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your support. Alrighty, so story at the Charlotte Observer by
Chase Jordan. Atrium Health big hospital chain here used to
be Carolina's Medical Center, I believe CMC, and now it's Atrium,
but now I think they're actually they're owned by another
parent company called Advocate Health, which it's kind of like
one of those it's kind of like one of those
names of a bill that is like the opposite of
what it's actually going to do, you know. Anyway, I kid,
I kid, I kid. The hospitals Atrium Health recently stopped
providing gender affirming medication. By the way, this is a
good example of how the media defers to the leftists
for their narrative crafting by adopting the vocabulary that the
left demands it adopts. Right. That's why you see things
like gender affirming care, gender affirming medication, and by the way,
I did count it up, fifteen mentions of gender affirming
in this piece. Also, nothing in this piece, not a
single counterpoint to the gender affirming care narrative. Okay, So
it's just allowed to stand as sort of a foundational
truth underpinning all of the rest of the story. It's
never questioned, which is something that once you, once you
sort of practice the challenging of the assumptions, a lot
of these reports but also a lot of arguments kind
of disintegrate before you. It is because you once you start,
once you start trying to assess what is the underlying assumption,
then you get at the core of your political opponent's argument, right,
And when you challenge that and you go after that
underlying assumption, then their argument disintegrates and you are no
longer trapped in this vocabularic box that is crafted by them.
Because see, gender affirming care puts you on the defensive,
because if you adopt that language, then that means you're
anti affirmation. That means you're denying, right, You're denying transgenderism.
You're denying somebody healthcare. Right. But if you get at
the root of it, the root of this term gender
affirming care or medication whatever, it's not actually gender affirmation.
It's denial. It's denial of your biological sex. That's what
this is. And so the media, this is an example
of how reporters and publications will adopt whatever the left
tells them to adopt as the new norm for how
to define issues. This is why, you know, women's reproductive
rights or reproductive care, that's why they use those terms. Now.
It's because the left keeps shopping, you know, keeps workshopping
these different focus group tested terms in order to mask
what is actually occurring. Right, they didn't like the pro choice,
and the same thing happens with like different labels. They
have been doing it my entire life when trying to
define you know, black people versus white people versus Hispanic people. Right,
they changed black and then because like when I was
growing up, black got changed to African American, and then
it got changed back to black but with a capitalized
B right now, and then that became the norm and
the ap and all of these publications still do that
that is a political position that they have adopted to
capitalize the B in black when describing somebody's race. They
do not capitalize the W because they're going to like
right historic wrongs between the races through capitalization or something. So.
Atrium Health recently stopped providing sex denying medication for people
under eighteen or eighteen younger, I should say, a move
that transgender rights and other LGBTQ organizations around the Charlotte
region immediately decried. They claim that the Charlotte areas largest
healthcare provider buckled under political pressure. Okay, well it's actually
the law now, so it's not like you're buckling under
political pressure. You you're conforming with the law. Okay. For
LGBTQ rights groups issued a blistering statement on the Facebook.
The statement was on the page for Time Out Youth,
a Charlotte nonprofit providing resources for LGBTQ plus people ages
thirteen to twenty four. The group was joined by Charlotte
trans Health, the Gender Education Network, and p Flag Charlotte. Oh,
maybe the P is silent there. Maybe it's just flag
because it's pflag, or maybe it's not silent and it's
just like per flag like Puffifer. I don't know the
groups said Atrium and its parent company, Advocate Health, are
making a decision based on fear of retaliation by hostile
federal agencies or funding cuts. Once again, it is also
to comply with state law. In January, President Donald Trump
issued in an executive order limiting youth access to gender
affirming care or sex denying procedures and medications. It defines
individuals as nineteen or young under the age of nineteen,
so eighteen and younger, right, and they define that as children.
And I guess I'm supposed to be outraged that we're
now defining eighteen year olds as children or something, because
I'm old enough to remember when children were deemed to
be twenty six and younger in order to stay on
mom and dad's health insurance, they were called children through
age twenty six. So now it's eight so we're back
to eighteen again. See this is this goes to another issue.
I'm not going to get into it, but it's like
these rights of passage that mark your progression from childhood
into adulthood. You know, I really do think that as
a society, we should we should try to figure out
a number, you know, just a uniform age when like,
once you hit this age, you are now full blown adult,
Like you have gone through the registering to vote, registering
for the draft, right driver's license, you know, off of
mom and dad's insurance. You could finally get the you know,
the the transgender bottom and top surgeries all on your own,
Like you get to make your own decisions, enter legal
documents and agreements and such like, we need to pick
an age. Do we want to make it twenty one?
Like alcohol purchases tobacco purchases. Is it going to be
twenty one and a twenty one? That's it? You're an adult.
That's it no more, you know. Anyway, Advocate Health said
that it has been closely following the evolving healthcare regulatory
environment and acknowledged a changing federal environment. So again, this
is a very lengthy piece. It's like a fifteen minute
piece that takes you to read, and it's like four
pages here, and never once in this do they actually
address any of the competing science. They don't talk about
it at all. It's just it's just a given. It
is an assumption that all of this ideology is the science,
and that this is the true and correct way, and
that anybody who disagrees with this is anti science or
their bigots. But that's not the case. What is the
case is that the quote science was never really science
in the first place. It was political ideology that had
infected the medical industry. And now you've got other countries,
you've got other medical organizations, and some have been opposed
to this stuff from the very beginning, but they were
peer pressured and they were shunned if they didn't get
on board. But now we have the data, we have
the science, we have the longer term studies that show
there really aren't any benefits here, and in fact, most
of the kids who are suffering from gender dysphoria will
grow out of it after puberty. All Right, if you're
listening to this show, you know I try to keep
up with all sorts of current events, and I know
you do too, and you've probably heard me say get
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Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. The leaders of the Advocate Health System, parent
company of Atrium Health, announced the policy change to Atrium
affiliated clinicians and pharmacists during what they called a very
difficult Microsoft Teams meeting, which I think that actually describes
like virtually every single time I use Teams, that's usually
what happens there. Anyway, I'm just kidding. I like Teams
just fine. A doctor associated with Atrium Health who was
in that meeting provided an audio recording of it to
The Charlotte observer and asked not to be named because
they were not authorized to share the recording. The Justice
Department also issued a new policy memo that could have
significant implications for healthcare professionals, they said during this meeting.
It suggested that doctors and other clinicians who provide specific
types of gender affirming or sex denying care, both medical
and surgical, to individuals under the age of nineteen, may
face criminal charges. The memo also includes provisions that encourage
and protect whistleblowers who report violations. Let me skip to
the Uh yeah, let me skip ahead here too. This
is a very lengthy piece. I've got to I highlight
too much stuff in these articles. That's one of my problems.
I highlight way too many things. So doctor Holla, executive
director for Charlotte Tran's Health and Advocacy Group, expressed concern
and disappointment over the decision, saying Atrium is operating out
of fear rather than standing up for evidence based care.
It's not standing behind the science and data. I say
it like that because that's the mantra during COVID remember
like in order to like if you like, when we
were all gripped in the cult of the branch Covidians.
This was their their mantra that was utilized in order
to get people to you know, genuflect at the altar properly.
It was all the science and data. And so they
still cite these things, except now I can't ever hear
them say the science or the data. I can't ever
hear them say it without thinking of the mantra anyway.
Advocate Health will focus on alternative, non invasive care such
as behavioral health and peer support for patients. Yeah, counseling
is fine. Counseling is absolutely fine. See, And what happened
was these institutions became so captured by this ideology that
they would give people like a cursory five minute consult
and then start prescribing them all of the puberty blockers
and such. There are reports from all over the country
that this has been occurring. You can buy these things
too online, so people are skirting laws like that now.
There is also, as I mentioned, the state law House
Pill eight to eight, enacted in twenty twenty three. It
prohibits puberty blockers and surgical gender transition procedures for minors
who had not already started treatment as of August one,
twenty twenty three. Okay, so if you were already down
that path, sorry, you're going to have to live with
those consequences. So if you ever want a detransition, it's
going to be very, very difficult. But if you're a
kid that hasn't started any of that, you're not going
to be able to get those things until you are adult.
And when you're an adult, whatever age, that might be
considered like, that's your choice at that point. But there
is a reason, for example, that we don't allow parents
to tattoo their children. Okay, you don't get to use
your kid as some sort of virtual signaling accessory. Okay.
Atrium Health hasn't provided surgical gender transition procedures for minors
under eighteen since the law was passed, which tells you
what that they were doing. It that they were doing
these transition surgeries on kids prior to the law being passed,
which we were told there was no need to pass
the law because this stuff never happens. But there's Atrium saying, oh,
we actually were doing that until the law and then
we stopped again. Not one single mention, not one counterpoint
to the gender affirming care narrative, offered up in this
lengthy Charlotte Observer piece is So that is the difference
between seeking to inform and educate your audience versus propagandizing
to your audience telling them what they want to hear,
simply to reinforce their priors to signal that they're better
than everyone else. I believe the quote, right, thing, I
believe in the science and data. I am a true follower. Right.
All of this stuff is simply regurgitated as fact, and
it represents no competing claims. In the piece, they offer
no representation for the competing claims, which is a standard
practice in actual journalism, especially when you're talking about an
issue like this, where the medical community is in fact
debating this. They are divided. The community is divided on
the proper approaches. It allows to stand uncontested that this
notion that this is simply some form of targeted discrimination
rather than protection of vulnerable kids in mental health crisis,
because that's what other experts say, like the kids who
are suffering from gender dysphoria. Right, there's usually the majority,
and this is what the science and data, it's what
it shows is that the kids who have these afflictions
have underlying mental health issues. They're suffering from something else.
There's something that triggers their dysphoria, and over time with counseling,
but even sometimes without counseling, over time it dissipates. So
you do not want to put a kid on a
life altering course when you don't know if the thing
that they are suffering from will eventually relieve on its own.
There's no mention of research undermining the gender affirming care narrative,
and there's no mention of any of the backtracking by
European clinics and governments that were on the leading edge
of this stuff, like they've actually dialed it back because
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connection to the UH the story that I was just
covering on the Atrium Health ending the gender affirming meds
for youths as they should, and I think we're going
to look back on what we have done as a
society to these kids. We're going to look back on
it much like they look back on the eugenics programs
that were implemented during the progressive era. Well, except for
planned parenthood. The left is still all about that. But yeah,
the eugenic stuff, I think it's going to be looked
at like that. It's indefensible, except now you've got some
You have too many people that have been advocating this
or participating in it, or have you know, trans their kids,
and they will be sort of like the Japanese soldiers
on the remote Islands that they can't give up the fight.
They just can't because if they are to acknowledge that
they were wrong, then like, what did you do? And
that's something that's going to be very difficult for people
to live with for the rest of their lives. And
I always say whenever I bring up this topic, this
is not any attack on people who are afflicted with
gender dysphoria or dysmorphia. I do not comprehend what it
must be like to feel like you are in the
wrong body. Your brain is telling you that part of
your body does not belong. And this also occurs, by
the way, people who believe that they're called transabilists. They
believe that they should be blind. They were born with
eyesight when they shouldn't have been. Their brain is telling
them that they shouldn't be able to see. And there
are cases where they will go blind themselves with chemicals
and such people will cripple themselves because they believe that
they are a paraplegic. People believe that they are morbidly obese,
when in fact they are emaciated right anorexia bulimia. But
in none of those other instances, in none of these
other dysmorphic afflictions, is the protocol to tell the patient
that their delusion is reality except for this one. This
is the only one. And I believe the reason why
is that people who proceed down this pathway become the
most radical types of people, and politically they become radicals.
And there and there is so there is a there
is an incentive there for people to encourage this kind
of behavior. There is also an incentive for platforms like
the Chinese communists owned platform of TikTok to encourage this
kind of behavior because it helps to blow up the
nuclear families. And that's one of the pillars of communism
is that you have to destroy the nuclear family. It's
one of the greatest threats to Communism, to Marxism. But
all of this ties into a piece that's at the Hill,
a piece by Forrest Rahm and Kevin Waldman. They are
opinion contributors. They are researchers in clinical and applied psychology
at Northwestern University. And here's what they wrote. This was
a couple days ago at the Hill dot com. On
today's college campuses, students are not maturing, they are managing.
Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue signaling
lies a quiet psychological crisis driven by the demands of
ideological conformity. Between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty five,
they conducted a little bit more than fourteen hundred confidential
interviews with undergrads at Northwestern University as well as the
University of Michigan. We were not studying politics, We were
studying development. Our question was clinical, not political. Here's the question,
what happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by
adherents to orthodoxy? And so, what they asked the kids was,
have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than
you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically. In other words,
did you hide your actual beliefs and go along with
the progressive tide? Did you claim to be more progressive
than you actually are in order to succeed, either academically
or in your social circles. Eighty eight percent said yes,
they lied. Eighty eight percent said they pretended to hold
these progressive views when they actually do not, but they
did so in order to get a better grade, in
order to get an assignment, in order to get some
friends to like them more, or to get in with
a particular friend group, or something. The researcher say, these kids,
these students were not cynical. They were adaptive. They were
adapting to what was required in a campus environment where grades, leadership,
and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality,
which is a great term, performative morality. Right, It doesn't
actually matter if you believe the thing. What matters is
that you're performing the morality, which is why you could
say you were against genocide while supporting Hamas Right, it's performative.
These young adults learn quickly to rehearse what is safe
the result is not conviction. The result is compliance, and
beneath that compliance, something vital is lost. Late adolescents and
early adulthood represent a narrow and non replicable development window.
It is during this stage that individuals begin the lifelong
work of integrating personal experience with inherited values, forming the
foundations of moral reasoning, internal coherence, and emotional resilience. But
when belief is prescriptive and ideological divergence is treated as
some sort of a social risk, well, then the integrative
process stalls. Rather than forging some durable sense of who
you are, of your sense of self through trial and
error and reflection, the students. Instead they learn to compartmentalize.
Oh I have to say this thing in front of
these people. Oh I have to do this with those
people publicly. They conform privately, they question often in isolation.
Hence the rise of podcasts. Right, That's why people are
listening to shows like this and podcasts like this. They
are listening to this stuff in isolation because they cannot
engage with these ideas with their peers or teachers, because
it's all about the performative morality. You know. Stories are powerful.
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seven O four five seven zero eleven ten, email, spt dot,
thepetecleanershow dot com and UH email you, al said the email,
I have an email from Ian who wants me to
wish his wife, doctor Nina, a happy birthday. Happy birthday,
doctor Nina. Do do do do do? And yes, I
do those for pay, so if you would like, I'm
just kidding, I don't charge for that. So this piece
at the Hill, written by these two researchers at Northwestern University,
performative virtue signaling has become a threat to higher education.
And I would say it's actually more than just higher education.
It's it's society. It's civilization. It's this year, it's you know,
the next generation, next generation. When you teach kids that
publicly they have to conform with the progressive view when
they actually don't agree with that, but they feel they
have to go along with all of that in order
to get ahead. Like that's that's not a helpful thing
for their development, but it's also not helpful for the society.
I mentioned this the other day as well, and this
is another example of it, which is the Rush Limbaugh example. Right,
millions of people all over America thought that they alone
had these questions and concerns and different opinions about various
current events and political parties and figures and whatever. But
they thought they were alone. And then Limbaugh gets on
the air and he starts saying the things that they thought,
and that creates they That creates a permission structure. You
are now aware that you are not alone. And then
you're hearing people call in and they're saying, I agree
with you, rush diddo, right, I agree, I agree. And
by the way, the diddo is the ditto is that
you're saying, I, uh, you know, love your show, first
time caller, longtime listener, love your show, whatever. So you
just say ditto because you're saying the same thing that
somebody else said. Anyway, that was where that came from.
But anyway, the point here is that but people then
had permission to say these things and say, I don't
agree with this whatever narrative, the mainstream narrative that's being
promoted by the only three TV networks that are out there,
the handful of legacy media outlets that set the template
of what was news of the day. And this is
the same thing. Right, there needs to be a permission structure. Granted,
the same thing happened just now in the last election
with Donald Trump, right that it was why you saw
football players doing that Trump dance thing as their touchdown celebrations.
All of a sudden, it was okay to say I'm
going to vote for Donald Trump, and people are no
longer afraid or worried about saying this. The fever breaks right.
Then comes the preference cascade, slowly at first, slowly, slowly,
and then very quickly, and boom, the damn breaks right. Publicly,
these kids are conformed, but privately they are questioning. The
split between outer presentation and inner conviction not only fragments
their identity, their own sense of self, but it arrests
its development. They don't even know who they are because
they're playing one role to the public, but internally they
think something else. And by the way, this is the
point of indoctrination, this is the point. It's to break you.
It's to make you think in a certain way, at
least publicly, because they can never fully know what you're
is going on in your own head. And eventually people
break and it's like, well, I might as well just
give in. I mean, the stupid people will always go
along with whatever you know they're being told is the
truth and they never question it. But people who do question.
The point is to break them in order to conform
so they don't become troublemakers. That's the point of indoctrination,
and unfortunately that has become the point of a lot
twelve education. Seventy eight percent of students told us they
self center their beliefs surrounding gender identity. Seventy eight percent
self center, see we are the majority on this issue.
Seventy two percent self censer on politics, sixty eight percent
on family values. More than eighty percent said they had
submitted class work that misrepresented their views simply to align
with the views of their professors. In public, students echoed
expected progressive narratives in private, though their views were more complex.
Eighty seven percent identified as exclusively heterosexual and supported a
binary model of gender. There's only two sexes, only two genders,
male and female. Nine percent expressed partial openness to gender fluidity.
Just seven percent embraced the idea of gender as a
broad spectrum, and most of these belonged to activist circles.
Those those are the radicals seven percent. That's what we're
talking about seven percent. But they are dictating everything because
people are afraid to stand up, because they think that
they are alone. Seventy seven percent said they disagreed with
the idea that gender identity should override biological sects in
domains such as sports, healthcare, or public data, but they
would never voice that disagreement allowed. We are on the
side of the seventy seven percent majority. We are the
vast majority here on this issue. But people are afraid
to talk about it because they will get fired, they
will get a lower grade, they will lose friends a few.
It's the achy position to take what are you some fascist?
You're a bigot? They don't want to be called names,
because here's the thing. Generally speaking, nice people, good people,
kind people don't like to be called these names. They're
afraid what other people are going to think about them
if someone's running around calling them a biggot because they
know they're not a bigot, but the radicals call you that,
and then everybody just goes along with it. Authenticity, once
considered a psychological good, has become a social liability. Nearly
half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for
fear of ideological fallout. This is not simply peer pressure.
It is identity regulation at scale. And it is being institutionalized.
Verities often justify these dynamics in the name of inclusion,
but inclusion that demands dishonesty is not ensuring psychological safety.
It's sanctioning self abandonment. If you're trying to engineer moral unity,
higher education has mistaken consensus for growth and compliance for care, unless,
of course, see this is why I say, if the
results don't make sense, always reassess the assumptions. You're assuming
that growth and care were actually what the universities were
attempting to achieve. See and I would submit that they
have not been. They have not been attempting to achieve
that they've been attempting to achieve consensus and compliance, because
that's how you get your troops for the fight for
the long march through the institutions. Whence dismantling these institutions
of Western civilization. You need these troops for students trained
to perform the act of telling the truth felt radical
faculty administrators and institutional leaders who built a system that
rewards moral theater while punishing inquiry. In shielding students from discomfort,
they have shielded them from their own discovery. The result
is a generation confident in self righteousness, but uncertain in themselves.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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