I know a white woman, in her 60s, a US citizen from birth, who is afraid to travel to San Francisco to get a special Visa to go to Prague for a 3-month mission trip. Her reason?
"ICE is just randomly rounding people up on the streets and killing them! Don't you watch the news?"
And this poor woman absolutely believes this narrative and lives her life alternating between hatred of all things Trump and fear of all things ICE!
A family member of mine in his 70s (who lives in the north east) wouldn't take his wife, who is black, to visit another ailing family member in one of the bluest college towns in the south east because of the fear of white supremacy.
Like we're all just burning crosses and dragging gays on gravel roads with our Hemis everywhere south of Richmond.
The MSM has driven many of the Boomers and older Gen Xers into complete retardation. They never catch on. They never fucking catch on.
Up here in Canada the MSM keeps amping up the Trump Derangement Syndrome, to the point we re-elected the most corrupt and repulsive federal regime in our country's history a fourth straight time, largely due to the baby boomer vote in eastern and central Canada. I'm a boomer myself and I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend such crass stupidity on the part of my generation's cohorts.
I'm an Albertan, born and raised and lived my entire life here, and along with at least 30% of the residents of this province, I've had my fill. Time for Alberta to leave Confederation and head down the road to new nationhood. Will it happen in my lifetime, I don't know. But now there is more than a ghost of a chance it will.
I have a lesbian friend who lives in Edmonton, and she said that she “can’t go to the US” because she looks obviously gay, and she “wouldn’t be safe there”. My answer: The US has more gay people than Canada has people, so…
Lol! I "look gay" too, one hell of an undercut and always masculine clothes, even got a tatoo, and I live in the sticks too. And never have any such problems. I get big grins from people with any combination of bright hair and nose rings, and when I recently ran into Starbucks at the gas station to grab a Carmel something or other for my sister, she proclaimed in surprise upon receiving it that she had ndved gotten so much carmel in her drink in her life. Super generous portion. I couldn't help thinking, after the bullshit the baristas were pulling after Charlie Kirk, that they saw the hair and clothes and thought "she's one of us"?
But yes, hugely persecuted in deep red rural America. Fear for my life every day from all the nazi white supremacist kkk grand wizards everywhere.
Yes, sarcastic. The only people I've noticed noticing my dykey look much less reacting are wokesters who think I'm one of them. No one else gives a shit.
Worked fourteen years at a plant in a certain a backwoods Carolina foothills town. Lesbians kinda took over shipping and receiving, which was damn heavy work, and everybody loved them. They got their share of ribbing and snide, no doubt, but they were great, and held their own. Twenty years since the place laid me off, and I still miss that bunch, bet I'm not the only one.
Yup, I find country folk are just fine with all sorts of people. I think these fearful sorts rather live in a bubble, are operating on antiquated "wisdom" or both.
Stop blaming boomers. It is a function of the concentration of higher education institutions and cultural factors. I live in the east and the TDS is on fire here from all ages listening to main stream media and just blindly trusting that news.
A mixed-race couple I know said they've been on vacation all around the US and found that in the deep red South nobody cared but in large blue northeastern cities they got many weird looks and the occasional racial slur.
If you've actually been all of those places that's not even news. If all you know is from the media, it's a complete inversion of what you'd expect.
It always has been destructive. One more reason I hate "the left" and one more reason why I haven't a living clue why all the black people I know are dumbocraps. SMH.
yes. pacifica radio network (formerly "liberal" and 'listener-supported' but now obviously bankrolled by big pharma) is actively promoting racial hatred. lots of programming with that intention.
I know a police officer in a VERY leftist blue city and he said they will get phone calls from upper income white neighborhoods asking for an officer to respond to a "suspicious" person in the area. When they arrive, it will turn out that they ONLY reason they found the person was concerning was...are you ready? "Well, you see, he's, well, you know...black...so why would he be in our neighborhood?"
sounds like my little brother. My parents came to US in 1947 from the Netherlands post WW2.
For some reason he thinks bc he has a "funny last name" (De Leeuw) he is going to get thrown out of the country by ICE. These people...... beyond hysterical
I have a Persian friend who came here in 1980. His entire family are citizens. He thinks Trump wants to send him back to Iran. His twin, a conservative, has weekly phone calls with him to talk him off the despair ledge he's always about to jump off of.
Well, Trump starting war with Iran for no reason does nothing but feed into his paranoia. I agree that he has no reason to be scared of ICE, but surely you can have a bit more sympathy for the particulars of his context, no?
I have coworker, early 30’s and white as they come, who will no longer travel outside the country with her lesbian partner because they believe they will be denied re-entry to the USA. Simply because they are lesbian cat ladies. They are legit terrified of this happening.
This is , of course, the same woman who insisted on wearing a mask to work for a solid year after even the most hardcore face diaper wearers had given it up.
I mean, she *should* be denied re-entry, but she wouldn't be. Ironically the real danger for them in travelling outside the US is encountering cultural enrichment in Europe.
The only way I can get their delusional blabbing stopped is to step in and pronounce that I am not where they are anymore and if you talk, I sure as hell will be talking too. Since they are too far gone and unwilling to the point of rudeness to listen anyway, it gives me a blessed bit of peace. But, honestly I don’t give a crap what they think of me. It’s all wasted breath for me at this point and I’m quite happy on my own.
Likely to some extent, but I still think it's fairly minimal because the people that bought in immediately was substantial and they were encouraged to rage against the "granny-killing" people who didn't wear masks and they were so fully self-righteous in their herd mentality for pretty much a full year prior to most getting those jabs. These are already fairly incurious people who are clearly not independent thinkers and whose lives, as I see it, are largely governed by fear. They were trained well up until 2020, especially once Trump came along, and I think it's fair to say that if any of those people didn't get skeptical or doubt by 2023 or so it was pretty much over for them ever being able to return to reality and be honest with themselves. The shocking thing is that more of these folks haven't had full breakdowns but I guess the herd protects itself by never venturing away from it.
It's oddly encouraging to read how so many people talking about this here serves as a reminder of having a large swath of company in just how many have had to deal with this and continue to do so, but it's also terribly disturbing.
Yes there was pre-existing neurological damage from TDS. First, “not gonna take Trump’s vaccine” then when Biden in office “everyone must take the vaccine, and we must sacrifice all our children to save granny”
I guess you can frame it as neurological damage in terms of the toll that fear and stress can play on one's psyche even when a threat is concocted, but I do tend to think this behavior is not very unusual throughout human history in terms of herd/mob mentality and fear of standing out from, and perhaps even against, the herd. I suppose one could propose trauma rather than just fear as the key component and being able to manipulate and control the behavior of the masses. Trauma does screw up our psyches if never dealt with. The injections, if one didn't have a strong adverse reaction, also certainly served to bring all of those people deeper into the fold and now they can't even acknowledge potentially having made a mistake. They have to remain in denial.
TDS is a psychosis, a condition of not being able to discern reality from fantasy. People with broken brains from TDS will also be easily gaslit and subjected to the fear you mention. The Covid lies and pandemic stress certainly added more broken brains to the pile, but the pile was already pretty high from TDSers.
About a month ago, an elderly customer arrived to pick up some materials.
I work at a landscape yard west of Seattle (rural compared to the big city).
He showed me a whistle around his neck, in case he sees ICE rounding up people. He was petrified he would be rounded up also since he is Hispanic but was born in the USA.
He had a card showing what to do or say if he is rounded up.
He is a sweet gentleman, so I assured him that he will be ok…no one is going to round him up and deport him. He was dubious but that’s all I could say.
It’s horrible that it has come to this for some people….the lies told by “media” outlets are petrifying people.
Well, people do pay for their ignorance even if they're nice and seem well-intentioned. It's difficult for me to have much sympathy for adults that have been around the block a bit and should know better than to get sucked up and carried away so readily. As we saw in 2020, as a mass they can become very dangerous.
The first I heard of this crap was around a year or so ago when a work friend of an older woman in our circles was coming around to our monthly dinners. She was Indian, had been in the US legally for decades and had a job in the admin of the local JC. She kept going on about how she was so scared she'd be rounded up and put in a camp or deported. I felt bad for her, but also knew that trying to 'talk her down' would only lead to her getting pissed off and lead to her making a scene at our humble party. I'd just take the dogs out in the yard until her fit had passed and someone changed the subject. Delusion is a helluva drug...
I knew we were lost when Trump was first running and someone was crying on facebook that Trump's miscegeny laws (remember that in his platform??) would force them to get divorced.
The stress of such massive cognitive dissonance ever since can't be helping their mental stability.
I have a friend from Czechia who says the same thing. She seemed to be a reasonable person until covid came around. Fell for it completely. She was also a dem and a liberal. I was a dem and a liberal, though not the completely convinced of their self-righteousness as some. Covid turned me to the right. Now Trump's murderous diatribes are turning me, not to the left, but to a place where very few seem to exist. That would be believing in peace and not believing it's right to bomb and destroy countries so the US can aid Israel in its domination and to exploit the mineral wealth of those countries.
Yeah, there simply is no, and hasn't been since the Iraq war was becoming imminent, anti-war movement in this country and that is scary. Unfortunately, Trump made a big mistake by going down this road because it is only adding fuel to a fire that doesn't need any stoking. I tend to think that he, like many others in D.C., is more than likely compromised by the state of Israel and had little choice but to go along at this point.
Iran and its proxies are the target… their ambitions to deliver a nuclear device to our continent is the reason they are the target. For a couple decades, we have elected WEAK Presidents… Trump is destroying that threat and he has all my support in doing so. My guess is he knows he has to move fast to complete the Mullahs destruction because if the criminal left captures the House of Representatives, they will do everything possible stop him from finishing the job.
No one forces DJT to do anything. He has his own mind about what he will and won’t’ do. He does what he thinks is right, period. That doesn’t mean he is always right, though. The media has lied about him so much that those who listen to them r so mixed and messed up so badly they don’t know their way out of a paper bag. The antisemitism is part of the great lie. What MSM says about them is so not true, but everyone wants to believe the lies so they can have more reasons to hate Jews. They r a race of people who celebrate life and joy, they long for peace. They have been persecuted and lied about for centuries and have learned that they have to fight back when an enemy comes against them or be erased from existence entirely. They r extremely intelligent people and have learned how to stay alive by becoming feared warriors. In the Middle East, no one wants to be at war with Israel, it is well known what kind of enemy they can be. But they make the greatest and strongest ally and friend. Iran had the whole world afraid of them, Iran, if a country tried to be allied with Israel. Iran bullied and threatened anyone who wanted to help Israel by withholding oil sales. Iran murdered 40,000 of their own citizens recently because they wanted to be free from the tyranny of the Islamic regime over there. They have been murdering Americans and Israelis and many citizens of other countries for the last 50 years. Trump and Netanyahu have decided it had to stop. I agree with them. The people of Iran have been begging Trump to come bomb their country to kill the Ayatollah and his cronies. They r rejoicing now and so is all of the Middle East. I am grateful for a President that wants to protect his country from the totally irrational, insane Islamists who have been trying to kill us and saying they would now for too long.🍒
Have to say I entirely disagree with most of what you say but only wish to point out that my speculation about Trump being pushed into this is based mainly on Tucker Carlson's statement, after meeting or speaking with Trump three times in the lead up to this, that he felt confident in saying that Trump really did not want to go ahead with this war but felt he was left with no choice. I don't think Tucker would say such a thing publicly without feeling that was true and our presidents are never totally in control and that should be obvious throughout history.
Tucker Carlson is extremely antisemitic, which says bad things about him to me. His statements r not to be trusted, they r suspect. He and JD Vance both r antisemitic. Trusting them will mislead u.🍒
He's not antisemitic so thank you for illustrating you swallow a lot of media b.s. and are pretty brainwashed. Why would you believe such nonsense? It's a rhetorical question- I won't engage further with such mindlessness. Adios and good luck.
You are probably correct. David Swanson was once a voice of reason against war. He has faded mightily. Aaron Mate is still in there swinging. But, movement, no. A lot of the anti-war movements were guilty of TDS. I moved away from their blandishments at that point. However, I'm starting to agree with them again.
Biden/kamala/etc were never any good either.
I'm pleased (for what that's worth) to see a voice of reason- yours - on this site.
My cousin’s husband was scared to come to Texas because he thought he would be attacked for being Asian. They live in Chicago. If I would have known this prior to seeing him, I would have attached him for being so, so stupid….and Asian.
Thanks for keeping the receipts. If the situation was hopeless, their propaganda would be pointless. Normies only scan headlines. This may have created a Streisand effect because the spin was so absurd. Zohran backtracked, but he invited his anti American Islamist buddy Khalil to the mayor’s mansion, who somehow still hasn’t been deported, instead of the heroic NYPD officers who intervened and their boss tisch who properly communicated that it was a terrorist bomb attack.
The corporate media are too stupid to realize that they are destroying their credibility when they attempt coverups this blatant. Every time they try this nonsense, more people wake up and realize how bad the media manipulation truly goes.
They don't need to be purchased, they're stupid true believers. See also the Tom Cotton affair in the NYT or the ongoing hysteria that the Ellisons will own CNN soon.
They will undoubtably be released, all charges dropped, and be invited to Gracie Mansion to dine with Mamdani, feted as heroes standing up to White Supremacy. Such is justice in the gag-me-with-a-spoon Leftist New York judicial system.
Except that it's the Feds that have taken the case. So with the current Admin I doubt they will walk, however, there is no telling what some looney judge might do.
yeah. SDNY is liberal, but it's not that liberal. JTTF is involved, and NY JTTF in particular are the big dawgs for dealing with terrorism threats. These kids are going away for a long time. Potentially Gitmo unless they squeal hard enough about who radicalized them.
The investigation's being handled by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is a federal initiative, and terrorism charges roll up to the feds by default so this will absolutely be federal prosecutors not state/local.
However, expect them to be charged as Foreign Terrorists, given the connections to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and the fact that there isn't really statute setting a definition + criminal penalties for "domestic terrorist" as a classification.
Despite all ramblings to the contrary from the left regarding the J6ers, they ended up charged with vandalism and trespass, because without a foreign terror connection, the terrorism charges weren't ever going to stick.
But the important thing to remember is not that they are lying about this particular issue -- it's that they do similar lying about nearly EVERY issue.
Ugh I’ll probably be asleep when it drops. 😏Grrrrr. I seem to be getting to your articles much, much later than the rest of your readers. Still enjoyable though! I’m glad you’re back on my banner carousel!
Turns out far more people than we could ever imagine have no interior sense of self and will swallow anything to keep themselves from collapsing into black hole physics. Education seems not to remedy certain basic lacks. At least at the beginning of our Republic journalism was raw blood sport and now it's just sort of a play kitchen baking simulated news.
In the case of our two teenage adventurers I've seen that interior chasm plenty. Almost no one these days can handle a free society.
Journalism has always been full of crap here, from the back and forth lying slurs from federalists and anti-federalists to yellow journalism. The only remarkable thing is that everyone is surprised that the media has an honestly problem.
I lost the NYT after 9/11 & subsequent Iraq war under Dubya. I kept waiting for them to tell the truth about WMD's - and they just didn't. How could I *know* it was fluffed, and yet -
"The only remarkable thing is that everyone is surprised that the media has an honestly problem."
Well..... it should be remarkable, Brett, but after more than a half-century of witnessing the "goldfish bowl effect" of widespread memory failures by otherwise reasonable people, I can't be astonished by the general surprise at how disingenuous media commonly is.
Particularly small-town America should not be at all surprised when reporting is skewed or absent. Small town newspapers and local radio stations exist on local advertising; alienate the deep pockets and revenue dries up.
What I find interesting, is how that small town dynamic operates at scale.
I've pondered the reasons for the secular faith folks have in the written and spoken word; if it's uttered, it must be "true." My current hypothesis, is that a significant factor is the social conditioning that prevents acknowledgement that everyone acts according to their perceived self-interest, always, distorted perceptions notwithstanding.
If you have another working hypothesis to explain it, please do share.
I think its less about faith in the written and spoken word, and more about a bewildering faith in authority.I would look at belief in media through the lens of a human tendency to gravitate towards authority
The desire to have someone tell them what to do, and what to think is a quirk of our species.
Brett Richards I think you may be right. And though I voted for him, I think the MAGA and Trump supporters have lost their way in a sea of macho beliefs.
Agree, and I think fundamentally, as was illustrated with the 'covid' madness, those who fully bought into that were already primarily driven by fear, albeit perhaps subconsciously, in their day-to day lives and all that needed be done was to pull the trigger because they were already well-trained by 'authority' figures over many years. Skeptics and free thinkers are always in the minority and the dangers of those who need to stay in the herd is always an ever-present reality lying barely beneath the surface.
I began to become disillusioned by the time I was in 4th grade when my classroom teacher, who I'd really liked, was contemptuous of my oral book report on Alfred Bester's short story "Star Light, Star Bright." I still remember her lip curling as she asked if I was going to reveal some tentacled monster as the villain.
Yes, she thought sci fi was unworthy to have been selected as the subject of a book report.
That story was in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series (1954) which introduced me to most of the best in the business. And that it was normal for women to write sci fi.
You could say that event was the beginning of me learning it would be necessary to trust my own tastes and strongly resist the concept of consensus on anything. Of course that would lead to making adolescence a little harder than it always is anyway, and continuing onward.
It starts in kindergarten with pre-cut May basket parts and pasting the parts together....woe unto the child who doesn't put the basket together in the prescribed manner...
Just as here, the good ones have been run out, run down and run off by [insert list of slurs/pejoratives], in school boards, in school politics and in academia.
If you like, Hollywood since 05 or so is just a parallel to education since the 1970s; force out the competent people and trash their legacy so that your own stuff can be elevated as the Good Stuff.
Same with food, same with houses, same with almost all consumer products.
What I remember best of William Buckley Jr. was his lazy arch smile on Firling Line.
The left have been ruthless fighters since the '30s and conservatives have been enriching themselves and their progeny via think tanks issuing beautifully printed lectures on what's wrong with the world and lo, here we are.
Oh, and Phyllis Schlafly of course. She had her fantasy vision on how American society should be ordered and meanwhile the left took over everything that mattered, most especially the Schools of Education.
Never forget about Taqqiya, the islamic practice of lying to non-moslems as a matter of course. To them, lying is not a sin nor a crime or even wrong, if it is done to people beneath you.
And to moslems, everyone else is either a servant, a slave or an enemy and thus beneath.
You opened your nation to moslems: this is how they thank you.
---
Love the headline of "the narrative bombs" due to how many ways it can be interpreted.
Wye aye, it's for certain a pattern, and I don't even rank as high as a minnow far as being a regime-critic goes. Probably it is some kind of semi-automated thing picking up key words and phrases, such as "moslem"+pejorative, or specific terms.
Bit of a lark. In Swedish, "mos" means mash as in bangers&mash, or sauce as in applesauce or for something that's been squished. "Slem" means slime, scuzz, mucus. And "Lem" means limb, as in your arm or leg but most often it is used for the penis.
So "moslem" can be read as a bi-lingual pun meaning "slimy squishy penis".
Whenever I hear about the stuff like Taqqiya that Islam has as 'gospel', the more I am reminded of Scientology and even Mormonism, which then puts me in mind about how so many 19th and 20th century occultists really thought Islam to be the bee's knees, and apparently stole from it whole cloth, especially the bits that allowed a single figurehead to dictate all human interaction for the faithful (and sometimes multiple wives...)
It's OK to lie to normies and "surpressives"for the greater good. It all sounds so cultily familiar.
Yup - few today know or realise that what we call New Age, Spiritism, and all Steiner/Blavatsky-based stuff really is a late 19th century Victorian upper-middle class hodge-podge mix-up of islam, buddhism, hinduism and stuff they just made-up whole cloth from their own fantasy.
Many couch their lies in the rationalisation of "non-members are noit meant to know/are not able to handle the truth, so we are protecting them".
Ah, The Religion of Pieces strikes again. How many terrorist attacks have been committed by Muslims globally in the last quarter of a century? Most reports put this at upwards of 50,000
It's a safety signal rather like the VAERS spike.
Whatever the true number it's time to admit that Islam has a serious problem despite the obvious fact that most Muslims do not condone this. The word 'most' here is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
And didn't Mamdani himself just describe Muhammad as an 'immigrant'? A poor helpless soul who eventually took over and who's ideology led to the conquest, murder, enslavement, and rape of thousands. All sanctioned by God, of course.
Such are desert dreams.
A lot of Islam has moved on from those initial heady days of conquest. A lot hasn't. It's those who remain firmly entrenched in a barbaric and pre-medieval mindset we need to be concerned about.
I noticed a few years ago that immigrants who had done quite well in this country were the most rapid anti-US opponents. This includes trust fund babies from developing countries where women are decidedly second class citizens. I was completely confused and wondered if I was wrong until I came across an interview of Professor Amy Waxman by Glenn Loury in which she explained (as only a MD/JD mind can) similar conclusions. I recently confronted a tech bro whose parents immigrated to the US. Nicest guy ever, who said he gets emotional listening to the Star Spangled Banner. While good to hear, there is a real issue in the room, and it is bourgeois immigrants colonizing the infrastructure created by the pasty white people while simultaneously hating them.
Not just the immigrants. MOST of US kids have been taught by their Marxist teachers in elementary and high schools to hate their country, the police, military, and conservatives, especially GOP and Trump. Certainly true for 90 percent of the 20-something kids I know.
Oh, that is a given. While the young ones are predictably idiotic - as I was for sure - one normally outgrows the idiocy. I am more than happy for anyone to flourish, but call me selfish, I want them to have a bit of gratitude. There is something sinister about someone driving a Maybach who came to the US penniless to complain that the US is on stolen land. This is why I love Vivek. He shows how one can come from a non Western heritage and fuse it with US patriotism. I only hope Ohio voters voted him in. And I love Harmeet Dhillon as well. She is not only brilliant, but she speaks so plainly, which is a true gift.
Sideshow Bob terrorist threw two bombs, one jumping over the back of Loudspeaker Guy, the other he threw at the feet of a couple of NYC police, which led to what may become one of the more iconic photos of this time. https://x.com/i/status/2031179948916904113
Both of those terrorists should be in the Super Max facility for life. If the city, State, and Feds don't clamp down on this sort of behavior as soon and as hard as possible, anarchy will ensue.
Maybe God will have mercy on those two terrorist's souls, I have none.
Given the nature of prosecutors and judges these days, I'm beginning to think police should just shoot them. Throw a bomb in the name of Allah... and you get to meet Him immediately.
I spar regularly with leftists on my local Richmond, VA lefty newsrag, and am constantly amazed at not only how low-info they are, but how they flat-out refuse to even consider non-MSM sources that debunk their narratives.
On the NextDoor app in Richmond the other day someone reported catching covid on a plane. Virtually every comment was either "wear your mask" or "make sure your jabs are up to date." And the anti-ICE yard signs are all over the place. Richmond has gone full woke, in large part due to VCU (IMO). I don't waste my effort discussing anything with these people.
The scamdemic did reveal how most people are not merely far from awake, but that they're just plain clueless, and so many of them are considered "smart" by societal standards. Just goes to show how upside-down sick society is.
I have to disagree. Surely those orchestrating things do, but as you've already pointed out most of the followers are useful idiots, and the middle management types are too wrapped up in benefitting themselves, satisfying their egos, and playing ball because they're weak in terms of values. Ignorance is bliss and never underestimate the power of denial.
Mostly X provide this kind of news. The problem is it takes a lot of time to sort out the truth. The hot takes phase provides the later-often-banned videos. But AI photos and videos get mixed in to muddy the water.
I have friends who get their news only from CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, and the NYT. They're wholly ill-informed. Of course, if I were to show them the videos of those nuts throwing the bombs, they'd say it was AI.
> instead “mistakes were made” and “devices were found.”
Convenient rule of thumb: if the media uses passive voice, they're lying.
"Mistakes were made" mistakes don't make themselves. Why are they hiding who made them?
"Devices were found" devices don't find themselves. Why are they hiding who found them?
I am frankly shocked at how rampant this kind of soft, manipulative not-quite-lying happens in society, and even more shocked at how effectively it works on normies. But I hold this rule hard and fast, no exceptions. If the news is using passive voice, they are actively trying to conceal information from me. They aren't trying very effectively, but, the fact that they are trying, the fact that they feel arrogant enough to try, and the fact that they're confident enough that it will work, speaks volumes
'I am frankly shocked at how rampant this kind of soft, manipulative not-quite-lying happens in society, and even more shocked at how effectively it works on normies.'
allah is the greatest of deceivers. satan has found fertile territory for his mischief.
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. I didn't think he was serious -- that it was all just a publicity stunt. It turned out he actually had some talent for being a Chief Executive.
I didn't vote for Trump in 2020. I judged that demented Joe Biden would NEVER win, and that 2020 might be the year the Libertarians broke 5%.
By 2024, I really didn't have any choice. I had seen 2020 stolen -- really, 81 million people voted for an Alzheimer's patient? -- and knew what was in store if Kakkler won.
We're getting as good as Neo Anderson at dodging bullets.
And now Trump's casual references to murdering people and his allegiance to Bibi and Israel's expansionism are driving me away. I guess I'm such a dupe, I believed that he wouldn't start random wars on random countries as long as they have oil or resources that he/they want.
Um, you do remember, don't you, that the Israeli offensive into Gaza started shortly after Biden took office. And of course Biden was also the mastermind that mastered us into Ukraine.
Iran has been a totalitarian, terrorist police state since Carter screwed up in 1979.
But, it's all Trump's fault, anyway. At least that's what the MSM have propagandized you into believing. It makes perfect sense, until you think about it.
I certainly did not support Biden/kamala in any of those incursions. Diplomacy would be the way of someone with a functioning brain. Violence is the way of children who know no better. Or brainwashed adults who think Die Hard, which I never saw, or some other Hollywood "shoot 'em dead dramas" works in real life.
Fine. So, why don't you flat-out condemn Iran, which is the one, the only sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East? Only weeks ago, they slaughtered thosuands of their own citizens for protesting in the streets.
You seem to think that if you act nice and behave yourself, you will never be under threat. You can afford to feel that way, because where you live, you're not under threat. Project a little...
I am not knowledgeable concerning Wahabi. A quick search yielded nothing concerning genocide or any such by them. Tell us more.
As for Israel, let's use some context. First, I don't believe anything that Iran or Hamas tells me. Do you? Second, Israel fights wars in defense of itself. You could hardly say it's expansionist. I double dog dare you to say that Israel initiated the Gaza war. Iran is responsible for all the killings by the various Muslim terrorist organizations, which includes Hamas and Hezbollah. That makes Iran the winner in the killing innocent people category. They must be so proud.
And the alternative is? Iran has been fomenting terrorism around the world for nearly half f a century. They were going to keep doing it. Many hundreds of thousands slaughtered, with no end in sight.
When you want to feel good about a problem, bring in the politicians. When you want to solve the problem, dump the politicians and bring in a pragmatist.
C'mon. Like the U.S. and the entire west hadn't been using al Qaeda for years and whatever other groups of mercenaries or terrorists trained by intel orgs to fight "our" wars, or Israel's wars in the past couple of decades, and like our CIA wasn't involved in assassinating our president, and so on and so on. There is no "good" or "right" side but merely power and the sick games it produces that cost people's lives. The Middle East had been a hot mess for nearly a century now and this was very certainly never about stopping a nuke program. We have to not allow ourselves to be part of the divide and conquer tactics.
Bradley Lewis - agree. Also a the Middle East has been a hot mess for 2,000 or more years. I'm all for isolationism at this point. I am amazed at how many bloodthirsty warmongers are on these sub stack sites. Definitely a dividing factor for me. I was turned from liberal-ish viewpoints by Covid. Now I'm turning away from Trump & his followers by their bloodiness.
I've been stranded politically for a little more than two decades now, and there's certainly no hope within the two-party dictatorship, as Ralph Nader liked to call our system. This rabidly pro-Israel posture is a bit much to take and libel to be a major thorn in the side for the rest of Trump's presidency and could easily swing the midterms, however much that will really mean I don't know. I do think Trump has some strong positives under his belt, but going down the neocon path has put him in the 'just another politician' camp at this time.
I beg to differ about who has listened to too many political speeches. Just stay the f' out. The middle east can solve their own problems. If you think 911 was other than an inside job, you may not ascribe to that belief.
I don't listen to political speeches so not sure what that's really supposed to refer to. We and Israel aren't the "good guys", that's the point, and I'm not praising Iran at all. I do tend to think Israel is probably the nation that utilizes terrorism more than any other perhaps and they seem to have had our political leaders compromised for quite some time.
"I do tend to think Israel is probably the nation that utilizes terrorism more than any other perhaps..."
"Tend", "probably", "perhaps"; three qualifiers in one sentence indicates to me that you want to believe that Israel is culpable, but have nothing to base it on.
Here's my claim; "Leave Israel alone, and it will leave you alone." I've never, in fifty years, seen Israel act outside of that manta.
I know a white woman, in her 60s, a US citizen from birth, who is afraid to travel to San Francisco to get a special Visa to go to Prague for a 3-month mission trip. Her reason?
"ICE is just randomly rounding people up on the streets and killing them! Don't you watch the news?"
And this poor woman absolutely believes this narrative and lives her life alternating between hatred of all things Trump and fear of all things ICE!
A family member of mine in his 70s (who lives in the north east) wouldn't take his wife, who is black, to visit another ailing family member in one of the bluest college towns in the south east because of the fear of white supremacy.
Like we're all just burning crosses and dragging gays on gravel roads with our Hemis everywhere south of Richmond.
The MSM has driven many of the Boomers and older Gen Xers into complete retardation. They never catch on. They never fucking catch on.
Up here in Canada the MSM keeps amping up the Trump Derangement Syndrome, to the point we re-elected the most corrupt and repulsive federal regime in our country's history a fourth straight time, largely due to the baby boomer vote in eastern and central Canada. I'm a boomer myself and I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend such crass stupidity on the part of my generation's cohorts.
I'm an Albertan, born and raised and lived my entire life here, and along with at least 30% of the residents of this province, I've had my fill. Time for Alberta to leave Confederation and head down the road to new nationhood. Will it happen in my lifetime, I don't know. But now there is more than a ghost of a chance it will.
I have a lesbian friend who lives in Edmonton, and she said that she “can’t go to the US” because she looks obviously gay, and she “wouldn’t be safe there”. My answer: The US has more gay people than Canada has people, so…
Tell her to try Gaza. I hear it's Queer Paradise.
Don't shill for Israel. It's gross.
Lol! I "look gay" too, one hell of an undercut and always masculine clothes, even got a tatoo, and I live in the sticks too. And never have any such problems. I get big grins from people with any combination of bright hair and nose rings, and when I recently ran into Starbucks at the gas station to grab a Carmel something or other for my sister, she proclaimed in surprise upon receiving it that she had ndved gotten so much carmel in her drink in her life. Super generous portion. I couldn't help thinking, after the bullshit the baristas were pulling after Charlie Kirk, that they saw the hair and clothes and thought "she's one of us"?
But yes, hugely persecuted in deep red rural America. Fear for my life every day from all the nazi white supremacist kkk grand wizards everywhere.
Are you being sarcastic? If not, I am sorry to hear you feel your life is in danger.
Yes, sarcastic. The only people I've noticed noticing my dykey look much less reacting are wokesters who think I'm one of them. No one else gives a shit.
Worked fourteen years at a plant in a certain a backwoods Carolina foothills town. Lesbians kinda took over shipping and receiving, which was damn heavy work, and everybody loved them. They got their share of ribbing and snide, no doubt, but they were great, and held their own. Twenty years since the place laid me off, and I still miss that bunch, bet I'm not the only one.
Yup, I find country folk are just fine with all sorts of people. I think these fearful sorts rather live in a bubble, are operating on antiquated "wisdom" or both.
Stop blaming boomers. It is a function of the concentration of higher education institutions and cultural factors. I live in the east and the TDS is on fire here from all ages listening to main stream media and just blindly trusting that news.
exactly. the people i know (here in blue territory) who go to 'no kings' protests , believe MSm and are super vaxxed are mostly in their 30s and 40s.
Hanoi Jane Fonda still is protesting against her country. She had her 20’s. Let’s hear from the new 20 year olds!
Nuttier than ever! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pkXj2FtC0WQ
Perhaps… democracy is a myth
Of course democracy is a myth when non citizens and dead people are allowed to vote.
If only they wouldn’t vote.
Ones suspects that many of them don't.
Vote, that is.
It is rumored that there are organizations that vote for them.
To save those troublesome trips to the polls.
Truly.
🙌👍
A mixed-race couple I know said they've been on vacation all around the US and found that in the deep red South nobody cared but in large blue northeastern cities they got many weird looks and the occasional racial slur.
If you've actually been all of those places that's not even news. If all you know is from the media, it's a complete inversion of what you'd expect.
Half the time when I meet an old black lady I think of my grandmother, and I'm white as they come. This leftist race bullshit is so destructive.
It always has been destructive. One more reason I hate "the left" and one more reason why I haven't a living clue why all the black people I know are dumbocraps. SMH.
yes. pacifica radio network (formerly "liberal" and 'listener-supported' but now obviously bankrolled by big pharma) is actively promoting racial hatred. lots of programming with that intention.
I know a police officer in a VERY leftist blue city and he said they will get phone calls from upper income white neighborhoods asking for an officer to respond to a "suspicious" person in the area. When they arrive, it will turn out that they ONLY reason they found the person was concerning was...are you ready? "Well, you see, he's, well, you know...black...so why would he be in our neighborhood?"
Obviously, the Southron love their dark meat.
Well they have exciting times in their own minds.
Poetry. 😁
sounds like my little brother. My parents came to US in 1947 from the Netherlands post WW2.
For some reason he thinks bc he has a "funny last name" (De Leeuw) he is going to get thrown out of the country by ICE. These people...... beyond hysterical
Some just like the drama so much they don’t care if it is unhinged.
It makes them feel important and relevant.
I have a Persian friend who came here in 1980. His entire family are citizens. He thinks Trump wants to send him back to Iran. His twin, a conservative, has weekly phone calls with him to talk him off the despair ledge he's always about to jump off of.
So sad
Well, Trump starting war with Iran for no reason does nothing but feed into his paranoia. I agree that he has no reason to be scared of ICE, but surely you can have a bit more sympathy for the particulars of his context, no?
Uhm, no. Chosen ignorance doesn't deserve sympathy. Chosing fear doesn’t.
I have coworker, early 30’s and white as they come, who will no longer travel outside the country with her lesbian partner because they believe they will be denied re-entry to the USA. Simply because they are lesbian cat ladies. They are legit terrified of this happening.
This is , of course, the same woman who insisted on wearing a mask to work for a solid year after even the most hardcore face diaper wearers had given it up.
I mean, she *should* be denied re-entry, but she wouldn't be. Ironically the real danger for them in travelling outside the US is encountering cultural enrichment in Europe.
And getting thrown off a building.
Maybe the news of the Israeli ambitions in Lebanon confused her. lol
2 down, if the country didn't let them back in. I vote for it to be a law.
Self psych out right there…
Hypno-fear continues as a two way street for all the "fit to print" front page news.
Hypno- mop up / cover-up ever stronger.
Try not to get used to it as it can ruin your normal thought process.
Living in fear is a Cortisol condition.
Followed by adrenalin rages of hatred.
Stayed tuned More @ 6-9 and 10!
(I have a wonderful Hispanic lady friend who now claims the .GOV/ICE is coming for her,
Trying to convince her otherwise has become futile and she grows distant!) So???
The only way I can get their delusional blabbing stopped is to step in and pronounce that I am not where they are anymore and if you talk, I sure as hell will be talking too. Since they are too far gone and unwilling to the point of rudeness to listen anyway, it gives me a blessed bit of peace. But, honestly I don’t give a crap what they think of me. It’s all wasted breath for me at this point and I’m quite happy on my own.
At some point, I have the short route to take.
Laughter might be the best medicine.
But Silence is by far the greater remedy.
I prefer the hush....over the rush or push. Hahaha
Poetry, Randall. I’ve sent a few memes at times. I also tend to lose my cool easier these days.
I need to learn how to give them the LAAAAAAZY EYE.
https://youtu.be/L4crQbmRCpU?si=y7Xvfz8k4u3hYYoS
If you want to get down to business, go to :55. If you want context, play from the beginning.
Justin, I watched this at 5:30 am today. Genius. Kind of early for me to be laughing so much. Thanks. 😂
That’s really sad🍒
Someone at my work (from NYC) went to an Airbnb in rural northern Virginia with a black friend.
They were afraid to go to a Walmart because they thought the black guy might get lynched.
Obviously not familiar with Virginia Walmarts.
Neurological damage from vaccines must be playing no small part as we transition from the Information Age to the Retardation Age.
Likely to some extent, but I still think it's fairly minimal because the people that bought in immediately was substantial and they were encouraged to rage against the "granny-killing" people who didn't wear masks and they were so fully self-righteous in their herd mentality for pretty much a full year prior to most getting those jabs. These are already fairly incurious people who are clearly not independent thinkers and whose lives, as I see it, are largely governed by fear. They were trained well up until 2020, especially once Trump came along, and I think it's fair to say that if any of those people didn't get skeptical or doubt by 2023 or so it was pretty much over for them ever being able to return to reality and be honest with themselves. The shocking thing is that more of these folks haven't had full breakdowns but I guess the herd protects itself by never venturing away from it.
It's oddly encouraging to read how so many people talking about this here serves as a reminder of having a large swath of company in just how many have had to deal with this and continue to do so, but it's also terribly disturbing.
Yes there was pre-existing neurological damage from TDS. First, “not gonna take Trump’s vaccine” then when Biden in office “everyone must take the vaccine, and we must sacrifice all our children to save granny”
I guess you can frame it as neurological damage in terms of the toll that fear and stress can play on one's psyche even when a threat is concocted, but I do tend to think this behavior is not very unusual throughout human history in terms of herd/mob mentality and fear of standing out from, and perhaps even against, the herd. I suppose one could propose trauma rather than just fear as the key component and being able to manipulate and control the behavior of the masses. Trauma does screw up our psyches if never dealt with. The injections, if one didn't have a strong adverse reaction, also certainly served to bring all of those people deeper into the fold and now they can't even acknowledge potentially having made a mistake. They have to remain in denial.
The last 10, and last 5, in my opinion, stand out in human history as a time of exceptional levels of psychosis and credulity.
TDS is a psychosis, a condition of not being able to discern reality from fantasy. People with broken brains from TDS will also be easily gaslit and subjected to the fear you mention. The Covid lies and pandemic stress certainly added more broken brains to the pile, but the pile was already pretty high from TDSers.
About a month ago, an elderly customer arrived to pick up some materials.
I work at a landscape yard west of Seattle (rural compared to the big city).
He showed me a whistle around his neck, in case he sees ICE rounding up people. He was petrified he would be rounded up also since he is Hispanic but was born in the USA.
He had a card showing what to do or say if he is rounded up.
He is a sweet gentleman, so I assured him that he will be ok…no one is going to round him up and deport him. He was dubious but that’s all I could say.
It’s horrible that it has come to this for some people….the lies told by “media” outlets are petrifying people.
Well, people do pay for their ignorance even if they're nice and seem well-intentioned. It's difficult for me to have much sympathy for adults that have been around the block a bit and should know better than to get sucked up and carried away so readily. As we saw in 2020, as a mass they can become very dangerous.
MSM is the enemy of our Republic….
Send her to Canada for some "healthcare"
goliath lol
Holy cow
The first I heard of this crap was around a year or so ago when a work friend of an older woman in our circles was coming around to our monthly dinners. She was Indian, had been in the US legally for decades and had a job in the admin of the local JC. She kept going on about how she was so scared she'd be rounded up and put in a camp or deported. I felt bad for her, but also knew that trying to 'talk her down' would only lead to her getting pissed off and lead to her making a scene at our humble party. I'd just take the dogs out in the yard until her fit had passed and someone changed the subject. Delusion is a helluva drug...
The TV has created an alternate reality for these weak minded, gullible people…. Are these people the enemies of our Republic or is it the MSM?
The MSM🍒
I knew we were lost when Trump was first running and someone was crying on facebook that Trump's miscegeny laws (remember that in his platform??) would force them to get divorced.
The stress of such massive cognitive dissonance ever since can't be helping their mental stability.
I have a friend from Czechia who says the same thing. She seemed to be a reasonable person until covid came around. Fell for it completely. She was also a dem and a liberal. I was a dem and a liberal, though not the completely convinced of their self-righteousness as some. Covid turned me to the right. Now Trump's murderous diatribes are turning me, not to the left, but to a place where very few seem to exist. That would be believing in peace and not believing it's right to bomb and destroy countries so the US can aid Israel in its domination and to exploit the mineral wealth of those countries.
https://youtu.be/-NuVB8aX6z8?si=cE1Qe6vqiGlFUKTA XTC President Kill
So tired, no matter where you vote, they warmonger.
Yeah, there simply is no, and hasn't been since the Iraq war was becoming imminent, anti-war movement in this country and that is scary. Unfortunately, Trump made a big mistake by going down this road because it is only adding fuel to a fire that doesn't need any stoking. I tend to think that he, like many others in D.C., is more than likely compromised by the state of Israel and had little choice but to go along at this point.
Iran and its proxies are the target… their ambitions to deliver a nuclear device to our continent is the reason they are the target. For a couple decades, we have elected WEAK Presidents… Trump is destroying that threat and he has all my support in doing so. My guess is he knows he has to move fast to complete the Mullahs destruction because if the criminal left captures the House of Representatives, they will do everything possible stop him from finishing the job.
And the New Khomeni, just like the Old Khomeni....
This is a hornet's nest, and it's got some sting.
No one forces DJT to do anything. He has his own mind about what he will and won’t’ do. He does what he thinks is right, period. That doesn’t mean he is always right, though. The media has lied about him so much that those who listen to them r so mixed and messed up so badly they don’t know their way out of a paper bag. The antisemitism is part of the great lie. What MSM says about them is so not true, but everyone wants to believe the lies so they can have more reasons to hate Jews. They r a race of people who celebrate life and joy, they long for peace. They have been persecuted and lied about for centuries and have learned that they have to fight back when an enemy comes against them or be erased from existence entirely. They r extremely intelligent people and have learned how to stay alive by becoming feared warriors. In the Middle East, no one wants to be at war with Israel, it is well known what kind of enemy they can be. But they make the greatest and strongest ally and friend. Iran had the whole world afraid of them, Iran, if a country tried to be allied with Israel. Iran bullied and threatened anyone who wanted to help Israel by withholding oil sales. Iran murdered 40,000 of their own citizens recently because they wanted to be free from the tyranny of the Islamic regime over there. They have been murdering Americans and Israelis and many citizens of other countries for the last 50 years. Trump and Netanyahu have decided it had to stop. I agree with them. The people of Iran have been begging Trump to come bomb their country to kill the Ayatollah and his cronies. They r rejoicing now and so is all of the Middle East. I am grateful for a President that wants to protect his country from the totally irrational, insane Islamists who have been trying to kill us and saying they would now for too long.🍒
Have to say I entirely disagree with most of what you say but only wish to point out that my speculation about Trump being pushed into this is based mainly on Tucker Carlson's statement, after meeting or speaking with Trump three times in the lead up to this, that he felt confident in saying that Trump really did not want to go ahead with this war but felt he was left with no choice. I don't think Tucker would say such a thing publicly without feeling that was true and our presidents are never totally in control and that should be obvious throughout history.
Tucker Carlson is extremely antisemitic, which says bad things about him to me. His statements r not to be trusted, they r suspect. He and JD Vance both r antisemitic. Trusting them will mislead u.🍒
He's not antisemitic so thank you for illustrating you swallow a lot of media b.s. and are pretty brainwashed. Why would you believe such nonsense? It's a rhetorical question- I won't engage further with such mindlessness. Adios and good luck.
You are probably correct. David Swanson was once a voice of reason against war. He has faded mightily. Aaron Mate is still in there swinging. But, movement, no. A lot of the anti-war movements were guilty of TDS. I moved away from their blandishments at that point. However, I'm starting to agree with them again.
Biden/kamala/etc were never any good either.
I'm pleased (for what that's worth) to see a voice of reason- yours - on this site.
We're probably all safer if this woman doesn't drive.
My cousin’s husband was scared to come to Texas because he thought he would be attacked for being Asian. They live in Chicago. If I would have known this prior to seeing him, I would have attached him for being so, so stupid….and Asian.
Thanks for keeping the receipts. If the situation was hopeless, their propaganda would be pointless. Normies only scan headlines. This may have created a Streisand effect because the spin was so absurd. Zohran backtracked, but he invited his anti American Islamist buddy Khalil to the mayor’s mansion, who somehow still hasn’t been deported, instead of the heroic NYPD officers who intervened and their boss tisch who properly communicated that it was a terrorist bomb attack.
The corporate media are too stupid to realize that they are destroying their credibility when they attempt coverups this blatant. Every time they try this nonsense, more people wake up and realize how bad the media manipulation truly goes.
They are not stupid....they are purchased.
Not sure about "not stupid" but am in absolute agreement that they are indeed "purchased".
They don't need to be purchased, they're stupid true believers. See also the Tom Cotton affair in the NYT or the ongoing hysteria that the Ellisons will own CNN soon.
Leskunque Agree re purchased.
Ah, c'mon. It's not terrorism. It's capitalism. They were just advertising Allah's Snack-bar.
you're one logo drawing away from a fatwa, steven...
lol.
You're out of control here, sir. A good fatwa is hard to find
Aren't they listed alphabetically above schwarma on the menus of any fine middle east dining establishments?
I'll, uh, let myself out.
Watch out for the goats in the parking lot
Should’ve had me a fatwa bar, blow me off a piece of that fatwa bar with a nuke. 🎶🎼
Our prices will blow you away!
"prophets are through the roof!"
Aisha special, only nine ninety nine!
You should see the roof top parties they sponsor every June!
😂🤣
Drop the bombs between the Raisinets...
(h/t "Lock The Snackbar" by Bobby Volare).
I knew a Steve Koenig once a long time ago, back in Boston. Great sense of humor. But I'm so old he's probably dead by now. Carry on.
Probably not me. I'm still (mostly) alive and I've never been to Boston. I dated a girl from Connecticut in college though
Glad to hear you're mostly alive. Avoiding Boston probably adds years to your life. Not so sure about girls from Connecticut.
Hahaha.
They will undoubtably be released, all charges dropped, and be invited to Gracie Mansion to dine with Mamdani, feted as heroes standing up to White Supremacy. Such is justice in the gag-me-with-a-spoon Leftist New York judicial system.
Except that it's the Feds that have taken the case. So with the current Admin I doubt they will walk, however, there is no telling what some looney judge might do.
yeah. SDNY is liberal, but it's not that liberal. JTTF is involved, and NY JTTF in particular are the big dawgs for dealing with terrorism threats. These kids are going away for a long time. Potentially Gitmo unless they squeal hard enough about who radicalized them.
I thought I read this morning that the DOJ is going to prosecute them as domestic terrorists.
If they don’t then…WTF IS a domestic terrorist…and our problem just got a lot worse
Obviously, Domestic Terrorists (TM) are, and only are, White, educated, middle class, Christian, Americans.
Just like racists, only Whites can be Domestic Terrorists (TM). Pay no attention to any facts showing otherwise.
SARC / John in Indy
The investigation's being handled by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is a federal initiative, and terrorism charges roll up to the feds by default so this will absolutely be federal prosecutors not state/local.
However, expect them to be charged as Foreign Terrorists, given the connections to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and the fact that there isn't really statute setting a definition + criminal penalties for "domestic terrorist" as a classification.
Despite all ramblings to the contrary from the left regarding the J6ers, they ended up charged with vandalism and trespass, because without a foreign terror connection, the terrorism charges weren't ever going to stick.
I would hope so
I would not doubt it.
The next intelligent pundits of outrage in stupidity, combined in one mass thought will fit in perfectly with the View CNN and MSNBC.
: (
Exactly what I'm planning on writing about today.
But the important thing to remember is not that they are lying about this particular issue -- it's that they do similar lying about nearly EVERY issue.
Ugh I’ll probably be asleep when it drops. 😏Grrrrr. I seem to be getting to your articles much, much later than the rest of your readers. Still enjoyable though! I’m glad you’re back on my banner carousel!
It's too late tonight so it'll drop tomorrow :)
Yes. There is no bottom for today's corporate whore "media" and they've sunk lower than this before.
Turns out far more people than we could ever imagine have no interior sense of self and will swallow anything to keep themselves from collapsing into black hole physics. Education seems not to remedy certain basic lacks. At least at the beginning of our Republic journalism was raw blood sport and now it's just sort of a play kitchen baking simulated news.
In the case of our two teenage adventurers I've seen that interior chasm plenty. Almost no one these days can handle a free society.
Journalism has always been full of crap here, from the back and forth lying slurs from federalists and anti-federalists to yellow journalism. The only remarkable thing is that everyone is surprised that the media has an honestly problem.
Exactly. It was a few decades after Walter Duranty that my 6th grade teacher was instructing us how the NYT was the gold standard.
I lost the NYT after 9/11 & subsequent Iraq war under Dubya. I kept waiting for them to tell the truth about WMD's - and they just didn't. How could I *know* it was fluffed, and yet -
Geez, I guess I was a conspiracy theorist.
"The only remarkable thing is that everyone is surprised that the media has an honestly problem."
Well..... it should be remarkable, Brett, but after more than a half-century of witnessing the "goldfish bowl effect" of widespread memory failures by otherwise reasonable people, I can't be astonished by the general surprise at how disingenuous media commonly is.
Particularly small-town America should not be at all surprised when reporting is skewed or absent. Small town newspapers and local radio stations exist on local advertising; alienate the deep pockets and revenue dries up.
What I find interesting, is how that small town dynamic operates at scale.
I've pondered the reasons for the secular faith folks have in the written and spoken word; if it's uttered, it must be "true." My current hypothesis, is that a significant factor is the social conditioning that prevents acknowledgement that everyone acts according to their perceived self-interest, always, distorted perceptions notwithstanding.
If you have another working hypothesis to explain it, please do share.
I think its less about faith in the written and spoken word, and more about a bewildering faith in authority.I would look at belief in media through the lens of a human tendency to gravitate towards authority
The desire to have someone tell them what to do, and what to think is a quirk of our species.
Brett Richards I think you may be right. And though I voted for him, I think the MAGA and Trump supporters have lost their way in a sea of macho beliefs.
Agree, and I think fundamentally, as was illustrated with the 'covid' madness, those who fully bought into that were already primarily driven by fear, albeit perhaps subconsciously, in their day-to day lives and all that needed be done was to pull the trigger because they were already well-trained by 'authority' figures over many years. Skeptics and free thinkers are always in the minority and the dangers of those who need to stay in the herd is always an ever-present reality lying barely beneath the surface.
You said you were politically stranded for quite a while. I got to that point in 2001 when G, W. was appointed president.
That sure made it a lot easier to leave the country when I got an invitation to do so! (left in '02)
Are there still small town radio stations? I thought they all got bought & conglomerated to satellite?
Good point. There are far fewer these days, and those remaining are pretty low wattage.
Bierce, Twain and Mencken definitely had some words to say about the quality of the press in their day...
As a teacher, you can teach people facts and skills and knowledge against their will (though a willing pupil of course learns more).
But you cannot teach people to think against their will; they must want to learn how to think.
Sadly, education - esp. post-internet - is mainly focused on teaching what to think, in conjunction with all other forms of media.
(I know you know this, but it bears repeating for the benefit of any stray glances from other commenters who might not.)
I began to become disillusioned by the time I was in 4th grade when my classroom teacher, who I'd really liked, was contemptuous of my oral book report on Alfred Bester's short story "Star Light, Star Bright." I still remember her lip curling as she asked if I was going to reveal some tentacled monster as the villain.
You interest me strangely with this anecdote, SCA. I'd like to read a transcript of that report.
Was she somehow prejudiced against science fiction, and did you submit a subsequent report on "The Stars, My Destination?"
Kudos on selecting one of the two most underrated authors in the history of the genre. Bester being one, and Van Vogt the other.
Yes, she thought sci fi was unworthy to have been selected as the subject of a book report.
That story was in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series (1954) which introduced me to most of the best in the business. And that it was normal for women to write sci fi.
You could say that event was the beginning of me learning it would be necessary to trust my own tastes and strongly resist the concept of consensus on anything. Of course that would lead to making adolescence a little harder than it always is anyway, and continuing onward.
It starts in kindergarten with pre-cut May basket parts and pasting the parts together....woe unto the child who doesn't put the basket together in the prescribed manner...
Or colors the cut out goose gray, instead of yellow like all the other kids.
the pussification of Americans.
It's something else in my view.
Who controls what kids learn?
Do we think what they're learning is an accident?
Teachers, and no accident.
Just as here, the good ones have been run out, run down and run off by [insert list of slurs/pejoratives], in school boards, in school politics and in academia.
If you like, Hollywood since 05 or so is just a parallel to education since the 1970s; force out the competent people and trash their legacy so that your own stuff can be elevated as the Good Stuff.
Same with food, same with houses, same with almost all consumer products.
Race to the bottom.
I posted my remarks below before reading yours.
Rikard - agree. But for me it got intolerable after 2020.
What I remember best of William Buckley Jr. was his lazy arch smile on Firling Line.
The left have been ruthless fighters since the '30s and conservatives have been enriching themselves and their progeny via think tanks issuing beautifully printed lectures on what's wrong with the world and lo, here we are.
Oh, and Phyllis Schlafly of course. She had her fantasy vision on how American society should be ordered and meanwhile the left took over everything that mattered, most especially the Schools of Education.
Never forget about Taqqiya, the islamic practice of lying to non-moslems as a matter of course. To them, lying is not a sin nor a crime or even wrong, if it is done to people beneath you.
And to moslems, everyone else is either a servant, a slave or an enemy and thus beneath.
You opened your nation to moslems: this is how they thank you.
---
Love the headline of "the narrative bombs" due to how many ways it can be interpreted.
It still amazes me you got flagged by the censors here in United Kingdom. For what? Telling the truth. Seems to be a pattern.
Wye aye, it's for certain a pattern, and I don't even rank as high as a minnow far as being a regime-critic goes. Probably it is some kind of semi-automated thing picking up key words and phrases, such as "moslem"+pejorative, or specific terms.
Bit of a lark. In Swedish, "mos" means mash as in bangers&mash, or sauce as in applesauce or for something that's been squished. "Slem" means slime, scuzz, mucus. And "Lem" means limb, as in your arm or leg but most often it is used for the penis.
So "moslem" can be read as a bi-lingual pun meaning "slimy squishy penis".
R-d-r-r!
That's hilarious... trust the Swedes. And yes, definitely automated algorithm flagging content based on keywords regardless of context or fact.
Yeah those bomb throwers missed that lying lesson. This time.
Whenever I hear about the stuff like Taqqiya that Islam has as 'gospel', the more I am reminded of Scientology and even Mormonism, which then puts me in mind about how so many 19th and 20th century occultists really thought Islam to be the bee's knees, and apparently stole from it whole cloth, especially the bits that allowed a single figurehead to dictate all human interaction for the faithful (and sometimes multiple wives...)
It's OK to lie to normies and "surpressives"for the greater good. It all sounds so cultily familiar.
Yup - few today know or realise that what we call New Age, Spiritism, and all Steiner/Blavatsky-based stuff really is a late 19th century Victorian upper-middle class hodge-podge mix-up of islam, buddhism, hinduism and stuff they just made-up whole cloth from their own fantasy.
Many couch their lies in the rationalisation of "non-members are noit meant to know/are not able to handle the truth, so we are protecting them".
sounds like the talmud.
Ah, The Religion of Pieces strikes again. How many terrorist attacks have been committed by Muslims globally in the last quarter of a century? Most reports put this at upwards of 50,000
It's a safety signal rather like the VAERS spike.
Whatever the true number it's time to admit that Islam has a serious problem despite the obvious fact that most Muslims do not condone this. The word 'most' here is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
And didn't Mamdani himself just describe Muhammad as an 'immigrant'? A poor helpless soul who eventually took over and who's ideology led to the conquest, murder, enslavement, and rape of thousands. All sanctioned by God, of course.
Such are desert dreams.
A lot of Islam has moved on from those initial heady days of conquest. A lot hasn't. It's those who remain firmly entrenched in a barbaric and pre-medieval mindset we need to be concerned about.
"How many terrorist attacks have been committed by Muslims globally in the last quarter of a century?"
I don't know but there were 2-3 million women burned ALIVE as witches by that other "religion of peace" known as Christianity.
"Have you ever noticed that the good guys have won every war in the last 200 years? What are the odds?" - Norm MacDonald
That is a great quote and line from Norm.
Million, huh? LOL
At least with Christianity you know that the murderers are disobeying their professed master rather than emulating him.
That's a slur of who Mohammed really was. He was a very sharp person with insight of his tribe.
He was a pedophile war lord.
I noticed a few years ago that immigrants who had done quite well in this country were the most rapid anti-US opponents. This includes trust fund babies from developing countries where women are decidedly second class citizens. I was completely confused and wondered if I was wrong until I came across an interview of Professor Amy Waxman by Glenn Loury in which she explained (as only a MD/JD mind can) similar conclusions. I recently confronted a tech bro whose parents immigrated to the US. Nicest guy ever, who said he gets emotional listening to the Star Spangled Banner. While good to hear, there is a real issue in the room, and it is bourgeois immigrants colonizing the infrastructure created by the pasty white people while simultaneously hating them.
Not just the immigrants. MOST of US kids have been taught by their Marxist teachers in elementary and high schools to hate their country, the police, military, and conservatives, especially GOP and Trump. Certainly true for 90 percent of the 20-something kids I know.
Oh, that is a given. While the young ones are predictably idiotic - as I was for sure - one normally outgrows the idiocy. I am more than happy for anyone to flourish, but call me selfish, I want them to have a bit of gratitude. There is something sinister about someone driving a Maybach who came to the US penniless to complain that the US is on stolen land. This is why I love Vivek. He shows how one can come from a non Western heritage and fuse it with US patriotism. I only hope Ohio voters voted him in. And I love Harmeet Dhillon as well. She is not only brilliant, but she speaks so plainly, which is a true gift.
Sideshow Bob terrorist threw two bombs, one jumping over the back of Loudspeaker Guy, the other he threw at the feet of a couple of NYC police, which led to what may become one of the more iconic photos of this time. https://x.com/i/status/2031179948916904113
Both of those terrorists should be in the Super Max facility for life. If the city, State, and Feds don't clamp down on this sort of behavior as soon and as hard as possible, anarchy will ensue.
Maybe God will have mercy on those two terrorist's souls, I have none.
Given the nature of prosecutors and judges these days, I'm beginning to think police should just shoot them. Throw a bomb in the name of Allah... and you get to meet Him immediately.
Since they pledged their allegiance to isis just put them in a cage douse them with kerosene and…
https://dispatchesfromheck.blogspot.com/2018/08/sippenhaftung.html
I spar regularly with leftists on my local Richmond, VA lefty newsrag, and am constantly amazed at not only how low-info they are, but how they flat-out refuse to even consider non-MSM sources that debunk their narratives.
Useful idiots, one and all...
On the NextDoor app in Richmond the other day someone reported catching covid on a plane. Virtually every comment was either "wear your mask" or "make sure your jabs are up to date." And the anti-ICE yard signs are all over the place. Richmond has gone full woke, in large part due to VCU (IMO). I don't waste my effort discussing anything with these people.
Well....NoVA has been moving to Richmond since before covid....
The scamdemic did reveal how most people are not merely far from awake, but that they're just plain clueless, and so many of them are considered "smart" by societal standards. Just goes to show how upside-down sick society is.
I haven't spent one thin dime in RIC since the Summer that George Floyd found sobriety.
They'll never understand-- ever, ever, ever-- that they are the actual fascists.
Oh, deep down, they know it's true, but lies and deception are the main pillars of Marxism.
I have to disagree. Surely those orchestrating things do, but as you've already pointed out most of the followers are useful idiots, and the middle management types are too wrapped up in benefitting themselves, satisfying their egos, and playing ball because they're weak in terms of values. Ignorance is bliss and never underestimate the power of denial.
Yes they are. And they don't think so. They think they are informed
Fed by lies of omission mostly, and also just plain lazy news consumers.
And the low-info ones vote in large numbers, God helps us.....
Ha! But they cannot think, and there's the rub.
Yep, Lemmings/Automatons they are.
Thanks always for writing. I have no idea where to get the news, so I get it here. You, at least, sound rational. :-)
Mostly X provide this kind of news. The problem is it takes a lot of time to sort out the truth. The hot takes phase provides the later-often-banned videos. But AI photos and videos get mixed in to muddy the water.
I have friends who get their news only from CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, and the NYT. They're wholly ill-informed. Of course, if I were to show them the videos of those nuts throwing the bombs, they'd say it was AI.
Btw, is there any nice place to live anymore?
In the woods, just don't go to the coffee shop in town. Make your own and watch the geese fly overhead. Definitely spring.
Geese flew over the woods where I was relaxing and playing my drum last night after work. Indeed! Spring!
The 20 something kids I know get their “news” from Apple News, TikTok, maybe Snapchat. The “educated” ones add NYT and some that you list.
Only on the fringes I believe.
> instead “mistakes were made” and “devices were found.”
Convenient rule of thumb: if the media uses passive voice, they're lying.
"Mistakes were made" mistakes don't make themselves. Why are they hiding who made them?
"Devices were found" devices don't find themselves. Why are they hiding who found them?
I am frankly shocked at how rampant this kind of soft, manipulative not-quite-lying happens in society, and even more shocked at how effectively it works on normies. But I hold this rule hard and fast, no exceptions. If the news is using passive voice, they are actively trying to conceal information from me. They aren't trying very effectively, but, the fact that they are trying, the fact that they feel arrogant enough to try, and the fact that they're confident enough that it will work, speaks volumes
Passive voice for passive (aka spoon-fed) 'thinkers'.
'I am frankly shocked at how rampant this kind of soft, manipulative not-quite-lying happens in society, and even more shocked at how effectively it works on normies.'
allah is the greatest of deceivers. satan has found fertile territory for his mischief.
I occasionally watch my local TV news to just remind myself why I don't watch my local TV news.
I keep telling progressives, "I was never drawn to Trump, you pushed me to him."
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. I didn't think he was serious -- that it was all just a publicity stunt. It turned out he actually had some talent for being a Chief Executive.
I didn't vote for Trump in 2020. I judged that demented Joe Biden would NEVER win, and that 2020 might be the year the Libertarians broke 5%.
By 2024, I really didn't have any choice. I had seen 2020 stolen -- really, 81 million people voted for an Alzheimer's patient? -- and knew what was in store if Kakkler won.
We're getting as good as Neo Anderson at dodging bullets.
I said often that he was my 18th choice of the 17 GOP primary candidates in 2016.
I voted reluctantly for him in 2016 (but was glad I did, within about three months).
And now Trump's casual references to murdering people and his allegiance to Bibi and Israel's expansionism are driving me away. I guess I'm such a dupe, I believed that he wouldn't start random wars on random countries as long as they have oil or resources that he/they want.
No matter who gets elected the bombs keep dropping and the debt keep rising.
Basically that sums up the last 4 decades of USA foreign policy LOL.
See my link above: Here comes President Kill Again
Surrounded by all of his a-killing men
Ain't democracy wonderful? Let's us vote someone like that in. . .
* * *
It almost doesn't matter where you vote - vote for President Kill instead....
True that.
Um, you do remember, don't you, that the Israeli offensive into Gaza started shortly after Biden took office. And of course Biden was also the mastermind that mastered us into Ukraine.
Iran has been a totalitarian, terrorist police state since Carter screwed up in 1979.
But, it's all Trump's fault, anyway. At least that's what the MSM have propagandized you into believing. It makes perfect sense, until you think about it.
I certainly did not support Biden/kamala in any of those incursions. Diplomacy would be the way of someone with a functioning brain. Violence is the way of children who know no better. Or brainwashed adults who think Die Hard, which I never saw, or some other Hollywood "shoot 'em dead dramas" works in real life.
Fine. So, why don't you flat-out condemn Iran, which is the one, the only sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East? Only weeks ago, they slaughtered thosuands of their own citizens for protesting in the streets.
You seem to think that if you act nice and behave yourself, you will never be under threat. You can afford to feel that way, because where you live, you're not under threat. Project a little...
"Iran, which is the one, the only sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East" - ROTFLMAO
The Wahabi sect is #1 by a country mile (Saudi $$ Sunni extremists).
Israel has killed more civilians than any other country in the mideast.
I am not knowledgeable concerning Wahabi. A quick search yielded nothing concerning genocide or any such by them. Tell us more.
As for Israel, let's use some context. First, I don't believe anything that Iran or Hamas tells me. Do you? Second, Israel fights wars in defense of itself. You could hardly say it's expansionist. I double dog dare you to say that Israel initiated the Gaza war. Iran is responsible for all the killings by the various Muslim terrorist organizations, which includes Hamas and Hezbollah. That makes Iran the winner in the killing innocent people category. They must be so proud.
https://individualistsunite.substack.com/p/why-do-you-hate-israel
And the alternative is? Iran has been fomenting terrorism around the world for nearly half f a century. They were going to keep doing it. Many hundreds of thousands slaughtered, with no end in sight.
When you want to feel good about a problem, bring in the politicians. When you want to solve the problem, dump the politicians and bring in a pragmatist.
C'mon. Like the U.S. and the entire west hadn't been using al Qaeda for years and whatever other groups of mercenaries or terrorists trained by intel orgs to fight "our" wars, or Israel's wars in the past couple of decades, and like our CIA wasn't involved in assassinating our president, and so on and so on. There is no "good" or "right" side but merely power and the sick games it produces that cost people's lives. The Middle East had been a hot mess for nearly a century now and this was very certainly never about stopping a nuke program. We have to not allow ourselves to be part of the divide and conquer tactics.
Bradley Lewis - agree. Also a the Middle East has been a hot mess for 2,000 or more years. I'm all for isolationism at this point. I am amazed at how many bloodthirsty warmongers are on these sub stack sites. Definitely a dividing factor for me. I was turned from liberal-ish viewpoints by Covid. Now I'm turning away from Trump & his followers by their bloodiness.
someone takes decisive action against evil and you get wobbly. women's suffrage was a mistake.
I've been stranded politically for a little more than two decades now, and there's certainly no hope within the two-party dictatorship, as Ralph Nader liked to call our system. This rabidly pro-Israel posture is a bit much to take and libel to be a major thorn in the side for the rest of Trump's presidency and could easily swing the midterms, however much that will really mean I don't know. I do think Trump has some strong positives under his belt, but going down the neocon path has put him in the 'just another politician' camp at this time.
Yep. I did vote for him.
Huh?
So, we just let it continue to fester, because it has always festered?
We let hundreds of thousands continue to be slaughtered because there have always ben hundreds of thousands being slaughtered?
I think you've listened to a few too many political speeches.
I beg to differ about who has listened to too many political speeches. Just stay the f' out. The middle east can solve their own problems. If you think 911 was other than an inside job, you may not ascribe to that belief.
Yeah, I get it. You're saying we should do as the pacifists did with Hitler. Just leave him alone, he's not our problem...Until he was.
I don't listen to political speeches so not sure what that's really supposed to refer to. We and Israel aren't the "good guys", that's the point, and I'm not praising Iran at all. I do tend to think Israel is probably the nation that utilizes terrorism more than any other perhaps and they seem to have had our political leaders compromised for quite some time.
"I do tend to think Israel is probably the nation that utilizes terrorism more than any other perhaps..."
"Tend", "probably", "perhaps"; three qualifiers in one sentence indicates to me that you want to believe that Israel is culpable, but have nothing to base it on.
Here's my claim; "Leave Israel alone, and it will leave you alone." I've never, in fifty years, seen Israel act outside of that manta.
Rational thought will get you nowhere on this site.