This week's cartoon was inspired by a pair of articles I had read recently. One, in Time magazine, claimed that Americans left and right aren't as diametrically opposed as your social media feed would have you believe. The other, in the New York Post, gave voice to complaints of "MAGA gays" who feel shunned and dissed by others in the LGBT movement — including their favorite bars and even their own spouses.
Mark Dorman, a retired teacher from Hell’s Kitchen, said he has been all but blacklisted from the Atlas Social Club, his local gay bar, since he spoke positively about the former president there last summer.
“I’m almost anti-gay,” a frustrated Dorman, 64, told The Post. “It’s an embarrassment to see this kind of behavior… I’d really invite them to go to Iran or Gaza. See what that does for you. See how fast they throw you in prison or kill you.”
“It feels like the Soviet Union, Marxist environment now,” he said. “With the gay community, they feel that Republicans on the far right have an anti-gay thing. ..."
The "Go To Iran or Gaza" is a common meme among Magazoids who deign to advise the LGBTQ+ community to ignore the chapters pertaining to us in Mein Trumpf: The 2025 Project. Yet somehow, I don't think that when Mark Dorman cites the Soviet Union, he has been following events in the Far Right Paradise that Russia has become under Trump's buddy Vlad the Defenestrator.
It's Dorman in the Post article whose marriage nearly ended over Trumpism (frankly, Dorman is their source for the whole article). Their marriage only survived because they agreed to stop discussing politics. So I hope for Dorman's sake that his husband never, ever, ever reads the New York Post.
I think we all have some family member/s with whom we have reached an agreement not to mention politics any more. Which is where the Time article comes in.
And divided we certainly think we are. The only thing Americans seem to agree on is that Americans cannot agree on anything. It’s hardly worth summarizing the headlines about doom and radicalization. In the prelude to a November ballot featuring the candidate synonymous with polarization, all the dapple and nuance of life is once again being reduced to a binary. Choose a side: red or blue.
Yet in the wintry interval between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day 2021, that Populace survey, dubbed the American Aspirations Index, found “stunning agreement” on national goals across every segment of the U.S. population, including, to a significant extent, among those who voted for Donald Trump and those who voted for Joe Biden. On the few points where the survey registered disagreement (notably, on immigration and borders), the dissent was intense. But intense disagreement was the exception, not the rule.
Oh, you could probably add abortion to the list of points where the dissent is "intense." But is not talking about divisive issues really what it takes to keep this country together?
Or is that just what they want us to think?
"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be," [Heritage Foundationführer Kevin] Roberts told host of "Real America's Voice" Dave Brat, a former congressman who spent his brief time in government claiming the attendees of the Women's March are much more dangerous than white supremacists.
On the other hand, if Team Edward and Team Jacob can bury their differences now that nobody talks about the Twilight series any more, maybe there is yet hope that we will all meet again some sunny day.
Not the vampires, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment