(Minneapolis, MN) After years of declaring the dangers of respecting gender, republicans are quietly optimistic that the recent school shooting in Minnesota, killing two children and injuring many others, will justify 50 years of loud and often violent hatred of transexuals. “We have said for many years, these people need to be driven into the streets and shot like animals,” said one republican pundit on fox news Thursday, “and this one shooting confirms all our years of fear were correct.”
This enthusiasm is widespread among the far right, while some admit that this shooting is a breath of fresh air, after dozens of mass killings by straight, white, conservative males in a row. “I’ll be honest,” said Jerub Cornflour of Kansas, “after all these troubled men who couldn’t get mental help in time in a row, I was starting to think the guns were the problem. I mean, that Trump boy voted for him. But this shows that trans people mean to kill us all, and it’s not the guns, it’s the gay.”
“Would of been nicer if he wasn’t white, though,” he added.
This mental contortionism is widespread in America, where even the idea of banning weapons would be met with laughter at this point. As communities grieve and enter the second of three days they will discuss the tragedy, republicans are just glad they have something to blame other than mental health.
“This is a real tragedy,” lamented Leo Sturbgetter, a cow detangler in rural Georgia. “You have to look at children dying like this and wonder what bathroom he used.”
You should have seen what republicans were saying before the identity came out. I saw comments like “this is a hate crime. I bet we all know what ethnicity they’ll be” or “in a democratic city. Big surprise” or “can’t wait to see the libs talk about the crime rates.”
To be fair, I’m pretty sure 80% of republicans on Reddit are bots or Russian after going through their communities. Every post has less than 500 upvotes unless it’s big news. Half the posts are just pandering with like 50 upvotes and one comment saying something like “Go Trump!” And nothing else yet they have over a million subscribers on some of them. I honestly feel like it’s just bots talking to each other akin to dead internet theory. The only time there are actual in depth comments is on big news and the highest upvoted comments are usually calling Trump out when he does something shitty. They were pissed about the flag thing just as much as everyone else. And if it’s not constructive they will say the exact same thing about people on the left about being in a cult that the left says about them.
This is just my opinion, but I think the internet is the cause of most of the division between left and right. Both sides say the other is in a cult and absolutely crazy. Both sides say the other is falling for all the propaganda. And both sides consider the other evil in every aspect of the word. When Epstein comes up the left says “I don’t care if Clinton is in them, lock them all up.” When Epstein comes up the right says “I don’t care if Trump is in them, lock them all up.” Like, I feel like if we all just sat the fuck down and talked it out we’d all come to the same conclusions on a lot of the issues that have divided us. Of course, I speak mostly of republicans, not MAGA. They’re basically a different group entirely within republicans right now, especially offline.
But at the end of the day, the republicans have really fucked up the US in so many ways. They unknowingly, and some knowingly which is the worst part, voted for fascism. Never forgive them for what they did. But at least give them a chance to make it right when they realized they fucked up. A lot of them are ignorant, not stupid. You can’t teach stupid, but you can teach the ignorant.