24 United States The EconomistNovember 28th 2020
21Boltonwere.Thelikelyresultoftheir part-
nership (cue more cooing) would be a re-
turn to low-key, competent governing, and
a predictable foreign policy that reflects Mr
Biden’s long-standing views. Messrs Sulli-
van and Blinken could be expected to en-
gage with global problems, through alli-
ances where possible, and rebuild the
institutions they were charged with. Amer-
ica, suggested Mr Blinken, should have the
“humility and confidence” to rely on its al-
lies. By choosing a relatively low-profile
secretary, notwithstanding Mr Blinken’s
qualities, Mr Biden may additionally be
signalling that he intends to do the high-
est-level diplomacy himself.
It was hard not to hear this as a repudia-
tion of Mr Trump—and harder still when
Mr Biden’s chosen Director of National In-
telligence (dni), Avril Haines, promised
that, if confirmed by the Senate, she would
“continue speaking truth to power”. Anoth-
er Obama administration veteran, and for-
mer deputy chief of the cia, she would be
the first womandni. Alejandro Mayorkas
would be the first Latino and immigrant to
lead the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr Biden’s chosen un ambassador, Linda
Thomas-Greenfield was a rare black wom-
an at the heights of American diplomacy,
before she was sacked by Mr Trump.
The diversity of Mr Biden’s nominees is
also from Mr Obama’s playbook. It is in-
tended in part to mollify the hard-left,
whose champions the president-elect has
otherwise ignored. His nomination of John
Kerry, to be his empowered climate envoy,
was another challenge to the left. Mr Kerry
is a pillar of the reviled Democratic estab-
lishment; yet the left must love his newly-
created post. Mr Biden’s nominees have
been duly welcomed across the party. By
way of dissent, Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and other lefties have limit-ed themselves to signing a petition against
the possible reappointment of Mr Biden’s
former chief of staff, Bruce Reed, a relative-
ly obscure figure, on account of his past
openness to welfare reform. If that consti-
tutes the serious Democratic infighting
that some news reports have described it
as, Mr Biden can rest easy.
Stiffer criticism of Mr Biden’s nominees
has come from Republican hawks. Senator
Marco Rubio characterised them as a
bunch of privileged do-gooders who would
be “polite & orderly caretakers of America’s
decline”. That rather ignored the fact that
most of Mr Trump’s team are Ivy Leaguers,
who have not restored American hegemo-
ny—and that Ms Thomas-Greenfield grew
up poor in Louisiana. Yet Mr Rubio’s spiky
comments speak to a legitimate question
about how Mr Biden’s national security ap-
proach will differ from Mr Obama’s.
Mr Sullivan and Mr Blinken have criti-
cised the Obama administration’s areas of
diffidence (on Syria and China especially).
Mr Biden has additionally underlined that
the post-Trump world is different from the
one his former boss presided over. On bal-
ance, that is probably to his advantage.
Besides lashings of goodwill, his ad-
ministration will have some useful lever-
age to work with, in the form of Mr Trump’s
sanctions on Iran and tariffs on China. It
will have little incentive to dispense with
either in a hurry. Even if Iran can be per-
suaded to comply with the terms of the nu-
clear containment deal (negotiated by Mr
Sullivan) that Mr Trump abrogated, Mr Bi-
den would try to broaden it. And there is no
appetite in Washington for giving China
something for nothing. Notwithstanding
the happy rhetoric, this might augur a for-
eign policy that is neither a total repudia-
tion of Mr Trump’s nor a re-embrace of Mr
Obama’s, but a cross between the two. 7The Centrist Grandad CollectiveA
teenage girlwho decides to alter her
body so that it resembles a boy’s com-
mits herself to a lifetime of medical treat-
ments. “Top surgery”—a double mastecto-
my—is a major operation. She must take
regular, large doses of testosterone. This
may increase her chance of developing
heart problems. It also causes the uterus to
atrophy, often painfully, which may neces-
sitate a hysterectomy.
Some of the changes to her body will be
irreversible, and likely to cause distress if
she changes her mind. If she has taken pu-
berty-blockers as well as testosterone she
may well be infertile. Only a few months of
testosterone may have altered her voice
and given her a lifelong five o’clock shad-
ow. Fortunately for such girls, “bottom sur-
gery”—a phalloplasty—is so often proble-
matic that few request it.
All this, coupled with the fact that ado-
lescence is confusing at the best of times,
might suggest that teenagers should, by
and large, be discouraged from embarking
on biomedical gender reassignment. That
is the argument running through “Irrevers-
ible Damage,” a book by Abigail Shrier, a
journalist. It is not one that holds much
sway in America. As the number of trans-
gender clinics has grown from one in 2007
to at least 50 today, so has the number of
young patients in them. Once they were
mostly boys; today they are girls. Ms Shrier
argues that many are victims of an ideology
which holds that the feeling of being in the
wrong body must be affirmed at all costs. It
has fuelled a craze, she writes, to which
teenage girls are particularly susceptible.
“Irreversible Damage” is full of stories
from the mostly white, privileged world in
which this seems to have flourished. Teen-
agers, often awkward and anxious, who
have lost themselves in an online world
that lionises anyone who identifies as
trans. YouTubers, who “extol the glories of
testosterone as if it were a protein shake”
and dismiss parents who are sceptical of
trans-identification as “toxic”. Teachers,
who do not tell parents that their child is
going by a different name at school. The
group she reports on in greatest detail is
parents. Many of them come across as hap-
less. Apparently unable to tell their chil-
dren that feelings of pain and confusion,
especially in adolescence, are part of life
and usually pass, they instead hope thera-
pists will sort everything out.
Ms Shrier is damning of some of theWASHINGTON, DC
A book on the rapid increase in trans
girls is denounced as transphobicThe other transitionMiss gender