Post-Trump priorities (10): Human rights

The tenth of the ten points that Dan Froomkin (1) has proposed as guidelines for a restoration of democratic governance is:

Support human rights for all, including trans rights.

Froomkin made a separate and distinct point about Israel’s genocide against Palestinians on which I’ve already commented.

Here he mentions trans rights in particular. This is yet another area where Democratic politicians wind up boosting Republican attacks by trying to mealy-mouth their way around them. No one – or at least vanishingly close to no one – for whom The Trans is a decisive issue against Democrats is going to change their vote because Dems adopt some form of, “We hate The Trans, too!”

As long as the Republican Party resembles its current self, they will always come up with some moral-panic issue to use against Democrats. Usually involving bathrooms. The Dems just have to get used to call them out on false claims to scam people and to portray the meanness behind those attacks for what it is.

It’s worth remembering that moral panics can catch on even when they are obviously crazy, as in the Satanic ritual hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s in the US. Stuart Vyse recalls: 

People have always had extreme beliefs, but it takes emotion to put those beliefs into action, and children stir up emotions. Children are vulnerable and beloved, and we make enormous efforts to protect them from illness, injury, and exploitation. Unfortunately, there are people in the world who are capable of horrible acts, and children can rarely defend themselves when targeted. They are both precious and fragile. ...

In 1994, the New York Times summarized the key finding of an investigation conducted by psychologist Gail Goodman of the University of California Davis of over 12,000 accusations Satanic ritual abuse: “The survey found that there was not a single case where there was clear corroborating evidence for the most common accusation, that there was ‘a well-organized intergenerational satanic cult, who sexually molested and tortured children in their homes or schools for years and committed a series of murders’” (Goleman 1994). The Satanic ritual abuse phenomenon was eventually recognized as a moral panic based on unreliable evidence. ,,,

The 1980 bestselling book Michelle Remembers introduced the idea of Satanic ritual child abuse. The prior decade had seen the emergence of new religious movements, and people were worried about young people being attracted to cults. In late 1978, 900 followers of the Reverend Jim Jones killed themselves in a mass suicide poisoning in Guyana, an event that became known as the Jonestown massacre. In this cultural context, the toxic ideas promoted in Michelle Remembers took root and found their greatest expression in the McMartin Preschool case in Manhattan Beach, California, in 1983. Seven staff members at the McMartin Preschool were accused of having ritually abused 360 children as part of a “Devil-worship” cult (Victor 1994). The McMartin case—which was not resolved until 1990—was the longest and most expensive trial in U.S. history, and in the end neither of the main defendants, Peggy McMartin Buckey and her son Ray Buckey, were convicted of any crime.

Meanwhile, the fear of Satanic ritual abuse had been adopted by many social workers, psychologists, law enforcement officials, and religious leaders. ... But eventually, after the McMartins were found not guilty, skepticism about the phenomenon finally began to grow. Expert witnesses, including psychologist and CSI Fellow Elizabeth Loftus, testified about the unreliable nature of recovered memories and the effects of leading questions on the testimony of young children. [my emphasis] (2)

Yes, even moral panics absurd and undocumented as those were, which always sounded like over-the-topic fantasies to anyone not looking for a dark conspiracy to obsess over, managed to gain an alarming level of credibility at that time.

The Democrats can also put a patriotic twist on their approach by identifying human rights advocacy as an important example that the US can display to the world and enhance our international standing. The wholesale message will need to be punchier than the following statement from the State Department during the Biden Administration:

The protection of fundamental human rights was a foundation stone in the establishment of the United States over 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Supporting democracy not only promotes such fundamental American values as religious freedom and worker rights, but also helps create a more secure, stable, and prosperous global arena in which the United States can advance its national interests. In addition, democracy is the one national interest that helps to secure all the others. Democratically governed nations are more likely to secure the peace, deter aggression, expand open markets, promote economic development, protect American citizens, combat international terrorism and crime, uphold human and worker rights, avoid humanitarian crises and refugee flows, improve the global environment, and protect human health. (3)

Audiences will go to sleep if the Democrats just drone out that boilerplate in speeches and interviews and social media. But they can make the points that Democrats fight for basic human rights at home and abroad and the Republicans fight to violate and diminish them.

Making that point along with films of masked ICE goons with no badges or identifying insignia assaulting and kidnapping people on American streets should be an effective approach.

They can and should also highlight the activities of violent Trumpista militia groups and demand that their Republican opponents condemn their positions and illegal actions. We’re very likely to see evidence that some of those characters are also among the masked ICE goons.

Notes:

(1) Froomkin, Dan (2025): Is it time to start planning a post-Trump restoration? Heads Up News 06/30/2025. (Accessed: 2025-03-08).

(2) Vyse, Suart (2021): Beware the Child Rescuers. Skeptical Inquirer July-Aug 2021. <https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/06/beware-the-child-rescuers/> (Accessed: 2025-26-08).

(3) Policy Issues: Human Rights and Democracy. US State Department Archives 01/20/2021- 01/20/2025. <https://2021-2025.state.gov/policy-issues/human-rights-and-democracy/> (Accessed: 2025-26-08).