So, In Other Words, a Trump Rally?

Tourists say they thought the “Straight Pride Parade” in Boston was a Trump rally #WCVB pic.twitter.com/n3YdXjK9sG

— John Atwater (@AtwaterWCVB) August 31, 2019

It's no real big shock to see a big-ass Trump float urging people to vote for Cheeto Christ and "Build the Wall", because GASP! this freak show was really not about being straight, because people who are okay with their straight selves don't really need to take anything away from people who are currently, this minute, here in the US, still being told they can be discriminated against because somebody's God doesn't like them. That's not a pride parade, assholes, that's an end zone dance over people's lives, and yes, we did get to see some of that choreography during this hatenanny.

But, by and large, this was a not-so-friendly, mostly white supremacist thing, as the organizer of a similar (also sparsely attended) event in Modesto basically gave away in Freudian fashion, accidently calling it a "totally peaceful racist group." And so it was with the Boston event, thus, the appearance of chuds dressed as "Honkler" :

These two men traveled for 8 hours from Pennsylvania to Boston Straight Pride to represent the banned reddit subreddit /r/frenworld one is holding a pillow of Youtuber Sargon of Akkad pic.twitter.com/1i6HT8W8i1

— Sam Bishop (@sebishop99) August 31, 2019

Because nothing says "this is really about being proud of being straight" like dressing as a Frog-Clown Hitler (except for the "taking back the rainbow" aspect of said Clown, which is just embarrassingly petty for uptight mofos who probably just wear, like, khaki all the time) and nothing says "I totally sleep with women" like carrying one's anime body pillow of a …. Sigh. There is clearly some other stuff going on there.

The reason I give this weird exercise in performative "We're so normal, it's weird" play-date oxygen is because it has the same basic goal as the Proud Boys bullshit in Portland: they want to promote conflict, get anti-fa (well, anti-them) protestors arrested, and basically exhaust the resources of the cities they decide to pull their fuckery in. There is some degree of intimidation-factor at work, an assumption that cops will support their nonsense (whether it's because its the job or because of some sympathy) and that, if they bs the message just right, they get press that normalizes the more fucked-up elements of what they represent.

In short, they show up in force (for a sad value of force) in order to manifest Maximum Assholery where said assholery is its own profit. I think if that alone was the goal--"mission accomplished". But there is a benefit in pointing out that the types of people who are just being goofily, nonsensically signifying at a thing like that, are also connected to groups who marched at the Unite the Right rally, and in other venues, where they don't bring costumes and floats, but clubs, hammers, and elsewhere, AR-15's.

All I can say is, I chose the side of the culture war with better costumes and values and that has made all the difference to me. Let's just not normalize what they want to call "normalcy", because it never was. And take note that as fucking bizarre as all this is, as angry, as discriminatory--this has been a spoke in the GOP umbrella for awhile. Anti-gay and racist and fascist-adjacent as this is: it should wear a big old "Trump" brand.  Like a dead  albatross that won't drop off.