Copycat

Image by Attila Pergel from Pixabay

For just a moment, let's stop ruminating over all the craziness Donald Trump has inflicted. It's time for a change.

Instead, let's start ruminating over the craziness inflicted by a Trump Mini-Me. I didn't say it would be a big change.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been leading his country away from democracy for years. The autocrat's party is down in the polls, and with elections upcoming, he's thrown his right-wing base some red meat:  us.

The Hungarian parliament this week passed a constitutional amendment allowing the government to ban public events by LGBTQ communities. In other words, kiss Budapest Pride goodbye.

Orbán's government, you see, wants to protect children from "woke ideology" and "gender madness." Also, the new amendment states there are two sexes, male and female, thereby establishing constitutional grounds for denying the existence of transgender and intersex people.

All that sound familiar? The truth is we can't really get away from Trump—his particular brand of bigotry has been exported to Europe.

And he didn't even slap a tariff on it.