It's worth an entirely new comment to point out the recent hijacking of monkeypox public health guidelines with anti-gay disinfo. The attacks are dialed up and more frequent, lately, with the emergency declaration. Running the AIDS playbook. GOP fascists are comfortable demonizing larger and larger groups. It's really progressing fast.
This is the direct consequence of isolationism. The fewer people there are in your group, the more enemies there are in the outgroup. This is a point I keep making, and you keep not hearing: the more you isolate yourself from the mainstream, the less the mainstream supports you. Take the GOP's recent misadventures in Kansas, for example: 20% of the GOP electorate decided they didn't trust the GOP legislature with abortion. Tom Hanks had AIDS thirty years ago. Antonio Banderas was his boyfriend. The GOP can absolutely run the AIDS playbook but Ryan White would be fuckin' 50 if he hadn't died prior to the Gulf War. They might as well run against miscegenation. Yeah - there will always be people for whom AIDS is the gay plague and yeah - of late, they have a lot more voice than they used to, and a lot-lot more voice than they should. But that voice is growing hoarse and faint.GOP fascists are comfortable demonizing larger and larger groups. It's really progressing fast.