The Colorado Republican Party wants all Gay Pride rainbow flags to burn to ash, according to a new report.
In a mass email titled “God Hates Pride” the state GOP made a call to flames, and castigated LGBTQ community as Pride month began on June 1, according to the local NBC affiliate 9News.
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The Colorado Republican Party wants all Gay Pride rainbow flags to burn to ash, according to a new report.
I really didn't. Like I keep saying, "moderate" conservatives are mythical creatures, much like unicorns or ethical billionaires. I had a "fiscally conservative" and "moderate" acquaintance flat out tell me to my face that the world would be a better place if gender minorities didn't exist and that we're all pretending anyhow
Just a small pedantic note, depending on what we want to emphasize is going on, the government they're going for is either theocratic autocracy or one-party autocracy.Fascism just describes the strategy of using hatemongering, mythical history and enemy within propaganda to distract the Republican base from noticing that they're not personally gaining anything from the abuses of the ownership class.
(Fascism depends on a myth that all the undesirables are at fault for the misery of the general population, that once they are removed from the population, the government can get right back to serving the public and fixing all the failing infrastructure and making sure everyone that remains prospers. But there are always new people added to the bottom of the undesirables-to-be-purged list. Eventually the nation will have to go to war to continue to push solidarity among the people.)
From the perspective of the Christian Nationalist movement, the goal is theocratic autocracy in which all the whims of the government are justified by the bible. (The bible, or any sacred scripture, can be used to justify anything, no matter how dire, conspicuous or indulgent. In fact, the Church is notorious for its extremes.) The establishment of a state religion also means the establishment of state positions on dogmatic minutiae, so it's not enough to be Christian but also to adhere to the specific position of the state. Anyone who doesn't will end up on that undesirables list to be purged.
From the position of the Republican Party, the goal is one-party autocracy The only thing that keeps the Republican party from completely going unhinged is that it has to continue to negotiate with the other party (the Democratic party for now), but once it no longer has to compete for votes, our legislators are enabled to do whatever they want (or whatever is dictated to them by the leaders of the party, currently Donald J. Trump and his handlers). This is why the Texas GOP is trying to reshape how elections are counted, essentially making a Texas electoral college, so Democrats are locked out. This is not for the benefit of Republican voters, but for the benefit of consolidating all power in their party.
Anyhow, autocracy is the endgame. Fascism is used to keep the public frightened and in line and accepting that atrocity may be necessary to keep the enemys at bay. (Otherwise, they might actually realize this is all bullshit and violently revolt.)
Imagine just foaming at the fucking mouth over people choosing sexual and romantic partners. They're mentally unwell if people you hardly ever see loving each other takes up this much of their thoughts. Choosing who you love, as long as its between two consenting adults, is part of true freedom. If they don't like true freedom they can take their own advice and fucking leave.
My understanding of what is going on is that they're suffering from the same precarity (food, rent, housing, work, family, etc. all in a state of precarity) that the rest of us are, but rather they don't challenge their own values. The don't challenge the traditions or the decades of pro-capitalist, pro-nationalist, anti-communist propaganda they've been spoon fed. Instead, it's much it's easier to blame those in the society they already don't like because they're creepy or weird. (And it occurs to me, this may be instincts -- called or related to Fixed Action Patterns -- from migratory tribes to combat infectious disease. When things feel wrong, you shun or stay away from the members that are looking zombiesque.)
And the ownership class is fueling its propaganda engine (financing it directly, often) to continue to feed them hate rhetoric, the notion that their fellow citizens (or immigrants) are the enemy within causing them grief, and not the deep abuses of the ownership class.
This mythology runs deep, it's why all our stories point to ramblers, gamblers, adulterers and thieves as sinners and criminals, rather than war profiteers, pharmaceutical companies and tobacco moguls pushing their respective addiction epidemics, or fossil-fuel billionaires pushing an automotive culture while burying data about the climate crisis. Even though all of the former category cause only a tiny fraction of the death, destruction and economic cost that the latter category does.
If we investigated and prosecuted white collar criminals and set all serial killers and bank robbers free, we'd have a lot more people living and a lot more money. And so decades of copaganda have absolutely figured into redirecting that outrage towards the marginalized.
And yes, the ownership class would rather see human extinction than give up their money and power. So I don't know how we're going to navigate through this great filter.
Taliban, with all its problems, took arms in hands and fought a foreing invader with a disgracefull disadvantage on their side in order to free their country. And won. I dont think republicans could ever do something remotely similar