A state senator said during a public forum in Tahlequah that LGBTQ+ people are "filth," and that he and his constituents don't want them in "our state."
It’s hard to riot when it’s not right in your backyard, and you’re not networked/less social, propaganda that encourages indifference or ignorance. America has a seriously systemic social problem. You’re definitely right, though.
This is what keeps us in check. If you’re busted by the overly militarized police you will also likely lose the job that you can’t afford to lose, you will go deep into debt, become homeless; which in most states is illegal and you’ll end up in jail.
When I was a younger person, I attended some protests. Then I saw many get broken up by the police, and many people arrested for trivial reasons. Eventually it became less and less worth it.
America, it’s law enforcement and most of the population values property over people. The owning class in America own the police, write the laws and vote R.
Roughly 80 million people that were eligible to vote in 2020 did not, which pretty average for presidential elections. That is right around 1/3 of the country.
Only around 2%, or around 5 million are disenfranchised due to felonies. Largely black obviously, and much higher in southern States (shocker). Some at around 8% total! And over 1 million of the 5 are from Florida.
I honestly think their intent is to just make their states completely uninhabitable to anyone who isn’t a white supremacist. If they can do that with a swing state or at least states that have a significant blue presence, they effectively take the entire government nationwide. They just need to make their policies so completely repulsive to anyone who isn’t them that we stay clear.
It is important to point things like this out because the people who are actively trying to erode LGBT rights are a very small minority with disproportionate power. We outnumber them by a large margin. We can beat them.
Part of the problem is that there are a lot of people who simply aren’t aware of how bad things are now. They aren’t doomscrolling reddit/Lemmy/bluesky/Mastodon, they’re doing other things with their lives. The result is that their awareness lags behind what’s going on and because the US is slipping hard and fast into fascism, they’re still thinking about Trump’s comment on “grabbing 'em by the pussy” while the CPAC is talking about ending democracy.
Nothing pisses me off more than people born in a period were there’s significant progress (gay marriage and softening of attitudes) and then fucking chooses to be conservative. I’ve seen it in the UK, people in their early 20’s supporting the Tories despite them living under 14 years of fuck up after fuck up and everything being near broken or gone to shit. Literally in the case of rivers in the UK.
No more of this forgiveness “healing” buttpat bullshit America loves to do with its internal enemies.
End every nazi. Give every apologist life in prison. Ban all nazi/MAGA/confederate iconography and treat anyone found with it as enemies of the state and treat them as such.
We can’t just keep forgiving them every time they fuck around then shocked Pikachu when they take another swing. Crush them.
That will involve armed liberals confronting these animals on the streets. Don’t see that happening. If they want to march in my town, I’ll be front and center. And I will start shit. What are they gonna do? Kill me in a firefight?
Easy for me to say in my weird space. I’m middle-aged, had a pretty great life, all in all. Also got little kids, I’d rather die than see them grow up in a fascist state. I’d count it a win if I take 2-3 of 'em first. Show that we’ll fight back.
Y’all do as you like. But don’t come crying “No more guns!” when the fascists start up the trains.
Liberals: “The Christo-fascists are taking over! And getting more blatant about it every day”
Yep. Have been for some time. They’re more and more in our face about it.
Liberals: “The 2A is ancient bullshit! Give up your guns!”
Well now, hold on a moment…
Saw a wild video a year or two back. Iranian Jihadis running and gunning down a residential apartment block. This was in response to protests. Women wanting rights are some such crazy thing. They were firing indiscriminately into apartment buildings.
Commented a time or three on reddit, “That can’t happen in America. We’d shoot back. Or they wouldn’t even start.” (Much like Ohio class boomers, deterrence is a thing.) Buried in downvotes. 🤷🏻♂️
I’ll do what I can for y’all. Won’t be much I fear. But I’ll fight the Nazis, the ones literally marching in our streets, and it may mean my personal extinction. I’ll be scared shitless, but I’ll fight, and I have the means and training. Do you? I suggest y’all join me before you end up on trains.
Always the same bullshit pro-gun comments pushing minorities to buy guns, but never telling them who they’re supposed to shoot and how it’s supposed to help.
If just owning a gun stops this, why is it happening? Why is it happening more often in America compared to countries with stricter gun laws?
If those guns need to be used, who are we shooting and when? This senator? Police? Trump? The far-right would be thrilled. They could open fire on anybody wearing rainbows and claim “I feared for my life” because the second amendment does far more to enable scumbags and extremists than it does to save minorities.
Yes, it has happened. That’s because I base my opinions on reality, not hero fantasies and gun-lobby propaganda.
Want to know the difference between Matthew Shepard and all the LGBT people you’re sacrificing to your cult? The people who killed Matthew Shepard didn’t get away with it.
I’m on your side on this one (and I know we don’t always agree). I’m not really sure why people are downvoting other than maybe being confused about your message? I took your meaning to be to encourage folks to train, prep and be ready to fight.
Could be the 2A comments drawing downvotes, but good people will need to fight fire with fire, unfortunately.
He’s getting a tiny bit of pushback because it’s an unhinged chest pounding power fantasy. Maybe that should be the focus of your concern instead of magic internet points.
Off you go then. Shoot some people with your cool guns. Or is it only other people who are supposed to throw their lives away for your bullshit rhetoric?
There is only one approved method to take out fascists and it’s using metal bars. Enough with this bullshit pro gun stance from the left on lemmy, leave that crap to the republicans
My plan is to boldy say something snarky right before getting shot and hope someone films it so I can be turned into a meme before everything collapses. (In actuality my mental health is way too poor to keep a gun in easy access. Maybe a crossbow or something would be better for me, or I could get a proper medic bag and help that way)
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I’d say to him. Too fucking bad dipshit this is america. If u dont like me being here rest assured I do not care and you can kiss my ass lol and if u wana try and kick me out theres the second amendment so that I can kick you out of this lifetime :)
I share your sentiment, but be very careful with comments wishing harm on U.S. senators. You never know who is reading, and they can and will take your comment seriously.
Sure. We can discuss semantics all you want. But the message agencies like the secret service and similar don’t care about that. They read “I will kill you,” and that triggers an investigation regardless of reasoning.
“I want to make sure that at least the children in our public schools have that faith ... what I want to make sure of is that our young children have the right to grow up with that faith"
Stephens said that as an educator, he had taken an oath to educate and not “indoctrinate” students.
Ok, I think I get it now, making sure that school children are taught your religious beliefs isn't indoctrination but teaching them that it is wrong to beat someone to death for their gender expression is.
I believe we need to live by example and embrace martyrdom, while simultaneously doing as much as possible to increase the quality of living, for those who will do the same in the future. Violence isn’t a part of that picture, but I acknowledge the right to self defense.
I understand if you don’t want to embrace that.
The best “offence”, is love, kindness, and sense of community; a place to call “home”.
There absolutely are, never forget the first pride parade was a riot.
"When did you ever see a fag fight back? … Now, times were a-changin’. Tuesday night was the last night for bullshit … Predominantly, the theme [w]as, “this shit has got to stop!”
“…the crowd shouted “Pigs!” and “Faggot cops!” Beer cans were thrown and the police lashed out, dispersing some of the crowd who found a construction site nearby with stacks of bricks…Garbage cans, garbage, bottles, rocks, and bricks were hurled at the building, breaking the windows. Witnesses attest that “flame queens”, hustlers, and gay “street kids”—the most outcast people in the gay community—were responsible for the first volley of projectiles, as well as the uprooting of a parking meter used as a battering ram”
That’s mindless violence. I was thinking much more focused.
Edit cause people can’t think:
I’m discussing history, not calling for, or advocating anything.
I’m not calling for violence, I was remarking that it’s interesting how poorly treated lgbt folks are and how well behaved they are in comparison.
A riot, especially one from many years ago, is not the historical anecdote I was alluding to. The fact that a riot from decades ago was linked to me proves my point.
Lastly, riots are mindless. It’s what a crowd does when anger boils over (as someone said to me) rather than the exact opposite, which is planned, calculated, etc.
I’m not devaluing those affected by the shit that was happening prior to stonewall. I’m saying it’s remarkable that a riot happen instead of people hunting down the cops that were targeting them.
Stonewall as a riot isn’t as notable as an outburst as it was a starting point. What would become the LGBTQIA+ of the time were underground. There were frequent police raids of establishments and there was violence all the time but none made the news. It was swept under the rug. Stonewall was noisy and it got a lot of the cis hetro folk actually talking about things that had previously been relegated to innuendo or silence.
In the aftermath of the riots the Queer community noticed and organized. There had been nice quiet liberation marches in the past where people dressed in their Sunday best and tried to look respectable or ride the line so people could be confused about who might actually be breaking some laws in bed. But they devised something noisier than a riot. Taking all the stuff reserved for the clubs and spilling them onto the street. Pride was conceived as an Independence day style celebration with “the Battle of Stonewall” as it’s memorial date. It was conceived at the time as a type of violence, not against people but against the silence. To keep people talking by being unabashed and even they were surprised how many queer people actually existed. The community due to external threat had been anonymized, atomized and carefully concealed so nobody had any clue how many queer people were actually out there. It was always just assumed to be a very few. Prides were hardcore shows of force where people courted arrest and police violence. One could see the continued Pride societies as being a safety measure. They are an organized entity, yes they are largely organizing parades and municipal events… But they are also highly socially connected and technically mobilizable. It’s a measure of keeping in touch and having an internal structure of people who know how to organize.
It’s also important to remember that the community has a continuity problem. There’s not as many queer elders as there should be because AIDS survivorship selected for those who were closeted, lived an exclusive heteronormative life style except for partner or just weren’t out having a good time in public. Those who remained to steer the ship were the quiet and mild mannered who were tangential to the violence. Everyone was slow to move on AIDS because it was thought to be a scourge on the obcene and it mowed down the community in the thousands. The crisis created a stunning loss of experienced liberation fighters at the same time it forged the survivors into a harder core of seige style organization with lesbians at the fore who used primarily beaurcratic means to fight. That beaurcratic framework is what survived and currently endures. It is quieter and fairly peaceable now but technically speaking you need a certain level of hardship and something that makes enough people angry to do violence to cause people to be primed to fight. The LGBTQIA are generally just invested in being happy and living their lives and their strongholds are cities. It’s harder to be queer in a smaller town when people like you are scattered over a distance because those connections are harder to maintain.
Ok, I’m not interested in that event though. Again, I was only remarking it is notable that there isnt violence targeted towards the repressors. That’s it. Hearing about an event from many years ago only proves the point.
I’m not saying stonewall was this, or that, or anything. I’m not discussing demonstrations, riots or any such gatherings, valid or not, violent or not.
I’m not advocating for violence or decrying it.
I’m only. Only. Only. Mentioning it is interesting that reality is a given way. That it’s remarkable. Your later discussion probably touches on why.
My dismissal of stonewall as a relevant point is only because it’s not of the type of event I was describing the absence of. Riots are not the type of premeditated, planned, definitive events I was describing the absence of.
Then you very obviously did not read the last half of my post which explains why the community is largely fairly beaurcratic and how we went from very punchy to fairly tame forms of resistance. The reason the movement works in rhetoric and democracy is tied up in a mass die off of the more revolutionary actors due to the AIDs crisis.
You literally cannot understand how the relationship of organized resistance for the modern movement is without recognizing the massive heelturn in strategic planning that the events of Stonewall and the AIDs crisis represented. You have to understand the psychological and social engineering of why people didn’t rise up earlier before that turn and the lessons that were learned and expanded upon to create a more aggressive approach. You can throw a tantrum about how people keep mentioning Stonewall when they talk about culture shifts or you can read past that and realize it for what it was. A massive shift in tactics that marked an actually very aggressive fight which changed again when the community started dropping like flies and other more subtle groups inside the movement became the ones keeping the lights on.
I’m not trying to understand anything! I literally made an observation. Not an argument FOR that observation. I only remarked that the LGBT community is harassed and targeted, and, it’s interesting that they are so peaceful. Thats it. Hard stop.
I was referring to targeted violence, not riots. That’s the only reason I discarded that event. I did not make claim that I needed an explanation or clarification.
I can understand the points you made just fine, and have all throughout this thread. Again and again I say: they are not on topic for my comment!
All I’m saying is that is is remarkable that there are not assassinations happening. I didn’t put a value judgement on that, or anything at all.
What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t “want violence” I “wanted” examples of the type of thing I’m surprised isn’t happening. Fucking Lemmy. I’m not looking for an instrument
You made a comment about admiring “self control” and then started talking about wanting examples for something that doesn’t exist and then people started talking about the types of resistance that DO exist because it seemed you wanted examples…
I think where this breaks down is that A) self control has nothing to do with it and people want to correct that misconception and B) you are asking for something more fundementally basic than people expect. Very well. Here is political resistance theory 101.
Assassinations tend to sow empathy for and consolidate the power/positions of the groups who are targeted. For example we look at JFK rather more warmly in retrospect then people did when he was alive. The criticism for risky political moves and his extramarital affairs made the question of his Presidential campaign being successful kind of anybody’s guess… But when election time rolled around LBJ won in a landslide victory the sort that is historic. Because all of a sudden his party had a martyr.
Assassinations don’t work…or they don’t work the way you think. Conservatives love cloaking themselves in the cosplay of being the oppressed. Nobody wants to fuel that delusion because they would use that to burn us all down.
The combination of competence, the necessary skills, intelligence, and most importantly, the willingness to sacrifice oneself to effect change is…rare. It’s also uncertain whether results would be positive.
Consider what is needed to pull off ‘focused’ violence - that is to say, assassination of key targets. You need to be sufficiently skilled to manage at least one successful strike. You cannot communicate with people to do this - it’s far too easy to get caught in the modern day. You need supplies and equipment, and sure, guns are somewhat easy to get in the US, but they aren’t the only thing you need. You need access and information, some of which is public, but some of which can be hard to get, and can draw attention by being sought (keep in mind algorithms are pattern matching to find this stuff).
Then consider the potential outcome of these actions. As mentioned before, organizing is impractical since it would mean getting caught before doing anything with much higher probability. Regardless of your skills, the chance of getting caught approaches 100%. You may be able to take out two or three key senators, or if you’re very good and very lucky, a few supreme court justices, before being caught. At this point you will either be imprisoned, or you commit suicide to avoid this fate.
And what’s the result? Violence of this sort to effect change is hard to pull off, but even harder to predict the outcome of. If you’ve succeeded in all plausible goals, you might manage to change the makeup of the supreme court - that’s probably the best possible outcome you can hope for with this sort of violence, but right now on the gay front, the supreme court shockingly has yet to do anything too bad, so you may not want to provoke that shit. But there are a lot of possible bad outcomes. And as someone smart enough to pull this off, you’re smart enough to see that. It could lead to increasingly strict rules, to retaliation against the group you’re trying to help - it could even be the catalyst to strengthen your opponents position enough to make things worse elsewhere.
The idea of someone killing a bunch of the key bad guys is great, but it has so many impracticalities, and worst of all, such an uncertain and potentially worse outcome that it’s probably just a bad idea overall, even as much as I too sometimes wish someone would just kill some of these motherfuckers already.
I think you’re overestimating the competence of LEO. Christopher Dorner was hunting cops (vs unarmed lawmakers) in the midst of one of one of the US’s largest man hunts and he got away with it for two weeks.
Speaks fucking volumes that you wanted violence and got the most significant example for LGBTQ history. Stonewall was massive for queer people around the fucking world and you brush it aside. At the point stonewall happened cops were going into underground bars and clubs for queer people and beating people and forcing them closed. Stonewall was what happened after the anger reached a boiling point. That’s why it was in your words “mindless violence”.
If you want targeted attacks on republicans do it yourself first instead of wanting a community already facing attacks and shunning to do it for you. Queer people aren’t your instruments.
What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t “want violence” I “wanted” examples of the type of thing I’m surprised isn’t happening. Fucking Lemmy. I’m not looking for an instrument
You fucking want people to carry out hit jobs and beatings on politicians with no fucking regard whatsofuckingever to the the people of the community you fucking want to carry out those “targeted” violence. Lemmy’s not to blame for your being a fucking pussy and wanting other people to fuck their lives up and make queer people even easier to weaponise by republicans. What the fuck do you think would happen if a trans person took a shot at the orange cunt? I’ll tell you, it would lead both Dems and republicans going after trans people. Progress wasn’t fucking fought for decades to have it eroded by doing something so monumentally stupid as attacking republican politicians.
As I said before it’s really fucking telling that you blame Lemmy and act hostile to me when you want queer people to carry out acts of violence without giving a single thought to what shit storm that would create.
For the last time you dullard: I was only pointing out it’s historically interesting that this particularly poorly treated group is so well behaved. The TYPE of well behaved I was referring to was not a riot. That’s it. You walked in here with a bunch of baggage, made assumptions, and wrote a bunch of crap. I’m not looking for anyone to do anything, only observing it’s fucking remarkable no one has.
You are incapable of consuming an observation without injecting a value into it. Grow up.
Here’s my original, if you forgot:
"Blows my mind that there aren’t violent LGBT folks out there. I’m not advocating violence, but I’m impressed with the self control. " tell me, which word is me calling for violence? Which word is me wanting anyone to do something for me cause I’m a “pussy”?
by saying “blows my mind” you’re saying that you think it should be the opposite: you’d expect it to be normal that LGBTQIA+ community would be violent. that expectation is a call, of sorts… like “wouldn’t surprise me if someone beat X”, you’re kinda giving someone permission
I’m not, I’m saying it’s remarkable that a people are so poorly treated, and are so well behaved.
I’m not saying I’m some Dwight shrute “I’d go all Jason Bourne”. I’m saying it’s historically interesting that LGBT folks are so well behaved, given how much they are targeted
This is shocking. I mean you have those gross parades where you dance around naked while being hideous and unattractive. How could small town people reject you after that? You've shown them your assholes and fat rolls! How can they reject your movement!?
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