I have a large group of friends through a common interest we all have. Their political views range over the spectrum so we avoid discussions of politics when together. In the past I rarely gave politics or one's beliefs any thought with respect to making friends.
Now? I'm the only one who didn't take the jab. And as far as I know, I am the only one aware of the psyop. Because of this I feel myself pulling away even though I don't want to. They're meeting this evening and I can't bring myself to go...
Totally agree -- it's the people who put up those "Love" signs on their lawns who spew the most visceral hatred against anybody who disagrees with them.
I travel in both blue and red circles (needless to say, they don't intersect). In red circles, political discussion tends to revolve around issues and ideas; whereas in blue circles, political talk is almost all sarcasm and name-calling against the other side.
Podcast/TV/Radio personality Dan Bongino has said something for a while that makes the most sense, and IMO has gotten worse over the last five years. “Republicans think Democrats are people with bad ideas. Democrats think Republicans are BAD people with ideas.”
I don't listen to Dan much. But I do agree with this. I have friends/family on both left and right. I hear insults/sarcasm pointed at the 'other' side from both left/right. But my experience is that the right/independents CAN choose to have conversations and even get off politics. But I haven't met many on the left who can refrain from debates and name calling.
My take is if you read the 'news' or anything these days and it makes you mad, you're probably being played. I ask myself: what is REALLY important?
YES. Most news--and many substacks--are designed sheerly to provoke outrage. A distraction from being IRL and finding common ground, like-minded folk, ways to work with un-like-minded folk based on physical-world reality that needs addressing.
I identified with the Left for about a decade and a half, originally in response to the "War on Terror" and the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. I think there has always been a bit of woke, holier-than-thou virtue-signalling about the Left that always tends to attack the cultural integrity of our society. But up until the 2016 election, leftists were generally reasonable and had serious opinions.
In early 2017, when Trump was sworn in as President, the hatred became normalized. At that time, the Democratic front groups actually discussed, and peremptorily decided upon, opposing Trump unconditionally, even if he was doing the right thing. As soon as they decided on that, they lost their issues and they lost their integrity. All they had left was pure, partisan hatred, focused on the person of Donald Trump and inevitably extended to all his supporters.
Those of us that cared about issues have fallen away, and those that are left are the tribal Democrats whose identity is so tied up with their party and cliques that they cannot deviate from their party's line. And that party line channels the bitter, spiteful soul of the disappointed loser of the 2016 election, mortified that she was beaten by her own chosen ringer, and desiring to wreak revenge on the country that rejected her.
Snow. Thank you for saying this. I voted for Obama first term because I completely abhorred Bush for his lies. The good thing is I found out Obama was a fraud after he started turning everything into a race war.
He threw the baby out with the bath water out of expediency.
We had come so far since I was a child in the 70's. Nobody was really thinking about race at that point until he stoked hatred.
Agree with you and Snow,most of my friends voted for Obama the first time, but for some reason I smelled a rat. He was too smooth for a brand new senator and that triggered my BS meter. He was overwhelmingly elected because of white voters because of lack of racism. Then like you said, everything after that became all about racism. I blame him personally for the hate and division we find ourselves in right now. Think about it! What are the democrat policies? I'm not really sure other than power and control at all costs!
I agree! Race relations were infinitely better before Obama became president, because he immediately used his position to stoke racism in our country. His declaration that racism is hardwired into our DNA and the whole "police acting stupidly" affair being just two examples.
And "convicting" people, without due process (and before the facts were in) in the court of public opinion on national television.
He caused Ferguson. That town is destroyed and will never come back. Same thing these haters did during the George Floyd saga.
Last but not least, the people they usually hurt most by stoking hate that inevitably leads to violence/chaos are the minorities they claim they're seeking justice for.
So odd that Trump was uniformly hated by both sides because he wasn't one of their tribes. And they won't stop because he is much too dangerous besides being a loose cannon. Pity he was such a poor judge of people and had such an ego.
Good points. A couple additions. It wasn't just "the democrats" who went full bore hate on Trump: most of the GOP too - pretty much all of established politicians. Some pretended to support Trump admin policies when it seemed necessary at election time. It wasn't just Trump - every voter who voted for Trump was deemed he enemy. The very idea that so many people would support an outsider was blasphemy to the political powers that be. BTW, the GOP made rules changes that will prevent the "hostile takeover" of 2016, copying near verbatim the DNC rules that ensure they can add un-elected delegates at the last minute to overcome any potential disruption by voters.
The "normalized hate" was obvious to me long before 2016, though maybe not as overt and extreme. It goes beyond simple ego ("we're wright and they're wrong"). Decades of public education has instilled the idea that it is fundamentally wrong to be independent. To enforce such a notion, you have to demonize all that would oppose the "obvious greater good". Anyone not in our tribe shall not be tolerated. This is not new. I realized the intolerance of outsiders decades ago (about the same time I realized I was an outsider). It became more overt, perhaps, or maybe the events of 2016-2022 made a lot of people open their eyes and look.
Trump didn't belong to the uniparty, thus too dangerous to tolerate. OTOH, that's what the voters wanted. Tea Party = MAGA, eventually the voters must win.
This is VERY interesting: "And that party line channels the bitter, spiteful soul of the disappointed loser of the 2016 election, mortified that she was beaten by her own chosen ringer, and desiring to wreak revenge on the country that rejected her."
I hadn't come across that theory before, that Trump was Hillary's chosen candidate! Where can I learn more about it?
I think that came out in the emails of Clinton's campaign Chairman, John Podesta, which were leaked to Wikileaks in March of 2016. I didn't read them myself, and it looks like I'm getting error screens or "Prohibited" messages when I try to access them now. The Wayback Machine also doesn't seem to have them, so maybe the internet is being scrubbed more thoroughly than we had supposed. Or perhaps I'm no good at this, and you would have better luck.
What I remember from secondary discussions around that time, probably mainly from writers on Counterpunch, is that Trump was previously a Democrat, and was a friend of the Clintons in the 1990s. I've seen a group photo of a much younger Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Mike Bloomberg, and one or two other kingpins in informal camaraderie at a golfcourse, Trump beaming and towering over the others. In early 2015, Trump got married for the third time, and Hillary Clinton attended his wedding. Shortly after that, Trump announced his campaign, the very one that Hillary had been carefully preparing for the previous year. An old Trump quote from the late 1980s or so was recalled, to the effect that if he ever ran for President, he would run as a Republican, since he thought the Republicans were stupid enough to vote for him.
From the beginning of the campaign, the Clinton-supporting MSM focused heavily on Trump, giving him almost daily front page coverage. Normally, they would have starved an outsider for attention, and his campaign would have gone nowhere. Jeb Bush was the expected Republican front-runner and probable nominee, in a year in which it was the Republicans' "turn" to win (eight-year cycle with only one exception going back to 1952), and the two parties were divided dynastically between the Bushes and the Clintons. But the MSM gave all attention to Trump, and it was Jeb Bush and the other neocon RINOs who were starved out.
The coverage was all hostile, to incite the Democrats, but at the same time it carried a "Can he do it?" tone, to tempt the conservative Republican base. The wisdom at that time among the corrupt RINO-DINO Uniparty was that they themselves were the moderate adults, creating a mature settlement between the two extremes. Their belief was that, although an "extremist" might be able to win one party's nomination, they would then crushingly lose the general election, because then they would be too far out on one thin wing of the bell curve, and would be greatly outweighed by the other party and the "center." Empirically, Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, and George McGovern lent weight to this theory.
I recall the gist of two quotes lifted by writers commenting on the Podesta emails. One of these, from around the spring or summer of 2015, was that Hillary had asked him to reach out to their friends in the media to have them promote whatever Republican candidates were most over the top: "Trump, Cruz, Carson..." The second, from early 2016, showed Podesta fussing something to the effect of: "I'm worried. Hillary is basing her entire campaign strategy on Trump getting the Republican nomination. What if he doesn't win?"
If these two quotes can be verified, I think they would pretty well make the case that Trump was Hillary's chosen candidate. The rest is circumstantial. About a month out from the election, I can recall the Clintonist MoveOn gang chortling that the election was in the bag, that Trump was so lame that he had no organization on the ground to bang on people's doors to get out the vote, like they did. This didn't seem surprising if he was in fact running for his opponent; why should he waste the money? His publicity had already been paid for by her.
A few days before the election, the confident jeering from MoveOn turned to squeaks of alarm, as the polls began shifting in the wrong direction. They put out an all-hands-on-deck call, which was duly ignored by such Sanders supporters as myself, still chafing at what had happened to our delegates at the Democratic Convention. Trump won, possibly as surprised as Hillary. He had no team in place, no high-level supporters, only the tens of millions of ardent yokels whose votes had made him President. A Counterpunch writer reported that he spent his evenings alone in the White House, forlorn, tapping out messages on Twitter. Even his wife preferred to stay home in New York.
I've never been sure about the real Donald Trump. Either he was a genius who won a high-stakes bet on a shoe-string, or he was a con man working to throw the election to a patron whose toxicity proved too much for their combined powers to overcome. In either case, Hillary considered his victory to be treason, and her machine has been raining the wrath of Hell on him ever since.
Interesting that even though it backfired spectacularly, Democrats have continued to use the strategy of pushing more "extreme" candidates for Republican nominations (Mastriano in Pennsylvania, for example) who they thought would be easier to beat.
And I imagine that you, as a Sanders supporter, saw the same kind of orchestration taking place in 2020 when all of the other Democratic candidates suddenly dropped out to endorse Biden (of all people), when it looked like Sanders might come out on top.
The hate is there left of right or up or down. What you may be seeing is that on what identifies as "the left" it has become an acceptable, almost mandated, hate in the mainstream. Most of my acquaintances "on the left", meaning loyal and proud democrats, will accept broad generalizations and declarations of evilness about "those evil bastards on the right" (what they fail to recognize as bigotry). While my right-leaning friends seem more often "live and let live" position - which used to be "the left". There is likely some measurement bias here. But perhaps the extreme hate is still delegated to the edges of the right?
We've also redefined hate. For an example, say you happen to believe in biology with respect to gender assignment as being absolute, and that the biological imperative of species propagation makes homosexuality unnatural. I would disagree. In a rational world, we could debate this.. I could acknowledge the point while pointing out there is much more to nature than biology. Ultimately we might agree that there's enough procreating humans that tolerating others is OK. Yet in today's political climate, even asking the question is defined as hate. Even failing to acknowledge another persons chosen pronoun is defined as hate. So that makes the polarization even easier.
BTW, in my opinion, identify however you like. Just don't make it my problem and we'll be fine. I'll tolerate your chosen gender if you'll tolerate my occasionally using the wrong pronoun.
There doesn't seem to be as much hate on substack. I tend to just block hateful people on other sites, and that's a full-time job. Is asking if someone who died suddenly was jabbed being hateful?
I agree with your analysis. On substack, the comments I read are thoughtfully expressed. On other sites (WSJ for example) comments and opinions quickly deteriorate into ad hominem attacks. Hard to have a conversation when a reply has nothing to do with what you actually wrote.
I found the WaPo impossible. I found Newsweek more open but filled with an excessive of what-about-ism. Then again I see a lot of commentary there that shows a real lack of understanding about factual truth that can often be found on SubStack with receipts.
WaPo is actually the worst of the MSM. there are more insane places (like al off the default subreddits, vox, jacobin, etc) but in terms of an ostensibly serious space, the people subbed to WaPo are by far the craziest
The left's talking points /fundraising points / themes in mainstream and progressive media is so much about how scary and dangerous the right is. Full of hate and projection. I'm less familiar with the conversations on the right, but sometimes I see individual examples of hate that are disturbing and feed right (no pun intended), into the Mean Violent Homophobic caricature that the left makes of the right.
But in general, yes, it seems like the left has become cartoons of projection and their main mode is being ANTI-everything (and anti-anti-vax).
Oh,definitely pedo Joe is done. Question is can they prop him up till the end of his term? And BIG MIKE OBAMALAMA-DING-SCHLONG is definitely running for 2024! She/he just came out with another book dontcha know! Lol!
Yeah, none of horses seem interested in going back in & living in the same barn until they've all had some serious attitude adjustment. And the barn probably needs de-hexing as well :) Maybe we should take a clue from the Aussies on just this one thing: https://resistthemainstream.com/first-country-to-reclassify-mdma-and-magic-mushrooms-for-medical-use/ That might be the only thing that could accomplish the national chip off shoulder attitude adjustment, hate eradication mission in short order. Enact a 1 week national holiday and switch out the flouride from all the public water supplies and apply some real medicine instead :) LOL - can you just imagine.... I have my own well, but I think I'd be bottling a few dozen jugs of water at a friend's house, just for ongoing attitude adjustments in the future :)
Well--ll--ll. I'd like to disagree, but hopefully in a most pleasant way. We don't need to avoid discussing politics "to be polite". We need to re-learn how to debate. And also re-learn when to *not* get engaged in speaking when there is a likelihood any reasonable debate could quickly devolve into a screaming match.
The debating process can be codified into set of rules (see: how do debate teams work). That's "technical", in a way. Learning when to walk away from an argument is kind of an art form, hence two conflicting types of processes.
Idunno, maybe someone wants to argue with me about that theory. 8-D
the issue with this is that it's somewhat circular and utopian.
"if humans were better at X, then doing X would not be so divisive."
"if people were more open minded and rational, we could have more open minded and rational debates."
there is probably a bit of give here and some progress possible, but human nature really doesn't change that much.
is there any evidence that you can get most of humanity to behave this way? it seems unlikely.
the reason it used to succeed at places like universities is that only the top 5% of the most rational went there. with numbers like 40-50% now, you don't have the talent pool.
True. I've been alternating between being among the not-employed or remotely-employed for a while, so that existential fear of the toxic workplace has kind of faded a little bit for me. That probably makes me a bit susceptible to utopian thinking.
Your last paragraph makes an interesting point. My own case: in 1968, Mount Holyoke accepted me with a "scholarship" because of my "fine academic preparation" (the upper 700's on College Board exams probably didn't hurt). Then at sometime in the next few decades, admissions moved from scholarships (essentially a 'buying the brightest" scheme) to 'need based aid'. Of a sudden they are are no longer going after the best. Now admittedly in the case of the Seven Sisters, the move to 'girls on campus'! at the formerly all-male schools must have necessitated a change in habit for the all-women schools.. That 5% you refer to seem to have converged on those men's schools. And, I think perhaps (having taken young people to these schools for interviews) the focus of those students, moved in a direction other than academic engagement.
And then, we must not forget the appearance of D--I--E---which further debased the intellectual talent pool.
How much do you know about the time period of the Robber barons and such? When the wealth of society becomes so ill distributed you end up with times like these. You don't talk about economics much though
One thing I try to do in discussing divisive issues is to avoid asserting my opinions as fact, and instead objectivize my own subjectivity. Instead of declaring "X," I tend to say, "My understanding is that X." Instead of saying "Y is evil," I might say, "I am strongly opposed to Y." This informs the other person of where I stand, and lets me communicate my ideas about things, without implicitly trying to force them to agree with me. I find that this method can be persuasive, and keeps us both out of screaming matches.
At the end of every game of rugby, the two teams who have beaten each other up for 80 minutes, shake hands. They can do this because they were all playing rugby, and playing by its rules.
I agree, and so I sit in silence when I’m with certain groups, because I don’t want to discuss politics, let’s talk about music, sports, art, gardening whatever, because whenever I try interjecting any of the above topics, someone ALWAYS pivots to politics. It’s a world I’m trying to escape, and trying to find Community again with individuals who are interested in something other than identity politics is like looking for a goldfish in a shark tank!
Perhaps proving your point, and Gato's, the problem is currently the leftists are pushing politics into music, sports, art, education, corporations etc. by using the weapon of DEI/CRT. They know their stances full of shit, but its worth pushing because it enhances their power structure, albeit in a destructive way.
The left have destroyed art. As a conservative leaning liberterian, I have my whole life been a cinephile. I love movies. Now I cant bare to watch most anything made in recent years. They are simply checking boxes, the hell with the plot or story. TV is far worse. I say this also as someone who enjoys everything from Casablanca to Fast and Furious 9. Its become unbearable. For entertainment now I basically rewatch old TV series. I rewatch old movies. Just tell a good story or make an entertaining mindless diversion. I dont need to be beat in the head with identity politics every time I turn on a television show or watch a new movie.
It's definitely wild. I think some new movies are literally made with the idea that the people watching them are only going to be half watching them while on their phones too. I watched Shotgun Wedding the other night at 3am while up with my newborn and it was an absolute black hole
It should not be a part of every conversation but “polite society” should be able to debate and even disagree without rage. In my experience, those advocating no discussing politics usually do that advocating after they have stated their position.
What polite company? If you work in blue bubble areas like Silicon Valley, like I do. The lefties scream politics at the top of their lungs at work when you are there just sitting in the corner just doing your work. and you cannot avoid it even if you want to. Often times the middle upper management dweebs are the main cheer leaders. Fuck them, it is time for a divorce or civil war.
I have a brother-in-law who does that. It's like a tic, these inappropriate statements come out of his mouth when you are discussing something completely benign like the dinner menu. I usually just ignore him like anyone else who has the NYT as his bible. But once when he snidely looked at me and said he was just reading "that liberal rag" (his words), I replied, "don't you mean that state run media outlet"? Teehee, he had no comeback for that.
Not advocating civil war. Divorce is good in this case. And OMG blue bubble is too kind a description for SV. This place is frickin' TyDBowl on steroids. YES the most insecure and insufferable middle management are the WORST. Having to sit in meetings that always turn to politics, tolerate far-left chat rooms, endure training on the latest progressive fads, deal with the sycophant cheerleaders ... UGH.
The problem is that politics has been inserted into every facet of society that used to have nothing to do with politics. The conversation cannot be avoided.
Please share them here, dear Gato. I don't do texting, and I like to keep my anonymity, such as it is...
(I am honored.) Best wishes.
(Coming from a communist country, where many many topics were off limits, I am not in favor and you are not likely to convince me. I find talking about politics and religion vital.)
Something tells me Gato did not originate these requests to text him. It's out of character, and why would he give out his phone number like that?
The part about "For your audience" gives it away IMO. Those two posts are addressed to people who don't have a Substack and otherwise have no evident large audience, so why would he be offering them something "for your audience"?
I don't mind discussing a particular issue. I might learn something I was not aware of that could change my perspective. But that rarely happens. I find that folks just spout what they heard on their favorite news outlet with no real understanding of the issue and cannot discuss it intelligently when asked to elaborate. The lefties just shout something stupid like "Orange man bad!" Which had nothing to do with the topic at hand.
people need a safe space for conversation, if intentionally created safe space for those who want to talk about politics and someone in the group presents a clear way out of the right/left elite rule box then we are on our way to non-violent societal transformation.
My 11th grade American History teacher instructed us thus: when someone asked her for whom she had voted, she always replied, "Isn't this a nice day!" That was ~1965.
I too don’t feel as connected with certain friendships even family relationships because of the harsh judgment sent at me. People who I thought knew me, my character, in an instant threw me under the bus, because I wasn’t buying into the Covid crap. I don’t deny Covid is a serious flu. But from the beginning, lockdowns, no alternative medicine (let people suffer, when their lips turn blue, throw them on a ventilator watch them die), hypocrisy everywhere, riots ok, but going to the beach evil! The list goes on and on. The fact that people could so easily follow the narrative without a single....”mmm...that seems off?” Scares the $%*! Out of me! So for me it’s a protective barrier I have put up, if I can’t trust someone, I don’t let them in. Because they scare the hell out of me.
I feel the same way. Just a lingering distrust. I look at people and realize I am on my own, and that's ok. When I meet another "leper" I feel the colony again and that we can trust one another. But in my life, as in most people's lives now - 90% of the people you interact with are not in the leper colony, so it is isolating.
I get it. I feel as you do. I also sit in silence and have watched a seemingly insurmountable wedge driven between me and my leftist friends, of whom I have several and love very much. But it's like we live in different worlds. In some cases I feel like if they ever bothered to attempt to learn what I really think and believe--rather than just assuming I share their views, the relationship would be sacrificed. And I believe that based on their comments that take the form of dismissal and denigration of "the others" that think differently. They assign as has been noted here, evil and fascism, baselessly in my view to anyone not in lockstep with the Democrat party line as espoused by the CNN/MSM opinion. And yet, I believe them to be good people. I can't help but believe, that their motives are in the interest of a better world and society. But I don't think they in most cases, can make that same assumption about non-leftist beliefs and opinion. I wish I knew better how to get to that common ground. I find it's somewhat easier if it's one on one because in that sort of conversation you can bring up facts that are ignored by mainstream leftist media. But in a group; forget it. You get ganged up on. So it's easier to shut up. I find, they recoil from ideological challenge and so attack like a pack of wolves. I personally think it's because if someone holds a low information point of view, it doesn't withstand much scrutiny, and so if you're wedded to it, you'll use whatever works to defend it which ends up being the name calling and the like.
I know exactly how you feel and what it feels like. I can't make new friends because there
is no one unjabbed around me...and all my friends are dying. Recurring cancers, new illnesses, etc.
I want to ignore the division in politics (which is also predominant where I live)...but
really, there is no fundemental commonailty ...all roads lead back to this jabbed/unjabbed division...because it is a huge gap between who sees reality, and who doesn't.
And it leaves very little to talk about, when all is said and done. You can't even discuss the weather even..hey its snowing ..its climate change....which leads to who believes it, and who doesn't.
Leaves you only talking about cable bill increases, electricity increases, etc etc...which eventually leads to inflation, and who beleives it is massive government overprinting of money to crash the economy, and who doesn't even grasp the concept of money.
I was fortunate in that there is a robust freedom movement in Maine that I found when the lockdowns happened, but I also joined a few online groups that have been lifesavers. I have made real friends and built real community. Find your people. It’s The Way.
Sarah, are you willing to divulge the county? Or is this freedom movement running throughout? I'm in Lincoln, but at present only for part of the year. Would very much like to find others.
All over the state, lots of folks in Lincoln! I'm in Sagadahoc. You probably want to go to the Owl's Head meeting. I can connect you. What town are you in?
I don't think there's a way to send a message through substack but I have a public identity:) Go to my website www.innerseahomeopathy.com and schedule an info call - tell me in the comments section who you are so I have the info to hand for you.
I am so sorry. The people you can talk with are still out there. I met someone new yesterday and we both enjoyed talking about the many places he and his wife have lived, what they liked and didn't in each, his wife finally working at the company of her dreams. We talked about how restrictive one place was with respect to vaccinations for a sentence or two and then moved on.
A month or so ago I was at a group dinner with what I assumed were all unjabbed, after that unmentionable topic came up one guy admitted he was indeed jabbed. I was really impressed at how everybody backed-off the rhetoric and became supportive and conceded that the future is unknown, and we quickly moved to less decisive convo.
Imagine the converse scenario, if everybody in the group were jabbed except for one who admitted he was unjabbed. Hmmm... 🤔
For all the stereotypes and vitriol aimed at us, my observation is that "red" people are on average actually more tolerant and open-minded than "blue" people. In terms of political dynamics this is actually a handicap, because we have a higher threshold of tolerance, so they can get away with more crap.
This has been my experience as someone who voted Demo her whole adult life. Except nowadays, Dems must buy into the extreme narrative (abortion til day before birth, for example) or you're a bigot. No gender ideology in schools and you're a transphobe. Protecting children is no longer a value espoused by the Dem party, unfortunately.
I totally relate to your situation. I come from a very liberal circle of friends. I was a Democrat my whole adult life until the lockdowns and the mandates for cardiotoxic jabs.
I wish them all well. ALL have taken the jab. One of them works for a huge hospital system in Oregon and already jabbed all 3 of her kids (17, 15, 12). I'm heartbroken but will NEVER tell her. I just avoid them all. I pray that none of them end up harmed by the jabs. But I can NO LONGER identify with people who applaud the mandates and support the lies/propaganda while my kids' peers are dying SUDDENLY. I cannot find commonality with people who swallow legacy media lies while poisoning their own kids. I'm so sorry. I find no reason to celebrate with them. I love them and bless them for the past that we shared. But their stance is having a profound impact in MY quality of life and the SAFETY OF MY 18 & 20 year olds. I NEED ALLIES NOW. At 58, I get more joy and fulfillment from meeting people with shared priorities/values: and keeping our kids WHOLE and SAFE is #1. There is no compromise, and no sitting at the table pretending that everything is honky dory.
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With you. Had to write (very difficult letter) to brother who asked to come visit, with wife, this summer for a night or two while my daughter and her family are visiting from UK. I had to tell him that I am much concerned about 'shedding', which seems anecdotal at this point, but so were vax adversities in Sept '21---and then became data points. And that I avoid being in proximity to the MRNA vaxxed, and don't wish my grandchildren to come to harm. [He took the message in good heart, mercifully]
I just listened to Dr. Urso on the Dr. Drew show talk about how no one knows how to stop the spike protein once in the system. If that's the case, it is possible that shedding may be happening from time. Perhaps there is an activation period just like with the esptein-barr virus.
See McCullough on this. My point is: no one knows. Yet. Yet. Adverse events were laughed away, their sufferers gaslighted around Sept. '21 (when I first saw Dr. John Campbell interviewing the vax-damaged) and for how long before, I don't know, as I only began to follow that topic about that time.
Mercifully, he took my letter in good heart and said he would wait on my lead. Thanks for your response (and gift of another one of 'those anecdotes').
Re shedding--well, almost but not quite--see Dr. Drew and Dr. Urso Jan 25 ~the 45 min mark (spike protein not ceasing production)
JLL - please consider speaking your truth to all your friends even if you are risking their friendship with you. How else to we create change and alarm people as to serious problems? Please speak out!
I *had* a large group of friends - we all came together over 2 decades ago after bonding over a common interest. We all met in the internet’s very early days (late 90’s) through a message board, and eventually became such good friends that we began regularly meeting in person every year for a long weekend reunion/retreat. We only had one rule, whether online or in person: we didn’t discuss politics or religion in our group, but everyone was welcome to be as quiet or as vocal about those things as we wanted anywhere else (including on all other social media) about what we believe. Since we were all social media “friends” outside our group chats, everyone was pretty well aware of which “side” the others were “on” and no one cared. It was very much a “I disagree with you about X but will defend to the death your right to believe it and live according to that belief” kind of group.
Between January and July of 2020, every single one of them unfriended me, ghosted me, and/or publicly denounced and denigrated me. 90% of it was Covid-related, and not because I was spouting off on my own page, but because I *dared* to ask questions like “how do you know that is true?” or gently offer factual counter-evidence when others would post angry raging tirades about masking, or staying home, or “all the hospitals being overrun” about it in our group (contrary to our one rule). The other 10% boiled down to their very vocal support for BLM and gender transitions for kids stuff - again that they were posting vehemently about in our “solace from politics and religion” group - and my unwillingness to agree with them.
The same thing happened with local knitting friends - all woke, all covid crazy, all very suddenly unwilling to adhere to our previously stated “no politics, no religion” rule, and all turned into a lynch mob, running with pitchforks after the few of us that calmly said “I disagree, here’s why.”
One of my oldest friends recently tried to friend me on Instagram (which I only use to keep up with my grown kids’ stuff). I wondered if she was hoping for amnesty, or if her brain was so vaccine-addled that she just forgot that 2.5 years ago she purposely sicc’d a group of her own friends on me via a certain social media post, doxxed me in another post to a group I wasn’t part of, and then laughingly egged both her friends and complete strangers on as they proceeded to threaten my family and me with some of the vilest evil acts I’d ever seen or heard of described in print. She was the only person I have ever unfriended (and then had to take the step of also blocking) on social media (mostly because I didn’t want to stoop to behaving like my intolerant “friends” had). Maybe she thought the baby gift she gave me in 2003 made up for her awful choices?
Seven years ago, I read a study which claimed the country (US) was more divided than it had been since the Civil War. I often wonder if we’ve topped that.
That is a horrific story....there is something so evil about what happened with covid....Is it our fear of illness or death that makes the divide so impassable?? Where logic and reason no longer work?
Get out of the social media circuit altogether. Encourage your kids to as well. My encouragement actually came from my millennial kids. They got off FB, and are only trolls on Instagram. They don't post anything. They saw too many of their friends get hurt, and saw how it was turning some of their friends into narcissistic train wrecks. Nothing good is created from social media. That being said, I am sorry that your long time friends hurt you. But their behavior was fueled by social media platforms. If we're going to get out of this, it's not going to be with rants on social media. I'm not sure what it's going to take, but I am pretty sure social media platforms are not going to make people use their critical thinking skills, it only allows them to run on emotions.
I basically abandoned social media after things went so sour in 2020. I keep my Instagram account only to be able to see the things my adult kids share with me there, and I do have a job that requires engaging with my company’s “fan” group on Facebook and Ravelry (social media for yarn-using nerds) but so far those specific spaces have remained free of all the other garbage. My boss (the company’s founder & owner) goes out of her way to stay out of cultural hot-button issues entirely, but the downside of that is that you don’t really ever develop any real relationship in that kind of environment. I know most people believe that it’s impossible to foster real relationship via social media, but that wasn’t true in my experience. The age of internet mobbing and cancel culture killed any chance of that continuing, though.
I do appreciate the polite and honest intellectual engagement found in the substack comment sections (both here on Bad Cattitude, and over on the Coffee and Covid substack). As JFly pointed out, this is too tough a time to waste effort on small talk.
You are not alone. I can relate. Long time friends I had thought were thinking people and loyal friends just... got sucked into some other dimension out of a PKD novel. They're still reading the NYT and getting boosted, heaven help them.
That's terrible! Although one in my group unfriended me and accused me of posting "misinformation" on Fakebook (one I am the least close to), the others have accepted my choices and provided me much comfort when I lost my dad last year. After hearing your story I'm feeling a little guilty that I didn't meet up with them last evening. I realize that it's my issue. I'm just not in the mood for small talk these days with so much evil in the world. And then I also knew we'd be discussing the recent diagnosis of a mutual friend with stage 4 glioblastoma (suddenly and out of the blue!). They're blaming Covid rather than the obvious cause!
I cannot tell you how many people I know have been blaming their or their family members' heart attacks, blood clots, severe muscle cramping, full body rash, shingles, sudden food allergies, aggressive cancers, etc on either pure coincidence or covid—never on the jabs, oh, no, could not possibly be the Holy Injections.
Yup! Same here. 3 family members: 1 pulmonary embolism, 1 arrhythmia, 1 with 3 heart operations in a month (stent, valve, pacemaker). Two friends with turbo cancer. No one hints of a link to the jabs.
If you are awake and know what has gone on and what is coming at us with the speed of a freight train, you are definitely not in the mood for small talk.
You have a lot of friends here.
I don't even do facebook anymore...waste of time. Right now we are focused on how to survive the coming CBDC...and the bank BAIL Ins...and how to get ready to survive.
Me too in many ways. However, I'm old and need social interaction. Most of the jab-happy folks are getting quieter and quieter, while I get bolder and bolder. And I call many of my former friends my Covid casualties. I have a much smaller friend base.
I totally, but totally hear you. And I think this whole covidian thing is one big mind-game, and to win, one has to not give in to despair, but stay standing— and creative.
Liberals/normies will say yes, because this is consistent with what they have been told: the narrative.
Conservatives will say: Reindeer don't fly.
It is the easiest non-political way I have found to demonstrate this effect. The sorting hat assigns people to be liberals NOT because of issues (as they think) but their willingness to follow the narrative, even to the point of ridiculous contradiction. "We are the anti-war party, no peace talks, we need to counter-attack Russia!"
the good news is that, albeit at a glacial pace, they are slowing their willingness to clap and play along.
are you the second child by birth order in your family? I'm starting to think second child syndrome is the cause of some people's so-called hesitancy... of course this doesn't help us fit in, sorry I don't have any solutions for your situation.
I am, but my older sister is also unjabbed. I think a better indicator is overall skepticism going back many years, taking receipts on the mammoth pile of lies from both political parties, observing the ratcheting-down outcomes from the 'expert class', and seeing how command & control of the currency / economy has us circling the drain. Not trusting 'The Narrative' on the Jabberwocky was a no brainer, even as it cost me my career and forced me into early retirement.
Thanks LIz, when given the choice of 'risk health' or 'continue paycheck' it becomes pretty easy. Our health is EVERYTHING! Pfizer's endgame is going to make the Hindenburg look like a firecracker.
Not sure if you're asking me but as a matter of fact I am. I am also a child sexual abuse survivor which made me distrust adults at an early age. But seeing my 3-month old go through 48 hrs of hell after her routine vaxxes taught me to question every medical intervention.
Thanks. I have healed and enjoy a life full of love and excellent opportunities. Healing IS possible if approached with faith and introspection. I only share that experience because it does change your sense of safety around adults. One learns to question authority very early on. At least that's how I coped. I'm blessed to be awake and aware enough to have a heightened sense of the real events happening all around us. I was never hesitant but rather keenly aware of the corruption of the alphabet agencies.
but you need clarity as to a non-violent way forward, I suggest Jubilee Justice - Public Banks and Commons Rent Public Finance - to get out of the right/left elite rule system.
"I will never forget that many on the Left would have us caged as animals for choosing bodily autonomy."
But you seem to overlook this applies equally to the Right when it comes to abortion and indeed BOTH sides reject the other's "bodily autonomy" on these two specific issues. Not only does compassion seem to evaporate but often a punitive element comes to dominate. Each side believes they have "right" on their side. This seems like a dividing line hard to breach.
There's a partial parallel there, but the abortion question is a little more complicated. Personally, I'm on the "woman's choice" side of that one, but the other side can rightly point out that there is another body involved whose autonomy is utterly violated to the point of inflicting a cruel death when the choice is abortion. Also, banning abortion affects a relatively small number of people, who usually bear some responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves. Such a ban means withholding an iatric procedure; it does not mean hunting the woman down to force something into her against her will.
To fairly compare the intrinsic outrage of the coerced injections with the abortion question, the authorities would not only have to ban abortion, but also require that everyone submit periodically to their sexual advances, else they cannot travel, hold a job, or shop.
I love this post because it calls out the demagoguery for what it is- a strategy (yes, intentional) to keep us divided. This will not be easy to unwind, but I also believe it is possible. Calling it out is a start. As we all begin to recognize it for what it is, we will need to begin the hard work of finding and emphasizing what brings us closer. The controlling machine fears this, but we must not.
keep in mind that this does not have to be a top down strategy and is likely an emergent feature of interactive internet media and the segmentation is drives.
it primarily sells you confirmation bias for your own prejudices and ideologies.
it also makes exaggerated pastiches and strawmen of opposing views to inflame you into engagement.
this divides tribes and makes them hate each other.
i suspect the politicians are more opportunistically response to this than capable of planning and perpetuating it.
it's just a selection filter. the loud, divisive, annoying ones get all the media coverage because that is what we the people click on.
I think we find ourselves in this divide due to a combination of “emergent features” of internet based communication and top down influence. There are obvious sources of top down influence, like the legacy media. There are less obvious examples that actually comport with Edelman’s proposed solution rather well: the collaboration between tech companies and sectors of our federal government to influence the narrative. The extent of that “collaboration” is not fully known.
The solution for us as individuals starts in the same place. Relate to one another as people deserving of dignity, and remember what is common between us. When it gets down to it, as Americans, most will agree that we would rather live as sovereigns rather than be ruled by a Sovereign Elite class. That is the essence of “We the People” as the voice from which the Preamble to the U. S. Constitution (and thus the entire document) was written.
I’m afraid you may be wrong in your assertion that we would rather live as sovereigns. These past three years don’t line up with this statement. People got right in line with the tyranny. Still there are many that would fall right in line tomorrow. I’d say up near 75% would go back to wearing a mask no questions asked if the mandate returned. Freedom is not a shared value of Americans any longer.
I disagree somewhat. Based on the evidence of the last 3 years buttressed by the Twitter releases, we are fools not to consider the collaboration (fascism) as pervasive, bordering on all-encompassing.
>"keep in mind that this does not have to be a top down strategy and is likely an emergent feature of interactive internet media and the segmentation is drives."
A big white pill for me recently on the future of online-discourse-as-narrative-antidote has been the US Surgeon General of all people warning against social media use among kids.
Now I'll grant that 13 is a mite young for a drip feed of what we currently know as "social media." But I'm also seeing this as a signal that the technocrats feel less confident in their ability to steer the online narrative than they once did. Certainly they are losing their grip on it faster than the grip they maintain on education institutions.
Just an observation. Back in the day my extended family was 80% D 20% R. Starting with Prez Carter, the family became increasingly R in terms of voting and to a lesser extent in terms of voter registration. Why? Economics and Morality/Religion. Over time the D’s damaged the economy and assaulted my families moral and religious values. Obama & Hillary C. turned the entire family ~100% R by votes. There were still many registered as D’s because of jobs, inertia, etc. Another observation: I have friends who are still strong D’s. They completely lost their minds when Trump was elected. They are the divisive ones, the ones who have to check their tribe to find their opinion on anything. I don’t see that behavior among the R voting group as much.
Exactly my experience. A former democrat, I loathe just about everything they stand for now. And yeah, it is the left, now firmly entrenched in power thanks to "fortified" elections, that seeks to punish its enemies.
It did get a little rough at the end. However, General Forney managed to get across the river and made it to Texas and commanded troops from there to the end of the hostilities. He was able to find his way back to Alabama and hid out on a family plantation for a period of time, after which he returned to my home town of Jacksonville, Alabama where he died in 1901. I have his West Point sword hanging over my mantle.
He is my great great grandfather. My first name is Forney. It's one of those Southern things. Giving family names for first names. Actually my middle name is Rutledge after Edward Rutledge of South Carolina who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Excellent point of view. This helps confirm my self perception that I’m a Libertarian at heart and register Republican. We need way.... less.... government. Also I agree that the populace (and apparently Congress) is confused regarding the (intended) limited power of the president. Instead, every 4 years everyone believes they are voting for a king (or queen).
I find that libertarianism is a decent middle ground and would be my default political preference if it weren't for a lack of a "war-like" posture of the current party. Our Nation was founded on individual liberty with freedom from overreaching government in the forefront. Somehow, we have devolved into a massive bureaucracy leading the "death by a million cuts" of big governmental spending; nevermind its bat-shit policies.
If the libertarian party came out with a massive push along the lines of, "We are going to fight for your freedoms whether you like us or not.", and, "We will start by dismantling the current governmental bureaucracy, stripping back large, wasteful government programs, and returning to the roots of individual freedom by reaffirming our God-given rights as enumerated in the constitution.", I, along with many others would jump ship in a heart beat.
In this highly polarized era, we need an all out cultural war for our individual freedoms. That is something that neither political party wants, for with it comes their demise.
I went to a Libertarian meeting, in graduate school, way back ~ 1972. Found the ideas quite attractive, at a time when Republican was just RINO (term not yet invented). However, I also found the Lib. party amoral, and that finished it for me. Have ever since thought of my self as 'conservative', not Repub.
OK. But one side is firmly on the side of advancing unreality (We are not all equal. Bruce Jenner and his kind are not women) and into knee-capping people based on race (Some graduating HS students I know are being shut out from schools they, 10 years ago, would've easily been granted admission based on test scores. Other HS kids I know are taking their slots and even receiving scholarships, though they scored lower on the ACT, but higher on melanin levels.)
The political party doing this also declared some workers were "non-essential", shut down businesses, enforced stupid mask mandates for school children, divided people based on vaccination status, and discriminated against those that refused to be injected with poison. They also are looking to tear up the 2nd Amendment, if given half a chance. So, yeah, I am running full speed to the other side that allowed people to live their lives freely, for the most part, during this manufactured drama. Right now, I am looking to move from my blue state into a red one and am checking voting results over the past few election cycles to make sure it is a solid red area.
My family and I left San Diego for Iowa. We have way too many liberal women here but I find most of them have no clue what exactly they are truly wanting. When I explain the horrors of living in California, they cannot fathom. I keep telling them they are voting for it. I’m thankful for strong men and farmers.
Thanks. Taking care of an elderly parent keeps me here for now, but the situation is becoming untenable. Fortunately, I am close to a very red state and wouldn't have to alter things too much.
yeah i moved out of cities back to rural PA and find myself happy to live amongst Republicans. yet still need to transcend right/left tyranny, suggest through radical decentralism and addresing the land and money problems with Public Banks and Commons Rent public finance, see:
Commies can be happy among Private Landowning Patriots, but not the opposite. If you really believe in Community ownership, move into Baltimore. Otherwise you are another Bernie Sanders Socialist Millionare grifting like the Greenie Billionaires in Davos flying in with hundreds of "Private" jets advocating for their NWO. Hippocritical
"Geolibertarians recognize the right to private ownership of land, but only if fair recompense is paid to the community for the loss of access to that land. Some geolibertarians broaden out the tax base to include resource depletion, environmental damage, and other ancillaries to land use"
Not "Buying" It, Comrade. The "Caveats" will end up with people in ditches, as always ........ Communal = Enforced Tyranny Mao Style.
National Divorce. There are FAR too many people who are very loud about how determined they are to, in the words of Michael Malice, “see me dead, or settle for my submission.” These are irreparable rifts. Team liberty and Team coercion cannot coexist.
If the dollar dies, a lot of this goes away because it becomes impotent shrieking. And if the country pulls apart, it goes away for the same reason.
Too many people are addicted to the bureaucratic state. They don’t want it to die, just the parts they don’t like, and, for the most part, they just want those redirected towards their ends.
Again, Malice, “I don’t hate you, I just don’t want to share a country with you.”
I was raised libertarian in NH. Almost all my parents’ friends were limousine liberals, and we all managed to function together. Now they have a shrinking social circle because the stridency has reached fever pitch, and my mother actually got called a fascist at a meeting for saying she read the WSJ along with the NYT.
The Overton window has to move. The memes have to move it.
I think we do it in place. I’m already seeing it happen. But I would see the solution as breaking up into loosely-confederated counties that are self-governing. Even up here in the Socialist-Puritannical northeast, the rural places are red/purple and the cities are blue (further south), blue/purple (further north). Maine and NH would be a whole lot happier with each other if the northern 2/3 of both joined up and left the southern parts to finally realize their goal of reuniting with Massachusetts. Of course, that’s still sad for me on the blue coast, but more competition across close borders is good for everyone. NH’s tax structure has applied pressure on ME and VT.
NH tax structure for ... real estate? Something else? (Howdy from south-central NH btw! And no, I don't want to join MA. I'd rather join QC - then pretend I can't speak English to MA residents.) We don't have income tax, but from what small business owners or self-employed tell me that in addition to business tax rates, they are definitely getting hit with more fees, certifications, etc., which is taxation in a sneaky kind of way.
How's that affecting ME and VT taxation? Are the things that NH politicians sneak past the voters giving the ME and VT politicians ideas?
Of course all of southern NH doesn’t want to join MA, but the first half of my life was spent in Concord and my perception is that the southern half of the state is very lefty and there are lots more immigrants from MA than to it-would you agree? That’s the blue part of the state.
The lack of income tax and sales tax in NH create some competition for the surrounding states. They lose residents to NH, who get vacation properties in ME or commute to MA.
There is something about the fierce competition in the large cities that seems to succumb to the Democratic Party. Not sure what that is. History perhaps?
The first thing that would happen if the US split among D/R voting lines, is that 99% of all D-voters who has helped cause the problems would try to move to the R-est area possible.
And if allowed in, they start the process of destruction again. And again and again and again.
The good nation, just as the good family, is not made by who you let in, but who you get rid of.
Yes, that’s what HAS happened. But the problem is trying to create a static state. It’s a dynamic system. If the framers proved one thing, it was that no amount of foresight, even combined with legal constraints, keeps that wolf at bay forever. I mean, you can’t even endow your own art collection with specific and binding instructions; three generations later the trustees are suddenly sure you *would have* included DEI provisions if you’d only *known.* That’s the “if you can keep it part.”
The apathy about engagement comes from the futility. Smaller units are always more responsive, and when they can’t print or beg the money from the feds, they get local again.
"Too many people are addicted to the bureaucratic state" - good point - and a while ago I read that many Russians were unhappy with the downfall of the Soviet Union because their guaranteed jobs had gone. Yeonmi Park, who defected from North Korea, also said something like 'freedom was harder than she expected'. She just wasn't used to thinking for herself.
I'm writing as a UK resident and I believe this is a disease of affluence in the West - we think we can afford to be at loggerheads because we're materially comfortable. The west is running up huge debts and sooner or later we're going to "run out of someone else's money" as Mrs Thatcher put it.
We Geolibertarians distinguish ourselves from right-wing, "royal" libertarians by our profound respect for the principle that one has private property in the fruits of one's labor. This includes the fruits of mental labor and the results of reinvestment of legitimate private property (capital) in future production. We remain consistent in that respect by recognizing, as did the classic liberals, that land and raw natural resources are not the fruits of labor, but a common heritage to be accessed on terms that are equal under the law for everyone. The statist system of land tenure empowers non-producing landlords to extract the fruits of tenants' labor.
We also consider ourselves "green" in our respect for the earth as our common heritage. However, we clearly distinguish between land as common property and land as state property. Unlike left-wing or "watermelon" greens, we advocate governance of land in harmony with free market principles, and deny the right of statist bureaucracies to meddle in the affairs of individual land holders. We see ourselves as embracing the best attributes of the Green and Libertarian parties.
Geolibertarians also believe in free trade, with no state support for monopoly privileges of any kind. We therefore oppose money monopolies, information monopolies, a host of lesser monopolies, and most of all, monopoly of the power to govern, as embodied by statist political systems. We are not nihilistic anarchists. We believe that monopoly privileges can be gently and methodically displaced without disrupting to society, even when statists resort to violence to prevent it.
Geolibertarian organizations and links
Land and tax reform
Money reform
Information access reform
Democratic process reform
Famous people with geolibertarian ideas
Classic liberals (Jefferson, Locke, Mill, Paine, Adam Smith, etc.
Modern libertarians (Choderov, Nock, Hess, Nolan, etc)
Other famous people (Churchill, Einstein, Tolstoy, etc)
Send comments, questions or offers to help to pimann@pobox.com (Dan Sullivan)
I feel unclear reading that on what the definition of "a common heritage to be accessed on terms that are equal under the law for everyone" is with respect to property. It's not intuitive to me, nor is it clear to me in what I do understand of the classical liberal tradition, that a general public/community is entitled to the land or compensation for the lack of access to it. How does a market determine what that should be?
Ours is a division not of race nor politics. Ours is a division created by principalities that separate man from God, His Love, His Holy Spirit, and His Truth. Until there is return to the God of the Bible and all that it encompasses, we will remain a lost people. Be in the Word. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201&version=NIVHis
Modern update of MLK's speech: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged by the color of their skin, but not by the content of their character. I have a dream that they will one day become well paid DEI commissars and marry the white men who they claim oppress them. I have a dream that the Karens of Boston, Maskachussetts will remove a Lincoln statue and then erect a statue in my honor that looks like a turd. I have a dream today!” https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-give-a-speech
Don't worry, sir - as is often the case, the seed of the solution is already contained within the soil of the problem. Big government requires big debt. Big debt requires big and willing buyers of debt. In case you hadn't noticed, the US is rapidly becoming one of the most hated nations on Earth, if not the most hated. The rest of the world is going hell-for-leather developing a multipolar trade and finance system that will cut out the need to hold USD for collateral and as a way of storing surpluses. The buyers will dry up. Of course, such parasitic entities as the US Govt don't accept being starved, they will attempt to maintain their feeding habits, and this will end in a very messy collapse of the monetary and political system (financial/economic and social too) - a messy end, but an end. The new system will fix many of the problems you observe at the root, in the DNA, to use a stack-appropriate metaphor. The only problem is that the transition will be rough.
I think Canada belongs in the "At Risk" category, if not even higher. Trudeau is the "Great Divider" and does it as a well thought out plan. I'm in my 70's and was born here and can truthfully say that I have never seen anything like this in my life. There was a little bit of it when his father was in power in the 70's, but we got rid of him quickly. This guy learned from his father and his father's elitist friends and has taken it to a whole new level.
What boggles my mind is that anyone takes him seriously.
At least Obama had the novelty factor going for him. Castreau is just a simpering politician who says nothing every time he gets up and stammers. To say nothing of his absurd dress up habits.
Why do any Canadians actually like him let alone give him the time of day? Bizarre.
1920s, not 1970s. Frankfurt school + later Adorno and Habermas. It was exported to the US post-WW2, and became the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. That's why US civil rights discourse ever since then is based in marxist epistemology. In the 1990s post-modernism was added, since it dispenses with knowledge, truth and evidence, in favour of leader-cults.
I can’t be friends with people who had no issues with the last three years. I can’t be friends with people who believed I should be locked up and/or fired for not taking a “warp speed” vaccine. I don’t really want to be friends with people who masked their children and didn’t fight back. And I don’t want to live in the same country as them.
This makes me alt right apparently. At least when we lived in California. I’ve also found the people who just want to be left alone are being railroaded by the groups who love power. So sadly, I don’t think this is a stance we can take any longer.
"those who would control a society are well served by polarizing the populace against one another to create strife and alienation rather than commonality. once you are convinced that “the other half” of the country is “out to get you” you can be easily corralled into a gang “for protection.”
Is there anything new under the sun? This is the way that throughout history, Tyrants have "Divided and Ruled". The British Empire used this tool very effectively in India particularly and it is basically all theat Kissinger ever understood. And still tries to use it to divide Russia and China despite the fact that they are both well aware of these stupid games and fully understand that "united we stand, divided we fall".
Absolutely correct, and for chronological reason. In the '00s, Diversity was what school admin were pushing. Somewhere about '07-'13 or so, inclusion became the focus. Then in '19, equity was added.
In order now, all together shout : D I E!
They know it--and surely re-arranged the letters so the stupids wouldn't notice. However, DEI spells 'gods', which "they" do think themselves to be.
Sorry Gatito... I appreciate the analysis, but blacks now state openly their hatred for whites, and the left encourages this. The few sites that are honest about race are severely censored, to the point where (unlike Covid critics such as Dr Malone) they are for all intents and purposes invisible. People who really want to should just start their own research (don't use Google) on "race realism".
It is important to be realistic, even when there are no obvious or even workable solutions.
Media mendacity works both ways. Does the media have any reason to *hide* things like black on white violence? Would they hide the race of black criminals, even when it is on video? I encourage people to look for themselves. But one must search out the few remaining sources before they are shut down.
I have a large group of friends through a common interest we all have. Their political views range over the spectrum so we avoid discussions of politics when together. In the past I rarely gave politics or one's beliefs any thought with respect to making friends.
Now? I'm the only one who didn't take the jab. And as far as I know, I am the only one aware of the psyop. Because of this I feel myself pulling away even though I don't want to. They're meeting this evening and I can't bring myself to go...
there was a time when discussing politics in "polite society" or, for that matter, in public, was generally frowned upon and avoided.
this was a sensible system to which we'd be well advised to return.
making politics a part of every conversation is societal rage pills.
Lots of hate coming from the Left. I'm not talking about hate of certain ideologies. I'm talking about hate of your fellow man/woman.
Maybe im blind. But I do not see the same hatred coming from the "right".
I do not believe anything can be "fixed" until hate is dispensed with.
Harboring hate is a personal responsibility. Being loose from its grip is also a personal responsibility.
Hate is the dividing line to me. This is why I am no longer in the middle. My conscience will not allow for it.
There can be no common ground when hate is accepted.
The question to me is can hate be undone? Not sure. It is a bit like contempt. It's hard to put that horse back in the stable.
Just my 2 cents.
Totally agree -- it's the people who put up those "Love" signs on their lawns who spew the most visceral hatred against anybody who disagrees with them.
I travel in both blue and red circles (needless to say, they don't intersect). In red circles, political discussion tends to revolve around issues and ideas; whereas in blue circles, political talk is almost all sarcasm and name-calling against the other side.
When you have no arguments to offer, that only leaves the name-calling. Otherwise, there'd be an uneasy silence.
Podcast/TV/Radio personality Dan Bongino has said something for a while that makes the most sense, and IMO has gotten worse over the last five years. “Republicans think Democrats are people with bad ideas. Democrats think Republicans are BAD people with ideas.”
I don't listen to Dan much. But I do agree with this. I have friends/family on both left and right. I hear insults/sarcasm pointed at the 'other' side from both left/right. But my experience is that the right/independents CAN choose to have conversations and even get off politics. But I haven't met many on the left who can refrain from debates and name calling.
My take is if you read the 'news' or anything these days and it makes you mad, you're probably being played. I ask myself: what is REALLY important?
YES. Most news--and many substacks--are designed sheerly to provoke outrage. A distraction from being IRL and finding common ground, like-minded folk, ways to work with un-like-minded folk based on physical-world reality that needs addressing.
I identified with the Left for about a decade and a half, originally in response to the "War on Terror" and the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. I think there has always been a bit of woke, holier-than-thou virtue-signalling about the Left that always tends to attack the cultural integrity of our society. But up until the 2016 election, leftists were generally reasonable and had serious opinions.
In early 2017, when Trump was sworn in as President, the hatred became normalized. At that time, the Democratic front groups actually discussed, and peremptorily decided upon, opposing Trump unconditionally, even if he was doing the right thing. As soon as they decided on that, they lost their issues and they lost their integrity. All they had left was pure, partisan hatred, focused on the person of Donald Trump and inevitably extended to all his supporters.
Those of us that cared about issues have fallen away, and those that are left are the tribal Democrats whose identity is so tied up with their party and cliques that they cannot deviate from their party's line. And that party line channels the bitter, spiteful soul of the disappointed loser of the 2016 election, mortified that she was beaten by her own chosen ringer, and desiring to wreak revenge on the country that rejected her.
Snow. Thank you for saying this. I voted for Obama first term because I completely abhorred Bush for his lies. The good thing is I found out Obama was a fraud after he started turning everything into a race war.
He threw the baby out with the bath water out of expediency.
We had come so far since I was a child in the 70's. Nobody was really thinking about race at that point until he stoked hatred.
We were taught to be colorblind back then. Now being colorblind is racist.
Perfectly said
Agree with you and Snow,most of my friends voted for Obama the first time, but for some reason I smelled a rat. He was too smooth for a brand new senator and that triggered my BS meter. He was overwhelmingly elected because of white voters because of lack of racism. Then like you said, everything after that became all about racism. I blame him personally for the hate and division we find ourselves in right now. Think about it! What are the democrat policies? I'm not really sure other than power and control at all costs!
I wished I had smelled the rat. But I was somewhat ambivalent back then to who was KING
I agree! Race relations were infinitely better before Obama became president, because he immediately used his position to stoke racism in our country. His declaration that racism is hardwired into our DNA and the whole "police acting stupidly" affair being just two examples.
Exactly!
And "convicting" people, without due process (and before the facts were in) in the court of public opinion on national television.
He caused Ferguson. That town is destroyed and will never come back. Same thing these haters did during the George Floyd saga.
Last but not least, the people they usually hurt most by stoking hate that inevitably leads to violence/chaos are the minorities they claim they're seeking justice for.
Despicable people stoke hate for power.
So odd that Trump was uniformly hated by both sides because he wasn't one of their tribes. And they won't stop because he is much too dangerous besides being a loose cannon. Pity he was such a poor judge of people and had such an ego.
Maybe Younkin or Yang can shake things up.
Good points. A couple additions. It wasn't just "the democrats" who went full bore hate on Trump: most of the GOP too - pretty much all of established politicians. Some pretended to support Trump admin policies when it seemed necessary at election time. It wasn't just Trump - every voter who voted for Trump was deemed he enemy. The very idea that so many people would support an outsider was blasphemy to the political powers that be. BTW, the GOP made rules changes that will prevent the "hostile takeover" of 2016, copying near verbatim the DNC rules that ensure they can add un-elected delegates at the last minute to overcome any potential disruption by voters.
The "normalized hate" was obvious to me long before 2016, though maybe not as overt and extreme. It goes beyond simple ego ("we're wright and they're wrong"). Decades of public education has instilled the idea that it is fundamentally wrong to be independent. To enforce such a notion, you have to demonize all that would oppose the "obvious greater good". Anyone not in our tribe shall not be tolerated. This is not new. I realized the intolerance of outsiders decades ago (about the same time I realized I was an outsider). It became more overt, perhaps, or maybe the events of 2016-2022 made a lot of people open their eyes and look.
Trump didn't belong to the uniparty, thus too dangerous to tolerate. OTOH, that's what the voters wanted. Tea Party = MAGA, eventually the voters must win.
This is VERY interesting: "And that party line channels the bitter, spiteful soul of the disappointed loser of the 2016 election, mortified that she was beaten by her own chosen ringer, and desiring to wreak revenge on the country that rejected her."
I hadn't come across that theory before, that Trump was Hillary's chosen candidate! Where can I learn more about it?
I think that came out in the emails of Clinton's campaign Chairman, John Podesta, which were leaked to Wikileaks in March of 2016. I didn't read them myself, and it looks like I'm getting error screens or "Prohibited" messages when I try to access them now. The Wayback Machine also doesn't seem to have them, so maybe the internet is being scrubbed more thoroughly than we had supposed. Or perhaps I'm no good at this, and you would have better luck.
What I remember from secondary discussions around that time, probably mainly from writers on Counterpunch, is that Trump was previously a Democrat, and was a friend of the Clintons in the 1990s. I've seen a group photo of a much younger Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Mike Bloomberg, and one or two other kingpins in informal camaraderie at a golfcourse, Trump beaming and towering over the others. In early 2015, Trump got married for the third time, and Hillary Clinton attended his wedding. Shortly after that, Trump announced his campaign, the very one that Hillary had been carefully preparing for the previous year. An old Trump quote from the late 1980s or so was recalled, to the effect that if he ever ran for President, he would run as a Republican, since he thought the Republicans were stupid enough to vote for him.
From the beginning of the campaign, the Clinton-supporting MSM focused heavily on Trump, giving him almost daily front page coverage. Normally, they would have starved an outsider for attention, and his campaign would have gone nowhere. Jeb Bush was the expected Republican front-runner and probable nominee, in a year in which it was the Republicans' "turn" to win (eight-year cycle with only one exception going back to 1952), and the two parties were divided dynastically between the Bushes and the Clintons. But the MSM gave all attention to Trump, and it was Jeb Bush and the other neocon RINOs who were starved out.
The coverage was all hostile, to incite the Democrats, but at the same time it carried a "Can he do it?" tone, to tempt the conservative Republican base. The wisdom at that time among the corrupt RINO-DINO Uniparty was that they themselves were the moderate adults, creating a mature settlement between the two extremes. Their belief was that, although an "extremist" might be able to win one party's nomination, they would then crushingly lose the general election, because then they would be too far out on one thin wing of the bell curve, and would be greatly outweighed by the other party and the "center." Empirically, Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, and George McGovern lent weight to this theory.
I recall the gist of two quotes lifted by writers commenting on the Podesta emails. One of these, from around the spring or summer of 2015, was that Hillary had asked him to reach out to their friends in the media to have them promote whatever Republican candidates were most over the top: "Trump, Cruz, Carson..." The second, from early 2016, showed Podesta fussing something to the effect of: "I'm worried. Hillary is basing her entire campaign strategy on Trump getting the Republican nomination. What if he doesn't win?"
If these two quotes can be verified, I think they would pretty well make the case that Trump was Hillary's chosen candidate. The rest is circumstantial. About a month out from the election, I can recall the Clintonist MoveOn gang chortling that the election was in the bag, that Trump was so lame that he had no organization on the ground to bang on people's doors to get out the vote, like they did. This didn't seem surprising if he was in fact running for his opponent; why should he waste the money? His publicity had already been paid for by her.
A few days before the election, the confident jeering from MoveOn turned to squeaks of alarm, as the polls began shifting in the wrong direction. They put out an all-hands-on-deck call, which was duly ignored by such Sanders supporters as myself, still chafing at what had happened to our delegates at the Democratic Convention. Trump won, possibly as surprised as Hillary. He had no team in place, no high-level supporters, only the tens of millions of ardent yokels whose votes had made him President. A Counterpunch writer reported that he spent his evenings alone in the White House, forlorn, tapping out messages on Twitter. Even his wife preferred to stay home in New York.
I've never been sure about the real Donald Trump. Either he was a genius who won a high-stakes bet on a shoe-string, or he was a con man working to throw the election to a patron whose toxicity proved too much for their combined powers to overcome. In either case, Hillary considered his victory to be treason, and her machine has been raining the wrath of Hell on him ever since.
THANK YOU!! You remembered enough details to lead me to the story. See in these two places: https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/ and https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/.
Interesting that even though it backfired spectacularly, Democrats have continued to use the strategy of pushing more "extreme" candidates for Republican nominations (Mastriano in Pennsylvania, for example) who they thought would be easier to beat.
And I imagine that you, as a Sanders supporter, saw the same kind of orchestration taking place in 2020 when all of the other Democratic candidates suddenly dropped out to endorse Biden (of all people), when it looked like Sanders might come out on top.
The hate is there left of right or up or down. What you may be seeing is that on what identifies as "the left" it has become an acceptable, almost mandated, hate in the mainstream. Most of my acquaintances "on the left", meaning loyal and proud democrats, will accept broad generalizations and declarations of evilness about "those evil bastards on the right" (what they fail to recognize as bigotry). While my right-leaning friends seem more often "live and let live" position - which used to be "the left". There is likely some measurement bias here. But perhaps the extreme hate is still delegated to the edges of the right?
We've also redefined hate. For an example, say you happen to believe in biology with respect to gender assignment as being absolute, and that the biological imperative of species propagation makes homosexuality unnatural. I would disagree. In a rational world, we could debate this.. I could acknowledge the point while pointing out there is much more to nature than biology. Ultimately we might agree that there's enough procreating humans that tolerating others is OK. Yet in today's political climate, even asking the question is defined as hate. Even failing to acknowledge another persons chosen pronoun is defined as hate. So that makes the polarization even easier.
BTW, in my opinion, identify however you like. Just don't make it my problem and we'll be fine. I'll tolerate your chosen gender if you'll tolerate my occasionally using the wrong pronoun.
Exactly!
There doesn't seem to be as much hate on substack. I tend to just block hateful people on other sites, and that's a full-time job. Is asking if someone who died suddenly was jabbed being hateful?
I agree with your analysis. On substack, the comments I read are thoughtfully expressed. On other sites (WSJ for example) comments and opinions quickly deteriorate into ad hominem attacks. Hard to have a conversation when a reply has nothing to do with what you actually wrote.
I found the WaPo impossible. I found Newsweek more open but filled with an excessive of what-about-ism. Then again I see a lot of commentary there that shows a real lack of understanding about factual truth that can often be found on SubStack with receipts.
WaPo is actually the worst of the MSM. there are more insane places (like al off the default subreddits, vox, jacobin, etc) but in terms of an ostensibly serious space, the people subbed to WaPo are by far the craziest
It's deemed as being hateful.
The left's talking points /fundraising points / themes in mainstream and progressive media is so much about how scary and dangerous the right is. Full of hate and projection. I'm less familiar with the conversations on the right, but sometimes I see individual examples of hate that are disturbing and feed right (no pun intended), into the Mean Violent Homophobic caricature that the left makes of the right.
But in general, yes, it seems like the left has become cartoons of projection and their main mode is being ANTI-everything (and anti-anti-vax).
So sad ..
I dunno Ryan, maybe it's just me, but I find it extremely difficult to not "dislike " Pedo Joe and Kackala Harris :)
Don't worry. Pedo Joe is done. And Kackala (which I love the moniker btw) is unmarketable.
So expect Michelle Obama. Which.......might be worse?
That would be Obama’s fourth term. This cannot happen.
Yes agreed this is the plan. Sad but true.
Oh,definitely pedo Joe is done. Question is can they prop him up till the end of his term? And BIG MIKE OBAMALAMA-DING-SCHLONG is definitely running for 2024! She/he just came out with another book dontcha know! Lol!
Lmao.
Yeah, none of horses seem interested in going back in & living in the same barn until they've all had some serious attitude adjustment. And the barn probably needs de-hexing as well :) Maybe we should take a clue from the Aussies on just this one thing: https://resistthemainstream.com/first-country-to-reclassify-mdma-and-magic-mushrooms-for-medical-use/ That might be the only thing that could accomplish the national chip off shoulder attitude adjustment, hate eradication mission in short order. Enact a 1 week national holiday and switch out the flouride from all the public water supplies and apply some real medicine instead :) LOL - can you just imagine.... I have my own well, but I think I'd be bottling a few dozen jugs of water at a friend's house, just for ongoing attitude adjustments in the future :)
agree with this 100%
Well--ll--ll. I'd like to disagree, but hopefully in a most pleasant way. We don't need to avoid discussing politics "to be polite". We need to re-learn how to debate. And also re-learn when to *not* get engaged in speaking when there is a likelihood any reasonable debate could quickly devolve into a screaming match.
The debating process can be codified into set of rules (see: how do debate teams work). That's "technical", in a way. Learning when to walk away from an argument is kind of an art form, hence two conflicting types of processes.
Idunno, maybe someone wants to argue with me about that theory. 8-D
the issue with this is that it's somewhat circular and utopian.
"if humans were better at X, then doing X would not be so divisive."
"if people were more open minded and rational, we could have more open minded and rational debates."
there is probably a bit of give here and some progress possible, but human nature really doesn't change that much.
is there any evidence that you can get most of humanity to behave this way? it seems unlikely.
the reason it used to succeed at places like universities is that only the top 5% of the most rational went there. with numbers like 40-50% now, you don't have the talent pool.
True. I've been alternating between being among the not-employed or remotely-employed for a while, so that existential fear of the toxic workplace has kind of faded a little bit for me. That probably makes me a bit susceptible to utopian thinking.
Your last paragraph makes an interesting point. My own case: in 1968, Mount Holyoke accepted me with a "scholarship" because of my "fine academic preparation" (the upper 700's on College Board exams probably didn't hurt). Then at sometime in the next few decades, admissions moved from scholarships (essentially a 'buying the brightest" scheme) to 'need based aid'. Of a sudden they are are no longer going after the best. Now admittedly in the case of the Seven Sisters, the move to 'girls on campus'! at the formerly all-male schools must have necessitated a change in habit for the all-women schools.. That 5% you refer to seem to have converged on those men's schools. And, I think perhaps (having taken young people to these schools for interviews) the focus of those students, moved in a direction other than academic engagement.
And then, we must not forget the appearance of D--I--E---which further debased the intellectual talent pool.
How much do you know about the time period of the Robber barons and such? When the wealth of society becomes so ill distributed you end up with times like these. You don't talk about economics much though
What was the first act of COVID? To bail out the bankrupt corporate system we live in! Lots of people forget that
What's that you say? The bailouts actually started before Covid? My word that can't be true!
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-systemic-collapse-and-pandemic-simulation/
One thing I try to do in discussing divisive issues is to avoid asserting my opinions as fact, and instead objectivize my own subjectivity. Instead of declaring "X," I tend to say, "My understanding is that X." Instead of saying "Y is evil," I might say, "I am strongly opposed to Y." This informs the other person of where I stand, and lets me communicate my ideas about things, without implicitly trying to force them to agree with me. I find that this method can be persuasive, and keeps us both out of screaming matches.
At the end of every game of rugby, the two teams who have beaten each other up for 80 minutes, shake hands. They can do this because they were all playing rugby, and playing by its rules.
then, we go get drunk together...
And then - if your local rugby club is anything like ours - fight like cats in a sack!
I agree, and so I sit in silence when I’m with certain groups, because I don’t want to discuss politics, let’s talk about music, sports, art, gardening whatever, because whenever I try interjecting any of the above topics, someone ALWAYS pivots to politics. It’s a world I’m trying to escape, and trying to find Community again with individuals who are interested in something other than identity politics is like looking for a goldfish in a shark tank!
Perhaps proving your point, and Gato's, the problem is currently the leftists are pushing politics into music, sports, art, education, corporations etc. by using the weapon of DEI/CRT. They know their stances full of shit, but its worth pushing because it enhances their power structure, albeit in a destructive way.
The left have destroyed art. As a conservative leaning liberterian, I have my whole life been a cinephile. I love movies. Now I cant bare to watch most anything made in recent years. They are simply checking boxes, the hell with the plot or story. TV is far worse. I say this also as someone who enjoys everything from Casablanca to Fast and Furious 9. Its become unbearable. For entertainment now I basically rewatch old TV series. I rewatch old movies. Just tell a good story or make an entertaining mindless diversion. I dont need to be beat in the head with identity politics every time I turn on a television show or watch a new movie.
It's definitely wild. I think some new movies are literally made with the idea that the people watching them are only going to be half watching them while on their phones too. I watched Shotgun Wedding the other night at 3am while up with my newborn and it was an absolute black hole
It should not be a part of every conversation but “polite society” should be able to debate and even disagree without rage. In my experience, those advocating no discussing politics usually do that advocating after they have stated their position.
What polite company? If you work in blue bubble areas like Silicon Valley, like I do. The lefties scream politics at the top of their lungs at work when you are there just sitting in the corner just doing your work. and you cannot avoid it even if you want to. Often times the middle upper management dweebs are the main cheer leaders. Fuck them, it is time for a divorce or civil war.
I have a brother-in-law who does that. It's like a tic, these inappropriate statements come out of his mouth when you are discussing something completely benign like the dinner menu. I usually just ignore him like anyone else who has the NYT as his bible. But once when he snidely looked at me and said he was just reading "that liberal rag" (his words), I replied, "don't you mean that state run media outlet"? Teehee, he had no comeback for that.
Not advocating civil war. Divorce is good in this case. And OMG blue bubble is too kind a description for SV. This place is frickin' TyDBowl on steroids. YES the most insecure and insufferable middle management are the WORST. Having to sit in meetings that always turn to politics, tolerate far-left chat rooms, endure training on the latest progressive fads, deal with the sycophant cheerleaders ... UGH.
TyDBowl.
Magnificent!
The problem is that politics has been inserted into every facet of society that used to have nothing to do with politics. The conversation cannot be avoided.
Thats because they don't want to you to talk about economics ;)
or what used to be called political economy
How boring. How can you not talk about politics if you wanta take part in the commonwealth? Feels to me like it's just shoving stuff under the rug...
Please share them here, dear Gato. I don't do texting, and I like to keep my anonymity, such as it is...
(I am honored.) Best wishes.
(Coming from a communist country, where many many topics were off limits, I am not in favor and you are not likely to convince me. I find talking about politics and religion vital.)
Leaving a phone number? Seems odd. Like... it has been hacked.
Something tells me Gato did not originate these requests to text him. It's out of character, and why would he give out his phone number like that?
The part about "For your audience" gives it away IMO. Those two posts are addressed to people who don't have a Substack and otherwise have no evident large audience, so why would he be offering them something "for your audience"?
Yer right... Creepy. WTF?
My mother's teaching was: we do not talk of money, politics or religion when in public (which includes social settings). Just a New England attitude?
I don't mind discussing a particular issue. I might learn something I was not aware of that could change my perspective. But that rarely happens. I find that folks just spout what they heard on their favorite news outlet with no real understanding of the issue and cannot discuss it intelligently when asked to elaborate. The lefties just shout something stupid like "Orange man bad!" Which had nothing to do with the topic at hand.
I know. But it did not use to be that way.
When I came to the US, I admired the way Americans were able to talk both parties without real rancor. Gone with the wind.
The bandwagon effect on society.
people need a safe space for conversation, if intentionally created safe space for those who want to talk about politics and someone in the group presents a clear way out of the right/left elite rule box then we are on our way to non-violent societal transformation.
see my previous comment and contact information.
My 11th grade American History teacher instructed us thus: when someone asked her for whom she had voted, she always replied, "Isn't this a nice day!" That was ~1965.
wise words
I too don’t feel as connected with certain friendships even family relationships because of the harsh judgment sent at me. People who I thought knew me, my character, in an instant threw me under the bus, because I wasn’t buying into the Covid crap. I don’t deny Covid is a serious flu. But from the beginning, lockdowns, no alternative medicine (let people suffer, when their lips turn blue, throw them on a ventilator watch them die), hypocrisy everywhere, riots ok, but going to the beach evil! The list goes on and on. The fact that people could so easily follow the narrative without a single....”mmm...that seems off?” Scares the $%*! Out of me! So for me it’s a protective barrier I have put up, if I can’t trust someone, I don’t let them in. Because they scare the hell out of me.
I feel the same way. Just a lingering distrust. I look at people and realize I am on my own, and that's ok. When I meet another "leper" I feel the colony again and that we can trust one another. But in my life, as in most people's lives now - 90% of the people you interact with are not in the leper colony, so it is isolating.
I get it. I feel as you do. I also sit in silence and have watched a seemingly insurmountable wedge driven between me and my leftist friends, of whom I have several and love very much. But it's like we live in different worlds. In some cases I feel like if they ever bothered to attempt to learn what I really think and believe--rather than just assuming I share their views, the relationship would be sacrificed. And I believe that based on their comments that take the form of dismissal and denigration of "the others" that think differently. They assign as has been noted here, evil and fascism, baselessly in my view to anyone not in lockstep with the Democrat party line as espoused by the CNN/MSM opinion. And yet, I believe them to be good people. I can't help but believe, that their motives are in the interest of a better world and society. But I don't think they in most cases, can make that same assumption about non-leftist beliefs and opinion. I wish I knew better how to get to that common ground. I find it's somewhat easier if it's one on one because in that sort of conversation you can bring up facts that are ignored by mainstream leftist media. But in a group; forget it. You get ganged up on. So it's easier to shut up. I find, they recoil from ideological challenge and so attack like a pack of wolves. I personally think it's because if someone holds a low information point of view, it doesn't withstand much scrutiny, and so if you're wedded to it, you'll use whatever works to defend it which ends up being the name calling and the like.
> The fact that people could so easily follow the narrative without a single....”mmm...that seems off?” Scares the $%*! Out of me!
💯💯💯 we are way more mind-fucked than I was ever willing to even think possible. I don’t really see any soft landings in our future.
I know exactly how you feel and what it feels like. I can't make new friends because there
is no one unjabbed around me...and all my friends are dying. Recurring cancers, new illnesses, etc.
I want to ignore the division in politics (which is also predominant where I live)...but
really, there is no fundemental commonailty ...all roads lead back to this jabbed/unjabbed division...because it is a huge gap between who sees reality, and who doesn't.
And it leaves very little to talk about, when all is said and done. You can't even discuss the weather even..hey its snowing ..its climate change....which leads to who believes it, and who doesn't.
Leaves you only talking about cable bill increases, electricity increases, etc etc...which eventually leads to inflation, and who beleives it is massive government overprinting of money to crash the economy, and who doesn't even grasp the concept of money.
I was fortunate in that there is a robust freedom movement in Maine that I found when the lockdowns happened, but I also joined a few online groups that have been lifesavers. I have made real friends and built real community. Find your people. It’s The Way.
M
Sarah, are you willing to divulge the county? Or is this freedom movement running throughout? I'm in Lincoln, but at present only for part of the year. Would very much like to find others.
All over the state, lots of folks in Lincoln! I'm in Sagadahoc. You probably want to go to the Owl's Head meeting. I can connect you. What town are you in?
Bremen-- and tomorrow 2/3 at 11 a.m. Thank you!
I don't think there's a way to send a message through substack but I have a public identity:) Go to my website www.innerseahomeopathy.com and schedule an info call - tell me in the comments section who you are so I have the info to hand for you.
Wait until the electric boogaloo hits full force! Then you won't even be able to talk about cars. It's sad, but it's coming.
I am so sorry. The people you can talk with are still out there. I met someone new yesterday and we both enjoyed talking about the many places he and his wife have lived, what they liked and didn't in each, his wife finally working at the company of her dreams. We talked about how restrictive one place was with respect to vaccinations for a sentence or two and then moved on.
A month or so ago I was at a group dinner with what I assumed were all unjabbed, after that unmentionable topic came up one guy admitted he was indeed jabbed. I was really impressed at how everybody backed-off the rhetoric and became supportive and conceded that the future is unknown, and we quickly moved to less decisive convo.
Imagine the converse scenario, if everybody in the group were jabbed except for one who admitted he was unjabbed. Hmmm... 🤔
For all the stereotypes and vitriol aimed at us, my observation is that "red" people are on average actually more tolerant and open-minded than "blue" people. In terms of political dynamics this is actually a handicap, because we have a higher threshold of tolerance, so they can get away with more crap.
This has been my experience as someone who voted Demo her whole adult life. Except nowadays, Dems must buy into the extreme narrative (abortion til day before birth, for example) or you're a bigot. No gender ideology in schools and you're a transphobe. Protecting children is no longer a value espoused by the Dem party, unfortunately.
I remember Dave Rubin noticing and commenting on this maybe in '18, as he was moving from wild Left toward right.
I totally relate to your situation. I come from a very liberal circle of friends. I was a Democrat my whole adult life until the lockdowns and the mandates for cardiotoxic jabs.
I wish them all well. ALL have taken the jab. One of them works for a huge hospital system in Oregon and already jabbed all 3 of her kids (17, 15, 12). I'm heartbroken but will NEVER tell her. I just avoid them all. I pray that none of them end up harmed by the jabs. But I can NO LONGER identify with people who applaud the mandates and support the lies/propaganda while my kids' peers are dying SUDDENLY. I cannot find commonality with people who swallow legacy media lies while poisoning their own kids. I'm so sorry. I find no reason to celebrate with them. I love them and bless them for the past that we shared. But their stance is having a profound impact in MY quality of life and the SAFETY OF MY 18 & 20 year olds. I NEED ALLIES NOW. At 58, I get more joy and fulfillment from meeting people with shared priorities/values: and keeping our kids WHOLE and SAFE is #1. There is no compromise, and no sitting at the table pretending that everything is honky dory.
I was a liberal until I got out of college and started to work.
I have been a conservative for most of my life...still am.
But I am FED TO THE BACK TEETH with the Republicans and the entire UNIPARTY.
We are in such trouble..we have lost our country, we are at the end of the Dollar economy,
and it is impossible to make small talk anymore.
that makes you TransPartisan - beyond parties. the FIRE sector is concentrating wealth and power Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. please join us to create a new system, free and fair markets - www.theIU.org
I will Check it out. Thanks.
Totally hear you.
With you. Had to write (very difficult letter) to brother who asked to come visit, with wife, this summer for a night or two while my daughter and her family are visiting from UK. I had to tell him that I am much concerned about 'shedding', which seems anecdotal at this point, but so were vax adversities in Sept '21---and then became data points. And that I avoid being in proximity to the MRNA vaxxed, and don't wish my grandchildren to come to harm. [He took the message in good heart, mercifully]
Doesn't the shedding stop after a while? I thought it was bad only the month or two after the jab?
I just listened to Dr. Urso on the Dr. Drew show talk about how no one knows how to stop the spike protein once in the system. If that's the case, it is possible that shedding may be happening from time. Perhaps there is an activation period just like with the esptein-barr virus.
Thanks. Also asking for clarification: 'happening from time"? Is there a word missing?
Meant to say "from time to time"...sporadically
See McCullough on this. My point is: no one knows. Yet. Yet. Adverse events were laughed away, their sufferers gaslighted around Sept. '21 (when I first saw Dr. John Campbell interviewing the vax-damaged) and for how long before, I don't know, as I only began to follow that topic about that time.
Mercifully, he took my letter in good heart and said he would wait on my lead. Thanks for your response (and gift of another one of 'those anecdotes').
Re shedding--well, almost but not quite--see Dr. Drew and Dr. Urso Jan 25 ~the 45 min mark (spike protein not ceasing production)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIU0yy63Lag
(Alerted to this from another commenter, then found the source)
Having just sent that, the not-ceasing-production makes one think of Paul Dukas/Disney Sorceror's Apprentice....,
JLL - please consider speaking your truth to all your friends even if you are risking their friendship with you. How else to we create change and alarm people as to serious problems? Please speak out!
So many similar journeys and experiences.
I *had* a large group of friends - we all came together over 2 decades ago after bonding over a common interest. We all met in the internet’s very early days (late 90’s) through a message board, and eventually became such good friends that we began regularly meeting in person every year for a long weekend reunion/retreat. We only had one rule, whether online or in person: we didn’t discuss politics or religion in our group, but everyone was welcome to be as quiet or as vocal about those things as we wanted anywhere else (including on all other social media) about what we believe. Since we were all social media “friends” outside our group chats, everyone was pretty well aware of which “side” the others were “on” and no one cared. It was very much a “I disagree with you about X but will defend to the death your right to believe it and live according to that belief” kind of group.
Between January and July of 2020, every single one of them unfriended me, ghosted me, and/or publicly denounced and denigrated me. 90% of it was Covid-related, and not because I was spouting off on my own page, but because I *dared* to ask questions like “how do you know that is true?” or gently offer factual counter-evidence when others would post angry raging tirades about masking, or staying home, or “all the hospitals being overrun” about it in our group (contrary to our one rule). The other 10% boiled down to their very vocal support for BLM and gender transitions for kids stuff - again that they were posting vehemently about in our “solace from politics and religion” group - and my unwillingness to agree with them.
The same thing happened with local knitting friends - all woke, all covid crazy, all very suddenly unwilling to adhere to our previously stated “no politics, no religion” rule, and all turned into a lynch mob, running with pitchforks after the few of us that calmly said “I disagree, here’s why.”
One of my oldest friends recently tried to friend me on Instagram (which I only use to keep up with my grown kids’ stuff). I wondered if she was hoping for amnesty, or if her brain was so vaccine-addled that she just forgot that 2.5 years ago she purposely sicc’d a group of her own friends on me via a certain social media post, doxxed me in another post to a group I wasn’t part of, and then laughingly egged both her friends and complete strangers on as they proceeded to threaten my family and me with some of the vilest evil acts I’d ever seen or heard of described in print. She was the only person I have ever unfriended (and then had to take the step of also blocking) on social media (mostly because I didn’t want to stoop to behaving like my intolerant “friends” had). Maybe she thought the baby gift she gave me in 2003 made up for her awful choices?
Seven years ago, I read a study which claimed the country (US) was more divided than it had been since the Civil War. I often wonder if we’ve topped that.
That is a horrific story....there is something so evil about what happened with covid....Is it our fear of illness or death that makes the divide so impassable?? Where logic and reason no longer work?
I think that has something to do with it.
Get out of the social media circuit altogether. Encourage your kids to as well. My encouragement actually came from my millennial kids. They got off FB, and are only trolls on Instagram. They don't post anything. They saw too many of their friends get hurt, and saw how it was turning some of their friends into narcissistic train wrecks. Nothing good is created from social media. That being said, I am sorry that your long time friends hurt you. But their behavior was fueled by social media platforms. If we're going to get out of this, it's not going to be with rants on social media. I'm not sure what it's going to take, but I am pretty sure social media platforms are not going to make people use their critical thinking skills, it only allows them to run on emotions.
I basically abandoned social media after things went so sour in 2020. I keep my Instagram account only to be able to see the things my adult kids share with me there, and I do have a job that requires engaging with my company’s “fan” group on Facebook and Ravelry (social media for yarn-using nerds) but so far those specific spaces have remained free of all the other garbage. My boss (the company’s founder & owner) goes out of her way to stay out of cultural hot-button issues entirely, but the downside of that is that you don’t really ever develop any real relationship in that kind of environment. I know most people believe that it’s impossible to foster real relationship via social media, but that wasn’t true in my experience. The age of internet mobbing and cancel culture killed any chance of that continuing, though.
I do appreciate the polite and honest intellectual engagement found in the substack comment sections (both here on Bad Cattitude, and over on the Coffee and Covid substack). As JFly pointed out, this is too tough a time to waste effort on small talk.
You are not alone. I can relate. Long time friends I had thought were thinking people and loyal friends just... got sucked into some other dimension out of a PKD novel. They're still reading the NYT and getting boosted, heaven help them.
That's terrible! Although one in my group unfriended me and accused me of posting "misinformation" on Fakebook (one I am the least close to), the others have accepted my choices and provided me much comfort when I lost my dad last year. After hearing your story I'm feeling a little guilty that I didn't meet up with them last evening. I realize that it's my issue. I'm just not in the mood for small talk these days with so much evil in the world. And then I also knew we'd be discussing the recent diagnosis of a mutual friend with stage 4 glioblastoma (suddenly and out of the blue!). They're blaming Covid rather than the obvious cause!
I cannot tell you how many people I know have been blaming their or their family members' heart attacks, blood clots, severe muscle cramping, full body rash, shingles, sudden food allergies, aggressive cancers, etc on either pure coincidence or covid—never on the jabs, oh, no, could not possibly be the Holy Injections.
I heard it was climate change. That's the real killer.
oh yeah! or eggs maybe.
Yup! Same here. 3 family members: 1 pulmonary embolism, 1 arrhythmia, 1 with 3 heart operations in a month (stent, valve, pacemaker). Two friends with turbo cancer. No one hints of a link to the jabs.
If you are awake and know what has gone on and what is coming at us with the speed of a freight train, you are definitely not in the mood for small talk.
You have a lot of friends here.
I don't even do facebook anymore...waste of time. Right now we are focused on how to survive the coming CBDC...and the bank BAIL Ins...and how to get ready to survive.
I also gave up FB a year ago, which was the only social media I had ever used. Best decision!
Same here!
Brutal!!!!!
Me too in many ways. However, I'm old and need social interaction. Most of the jab-happy folks are getting quieter and quieter, while I get bolder and bolder. And I call many of my former friends my Covid casualties. I have a much smaller friend base.
I totally, but totally hear you. And I think this whole covidian thing is one big mind-game, and to win, one has to not give in to despair, but stay standing— and creative.
Me too. 100 percent am seeing the same here and with me.
Go along and keep plugging away. Those that don't die from multi-jab effects will eventually see the light.
I can completely relate. Thanks for putting this simple observation out here.
Totally hear you.
Does Santa have magic Reindeer that can fly?
Liberals/normies will say yes, because this is consistent with what they have been told: the narrative.
Conservatives will say: Reindeer don't fly.
It is the easiest non-political way I have found to demonstrate this effect. The sorting hat assigns people to be liberals NOT because of issues (as they think) but their willingness to follow the narrative, even to the point of ridiculous contradiction. "We are the anti-war party, no peace talks, we need to counter-attack Russia!"
the good news is that, albeit at a glacial pace, they are slowing their willingness to clap and play along.
are you the second child by birth order in your family? I'm starting to think second child syndrome is the cause of some people's so-called hesitancy... of course this doesn't help us fit in, sorry I don't have any solutions for your situation.
I am, but my older sister is also unjabbed. I think a better indicator is overall skepticism going back many years, taking receipts on the mammoth pile of lies from both political parties, observing the ratcheting-down outcomes from the 'expert class', and seeing how command & control of the currency / economy has us circling the drain. Not trusting 'The Narrative' on the Jabberwocky was a no brainer, even as it cost me my career and forced me into early retirement.
Well, glad you have an older sister in your camp.... but sorry about the price you paid for being right 😕
Thanks LIz, when given the choice of 'risk health' or 'continue paycheck' it becomes pretty easy. Our health is EVERYTHING! Pfizer's endgame is going to make the Hindenburg look like a firecracker.
Not sure if you're asking me but as a matter of fact I am. I am also a child sexual abuse survivor which made me distrust adults at an early age. But seeing my 3-month old go through 48 hrs of hell after her routine vaxxes taught me to question every medical intervention.
oh dear. I am sorry all that happened to you. I do hope your child is fully recovered.
Thanks. I have healed and enjoy a life full of love and excellent opportunities. Healing IS possible if approached with faith and introspection. I only share that experience because it does change your sense of safety around adults. One learns to question authority very early on. At least that's how I coped. I'm blessed to be awake and aware enough to have a heightened sense of the real events happening all around us. I was never hesitant but rather keenly aware of the corruption of the alphabet agencies.
Jfly - there is a way out of the box - https://alannahartzok.substack.com/p/war-peace-and-commons-rent see my comment for contact information.
This cat-has-trophy for best comment imo.
I don't know whether to laugh or clap?!
but you need clarity as to a non-violent way forward, I suggest Jubilee Justice - Public Banks and Commons Rent Public Finance - to get out of the right/left elite rule system.
"War" may very well be more compassionate in the end with fewer casualties.
I will never forget that many on the Left would have us caged as animals for choosing bodily autonomy.
Perhaps that is more dangerous than war?
"I will never forget that many on the Left would have us caged as animals for choosing bodily autonomy."
But you seem to overlook this applies equally to the Right when it comes to abortion and indeed BOTH sides reject the other's "bodily autonomy" on these two specific issues. Not only does compassion seem to evaporate but often a punitive element comes to dominate. Each side believes they have "right" on their side. This seems like a dividing line hard to breach.
There's a partial parallel there, but the abortion question is a little more complicated. Personally, I'm on the "woman's choice" side of that one, but the other side can rightly point out that there is another body involved whose autonomy is utterly violated to the point of inflicting a cruel death when the choice is abortion. Also, banning abortion affects a relatively small number of people, who usually bear some responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves. Such a ban means withholding an iatric procedure; it does not mean hunting the woman down to force something into her against her will.
To fairly compare the intrinsic outrage of the coerced injections with the abortion question, the authorities would not only have to ban abortion, but also require that everyone submit periodically to their sexual advances, else they cannot travel, hold a job, or shop.
What a polite, thoughtful, response. Thank you.
Sorry, I don't see similarity between rejecting a shot and killing a full term baby. Am I missing something?
Just saying, forcing someone to take a shot may kill them and aborting a baby definitely kills someone. They are on the wrong side in both cases.
Porge speaking truth
Who ever lost their lively hood over an abortion?
In both cases, someone dies or may die, eh?
I love this post because it calls out the demagoguery for what it is- a strategy (yes, intentional) to keep us divided. This will not be easy to unwind, but I also believe it is possible. Calling it out is a start. As we all begin to recognize it for what it is, we will need to begin the hard work of finding and emphasizing what brings us closer. The controlling machine fears this, but we must not.
keep in mind that this does not have to be a top down strategy and is likely an emergent feature of interactive internet media and the segmentation is drives.
it primarily sells you confirmation bias for your own prejudices and ideologies.
it also makes exaggerated pastiches and strawmen of opposing views to inflame you into engagement.
this divides tribes and makes them hate each other.
i suspect the politicians are more opportunistically response to this than capable of planning and perpetuating it.
it's just a selection filter. the loud, divisive, annoying ones get all the media coverage because that is what we the people click on.
I think we find ourselves in this divide due to a combination of “emergent features” of internet based communication and top down influence. There are obvious sources of top down influence, like the legacy media. There are less obvious examples that actually comport with Edelman’s proposed solution rather well: the collaboration between tech companies and sectors of our federal government to influence the narrative. The extent of that “collaboration” is not fully known.
The solution for us as individuals starts in the same place. Relate to one another as people deserving of dignity, and remember what is common between us. When it gets down to it, as Americans, most will agree that we would rather live as sovereigns rather than be ruled by a Sovereign Elite class. That is the essence of “We the People” as the voice from which the Preamble to the U. S. Constitution (and thus the entire document) was written.
I’m afraid you may be wrong in your assertion that we would rather live as sovereigns. These past three years don’t line up with this statement. People got right in line with the tyranny. Still there are many that would fall right in line tomorrow. I’d say up near 75% would go back to wearing a mask no questions asked if the mandate returned. Freedom is not a shared value of Americans any longer.
yes and what exactly do we need to live as sovereigns? I suggest freedom from usury/debt and fairness in relationship to land and natural resources. A Fair and Free market. see https://alannahartzok.substack.com/p/war-peace-and-commons-rent
I disagree somewhat. Based on the evidence of the last 3 years buttressed by the Twitter releases, we are fools not to consider the collaboration (fascism) as pervasive, bordering on all-encompassing.
>"keep in mind that this does not have to be a top down strategy and is likely an emergent feature of interactive internet media and the segmentation is drives."
A big white pill for me recently on the future of online-discourse-as-narrative-antidote has been the US Surgeon General of all people warning against social media use among kids.
Now I'll grant that 13 is a mite young for a drip feed of what we currently know as "social media." But I'm also seeing this as a signal that the technocrats feel less confident in their ability to steer the online narrative than they once did. Certainly they are losing their grip on it faster than the grip they maintain on education institutions.
See also "Hate Inc." by Matt Taibbi.
Well said!
Just an observation. Back in the day my extended family was 80% D 20% R. Starting with Prez Carter, the family became increasingly R in terms of voting and to a lesser extent in terms of voter registration. Why? Economics and Morality/Religion. Over time the D’s damaged the economy and assaulted my families moral and religious values. Obama & Hillary C. turned the entire family ~100% R by votes. There were still many registered as D’s because of jobs, inertia, etc. Another observation: I have friends who are still strong D’s. They completely lost their minds when Trump was elected. They are the divisive ones, the ones who have to check their tribe to find their opinion on anything. I don’t see that behavior among the R voting group as much.
Exactly my experience. A former democrat, I loathe just about everything they stand for now. And yeah, it is the left, now firmly entrenched in power thanks to "fortified" elections, that seeks to punish its enemies.
"fortified" elections"
Bravo!!! Doc.
Thanks, General John. Sorry about Vicksburg...
It did get a little rough at the end. However, General Forney managed to get across the river and made it to Texas and commanded troops from there to the end of the hostilities. He was able to find his way back to Alabama and hid out on a family plantation for a period of time, after which he returned to my home town of Jacksonville, Alabama where he died in 1901. I have his West Point sword hanging over my mantle.
Wow, are you related?
He is my great great grandfather. My first name is Forney. It's one of those Southern things. Giving family names for first names. Actually my middle name is Rutledge after Edward Rutledge of South Carolina who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Or simply seek to win elections!!
Excellent point of view. This helps confirm my self perception that I’m a Libertarian at heart and register Republican. We need way.... less.... government. Also I agree that the populace (and apparently Congress) is confused regarding the (intended) limited power of the president. Instead, every 4 years everyone believes they are voting for a king (or queen).
I find that libertarianism is a decent middle ground and would be my default political preference if it weren't for a lack of a "war-like" posture of the current party. Our Nation was founded on individual liberty with freedom from overreaching government in the forefront. Somehow, we have devolved into a massive bureaucracy leading the "death by a million cuts" of big governmental spending; nevermind its bat-shit policies.
If the libertarian party came out with a massive push along the lines of, "We are going to fight for your freedoms whether you like us or not.", and, "We will start by dismantling the current governmental bureaucracy, stripping back large, wasteful government programs, and returning to the roots of individual freedom by reaffirming our God-given rights as enumerated in the constitution.", I, along with many others would jump ship in a heart beat.
In this highly polarized era, we need an all out cultural war for our individual freedoms. That is something that neither political party wants, for with it comes their demise.
Well, they didn’t, did they? They completely deserted the world in the Tyranny of COVID19. Don’t count on them!!
I went to a Libertarian meeting, in graduate school, way back ~ 1972. Found the ideas quite attractive, at a time when Republican was just RINO (term not yet invented). However, I also found the Lib. party amoral, and that finished it for me. Have ever since thought of my self as 'conservative', not Repub.
Consider geo-libertarian for both Freedom and Fairness. https://alannahartzok.substack.com/p/war-peace-and-commons-rent
OK. But one side is firmly on the side of advancing unreality (We are not all equal. Bruce Jenner and his kind are not women) and into knee-capping people based on race (Some graduating HS students I know are being shut out from schools they, 10 years ago, would've easily been granted admission based on test scores. Other HS kids I know are taking their slots and even receiving scholarships, though they scored lower on the ACT, but higher on melanin levels.)
The political party doing this also declared some workers were "non-essential", shut down businesses, enforced stupid mask mandates for school children, divided people based on vaccination status, and discriminated against those that refused to be injected with poison. They also are looking to tear up the 2nd Amendment, if given half a chance. So, yeah, I am running full speed to the other side that allowed people to live their lives freely, for the most part, during this manufactured drama. Right now, I am looking to move from my blue state into a red one and am checking voting results over the past few election cycles to make sure it is a solid red area.
My family and I left San Diego for Iowa. We have way too many liberal women here but I find most of them have no clue what exactly they are truly wanting. When I explain the horrors of living in California, they cannot fathom. I keep telling them they are voting for it. I’m thankful for strong men and farmers.
There is nothing quite as clueless and harmful as a liberal with good intentions.
I left California to move back home to rural PA for affordable housing and to be close to family for my children to grow up.
Yes, I moved to where I grew up to be nearer to people I could trust- family.
The sooner the better Doc. I can speak from experience.
Thanks. Taking care of an elderly parent keeps me here for now, but the situation is becoming untenable. Fortunately, I am close to a very red state and wouldn't have to alter things too much.
yeah i moved out of cities back to rural PA and find myself happy to live amongst Republicans. yet still need to transcend right/left tyranny, suggest through radical decentralism and addresing the land and money problems with Public Banks and Commons Rent public finance, see:
https://alannahartzok.substack.com/p/war-peace-and-commons-rent
Commies can be happy among Private Landowning Patriots, but not the opposite. If you really believe in Community ownership, move into Baltimore. Otherwise you are another Bernie Sanders Socialist Millionare grifting like the Greenie Billionaires in Davos flying in with hundreds of "Private" jets advocating for their NWO. Hippocritical
The approach is about private property for all. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism
"Geolibertarians recognize the right to private ownership of land, but only if fair recompense is paid to the community for the loss of access to that land. Some geolibertarians broaden out the tax base to include resource depletion, environmental damage, and other ancillaries to land use"
Not "Buying" It, Comrade. The "Caveats" will end up with people in ditches, as always ........ Communal = Enforced Tyranny Mao Style.
You must be in Lancaster Cty if you are among Repubs! (I'm in Montgomery, formerly Repub. now all Democrat ).
Not even the same state, I'm in the Southern Appalachian Redoubt of the corners of TN, NC, & GA.
Very Few democRats; We don't really like Repubs either, but vote for them as long as they keep the Rats away. :-)
National Divorce. There are FAR too many people who are very loud about how determined they are to, in the words of Michael Malice, “see me dead, or settle for my submission.” These are irreparable rifts. Team liberty and Team coercion cannot coexist.
If the dollar dies, a lot of this goes away because it becomes impotent shrieking. And if the country pulls apart, it goes away for the same reason.
Too many people are addicted to the bureaucratic state. They don’t want it to die, just the parts they don’t like, and, for the most part, they just want those redirected towards their ends.
Again, Malice, “I don’t hate you, I just don’t want to share a country with you.”
I was raised libertarian in NH. Almost all my parents’ friends were limousine liberals, and we all managed to function together. Now they have a shrinking social circle because the stridency has reached fever pitch, and my mother actually got called a fascist at a meeting for saying she read the WSJ along with the NYT.
The Overton window has to move. The memes have to move it.
divorce is difficult as we are so geographically interpenetrated.
the US is not so much red state blue state as blue urban red suburban and rural.
how do you split that?
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1620765881998639107?s=20&t=vpuAoX7WumUHM_pne4GLTA
I think we do it in place. I’m already seeing it happen. But I would see the solution as breaking up into loosely-confederated counties that are self-governing. Even up here in the Socialist-Puritannical northeast, the rural places are red/purple and the cities are blue (further south), blue/purple (further north). Maine and NH would be a whole lot happier with each other if the northern 2/3 of both joined up and left the southern parts to finally realize their goal of reuniting with Massachusetts. Of course, that’s still sad for me on the blue coast, but more competition across close borders is good for everyone. NH’s tax structure has applied pressure on ME and VT.
NH tax structure for ... real estate? Something else? (Howdy from south-central NH btw! And no, I don't want to join MA. I'd rather join QC - then pretend I can't speak English to MA residents.) We don't have income tax, but from what small business owners or self-employed tell me that in addition to business tax rates, they are definitely getting hit with more fees, certifications, etc., which is taxation in a sneaky kind of way.
How's that affecting ME and VT taxation? Are the things that NH politicians sneak past the voters giving the ME and VT politicians ideas?
Of course all of southern NH doesn’t want to join MA, but the first half of my life was spent in Concord and my perception is that the southern half of the state is very lefty and there are lots more immigrants from MA than to it-would you agree? That’s the blue part of the state.
The lack of income tax and sales tax in NH create some competition for the surrounding states. They lose residents to NH, who get vacation properties in ME or commute to MA.
it would be easy in Oregon! ;-)
Starve the bastards out?
Saw off the coastal cities and let them sink into the sea. 😉
This is true right here in my own county.
Kurt Schlichter split it pretty well in his Kelly Turnbull Books…
Just downloaded a sample: any particular books to start with?
They are a series. Peoples republic is the first one. Here’s a good description of them: https://www.goodreads.com/series/250028-kelly-turnbull
There is something about the fierce competition in the large cities that seems to succumb to the Democratic Party. Not sure what that is. History perhaps?
The first thing that would happen if the US split among D/R voting lines, is that 99% of all D-voters who has helped cause the problems would try to move to the R-est area possible.
And if allowed in, they start the process of destruction again. And again and again and again.
The good nation, just as the good family, is not made by who you let in, but who you get rid of.
Yes, that’s what HAS happened. But the problem is trying to create a static state. It’s a dynamic system. If the framers proved one thing, it was that no amount of foresight, even combined with legal constraints, keeps that wolf at bay forever. I mean, you can’t even endow your own art collection with specific and binding instructions; three generations later the trustees are suddenly sure you *would have* included DEI provisions if you’d only *known.* That’s the “if you can keep it part.”
The apathy about engagement comes from the futility. Smaller units are always more responsive, and when they can’t print or beg the money from the feds, they get local again.
California may be an interesting place in 30 years, then
"Too many people are addicted to the bureaucratic state" - good point - and a while ago I read that many Russians were unhappy with the downfall of the Soviet Union because their guaranteed jobs had gone. Yeonmi Park, who defected from North Korea, also said something like 'freedom was harder than she expected'. She just wasn't used to thinking for herself.
I'm writing as a UK resident and I believe this is a disease of affluence in the West - we think we can afford to be at loggerheads because we're materially comfortable. The west is running up huge debts and sooner or later we're going to "run out of someone else's money" as Mrs Thatcher put it.
I think that will shift the Overton window.
Research geo-libertarian for a way out of right/left and to have both Freedom and Fairness.
https://alannahartzok.substack.com/p/war-peace-and-commons-rent
Freedom IS fairness. Can you give me a quick synopsis of geo-libertarianism?
here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism
Any place trustworthy? Never trust Woke-a-pedia for a thing.
Geolibertarian Home Page
Who are the Geolibertarians?
We Geolibertarians distinguish ourselves from right-wing, "royal" libertarians by our profound respect for the principle that one has private property in the fruits of one's labor. This includes the fruits of mental labor and the results of reinvestment of legitimate private property (capital) in future production. We remain consistent in that respect by recognizing, as did the classic liberals, that land and raw natural resources are not the fruits of labor, but a common heritage to be accessed on terms that are equal under the law for everyone. The statist system of land tenure empowers non-producing landlords to extract the fruits of tenants' labor.
We also consider ourselves "green" in our respect for the earth as our common heritage. However, we clearly distinguish between land as common property and land as state property. Unlike left-wing or "watermelon" greens, we advocate governance of land in harmony with free market principles, and deny the right of statist bureaucracies to meddle in the affairs of individual land holders. We see ourselves as embracing the best attributes of the Green and Libertarian parties.
Geolibertarians also believe in free trade, with no state support for monopoly privileges of any kind. We therefore oppose money monopolies, information monopolies, a host of lesser monopolies, and most of all, monopoly of the power to govern, as embodied by statist political systems. We are not nihilistic anarchists. We believe that monopoly privileges can be gently and methodically displaced without disrupting to society, even when statists resort to violence to prevent it.
Geolibertarian organizations and links
Land and tax reform
Money reform
Information access reform
Democratic process reform
Famous people with geolibertarian ideas
Classic liberals (Jefferson, Locke, Mill, Paine, Adam Smith, etc.
Modern libertarians (Choderov, Nock, Hess, Nolan, etc)
Other famous people (Churchill, Einstein, Tolstoy, etc)
Send comments, questions or offers to help to pimann@pobox.com (Dan Sullivan)
I feel unclear reading that on what the definition of "a common heritage to be accessed on terms that are equal under the law for everyone" is with respect to property. It's not intuitive to me, nor is it clear to me in what I do understand of the classical liberal tradition, that a general public/community is entitled to the land or compensation for the lack of access to it. How does a market determine what that should be?
Ours is a division not of race nor politics. Ours is a division created by principalities that separate man from God, His Love, His Holy Spirit, and His Truth. Until there is return to the God of the Bible and all that it encompasses, we will remain a lost people. Be in the Word. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201&version=NIVHis
Modern update of MLK's speech: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged by the color of their skin, but not by the content of their character. I have a dream that they will one day become well paid DEI commissars and marry the white men who they claim oppress them. I have a dream that the Karens of Boston, Maskachussetts will remove a Lincoln statue and then erect a statue in my honor that looks like a turd. I have a dream today!” https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-give-a-speech
Don't worry, sir - as is often the case, the seed of the solution is already contained within the soil of the problem. Big government requires big debt. Big debt requires big and willing buyers of debt. In case you hadn't noticed, the US is rapidly becoming one of the most hated nations on Earth, if not the most hated. The rest of the world is going hell-for-leather developing a multipolar trade and finance system that will cut out the need to hold USD for collateral and as a way of storing surpluses. The buyers will dry up. Of course, such parasitic entities as the US Govt don't accept being starved, they will attempt to maintain their feeding habits, and this will end in a very messy collapse of the monetary and political system (financial/economic and social too) - a messy end, but an end. The new system will fix many of the problems you observe at the root, in the DNA, to use a stack-appropriate metaphor. The only problem is that the transition will be rough.
I think Canada belongs in the "At Risk" category, if not even higher. Trudeau is the "Great Divider" and does it as a well thought out plan. I'm in my 70's and was born here and can truthfully say that I have never seen anything like this in my life. There was a little bit of it when his father was in power in the 70's, but we got rid of him quickly. This guy learned from his father and his father's elitist friends and has taken it to a whole new level.
What boggles my mind is that anyone takes him seriously.
At least Obama had the novelty factor going for him. Castreau is just a simpering politician who says nothing every time he gets up and stammers. To say nothing of his absurd dress up habits.
Why do any Canadians actually like him let alone give him the time of day? Bizarre.
The long march left started back in the late 70’s, can’t turn that around any time quick
1920s, not 1970s. Frankfurt school + later Adorno and Habermas. It was exported to the US post-WW2, and became the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. That's why US civil rights discourse ever since then is based in marxist epistemology. In the 1990s post-modernism was added, since it dispenses with knowledge, truth and evidence, in favour of leader-cults.
Nope, read it all - I’m allowed my own opinion
WTH?
Dude, it’s the internet - not a court of law - AFAIC enjoy balkanization - you earned it
You do not understand history - ok, time to go to work - this was fun tho
I can’t be friends with people who had no issues with the last three years. I can’t be friends with people who believed I should be locked up and/or fired for not taking a “warp speed” vaccine. I don’t really want to be friends with people who masked their children and didn’t fight back. And I don’t want to live in the same country as them.
This makes me alt right apparently. At least when we lived in California. I’ve also found the people who just want to be left alone are being railroaded by the groups who love power. So sadly, I don’t think this is a stance we can take any longer.
"those who would control a society are well served by polarizing the populace against one another to create strife and alienation rather than commonality. once you are convinced that “the other half” of the country is “out to get you” you can be easily corralled into a gang “for protection.”
Is there anything new under the sun? This is the way that throughout history, Tyrants have "Divided and Ruled". The British Empire used this tool very effectively in India particularly and it is basically all theat Kissinger ever understood. And still tries to use it to divide Russia and China despite the fact that they are both well aware of these stupid games and fully understand that "united we stand, divided we fall".
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9
It should be referred to as DIE not DEI. Why not point out the obvious goal of the program?
Absolutely correct, and for chronological reason. In the '00s, Diversity was what school admin were pushing. Somewhere about '07-'13 or so, inclusion became the focus. Then in '19, equity was added.
In order now, all together shout : D I E!
They know it--and surely re-arranged the letters so the stupids wouldn't notice. However, DEI spells 'gods', which "they" do think themselves to be.
>>>our races are increasingly coming together
Sorry Gatito... I appreciate the analysis, but blacks now state openly their hatred for whites, and the left encourages this. The few sites that are honest about race are severely censored, to the point where (unlike Covid critics such as Dr Malone) they are for all intents and purposes invisible. People who really want to should just start their own research (don't use Google) on "race realism".
It is important to be realistic, even when there are no obvious or even workable solutions.
i do not think this is true.
i think a non-representative, extreme faction is being presented as the mainstream and shading perception.
marriage rates don't lie, media and leaders do.
Media mendacity works both ways. Does the media have any reason to *hide* things like black on white violence? Would they hide the race of black criminals, even when it is on video? I encourage people to look for themselves. But one must search out the few remaining sources before they are shut down.
I'm in that apparently shrinking minority that hate both parties. 🤬