A lot of politics is being performative, and I can absolutely accept that. In fact, in my instances, putting on a show is a great way to not only get people to pay attention to what you're doing, when done in the right way, it can help people understand it too. When done well, it can reshape entire narratives and put your opponents on the back foot.
Donald Trump is very good at this.
But there's a difference in the way Trump puts on a show and Democrats put on a show. When Trump does it, it's to show off successes he's either already accomplished or is accomplishing as per directed by the American people, and usually as a way to get ahead of false media narratives. The White House lawn stunt where Trump put up signs of all the criminals he deported is a very good example of this.
(READ: Trump's Skill of Making It a Show Is Saving America)
When Democrats do it, it usually qualifies as a useless gesture, lovingly called a "virtue signal." It accomplishes very little, at least in terms of actually doing things that help the people of the United States. If it benefits anyone, it's an incredibly small group, which includes the politician or political party they belong to.
Case in point, the Daily Wire reported that Pam Bondi had the Department of Justice strip funds from groups that pushed transgender nonsense and move them to more law enforcement initiatives. What the money was going to was nothing short of stupid.
For instance, the Justice Department awarded $50,000 to Civic Heart Community Services in Texas to create a “youth-led anti-gun violence mural art” whose launch would be “celebrated by a song and creative arts expression.”
The DOJ also gave $700,000 to F.O.R.G.E. Inc in Wisconsin to address “major types of violence/crime” against trans-identifying people and “add a particular focus on the experience of trans women and girls of color."
A diversity center in Oklahoma was given $200,000 to provide "culturally responsive services" to "black and brown women, including black transgender women." This also included providing "gender-affirming medical care," or transgender surgeries and hormone blockers.
As the Daily Wire reported, the most egregious of these is probably what Biden's DOJ was doing in the prisons:
And, perhaps most significantly, a fourth Justice Department grant awarded $250,000 to the Washington State Department of Corrections in 2022, during the Biden administration, to promote transgenderism within the state’s prisons, where men who identify as women are housed with female prisoners. The Biden administration kept the grant alive even after female inmate Mozzy Clark filed a lawsuit in December 2024 accusing a male prisoner who identifies as a female of repeatedly sexually assaulting her in a Washington State prison.
The grant’s deliverables include “hiring a Transgender Housing and Program Manager” and pushing to reduce “misconceptions among staff and incarcerated individuals about transgender and non-binary individuals.”
Who does this benefit? You may say transgender people, but ultimately, it doesn't even benefit them. It only reinforces a mental illness that is causing them mental distress in the first place. There's more proof of damage being done to people with these pro-transgender virtue signals, especially women.
But the bottom line that we should be looking at is that all of these virtue signals are hyper-focused. Not only are we paying for this, we're not getting any benefit out of it. It's all entirely for Democrats to be able to thump their own chests and make a show out of looking out for the oppressed.
But they're not. They're just taking our money and using it to show off a belief that very few of us share. It sure impresses the donors, but there's no real virtue behind it. It's all politics, no results.
It's the perfect example of corruption.
If politicians really did care, then why aren't they putting up their own money, and spending their own time with this very small group of people?
They're not going to do that, because ultimately, they don't care. Not about them, not about you, and not even about the places that represent them. They care about power and how they can use your money to make themselves more powerful.
Honestly, if there was a way to tighten restrictions on what our money could be spent on, such as forcing them to give us a detailed expectation for ROI, we should do that, because I'm tired of hearing about how my money went to something I know was effectively a brag for a campaign later down the line.
