Orwellian Cry Babies on the Right

If there is one hobby that dominates the Right in America today, it’s throwing tantrums and crying about how awful they have things. They are always willing to play the victim card, even before the the deck is dealt.

A conservative whines about how conservatives have it worse than gay people and are victims of discrimination. They run the government but they are victims. But his reasoning is odd and out of context.

One Chad Greene, who identifies as a gay conservative says:

“To be a conservative means to openly invite others’ hatred into your life and to lose your humanity in the eyes of strangers who view you exclusively through stereotypes and prejudices…. To be a conservative means to be a marginalized voice, suppressed and dehumanized; bullied into hesitating to speak out.”

Okay, but why does he think this is?

Perhaps the hate campaigns run by conservatives against refugees and immigrants is one reason. Maybe another is how they target trans individuals. It could be their desire to nationalize the wombs of women to force them to procreate whether they wish to do so or not. Perhaps it is related to how they applaud and cheer violent police attacks on civilians — provided the civilians are of a darker hue than the average Republican.

When you act inhumanely toward children refugees, rip them from the arms of their parents, jail them in what are the equivalents of prisons for kids, and then can’t figure out how to “reunite” them with their parents, a lot of people will see that inhumane. Maybe you called inhumane because you ARE INHUMANE.

At this very moment the Republican president, with the support of conservative lapdogs in Congress is trying to once again throw all transgender individuals out of the military. When we reach the stage where conservatives are forbidden from service in the military than Mr. Greene has something to complain about.

As for being a “marginalized voice,” not even close.

For the time being conservatives control the White House, the Senate, the House and the majority of state governments. I wish I were that marginalized!

More bizarrely Greene claims, “Just as I did not choose to be gay, I did not choose to be conservative.” Really?

Is Mr. Greene saying he has no control over the positions he holds?

I hate to break the news to him, but it’s far easier to change your mind than change your sexual orientation. In fact, I just changed my mind. I actually thought Republicans couldn’t get any dumber and Mr. Greene has proven me wrong.

On Twitter Greene got rather bizarre, going as far as claiming, “Gays have never been outlawed in America.”

Now, when I was born it was a crime to be gay in all 50 states. The first state to decriminalize homosexuality was my home state of Illinois and it did so only in 1961. The death penalty remained on the law books until as late as 1873 in South Carolina, which then replaced the sentence with 5 years imprisonment. You can’t be more “outlawed” than that! The idea of “liberal” tolerance at the time would be in Pennsylvania, a Quaker controlled state. They said any convicted of homosexuality should be whipped, forfeit one third of their estate, and be sentenced to six months hard labor in prison. A second offense required life imprisonment. That was the most liberal of the states at the time.

Consider a legal case that is still on going. Charlton Green was arrested for consenting sex with another male, who was above the age of consent, in a hotel in Georgia in 1997. He was required to register as a sex offender for having homosexual sex. The Supreme Court only abolished the last of the laws criminalizing homosexuality in 2003. So, it was no longer a crime to be gay and Green went about life as normal. That means he didn’t register as sex offender because there was no longer any law on the books making it a crime to be gay.

In 2009 he was sentenced to two years in prison for failure to register as a sex offender in spite of the fact that his “crime” was no longer a crime. In 2010 a judge said the conviction on sodomy was invalid, but the state appeals court overturned that and Green was once again a criminal. The a federal judge ruled Green “should not have been required to register as a sex offender and therefore could not be held guilty of the instant offense.” The last ruling was from conservatives on the 11 Circuit of Appeals who reversed that ruling making Green a criminal again. Mr. Green was only removed from the sex offender list in 2012.

Of course, Greene’s perceptions are common in conservative circles. Conservatives are the one group of Americans where a majority believe whites are victims of discrimination more than blacks. They believe Christians have it worse than Muslims, heterosexuals have it worse than LGBT individuals. In fact, conservatives easily change their views. Only a few years ago far more Republicans thought there was discrimination against racial, religious and sexual minorities.

When Cheeto Benito came along and told them it was all “fake news” they changed their minds. In 2013 59% of Republicans said Muslims face a lot of discrimination, now only 38% do in spite of Trump’s repeated Muslim bans. Incredible. Trump has tried to throw trans individuals out of the military services, but Republicans can’t see it. They only see problems when Democrats are in office. In 2013, 60% of Republicans said trans individual face “a lot of discrimination.” Now with Trump in office the number plummets to 37%.

In 2013, 29% of Republicans said Jews faced lots of discrimination, but since Nazis in Charlottesville were called “fine people” by the President the percentage has but cut almost in half, down to 15%. In 2013 a majority of Republicans, 54%, said gays and lesbians still faced a lot of discrimination, today only 29% are able to recognize it.

If you were to believe Republicans, discrimination against women dropped dramatically since Trump was elected. In 2013 28% said women faced a lot of discrimination, but now we have a confessed molester in the White House and only 14% of Republicans see a problem.

This is not rational, but these are not rational people. These are authoritarians. Republicans who are not authoritarian and irrational have either been driven out of the GOP or very isolated from the “mainstream” of the party. There hasn’t been a huge improvement since Trump took power. In almost every way discrimination has increased since then.

It is quite astounding at how quickly the dominant groups in God’s Own Party are redefining what they say in order to pretend they didn’t impose a disaster on the United States. That Republicans are this intellectually dishonest, so as to dramatically change their views on discrimination in just five years, makes the party totally unworthy of any libertarian support.