I think the thing that concerns me the most about the type of success the right has had with its obsessive campaign against businesses working with Dylan Mulvaney is that they're not even inventing a pretext. It's simply an argument that companies shouldn't work with trans people in any way.

Keep in mind that this wasn't Bud Light making her the face of the brand or anything. It was simply Bud Light buying a sponsored post on her social media page, targeting her existing audience. The right had to go looking for the post to see it, plaster it all over TV, and seethe about it.

You would think that they'd have tried to at least find some sort of pretext here, but instead, it's just framed as "Bud Light transgender controversy."

We've very quickly shifted from the right arguing that it should be legal to discriminate against trans people to arguing that any business that doesn't discriminate against trans people should be boycotted and shunned. This isn't about Instagram influencers. It's not about Dylan Mulvaney.

This is all just treated as a totally fine, valid argument on the right. And mainstream outlets don't push back, treating it like a totally fine thing to push for: the exclusion of trans people from society.

And this is where the relative shrug of society in response to this hits me hardest. This is an attempt to remove an entire group of people from society, but this isn't treated like an emergency. In fact, maybe it's "good politics," as NYT would probably write it up.

Pushing back on the extreme wave of right-wing legislative and social attacks is the “moderate” thing to do here, but a lot of “moderates” just don't seem to care.