One of the pillars of conservatism has always been self-reliance; work hard and you won't need handouts, you're responsible for yourself and your family. A recent addition to "conservative values" is that a parent knows better than anyone else how to educate their children. I have thoughts on that at the end, but for once, I won't digress. These two themes are repeated over and over from right wing voices, so I'll consider them to be without dispute.
As it moves further toward the extreme, the right has become obsessed with drag shows, in particular ones billed as family friendly. They're angry that these shows are tantamount to what they call grooming, convincing children who attend to become drag performers (I guess?). First, normalizing something doesn't do that; the brain doesn't work that way. I could write a whole post on the grooming topic, but I'm not an expert, so won't. Back to drag shows, the right wingers claim the shows aren't suitable for children. In all honesty, they may be right in some cases, but it doesn't matter, as you'll see.
This sentiment (if you believe them), has caused a documented spike in harassment and violence toward the LGBTQ community. There are social media accounts, the worst being Libs of TikTok, who publicize dates and times of these shows, for the sole purpose of stochastic terrorism. The person who runs it says it's purely for awareness, but that claim goes well beyond disingenuous. With the information these accounts provide, armed right wing looneys, wearing face masks, frequently show up to protest these shows. Strike that, when you show up openly armed to the teeth, you're no longer protesting, but engaging in intimidation But the right's activity has begun to gravitate further toward violence. On the extreme, some shot up a substation here in North Carolina just to stop a drag show. Forty thousand people without power; a life threatening situation for many, all because of bigotry. On a side note, I don't think the act was organized so much as a few hillbillies being bigoted inbreds. With their history and path toward escalation in clear view, it's a matter of time before the right wing shoots more than power stations.
As I mentioned above, one of the new cries from the hard right is they know best what education their children need. In other words, a single mother from the Midwest, with a GED, who's never left her home state has a better understanding of learning development than a properly trained educator who's dedicated their life to it. Nothing more to be said there, because it's ludicrous.
This, of course, has nothing to do with proper education, so much as them not wanting their kids exposed to subjects they're intolerant of. Anything to do with whites not being the master race or gender. CRT is one of the buzzwords here. Here's your parting piece of hypocrisy - these parents are angry over what right wing media tells them their kids are being taught, but never actually engage with educators to learn the true story.
