This has been America. It's hard to imagine now, but it's been nearly a decade since my mom's boyfriend was almost murdered by two homophobic strangers. He was walking back from work late at night, they mistook him for someone cruising (how tf would they even know what that looks like, idk), they jumped him in the dark and beat him bloody. He only survived because one of his coworkers noticed he didn't make it back to the hotel after the gig and went looking for him. EMTs said he'd have bled out by morning.

This country was a fucking shithole then, and it's still a shithole now.

[–] RainaLillius@lemm.ee 25 points 16 hours ago

The rate of hate crimes does go up when you have a hate monger in office. There was a spike in his last term and there will be this time also.