Buttinskies

All we want is to live our lives but something times these people who think they are holier than thou can cause some real damage, including death. Some think that it gives them power over others, belittling, putting down, call them names all makes them feel big! (Now who does that remind you of?)

The suicide of a gender non-conforming GOP mayor reveals the incoherence of the right's culture wars
Instead of thanking a Breitbart writer for outing their leader, this conservative Alabama town is outraged
Salon
By Amanda Marcotte
November 14, 2023

For most Americans, viral internet memes are mostly harmless ways to waste time: Trendy TikTok dances, goofy cat videos and Instagram thirst traps. For MAGA nation, however, the hottest online trend of the past couple of years has been digging up images of random queer people, splashing them all over the internet, and inviting the deplorables to threaten them. Libs of TikTok is a Twitter account dedicated to revealing the identities of gender non-conforming people, so that they can be abused by strangers, for no other reason than who they are. The account has 2.6 million followers, but its reach goes way beyond that because the names and pictures of people blasted by Libs of TikTok are then often amplified by right-wing media outlets like Fox News.

The assault on the mayor began…

With targeted harassment of random queer people being the favorite pastime of MAGA nation, it's not surprising that a right-wing website thought the very conservative residents of one Alabama town would welcome the outing of their mayor. On November 1, 1819 News — an Alabama outlet run by Breitbart writer Jeff Poor — published an article exposing the cross-dressing and sexual fantasies of F.L. "Bubba" Copeland, who was both mayor and a local Baptist minister.

They knew what they were doing and they didn’t care what the results were… they were outing another fa**ot.

If 1819 News thought the very Republican residents of Smiths Station would be grateful that they had outed their Republican mayor, however, they had another thing coming. By all accounts, many people in the town are furious. "Members of this church have been steadfast in their love and concern of their pastor," David White, a congregant at First Baptist, said during Sunday's service.

But they never got the desired affect, instead the people opened their hearts but the Rev. Copeland never got to see their love.

However, the good MAGA followers denied causing his death,

And then there was a subcategory of comment: The people insisting there's no conflict between outrage over what happened to Copeland and being MAGA. "I voted for TRUMP. I lean far right & what happened to this man is despicable," one woman wrote angrily. There was much talk of Christian forgiveness, all to smooth over the cognitive dissonance.

I was outed against my knowledge by a former technician, when I was laid off he wasted no time sending out an email addressed to all company users. We worked side-by-side for over 25 years and he couldn’t even wait until the next day to hit send.

I don’t hate him, I feel sorry him, I feel he needed to feel superior, he was better than his boss!

The only thing is that it backfired, I got tons positive email and even a technician who is a Jehovah Witness said that he knows me as a good person and doesn’t understand why ___________ sent the email. Thursday I went out to dinner with a bunch of former employees (I wondered if he will be there?).

Unsurprising, then, the 1819 News staff is using the same excuse for their "reporting" on Copeland. As the Daily Beast reports, 1819 News CEO Bryan Dawson insists all they did was "tell the truth." And Poor insisted that the people of "the First Baptist Church of Phenix City had a right to know what their worship leader was doing." As with Libs of TikTok, these excuses are disingenuous. In both cases, the "facts" are presented in a maximally salacious manner that hatefully implies queer people are perverts and predators.

My ex-tech was stirring up revolution like the politicians from a certain party.

Trump himself is good at playing this game. He's taken to calling for mass genocide, such as a speech on Saturday where he promised to "root out" the "vermin within the confines of our country." But even though part of his program is explicitly setting up concentration camps for immigrants of color, because he made sure to define "vermin" as "communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs." That lets him pretend he's talking about hating Democrats (which is what all those words are code for), and not talking about race, ethnicity, or status as a sexual minority. Sure enough, he got headlines like the one at Washington Post that reads, "Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini." Good on them for calling out the fascism, but alas, the framing still allows naysayers to claim it's just overheated partisan rhetoric, rather than the genocide talk it actually is.

I will tell you that win or lose, I am afraid! If Trump wins I am afraid of what he will do. And if he loses I am afraid of what his cultist MAGA followers will do.