While not real yet, I’m not speaking of a metaphorical one. Prominent Mississippi Republican Robert Foster has called for the shooting deaths of anyone who “grooms” teenagers by encouraging them to believe that they can wear the clothing of the “opposite sex” and/or change sex. He has also called for the death penalty for anyone who tells others that “men can become women” or that locker rooms can be inclusive of both trans people and cis people at the same time.
He denies that he wants to kill trans people for being trans, he just wants to kill anyone who says a nice thing about trans people, ever. But this isn’t an attack on free speech rights, heavens no!
Foster … calls himself a “Man of Faith,” and a “Constitutional Conservative,”
He’s a constitutional conservative! Certainly the constitution says something about the government shooting people to death if you don’t like what they have to say!
Will any of the FREEZE PEACH squad show up to contest this assault on the First Amendment? Of course not. The First Amendment only applies when people criticize other people on twitter. Governments killing people because of their speech isn’t an idea to get alarmed about!
Lest you think I’m being alarmist, from the Mississippi Free Press:
“I said what I said,” he wrote, adding to what he had tweeted. “The law should be changed so that anyone trying to sexually groom children and/or advocating to put men pretending to be women in locker rooms and bathrooms with young women should receive the death penalty by firing squad.”
And all of this is from the last 36 hours. Expect more from Foster. And, of course, expect a lone wolf to kill some trans people or PFLAG members or random folks out for brunch at a queer-owned breakfast spot, because that’s how this works.
I’ve lived with a target on me since I was bashed in Portland in 1992, but now if you’ve ever said something nice about trans people you’re wearing the target as well.
Look out for each other. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Just say no to firing squads (except progressive circular ones!).
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : That bit you put in brackets, er , what? Can you expand and explain that with examples please?
StevoR @ # 2 – Have you not noticed the tendency of progressives to snipe at each other, collectively, at close range?
It’s a traditional value!
Well, that’s exactly the kind of thinking I’d expect from the Popular Front of Judea. Splitter!
But there is a serious point to this. Perhaps we can discuss this sometime on a more appropriate thread. But this is a real issue in progressive politics.
@ 3. Pierce R. Butler : Okay but are you then saying that’s okay? That such tendncy to metaphorically ..kill each other is something we shouldn’t “say no” to?
Sorry for the derail here but puzzled.
Also that Maya Angelou quote :
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3503.Maya_Angelou
Specifically the one where she talks about “When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.” springs to mind here regarding Robert Foster and those like him..
Also just no words but expletives. TFP as Jim Wright would say.
StevoR @ # 5: … are you then saying that’s okay?
Well, I do think mutual criticism turns out better than mutual-admiration-no-matter-what –
– but mostly I just let kneejerk-reflex word-association get the better of me.
Every time I think people could not be any stupider they say “hold my beer.” Now of course, for all its rampant hatred and ignorance and mind-blowing stupidity, the way it is said is not only maximally stupid but truly insane. I mean, let’s forget a moment about how dumb this is. You’d have to make an extraordinary effort to declare it anything short of homicidally crazy.
Calling for firing squads for anything, much less for other people’s sexual choices, is digging pretty far down the floor of the bat cave, but “encouraging them to believe that they can wear the clothing of the “opposite sex” ” taken literally means that he thinks parents should be gunned down for letting their daughters wear pants. I wonder if the chastened children, in their new blue surplices, will be made to watch. Of course he’ll backpedal that one and let us know that’s not what he really means, just as the apologists for the draconian anti-abortion laws will backpedal and say they don’t really mean that they seek the death of a child who has been raped if, a victim of their own ban on birth control and crippling of sex education, she doesn’t know what’s up until an hour after some arbitrary deadline when they decide that the nonexistent heart is beating. Except that they do, because they are so carelessly stupid they don’t even see how stupidly careless they are.
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : Fair enough. As for mutual criticism yeah but we need to do more than just mutual criticism – we need to co-operate and support and encourage as well I think. /Cap’n Obvs.
But yeah, as part of the balance and mix &done constructovely not destructively, yes.