This Pride Month, They're Trying to Drag Everyone Back Into the Closet

On Friday in NYC, the annual Drag March for Pride Month got under way in Tompkins Square Park. It was the expected array of fabulous, fantastic, and/or delicious people decked out in outrageous finery, crossing and uncrossing gender lines. The march is the cause of the latest right-wing freak out over a perceived LGBTpocalypse because of a portion of a chant. 

One part of the marching group chanted, "We're here! We're queer! We're not going shopping!" as an anti-capitalist stance by some queer organizations going all the way back to at least the 1990s.  The freak out is because in the video clip that made the rounds of Nutsyzania (and apologies for linking to a right-wing dipshit for this) you can hear one guy and maybe one other person chant, "We're here, we're queer, and we're coming for your children." It's a clever joke playing on the worst fears of the most ignorant motherfuckers out there. It is so insignificant, like a flea fart in a hurricane, but conservative media, including Fox "news" and the New York Post and assorted cockmites of the right have picked up on that little bit of a sound bite and treated it like the entire goal of Pride Month is to force kids to go on puberty blockers or some such shit. 

The usual fuckers did the usual fuckery, leaping in to do their best dance of fake outrage. "This movement grooms minors to have mastectomies and castration and fuels a multi billion dollar medical child abuse industry," screamed rat banshee Marjorie Taylor Greene. Lesser animals talked about murdering LGBT people ("There's not a woodchipper big enough" or "Come and try") or "This is what evil looks like" or disgust at the very existence of people in drag or topless women (there's one in the video with nipple pasties) or assertions of "grooming" and pedophilia. You know the routine by now. Truth Toilet has lost its tiny mind over the whole thing. I'm sure we'll hear how this was supposed to distract us from Hunter Biden because every fucking thing seems to have that purpose now.

We are in the midst of an enormous backlash against the rights of queer people in this goddamned country. Things have moved really fucking quickly from drag queens in front of kids to drag queens in general, from trans kids to trans people in general, from banning books with queer characters to banning anything with a friggin' rainbow in general. We're in the midst of an attempt to drag us all back into the closet and lock the door, and lemme tell you, as someone who fought this shit already to get us to where we were before the slavering hatemongers came up with a new way to make bank once the same sex marriage issue seemed to be settled, it's fucking frightening, fucking enraging, and just fucked in general.

Here's some shit that happened in just the last month or so:

In New Hampshire, fucking Nazis showed up outside a coffee shop in Concord to chant and yell slurs while a drag queen story time was going on inside. And then I'm sure they all went back to someone's basement and circle jerked in triumph while talking about straight they are. 

Crazed white nationalist protesters showed up outside a school board meeting in Glendale, California, to rant and get violent about LGBTQ content in the district's curriculum. They had Proud Boys, January 6th insurrectionists, and other assorted fucknuts there, and riot police were present to separate the fucknuts from the LGBTQ supporters, parents, and people. And then I'm sure the Proud Boys went back to someone's basement and totally didn't jack off because, no, really, they actually believe that shit. 

Nazis also showed up at a drag brunch fundraiser to support LGBTQ+ kids in Columbus, Ohio. That roused Republican Governor and crazy son of a bitch who is actually less crazy than most of the GOP Mike DeWine to pen an editorial condemning the existence of Nazis, even if he didn't offer any support to the queer community. 

And then there are the laws that have been passed and stopped by various courts that ban treatment for trans kids or ban people in drag in places where children might be. But that hasn't stopped those same states from banning discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in their public schools. It's not just Florida's Ron DeSantis, who always looks like he's telling someone, "This dick won't suck itself" as he shoves their head into his lap. Oklahoma's governor just approved rules that could take away a school's accreditation if their libraries have "sexualized materials" (which sounds like cum rags, frankly). 

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, more than 200 anti-drag protests, threats, and violent incidents have taken place in the United States in the last year. That's IRL shit. It doesn't count online harassment and hate speech, which is probably so high that it's impossible to register how much of it is out there. 

The problem has always been that a small, loud contingent, with politicians who want to fan the flames of fear and hate to get votes, can make life a fucking misery for a lot of people. And that dopamine jolt of getting "likes" makes people believe jump on the hate bandwagon, whether they truly give a shit or not. And you know what? Most of them fucking don't. They just think they're supposed to. 

Lemme end this with an anecdote. On the NYC subway right now, you might see ads from the dating site Tinder. Leaving aside whatever you think about Tinder and swipe culture, the ads themselves are fascinating because they show various kinds of couples in romantic situations for various gender combinations: same-sex, opposite sex, even non-binary (with the line "A toothbrush at their place"). I really dig their positivity and, really, sexiness. I sat on the subway on Friday thankful that I live somewhere that this kind of thing causes no issue whatsoever to almost every single one of us. No one gave a shit.

You know who else didn't give a shit, too? The people bringing their kids on the train. No one told their children not to look. No one fucking cared. And that goes for the two obviously tourist families who went on and off (I was on a long ride into Brooklyn). They had southern accents, and each was two straight parents and three kids of various ages. They glanced at the ads and then went about their business, like the rest of us did. If they had given a shit at all, they could have gotten off and gone onto another car. They didn't because it didn't matter that much if they saw two men who love each other. (Yes, I know they could have been southern liberals.) 

I fully believe that most people in the United States don't believe any of this is a threat to them or their precious kids. But, like with so many issues, they give into pressure from their peers or their churches to hate where they just don't have that hate. Yeah, that makes them suck, too. But that means they might be persuadable. As we learned with same sex marriage, once it was decided, it went away as an issue (until recently when the Christian nutzoids realized this insane Supreme Court might actually overturn it). 

As Pride Month winds down, we need to push the zealots and Nazis back in the closets. That's where hate belongs, not love.

Get in the Fucking Game on Trump's Indictment, Democrats

President Joe Biden has been very clear: No, motherfuckers, he will not answer your goddamned questions about the federal indictment of former president Donald Trump on 38 counts of just being a fucking cockknob and possibly, but not provably (yet), a traitor. Not only will Biden not answer your questions, he won't comment on it. And he doesn't want anyone in the White House to talk about it, nor does he want his reelection committee or even the Democratic National Committee to say jack shit. And, yep, as of this writing, the DNC has not a peep on its website. 

To an extent, sure, yeah, I get it. As we're told on tiresome repeat, this prosecution is "unprecedented" and needs to be handled with utmost respect for the Justice Department and for the justice system of the United States in order to preclude any accusations of politicization. I mean, you don't want people thinking that this is Biden and the Democrats jailing Trump because he's the leading candidate and almost inevitable presidential nominee for the Republican party. You don't want them to think that the Justice Department, the Attorney General, or the Special Counsel aren't acting independently. You wouldn't ever want that narrative to get out there. You wouldn't want to help that narrative.

Oh, wait. Except for the fact that it's the narrative that's now congealed on the right and the silence is feeding it to bloating and crowding out other narratives. In fact, here's what Trump said last night at his shitpile country club in New Jersey: "Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abusive power in the history of our country, a very sad thing to watch. A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges." And then, later in his pissy, tired little speech (which was interrupted, no shit, by the pathetic sycophants present singing "Happy Birthday" like they were shrieking a funeral dirge), Trump promised that, if he's reelected, "I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president of the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family." The yowling savages in the crowd chanted, "Lock him up!" in response because everyone loves the hits.

You got that? Trump said that it's wrong if he's prosecuted but he will make sure that Biden and his family are prosecuted. In other words, the open politicization of the Justice Department that Trump wanted in his first administration would occur in a presumed second. That orange, dough-faced shitmonger has no problem laying it all out there (although you'd probably wanna ask his voters how it went locking up Hillary Clinton last time around). 

By the way, for the record, Merrick Garland, not Joe Biden, appointed Jack Smith.

Republicans have been all over the airwaves, with most of them denouncing the indictment in varying ways. There have been a couple of outliers, especially in the Republicans running against Trump, who condemn him for, you know, criming so blatantly. And a couple of those have promised to pardon Trump if they're elected because reasons. 

But the near-silence from elected Democrats has been ridiculous. Here and there, some have spoken out forcefully about the severity of the indictment, like Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York, who was the lead counsel in Trump's first impeachment, on CNN on Sunday. But most responses have been like Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina, who addressed things in the most milquetoast, weak tea, pedantic way possible: "What I believe is important is to allow the facts to continue to come forth through a process here and let's allow the Department of Justice to continue to do its work." On the floor of the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, "This case must be allowed to play out through the legal process, without outside political or ideological interference." Nice, inoffensive, and completely fucking useless. 

Even Adam Schiff was on CNN last night and he was muted, talking mainly about how sad it is that Trump still has support. About the whole situation, he told Anderson Cooper, "It's a sad day when a president is again indicted, and what so many Republicans are doing to defend him by attacking the Justice Department, by sowing -- you know, an effort to sow disbelief and discredit the FBI, this is another way they're damaging the country, damaging our national security besides the risk it was already taken by having these documents in an unsecure place."

That last remark there is what should be the thing that elected Democrats are hammering constantly with at least the same intensity that Republicans are insisting it's all a witch hunt or that it's no big deal or that others did it or whatever random bullshit they pull out of the giant bag of bullshit they always carry with them. It's mind-boggling that Democrats are once again unilaterally disarming here (and, yeah, if Biden is making them do it, he's fucking wrong). 

This isn't that hard: Talk about the fucking crimes. That's it. Talk about the crimes. Talk about how fucked this all was when it comes to national security. Ask if people feel okay about nuclear secrets laying around the bathroom of a country club that was infiltrated by spies. Ask if they feel safe with that happening. Keep shoving this up the fucking asses of any Republicans who defend it. We're not talking about a love letter from Kim Jong Un. We're talking about documents that say, "Oh, hey, here's where the US is weak, enemies, so you can probably blow shit up here." And ask what kind of fucking asshole does this shit and what kind of assholes say it's all fine. Get angry about it, Democratic leaders. Let the public know that Trump's accused of doing something really shitty and harmful and he's pretty much admitted that he did it.

Right now, according to one poll, 63% of independents think the indictment is a serious matter. As the narratives develop around the case and around Trump, if the main one those voters hear is from the GOP crime-enablers, it could have an effect on the pudding-brained independents whose whims seem to shift from election to election. Democrats can get them on board by making clear that you can ally with the criminals or you can ally with the ones who believe that you shouldn't put the nation at risk. There's a window of time to accomplish this, and Democrats have gotta jump on the messaging train. 

We keep pretending that all this shit is normal because Trump and his spokeworms get away with saying it. No, it's not normal for a president to just take whatever the fuck they want when they leave. Trump keeps lying about it. Last night, he told the Bedminster zombies and plague rats, "Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture, china, flatware, rugs, and more from the White House and she wasn’t prosecuted. How about that one? She took the furniture and the china." The Clintons weren't prosecuted for the $190,000 in gifts and other things they took because they either returned them or they paid for them in a settlement of the issue. In other words, it's the complete opposite of Trump and the documents. 

But these stories and Trump's telling of them become accepted as fact, no matter how many fact checks there are. That often happens because Democrats try to be decent or upstanding or what the fuck ever when they should be laying it on the line and creating the narrative instead of responding to it and certainly instead of being silent.

The Trump Indictment Is Just Embarrassing (Sorry, MAGA Cretins, Not for What You're Thinking)

 

Look at this shit. No, not just the boxes of government documents that former President Donald Trump, who is probably already working on bragging that his ass is worth more cigarettes than anyone else's in the federal pen, hoarded like a deranged squirrel anticipating a long winter. No, look at the bathroom and shower in The Mar-a-Lago Club’s Lake Room, which seems to be a sitting or dining area.

Truly, what the fuck is this? This is some trailer park shit right here. Like when you're trying to make your double-wide look palatial (and I can make these jokes because, yeah, I lived in a trailer park in a double-wide when I was a kid and I fucking visited friends whose bathrooms were pimped out like a white trash Louis XIV decorated it). I mean, beyond the fake marble and fake gold fixtures, even beyond the whorehouse chandelier and the chintzy sconce that must have hit Trump in the head every time he got a blumpkin from a lucky bride before he wiped his ass with classified docs, what the hell is that shower curtain? That's Dollar General chic right there. You know the joint is filled with black mold.

Why give a single fumbling fuck about the decor of a Mar-a-Lago shitter? Because it's representative of fucking everything to do with Donald Trump, the man and the president. Mar-a-Lago was, in his telling, the "Winter White House," a place so gorgeous, such a signifier of wealth and power, that it deserved that moniker. But, as with all things Trump, it's just some gold paint on a pile of shit. And that gold paint might fool those inclined to see all shiny things as valuable and important, but everyone else knows it's just shit.

That's fucking embarrassing. In fact, the whole indictment of Trump on 38 counts of document fuckery is embarrassing. 

And dangerous. Trump did, in fact, put the security of the nation at risk. It's beyond doubt that he had documents that related to the defense of the country, the nuclear arsenal, the weaknesses of our defenses and those of our allies and enemies, and so much more. He kept stuff that was so top secret that a president on their own couldn't declassify it. That's reality. That isn't up for discussion. And if you acknowledge that reality (which MAGA freaks and Republican cowards are loath to do), as well as the reality that anyone with the right amount of money could get membership to the club, then you cannot escape the conclusion that the former president at least set up the circumstances where spies for unfriendly countries could read about how to attack the United States. That's scary shit.

But that doesn't in any way hinder how embarrassing the whole affair is because, from what we know now (and, sure, it's definitely possible that a thousand more shoes will drop), it looks like Trump did all this just because he wanted to keep important shit and show off what a big shot he was. Motherfucker waved around documents and talked about how secret they were. It was just another version of dick measuring: "Oh, you own a Picasso? Well, I can tell you how to blow up France. Top that." And he didn't want to give them back because then he wouldn't be that big shot anymore. They were his and fuck you if you wanted them back. 

 

I mean, honestly, it would be less embarrassing if this whole thing turns out to be espionage because at least there's a fucking purpose beyond feeding the voracious ego of a soulless orange monster with mommy, daddy, and every other relative issues. At least it would mean more than impressing the dead-eyed zombies with botox smiles parading around a cut-rate Xanadu, pretending to worship the moron king who gets off playing DJ, spinning "YMCA" while everyone gorges themselves at the overpriced feed trough. God, this is all so devoid of meaning that the nation should be ashamed that it allowed his election, that it allowed him to roam free for so long, that it didn't rise up and vomit him out like bad, overcooked steak.

For many others, it would be tragic, but tragedy is only for those who were once or who could have been heroes. It would require a genuine fall, but Trump was always this farting, pie-in-his-face clown. This is cringe comedy at its cringiest, and, for fuck's sake, for the good of a country he has driven mad, let this be the thing that puts a stake in the heart of Trump's narcissistic, criminal existence.

The Real Mind Virus Is the GOP's Attack on Reality

There is one question that I don't see being asked of right-wing politicians when they start talking about all the things they want to ban from the "public" (and I put "public" in quotes because the real public doesn't actually give a shit about any of this, but a fantasy public that the GOP pretends exists sure cares a lot about making sure their kids don't learn that it's possible for same sex couples to love each other). It's a simple one: "What's your end goal here?" Or, to put it more simply, "What are you trying to accomplish?"

As often as Florida governor, GOP presidential candidate, and man who looks like making children cry arouses him Ron DeSantis talks about crushing the "woke mind virus," which I think means, "Shit I can make sound scary," as often as he promises to "leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history," as he does in his truly, laughably shitty campaign website, I haven't seen a single challenge to him where he's asked, "The fuck do you want?" 

Because what would be the answer? What could possibly be the answer to, say, the desired outcome in eliminating all programs at schools that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion? Just to game it out here, those in the DeSantis/Christopher Rufo camp of purging the offices of diversity or any academic programs that teach things like "racism is bad" would probably trot out their evil initials of doom and declare that, in and of themselves, DEI and CRT (whatever the fuck they think critical race theory is) are discriminatory. But how they're discriminatory is never explained because the explanation would have to include "against white people" and as blatant as they are about their racist intentions, they never quite make the leap to that. (Yes, there are exceptions who have always been shitheels and say the worst things possible.)

Even more insidious and directly harmful are the anti-science attacks on treatment for trans youths and the absolutely insane crusade against drag in public. It directly crosses with the book banning and curriculum censorship because anything that mentions LGBTQ+ people is seen as somehow "grooming" kids to become gay or trans or something not straight and cisgender. (And, by the way, fuck you if you have a problem with the term "cis." Language changes. Deal with it.) 

Again, we haven't heard what the final objective is from DeSantis or legislators in all the states that have lost their goddamn minds (and court cases) over drag performances and trans treatment. They'll say they're preventing child sexual abuse, except facts don't back that up. They'll say it's for the welfare of children, except that makes zero sense in a world inundated with sexual imagery, images and ideas that don't necessarily say they are targeting only feels of heterosexual lust. I mean, I know a few lesbians who thoroughly enjoy the Tennessee Titans Cheerleaders. 

I mean, it's fucking obvious what they want. They want to curtail the power of non-whites, power they see growing along with the teaching of the harm whiteness in this country has actually done. They want to push LGBTQ people back into the closet, or the prison, by making their existence illegal. They want to control speech, control sexuality, control all those things that they see as threats to their power, a power that is enforced through hegemonic whiteness and enforced heterosexuality. 

Or, to put it another way, the politicians and media apparatchiks who push this agenda are fucking frightened little bitches asserting their remaining power to fuck shit up for everyone not them. (And let's be clear: the public doesn't support most of this shit.) They want to fuck up public education. They want to be able to jail or punish ideological enemies. And they want to do it by pretending that's what the endgame of "wokeness" is when the endgame of wokeness is really, simply to fucking ask people to stop being assholes and to acknowledge that reality is fucking real. Yeah, that means teaching children that shit was fucking awful and, hey, let's learn about the awfulness so we can be less shitty. Yeah, that means saying that trans people need our support and that queer couples are just couples. But I guess it takes some effort to do that. It's a hell of a lot easier to tell people, "You should be afraid. Go hide and cower with your guns until we make it safe for you again."

If the "anti-woke" forces had to say what they ultimately want, it would sound vile. It's about erasure. It's about elimination. It's about returning to an imagined past that they keep insisting was somehow good when, really, it was just a clusterfuck of hate, violence, and repression. That's why they need to be pushed to say it. 

There is no "woke mind virus." There is only what's real and what's fake. And the GOP can't face reality.