomic bombs.

            But there is a huge difference between the Allied forces’ terror bombing in WW II and Putin’s terror bombing of Ukraine now. We used terror bombing only in the late stages of the war; only when years of strategic bombing of military targets failed; only when both enemies made it abundantly clear they were not about to surrender.

            Putin never gave strategic bombing a chance. He never went after Ukraine’s ability to resist. He went after Ukraine’s will to resist immediately. Terror was his first tactic: Target with bombs, missiles, and tanks homes and militarily unimportant businesses.

            Putin’s biggest mistake was that now – unlike the ’40s – there are television cameras to record the devastation and suffering, vivid images broadcast nightly into homes all over the world. Never before have so many nations cried out in moral outrage against another nation. Even Russia’s longtime friend, China, is keeping Putin at arm’s length.

            In the end, Putin may win concessions from Ukraine. He may even come away from the war, claiming victory. He will never be tried as a war criminal. But he has made of himself a pariah. That will cost him more than whatever he thinks he would gain from a victory, however hollow, over Ukraine.