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| Family Research Council president Tony Perkins |
I'm not surprised by the most recent attempt by the Family Research Council and its president, Tony Perkins, to gaslight about the January 6th insurrection of 2021. I wouldn't necessarily say that I hoped they would but I knew that before the day ended, I would have something from them to write about.
They didn't disappoint as this snippet from the FRC webpage proves:
The rest of the country already celebrated Christmas, but for Democrats, it's today. To them, the anniversary of the January 6th riot marks one of the greatest political gifts ever given -- a terrible stain on our country that Joe Biden's party will forever exploit and distort to keep the outrage about conservatives burning. "Every day is January 6 now," the New York Times had the audacity to declare. And maybe for the far-Left it is. For a struggling and fractured party with no successes to speak of, the constant reminder of 2021's traumatic event seems to be the only thing they can grab to keep their socialist dreams afloat.That's not to say that what happened when the mob stormed the Capitol wasn't repugnant. It was. But it was also the culmination of months of frustration, isolation, nationwide lawlessness, and despair, cheered on by (if not orchestrated) by the Left. "This is what inevitably happens when a society lets violent mobs run roughshod through cities and towns and does nothing," John Daniel Davidson warned. And while the vast majority of people on that day weren't there to shatter windows or trash offices, the entire conservative movement is still paying a steep price for those who were.President Biden, desperate to make political hay while the media's sun is shining, railed against the entire Republican Party this morning for its supposed "plot" to topple democracy. They held "a dagger at the throat of America," he accused before making another empty appeal to unity. "I will stand in this breach," Biden claimed, after 12 months of doing nothing to bind the nation's wounds.
Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's former chief of staff, could only shake his head at how the date continues to cast a shadow on all the president accomplished. "It is really all about trying to make sure that January 6th defines what President Trump and his entire four years was all about. You and I know that's not the case," he said on "Washington Watch" Wednesday.. . . The Donald Trump he knew wasn't the reckless villain the Left and media make him out to be. "He's got an unbelievable compassionate heart. People don't realize that in [private], when there [are] no cameras rolling, things touch him in a way and he does something about it -- whether it's writing personal checks, whether it's making calls to people that have suffered loss. He loves this country and does that in a way that profoundly impacted me."
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| UFC fighter Sean Strickland |
Some of us have yet to get used to this being 2022 but already we are reminded about the need for LGBTQ visibility and especially the benefits of LGBTQ celebrities coming out.
And it's all thanks to an unbelievably insensitive and rather stupid comment by UFC fighter Sean Strickland in December:
According to the webpage Queerty - and as you can see in the above tweet, Strickland was answering a fan's question. The attention I pay to the homophobia of his comment does not any in way diminish the same degree of eyerolling I commit when it comes to his comment about women. Queerty points out that his comments received a lot of backlash. The site shows that Strickland has a 'knack' for saying stupid and ugly things.
But still, what the hell!!?
With so many LGBTQ kids going through trauma partly because of their justified fears of coming out to their parents, Strickland is setting an awful example. And spare me the oncoming digs about him being a UFC fighter and the hackneyed lines about him supposedly a being 'punch-drunk meathead.' Strickland's type of ignorance goes beyond UFC. It is worldwide and it is ugly. Just like when Dave Chappelle came out with his transphobic ugliness and folks were quick to diminish the anger of those he attacked, some will also be quick to claim that backlash to Strickland's comments is 'cancel culture.'
It is 'cancel culture,' but not to people like Strickland. Comments like his amplify and reinforce ignorant attitudes and ugly mindsets which leads to the diminishing of the mental and physical health of our children. Comments like Strickland's strip our babies of their self-worth and security, dragging them down to the path of being thrown out of their homes, physical violence, psychological instability, and worse. LGBTQ kids are the ones being cancelled, not people like Strickland.
And it is a depressingly simple reason why I support LGBTQ celebrities publicly coming out. Some folks see it as a tiresome trend, repeatedly done to death. Perhaps they have a point. But a much better and much more crucial point is maybe newly coming out celebrities are standing in the gap for kids whose parents should know better and should be better, but steadily refuses to act better.
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| Lil Nas X |
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| Family Research Council president Tony Perkins |
But unlike other Republicans, FRC and Perkins aren't outright spinning the lie that the 2020 election was 'stolen' or that the January 6 insurrection is being falsely 'overhyped' by the media. Instead, the group has chosen to walk a thin line and play the passive-aggressive game, as witnessed by a portion of some nonsense found on its webpage. Via this drivel, Perkins and FRC are attacking Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi. They are angry at Riccardi for writing a very good article on how the GOP is exploiting Trump's stolen election lie in order to grab the power to control future elections.
This passage from the FRC piece caught my attention:
The riot at the U.S. Capitol -- a year ago this week -- has provided all the ammunition the media needs to smear anyone working to erase the doubts about the fairness of U.S. elections. In the 12 months since that unruly mob, Democrats have rushed to paint every conservative trying to safeguard elections with the broad brush of treason. "They're laying the groundwork," former Democratic operative Mark Brewer claims in the AP piece, "for a slow-motion insurrection." How? By trying to ensure that everyone's vote is sacred?
It's a ludicrous claim -- and yet the AP, in one of the greatest affronts to journalism, is passing it off as fact. To suggest that people who are changing the laws -- or using the process to reinforce the laws that already exist -- are trying to overthrow the government isn't just biased reporting, it's dangerous reporting. Taking the earnest efforts of citizens and wrapping them in a loaded term like "insurrection" is like the AP taking a pitchfork to democracy.
And then there was this passage:
What 2020 taught us is that there are major vulnerabilities in our election system -- many of which were exploited, thanks to COVID. And anyone who doubts that these issues exist can check out Heritage's new election integrity scorecard and read the detailed ratings of every state. "[We look at it] from the standpoint of do they protect security and integrity? And you'll find, boy, there [are] a lot of states around the country that have serious problems in their election systems."
It's stuff like this by Perkins and FRC which is as dangerous as the firebrand nonsense spewed by Trump and his most rabid supporters. Probably more dangerous. It's concern trolling at its worse; psychological manipulation created to sow doubt about a situation in which there should be no doubt.
