Our cultural revolutionaries, who win battle after battle by default, aren’t used to getting pushback. But they got some in a major way last Wednesday, courtesy of a feisty Vietnam veteran named Don Sucher.
It was then that the 78-year-old was confronted by a MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status or “transgender”) town councilman originally named Nathan Kennedy, but now going by “Tiesa Meskis,” at his Star Wars memorabilia store in Aberdeen, Washington.
At issue is a sign in the window of Sucher’s establishment, Sucher & Sons Star Wars Shop, stating, “Just out. Dr Seuss’s new book. ‘If you are born with a d***, you are NOT a chick’. Period. This new release is out now because cancel culture banned his early books.”
The New York Post reports on the story, noting that the encounter was captured on video:
“Trans women are women,” Meskis can be seen yelling in the video as she stands face-to-face with Sucher.
…The Vietnam veteran defended the message as he faced off with Meskis.
“Everybody loves it,” he declared in the video. “They take pictures of it. They post it. 9/10 customers love it.”
When Meskis accused the shop owner of lying, Sucher said: “No, what you’re spouting is bulls–t.”
“No it’s not. Trans women are women, sir, that sign is bulls–t,” Meskis hit back.
Sucher later told the trans woman: “You know what, nobody confronts your a-s. That’s the problem.
“Every time some bulls–t like this happens, my sales go up because people are wanting this.”
The argument eventually spilled out onto the street with Meskis repeatedly shouting: “Trans women are women” [video, parts one and two, below. Warning: foul language].
Commentator Andrea Widburg notes that on “one level, the video is uninspiring, filled as it is with obscenities, as well as cross-talk that’s hard to understand. Sucher doesn’t engage in deep philosophical analysis or talk about the erroneous foundations of the whole transgender madness. What makes the video so appealing is seeing someone absolutely refuse to buckle down to wokeness. Sucher doesn’t apologize, and he doesn’t explain.”
She can say that again. Unbowed, Sucher also told Meskis, among other things, “You’re nuts. You’re not a woman. …You are not a chick!” and “You don’t look like a woman; you don’t act like a woman!”
Widburg is also correct in implying that vulgarity should be avoided. It coarsens and corrupts society and, do consider, was normalized by the Left. (Yes, it really is contrary to the virtuous life, as explained in my essay “Cussing & Cultural Decay.”)
But it’s true as well that Sucher, in not capitulating, is showing how to combat Truth- and freedom-squelching political correctness. An amoral saying goes, “Might makes right,” but what’s actually true is that right makes might. That is to say, when you know you’re absolutely, objectively, eternally right — not just espousing some “perspective” — it emboldens you. The Truth is your armor.
Yet time and again we see that leftists, relativists all, are absolutely wrong but behave as if they speak ex cathedra; conservatives, being conservative (as in defensive), are often absolutely right but behave as if everything is relative.
The MUSS agenda is a perfect example. It has no basis in reality, as I illustrated in “The Transgender Con: Rending Bodies and Twisting Minds”; thus should good people, with knowledge, reject it unabashedly. Yet too many Americans, lacking the principle that could overcome cancel-culture fears, are cowed.
Speaking of which, after the Star Wars-shop war of words spilled out onto the street, Meskis did what’s par for leftists’ course: He claimed that Sucher — a man pushing 80, with a bad leg, and whom he dwarfs — was intimidating him.
And speaking of that, Meskis and Antifa (surprise, surprise) had planned a Saturday “direct action” protest in front of Sucher’s store, but decided to “back off once it became apparent Sucher’s supporters would outnumber them,” writes Widburg. This, again, demonstrates how it’s done: Only power negates power.
Moving on, there’s something unsaid here. Meskis’s behavior was lawful; he had every right to enter Sucher’s store and express his opinion. Yet consider: I just reported earlier today on a Northeast butcher chain that, animated by a complaint from one of its investors, removed BLM and sexual devolutionary signs from its store windows, prompting an employee walkout.
What, however, if complaints by a city councilman — Meskis’s position — had motivated the action instead? You can bet the leftist powers-that-be would portray the removal as government infringement on free speech. We won’t hear this with Meskis.
Sucher’s pooh-poohing of feelings also hints at a deeper issue. Feelings are noteworthy if you’re counseling someone, as they can provide insight into a person’s inner reality, his mind and heart, and can aid in “diagnosis.” But they’re irrelevant when prescribing social codes and laws because feelings are not reliable indicators of external reality — namely, the ultimate reality that should govern these matters: Truth.
In other words, who’s offended by what cannot be a good guide for civilizational norms because it’s subjective: Most everyone is offended by something, and most everything offends someone.
Yet some will still wonder why any of this matters. “Why should we care how someone ‘identifies’?” Well, it matters immensely when we try to mainstream mental disorders because it distorts reality for people and leads to life-rending decisions. Just ask the young people who, having been deceived by the MUSS agenda, have allowed their bodies to be irrevocably altered — and now regret it.
Reality distortion is never, ever a victimless crime.
