How Confidently Ignorant Right-Wing “Experts” Gaslight a Nation and Target Queer Lives

There’s a story I return to often — almost biblical in its irony, even though it actually happened in 1995.
A man named McArthur Wheeler robbed two Pittsburgh banks with his face fully exposed. No mask, no disguise, nothing. His only preparation was smearing lemon juice all over his skin.

Why?

Wheeler had once seen a children’s science demonstration where lemon juice was used as invisible ink, and — in a spectacular misunderstanding of his own ignorance — concluded that if lemon juice made writing invisible, it would make him invisible too.

This incident inspired psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to study how people who know the least about a topic often believe they are the most qualified experts. Their research became the Dunning–Kruger Effect — a phenomenon now so central to American political life that it could be considered our unofficial national disorder.

And nowhere is it more visible than in the way the political rightwing media has appointed itself the mental-health authority of the country, and its propagandized followers dutifully recite its diagnoses.

Truly, the people with the least understanding of psychology, neuroscience, identity development, trauma, or spirituality have positioned themselves as the nation’s mental-health experts.

It’s lemon-juice-on-his-face confidence — but now weaponized against human beings.

THE NEW MENTAL-HEALTH PRIESTHOOD OF MAGA

One of MAGA’s most reliable reflexes is to declare anyone who disagrees with them “mentally unstable.”

Queer?
Sick.

Trans?
Disordered.

Oppose their worldview?
Delusional.

This isn’t diagnosis. It’s dominance.
It’s cultural pathology masquerading as expertise.

And it’s coming from people whose understanding of mental health is as informed as Wheeler’s understanding of chemistry.

THE TRUTH MAGA DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

Here’s what actual psychological science tells us:

Not all transgender people have the clinical diagnosis of a disorder called “Gender Dysphoria.”
Studies show only 20–40% of trans people meet the full DSM-5-TR criteria.

The DSM requires:

• A marked incongruence between one’s experienced gender and assigned sex
• Causing clinically significant distress or impairment
• Persisting for at least 6 months

Meaning:
It’s the distress that constitutes the disorder — not the gender. Or gender incongruence.

Yes, it’s true – being trans does NOT mean a person has gender dysphoria. The majority of trans people are very comfortable with the incongruence of body and spirit.

There must be “distress” for the clinical diagnosis to be used. And often, that distress is not from within.
It is imposed. Created by the behavior of the very people hurling accusations of “mental illness.”

By Dunning–Kruger “experts” who have never studied psychology.
By churches poisoned by bad theology and worse translations.
By influencers monetizing manufactured outrage.
By politicians who need scapegoats to maintain power.

WHEN IGNORANCE TURNS DEADLY

This ignorance doesn’t just misdiagnose people.
It kills people.

• Queer youth rejected by family are at 8× higher risk of suicide attempts.
• Trans teens denied affirmation can face up to 13× increased risk.
• 2024 saw the highest recorded number of violent deaths of trans Americans, disproportionately targeting Black and Brown trans women.
• Influencers like Riley Gaines have made millions capitalizing on transphobia, soothing the itchy ears of resentment.
• Trump’s campaign spent hundreds of millions on ads declaring, “Kamala Harris is for they/them — Trump is for you,” turning nonbinary identities into national boogeymen.

Meanwhile:

• ICE has detained U.S. citizens with darker skin, assuming them to be “illegals.”
• Trump has labeled his fellow Americans “vermin,” “enemies within,” and mentally unfit.
• Anti-trans policies spread like wildfire, dictating everything from healthcare to pronouns to whether a child can exist safely at school.

This is not a mental-health crisis caused by queer people.
This is a mental-health crisis caused by the uninformed certainty of the powerful and their blind followers.

THE SPIRITUAL IRONY IS TOO BIG TO IGNORE

What makes this crisis even more absurd is how thoroughly MAGA has inverted the teachings of Scripture.

The Bible is explicit:

• Seek justice for the poor
• Protect the immigrant
• Defend the outcast
• Advocate for the widow and the economically marginalized

The prophet Jeremiah condemned elites who grew “rich and sleek, fat and satisfied,” while exploiting the vulnerable:

“Shall God not avenge those whom the powerful have defrauded, disregarded, and devoured?”

Jesus’ ministry focused on the exact people MAGA now targets. He, too, was for the “they/thems.”
He didn’t gatekeep differences.
He confronted injustice.
He dignified the socially rejected.
He warned the religious elite:

“On the day of judgment, it will be more bearable for Sodom than for you.”

Not because queer people exist —
but because cruelty does.

THE REAL CRISIS

Let’s name the truth with clarity:

The danger is not queer people’s mental health.
The danger is that Dunning–Kruger “experts” are writing laws.

They are:

• shaping curriculum,
• controlling state policy,
• radicalizing churches,
• and diagnosing the rest of us with categories they don’t understand.

This is the mental-health emergency.
This is the American crisis.
This is the lemon-juice fallacy scaled up to a national level.

Queer kids are suffering.
Trans lives are endangered.
Marginalized communities are scapegoated.
And entire political strategies are built on the confident ignorance of people who do not know what they do not know.

We are not suffering because of who we are.
We are suffering because of the ignorance of those who refuse to see.

And that —
that spectacular misunderstanding of their own ignorance —
is killing people.

America doesn’t have a mental-health crisis.
It has a Dunning–Kruger crisis.
And queer lives are caught in the crossfire.