Trump’s overreaches and grandiosity ultimately will fade like a mist
For several decades, Canute the Great ruled over England, Denmark, Norway, Scotland and parts of Sweden as the most successful monarch in the Anglo-Saxon period. But Canute, who reigned until 1035, is most famous for the often misunderstood story about his ordering the tide to abate on the Thames.
“You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord,” he is reported to have said while sitting in a chair on the shore.
The tale is commonly seen as ending there, bearing witness to a ruler’s foolish arrogance. But, in fact, as historian Henry of Huntingdon recorded it, the lesson Canute sought to teach was the opposite.
“But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person and soaked his feet and legs,” the historian wrote. “Then he moving away said: ‘All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy of the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws.’”
Vain and trivial. More than ever, these terms apply to Donald J. Trump, the would-be monarch who continues to soil the White House and our culture with his vanity and ultimate triviality.
Consider, first, Trump’s move to install plaques under the photos of presidents near the Oval Office that extol himself and denigrate his predecessors. As The New York Times reported, the plaque for Barack Obama falsely describes him as “one of the most divisive political figures in American history” in spite of his high favorability rating. And the plaque for Joe Biden appears under a picture of an autopen and promotes Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, while referring to Biden as “… by far, the worst President in American History.”
And ponder the vote by Trump sycophants on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center to rename the performing arts venue as the Trump-Kennedy Center. Trump, who chairs the center, had repeatedly spoken of such a change, but claimed to be surprised and honored at the move, which may require Congressional action.
Remember, too, how Trump has gilded the Oval Office and laid plans for a grandiose ballroom addition to The White House. “Renderings show a vast, glacially white aircraft hangar of a structure embellished with an ornate coffered ceiling, gilded Corinthian columns and drooping gold chandeliers. Nero, who conceived the original domus aurea, would feel right at home,” the architecture critic for The Guardian wrote. put it. “Trump’s style edicts and building bombast exude a dictator-for-life megalomania vibe, as he barrels through his second term, with an unconstitutional third potentially in his sights.”
Still, those efforts pale beside the president’s just-announced plan, developed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to deny gender-affirming care to transgender youth. Trump, who has refused even to recognize transgenderism, would pull federal funding from hospitals that provide services such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers and rare procedures such as mastectomies to children and teenagers. As The New York Times reported, defying the proposed rules, in effect, would shut down rebellious hospitals.
The pair would also ban Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program from paying for transition care for those under 18 and 19, respectively, according to The Washington Post.
“We are done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children,” Kennedy said at a news conference. He said he signed a declaration confirming that “sex-rejecting procedures pose medical dangers of lasting harm on children who receive these interventions.”
In taking these steps, Trump and Kennedy hoisted themselves above experts who treat transgender people of all ages. Groups including the American Medical Association (AMA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Psychiatric Association (APA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the Endocrine Society, support evidence-based gender-affirming care as medically necessary and beneficial.
The pediatrics association, for one, condemned the Trump-Kennedy plan as a dangerous intrusion of the federal government into private medical decisions. “Allowing the government to determine which patient groups deserve care sets a dangerous precedent, and children and families will bear the consequences,” Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the AAP, told The Times.
Casting aside medical experience with transgenderism that dates back at least to the early 1900s, Trump launched his anti-trans efforts on the campaign trail and then cemented them in the opening days of his administration. In early-days executive orders he denied the very existence of transgender people. “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the president wrote, reflecting the sensibilities of religious fundamentalists.
Indeed, an official of HHS echoed the Biblically based notion at the press conference where the new rules were announced. “Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men,” said Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of the health department. “At the root of the evils we face is a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived.”
While the Trump-Kennedy changes are anything but trivial for the estimated 724,000 minors in the U.S. who believe they are transgender, the pair’s effort is ultimately in vain. No matter how much the men deny the existence of gender dysphoria, those suffering from it are real and will continue to be with us. Many will need and get treatment, even if limited to psychological care, and at least for now, the government’s move just delays some kinds of care until they reach adulthood.
Still, a few points bear noting. For one, the number of transgender people is so small – perhaps just 2.8 million, or 0.8 percent of the U.S. population — that it is mystifying that they should be subjects of federal policy and, in recent times, state policy around the country. And yet, along with the Trump-Kennedy move, more than 1,000 bills are under consideration nationwide that would limit trans people’s rights in areas such as healthcare, athletics, the military, in education and even in prisons, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.
Of course, Trump and a compliant Supreme Court have already banned transgender people from serving in the military. Up to 1,000 such soldiers are being driven out of the services, which in all number some 2.86 million people.
So, why are so many people apparently feeling threatened by so few? What is it in the psyche of so many conservatives that makes them feel endangered by gender fluidity?
Moreover, what happened to the traditional conservative ideal of limited government? Why should federal or state legislators inject themselves into what ultimately are private medical and psychological decisions by individuals and families? And how can people such as Trump and Kennedy – with their wacko unscientific beliefs about bleach and Covid and vaccines – impose their ignorance on a nation?
Yes, scientists and doctors can get things wrong – such practices and lobotomies and leeching are proof of that. And, yes, there can be misdiagnoses and faddism in psychiatry. Still, the share of young people who get puberty-blockers and other gender-affirming medicines is minuscule, fewer than one in 1,000 adolescents, according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics.
Physicians do not seem to be hell-bent on putting youngsters on such drugs, much less operating on them. In that sense, the Trump-Kennedy restrictions may prove inconsequential, indeed trivial. Relatively few people will be affected and only for a fairly short time in their lives. As they become adults, they likely will have more options.
Indeed, not all transgender youth proceed with medical treatments, Dr. Scott Leibowitz, co-lead author of the adolescent standards of care for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, told The Associated Press early this year. Transgender adolescents “come to understand their gender at different times and in different ways,” he said, noting that the best care should include experts in adolescent identity development who can work with families to help figure out what’s appropriate.
Still, we cannot ignore the fact that Trump and Kennedy are intent on worsening life for transgender people. Already, such folks have it quite rough — some 81 percent of transgender adults in the U.S. have thought about suicide while 42 percent have attempted it, according to The Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law.
For them, Trump’s vanity and triviality are vile and perhaps deadly.
For all of us, we must take heart that the Biblical sense of vanity will apply here. In Ecclesiastes, the Hebrew word for vanity means “vapor” or “breath,” something insubstantial, fleeting and quickly gone, like a mist. Canute appears to have understood that and, someday, that will apply to Trump.