The minute I crossed the Red River into Texas, I got a "Welcome to Texas!" notification. Five minutes later, I got a news notification: "Texas GOP Adopts Anti-LGBTQI+ Platform." Never mind that record heat is causing power outages, killing thousands of Texas cattle, and creating dreadfully dire drought conditions statewide. Ignore the infant formula shortage, food supply chain inadequacies, ridiculous inflation, bounty-hunter abortion laws, and casual gun violence engulfing small-town America. Forget how small businesses fail daily because they refuse to properly value and compensate the workforce that keeps their businesses open, whilst the goddamned FED encourages businesses to LOWER wages in order to counter inflation. All of these are problems that LGBTQI+ people did not cause and do not in any way benefit from. In fact, these problems affect EVERYBODY--not just the 10%-15% of America's population that is LGBTQI+.
However, as long as the GOP hounds, hunts, drives out, and eradicates LGBTQI+ people, the Republican Party doesn't have to solve the real problems. They can just spout stochastic terrorism that drives radicalized "patriot" violence groups and "lone wolf" shooters after my people and me...and then rest assured that my fellow citizens will gladly massacre me and mine to vent their boiling, impotent rage over the intolerable misery that their beloved GOP forces them into. When thousands of innocent people-cum-worthless undesirable queers are eradicated (and pregnant women, eventually to be followed by the disabled, PoC, Muslims, Jews, and--finally--liberal Christians), the voting base for anything other than the Republican party dwindles. That's actually the point: with enough citizen-driven violence, massacre, and genocide, Republicans won't even have to gerrymander or cry "election fraud" anymore to keep their power. They can just tweet hate speech and watch their Nazi-thug citizen militias go to work while the rest of us hide.
If you haven't caught on yet, this is how scapegoating works. We saw the same goddamn thing 90 years ago in Nazi Germany. And here's how all that scapegoating really ended for Germany: it solved nothing. The Third Reich collapsed and Nazi Germany imploded because instead of innovating to solve the problems, they scapegoated a large chunk of their consumer base/workforce to death while simultaneously ignoring the persistent economic problems that had already made life too difficult. It was just easier to scapegoat and massacre 6 million Jews and millions of others because doing so drew public attention away from the domestic policy failures of the Nazi state. By the last year of the war, the Nazi state had obviously and manifestly failed to bring the peace, prosperity, and opportunity to Germany that it had promised. In the process, millions of innocent people were killed and absolutely nothing changed for the better. Scapegoating does not bring solutions, no matter how proud and patriotic of a Nazi it is who is doing the scapegoating.
The worst part of it all is that just like with the average Nazi party member, the average Republican doesn't really care about LGBTQI+ folks one way or the other; they are only stoking stochastic terrorism to keep Christian Fascists, Fox News-addled boomers, and wannabe-soldier militia groups voting in their favor--even if it means encouraging them to let off steam by hunting and killing queers like me. Republicans are gaming the rotten system in order to keep control of it. Having massacres and genocide committed on their political behalf--starting with the LGBTQI+ community--is just the price of doing business.
THAT dreadfully humdrum evil brings to mind Hannah Arendt's discussion of "the banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem: this massacre is absolutely being brought on by bland bureaucrats in ill-fitting Brooks Brothers suits and questionable Ann Taylor Loft ensembles. These bureaucrats are doing nothing more or less than diligently pursuing their political careers in today's fascist, white-supremacist, Evangelical Christian Republican party. The truth is, GOP politicos don't really care enough about queers and marginalized folks to actually hate us themselves. They say what they say in order to get the result of retaining power. Sacrificing us LGBTQI+ folk to the teeming hordes who are enraged about the nightmare world of poverty and despair that the GOP sees fit for them to have is simply a political convenience to ensure the furtherance of their own careers.
So what topics do Republicans spout off about to infuriate those teeming hordes unto stochastic terror?
* That Oscars slap that Chris Rock had honestly been spoiling for; unfortunately he chose the night that the insulted woman's husband had just uttered the name "Macbeth" live onstage in a crowded theater to do so.
* Virulently misogynist commentary on that hypnotic, sentient, abortion of justice masquerading as the Depp-Herd defamation trial, which will go on to be applied in blanket fashion to all women who share Herd's diagnoses deserved or not...As will the life-threatening danger that comes along with mentally ill women being seen as “someone like her.”
* Protecting the free speech rights of misogynist, transphobic, homophobic comedians because comedy is THE LAST STAND for free speech, period, and always has been...but refusing to acknowledge that in doing so they are platforming stochastic terrorism against vulnerable people AND denying any responsibility to offset that harm in the process.
* Banning fewer than 100 women from professional women's swimming because they are transgender and have some sort of "an unfair advantage" over cis women, even if their best record times and overall performance remains already lower than they had been pre-transition.
Clearly, Republicans platform and promote the most banal bullcrap imaginable, in the most misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic terms possible, in whatever form of media they can spew into. You'd think they'd have gotten the hang of it by now, but after the successes of trolling Trump into office, these Nazis are really slipping. Everything Republicans come up with is pretty basic...and pretty sloppy with endless circular logic. The lack of original arguments, clear reasoning, and basic humanity that has driven the planning of my massacre is horrifying and shocking. But it's also incredibly...insulting? These aren't super-villains we're dealing with. They're super-Kevins and Karens, and they're a lousy excuse for a master race. I submit this rogue's gallery as Exhibit A testifying to this fact:
*Marjorie-Taylor Greene: A Ken if ever there was one. Avoid.
*Lauren Bobert: Also a Ken...REALLY enjoys guns. Avoid.
*Mitch McConnell: He's the bitchiest Karen on the planet after Lindsey "Lady G" Graham. Avoid.
*Tucker Carlson: This is ur-Ken. Avoid.
*Madison Cawthorne: A Ken in denial of his true nature; DISABLED Republican. If he can do it, so can you, grandma! Avoid.
*Ron DeSantis: Diva Karen who power-dresses like Ken because she knows damn well that patriarchy is a thing. Avoid.
*Tomi Lahren- Ur-Karen, feeling backstabbed by the abortion thing a little bit, but it if owns the Libs, then what the hey? Avoid.
*Ted Nugent: A Ken who likes guns and longs to shoot you with one even if the two of you are good friends. Avoid.
The mediocrity of these people is frankly offensive. I'm OFFENDED that the massacre of LGBTQI+ people isn't being planned by actual brainiac super-villains, and carried out by cyborg manticores with flaming nipple cannons. These white supremacist douchebags are all basically the exact people I avoid at the grocery store at all costs. The people they inspire to violence against me are all basically one form or other of my high school classmates. There is no way any of them can hate me enough to want to kill me. But they really love buying name-brand groceries in this economy, you know? They are convinced that throwing queers like me under the bus buys them a steady supply of Grey Poupon and Polaner All-Fruit, and at least one night a week at the Olive Garden. So they do it and then think nothing of it except to occasionally engage in the requisite worship of the hateful and the stupid.
Massacre and genocide should be Bond-villain-level stuff. Instead, this incredibly supervillainous goal of queer massacre has been set by Kens and Karens. They're just greedy, basic bitch Republican careerists who keep their hands clean by egging on stochastic terror agents. Overwhelmingly, those terror agents include fascists, white supremacists, actual Nazis, murderously rapey white supremacist incel "lone wolves," and sister-kissing inbred militias from red states and the "State of Jefferson."
And sweet mercy of cuck can we talk about how they broadcast their mediocrity sartorially? Supervillains should have more style than Nazis. At least the Nazis went to the trouble of hiring Hugo Boss to design their SS uniforms--they looked evilly sharp while massacring your entire family! Instead, I am likely to be killed by some asshole wearing a cheap black knockoff polo shirt, camo cosplay, or a Wal-Mart T-shirt with Trump standing atop a tank, accompanied by a machine-gun-wielding eagle, amidst glorious fireworks, all with an American flag in the background. THAT is very probably the last image I would see if I got killed by one of these people. I promise you I would make myself die quicker just to get away from having to look at it anymore. I think I'd actually be dying from shame FOR them at that point. I know I did not hurt these people, but when I look at all of that fashion tragedy, I have to wonder who did and at what age. Goddamn it, I DEMAND the Spectre take over the operation of my queer massacre right this minute. I, at least, would appreciate the quick efficiency of a Spectre-calibre massacre. The anxiety of waiting for a bunch of bigoted asshats to pull it off is quite frankly driving me insane.
At the core of my current situation is–you guessed it–Republican Christian Fascism playing out on a local level. The worst part of it is how incredibly unaware I've been about the stuff happening right under my nose. Some people in my community really don't like me because of things they’ve been told about me, or things they think that I did, or opinions I have aired that they don’t agree with. I can't decide if I've been naive or innocent about this. But then I remember that it doesn’t matter. I did exactly these three things to cause any sort of a ruckus, and they are three things that average Americans do all the time without getting death threats:
*I wrote a letter to the editor of my hometown newspaper
*I quit the teaching job that wrecked my health and my faith in my school district
*I fought City Hall for my parents because they were being predated upon by a sketchy developer.
All three of those are basic actions that people take when they are engaged as participants in a democratic society. My actions were not unreasonable. They were not wrong. Oklahoma is what is wrong. The powers that be in Oklahoma will actively seek to harm anyone who engages in basic civic actions that are perceived to block their way forward into fascism. Even if the only thing you've done is stand up for yourself and others in ways that ten years ago would have been viewed as tiny and inconsequential, they're coming for you. Fascism in Oklahoma means that fascism has come to America; it just isn't evenly distributed--yet.
Perhaps Americans who should know better don't recognize the fascism already in their midst because "FASCISM!" seems like such a terrifying and harsh word. It certainly describes a terrifying and harsh reality. The thing is, we are pre-conditioned to respond to fascism as an obvious and massive evil, and because of this, we miss the small things that we should notice as red flags. We don't because they're too small.
The small red flags dotting the early path into fascism start out looking more or less like a civility war. First comes the stochastic terrorism...and then the defense of the free speech rights of the stochastic terrorists to the silencing and detriment of the marginalized and terrorized. Then comes the outright public discrimination against these groups by fascists who've rules-lawyered judges into accepting the preeminence of their right to discriminate over the basic human rights of those discriminated against. Then come the defenses of these fascists' actions, because they are based on deeply held beliefs that the powers that be happen to overwhelmingly share. Finally. you start having fascist-leaning citizens, inspired and emboldened by banal Republican stochastic terrorists, visit acts of stochastic terrorism upon the marginalized. THAT is when you know you've gone from a civility war into a fascist civil massacre of those whom they have marginalized and want to finish edging out of "their" country.
At that point, it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle because you've tilted into full-on fascism.
Oklahoma is already there, and they're ready to expand and export. Texas is gearing up to do likewise. The Texas GOP has announced its intention to secede the state of Texas from the United States. Most folks dismiss this action because it's doubtful a Texas secession would go through. They need to stop dismissing it, because they've misapprehended what the GOP is trying to get by making that announcement. The point here is not that the GOP will ultimately be deterred from seceding because of the logistical and economic nightmare that would follow such a move--because of course they will. The point is for the Texas GOP to make Texans believe that the only law that will matter in the future is the Anti-LGBTQI+ law of the new Texas nation-state. This announcement is a dog whistle to their fascist base that future violence against the LGBTQI+ community will be allowed, uninvestigated, unprosecuted, and ignored by Texas state LEOs--and applauded by the Texas GOP. They know that their fascist base longs to enforce those yet-to-be-written-and-passed laws locally and extrajudicially by visiting terror and murder upon Texas' LGBTQI+ Community. Which they will do, because they know for a fact that they will get away with it. The queers will all be gone even if Texas fails to secede; that is the whole entire point of pretending to secede Texas from the United States.
I suspect that fascism from red state congresspeople is going to start hitting Washington, D.C. hard this election cycle. Because of the clueless, neo-libeal hubris of the willfully blind Democratic Party, it will be extremely difficult to legislate against the wave of fascism. Those who should already be noticing and fighting it are committed to ignoring its presence until it's too late. If you, on an individual level, have any capability within yourself to resist the exporting of fascism to where you live, you need to start actively looking for signs now and choosing to recognize them as such. When in doubt, listen to your gut.
Over the last three weeks, a few things have happened to make my guy wrench hard enough to scream a flash of agony through my nervous system. It felt like what I always imagined a steel-toed boot to the gut would feel like. I can think of no better sensory image to accompany the words "fascism" and "Nazi." This is what my gut told me after each of these experiences:
*My gun-shooting, bonfire-building backyard neighbors catty-corner to the southwest have their pool up and running. They are out there cooking food and splashing around. These are hair-rock Southern rock people, which is why I was surprised to hear the opening guitar riff and voiceover of "The Time Warp" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was delighted to hear the family matriarch declare drunkenly, "This is from The ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. I LOOOOOOOVE The ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW!" The women discuss the movie for a moment. Then one of the men asks what the movie is about. The voices went quiet. "I ain't listening to any faggot music!" the man finally declared, to my abject horror. The music stopped. People splashed as they got out of the pool. Someone mentioned that the burgers were on. Then I heard the opening riff of "Sweet Home Alabama." blare through the pool speakers. I think to myself that these people could easily burn my house down "accidentally" during their traditional fire-hazardous Fourth of July bonfire party, if they wanted to.
*A few weeks back I learned that two of my former BAPS students had since joined the police force. My impression at the time they were in my class was that they had definite white supremacist leanings. I also learned of the suspicion that the old district superintendent might have been forced to resign, at least in part, due to my own outrage-provoking resignation. In my resignation, I spoke truth to power and explained that truth to my students. It seems that because I forgot to make it sound funny enough for everyone to laugh, some of the district parents now want to harm me. That was attested to by comments of random forums I did not belong to but that former colleagues made em aware of. That certainly showed me.
*Monday before last, my handyman J was late to work because he stopped to help a stranded motorist who'd broken down on my street. My three-block radius from West Fourth Street in the west to West 57th Street to the east is actually located on unincorporated land that lies between Sand Springs city limits and Tulsa city limits. The only law enforcement available is the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, and they are pretty hands-off. They are that way because nearly everyone in that 3-block radius is a gun owner–a fact attested to by the "We don't call 911" signs in many of their yards. These signs are sitting right beside the myriad TRUMP 2024 signs decorating all but three of the neighborhood yards: mine and two of my near-neighbors'. The motorist J was helping was a Black woman. Within ten minutes of J's arrival to give the woman a jump start, a big, black Tulsa Police Department SUV drove up to intrude upon them. Thankfully J was there.
But here's the thing: that cop had no business in our neighborhood because it had been outside of his jurisdiction for the past 72 years. What he did was what neighborhood cops working in adjacent jurisdictions do for their neighbors all the time: answer a call from his neighbor to come check out the Black motorist who'd broken down outside and make sure she wasn't trouble. That cop had no jurisdiction there and no business in the neighborhood that should not have involved the Sheriff's office. Or in this case, a AAA tow truck and basic human decency, for chrissakes.
It was then that I realized that there is an out-of-jurisdiction police officer wantonly policing my neighborhood at the whim of my racist neighbors at the same time that I have two fascism-supporting former students now working among them. My blood ran cold.
*Last Saturday, I was summoned to my mother's to give her a bath. My dad had hurt his back and my brother won't do it, so I was called. I went because mom needed me and I knew by then that it would be the last thing I would be able to do for her for a while. Possibly ever.
What I didn't expect was to be followed out of the neighborhood and tailgated by a Sand Springs police SUV. As I crossed the Arkansas River Bridge, I looked in my rearview to find the guy was still tailgating me. A swift kick to the gut told me to get in the far left lane beside me, ASAP. I turned on my signal, waited for a car to pass, watched my child-driver-safety-warning light go off, and I moved over. The car immediately coming up behind me was going at least 6o across this 45 mph bridge and had to slow way down so as to not hit me. The cop hadn't come up behind me, so I boogied along across the river and came to a stop about four cars from the stoplight at the end of the bridge.
I looked up and noticed the lane next to me had only one car at the light, and it was much further up. Out of the corner of my eye, I look over and see the cop. He's stopped immediately to my right, pinning me into my lane. His face screams pure murder. He angrily gestures for me to roll down my window. I felt grateful that I pulled myself over to the far left before getting pulled over by him to the right.
"What did you just do?!?" the officer demanded.
Genuinely confused, I gently answered, "I changed lanes?"
"And why did you do it like that?"
"I'm not sure--"
"What were you doing when you changed lanes like that," he literally spat. Flecks of his spit flew all the way across the car and hit my nose.
"I turned on my turn signal, looked behind me, and saw my safety light went off--"
"I KNOW you looked behind you! I SAW you look behind you!"
"And then I turned on my signal. I don't understand. Officer?"
"You cut that guy off who was behind you!" He roared." Cars behind him started honking."He had to step on his brakes to avoid hitting you!"
Genuinely shocked and showing it on my face, I replied as meekly as Monroe, "Thank you for telling me this officer, I'm glad I know now so I won't do it again. I'm terribly sorry."
This startled him a moment...long enough for him to disengage. "Don't do it again," he glowered as he rolled up the window. At that precise moment, the light turned green. I got into the lane right behind him and watched him speed off ahead. I took the first right I could find and took the back way home. As I drove, I was pretty sure this was related to the *Mr. Smith fiasco last summer.
Mr. Smith is a dodgy land developer in the area. For the past few years, he has been engaged in a land war with my parents' neighborhood. A few Easter Sundays ago, I noticed that the survey marker medallion that matches the original plat for the neighborhood from the 1960's has been removed from the cul-de-sac where it had sat in front of my house since the day of the original plat survey. I called the police and the city maintenance office to report the theft. At this point, there is now nothing linking the neighborhood layout to the original plat.
A few years back, Mr. Smith came in with plans to develop the solid limestone shelf immediately northwest of my parents’ neighborhood. In order to do this, he has to poach a significant amount land from the current residents' backyards. Never mind that the limestone shelf has recently collapsed in places and that the blasting they'd have to do to build houses would only weaken it further--as well as destroying the structural integrity of the residents' homes--residents such as my parents.
Mr. Smith broke through the legalities preventing development on that land parcel by conning folks into agreeing to let him build an RV campsite on the land. What he promised and what he delivered were very different things, and the entire neighborhood felt swindled. Last summer, I took the matter to city hall and raised enough of a ruckus that the USCGS is doing a geological survey of the area to determine its viability for the proposed development. I'd also heard a while back that it had discovered some actual problems that needed addressing, but I didn't hear what they were or how big.
Mr.Smith is pretty well known as a powerful businessman and complete sleazeball. He's also very sociable and charming--he has good friends at City Hall, the Police Department, and the County Election Board. I know from a very reliable source that he has done some truly awful things to people and that he ended up skating on everything. One of my former poll worker associates is a very good friend of his and confirmed that there was definitely truth to the rumors, though he'd taken care never to find out exactly what. I don’t blame him.
From another source, I'd heard that Mr. Smith was a prolific house-flipper and landlord who did awful things to people who crossed him. I was told that he'd once overbid on the house of a person with whom he was feuding and that his offer was accepted. However, the house mysteriously burned down before closing, so obviously, the sale fell through. Then the Fire Chief said that there seemed to be signs of arson, so the insurance refused to pay out. The fire left that homeowner with nothing. The people renting the house at the time escaped with their lives and very little else.
True or not, the thought of that gave me the willies, because Mr. Smith definitely seems like the sort of guy who would sic his police friends onto his enemies without a second thought. I figured that he might also harass my parents if I spent any more time over there. If that story was true, he'd almost certainly come looking for my house as soon as it hit the market and try the same thing. My stomach wrenched in a wave of sick, anxious, fear.
As I pulled into the driveway of my beloved grandparents' home that I had inherited, I made the decision to closely scrutinize every single offer that was made. The house is a prime candidate for a rental investment property though I would prefer to sell to a family that is hoping to catch a break. This house is listed in 35,000 places from Mexico to Canada, and I know this much for sure: I will take the best offer I get from an out-of-state buyer who is farthest from Tulsa and has no connections to the area.
Before I got out of the car, I removed the toll tag transponder stuck to the windshield. I pasted it to my refrigerator so that if anyone was keeping tabs on my movements through it somehow, it would always look like I was home. I scraped off the remaining bumper stickers and removed the fuzzy dice from my rearview mirror, too. When I went inside, I started by planning my route out of Oklahoma to avoid both the toll system and the Tulsa and Mayes County arms of the Oklahoma Highway patrol. I determined to leave by the next Saturday afternoon, at the latest.
The morning I was packing up to leave, I saw my lifelong neighbor going from her car to her house. C had moved in during the early '80s, and had been in that house since I was a five-year-old. She'd known my grandparents fairly well and was an absolute sweetheart. I thanked her for being a great neighbor and told her I would miss her. Her autistic grandson P was with her. We'd made friends a few years back, he and I, even though his mom, C's eldest, had been one of my bullies in high school. The boy's mother had been spending an increasing amount of time at her mother C's house and scowled like mad at the sight of me every time she saw me in my yard. P completely ignored me as I hugged his grandmother.
As I was loading up my car to leave, C's neighbor on the other side, D, came by. D was a Vietnam vet who'd moved into the neighborhood in 1979. D asked if I needed help loading my car even though I had never spoken to him before in my life. He said he was the neighbor who'd been in the neighborhood the longest. I asked if he'd known my grandparents, Bob and Mary. He said he had. I told him that he may have lived here the longest, but that my family moved in the year the neighborhood was built, as paid for by the WWII GI Bill.
"I guess this was the end of an era,” I said, looking at him.
"Too bad," said D, smiling sadly. He then turned and made his way back to his house. At that moment, neighborhood terrier Carson started nipping around my ankles. His mom, E, had brought him on a walk--without a leash. E had actually grown up in the neighborhood in the '60s and '70s. She'd known my grandparents.
Once E had rescued Jason, a cat I fostered during the pandemic. He'd escaped outside and got stuck up her willow tree. E always recalled that to me when we passed in the street and she mentioned it again now. We chatted about how Timbercraft Denali tiny homes and the allure of digital nomad life. Then E went and ruined it all by bemoaning the betrayal she felt when healthcare workers who refused vaccination got fired from their jobs. (She'd been a paralegal before the pandemic.) I just told her it had been a horribly sad and confusing time for everyone, that's for sure, and I bid her goodbye. She did likewise.
That hot barb of a reminder was my cue to leave. So I did. I got into my car and drove. I didn't get out to take a piss or get gas till I reached Paris, Texas.
