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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3223 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Rise of American Authoritarianism

I don't post that to question your statistics. I post that to point out that you're talking about a category that, in my experience, hadn't even been parsed out within mainstream discussion until recently. And that's the shitty thing about mainstreaming: it causes violence. I mean, we elected a black man president seven years ago and we didn't stop talking about his damn birth certificate until what? 2011? Frickin' ammunition didn't start hitting sane prices until like last year. The crazies went crazycrazy and we were damn lucky that yallqaeda wildlife refuge thing was a joke rather than a standoff. Had it happened in 2009 it would have been ugly.

I remember when Matthew Shepard died. The way he died wasn't noteworthy, nor was where, how or why. What was noteworthy was that culturally, we were convinced (that level of) violence against homosexuals was no longer acceptable.

It's a terrible price to pay, but at least we get something with our investment.