For the American Republican Party, it has become the norm to be in a state of near constant fear and hatred. They seem intent on being the voice for those who wish to see people of different sexual orientations ostracized, harmed, and even killed. They GOP is intent on spreading the dangerous lies that the LGBTQ community is grooming children to sexually abuse them. Since the party itself seems to have moved to a “post truth” view of the world, it matters little that there is no proof in the allegations. If only they showed such zeal for their own religious institutions which already have hundreds of thousands of incidences of child abuse. Instead, their hateful rhetoric becomes a calling card for the extreme fringe of their constituents; impotent men armed to the teeth, thinking that they will be heroes instead of domestic terrorists.

The most recent example of this is in Colorado. You may remember that in 2022, a pathetic excuse for a human being named Anderson Lee Aldrich entered a gay nightclub called Club-Q. Dressed in body armor and carrying an AR-15 style rifle, he opened fire on innocent people, killing 5 and injuring a further 25. The tragedy would have claimed further victims, were he not stopped by a patron of the bar, a U.S. Army veteran by the name of Richard Fierro. This true American hero tackled the 300 pounds of human excrement to the ground, knocking the gun out of his had. Two other patrons helped hold him down as the authorities made their way to them.

Aldrich had previous incidents with police in the past, including threatening his grandparents for “ruining his plans for a mass shooting”. Of course, because this is a red state, this ticking time bomb was allowed to continue to own weapons, despite serious incidents with police and even the FBI, or him hosting a website advocating for the killing of civilians to “cleanse society”.  It was therefore only a matter of time before the continued lies and propaganda against the LGBT community, now perpetuated openly by the Republican party, would incense someone into violence.

It seems that they are doubling down on the dangerous rhetoric now. No longer are they skirting around their hatred for the LGBT community. They are now openly calling for people to burn pride flags, as though we were in the middle of Kabul:

“Burn all the #pride flags this June,” the state GOP wrote Monday on the social platform X. Earlier Monday, an email sent by the party with the subject line “God Hates Pride” perpetuated the false claim that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children to abuse them. “The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children,” reads the email.

Social media response is of course mixed. People with crosses in their profile are just as likely to condemn it as embrace it. It’s telling. Those of us with our heads screwed on properly know that advocating for the destruction of private property by a major political party is outrageous to say the least, but this type of thuggish behavior is becoming all too common. Those that support this kind of open animosity and hatred should be closely monitored. They are at the knife edge of fascism without knowing what it is.

The only bright light at the end of this dark tunnel is that this type of strategy is going to blow up majorly for the GOP. You see, there is a large, unvocal majority that sees all of this and have a strong reaction against it. They just aren’t social media savvy, and are smart enough not to engage in online toxicity. But they vote, and often they have no real political alliance. They simply try to balance out the left-right divide, often punishing groups if their power goes unchecked. Well, this is as power hungry as it gets, and considering the fact that people are leaving churches that promote such hatred, I find it difficult to imagine where all of these voters are that the GOP is hoping to attract with open calls for assault and violence.

Hopefully, the decency of people will shine through when it comes time to elect their representatives anew. There is a lot of hatred in the halls of government, and it needs to be expunged. Judging by the fact that Fierro’s family has been endlessly harassed by bigots who invented stories to demonize him, our prospects for the future does not look good.