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Biological ecologies are a complex web of interdependencies between their constituent elements and the same is true for political ecologies.

There was a time, not that very long ago, when the two political parties in the United States each contained divergent factions of liberals, moderate, conservatives and assorted minor ideologies. The Civil Rights movement and legislation fractured the Democratic Party as a considerable number of their ‘conservatives’ were more invested in segregation than anything else politically. After a brief turn as ‘Dixiecrats’ this faction was wooed and welcome into the Republican Party as the wedge that allow the GOP to begin winning elections in the deep South.

This additional faction swelled the GOP and ushered in the Reagan Regime that dominated American politics from 1980 until well into 1990s. However, like HYDRA with SHIELD this racist driven conservatism grew like a parasite with the Republican Party. With the power to win or cost elections it soon, welded to its fast-growing cousin the Social Conservative faction, determined the shape and course of American Conservatism, and thus began the period of ‘RINO hunting.’

RINO is a slur for member of the Republican Party not sufficiently subservient to the conservatism imported from the deep south and it stands for Republican In Name Only. The very nomenclature reveals the transformed nature of the GOP. It became a party that tolerated no dissention, no variation, and no other factions. There had become just one way to be a Republican and those who did not conform, who were not of the body, were cast out, chased out, and hounded out of the party. What had once been a collection of factions became a movement and a movement can only proceed in one direction.

Throughout the late 90s there was a giddiness every time a ‘RINO’ was defeated, resigned, and switched parties. Like a boiling solution what remained concentrated in its purity. Led and goaded by non-politicians such as Rush Limbaugh and bomb-throwing politicians such as Newt Gingrich the GOP moved more and more in lockstep to a beat that had been determine decades earlier by fleeing segregationists.

Racism has always been an American problem and both parties have a long history if welcoming it within their domains. However, once the Democratic party began moving in a direction of racial justice, awareness, and correction the racist had but one party that welcomed them. At first tacitly, then subtly, and eventually openly, the GOP.

With the RINOs, primarily the Northeastern liberal Republicans, driven out of the party, and the communists threat collapsed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the GOP turned it unified and obedient movement on American itself. It abandoned all pretense at governing or morality. A political movement that embraces torture is capable of anything.

Is it any surprise at all that such a movement, such a political ecology now deprived of any contrary thought, proved such fertile ground for a con man and a demagogue? That after decades of beating obedience into its base that it would lash itself with the fanaticism of a cult to that new leader?

No, not at all.

The GOP hunted the RINOs into extinction and without that balance dove into neo-fascism endangering us all.

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It is not what Pride celebrates that scares me, since the late 1970s I have found the legal and social discrimination against the gays and their brethren utterly evil and idiotic. I am old enough to remember the Anita Bryant kerfuffle and recognized even then just how wrong and hateful her campaign was no matter how many times they repeated the delusional incantation, ‘love the sinner hate the sin.’ No, Pride represents the beginning of the real fight for freedom and equality and for aspect of our nation is it as important as the 4th of July.

What terrifies me is the poisonous atmosphere of 2023 with its escalating number of mass shootings along with the rising tide of Family Values Fascism.

Mass shootings are a social contagion, with each instance acting like a chemical catalyst lowering the activation energy of the process, accelerating the reaction brings more shootings and more death. As reported by the BBC there have been more than 200 hundred mass shootings in 2023. The contagion is running unchecked.

The political environment is particularly dire. An entire political party in our two-party system is succumbing to an anti-democratic dogma that can best be described as neo-fascist. Abandoning the rule of law and democratic norms they have embraced hatred and scapegoating as tools to seize power. Still bitter over marriage equality, but recognizing that the tide had turned against them, they targeted another sexual minority for their hatred, lies, and venom, the transsexual community. Empowered by their reactionary fury they stoke fear, anger, and hatred in a base already inclined to violence.

These twin lethal cultural currents are what terrifies me about Pride 2023. It is my most sincere hope we can get to the 4th of July without any deadly violence at Pride events but there will be no shock or surprise if we do not.

Should Pride events be canceled during this terrifying time?

No.

The danger must be recognized and dealt with, but it must not be appeased. That only empowers it more. Pride must go on.

I am terrified but I am also hopeful. These are the dying spasms of an older ideology and generation, survive these and better days are ahead.

The GOP is a parade of corruption, anti-American ideology, and moral collapse.

There is no credible reason for voting for this political party save, grift, power, and bigotry. Everything else is rationalization, justification, and lies.

There are arguments to be made about the size, scope, and reach of government but that is not the question of the day.

The question of the day is do you stand with democracy or against it?

There is no third way.