Choads by the Truckload

Now here’s an amusing headline.

Seriously, though … Saturday afternoon, a U-Haul truck carrying 31 masked and uniformed members of the Patriot Front was stopped in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The thugs in the back were on their way to a Pride event at a local park, where they clearly intended to bust heads.

When the first reports came in, I automatically assumed federal law enforcement agencies had informants in the Patriot Front and had stepped in to prevent violence. Surely, I remarked to Donna, if it had been left to local authorities, they’d more likely have given the truck a police escort to the park, and probably loaned the thugs their batons as well.

Well shame on me. It turns out it was local and state cops who saved the day, not the feds, by stopping the truck and arresting its occupants before they could do any harm. I’m delighted to be wrong.

Now, though, I see headlines like this:

Coeur d’Alene Police Receive Death Threats for Arresting Patriot Front Members

The police department received 149 phone calls on Monday morning about the arrests, including one from as far away as Norway, White said. He said they were a “50/50 split,” between local calls of support for the police and anonymous angry calls from those upset about the arrests. White confirmed that users on far-right social media platforms have doxxed Coeur d’Alene officers, publicly identifying them and publishing personal information about them online. “The other 50%, who are completely anonymous, who want nothing more than to scream and yell at us and use really choice words, offered death threats against myself and other members of the police department merely for doing our jobs,” White said.

As you know, I follow book banning and school board takeover trends in Idaho and other red states. None of this — not the attempted attack, not the reaction of right-wingers to the cops who stopped it — surprises me. The tie-in between book banning and violence against gays is right out there where anyone can see it, just as it was in Germany in the 1930s.

Recently, to help stay on top of the trends I blog about, I started following Libs of TikTok, one of the hate-brigade cheerleaders drumming up hysteria over what right-wingers believe to be the “grooming” of children by LGBTQ-sympathetic teachers, librarians, and school boards. This month, Libs of TikTok has been focusing on Pride events. Here’s a sample:

Singer Christina Aguilera wore this on stage while performing at LA’s Pride in the Park. The advertisements did not metion any age requirement and it appears this was an all-ages event. @lapride were children present by this performance? pic.twitter.com/fnXFuDNVZV

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 13, 2022

The Patriot Front choads busted in Idaho, and those who support them, claim there’s “a war of perversion against our children,” a war being waged by liberals and the LGBTQ community. You can justify damn near anything in the name of protecting children, violence against groups you hate most definitely included.

I know, I know … it’s the same old shit, over and over, but the violence associated with gay-bashing (as with anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of hate) has peaks and valleys, and if what almost happened in Coeur d’Alene  over the weekend is any indication, we’re ramping up toward another peak.