those egging them on know that you are not a fascist, but those who buy the story believe it utterly because everything they know about "the other side" came from their own side and has, through a game of "radicalization telephone" been amplified into an entirely hallucinatory worldview from which no sense can escape and into which no perspective may penetrate.
mark this one down:
as it comes into view, the venn overlap on trans activism and antifa will look like a near perfect circle.
it's the same boot camp for the same stochastic campers.
Trans and Antifa? I knew that the moment the Degenderettes marched in SF with painted baseball bats and wooden shields that proclaimed themselves to be 'Good and Pure' back in '17 or so.
Trans has always been violent. They just shove their pitiful, traumatized FtMs like Ellen Page out in front of the camera for better optics.
She reminds me for some reason of the little girl that is on all the Les Mis posters. Delicate, vulnerable and childlike. Just like a 'Save the Children' Ad. Being mean would be like kicking a puppy. Any Madison ave dude would kill for those optics. Wine mom clickbait for sure- in between readings of the latest 'Dark Fantasy' novel that would even make Anne Rice in her heyday blush and a healthy dose of tictok (or whatever)...
Which is why the ad agency picked Greta Thunberg in 2018 as the post child for climate cult.
She's 149 cm tall (4'10"), flat-chested and has a boyish frame.
By now she is well into her twenties, but the cultists still talk about her as a little girl, though their numbers have dwindled fast after she came out in full support of the Palestinians attempted and intended genocide of the Israeli Jews.
Speaking of ads, I once was asked to model for an ad for a gym. Not because I was in super-duper good shape (not in bad shape either), but because they wanted someone with "a normal build and physique".
Then it turned out it was my beard that had clinched the deal, when the photographer brought out a Tomte-costume (Father Christmas) and asked me to put it on and starting lifting weights while he took snap shots.
Think I lost a couple of pounds just from sweating in the costume under the lights.
Ad people are weird, was my take-away. They had such an advanced internal jargon it was almost to the level of a sociolect or cant. When adult men are for real arguing if an arched eyebrow adds or detracts from the imagery desired, you've lost me.
I did not know that about Greta. It makes sense though. I think she is going to go through life permanently stunted because it makes good optics for someone.
Since you deleted this, I thought I would post it so we all know who to look out for;
FRASS8519 replied to your comment on the time machine hitler fallacy.
You and 11 like that HOW THE just shove their pitiful, traumatized FtMs like Ellen Page out in front of the camera for better optics. Trans men are not pitiful, Trans men are not traumatized Ellen Page you and 11 likes you liars Elliot Page are not pitiful Elliot Page are not traumatized you and 11 likes YOU Stop deadname @kafka2 @JDZ @Sonia Nordenson @Paula @Ana Still Runs @Essay33 @CStone @Danielle @Shelagh Anne Shackleton @Sean Seyler @Bandit @Dave Slough @KatWarrior @JollyLittlePerson @alexei @Fabes55 @Jones110 @Rhaine @Tu Tasty @LEA7 @Eric Anderson
Oh get stuffed. You have no power here. We speak freely. Deadname is a stupid concept and words are not violence.
I still have your post you know. Were you calling your flying monkeys with all teh @'s? We like to eat kids like you for breakfast here. Easy thing to do when you have the truth on your side.
But I prefer to think the term "fascist" has been so watered down, it's about as useful as the terms "racist" and "homophobe/transphobe". Nobody cares anymore because the MSM is no longer a bullhorn for them.
So we can replace them with real vices such as resentment, or murder, or enslavement, and real virues: gratitude, charity, self-sacrifice.
If you cannot explain the standard to which you want to hold yourself, and your neighbors without resorting to gobbledeygook word that point to nothing, every decent person gets to roll his eyes and say "OK, Democrat."
Nobody on the RIGHT cares. These people don’t even know what a fascist is, they only know it to be an insult, just as they use all of the other phobes, ists etc. Anti-vaxxer is just the newest high use term.
The problem is the fanatics, the mentally unstable and the easily led on the left. They soak this in like a sponge, aided by an education system that has drummed it into their heads for 18 years. And the true fanatics are cultists and absolutely believe every word.
That is their justification.
Just look at the rubbish Stephen King posted online. Not a word of truth, and after serious backlash online, his “apology” was just another passive/agressive dig.
exactly. I recently went down a rabbithole on wiki bio's of the pre-WW2 fascist movement's development, as I realized I knew a lot less than I thought I did.
the left's letters they wrote to each other, especially among the various Communists, was absolute hysteria: they sounded **exactly like modern Reddit retards trying to explain Trump**. I think Trotsky's letter in 1931 where he calls it "something similar to what we are trying to explain in Germany at this time" and his caution to not go ballistic retard on them is the best take they had.
Fascist means nothing to me, or anyone else.
"CHRISTOFASCIST" is one of the worst rhetoric devices the ultralefties have managed to come up with. That word is one they are trying to make "fetch" happen, and if anything it only reminds normies it may be time to end the Left altogether.
Spot on! I believe somewhere (maybe James Lindsey's podcasts) hearing that the 20s and 30s communists were aghast at its seeming failure and feared fascism to the point they tweaked Marx's communism (Frankfurt School) into more of a neo-communist movement that lead to what we have trying to gain foothold in the US.
fyi since all of us were taught at some point, or saw mentioned, that fascism somehow had a loose alliance with big business "CORPORATISM" but that is never explained in any detail when we're sitting in a 11th grade history class...
go look up the wikipedia for Corporatism. Turns out it had absolutely nothing to do with any of that connection whatesoever.
in fact, a google search definition (Oxford) for "Corporatism" gives this example, which is not accurate:
definition: the control of a state or organization by large interest groups.
example: "roughly one hundred years ago, the free market began to be replaced with corporatism"
Turns out it has nothing to do with the "Free market", it's actually more akin to trade unions and even aspects of socialism adapt it at times, it is unrelated entirely
the top of wikip[edia: Not to be confused with Corporate capitalism.
This article is about the general social theory. For business influence in politics, see Corporatocracy. For the process of reorganizing institutions on a corporate or business basis, see Corporatization.
"Antifascist Action" was founded by Stalinists in 1930s Germany. And the same people gave the Berlin Wall the official name "The Antifascist Protection Rampart".
Stalin's definition of "fascism" was "anything that isn't Stalinist Communism". So yes, the word is meaningless.
i use fascism in the sense the fascists themselves did. they meant it as a positive. FDR admired it. it was nationalist statism with command and control crony corporatism, planned economies, and heavy emphasis on the indoctrination of the young into ideologies of collectivist enterprise and responsibility. its eschewed rights in favor of obligation to the state which stood paramount over the individual.
"nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Fascism was kewl until we went to war against a country that happened to be its birthplace, primarily because they declared war against us and threw down with another country that did the same.
OMG Mussolini made the trains run on time fapfapfap...
Of course, commies were also kewl at the same time. 20 years later, not so much.
remember that "corporatism" means something different than how we use it: it has nothing to do with big business, free market capital, etc, if anything it is just how guilding or sections of the economy can be an interest group in the fascist one
i just made another comment on all this cause i was being autistic about realizing i've never went to read more about fascism, cause the Left has shown their theoreticians never did, either.
The only difference between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism was de jure vs de facto ownership of the means of production. And the only difference between those two and the Soviets was the racial aspect - the Soviets wanted to rule over everyone regardless of race or ethnicity.
@Gato- I have a hometown friend, who claims to be transgender, who posted s/he had no idea who Charlie Kirk was and never reads 'right wing material' was, but- MIRACLE OF MIRACLES!- after one day of 'research', convinced Charlie was a bigot and a racist.
I have a feeling s/he isn't the only one in America.
I don't think that those egging them on know that we are not fascists, because I don't think they have any clue what fascism really is.
We have to debunk the use of 'antifascist' to describe the radical progressive left just like we have had to debunk the use of 'transgender-woman' to describe mentally ill men. Antifa are really not antifascist, and, transgender-women are really not women. Stop using their labels.
Honestly, the "trans activists" of today seem like they are actively *trying* to get the rather polite trans people I knew thirty years ago killed in backlash. I don't know what changed, but none of them would have gone preaching to kids. They just wanted to live their lives and be left alone, for the most part. Frankly, I'm scared for them, from what's been done notionally in their name.
Gato - you're 100% right, and also ... leftist indoctrination is likely a factor in patsies being willing, and also in misdirection. It's not the only factor.
That doesn't excuse any of the violent rhetoric or pretend there isn't an insane violent streak in the trans activist community. But that's just part of it, and it's going to become the whole story unless
Likely whoever comes next from the right, much harsher than Charlie Kirk, will be a tool of the psychopathic bloodthirsty Zionists (not the same as generalizing any religion). What a tragic irony if those who most respect Charlie let this happen without digging up the truth from the roots - they are likely the force that directed all this and killed him.
"The cover story gives the FBI their win, but the receipts show coordination across state lines and borders. Always ask: who benefits from the cover story? Follow the narrative, find the sponsor." - George Webb
The cover story is always divisive. Oswald the commie. Crooks the incel. Robinson the trans-recruited Discord radical. Dan Bongino pushes the “trans shooter” narrative just as J. Edgar Hoover pushed “lone nut communist.” It’s misdirection.
While we debate identity politics, the sync team rolls out of town. Metadata nails it down: plane manifests, Discord chat logs, ROTC rotations." - George Webb, "Sync shot again"
I am heading towards age 60. Every time there has been a presidential debate, the republican candidate has been labeled, “Hitler.” George Bush II included. (Later we found out that the Bushes and Clinton’s vacation together.)
When everyone is Hitler, no one is Hitler.
I also notice that few or none on the left know that Mussolini invented a word they love to use- Fascist.
Hitler was in a political party called “Democratic Socialist Party.
“Fascism” came out of Italy. Mussolini had been a journalist before he was leader of Italy in WW2.
Hitler's party was literally NAtionalsoZIalistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or National Socialist German Workers' Party; so indeed they were actually socialists.
Oy vey! Left, right. Fascist, socialist. How many angels dance on the head of a pin? (Or even the definition of pornography?) All of it is antithetical to a free society based on a free market. How about: "...liberty or death?" Shake out the academic cobwebs, think about how unencumbered our founders were by all this word salad, and be prepared to back it up by force if necessary. The money line of a great essay: "They killed the nice guy."
My view is that any form of government that centralizes control to a few or to one is, by definition left wing. Authoritarian is is control, libertarianism (small "l") is freedom from central control. I place authoritarianism on the far left, and full individual liberty on the right. By that definition, all forms of government are somewhere in between
finally someone else says this. This is the "correct" viewpoint we were never taught. "good " democrats in the center, fascists, nazis authoritarians etc on the right.
Fascist implies a popular dictatorship. As in the dictator justifies himself as "the will of the people".
Yes, "the people" might be only a subset of the nation, and it's entirely possible not even 51%. However, the ideological base of support is wider than under monarchy or aristocracy or other "non populist" right wing regimes.
The Ancien Regime justified itself with 0.5% in the first estate and 1.5% in the second estate. The Nazi's won like 40% of the vote in a multi-party democracy.
That's actually its innovation. As old world interests crumbled before the popular will, they seeked out a form of the popular will that wouldn't murder them. Fascism promised to solve the dilemmas of the socialist state without revolutionary murder. A "third way".
Yes. The political spectrum of left and right have totalitarianism, fascism, communism, dictatorship all on the far left. Anarchy resides on the far right, with individual liberty within the historical bounds of civilized society in the middle
Don't consider what others have told you about these regimes; consider what they did. Every leftist will (and have for decades) tell you they were right wing, but they were authoritarian and controlled speech, government, economics, everything. Classic fascism, which is left wing behavior.
It definitely makes you an authoritarian, but what is a fascist? The words have lost clear meaning because they've been overused by the left. Is Singapore with a free market economy and no political freedom a fascist country. Or is it socialist? In today's environment Left and Right are no longer good descriptors.
this is a low IQ take that sounds like someone who just learned what left and right is, and trying to use it as dialectic substitute for rhetoric (and doing so poorly) in internet comments
Many republicans adopted the pablum of social security payments and Medicare. Few are grounded, with only a vague sense of traditionalism to hold them in place.
In a way this fact makes the hard left turn of the radical democrat party even more surprising. It’s as though they didn’t understand that unionized blue collar democrats were only thinly differentiated. So naturally they began to alienate both. 🤣
hot take: economics is irrelevant when the culture social side is at stake.
things I was not OK with as I made my journies from Republican to Rothbard to Hoppe and even for a bit after: medicare and medicaid, horrible social programs
things I am now perfectly fine with: spending every dime of those billions in a new program that only right-wing, Americans can have, cancelling every leftist in the country in one fell swoop.
IT turns out the "ending the left" entirely idea is not a bad one, and purity tests are good.
I’m a bit of a constitutionalist myself. Though I understand your emotion, I know we lose the war even if we win a small battle. It will be a Pyrrhic victory if we start in with special privileges for me but not for thee. We become what we hate. Also, I was never the pablum eater on the social welfare stuff either. 👍🏿
what we have learned is economically "left" and socially "right" is actually the most stable, effective, and desired state of pretty much every population on Earth, yet does not exist anywhere right now
The first person the Democrats labeled "Hitler" was Thomas Dewey in 1948. Less than 3 years after the real Hitler. (Hat tip to Steven Crowder for digging that up).
The second person to be labeled "Hitler" by the Democrats was Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, the man in charge of the successful operation to defeat Hitler. I don't know if you can top the stupidity there, but the Democrats certainly haven't stopped trying.
And Mussolini, before his ill-fated alliance with Germany, had done some wonderful things there. It is incredibly complicated to talk about ynless you find an honest historian. I have lived in the south of Italy for 45 years, and the remembrance of that period is nothing if not nuanced. By the way, the msm in Italy is WAY worse than here!
Part of the problem, if not all of it, is that they’re so disjointed and discombobulated that each group seems to have a different definition of what “fascism” is. Assuming they actually know who Mussolini is (let alone Stalin, Lenin, Mao). They probably think he’s Palestinian/Hamas.
Actually I was ‘splained by a lefty professional psychologist that the definition of “fascism” has “changed.” It now means whatever people on the left want it to mean. (Much like the definition of the word, “vaccine.”)
This is dark ages cult stuff, operating like the Spanish Inquisition or Jesuits.
The cult is driven purely by the desire for power. No actual reason or honesty involved.
I get that. But the “partisani,” who adopted that song (on the bullet casing) “Bella Ciao”, murdered thousands and thousands in cold blood. My little town of 10,000 had its share of men woken up to go stand in doorways and be assassinated. No discussion, just perceived political views. And often just for old rivalries, no politics at all. Looks like things haven’t changed at all, really.
Also have you ever heard someone in the MSM say "leftwing extremists" or "far-left?
They do this for a reason. Hell while I was typing this comment on my phone far-right auto populated, and far-left I had to add to word preferences in order for it to auto-populate
Autocorrect has an agenda. To me it’s glaringly obvious. I can’t misspell God as Hod and have it correct it. But I can misspell Saran for Satan and that pops up right in the middle of my texting keyboard.
The right has “Turn the other cheek” baked into the cake. Plus, they’re busy with work and raising kids. We need a concerted effort to wake them up with actual step by step directions they can stick on their car dashboard. Something like this-
1. DO NOT ENGAGE IN YOUR OWN DESTRUCTION! Stop funding Soros- Do NOT buy Desani yoghurt! 😳
@SCA- PREACH!!!!!! Husband and I just left a Starbucks in the Buffalo area (sorry but Sbux has the best espresso in the area). Everyone was saying "GO BILLS!" as they were walking out as were the workers. My husband said "GO BILLS!" and I said "GO CHARLIE!" I have no idea how it was taken although no knives were thrown at me. But I felt it was my small part in continuing Charlie's works.
It's easy for me to say I guess because I don't drink coffee. But I think this monstrous moment we're in demands us giving up inconsequential pleasures because only economic impacts will help us win.
“Human retardation sycophant” is a bit of a mouthful to say, to be sure, but perhaps its usage will receive greater acceptance by the anti-retard-usage gestapo.
We need to shun this ridiculousness. Times up on the grand experimentation of un-empirical, dark ages thinking.
Linus test. Ask, “What is a Woman?” Or, “Describe to me the scientific method.”
If they can’t do either one, instead of being mean, suggest they go back to study a high school science text book. Then we’ll have a convo but not until then.
It looks like covid still isn't over. I wonder how many of them would gladly take up the snotrag again if called to do so? They do claim that we anti vaxxers and anti maskers are responsible for 'millions' of deaths....
Yep. Just look at the ones who are still 'ride or die' with that one.
I guess I have even more reason to put more than 6 feet between ourselves when encountered at the local Grocery Outlet. I used to cast pitying glances. Now the looks are gonna be more side-eyed.
People dear to me were very diligent maskers and that was entirely because their deep decency was so exploited by Fauci and Walensky et al into fearing being a danger to others.
I got such a long list and growing of "Reasons to Never Forgive" that I may find myself using up all my darling little laptop's working memory.
Didn’t Charles Krauthammer (RIP) say “Republicans think Democrats are people with bad ideas but Democrats think Republicans are bad people”? They really really do think that; it is their primal motivational force to remake the world “better” according to their desires.
This goes to Gato's highlighting of the concept that some people confuse identity with ideology. For instance: they do not merely hold the opinion that a man can change into a woman. That is, rather, central to their entire being. Not a small step from that to "Charlie Kirk is Hitler."
Yes yes and yes. But bad cat why on earth does he have to say "and of fascism around the world" WW2 did not have fascist around the world. One guy in Italy wrote the book called Fascism and published it.
Hitler was elected a National Socialist. He was a high level socialist before he broke off because he was against International Socialists and was for National Socialists. Let me simplify this down. International Commie or National Commie. Fascist is what Commies call everyone that is not a Commie.
Example: From the signs outside of the Communist Headquarters in Germany in 1932
Makes me think of a song. “Instrument” by Fugazi. The key question of the song “Could it be that loss could weigh?” I think the song is about perspective…the shortsighted satisfaction of losing one’s temper in a warlike response vs peaceably seeing things down the road. The losses add up fast if we keep letting them.
In a way the left has become a perfect merge of American consumerism of a product in Marxist packaging. It is being bought at a high price they do not realize. The price keeps going up until the centrist left stops buying it. There is emotive salve NOW without exercise of any self control with pops of low thought verbal artillery. It satisfies the “we want this thing now” and not willing to wait for it much longer. This is the difference from conservatism; it is a willingness to wait to win according the the principles we have set, the contract we are bound by, and have agreed to abide by. Extremists know no bounds. The more we agree to see that not everyone agrees…AND that this is okay…we will preserve these United States. This is why “big business, big Pharma” etc seems more intertwined with leftism because they align on appealing to get the product now because they want it now. So in some ways leftism in 2025 satisfies the immediate consumer, strong elements of capitalism when convenient but loves the illusory “moral” control of Marxist “power to the people.” The incremental plays of verbal guerilla outbursts have to continue to become broader in impact to reach the ultimate outcome of destruction. What it all boils down to is they will do WHATEVER it takes to have the power even if that involves any evil means because in their mind it is justified…it is a “no delay of gratification” culture. Assassination sounds less and less extreme in these type of leftist thought patterns. They do not even seem to them as dangerous because it has been recited so many times. They must be consistently and emotively satisfied like the toddler melting down in the store which is a perfect meme for the consumer-marxist.
But Ryan, they do, they know it is true. Anybody who dare disagree or have different values is LITERALLY a fascist Nazi deserving of death. But, they only kill out of compassion and love. The destitute wasteland they consider brain matter justifies this by calling it a mercy killing. You know, we slaughter millions of babies (both unborn and just born) assassinate Jews, Catholics, Christian’s, blacks, disabled all to better humans with no humanity!
Ryan, they think those are Groyper terms and that trans has only been mentioned bc "TRN" is on the bottom of the bullets. They really think Fuentes is behind this.
The DNC blast fax went out fairly early on blaming the groypers. It's obviously stupid, because who's celebrating the murder? It ain't Fuentes, it's the hard left.
Excellent essay! Thank you for writing it (just proof-read ;).
I am thinking that it is utterly amazing that Democrats can’t come up with people who are extreme moderates. It is the only category that might even win again sometime. Slam dunk.
That said, I am a person who had a friend for 40 years whom I loved dearly. We were great together and avoided politics, because we were opposites in this category. But the last time I saw her, out for a lunch, I danced like Mohammed Ali trying to avoid the “T” subject, but she suddenly stood up, hurling her chair backwards, and launched into a spittle-filled tirade in the restaurant that left me shell-shocked. Everything now and in the future was my fault, because I voted for the “T.” She fired me as her friend, forever. I told her she seemed very unhappy and maybe should seek some help but…I suppose I am dead to her, and to her husband and son with whom I had wonderful rapport. She is a very high-intelligence professional. I will miss her dearly. But after this happened I realized that I would never have fired her like this. Never. And it shows the stark difference between many liberals and conservatives. I know I am not alone in my experience. Who does this??
Again, your essay was GREAT, and I learned a couple of new words, too. Onward, its going to get better.
I was talking to my oldest sister who is buried in the morass of the northeastern seaboard, think Pocahontas territory, and all I said was "can I at least explain why I think the way I do?"
She almost turned into a demon when I said that... I swear there was spittle coming out of her mouth. All she said was an emphatic NO.
Then she left the room. That was it. This is a highly intelligent professional woman. She has multiple awards. But she can't get past trump. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen.
Did it occur to you that there was a demon? I mean, a real one. You know, in the modern era where we have banished all such things from our "reality" as fairy tales or superstition, one must question whether this was really a valid take considering how little we really know about the nature of Nature. The Left has done a lot of very bad things, but the worst is probably convincing so many people that the concept of 'evil' is a work of fiction.
Someone on X posted after the Kirk shooting that they used to be atheist because nobody could prove to them that God exists. But they became Christian after the left proved that Satan exists. I think we'll see many more such cases.
I am not sure who said it, but Satan's finest work was when he convince people he did not exist. I had an awakening, led by the Lord I believe, where I read a few stories that opened my eyes that evil is real and that good is only found through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I was an agnost before then. I started my journey and found in the early days of my belief in Christ that demons were attacking me through fear. In my prior life I would never have seen it for what it was. I am so glad God opened the door for me to walk through.
Quite true. About a year ago Naomi Wolf (formerly a progressive) wrote an essay " Is it Time for Intellectuals to Talk about God?". The answer increasing seems to be yes.
Excellent point. One of my sisters, highly intelligent, high level professional, is like that too. At least she has agreed to keep politics off the table. But it gets harder and harder as more of life is politicized.
If I was an ancient trans-dimensional evil being whose all-consuming hobby was the destruction of humanity, and I'd witnessed the rise and fall of many human civilizations, I think I'd do my best to outsource most of the work of destroying those people - TO those people. What is more evil than making the ones you wish to savagely crush, into barbarous instruments of their own destruction? Just a theory. I guess the easy answer is, "Both these things can be true".
Yes, it is devastating to families and friends alike. Who is so threatened by ideas that they have to plug their ears and yell “lalalalaaa?” My theory is that in one’s personal weakness or laziness one depends on outsiders to define one’s goodness, then if the outsiders behave (very) badly it injures that perceived goodness. I say “goodness”, but we all know that there is class/intellectual superiority rolled up in there too. Some people are ALL about the superiority thang..
you cannot reason, don't even try to explain. If you have a good enough relationship to have fun like I have done to leftist family members, tell them you're going full Hand Maid's Tale. THe wink and nod makes them actually listen better because your rhetoric is now addressing the emotions directly instead of with logic
Forty years is a long time to be "friends" with someone who will throw a temper tantrum as if they were a toddler in public. There sure are a lot of unprofessional professionals as of late.
Unfortunately, I believe you were correct when you mentioned she should seek help for her mental health. Although I’m not sure your timing was very good.
My wife taught me about the timing thing. All I usually want to do is fix things sometime before they are even broken.
I can identify. I lost a long-time friend over my choice to not get vaccinated (after struggling with the decision) during the Pandemic. She wouldn't even talk to me on the phone and dumped me via email.
Then, my husband and I lost our son and both grandchildren (who were born during Covid). Just before this, he had married a woman who was very troubled. She was uncomfortable to be around, but we tried to make it work. Covid pushed her to become a "true believer". When I asked (very politely) if I could see my grandchildren, she screamed at me at length that she didn't give birth to them for me, and who did I think I was! When she stopped to take a breath, I asked if I could respond, but she said no.
At that point our son became a stranger to us. We no longer recognized him. I reached out to him to try to come to some understanding. He told me that I must get all the shots and boosters that were available and that I needed to get "professional counselling" for my wrong-think.... and show him the evidence. I could not do that and maintain any self-respect.
It has been three years since he completely cut us off. So much damage has been done. It is very sad, but it is the price of being me. Everyone has their line in the sand.
I don't know. They don't live in town and we are completely estranged in every way. Many other family members (aunts, uncles, cousins) have also been cut off and blocked on social media, either for their choices, or if they defended my husband and me. The few that have sporadic contact are sworn to secrecy.
There is more to my story. There is unpaid money involved. I have had to recognize that respect and trust have been completely destroyed. I am coming to terms with the situation..... because I have to.... but I am a surviver.
I see a world that has gone mad. My story is insignificant, but a sign of the times with regard to the state of Western society.
I learned many years ago that you can't reach those who didn't reason themselves into a position with reason. The statement that opened my eyes was, “The math all works out, but it doesn't feel right.”
I guess I am stunned at the reaction of some liberals. They seem to have become so angry over the thought of a different opinion. Media has clearly won by their constant barrage of propaganda. Like Covid mass delusion.
True. However I am convinced that political views are reached for purely emotional reasons, initially, and then we spend all our time trying to justify them with reason. Doesn’t work so well.
Yes, reached for purely emotional reasons, not on history or the constitution or the belief and participation of civil discourse. I have experienced this in my own family (in laws) to the point I simply do not engage in conversation.
“Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.” Aristotle, Rhetoric
Oh lord, that is horrendous. I am so sorry. But your grandchildren will grow and they will find you.
My husband and I lived through the worst of Covid in Italy. Eventually I traveled back here to see my grown kids, but my husband was not allowed. Italy allowed me to come and go freely, in contrast. We were never vaxxed, and I have never had covid to this day. Lots of travel and exposure to ill family members.
We were shunned. And with love I begged my relatives not to get boosters, and I offered them plenty of reasons, as I had been researching mRNA technology from years prior. Nothing made any difference.
As with leftist politics, they cling to doing what they believe will make them GOOD. Blind rule-following is one of the scariest human traits in its potential to do harm. And mass psychosis is even worse!
The people in my life have been understanding, to a degree. My sister and I have come to tears a few times, but she has mellowed. Her intransigence was horrifying to me, precisely because of her refusal to either discuss or read any informative materials. She simply is too threatened by the thought that “THEY” don’t have her best interests in mind.
But I DO have hers in mind, and she should recognise it.
I recently visited with friends and family. I told them that when T does something good, the MSM don't report it (see e.g. he ended the war between Congo and Rwanda). But I didn't dare admit I voted for T, because they might have disowned me. They don't ask because I think they can't imagine I would ever actually vote for him.
I know what that's like. It happened to me a few years ago, and still feel occasionally like asking her, "Are we better off this way, really, cut off from our friendship?"
Their establishment politicians actually are in charge of all of it -- they have let the loonies run their decisions for them on the trans \ nutjob \ socially inept weirdo stuff since those losers were empowered by the invention of the Internet on a cell phone in 2010.
that, plus the fact it originated out of GamerGate to dominate the cutlure for a decade, is why the Left establishment in charge didn't care:
they just let the loonies continue taking out the online "right" and they didn't have to worry about it in their elite circles, as it took care of a threat they didn't want to and never had to deal with online
now it turns out they have a fractioning identity: the Left is made up of 1) normies of Democrat persuasion, 2) minority groups that have 0 connection to the idea of being an "American" -- all immigrant's kids kids, who are antisemitic and not-white, and 3) tranny crazies and their supporters (terminally online) people who have been calling the shots weith online mobs for 15 years
all 3 of those are ripe to break apart, and likely from disconnected brown-immmigrants of 2nd\3rd generation in dense areas, where they will simply stop working with the Democrats at some point, costing the D's permanent relevance
I don't think your experience is rare - the self-righteousness of these folks - and the willingness to make a scene - is stunning. Being able to "agree to disagree" seems to be vanishing in numerous social circles.
Both of my daughters are swimming in the morass of the left. After Charlie, I reached out to open discussions, & received rude replies. It may be “mother-worry”, but I’m concerned about their mental health and that they might become targets of the backlash of the right. I am going to reach out again and again. But I’m expecting an alone Thanksgiving and Christmas again this year.
Similar scenario with a 30 year friend, Except we did used to be able to talk about politics in a limited way. But she 'broke' in 2020. Went from moderately liberal to full on radical left.
Every little bite in the wall lets another mouse in and though one mouse is an adorable little furry thing with soulful eyes, in a week your pantry is full of piss and crap pellets and the sickly smell will knock you over and they've taken a big chunk out of everything you love.
All them Good Germans I saw during Our Plague Era, I ain't never forgetting nor forgiving and though I have no tribe myself I been taught which tribe is willing to keep me alive as I am, and which ain't.
Though I’m pretty certain I recall Germany vaxxed to a very high degree- 90% ish or higher….
Your statement could apply to the pro-vax and anti-vax crowd, both. I’m pretty sure they’re still mostly brainwashed on the subject. (You are also on the “E” substack, correct?) Thanks. I am always trying to learn about the Rheinland Westphalia mindset.
Think WWII. Good Germans went along with their former neighbor Jews being dragged off and gassed. And then happily took their apartments. They told themselves it was honorable.
I don't recall ever watching one of Charlie's videos. Yet, every time I think about his death I want to cry. I can't explain it...other than it feels like an unpardonable transgression. If the Left is willing to kill Charlie for his ideas, then they are willing to kill ME for my ideas.
Go look for his videos and watch as many as possible. You will see a genius at work, but also a kind hearted person with incredible knowledge of the Bible and our Constitution. He regularly read 100 books a year. He was a master debater, even when he went to Oxford and made that professor look like an idiot.
I agree! I told someone today: if they killed dear sweet wonderful Charlie over his thoughts and speeches, am I next? What will they do to me? As a conservative who speaks her mind at the drop of a hat, my days may be numbered…..
The anti-bad-guys meme is also a perfect image of US foreign policy since 1945.
Remember how everyone you slaughtered at a wedding in Mosul was a terrorist because if they weren’t you wouldn’t have killed them? All 200 of them? indeed, all the 100s of 1000s killed in the war on terror were terrorists.
Officially.
Every tin pot wannabe or just someone who believed in governing his country for the benefit of his people and not for US business interests, was the new Hitler and letting them live was you being the new Chamberlain, the appeaser of evil. Mau, Ho Chi Min, Hussein, Gadaffi, and Putin have all been painted with this same retarded brush by the US’ left and right alike.
I’m not here to say you deserve to reap what you’ve sown because I know many many Americans deplored these evil wars of choice, of grand larceny and slaughter on an industrial scale perpetrated by the greatest industrialized nation in the world.
I personally abhor violence and continuously advocate against promoting or performing it.
I am here to say that the rest of the world doesn’t see you the way you see yourselves. We mourn the loss of Charlie Kirk, we feel deeply for his wife and children, and the wider family left to deal with the horrific banality of the evil that took him from them. We share the concerns of Christian’s and conservatives and libertarians and all who know that emotions are a terrible basis for law or morality, for what is happening in America and what is happening to America.
I am here to say that if you want to stop the civil war that has been waged against you for at least 8 decades then you must also stop the wars that have been waged against the rest of the world in your name for that same period. And for a very practical reason ; it’s not psychologically possible for your ruling class to consider remote strangers outside your borders as fungible and inconsequential while considering you, who to them are but remote strangers within your borders, as anything else.
Man, that last paragraph. You cannot deny the humanity of another without dehumanizing yourself. We need to end the warfare state that has sucked dry our economy and left only (expensive) war materiel manufacture as an industry here. Well said.
With what is happening to all those who glorified his murder on social media, the September jobs report is gonna look heinous. And the left’s clutching of pearls over being shocked that this is happening because they thought we were against “cancel culture” may be opening their eyes to their own culpability. But if there was one thing I learned from the Covid years, their cognitive dissonance(stupidity) won’t allow it.
One of the OG victims of cancel culture was James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote a memo politely explaining that men and women are different so equality of outcome was not possible, but they should find ways to help men and women work together happily.
He was fired for it.
Make sure your center left acquaintances are familiar with the distinction between Damore's attempt at reasoning with the far left and celebrating a man's body being annihilated in front of his wife and 3yo daughter, because that distinction is kind of important.
Normies don't get it. There were people saying "We just have to talk things out." in response to the murder of the guy who was just talking things out.
The leftists insisted during peak cancel culture that there was no such thing as cancel culture, it was simply accepting responsibility for what you've done and said. Turning that back around on them has been fun.
Sure, but they'll probably have said that anyway. The most recent jobs report was actually pretty good except for the large number of federal government jobs lost.
Best essay yet, Gato, and I'm including your Covid-work in that statement. If you keep raising the bar, be ready to hand out brathing-apparatus to your readers.
---
"the praxis is endlessly messaging until you find the weak minded or the virtue seeking vicious, whip them to violence, then call the burning of cities and killing of anyone you do not like “well deserved” and act like it’s the height of morality and how to get tribal merit badges."
This also describes how and why islam is the only religion/culture with suicide bombers, since it is the very same pattern.
---
"they do it with finality." Kind of an ironic phrase given that you started out talking about the Hitler-time machine crap. Endlösung = Final solution in English. On the other hand, a solution that doesn't solve the problem isn't a solution in the first place.
The problem, and the test of character is twofold:
How to put an end to the political, cultural, religious and racial tics and termites destroying civilisation without having to resort to actual old-school solution, Genghis Khan-style (who by the by makes Hitler look like a rank amateur when it comes to cause death)
and
How to know when to stop cutting
Neither is easy, both are possible and the trap of the "goalposts just beyond the horizon" is all too easy to fall into.
But it can be done, and done well.
PS: have you looked at the meaning of his name? Charles comes from an Old German noun meaning "Free man", and Kirk comes from Old Norse for church (kyrka/kirkja). I wonder if he knew what his name meant?
The main subplot here is how do two perfectly ordinary teenagers, within a period of just a few years, turn into these two broken nightmarish freaks (speaking here of Robinson and his boy/girlfriend Twiggs, the furry+trans roommate specimen)?
I have children in their 20s. I have seen how captured some of these young adults are...and how defenseless they seem to be. As you suggest, the nightmarish freaks didn't just happen. Their lack of internalized personhood made them easy prey to all this.
Thank you for "lack of internalized personhood." Another and maybe better way way of saying they "conflating identity and ideology." We all need to grasp this notion.
Yes. "Conflating identity and ideology" is right. The Bad Cat has covered this in a few interesting pieces. In the process of conflating, its not a full replacement. its like the layers of self buried beneath the ideology.
Twiggs was confronted by the LEOs and from what I can tell caved immediately. He showed the discord 'jokes'. Twiggs had a good sense of self preservation.
From the day I knew what political ideology was I began thinking of my adversaries as if they were Frank Burns from MASH: wrong & ignorant, but comical & necessary for the plot. You don’t hate Frank & you definitely don’t silence him, as that robs you as much (or more) than him.
That healthy formula fails when you mistake the other side for Hitler.
It’s almost as if grownups are still waiting for the long arm of the almighty father to swing back from the front seat of the station wagon to get you kids to knock it off.
Gato- the truth is that we all are being played in the greatest game of totalitarian world control- left, right, man in the middle & the apolitical.
Our Government works for forces we do not see because they are so carefully hidden. They are not of this world, in personal opinion, (at 65 years of watching this movie I tend to align more & more with Jesus of Nazareth,) but even if you look at the worldly actors you can see- the Bidens & Trumps, the Elons & the Gates, Epstein & Israel, the US Senate, Pharma, War mongerers, Banksters, Bezos & Zuckerberg, on & on, you see those who feed on ignorance, debt, disease & war & big Government, they want us, all the reasonable, sane & compassionate Americans to be at each others throats.
They NEED us at each others throats. You cannot become a One World Dictatorship without destroying the Nation & the People founded upon Liberty & Freedom.
Beware, Mr. Cat.
You are teetering on the edge of calling for the very violance Charlie gave his life to prevent by living peaceful & respectful discussion of our differences & by loving, unconditionally, each other as Christ commands, despite our intense differences.
And, my smart feline, you are being played- or you are a player- helping to bring the very thing that would destroy our Liberty, our Constitution & our Nation.
War with those in the media who lie endlessly, not the other side if the isle.
Repeal the Obama era abomination of allowing propaganda to be used on Americans.
Expose the Psy-op we are all in.
Expose the MONEY in sickness, war, & debt.
Fight for Freedom of Speech & Equal Rights Under the Law.
Expose the SSRIs, the Sars-cov-2 bio-weapon program- the ModRNA disaster.
The vaccine type indemnification planned for pesticide companies.
The horrific use of fetal remains from abortion.
The toxic load given babies in their "shots."
The weather manipulations & the actual earth changes we are experiencing.
Any of a thousand things that mainstream media will not discuss- UFOs/UAPS/NHI for heavens sake!
But let's not have another civil war, ok?
The last was over slavery. This time it would be strictly because of a very evil psy-op run on us by our own internal forces, who are controlled by those seeking a One World Government & the destruction of the USA, imho.
Don't be a part of that, please, or I won't be able to keep liking Mr. Cat.
Well stated. I’ve come across Hope and Tragedy by Carroll Quigley, PhD and it’s synopsis Hope and Tragedy 101 by Joseph Plummer who outline the literal top of the heap Deep State and its origins from Cecil Rhodes, Milner, etc. that have orchestrated all that we see today. Familiar?
don't even bother reading that stuff anymore -- it is the stuff that I read when I moved from "conservative" to "Ron Paul and Austrian Economics" positions in 2006-2009.
Then you start to abandon those ideals and principles as you embrace Christian tradition and that the Enlightenment was all bad. Turns out the conspiracys are around for a reason: there's so much wrong you just want to find a singlular "blame" for it, when in fact it's that the past 350 years of the Enlightenment has been a slow singular event that has erased what made Western Civization so good and endure for so long in the first place.
VAlues like "free speech" are meaningless, meant to reject blasphemy laws so that correct things could be taught.
Usury abandoned because it's just wrong to prevent that, right guys?
Those books have contributions but they're not helping anymore.
We're in an era of defining new terms, political re-alignments, and concepts that is going to upset the entire last 200 years, but it will take some time
Your experience which you’re entitled to. Mine? Currently it explains the mechanisms that have led to current One World Govt. objectives and gives context to MIC, pHARMa, WEF, etc.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
If your plan could work, we'd need to repeal the Patriot Act and the Prep Act, restoring Constitutionally protected rights against declared "emergencies."
How we change the cultural expectation of the government as Provider and taxes as the metastatic means of enabling, seems a task beyond dialogue.
Someone smart once said- "if you are not a liberal when you are young you don't have a heart, & if you are not a conservative as an adult, you don't have a brain!" Lol. In general I tend to agree but today, via social media logarithms we are shown only the lunatic fringe.
Yes overall, the Dems went "insane" during Covid & yes I agree they are completely nuts today on many topics, but in the past I disagreed vehemently with the party of war & unlimited corporate power that owned the "right." I am a small Government, Individual Liberty type who professes the Faith of George Washington in a Kind Providence, despite human wickedness & the spiritual wickedness "in high places."
Washington said political parties would destroy us, & Jefferson said standing armies are more injurious to freedom than tyrants.
We are all being played & Charlie's assassination may well have been a grand act to take out a powerful force for Good & a man who began to question the lies he had been told who held a huge microphone.
There is much more to all of this than meets the eye. That I know for sure.
Thank you, by the way, for saying your heart is with mine- it gave me a real smile!
Yes, I feel a certainty of the conclusions many are making on this ELG post. When I retired to bed there were 200+ replies. When I opened my eyes, the count was over 450.
On the same topic (CKirk) on two other author's sites, I unsubscribed because the "weeds" became so very hateful.
Libertarian views (with which I generally agree) are still difficult (for me) to square with Christ's commands, however well-intentioned the motive. And Mob Rule (Democratic party) is not consistent with our Constitutional Republic.
"Repeal the Obama era abomination of allowing propaganda to be used on Americans."
is your IQ 25? this is a good emotional plea but it is not based on fact, and i mean your entire post -- you're too online, but also have too strongly the innate cuck feeling that certain things mean things today
"Fight for Freedom of Speech & Equal Rights Under the Law."
This is not a virtue.
Equal rights under the law and free speech are actually against you. Free speech was pushed, almost always, to blaspheme and say religious evils that no one would ever accept.
America didn't force STates to have "Free speech" until the Doctrine of Incorpoation via the 14th amendment in the 1900s.
States in the earlyt 1800s still had religious tests and would not allow an atheist to swear an oath of office
Blapshemy laws still existed in many states, though they were often ignored or repealed as the nation as a whole was purely Christian of some sect until the 1900s anyway
That post is definitely a bit out there, but Obama really did repeal a late 40s prohibition on the government using propaganda against Americans. I can't remember the name of the law that he overruled, but Mike Benz has explained it in a few places now.
I found it very interesting that my younger son's response to Charlie's murder included the thought that he found Charlie to be too moderate.
So much truth in what you wrote today.
I think there is a subset of people so invested in complex conspiracy theories (Charlie's death was an inside job/faked/Charlie himself was never real) they will refuse to see it.
Well akshully, can you blame them? "The View" clip in the piece is fake. You know it's fake because they would never have let anyone talk to them like that, but it looks real (and what the guy said is true). If it had been real, they would have cut his mic before he could have said any of that. And lots of things are fake. The talking dogs in the video from the meme pool this morning for example. The AI can fake anything and make it look real. So, if you've never seen someone in person you could resort to the idea that it is all fake, because so much is. This is not the ridiculous response that perhaps you think it is. Dead internet theory says that sometime around 2016, the majority of internet traffic became non-human. And there's evidence of this, that a lot of discourse online is nothing more than bot farms run by other governments and of course our own.
I think Charlie was too moderate as well, but I am also someone who anticipated all of this for the past twenty years and watched it slowly come to fruition.
I also reject more and more conspiracies as I watch them grow on the right -- it is basically a current disease of "over noticing" because every time the Left pushes the Right to become more "aware", the new converts also bring along some people who can't stop "noticing" everywhere.
that is a different problem to address later, as those people never run everything despite using the rhetoric (They aren't high IQ enough)
Charlie was certainly too moderate for me, but he also had a documented rate of success at convincing people about both conservatism and Christianity. I didn't watch his stuff, but I am 100% in favor of people doing that. I don't think it's any kind of a bad thing.
I also generally am in favor of pattern recognition, aka "noticing" in the modern parlance. I'm just not midwit enough to believe that all of the things some people say are patterns actually are.
As a Christian person myself I can say that sadly, these are the same people that 50 years ago would’ve looked down their nose at you for brining a tuna casserole to the church picnic. Self righteous church ladies are self righteous church ladies, just different church.
Right. I recognize Puritanism, perverted by narcissistic individualism, in the political religiosity of the modern left. Therapy, feminism, and Our Team all fuse into a new religion, but the uprightness and zealotry of 1650 are unmistakable.
My husband is the wisest person I know, and he has long said, "If you don't like the religious right, you're *really* not gonna like the irreligious right." Readers here will understand why the assassination has brought this quote to the foreground for me this week.
I had a relative who used to run in Militant Odinist circles in the 90's. I find it funny that the colored/shaved hair, tattoos and septum rings have now become 'left-wing' fashion, along with the racism.
Those guys were known for rushing into concerts, beating up the bands and fighting their way back out through the crowd again.
There is no moderate left, I'm afraid. Teachers, nurses, doctors (adults with jobs!) openly celebrated the murder of a kind, gentle man. The Democratic Party--not just oddball, fringe leftists-- has carefully followed a playbook demonizing half the population as fascists.
i think there is. i know a lot of them. and i am watching them turn.
they had no idea how bad this was because they thought they could get news from the NYT and bloomberg and the economist.
a great many of them are reasonable people of good faith and both able and desirous of living in a high trust society. they just got the minds poisoned with decades of false facts and their perceptions became GIGO.
we both need and want them in our tent. they are good people.
and they keep waking up because once you catch one big lie, you immediately ask "how many more were there?" they think the trans thing is made up, that drag queen story hour is a myth, theat trump wants to kill gay people and ban abortion.
they are not bad people, they just got bad data. and that can be fixed.
they have turned a tolerant eye toward their extreme wing of wack-jobs because they simply could not believe it was real, that teachers were grooming kids and radicalizing them. they got this way because they stopped talking to anyone outside their tribe and so only learned about us from people within their tribes.
this is the moment we can say "hey, you're not actually with them. you never were. you're with us. you always were." and focus on what we agree on.
this lets us build a large and lasting social contract within which we can escape from and suppress this extremist impulse.
Democrats were told to hate the unvaccinated, and a huge number did. Democratic politicians and their fellow travelers in the media have stigmatized MAGA to such a degree that even someone as mild-mannered as Charlie Kirk could be dehumanized, his brutal murder celebrated like a homecoming win over Tech. That so many cheering on his death or making excuses for it were adults holding important positions is unnerving. This, like covid, has been another moment of revelation.
I hope that your circle of friends now looking askew at the excesses is indicative of a burgeoning awakening. That's our only hope for a peaceful resolution.
48% still leaves a large number that were not fanatical. The 52% are the ones we need to convince, although, at this stage, many of the fanatics are very busily outing themselves and doing the job for us.
Maybe Leftist should stop saying things engraved on bullets.
They call you a Nazi so they can justify killing you, not because they believe you're a Nazi
i suspect it's both, ryan.
those egging them on know that you are not a fascist, but those who buy the story believe it utterly because everything they know about "the other side" came from their own side and has, through a game of "radicalization telephone" been amplified into an entirely hallucinatory worldview from which no sense can escape and into which no perspective may penetrate.
mark this one down:
as it comes into view, the venn overlap on trans activism and antifa will look like a near perfect circle.
it's the same boot camp for the same stochastic campers.
Trans and Antifa? I knew that the moment the Degenderettes marched in SF with painted baseball bats and wooden shields that proclaimed themselves to be 'Good and Pure' back in '17 or so.
Trans has always been violent. They just shove their pitiful, traumatized FtMs like Ellen Page out in front of the camera for better optics.
Right. Trans is overwhelmingly MtFs with autogynephilia, but that's a lot harder to market to the wine moms than Ellen Page.
She reminds me for some reason of the little girl that is on all the Les Mis posters. Delicate, vulnerable and childlike. Just like a 'Save the Children' Ad. Being mean would be like kicking a puppy. Any Madison ave dude would kill for those optics. Wine mom clickbait for sure- in between readings of the latest 'Dark Fantasy' novel that would even make Anne Rice in her heyday blush and a healthy dose of tictok (or whatever)...
Which is why the ad agency picked Greta Thunberg in 2018 as the post child for climate cult.
She's 149 cm tall (4'10"), flat-chested and has a boyish frame.
By now she is well into her twenties, but the cultists still talk about her as a little girl, though their numbers have dwindled fast after she came out in full support of the Palestinians attempted and intended genocide of the Israeli Jews.
Speaking of ads, I once was asked to model for an ad for a gym. Not because I was in super-duper good shape (not in bad shape either), but because they wanted someone with "a normal build and physique".
Then it turned out it was my beard that had clinched the deal, when the photographer brought out a Tomte-costume (Father Christmas) and asked me to put it on and starting lifting weights while he took snap shots.
Think I lost a couple of pounds just from sweating in the costume under the lights.
Ad people are weird, was my take-away. They had such an advanced internal jargon it was almost to the level of a sociolect or cant. When adult men are for real arguing if an arched eyebrow adds or detracts from the imagery desired, you've lost me.
I did not know that about Greta. It makes sense though. I think she is going to go through life permanently stunted because it makes good optics for someone.
You and 11 likes YOU how HE's Right.
You and 11 likes YOU HE's Wrong, like you.
You and 11 likes YOU HOW Trans is overwhelmingly MtFs with autogynephilia. This is a pack of lies.
@Bandit
@Stephenie
@JollyLittlePerson
@Russ Nelson
You and 11 like that HOW THE just shove their pitiful, traumatized FtMs like Ellen Page out in front of the camera for better optics.
Trans men are not pitiful,
Trans men are not traumatized
Ellen Page
you and 11 likes you liars
Elliot Page are not pitiful
Elliot Page are not traumatized
you and 11 likes YOU Stop deadname @kafka2
@JDZ
@Sonia Nordenson
@Paula
@Ana Still Runs
@Essay33
@CStone
@Danielle
@Shelagh Anne Shackleton
@Sean Seyler
@Bandit
@Dave Slough
@KatWarrior
@JollyLittlePerson
@alexei
@Fabes55
@Jones110
@Rhaine
@Tu Tasty
@LEA7
@Eric Anderson
Since you deleted this, I thought I would post it so we all know who to look out for;
FRASS8519 replied to your comment on the time machine hitler fallacy.
You and 11 like that HOW THE just shove their pitiful, traumatized FtMs like Ellen Page out in front of the camera for better optics. Trans men are not pitiful, Trans men are not traumatized Ellen Page you and 11 likes you liars Elliot Page are not pitiful Elliot Page are not traumatized you and 11 likes YOU Stop deadname @kafka2 @JDZ @Sonia Nordenson @Paula @Ana Still Runs @Essay33 @CStone @Danielle @Shelagh Anne Shackleton @Sean Seyler @Bandit @Dave Slough @KatWarrior @JollyLittlePerson @alexei @Fabes55 @Jones110 @Rhaine @Tu Tasty @LEA7 @Eric Anderson
Oh get stuffed. You have no power here. We speak freely. Deadname is a stupid concept and words are not violence.
I still have your post you know. Were you calling your flying monkeys with all teh @'s? We like to eat kids like you for breakfast here. Easy thing to do when you have the truth on your side.
But I prefer to think the term "fascist" has been so watered down, it's about as useful as the terms "racist" and "homophobe/transphobe". Nobody cares anymore because the MSM is no longer a bullhorn for them.
Which is to the good, as none of them are sins.
So we can replace them with real vices such as resentment, or murder, or enslavement, and real virues: gratitude, charity, self-sacrifice.
If you cannot explain the standard to which you want to hold yourself, and your neighbors without resorting to gobbledeygook word that point to nothing, every decent person gets to roll his eyes and say "OK, Democrat."
Nobody on the RIGHT cares. These people don’t even know what a fascist is, they only know it to be an insult, just as they use all of the other phobes, ists etc. Anti-vaxxer is just the newest high use term.
The problem is the fanatics, the mentally unstable and the easily led on the left. They soak this in like a sponge, aided by an education system that has drummed it into their heads for 18 years. And the true fanatics are cultists and absolutely believe every word.
That is their justification.
Just look at the rubbish Stephen King posted online. Not a word of truth, and after serious backlash online, his “apology” was just another passive/agressive dig.
Fascism was the merger of corporation and state. Now it's called public-private partnership. Nothing has changed.
Precisely
exactly. I recently went down a rabbithole on wiki bio's of the pre-WW2 fascist movement's development, as I realized I knew a lot less than I thought I did.
the left's letters they wrote to each other, especially among the various Communists, was absolute hysteria: they sounded **exactly like modern Reddit retards trying to explain Trump**. I think Trotsky's letter in 1931 where he calls it "something similar to what we are trying to explain in Germany at this time" and his caution to not go ballistic retard on them is the best take they had.
Fascist means nothing to me, or anyone else.
"CHRISTOFASCIST" is one of the worst rhetoric devices the ultralefties have managed to come up with. That word is one they are trying to make "fetch" happen, and if anything it only reminds normies it may be time to end the Left altogether.
Spot on! I believe somewhere (maybe James Lindsey's podcasts) hearing that the 20s and 30s communists were aghast at its seeming failure and feared fascism to the point they tweaked Marx's communism (Frankfurt School) into more of a neo-communist movement that lead to what we have trying to gain foothold in the US.
James Lindsay is showing us he's never given up communism this week
fyi since all of us were taught at some point, or saw mentioned, that fascism somehow had a loose alliance with big business "CORPORATISM" but that is never explained in any detail when we're sitting in a 11th grade history class...
go look up the wikipedia for Corporatism. Turns out it had absolutely nothing to do with any of that connection whatesoever.
in fact, a google search definition (Oxford) for "Corporatism" gives this example, which is not accurate:
definition: the control of a state or organization by large interest groups.
example: "roughly one hundred years ago, the free market began to be replaced with corporatism"
Turns out it has nothing to do with the "Free market", it's actually more akin to trade unions and even aspects of socialism adapt it at times, it is unrelated entirely
the top of wikip[edia: Not to be confused with Corporate capitalism.
This article is about the general social theory. For business influence in politics, see Corporatocracy. For the process of reorganizing institutions on a corporate or business basis, see Corporatization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
it turns out in the end, all the Marxists trying to explain Fascism always end up saying they're colluding with big Capital, cause they are retarded
"Antifascist Action" was founded by Stalinists in 1930s Germany. And the same people gave the Berlin Wall the official name "The Antifascist Protection Rampart".
Stalin's definition of "fascism" was "anything that isn't Stalinist Communism". So yes, the word is meaningless.
"Fascist" means "anybody who disagrees with anything I have to say".
Even our host uses fascist to describe National Socialism. It's far gone.
i use fascism in the sense the fascists themselves did. they meant it as a positive. FDR admired it. it was nationalist statism with command and control crony corporatism, planned economies, and heavy emphasis on the indoctrination of the young into ideologies of collectivist enterprise and responsibility. its eschewed rights in favor of obligation to the state which stood paramount over the individual.
"nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Now it's public-private partnership.
Fascism was kewl until we went to war against a country that happened to be its birthplace, primarily because they declared war against us and threw down with another country that did the same.
OMG Mussolini made the trains run on time fapfapfap...
Of course, commies were also kewl at the same time. 20 years later, not so much.
remember that "corporatism" means something different than how we use it: it has nothing to do with big business, free market capital, etc, if anything it is just how guilding or sections of the economy can be an interest group in the fascist one
i just made another comment on all this cause i was being autistic about realizing i've never went to read more about fascism, cause the Left has shown their theoreticians never did, either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
my other comment: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-time-machine-hitler-fallacy/comment/155941195
And ‘gay’ used to mean ‘happy; carefree’
Liberalism used to mean something different. So…..what is your point?
They steal the language…….
Then they kill the voice.
The only difference between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism was de jure vs de facto ownership of the means of production. And the only difference between those two and the Soviets was the racial aspect - the Soviets wanted to rule over everyone regardless of race or ethnicity.
@Gato- I have a hometown friend, who claims to be transgender, who posted s/he had no idea who Charlie Kirk was and never reads 'right wing material' was, but- MIRACLE OF MIRACLES!- after one day of 'research', convinced Charlie was a bigot and a racist.
I have a feeling s/he isn't the only one in America.
Agree. FYI. I used "they" for the MSM and Leftist politicians.
But good clarification on your behalf
I don't think that those egging them on know that we are not fascists, because I don't think they have any clue what fascism really is.
We have to debunk the use of 'antifascist' to describe the radical progressive left just like we have had to debunk the use of 'transgender-woman' to describe mentally ill men. Antifa are really not antifascist, and, transgender-women are really not women. Stop using their labels.
Antifa are fascists. Or wannabe anyway.
Honestly, the "trans activists" of today seem like they are actively *trying* to get the rather polite trans people I knew thirty years ago killed in backlash. I don't know what changed, but none of them would have gone preaching to kids. They just wanted to live their lives and be left alone, for the most part. Frankly, I'm scared for them, from what's been done notionally in their name.
Gato - you're 100% right, and also ... leftist indoctrination is likely a factor in patsies being willing, and also in misdirection. It's not the only factor.
That doesn't excuse any of the violent rhetoric or pretend there isn't an insane violent streak in the trans activist community. But that's just part of it, and it's going to become the whole story unless
Likely whoever comes next from the right, much harsher than Charlie Kirk, will be a tool of the psychopathic bloodthirsty Zionists (not the same as generalizing any religion). What a tragic irony if those who most respect Charlie let this happen without digging up the truth from the roots - they are likely the force that directed all this and killed him.
https://georgewebb.substack.com/p/charlie-kirk-murder-sync-shot-again
"The cover story gives the FBI their win, but the receipts show coordination across state lines and borders. Always ask: who benefits from the cover story? Follow the narrative, find the sponsor." - George Webb
https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/charlie-kirk-refused-netanyahu-funding
https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/billionaire-bill-ackman-convened
https://georgewebb.substack.com/p/ukraine-family-robinson-azov-kirk
"Part Eight — Cover Stories and Smokescreens
The cover story is always divisive. Oswald the commie. Crooks the incel. Robinson the trans-recruited Discord radical. Dan Bongino pushes the “trans shooter” narrative just as J. Edgar Hoover pushed “lone nut communist.” It’s misdirection.
While we debate identity politics, the sync team rolls out of town. Metadata nails it down: plane manifests, Discord chat logs, ROTC rotations." - George Webb, "Sync shot again"
I am heading towards age 60. Every time there has been a presidential debate, the republican candidate has been labeled, “Hitler.” George Bush II included. (Later we found out that the Bushes and Clinton’s vacation together.)
When everyone is Hitler, no one is Hitler.
I also notice that few or none on the left know that Mussolini invented a word they love to use- Fascist.
Hitler was in a political party called “Democratic Socialist Party.
“Fascism” came out of Italy. Mussolini had been a journalist before he was leader of Italy in WW2.
Hitler's party was literally NAtionalsoZIalistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or National Socialist German Workers' Party; so indeed they were actually socialists.
There has never been a "far-right" dictator. All have been far left. Hitler was far left. Stalin, Mao, pol pot, maduro... all far left
i would disagree with this.
left and right as a distinction is orthogonal to authoritarian vs liberty
many theocracies, kings, and even folks like franco were far-right wing.
from the house of saud to popes to european kings and the dali lama, you had far right dictatorships. it's very possible, common even.
Oy vey! Left, right. Fascist, socialist. How many angels dance on the head of a pin? (Or even the definition of pornography?) All of it is antithetical to a free society based on a free market. How about: "...liberty or death?" Shake out the academic cobwebs, think about how unencumbered our founders were by all this word salad, and be prepared to back it up by force if necessary. The money line of a great essay: "They killed the nice guy."
Twenty angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I have spoken.
My view is that any form of government that centralizes control to a few or to one is, by definition left wing. Authoritarian is is control, libertarianism (small "l") is freedom from central control. I place authoritarianism on the far left, and full individual liberty on the right. By that definition, all forms of government are somewhere in between
finally someone else says this. This is the "correct" viewpoint we were never taught. "good " democrats in the center, fascists, nazis authoritarians etc on the right.
Fascist implies a popular dictatorship. As in the dictator justifies himself as "the will of the people".
Yes, "the people" might be only a subset of the nation, and it's entirely possible not even 51%. However, the ideological base of support is wider than under monarchy or aristocracy or other "non populist" right wing regimes.
The Ancien Regime justified itself with 0.5% in the first estate and 1.5% in the second estate. The Nazi's won like 40% of the vote in a multi-party democracy.
That's actually its innovation. As old world interests crumbled before the popular will, they seeked out a form of the popular will that wouldn't murder them. Fascism promised to solve the dilemmas of the socialist state without revolutionary murder. A "third way".
It's this kind of classification problem that led to the Nolan chart.
My bad, gato.
I misinterpreted your comment.
I agree with your summation. Just because Germany invaded Russia doesn't mean they were right wing.
It was more a struggle of ideology, in particular world domination, etc.
Apologies
Since socialism is the far left, individual liberty must be the far right. Nobody believing in or advocating individual liberty can be a dictator.
"You will do as I say! Unless you have better ideas." Makes for a pretty feeble dictatorship.
Yes. The political spectrum of left and right have totalitarianism, fascism, communism, dictatorship all on the far left. Anarchy resides on the far right, with individual liberty within the historical bounds of civilized society in the middle
@First- anarchy also resides on the left.
It’s called the Horseshoe Political Spectrum.
How about Pinochet in Chile, the Military Junta in Argentina, and many more? Perhaps you should top up on your history ......
Don't consider what others have told you about these regimes; consider what they did. Every leftist will (and have for decades) tell you they were right wing, but they were authoritarian and controlled speech, government, economics, everything. Classic fascism, which is left wing behavior.
'By their deeds you shall know them'
I don't know about that. Franco may qualify as a rightwing dictator, though no one would call him "far-right".
I respectfully disagree. If you control the economy and political environment of a country, you are either fascist or socialist. It's that simple
many kings and theocrats would dispute this.
It definitely makes you an authoritarian, but what is a fascist? The words have lost clear meaning because they've been overused by the left. Is Singapore with a free market economy and no political freedom a fascist country. Or is it socialist? In today's environment Left and Right are no longer good descriptors.
this is a low IQ take that sounds like someone who just learned what left and right is, and trying to use it as dialectic substitute for rhetoric (and doing so poorly) in internet comments
Augusto Pinochet was certainly not a socialist.
Most Americans have no idea and legacy media doesn’t inform on that either.
NSDAP was less socialist than modern Republicans...
Many republicans adopted the pablum of social security payments and Medicare. Few are grounded, with only a vague sense of traditionalism to hold them in place.
In a way this fact makes the hard left turn of the radical democrat party even more surprising. It’s as though they didn’t understand that unionized blue collar democrats were only thinly differentiated. So naturally they began to alienate both. 🤣
hot take: economics is irrelevant when the culture social side is at stake.
things I was not OK with as I made my journies from Republican to Rothbard to Hoppe and even for a bit after: medicare and medicaid, horrible social programs
things I am now perfectly fine with: spending every dime of those billions in a new program that only right-wing, Americans can have, cancelling every leftist in the country in one fell swoop.
IT turns out the "ending the left" entirely idea is not a bad one, and purity tests are good.
I’m a bit of a constitutionalist myself. Though I understand your emotion, I know we lose the war even if we win a small battle. It will be a Pyrrhic victory if we start in with special privileges for me but not for thee. We become what we hate. Also, I was never the pablum eater on the social welfare stuff either. 👍🏿
Agreed. If a nation is composed of a unified culture and race, the rest mostly takes care of itself.
what we have learned is economically "left" and socially "right" is actually the most stable, effective, and desired state of pretty much every population on Earth, yet does not exist anywhere right now
It used to exist, it was called the Soviet Union. Not sure I'd describe the USSR as "the most stable, effective, and desired state" though.
That depends on how far left or right you go.
The first person the Democrats labeled "Hitler" was Thomas Dewey in 1948. Less than 3 years after the real Hitler. (Hat tip to Steven Crowder for digging that up).
The second person to be labeled "Hitler" by the Democrats was Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, the man in charge of the successful operation to defeat Hitler. I don't know if you can top the stupidity there, but the Democrats certainly haven't stopped trying.
Wow. Just wow! Thanks for that.
And Mussolini, before his ill-fated alliance with Germany, had done some wonderful things there. It is incredibly complicated to talk about ynless you find an honest historian. I have lived in the south of Italy for 45 years, and the remembrance of that period is nothing if not nuanced. By the way, the msm in Italy is WAY worse than here!
So it is in Germany, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, and UK.
@Kankles (had to)- Still is
Part of the problem, if not all of it, is that they’re so disjointed and discombobulated that each group seems to have a different definition of what “fascism” is. Assuming they actually know who Mussolini is (let alone Stalin, Lenin, Mao). They probably think he’s Palestinian/Hamas.
Actually I was ‘splained by a lefty professional psychologist that the definition of “fascism” has “changed.” It now means whatever people on the left want it to mean. (Much like the definition of the word, “vaccine.”)
This is dark ages cult stuff, operating like the Spanish Inquisition or Jesuits.
The cult is driven purely by the desire for power. No actual reason or honesty involved.
@Chix- my father and grandparents were from Sicily. They hated Mussolini with all their hearts.
I get that. But the “partisani,” who adopted that song (on the bullet casing) “Bella Ciao”, murdered thousands and thousands in cold blood. My little town of 10,000 had its share of men woken up to go stand in doorways and be assassinated. No discussion, just perceived political views. And often just for old rivalries, no politics at all. Looks like things haven’t changed at all, really.
Humans have not evolved. Stalin did the same of course.
Oops, partiggiani. Che cavolo!
Partigiani
But he made the trains run on time! 🤣
They hardly need "Nazi" any longer. "Anti-vaxxer" is sufficient for their purposes.
That's right. Anti this and that, etc.. Labeling is a powerful tool. Or simply the absence of labeling for one side of the argument
The right has been given a gift paid for at extreme cost and if they blow this moment shame will be on their heads forever.
Yup.
Also have you ever heard someone in the MSM say "leftwing extremists" or "far-left?
They do this for a reason. Hell while I was typing this comment on my phone far-right auto populated, and far-left I had to add to word preferences in order for it to auto-populate
Autocorrect has an agenda. To me it’s glaringly obvious. I can’t misspell God as Hod and have it correct it. But I can misspell Saran for Satan and that pops up right in the middle of my texting keyboard.
Yes. Sorta like the propaganda on Wikipedia.
Insidious to say the least
Imagine if people not on the left actually learned the power of boycotts.
Well political violence takes less effort, organization, and money than protesting.
Political violence has worked for every Leftist movement in history, otherwise they wouldn't deploy it.
Some have, sometimes. Think Target or BudLight. What I think is entertaining now is the right's use of cancel-culture. It's gotten pretty organized.
The right has “Turn the other cheek” baked into the cake. Plus, they’re busy with work and raising kids. We need a concerted effort to wake them up with actual step by step directions they can stick on their car dashboard. Something like this-
1. DO NOT ENGAGE IN YOUR OWN DESTRUCTION! Stop funding Soros- Do NOT buy Desani yoghurt! 😳
@SCA- PREACH!!!!!! Husband and I just left a Starbucks in the Buffalo area (sorry but Sbux has the best espresso in the area). Everyone was saying "GO BILLS!" as they were walking out as were the workers. My husband said "GO BILLS!" and I said "GO CHARLIE!" I have no idea how it was taken although no knives were thrown at me. But I felt it was my small part in continuing Charlie's works.
It's easy for me to say I guess because I don't drink coffee. But I think this monstrous moment we're in demands us giving up inconsequential pleasures because only economic impacts will help us win.
They already insist we can't use the word retarded.
I never stopped using it...or gay
I was tarded in the 1st place so I don't need to be retarded. I also once had a girlfriend named Gay. You don't see that name anymore.
"I was traded in the first place so I don't need to be retarded."
*considers implications for 'research'*
I use queer in its standard definition .... odd.
Well that assassin must really been attracted to the "queermones" of his tranny boyfriend.
Why? Because he was queer!...:)
This is the way
Likewise :-)
“Human retardation sycophant” is a bit of a mouthful to say, to be sure, but perhaps its usage will receive greater acceptance by the anti-retard-usage gestapo.
Nice term of art. I say it is high time to fire retardant gazpacho
They insist, but the ban has sprung a lot of leaks. Elon allows it on X and uses it himself.
i promoted it across Twitter\X last year as WORD OF THE YEAR 2024, and I have been doing so again this year for 2025, though the year isn't over yet
doing so is epic, it does not get banned and has increased in use
See Interest over time on Google Trends for retard - United States, 8/14/10 - 9/14/25 - https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1757874000?hl=en-US&tz=300&date=2010-08-14+2025-09-14&geo=US&hl=en&q=retard&sni=3
Not so. Trump allowed it by executive order. Look it up.
That's why I'm Anti-Anti-Everything.
It's almost like being Pro... Something.
Well its framing.
That's why you have to turn it around on them.
For example, people would call me anti-masker. I said nope, im pro-face
pro-breathing. or breath ing. I "breth" therefore I am.
Yes! Lolol
LOL
I see what you did there.
"Something" being a noun would thus mean you're in fact...
...Pro-noun?
Don’t you just love the Anti Statist Anarchy movement claiming “Anarchy does not mean Chaos”?
Bit Like AnitFa Socialist Democrats trying to hide from “German Socialist Worker’s Party” Adolf being a SOCIALIST MARXIST FASCIST.
We need to shun this ridiculousness. Times up on the grand experimentation of un-empirical, dark ages thinking.
Linus test. Ask, “What is a Woman?” Or, “Describe to me the scientific method.”
If they can’t do either one, instead of being mean, suggest they go back to study a high school science text book. Then we’ll have a convo but not until then.
Yeah.
It looks like covid still isn't over. I wonder how many of them would gladly take up the snotrag again if called to do so? They do claim that we anti vaxxers and anti maskers are responsible for 'millions' of deaths....
It is one of their flags. An important public signifier.
Yep. Just look at the ones who are still 'ride or die' with that one.
I guess I have even more reason to put more than 6 feet between ourselves when encountered at the local Grocery Outlet. I used to cast pitying glances. Now the looks are gonna be more side-eyed.
People dear to me were very diligent maskers and that was entirely because their deep decency was so exploited by Fauci and Walensky et al into fearing being a danger to others.
I got such a long list and growing of "Reasons to Never Forgive" that I may find myself using up all my darling little laptop's working memory.
They have been preached that speech is violence for so long, a few of them have followed the logic to violence is speech...
Didn’t Charles Krauthammer (RIP) say “Republicans think Democrats are people with bad ideas but Democrats think Republicans are bad people”? They really really do think that; it is their primal motivational force to remake the world “better” according to their desires.
This goes to Gato's highlighting of the concept that some people confuse identity with ideology. For instance: they do not merely hold the opinion that a man can change into a woman. That is, rather, central to their entire being. Not a small step from that to "Charlie Kirk is Hitler."
Exactly. People who are their IDEA project Hitler on others who hold the NOT-IDEA opinion, i.e. project that others ARE their (evil) idea.
I've heard that less formally as "The right thinks the left is stupid, the left thinks the right is evil". Same ultimate meaning though.
In Krauthammer’s version the right asserts the ideas are bad without ad hominem.
Yes yes and yes. But bad cat why on earth does he have to say "and of fascism around the world" WW2 did not have fascist around the world. One guy in Italy wrote the book called Fascism and published it.
Hitler was elected a National Socialist. He was a high level socialist before he broke off because he was against International Socialists and was for National Socialists. Let me simplify this down. International Commie or National Commie. Fascist is what Commies call everyone that is not a Commie.
Example: From the signs outside of the Communist Headquarters in Germany in 1932
https://media.scored.co/post/YfefoHDjRILp.jpeg
Notice the Antifa flag out front. Notice that the Commie stood against the "Faschismus" in 1932
Makes me think of a song. “Instrument” by Fugazi. The key question of the song “Could it be that loss could weigh?” I think the song is about perspective…the shortsighted satisfaction of losing one’s temper in a warlike response vs peaceably seeing things down the road. The losses add up fast if we keep letting them.
In a way the left has become a perfect merge of American consumerism of a product in Marxist packaging. It is being bought at a high price they do not realize. The price keeps going up until the centrist left stops buying it. There is emotive salve NOW without exercise of any self control with pops of low thought verbal artillery. It satisfies the “we want this thing now” and not willing to wait for it much longer. This is the difference from conservatism; it is a willingness to wait to win according the the principles we have set, the contract we are bound by, and have agreed to abide by. Extremists know no bounds. The more we agree to see that not everyone agrees…AND that this is okay…we will preserve these United States. This is why “big business, big Pharma” etc seems more intertwined with leftism because they align on appealing to get the product now because they want it now. So in some ways leftism in 2025 satisfies the immediate consumer, strong elements of capitalism when convenient but loves the illusory “moral” control of Marxist “power to the people.” The incremental plays of verbal guerilla outbursts have to continue to become broader in impact to reach the ultimate outcome of destruction. What it all boils down to is they will do WHATEVER it takes to have the power even if that involves any evil means because in their mind it is justified…it is a “no delay of gratification” culture. Assassination sounds less and less extreme in these type of leftist thought patterns. They do not even seem to them as dangerous because it has been recited so many times. They must be consistently and emotively satisfied like the toddler melting down in the store which is a perfect meme for the consumer-marxist.
The situation is not at all what the dance on the grave faction of the left thought!
Hell, No!
The rubicon has been crossed, the pivot begins, the pendulum swings, and the paradigm is shifting.
Restore order, open our tent and let the moderate left march in. We accept them with love, open arms and open hearts.
Dispose of the labels and begin the long road back to sanity.
agree. easier said than done
But Ryan, they do, they know it is true. Anybody who dare disagree or have different values is LITERALLY a fascist Nazi deserving of death. But, they only kill out of compassion and love. The destitute wasteland they consider brain matter justifies this by calling it a mercy killing. You know, we slaughter millions of babies (both unborn and just born) assassinate Jews, Catholics, Christian’s, blacks, disabled all to better humans with no humanity!
Exactly.
To put it in perspective, liberals were outraged at a model in jeans, but not about a man getting assassinated in cold blood.
Let that sink in.
Ugh. I guess it is a moral duty to let that sink in.
Ryan, they think those are Groyper terms and that trans has only been mentioned bc "TRN" is on the bottom of the bullets. They really think Fuentes is behind this.
The DNC blast fax went out fairly early on blaming the groypers. It's obviously stupid, because who's celebrating the murder? It ain't Fuentes, it's the hard left.
Yeah, they're saying Fuentes is staying mum bc he doesn't want it traced back to him, hahahaha.
Excellent essay! Thank you for writing it (just proof-read ;).
I am thinking that it is utterly amazing that Democrats can’t come up with people who are extreme moderates. It is the only category that might even win again sometime. Slam dunk.
That said, I am a person who had a friend for 40 years whom I loved dearly. We were great together and avoided politics, because we were opposites in this category. But the last time I saw her, out for a lunch, I danced like Mohammed Ali trying to avoid the “T” subject, but she suddenly stood up, hurling her chair backwards, and launched into a spittle-filled tirade in the restaurant that left me shell-shocked. Everything now and in the future was my fault, because I voted for the “T.” She fired me as her friend, forever. I told her she seemed very unhappy and maybe should seek some help but…I suppose I am dead to her, and to her husband and son with whom I had wonderful rapport. She is a very high-intelligence professional. I will miss her dearly. But after this happened I realized that I would never have fired her like this. Never. And it shows the stark difference between many liberals and conservatives. I know I am not alone in my experience. Who does this??
Again, your essay was GREAT, and I learned a couple of new words, too. Onward, its going to get better.
I was talking to my oldest sister who is buried in the morass of the northeastern seaboard, think Pocahontas territory, and all I said was "can I at least explain why I think the way I do?"
She almost turned into a demon when I said that... I swear there was spittle coming out of her mouth. All she said was an emphatic NO.
Then she left the room. That was it. This is a highly intelligent professional woman. She has multiple awards. But she can't get past trump. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen.
Did it occur to you that there was a demon? I mean, a real one. You know, in the modern era where we have banished all such things from our "reality" as fairy tales or superstition, one must question whether this was really a valid take considering how little we really know about the nature of Nature. The Left has done a lot of very bad things, but the worst is probably convincing so many people that the concept of 'evil' is a work of fiction.
Someone on X posted after the Kirk shooting that they used to be atheist because nobody could prove to them that God exists. But they became Christian after the left proved that Satan exists. I think we'll see many more such cases.
I am not sure who said it, but Satan's finest work was when he convince people he did not exist. I had an awakening, led by the Lord I believe, where I read a few stories that opened my eyes that evil is real and that good is only found through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I was an agnost before then. I started my journey and found in the early days of my belief in Christ that demons were attacking me through fear. In my prior life I would never have seen it for what it was. I am so glad God opened the door for me to walk through.
Quite true. About a year ago Naomi Wolf (formerly a progressive) wrote an essay " Is it Time for Intellectuals to Talk about God?". The answer increasing seems to be yes.
Here is the link if interested :
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/is-it-time-for-intellectuals-to-talk
Thanks for this.
Screwtape!
I've been reading CS Lewis' daily devotionals... Giving my morning routine a positive anchor in these turbulent times.
Thank you--I'm looking into that.
Excellent point. One of my sisters, highly intelligent, high level professional, is like that too. At least she has agreed to keep politics off the table. But it gets harder and harder as more of life is politicized.
Well, I think the demon behind this social divisiveness is more likely China or the WEF, etc.
If I was an ancient trans-dimensional evil being whose all-consuming hobby was the destruction of humanity, and I'd witnessed the rise and fall of many human civilizations, I think I'd do my best to outsource most of the work of destroying those people - TO those people. What is more evil than making the ones you wish to savagely crush, into barbarous instruments of their own destruction? Just a theory. I guess the easy answer is, "Both these things can be true".
Yes, it is devastating to families and friends alike. Who is so threatened by ideas that they have to plug their ears and yell “lalalalaaa?” My theory is that in one’s personal weakness or laziness one depends on outsiders to define one’s goodness, then if the outsiders behave (very) badly it injures that perceived goodness. I say “goodness”, but we all know that there is class/intellectual superiority rolled up in there too. Some people are ALL about the superiority thang..
you cannot reason, don't even try to explain. If you have a good enough relationship to have fun like I have done to leftist family members, tell them you're going full Hand Maid's Tale. THe wink and nod makes them actually listen better because your rhetoric is now addressing the emotions directly instead of with logic
Love this idea
Forty years is a long time to be "friends" with someone who will throw a temper tantrum as if they were a toddler in public. There sure are a lot of unprofessional professionals as of late.
Afraid it is what it appears: mental illness.
No. Illness is a disease. This is spiritual ROT. It is DEMONIC. We are in a spiritual war.
Unfortunately, I believe you were correct when you mentioned she should seek help for her mental health. Although I’m not sure your timing was very good.
My wife taught me about the timing thing. All I usually want to do is fix things sometime before they are even broken.
I can identify. I lost a long-time friend over my choice to not get vaccinated (after struggling with the decision) during the Pandemic. She wouldn't even talk to me on the phone and dumped me via email.
Then, my husband and I lost our son and both grandchildren (who were born during Covid). Just before this, he had married a woman who was very troubled. She was uncomfortable to be around, but we tried to make it work. Covid pushed her to become a "true believer". When I asked (very politely) if I could see my grandchildren, she screamed at me at length that she didn't give birth to them for me, and who did I think I was! When she stopped to take a breath, I asked if I could respond, but she said no.
At that point our son became a stranger to us. We no longer recognized him. I reached out to him to try to come to some understanding. He told me that I must get all the shots and boosters that were available and that I needed to get "professional counselling" for my wrong-think.... and show him the evidence. I could not do that and maintain any self-respect.
It has been three years since he completely cut us off. So much damage has been done. It is very sad, but it is the price of being me. Everyone has their line in the sand.
What a sad and terrible story. But you did the right thing. Cold comfort, I know.
How are the grandkids? Bolstered up the kazoo? Are they healthy?
I don't know. They don't live in town and we are completely estranged in every way. Many other family members (aunts, uncles, cousins) have also been cut off and blocked on social media, either for their choices, or if they defended my husband and me. The few that have sporadic contact are sworn to secrecy.
There is more to my story. There is unpaid money involved. I have had to recognize that respect and trust have been completely destroyed. I am coming to terms with the situation..... because I have to.... but I am a surviver.
I see a world that has gone mad. My story is insignificant, but a sign of the times with regard to the state of Western society.
This is awful.
I learned many years ago that you can't reach those who didn't reason themselves into a position with reason. The statement that opened my eyes was, “The math all works out, but it doesn't feel right.”
The way I heard it was; "You can't reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into in the first place." Same sentiment though.
I guess I am stunned at the reaction of some liberals. They seem to have become so angry over the thought of a different opinion. Media has clearly won by their constant barrage of propaganda. Like Covid mass delusion.
‘Some liberals’? “Seem to have become”?
Covid1984, Plandemic-Scamdemic....
True. However I am convinced that political views are reached for purely emotional reasons, initially, and then we spend all our time trying to justify them with reason. Doesn’t work so well.
Yes, reached for purely emotional reasons, not on history or the constitution or the belief and participation of civil discourse. I have experienced this in my own family (in laws) to the point I simply do not engage in conversation.
Yes. So much is beyond reason you just stop talking.
read Aristotle's "Rhetoric":
“Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.” Aristotle, Rhetoric
It’s not going to get better without great interference.
Oh lord, that is horrendous. I am so sorry. But your grandchildren will grow and they will find you.
My husband and I lived through the worst of Covid in Italy. Eventually I traveled back here to see my grown kids, but my husband was not allowed. Italy allowed me to come and go freely, in contrast. We were never vaxxed, and I have never had covid to this day. Lots of travel and exposure to ill family members.
We were shunned. And with love I begged my relatives not to get boosters, and I offered them plenty of reasons, as I had been researching mRNA technology from years prior. Nothing made any difference.
As with leftist politics, they cling to doing what they believe will make them GOOD. Blind rule-following is one of the scariest human traits in its potential to do harm. And mass psychosis is even worse!
The people in my life have been understanding, to a degree. My sister and I have come to tears a few times, but she has mellowed. Her intransigence was horrifying to me, precisely because of her refusal to either discuss or read any informative materials. She simply is too threatened by the thought that “THEY” don’t have her best interests in mind.
But I DO have hers in mind, and she should recognise it.
It was (and us) a sad affair.
Best of luck to you.
I recently visited with friends and family. I told them that when T does something good, the MSM don't report it (see e.g. he ended the war between Congo and Rwanda). But I didn't dare admit I voted for T, because they might have disowned me. They don't ask because I think they can't imagine I would ever actually vote for him.
I know what that's like. It happened to me a few years ago, and still feel occasionally like asking her, "Are we better off this way, really, cut off from our friendship?"
Their establishment politicians actually are in charge of all of it -- they have let the loonies run their decisions for them on the trans \ nutjob \ socially inept weirdo stuff since those losers were empowered by the invention of the Internet on a cell phone in 2010.
that, plus the fact it originated out of GamerGate to dominate the cutlure for a decade, is why the Left establishment in charge didn't care:
they just let the loonies continue taking out the online "right" and they didn't have to worry about it in their elite circles, as it took care of a threat they didn't want to and never had to deal with online
now it turns out they have a fractioning identity: the Left is made up of 1) normies of Democrat persuasion, 2) minority groups that have 0 connection to the idea of being an "American" -- all immigrant's kids kids, who are antisemitic and not-white, and 3) tranny crazies and their supporters (terminally online) people who have been calling the shots weith online mobs for 15 years
all 3 of those are ripe to break apart, and likely from disconnected brown-immmigrants of 2nd\3rd generation in dense areas, where they will simply stop working with the Democrats at some point, costing the D's permanent relevance
I don't think your experience is rare - the self-righteousness of these folks - and the willingness to make a scene - is stunning. Being able to "agree to disagree" seems to be vanishing in numerous social circles.
Both of my daughters are swimming in the morass of the left. After Charlie, I reached out to open discussions, & received rude replies. It may be “mother-worry”, but I’m concerned about their mental health and that they might become targets of the backlash of the right. I am going to reach out again and again. But I’m expecting an alone Thanksgiving and Christmas again this year.
The saddest part is that they will despise themselves on a very deep level, and possibly never realize. Hoping they will come around.
Similar scenario with a 30 year friend, Except we did used to be able to talk about politics in a limited way. But she 'broke' in 2020. Went from moderately liberal to full on radical left.
Every little bite in the wall lets another mouse in and though one mouse is an adorable little furry thing with soulful eyes, in a week your pantry is full of piss and crap pellets and the sickly smell will knock you over and they've taken a big chunk out of everything you love.
All them Good Germans I saw during Our Plague Era, I ain't never forgetting nor forgiving and though I have no tribe myself I been taught which tribe is willing to keep me alive as I am, and which ain't.
SCA, could you please elaborate on the Good German Plague Era statement. It could go two ways. Thanks! 👋🏿
Which two ways could it go?
Though I’m pretty certain I recall Germany vaxxed to a very high degree- 90% ish or higher….
Your statement could apply to the pro-vax and anti-vax crowd, both. I’m pretty sure they’re still mostly brainwashed on the subject. (You are also on the “E” substack, correct?) Thanks. I am always trying to learn about the Rheinland Westphalia mindset.
Think WWII. Good Germans went along with their former neighbor Jews being dragged off and gassed. And then happily took their apartments. They told themselves it was honorable.
And Christians next to the train tracks carrying Jews to their deaths were told to “Sing Louder” .
Yep thanks. I knew about that but it seemed SCA’s context was different. 👍🏿
Go back a little further in history.
You mentioned “our plague era.” I doubt you meant bubonic plague.
https://x.com/KathleenWinche3/status/1967213632955326862
I don't recall ever watching one of Charlie's videos. Yet, every time I think about his death I want to cry. I can't explain it...other than it feels like an unpardonable transgression. If the Left is willing to kill Charlie for his ideas, then they are willing to kill ME for my ideas.
Go look for his videos and watch as many as possible. You will see a genius at work, but also a kind hearted person with incredible knowledge of the Bible and our Constitution. He regularly read 100 books a year. He was a master debater, even when he went to Oxford and made that professor look like an idiot.
I have never seen so many so-called ‘intellectuals’ look so uncomfortable as those Oxford dimwits. They hated him for it too.
Their disgust should have been in their overpaid university degrees
I agree! I told someone today: if they killed dear sweet wonderful Charlie over his thoughts and speeches, am I next? What will they do to me? As a conservative who speaks her mind at the drop of a hat, my days may be numbered…..
I’m 74 years old. When we elected a Muslim as president? I was D.O.N.E. with silence and NOPE with COEXIST.
I hate obnoxious women, but I may have already crossed that line myself.
The anti-bad-guys meme is also a perfect image of US foreign policy since 1945.
Remember how everyone you slaughtered at a wedding in Mosul was a terrorist because if they weren’t you wouldn’t have killed them? All 200 of them? indeed, all the 100s of 1000s killed in the war on terror were terrorists.
Officially.
Every tin pot wannabe or just someone who believed in governing his country for the benefit of his people and not for US business interests, was the new Hitler and letting them live was you being the new Chamberlain, the appeaser of evil. Mau, Ho Chi Min, Hussein, Gadaffi, and Putin have all been painted with this same retarded brush by the US’ left and right alike.
I’m not here to say you deserve to reap what you’ve sown because I know many many Americans deplored these evil wars of choice, of grand larceny and slaughter on an industrial scale perpetrated by the greatest industrialized nation in the world.
I personally abhor violence and continuously advocate against promoting or performing it.
I am here to say that the rest of the world doesn’t see you the way you see yourselves. We mourn the loss of Charlie Kirk, we feel deeply for his wife and children, and the wider family left to deal with the horrific banality of the evil that took him from them. We share the concerns of Christian’s and conservatives and libertarians and all who know that emotions are a terrible basis for law or morality, for what is happening in America and what is happening to America.
I am here to say that if you want to stop the civil war that has been waged against you for at least 8 decades then you must also stop the wars that have been waged against the rest of the world in your name for that same period. And for a very practical reason ; it’s not psychologically possible for your ruling class to consider remote strangers outside your borders as fungible and inconsequential while considering you, who to them are but remote strangers within your borders, as anything else.
Man, that last paragraph. You cannot deny the humanity of another without dehumanizing yourself. We need to end the warfare state that has sucked dry our economy and left only (expensive) war materiel manufacture as an industry here. Well said.
Bill Hicks said that in a comedy routine and thought he sounded important.
THen he died
We might be on the way with pdt. He certainly doesn’t believe in war to help out the mic.
Every teacher who puts up the flag of sodomy and mental illness in the classroom must be charged with child sexual abuse and go to prison for life.
With what is happening to all those who glorified his murder on social media, the September jobs report is gonna look heinous. And the left’s clutching of pearls over being shocked that this is happening because they thought we were against “cancel culture” may be opening their eyes to their own culpability. But if there was one thing I learned from the Covid years, their cognitive dissonance(stupidity) won’t allow it.
One of the OG victims of cancel culture was James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote a memo politely explaining that men and women are different so equality of outcome was not possible, but they should find ways to help men and women work together happily.
He was fired for it.
Make sure your center left acquaintances are familiar with the distinction between Damore's attempt at reasoning with the far left and celebrating a man's body being annihilated in front of his wife and 3yo daughter, because that distinction is kind of important.
Normies don't get it. There were people saying "We just have to talk things out." in response to the murder of the guy who was just talking things out.
The leftists insisted during peak cancel culture that there was no such thing as cancel culture, it was simply accepting responsibility for what you've done and said. Turning that back around on them has been fun.
OMG! It’s been glorious!
The news will report "One Million Jobs Lost in September" and blame Trump for mishandling the economy.
Sure, but they'll probably have said that anyway. The most recent jobs report was actually pretty good except for the large number of federal government jobs lost.
Best essay yet, Gato, and I'm including your Covid-work in that statement. If you keep raising the bar, be ready to hand out brathing-apparatus to your readers.
---
"the praxis is endlessly messaging until you find the weak minded or the virtue seeking vicious, whip them to violence, then call the burning of cities and killing of anyone you do not like “well deserved” and act like it’s the height of morality and how to get tribal merit badges."
This also describes how and why islam is the only religion/culture with suicide bombers, since it is the very same pattern.
---
"they do it with finality." Kind of an ironic phrase given that you started out talking about the Hitler-time machine crap. Endlösung = Final solution in English. On the other hand, a solution that doesn't solve the problem isn't a solution in the first place.
The problem, and the test of character is twofold:
How to put an end to the political, cultural, religious and racial tics and termites destroying civilisation without having to resort to actual old-school solution, Genghis Khan-style (who by the by makes Hitler look like a rank amateur when it comes to cause death)
and
How to know when to stop cutting
Neither is easy, both are possible and the trap of the "goalposts just beyond the horizon" is all too easy to fall into.
But it can be done, and done well.
PS: have you looked at the meaning of his name? Charles comes from an Old German noun meaning "Free man", and Kirk comes from Old Norse for church (kyrka/kirkja). I wonder if he knew what his name meant?
Kirk is still used in Scotland (my mother was a Scot).
And they shot him in the throat……in case it didn’t kill him, to silence him.
They killed America’s son.
I agree, I'm adding this post to must read for all
The main subplot here is how do two perfectly ordinary teenagers, within a period of just a few years, turn into these two broken nightmarish freaks (speaking here of Robinson and his boy/girlfriend Twiggs, the furry+trans roommate specimen)?
I have children in their 20s. I have seen how captured some of these young adults are...and how defenseless they seem to be. As you suggest, the nightmarish freaks didn't just happen. Their lack of internalized personhood made them easy prey to all this.
Thank you for "lack of internalized personhood." Another and maybe better way way of saying they "conflating identity and ideology." We all need to grasp this notion.
Yes. "Conflating identity and ideology" is right. The Bad Cat has covered this in a few interesting pieces. In the process of conflating, its not a full replacement. its like the layers of self buried beneath the ideology.
Twiggs turned him in. Whatever problems Twiggs has, they appear to be psychological, not anti-social.
Twiggs was confronted by the LEOs and from what I can tell caved immediately. He showed the discord 'jokes'. Twiggs had a good sense of self preservation.
The father is the one with courage.
From the day I knew what political ideology was I began thinking of my adversaries as if they were Frank Burns from MASH: wrong & ignorant, but comical & necessary for the plot. You don’t hate Frank & you definitely don’t silence him, as that robs you as much (or more) than him.
That healthy formula fails when you mistake the other side for Hitler.
Brilliant. I'm going to see Frank everywhere now.
But Ken, sometimes the other side is Hitler. Or Stalin. Or Chairman Xi.
It’s almost as if grownups are still waiting for the long arm of the almighty father to swing back from the front seat of the station wagon to get you kids to knock it off.
Gato- the truth is that we all are being played in the greatest game of totalitarian world control- left, right, man in the middle & the apolitical.
Our Government works for forces we do not see because they are so carefully hidden. They are not of this world, in personal opinion, (at 65 years of watching this movie I tend to align more & more with Jesus of Nazareth,) but even if you look at the worldly actors you can see- the Bidens & Trumps, the Elons & the Gates, Epstein & Israel, the US Senate, Pharma, War mongerers, Banksters, Bezos & Zuckerberg, on & on, you see those who feed on ignorance, debt, disease & war & big Government, they want us, all the reasonable, sane & compassionate Americans to be at each others throats.
They NEED us at each others throats. You cannot become a One World Dictatorship without destroying the Nation & the People founded upon Liberty & Freedom.
Beware, Mr. Cat.
You are teetering on the edge of calling for the very violance Charlie gave his life to prevent by living peaceful & respectful discussion of our differences & by loving, unconditionally, each other as Christ commands, despite our intense differences.
And, my smart feline, you are being played- or you are a player- helping to bring the very thing that would destroy our Liberty, our Constitution & our Nation.
War with those in the media who lie endlessly, not the other side if the isle.
Repeal the Obama era abomination of allowing propaganda to be used on Americans.
Expose the Psy-op we are all in.
Expose the MONEY in sickness, war, & debt.
Fight for Freedom of Speech & Equal Rights Under the Law.
Expose the SSRIs, the Sars-cov-2 bio-weapon program- the ModRNA disaster.
The vaccine type indemnification planned for pesticide companies.
The horrific use of fetal remains from abortion.
The toxic load given babies in their "shots."
The weather manipulations & the actual earth changes we are experiencing.
Any of a thousand things that mainstream media will not discuss- UFOs/UAPS/NHI for heavens sake!
But let's not have another civil war, ok?
The last was over slavery. This time it would be strictly because of a very evil psy-op run on us by our own internal forces, who are controlled by those seeking a One World Government & the destruction of the USA, imho.
Don't be a part of that, please, or I won't be able to keep liking Mr. Cat.
; ))
Well stated. I’ve come across Hope and Tragedy by Carroll Quigley, PhD and it’s synopsis Hope and Tragedy 101 by Joseph Plummer who outline the literal top of the heap Deep State and its origins from Cecil Rhodes, Milner, etc. that have orchestrated all that we see today. Familiar?
don't even bother reading that stuff anymore -- it is the stuff that I read when I moved from "conservative" to "Ron Paul and Austrian Economics" positions in 2006-2009.
Then you start to abandon those ideals and principles as you embrace Christian tradition and that the Enlightenment was all bad. Turns out the conspiracys are around for a reason: there's so much wrong you just want to find a singlular "blame" for it, when in fact it's that the past 350 years of the Enlightenment has been a slow singular event that has erased what made Western Civization so good and endure for so long in the first place.
VAlues like "free speech" are meaningless, meant to reject blasphemy laws so that correct things could be taught.
Usury abandoned because it's just wrong to prevent that, right guys?
Those books have contributions but they're not helping anymore.
We're in an era of defining new terms, political re-alignments, and concepts that is going to upset the entire last 200 years, but it will take some time
Your experience which you’re entitled to. Mine? Currently it explains the mechanisms that have led to current One World Govt. objectives and gives context to MIC, pHARMa, WEF, etc.
You need to stop watching so many videos. Read Vox Day, it'll help.
You're behind the times lol
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Ephesians 6:12
THIS.
Do not hate the people that have succumbed to evil, but do fight the evil.
Make no peace with it.
If your plan could work, we'd need to repeal the Patriot Act and the Prep Act, restoring Constitutionally protected rights against declared "emergencies."
How we change the cultural expectation of the government as Provider and taxes as the metastatic means of enabling, seems a task beyond dialogue.
My heart is with yours. 🙏
Someone smart once said- "if you are not a liberal when you are young you don't have a heart, & if you are not a conservative as an adult, you don't have a brain!" Lol. In general I tend to agree but today, via social media logarithms we are shown only the lunatic fringe.
Yes overall, the Dems went "insane" during Covid & yes I agree they are completely nuts today on many topics, but in the past I disagreed vehemently with the party of war & unlimited corporate power that owned the "right." I am a small Government, Individual Liberty type who professes the Faith of George Washington in a Kind Providence, despite human wickedness & the spiritual wickedness "in high places."
Washington said political parties would destroy us, & Jefferson said standing armies are more injurious to freedom than tyrants.
We are all being played & Charlie's assassination may well have been a grand act to take out a powerful force for Good & a man who began to question the lies he had been told who held a huge microphone.
There is much more to all of this than meets the eye. That I know for sure.
Thank you, by the way, for saying your heart is with mine- it gave me a real smile!
😊
Yes, I feel a certainty of the conclusions many are making on this ELG post. When I retired to bed there were 200+ replies. When I opened my eyes, the count was over 450.
On the same topic (CKirk) on two other author's sites, I unsubscribed because the "weeds" became so very hateful.
Libertarian views (with which I generally agree) are still difficult (for me) to square with Christ's commands, however well-intentioned the motive. And Mob Rule (Democratic party) is not consistent with our Constitutional Republic.
Labels, labels, labels!!!
"Repeal the Obama era abomination of allowing propaganda to be used on Americans."
is your IQ 25? this is a good emotional plea but it is not based on fact, and i mean your entire post -- you're too online, but also have too strongly the innate cuck feeling that certain things mean things today
"Fight for Freedom of Speech & Equal Rights Under the Law."
This is not a virtue.
Equal rights under the law and free speech are actually against you. Free speech was pushed, almost always, to blaspheme and say religious evils that no one would ever accept.
America didn't force STates to have "Free speech" until the Doctrine of Incorpoation via the 14th amendment in the 1900s.
States in the earlyt 1800s still had religious tests and would not allow an atheist to swear an oath of office
Blapshemy laws still existed in many states, though they were often ignored or repealed as the nation as a whole was purely Christian of some sect until the 1900s anyway
now we see why we needed them
That post is definitely a bit out there, but Obama really did repeal a late 40s prohibition on the government using propaganda against Americans. I can't remember the name of the law that he overruled, but Mike Benz has explained it in a few places now.
You’re off base on a few things, enjoy your day.
I found it very interesting that my younger son's response to Charlie's murder included the thought that he found Charlie to be too moderate.
So much truth in what you wrote today.
I think there is a subset of people so invested in complex conspiracy theories (Charlie's death was an inside job/faked/Charlie himself was never real) they will refuse to see it.
Well akshully, can you blame them? "The View" clip in the piece is fake. You know it's fake because they would never have let anyone talk to them like that, but it looks real (and what the guy said is true). If it had been real, they would have cut his mic before he could have said any of that. And lots of things are fake. The talking dogs in the video from the meme pool this morning for example. The AI can fake anything and make it look real. So, if you've never seen someone in person you could resort to the idea that it is all fake, because so much is. This is not the ridiculous response that perhaps you think it is. Dead internet theory says that sometime around 2016, the majority of internet traffic became non-human. And there's evidence of this, that a lot of discourse online is nothing more than bot farms run by other governments and of course our own.
I think Charlie was too moderate as well, but I am also someone who anticipated all of this for the past twenty years and watched it slowly come to fruition.
I also reject more and more conspiracies as I watch them grow on the right -- it is basically a current disease of "over noticing" because every time the Left pushes the Right to become more "aware", the new converts also bring along some people who can't stop "noticing" everywhere.
that is a different problem to address later, as those people never run everything despite using the rhetoric (They aren't high IQ enough)
but I agree with your younger son.
Charlie was certainly too moderate for me, but he also had a documented rate of success at convincing people about both conservatism and Christianity. I didn't watch his stuff, but I am 100% in favor of people doing that. I don't think it's any kind of a bad thing.
I also generally am in favor of pattern recognition, aka "noticing" in the modern parlance. I'm just not midwit enough to believe that all of the things some people say are patterns actually are.
As a Christian person myself I can say that sadly, these are the same people that 50 years ago would’ve looked down their nose at you for brining a tuna casserole to the church picnic. Self righteous church ladies are self righteous church ladies, just different church.
Right. I recognize Puritanism, perverted by narcissistic individualism, in the political religiosity of the modern left. Therapy, feminism, and Our Team all fuse into a new religion, but the uprightness and zealotry of 1650 are unmistakable.
My husband is the wisest person I know, and he has long said, "If you don't like the religious right, you're *really* not gonna like the irreligious right." Readers here will understand why the assassination has brought this quote to the foreground for me this week.
Or the Right whose religion isn't Christianity.
I had a relative who used to run in Militant Odinist circles in the 90's. I find it funny that the colored/shaved hair, tattoos and septum rings have now become 'left-wing' fashion, along with the racism.
Those guys were known for rushing into concerts, beating up the bands and fighting their way back out through the crowd again.
Not really people I want to encounter.
Correct. We atheists are the authentic hounds from hell.
There is no moderate left, I'm afraid. Teachers, nurses, doctors (adults with jobs!) openly celebrated the murder of a kind, gentle man. The Democratic Party--not just oddball, fringe leftists-- has carefully followed a playbook demonizing half the population as fascists.
Democratic Party delenda est.
Bring a hard rain on their heads, Trump.
i think there is. i know a lot of them. and i am watching them turn.
they had no idea how bad this was because they thought they could get news from the NYT and bloomberg and the economist.
a great many of them are reasonable people of good faith and both able and desirous of living in a high trust society. they just got the minds poisoned with decades of false facts and their perceptions became GIGO.
we both need and want them in our tent. they are good people.
and they keep waking up because once you catch one big lie, you immediately ask "how many more were there?" they think the trans thing is made up, that drag queen story hour is a myth, theat trump wants to kill gay people and ban abortion.
they are not bad people, they just got bad data. and that can be fixed.
they have turned a tolerant eye toward their extreme wing of wack-jobs because they simply could not believe it was real, that teachers were grooming kids and radicalizing them. they got this way because they stopped talking to anyone outside their tribe and so only learned about us from people within their tribes.
this is the moment we can say "hey, you're not actually with them. you never were. you're with us. you always were." and focus on what we agree on.
this lets us build a large and lasting social contract within which we can escape from and suppress this extremist impulse.
I think a lot about this Rasmussen survey:https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated
Democrats were told to hate the unvaccinated, and a huge number did. Democratic politicians and their fellow travelers in the media have stigmatized MAGA to such a degree that even someone as mild-mannered as Charlie Kirk could be dehumanized, his brutal murder celebrated like a homecoming win over Tech. That so many cheering on his death or making excuses for it were adults holding important positions is unnerving. This, like covid, has been another moment of revelation.
I hope that your circle of friends now looking askew at the excesses is indicative of a burgeoning awakening. That's our only hope for a peaceful resolution.
48% still leaves a large number that were not fanatical. The 52% are the ones we need to convince, although, at this stage, many of the fanatics are very busily outing themselves and doing the job for us.
GIGO ??? What the heck, gato. You're using capital letters.
I think gato's account must have been hacked 🤣
Let's hope some of those converts are in media, or own media.
The media is owned by its advertisers. But: several more bridges too far, and even the mainstream media may get a new attitude.
I grew up in the Deep South. I never saw a ‘moderate leftist’ and liberals, as my husband says “are just democRATS turned sideways.”
Absolutely true. Look at, what used to be the capitalism hubs of the world (NYC and London), who went full-on commie
I’m afraid you are right. The people openly celebrating are the tip of an iceberg that is, as far as I can see, the Democratic Party.