Last week I saw a meme that read: “Remember to turn your clocks back 50 years.”
It feels like we’re moving back in time to when laws were written from lesser awareness. We’re regressing to virtually no restrictions on owning assault weaponry, to government dictated by the church, and patriarchal control overreproduction.
What’s next? Bringing back disembowelment and the rack?
Conservatives now have the LGBTQ community in their sights. Emboldened Proud Boys are interrupting “Pride” story-time events and “Drag Queen Story Hour” readings.
They invaded a library in California at a regularly held LGBTQ event. In North Carolina they stood at windows to intimidate the participants. Shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs to clarify their “traditional values.”
Of course, these are the same white supremacists who think trampling on our democratic process is a show of their deep abiding faith in the Constitution.
But they’re fringe, right? Or are they? How different are they from Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, Mary Miller, Josh Hawley, Republicans in the Texas state legislature, Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, and gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson? Or the treasonous master of ceremonies himself, Donald Trump?
On one side of this ideological impasse there are people who identify differently from cis gender, who want to be accepted for who they are and for their rights to be recognized as equal. They plant rainbow flags on their lawn that say “Love Resides Here.”
On the other side there are Proud Boys and Oath Keepers with confederate flags and assault rifles, shouting insults, calling them “pornographers” and “child molesters.”
And Republicans concluded that it’s people who identify as LGBTQ who are inciting violence.
In Wisconsin, Republican Senator Ron Johnson, doubled down on cognitive dissonance and said violence in America is a result of “wokeness”and “loss of faith.”
Christian faith, we can presume. But if you believe in our Constitution then you must realize that the First Amendment secures us from a one-religion theocracy.
Does that mean God doesn’t like our Constitution?
There’s a sign east of my home town in Iowa that reads: “Gay Marriage and Abortion are not God’s plan.” At the same time Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, said with regard to the Uvalde massacre, that “God has a plan,” insinuating that the murder of school children is part of that plan.
Proud Boys and neo-Nazis were once far-right, but their repugnant motives have been embraced by the conservative mainstream as their militant voice. Antiquated values have been synthesized into the Republican platform, as evidenced by a conservative Supreme Court that would make the Spanish Inquisition proud.
They say they’re fighting for freedom, but they are really fighting for how they believe everyone should conform.
They claim to be patriots yet despise representational democracy.
They demand loyalty to their party and to Donald Trump, even though such loyalty to a leader is the definition of fascism.
Godwin’s Law prevents me from making a comparison to another party and demagogue who made the same demands. Where the people of that country thought they were preserving its “traditional values.”
Believe me, we’re safer with RuPaul reading ”All Are Welcome.”
