'Taxation Without Representation': The death of the United States

Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

I'm a student of history. As a young woman in school, history was always the one class - with the exception of art and computer sciences - that I typically excelled at.

One of the primary grievances the American Colonists had with England in the lead-up to the American Revolution was that they had no representation in the British government. Instead, they were ruled by a monarch half a world away.

As I continue to digest everything that happened yesterday in Washington, D.C., I'm reminded of those words and how the colonists in the 1700's felt they were not represented by the government under which they lived.

There are many things - if not outright all of them - that I strongly disagree with from yesterday, but I'm going to try (and fail) to focus on just one.

In an email delivered to the White House press pool yesterday just prior to Mr. Trump taking the oath of office, this was at the bottom of a long list of "Day One" priorities for the incoming administration.

The President will establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from radical gender ideology.

A couple things stand out to me here.

• The rhetoric is indicative of the normal fear mongering that the Conservative-Republican party is known far and what Donald Trump has used to secure his rise to power since late 2015. They are, at their core, an echo chamber of what the extreme right says amongst themselves. Words like "reality" and "radical," challenging both the mental well being and alleged "extreme" of gender identity.
  
  With this rhetoric, Trump is outright refusing to acknowledge the existence transgender and non-binary people. Yet, he believes he has the right to govern them.
  
  
• A long-standing symbol of the far right is the "Don't Tread On Me" imagery. And yet, that same crowd is not only willing, but eager to tread on others. This stems from primarily from religion:
  
  Mark 16:15-16 says, "And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.'"
  
  A large premise of the Christian belief is to spread the message and ideology. And thus, they have the arrogance to force that ideology on anyone that they deem to "live in sin." 
  
  The United States was once seen as a melting pot of ideas and cultures. Now, thanks to rural isolationism and ideological echo chambers, this has only intensified as Christians seek to govern from the pulpit.

While I have yet to find confirmation that the executive order was signed on Jan. 20 denying transgender people the dignity of existence in the eyes of the federal government, it is surely coming. Mr. Trump said as much during his inaugural address Monday.

So, I say this in response:

I no longer am represented by the United States of America, its government, nor its people. The vitriolic hatred shown toward myself and the people within my community by both the general population and, now, all levels of government, give me little reason to accept that this country has a place for me in it.

The following is an excerpt from President Barack Obama's memoire, "A Promised Land."

“But the idea of America, the promise of America: this I clung to with a stubbornness that surprised even me. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”—that was my America. The America Tocqueville wrote about, the countryside of Whitman and Thoreau, with no person my inferior or my better; the America of pioneers heading west in search of a better life or immigrants landing on Ellis Island, propelled by a yearning for freedom.”

From the moment I read that line years ago, I've strongly felt every word of it.

The promise of America and what it should be is beautiful. And while I hope there is enough left of this country after four years of Trump 2.0, I don't feel very optimistic.

I have no representation. I am governed by people that do not acknowledge I exist. We now are on the verge of living under a Christian-based authoritarian state. And while I hope we can one day recover, if it ever gets that far, I do not believe we as a nation will be able to come back from that.

The great American experiment will have failed.