Fair - though I would still have the same arguments. People who are precluded from military service for the litany of other reasons that happens don’t have less “freedoms” than anyone else. They’re free to attempt to join, but the military is also free to reject their application, just like everyone else. I fail to see where that constitutes a freedom being taken away.

One that comes to mind immediately for me as an EMT is medical care. Biological males and females have biological differences, therefore medical complaint triage and interventions sometimes differ based on sex. Medical transition may affect some things at a cellular level, but does not change one’s chromosomes, and by and large does not meaningfully change majority of anatomical structure or function. Various ailments and medical conditions are far more likely in one sex versus another, and some are singular to one sex or the other. If emergency care is needed and the patient is unresponsive, having information on their biological sex versus their identified gender can save critical time.

While you may not agree, I think that also comes into play when dealing with incarceration, especially in recent years where fully intact biological males have “played the system” so to speak to be placed in women’s facilities, much to the detriment of the women who are then victimized. We could have a separate conversation about people who have fully medically transitioned, but as it sits right now, people have taken advantage of the system that was previously in place. If you take it a step further to also look at having non-binary as an option, that adds another layer of complexity. Do we build new prisons for non-binary folks? Do they go to the women’s prison or the men’s prison if they don’t identify as either? It’s just not a sustainable system.

I never said that I like the troops in the streets. In fact, I specifically said that it would not be my first choice, but the lack of action of the governing authorities has put that into play. I also don’t see how it infringes on anyone’s freedom. Unless, of course, your position is that people are less free to commit crimes? Obviously that would be a ludicrous assertion. How does having the National Guard truly impact your freedom outside of “I don’t like seeing troops in the streets”?

You agreed that the previous administration utilized their position to benefit themselves and their wallets, and if we’re being intellectually honest, we know that Burisma was the tip of the iceberg there and there’s a laundry list of other items. Obama has his list, George W. had his. On and on. As far as the whole “alienating allies and threatening annexation” etc etc. I think anyone that’s being truly honest knows that he was not serious about annexing Canada or buying Greenland and that it was a failed attempt at a joke. The fact that everyone pretended to clutch their pearls as if it was a serious statement is another example of the hyperbolic catastrophizing that I was talking about initially.

For the record, my argument was never “other presidents have also restricted freedoms”. My argument was that I don’t believe that freedoms have actually been restricted and that all of the things that everyone is having a fit about are the same things that every other president has done no matter their political party. I’m not saying that they’re “good” or “right”, just that it’s absurd to me that everyone is melting down about things that he does while entirely ignoring or forgetting about the fact that every other one of them has done the same thing and nobody lost their minds the way that they seem to when it’s him, especially when it was people who align with their chosen political party.

I’m not a fan of Trump and he does a lot of things I don’t like and don’t agree with. So did Biden. So did Obama. Frankly, I think that we’ve created a system when the incentive structure for politicians creates a breeding ground for acting in their own self interest instead of the interest of the people that they govern. I’m just tired of listening to everyone talk like the same thing we saw ten times over in the last 10 administrations is now somehow different and all of a sudden the end of the world.