Op-Ed: Donald Trump is betting his anti-trans culture war wins on Election Day

This column is syndicated by Beacon Media.

Voting has started in North Carolina and across the nation, and early reports say the lines are healthy and long. That’s exciting news to anyone who works in politics, and to the rest of us heavily invested in this election and in building our collective future.

Campaigns shift when voting starts — elections can be decided by early voting turnout and mail in ballots. Politicians and campaigns change their messaging accordingly. They are no longer making their case to the public but now focused on mobilizing their base to the polls.

That’s why former President Donald Trump’s campaign ad about “ending wokeness” doesn’t surprise me. The ad contrasts the hypermasculine movie “Full Metal Jacket” with images of service members in drag. Trump is the first candidate in history to launch general election attack ads on transgender and drag issues, according to The Bulwark.

The Trump campaign has spent $21 million on various anti-trans and drag ads in October alone, a majority of its television budget during the month, according to ABC News.

I had heard Trump talk about “ending wokeness” in the military at a rally in Asheboro a month ago, so I already knew he was adding it to his stump speeches.

The ad doesn’t so much make a case for a policy or line of reasoning as it taps into an emotion.

What stood out to me is how simple this ad is. It simply contrasts hyper masculine images of a fictional Drill Sergeant yelling with images of real service members performing in drag, ending with “Make our Military Great Again.” It doesn’t lay out reasoning as to why we should oppose LGBTQ soldiers, but instead creates simple binaries: Then versus now, us versus them, etc.

In other words, it’s the perfect ad to mobilize people to the polls.

That’s because it’s designed to trip a wire in our brains. It’s designed to make us feel instead of think. Like much of the sensational language of politics, it’s meant to feel dire, existential, and threatening.

Most importantly, it’s designed to trigger hate.

Trump played the ad during his recent rally in Greensboro. I was in the crowd and watched the people around me laugh everytime the drag performers flashed on the screen.

I didn’t laugh. I felt worried. Absent of any argument as to why we should oppose LGBTQ service members, it all felt Pavlovian — like a trigger response.

I was also at the rally with a friend: A gay veteran who served our country for over 20 years.

We’ve all experienced hate. None of us are immune to it. We’ve hated an ex, a neighbor, a boss or a job. I suppose hate is an unfortunate and unsavory part of the human condition. But because of how hate is wired in our brains, it’s actually an emotion that leaves us very vulnerable.

Unlike anger or sadness, which are often temporary, hate is a long term emotion and, researchers say, actually maps to our brains. Because of this established circuitry, humans have and often do frequently use it to form a sense of identity, and create in groups and out groups of their peers, according to a 2023 report from Medical News Today. This hardwiring also means that merely seeing a picture of “the other” can activate hate.

As North Carolinians, we know our history and know that hate can and has been used to mobilize voters to the polls. Hate is a legacy that most of us are actively seeking to move ourselves and our children away from and into something brighter and healthier. I’m not a psychiatrist nor scientist, but like you I have seen hate take hold of people I care about. I’ve witnessed it work like an addiction, something hard to quit.

Full Metal Jacket Director Stanley Kubrick knew that dehumanization— both of the enemy and the soldier— was a successful tactic in warfare. That was a central theme in “Full Metal Jacket.” Dehumanization of oneself or of the other means that normal moral rules don’t apply — and that has allowed for some of the worst things in our history to be done.

But an election isn’t warfare. Drag queens aren’t our enemy. “Full Metal Jacket” isn’t our past — it was a movie.

When a politician, no matter who they are or what their politics might be about, is calling on you to hate, they are manipulating you and your brain’s circuitry. It’s up to us whether that is a successful campaign tactic or not. It’s up to us whether we see these ads as a reason to hate someone or protect them.