…because, after all, the wingnut meltdown into evangelical fascism really belongs below-the-fold (ok, the virtual fold in the digital age), or buried in the back pages, right?

Nothing to see here, move on please…that’s an order

In Arizona, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Lyft driver told the state’s chief election officer she would hang for treason. In Utah, a youth treatment center staffer warned Colorado’s election chief that he knew where she lived and watched her as she slept.

In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die.

“This might be a good time to put a f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pistol in your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f‑‑‑‑‑‑ numbered.”

Just some good old fashioned trolling…

Then there are the school board meetings…

Hell, I’m so old I remember a time when school boards were merely an opportunity for small time wannabees to have some fun politicking…and when I was a bit older, paid employment for videophiles when they weren’t honing their skills via cable TV public access obligations

Beverly Anderson, a long-serving board member for Virginia Beach City Public Schools, said she first noticed an uptick in discontent when she began receiving 50 to 60 emails a day following her school system’s decision to close because of the pandemic in March 2020. Parents started showing up to complain at board meetings soon afterward, and the tone quickly turned far nastier than anything Anderson had seen in almost a decade serving on the school board.

…

By the fall of the 2021-2022 academic year, with the vast majority of school districts reopened for five days a week of almost-normal in-person learning, the arguments shifted to center on curricular and cultural issues. Some parents nationwide — usually White, conservative parents — have become alarmed over what they argue is the indoctrination of their children with critical race theory, a college-level academic framework that examines systemic racism in America.

…

Nowadays, meetings in Anderson’s small Virginia Beach district of 65,000 regularly last until 1 or 2 a.m., she said. Parents sign up in scores for public comment. People hold rallies in the parking lot beforehand, and security personnel or police have begun escorting Anderson and her colleagues to their cars at night’s end.

At one meeting, Anderson said, an attendee gave the board the middle finger and began shouting obscenities, causing the board to ask police to escort her from the building — which spurred accusations that the board had silenced the speaker. At another meeting, after students spoke in defense of books including Toni Morrion’s “Beloved,” parents accused the board of paying the students, Anderson said. One woman vowed an investigation.