It's absolutely hilarious to me that I read all the same stuff on X that you do and we've been having such a great time this week with our new Japanese friends.
Why specifically Japanese? Was that the only translation offered, or they're just the ones who happened across each other's tweets? I've always loved Japanese culture because I love JRPG video games & consume & appreciate lots of it.
As I understand it the algorithm was changed so instead of people's timelines being filled with third-world accounts pretending to be something else, actual Japanese accounts auto-translated into English took their place and everyone is discovering that the Japanese love Americans and American culture and the interwebs iz filling up with cherry blossoms and happiness.
Well, only some Japanese like American ways of doing things. Those types I became friends with when working for a Japanese trading company. The others not so much.
I mean, it's a good message, but it's kinda hard to not take umbrage at people telling me that I'm literally a Nazi for whatever reason, and that I should kill myself so they can shit on my grave. Like, even if I *want* to let the differences go, it takes two to tango.
But who says that to your face? Like, how many people look you in the eye and speak that way to you? I know it can happen, and people lost their filter during the panic years especially, but is it mostly anonymous others? If so, it’s probably the ‘us vs. them’ mentality that is being foisted upon us by our overlords.
Go past a No Kings rally driving a red pickup truck. No bumper stickers, no hat. They will spit on your truck and scream til they are red in the face to match your truck.
Agreed. But it’s madness of crowds. Group stuff. It doesn’t excuse it, but it does help explain it. People forget who they are as individuals because their tribalism kicks in.
Well there are faces to all the insults I hear. It’s not anonymous with asshats like Kimmel on the air and almost every station having news anchors Karen us all to death, and throwing in our faces all the people out there that would be happy to see us dead, and ARE happy when one of ours is assassinated. In my own direct community I’m actually less likely to engage with others even though my nature is very outgoing and a social butterfly. I don’t want my experience marred by their diatribes about Trump or those who support him. So I choose to not engage with others anymore. That’s the sad part of it all.
I stopped watching the insanity of the media. News can be found online from reasonable sources....meaning.....don't listen to someone tell you, read it for yourself. I re-discovered that when I read it, the tones of propaganda are not included and one can spot the lies more easily.
I also try to find transcripts of interviews for the very same reasons.
You no longer need to expose yourself that way and not doing so enables better discernment and objectivity toward the person standing next to you in Walmart who needs a lending hand.
6 years ago this month I turned it all off. From being connected to alternative health and medicine sources, I was led to the truth and it started to pour in. Prayer opened the floodgates then. I was willing to listen and change even though it was hard after being an active democrat. But being out of the liberal cult allowed me to look back in and see what it had become.
Maybe it’s regional or demographic because I can count on one hand the number of in-person diatribes I’ve heard and when it happens I just shrug and say, “politics, amirite?” And that typically shuts it down. Not going to engage with someone who is blowing off steam. I don’t watch the news or Kimmel, so that’s definitely influencing my perspective, I refuse to bear witness to lies or bad comedians. But I am really sorry to hear that you’re holding back and narrowing your social sphere because of the msm. I withdrew during the covid years because the world felt insane and some of that withdrawal is still with me.
I live in a very, very, deep blue city. The “Covid” mentality of social shaming and diatribes never went away, it just pivoted to MAGA. It’s lonely. I long for the day when we can move and live somewhere that I can enjoy other people again.
I found someone today at exercise class totally in my camp. She meets with others. Our age group seems totally TDS here and I’ve been longing to find a human to talk to. I’m sure God put her right beside me. We are not alone.
If you are on the liberty side of things, consider New Hampshire. They're making great strides getting the government off their backs. "Live Free or Die" Trying.
My little brother used to live in an old crumbling house on New Castle Island, he is very snooty, and very angry and liberal. He recently moved to Dover. Is that a blue neighborhood? I would wish he would wake up. He is so mean. We can’t talk with me, and is facebook page is full of quotes from all of those insane lefties with their substack blogs
I wish. I still hold dreams of someday getting to do animation. Real animation, not cg, and yes its still being made. But the artist community (much like Hollywood) seems particularly bound in this violent antiMAGA antiICE groupthink and I'm not sure if wouldn't shortly oust me for voting Trump or for not publicly declaring my allegiance to all things antiTrump. Hell, I dont know if I could stomach working on bland preachy woke propagandist scoldings posturing as creative endeavor.
Exactly. And at some point, the whole "kill em with kindness" approach is really just ceding ground to postmodern totalitarians who simply have no intent to ever put differences aside and break bread as fellow americans. The reason we're seeing a lot of "now conservatives are nasty, too" is a lot of us simply understood the losing strategy.
That's where a politician like Trump comes from... he fights like they fight. Do I wish some polished, sensible moderate was in charge who would hold the ground against the tsunami of radical progressivism? Sure. Does that ever work? No. So you either accept your country is in a cold civil war, and respond accordingly, or pretend it's not, and lose.
That's what my mom doesn't get. She has two positions: Trump/Republicans are evil (except for the ones helping Dems "stop Trump") and both sides are bad. The former is her primary operating system that applies both when Trump/Trump Republicans are bad and when both sides are factually bad. She only shifts to claiming "both sides" when the Democrats are 100% balls to the wall inescapably wrong and bad.
She has been saying "both sides" a lot recently, and has recently taken to using that as evidence that im the one in a cult when I don't take the antiTrump arguments she repeats verbatim from Democrat central as face value truth, and im just believing the Republicans and Trump especially are angels, which i have never even suggested but I have been accused of since 2016 when I didn't believe the Russia narrative as it didn't add up and sons of ths shit was piloted in the primary against Bernie.
I keep saying there are Democrats and there are Establishment Republicans (the Dems long ago purged ths non Establishment wing), both if whom work together for the same donor overlords, then there is a big ugly orange wrench that seems to be fucking up their plans badly enough they tried to blow his head off and are becoming increasingly frantic over it.
Is he perfect? No. Is he polite? No. Is he the suave V-like figure we all secretly long for to save us from our elite autocracy? No.(*) But right now he seems to be ths first thing that has made a single dent in the machine that has been dismantling our lives in a slow but orderly controlled deconstruction or madd the elites flinch or panic, and for some of us old enough to have seen the better world they stole from us, that is more than we ever dreamed possible.
(*) And keep in kind, V was a fucker too and knew it, and that it was necessary and that's why in the book he set up Evie to be his successor, unlike in the trash fire movie that relegated her to "love interest only", so there would be a version of V sane and decent enough to lead humanity in the rebuild. Trump is V in a way. We need to be Evie.
Another excellent post, operating at a level virtually unknown in DC.
There's an organization called Braver Angels that tries to bring 'red' and 'blues' into the same room for rational discussions. I participate. I remember a 'blue' woman telling me that she was surprised when she first met Trump supporters there. She anticipated that they would assault her. She figured out quickly enough that she was wrong, but she never bothered to think about who it was that misinformed her, and why.
She didn’t mean actual assault did she? My sister said after the 2024 election we would be roaming around shooting people. Tammy Duckworth (my good for nothing senator), actually said on X that ICE would be shooting people at the airports. I don’t havr X just saw it randomly and couldn’t get comments.
She absolutely was afraid that she would be physically assaulted by MAGA people. I'm sure it wasn't a well formed thought, but in the back of her head was fear of physical assault.
Aren’t we though. 🙄. I had to have a short conversation with my daughter last night who never saw a drug she didn’t love, even for her child, about the repurposed drugs her dad took along with the standard protocol for bladder cancer. Her first words were “you are not doctors”. He is cancer free since January 2025. I’m the one who found the treatment. Her attachment to the medical system has caused harm.I try to remain silent. She’s on her own. I pray.
I find that I can get along with most people no problem in social settings. And we should absolutely seek to spend time with each other whether we agree politically or not.
One issue is that at some point the politics becomes inescapable because especially for the political left their movements are ultimately revolutionary in nature. They aren’t satisfied with having an enclave and seek to constantly expand territory. You end up getting to a place where we are now in which there is a collapse in confidence in our governing institutions and intense competition for control to try and right the ship.
My wife and I had our son in May of 2020 right in the middle of the Covid craziness. My parents had friends who also were welcoming new grandchildren around that time and the children of their friends were making all sorts of rules around who could be around the baby due to Covid fears up to and including requiring proof of getting the shot once it was available to continue fellowship. The politics was no longer abstract it was personal.
Great post, but it's not equal and opposite though. The left usually refuses to interact at all with anyone who questions their orthodoxies. The right is usually willing to interact with everyone. I see this in my own life all the time.
The constant media drumbeat of negativity makes that difficult to believe at times. A recent Coffee & Covid piece gave numerous examples of fake news about "fractures" in the MAGA coalition, and a looming disaster in the midterms. While many of us here see through the misinformation (especially since Covid), it can be profoundly addictive to a certain segment of the electorate. But you're absolutely right: when you get out and start interacting with folks as just people like you, there is still decency and generosity of spirit to be found. I was sliding into a black hole of depression over our politics many years ago, and intuited that the cure was to stop consuming mainstream news. My mental and physical health improved dramatically. As for Leftist zealots, I simply don't engage with them. Life is way too short.
That is the biggest reason for ex-Democrat progressives like me. They narrowed the definition of "acceptable" to a hair's width on the craziest edge, and attacked everyone and anyone who didn't adjust to fit into that definition, and the more tightly they limited that definition into the lunatic fringe, the less they were willing to even consider speaking to anyone in the "Nazi" camp. I was being called an Nazi and Russian agent long before i ever considered voting Trump. I didn't even like the guy, I just knew a lie and psyop when i saw one and wasn't going to pretend a bombastic carnival barker was Hitler 2.0 based on shoddy and/or nonexistent evidence and histrionic shrieking excuses and threats were unable to force me to step in line.
On the right I increasingly ran into people who I didn't always agree with--because I am after all still progressive--who, even if they very much disagreed with some or all of my views, didn't immediately launch a string of hateful epithets and threats. I think I've only run into one conservative who thought I should be imprisoned for expressing socialist views. He ended up blocking me. That's the first one I coukd reasonably say was close to the antiMAGA left, and even then there were other conservatives who defended me and my right to speak without imprisonment even if they disagreed with my views.
A lot of stuff coming from the right might be due to fatigue. Like my dad who got frustrated dealing with my alzheimers great grandma one day and very lightly slapped her....then flagellated himself with guilt for years. But after years of dealing with someone out of their mind who frequently spits food at you or tries to wipe poo on you, even the most stable adult is likely to lose it for a hot minute.
I mean, I told my dad near the end that I hated him. And it was possibly the last thing he heard md say with any lucudity. But he had made a mess in the middle of the night and after years dealing with him and his mind going, primarily just me and mom with some help from my sister who lives elsewhere. I was dead bone-tired and had to go to work next day and had no energy to clean it but knew I had to or it would dry and calcification and be harder to clean, and I just whimpered that I hate him, and he looked up and asked sadly "you hate me?" Then fell asleep again. I told him later when he was in the hospital before we found a hospice that I didn't hate him but he stared at me so blankly im not sure it registered.
People hit a limit is what I'm saying, even with people they live dearly.
Happy Easter! I have been reading (and enjoying) your substacks since Covid times and am glad that you have kept writing on a broader range of topics. You seem to want good things for our world.
Just returned from SF. Yep. Tenderloin was just like it was in the '90's. Pac heights was very nice. Son just graduated, moved to pac heights and took a wicked good position. And, No lines at all at SFO.... Week before, San Sebastián eating pintxos with a bunch of Russians. drank way too much cider and stupid levels of grilled pulpo. Conversation was excellent and about ai and humanity. Two weeks prior- Paris- lamb tagnie w a bunch of Turks who wanted to talk only about '69-70 Boss Mustangs. iconic muscle.
such fun things in life to discuss. If only we'd seek the commonality and not the differences.
Woot Woot… proud American BBQ loving Gma here… it should be noted that we do draw the line at grilling feline but we are welcoming open door bovine grill masters… konnichiwa! Great writing Bad Cat! 👏👏👏 perfect and oh so needed right now 🫶👍
I was on a 5 day rowing trip in southern France (Canal du Midi) and one of only two Americans. At a dining stop I began conversing with a women on the trip with her family. After suffering my stunted French for a while, she broke into English and stated in a surprised voice, "You're nothing like the Americans we see on TV". She meant it as a compliment, of course. We had an interesting discussion after that. But I basically told her no one is like the people on TV shows or at least no one I know.
> and both sides are doing it. self styled “informed conservatives” talk about san francisco like it’s some tim burton horror of needles and feces and crime with no redeeming graces whatsoever. i was just there in january. it’s lovely. the food is 20 times better than just about any other city in the US. i had a great time.
Gonna have to disagree with you on this one, and I have standing.
San Francisco is, in almost every way, worse than what the conservative commentators say. At least, it was when I moved away, in 2018.
The thing is, and this is a lesson I learned the hard way, visiting San Francisco is extremely different from having to live there. Just trust me on this one.
I will give you the food thing, though. Best food in the world there, and, at least before I left, it was surprisingly cheap compared to everything else. Next time you're there, go to House of Nanking. It's simply the best there is
EDIT: Adding recommendations in a child comment. I have no idea if these places are still in business
BEST PLACES TO GET FOOD AND DRINK IN THE BAY AREA:
SF:
Humphrey Slocombe: Ice cream shop with a unique flavour, my favourite ice cream in the world: Bourbon and Corn Flakes
House of Nanking: the best chinese food in the world
Cafe Prague: Hungarian food. I *think* this place died during covid
El Farolito: The first burrito I ever had. Won second place for best burrito in north america
Senor Sisig: My favourite burrito. Filipino fusion burritos
East Bay:
Blind Tiger: nice little brew pub just north of downtown
Mama's Royal Cafe: best brunch I've ever had
Bowl'd: Best Korean food I've ever had
Philz: Best coffee I've ever had
Mint Leaf: Random Vietnamese place near Berkeley Bowl west. It's not the *best* vietnamese I've ever had, but it's pretty good, and that place is always empty so you never need to wait or make a reservation
Sushi: There's three sushi places on Solano Ave. One of them is the best sushi place I've ever been to, but I never made a note of which one. Checking gmaps, I don't recognize any of the names of sushi restaurants there, so IDK which one it was. But, one of them.
Looking over what i have starred in Gmaps is sad, half of my favourite places are permanently closed now. :(
Cafe Prague was my secret go to. Fantastic food, beer and the waitresses were always Eastern European, smokin’ hot and never there for too long. Always made me wonder if it was a stop on some sort of sex/prostitution/illegal immigration ring or something.
I never noticed that about the staff there, I just really liked their food.
Tlaloc is near Cafe Prague, too, and while there are cheaper, more convenient, and better burritos in the city, Tlaloc is pretty good burritos and also other Mexican food
House of Nanking! Ha! It doesn’t matter what you order, they bring you whatever happens to be sitting it the hot window at that moment. How else you going to churn ‘em and burn ‘em? It’s pretty humorous, and tasty.
In 2014, I worked on a team that was, apart from me, entirely born-in-the-bay-area ethnic chinese, and we were two blocks from HoK. At least once a week, we'd go there, and one of my teammates would order in Mandarin. They'd just bring out a bunch of random food, and we'd go family style and split the bill evenly. It was, by far, the best chinese food I have ever had
Oh yeah, there was also this random hole-in-the-wall bakery/deli place we'd go to get pork buns, and they sold chow mein for $2 a pound.
I'm sure whatever they do to make it be only $2 a pound is both very illegal and very unsafe for me, but I don't care because it's delicious, and it's $2 a pound
"...and honestly, i think “america” goes to the first group that figures out how to gather the middle around something positive and communal and pulls us out of the endless scabbling over “you need to let our jerks take power because the other side are bigger jerks” jerktopian jerktocracy."
Could not agree more!! We need to stop trying to find reasons to hate and mistrust each other and unite in our hatred and mistrust of all the Swamp Creatures in DC (of BOTH parties) who have been engineering most of this conflict in order to deflect from their decades of pure corruption!!
It's absolutely hilarious to me that I read all the same stuff on X that you do and we've been having such a great time this week with our new Japanese friends.
This was a great, cheery piece.
Why specifically Japanese? Was that the only translation offered, or they're just the ones who happened across each other's tweets? I've always loved Japanese culture because I love JRPG video games & consume & appreciate lots of it.
As I understand it the algorithm was changed so instead of people's timelines being filled with third-world accounts pretending to be something else, actual Japanese accounts auto-translated into English took their place and everyone is discovering that the Japanese love Americans and American culture and the interwebs iz filling up with cherry blossoms and happiness.
Watch a Youtube video, sometime, of Japanese people going out to the countryside, RVing and tent camping, SCA.
They are brilliant. If the Japanese like American ways of doing things, the sentiment is warmly returned.
I won't describe it, you'd have to be curious enough to see for yourself. Their camp cooking alone, is worth the time to watch.
Well, only some Japanese like American ways of doing things. Those types I became friends with when working for a Japanese trading company. The others not so much.
I think I saw that going on in another online place I frequent. You tube maybe?
That I wouldn't know. There's only a handful of X accounts I follow but they follow/repost lots of other guys and that's how I find these things out.
I’ve seen the Japanese writing and translation somewhere. 🤔
Yes. On X.
> there is an old adage: if everyone you meet all day is an asshole, the problem is not the world.
Here's a better phrasing: if the whole world smells like shit, check your shoes
Too funny!
I mean, it's a good message, but it's kinda hard to not take umbrage at people telling me that I'm literally a Nazi for whatever reason, and that I should kill myself so they can shit on my grave. Like, even if I *want* to let the differences go, it takes two to tango.
But who says that to your face? Like, how many people look you in the eye and speak that way to you? I know it can happen, and people lost their filter during the panic years especially, but is it mostly anonymous others? If so, it’s probably the ‘us vs. them’ mentality that is being foisted upon us by our overlords.
Go past a No Kings rally driving a red pickup truck. No bumper stickers, no hat. They will spit on your truck and scream til they are red in the face to match your truck.
Agreed. But it’s madness of crowds. Group stuff. It doesn’t excuse it, but it does help explain it. People forget who they are as individuals because their tribalism kicks in.
I bet a USA flag waving would get the same treatment. Sick puppies.
Well there are faces to all the insults I hear. It’s not anonymous with asshats like Kimmel on the air and almost every station having news anchors Karen us all to death, and throwing in our faces all the people out there that would be happy to see us dead, and ARE happy when one of ours is assassinated. In my own direct community I’m actually less likely to engage with others even though my nature is very outgoing and a social butterfly. I don’t want my experience marred by their diatribes about Trump or those who support him. So I choose to not engage with others anymore. That’s the sad part of it all.
I stopped watching the insanity of the media. News can be found online from reasonable sources....meaning.....don't listen to someone tell you, read it for yourself. I re-discovered that when I read it, the tones of propaganda are not included and one can spot the lies more easily.
I also try to find transcripts of interviews for the very same reasons.
You no longer need to expose yourself that way and not doing so enables better discernment and objectivity toward the person standing next to you in Walmart who needs a lending hand.
6 years ago this month I turned it all off. From being connected to alternative health and medicine sources, I was led to the truth and it started to pour in. Prayer opened the floodgates then. I was willing to listen and change even though it was hard after being an active democrat. But being out of the liberal cult allowed me to look back in and see what it had become.
I definitely prefer transcripts!
Maybe it’s regional or demographic because I can count on one hand the number of in-person diatribes I’ve heard and when it happens I just shrug and say, “politics, amirite?” And that typically shuts it down. Not going to engage with someone who is blowing off steam. I don’t watch the news or Kimmel, so that’s definitely influencing my perspective, I refuse to bear witness to lies or bad comedians. But I am really sorry to hear that you’re holding back and narrowing your social sphere because of the msm. I withdrew during the covid years because the world felt insane and some of that withdrawal is still with me.
I live in a very, very, deep blue city. The “Covid” mentality of social shaming and diatribes never went away, it just pivoted to MAGA. It’s lonely. I long for the day when we can move and live somewhere that I can enjoy other people again.
I found someone today at exercise class totally in my camp. She meets with others. Our age group seems totally TDS here and I’ve been longing to find a human to talk to. I’m sure God put her right beside me. We are not alone.
If you are on the liberty side of things, consider New Hampshire. They're making great strides getting the government off their backs. "Live Free or Die" Trying.
My little brother used to live in an old crumbling house on New Castle Island, he is very snooty, and very angry and liberal. He recently moved to Dover. Is that a blue neighborhood? I would wish he would wake up. He is so mean. We can’t talk with me, and is facebook page is full of quotes from all of those insane lefties with their substack blogs
I wish. I still hold dreams of someday getting to do animation. Real animation, not cg, and yes its still being made. But the artist community (much like Hollywood) seems particularly bound in this violent antiMAGA antiICE groupthink and I'm not sure if wouldn't shortly oust me for voting Trump or for not publicly declaring my allegiance to all things antiTrump. Hell, I dont know if I could stomach working on bland preachy woke propagandist scoldings posturing as creative endeavor.
Nobody has ever said that to his face. It’s all internet chatter.
Exactly. And at some point, the whole "kill em with kindness" approach is really just ceding ground to postmodern totalitarians who simply have no intent to ever put differences aside and break bread as fellow americans. The reason we're seeing a lot of "now conservatives are nasty, too" is a lot of us simply understood the losing strategy.
That's where a politician like Trump comes from... he fights like they fight. Do I wish some polished, sensible moderate was in charge who would hold the ground against the tsunami of radical progressivism? Sure. Does that ever work? No. So you either accept your country is in a cold civil war, and respond accordingly, or pretend it's not, and lose.
That's what my mom doesn't get. She has two positions: Trump/Republicans are evil (except for the ones helping Dems "stop Trump") and both sides are bad. The former is her primary operating system that applies both when Trump/Trump Republicans are bad and when both sides are factually bad. She only shifts to claiming "both sides" when the Democrats are 100% balls to the wall inescapably wrong and bad.
She has been saying "both sides" a lot recently, and has recently taken to using that as evidence that im the one in a cult when I don't take the antiTrump arguments she repeats verbatim from Democrat central as face value truth, and im just believing the Republicans and Trump especially are angels, which i have never even suggested but I have been accused of since 2016 when I didn't believe the Russia narrative as it didn't add up and sons of ths shit was piloted in the primary against Bernie.
I keep saying there are Democrats and there are Establishment Republicans (the Dems long ago purged ths non Establishment wing), both if whom work together for the same donor overlords, then there is a big ugly orange wrench that seems to be fucking up their plans badly enough they tried to blow his head off and are becoming increasingly frantic over it.
Is he perfect? No. Is he polite? No. Is he the suave V-like figure we all secretly long for to save us from our elite autocracy? No.(*) But right now he seems to be ths first thing that has made a single dent in the machine that has been dismantling our lives in a slow but orderly controlled deconstruction or madd the elites flinch or panic, and for some of us old enough to have seen the better world they stole from us, that is more than we ever dreamed possible.
(*) And keep in kind, V was a fucker too and knew it, and that it was necessary and that's why in the book he set up Evie to be his successor, unlike in the trash fire movie that relegated her to "love interest only", so there would be a version of V sane and decent enough to lead humanity in the rebuild. Trump is V in a way. We need to be Evie.
Right
Another excellent post, operating at a level virtually unknown in DC.
There's an organization called Braver Angels that tries to bring 'red' and 'blues' into the same room for rational discussions. I participate. I remember a 'blue' woman telling me that she was surprised when she first met Trump supporters there. She anticipated that they would assault her. She figured out quickly enough that she was wrong, but she never bothered to think about who it was that misinformed her, and why.
She didn’t mean actual assault did she? My sister said after the 2024 election we would be roaming around shooting people. Tammy Duckworth (my good for nothing senator), actually said on X that ICE would be shooting people at the airports. I don’t havr X just saw it randomly and couldn’t get comments.
She absolutely was afraid that she would be physically assaulted by MAGA people. I'm sure it wasn't a well formed thought, but in the back of her head was fear of physical assault.
Sad. But like when I have told people I’m unvaxxed. Not a single one has asked WHY.
We're weird, dangerous people!
Aren’t we though. 🙄. I had to have a short conversation with my daughter last night who never saw a drug she didn’t love, even for her child, about the repurposed drugs her dad took along with the standard protocol for bladder cancer. Her first words were “you are not doctors”. He is cancer free since January 2025. I’m the one who found the treatment. Her attachment to the medical system has caused harm.I try to remain silent. She’s on her own. I pray.
I find that I can get along with most people no problem in social settings. And we should absolutely seek to spend time with each other whether we agree politically or not.
One issue is that at some point the politics becomes inescapable because especially for the political left their movements are ultimately revolutionary in nature. They aren’t satisfied with having an enclave and seek to constantly expand territory. You end up getting to a place where we are now in which there is a collapse in confidence in our governing institutions and intense competition for control to try and right the ship.
My wife and I had our son in May of 2020 right in the middle of the Covid craziness. My parents had friends who also were welcoming new grandchildren around that time and the children of their friends were making all sorts of rules around who could be around the baby due to Covid fears up to and including requiring proof of getting the shot once it was available to continue fellowship. The politics was no longer abstract it was personal.
Great post, but it's not equal and opposite though. The left usually refuses to interact at all with anyone who questions their orthodoxies. The right is usually willing to interact with everyone. I see this in my own life all the time.
be grateful for that. it's why they will lose.
The constant media drumbeat of negativity makes that difficult to believe at times. A recent Coffee & Covid piece gave numerous examples of fake news about "fractures" in the MAGA coalition, and a looming disaster in the midterms. While many of us here see through the misinformation (especially since Covid), it can be profoundly addictive to a certain segment of the electorate. But you're absolutely right: when you get out and start interacting with folks as just people like you, there is still decency and generosity of spirit to be found. I was sliding into a black hole of depression over our politics many years ago, and intuited that the cure was to stop consuming mainstream news. My mental and physical health improved dramatically. As for Leftist zealots, I simply don't engage with them. Life is way too short.
I think you're ignoring an opportunity to at least plant seeds of truth in those leftist zealots.
Just ask a simple question and walk away, letting the seed of truth germinate.
That is the biggest reason for ex-Democrat progressives like me. They narrowed the definition of "acceptable" to a hair's width on the craziest edge, and attacked everyone and anyone who didn't adjust to fit into that definition, and the more tightly they limited that definition into the lunatic fringe, the less they were willing to even consider speaking to anyone in the "Nazi" camp. I was being called an Nazi and Russian agent long before i ever considered voting Trump. I didn't even like the guy, I just knew a lie and psyop when i saw one and wasn't going to pretend a bombastic carnival barker was Hitler 2.0 based on shoddy and/or nonexistent evidence and histrionic shrieking excuses and threats were unable to force me to step in line.
On the right I increasingly ran into people who I didn't always agree with--because I am after all still progressive--who, even if they very much disagreed with some or all of my views, didn't immediately launch a string of hateful epithets and threats. I think I've only run into one conservative who thought I should be imprisoned for expressing socialist views. He ended up blocking me. That's the first one I coukd reasonably say was close to the antiMAGA left, and even then there were other conservatives who defended me and my right to speak without imprisonment even if they disagreed with my views.
A lot of stuff coming from the right might be due to fatigue. Like my dad who got frustrated dealing with my alzheimers great grandma one day and very lightly slapped her....then flagellated himself with guilt for years. But after years of dealing with someone out of their mind who frequently spits food at you or tries to wipe poo on you, even the most stable adult is likely to lose it for a hot minute.
I mean, I told my dad near the end that I hated him. And it was possibly the last thing he heard md say with any lucudity. But he had made a mess in the middle of the night and after years dealing with him and his mind going, primarily just me and mom with some help from my sister who lives elsewhere. I was dead bone-tired and had to go to work next day and had no energy to clean it but knew I had to or it would dry and calcification and be harder to clean, and I just whimpered that I hate him, and he looked up and asked sadly "you hate me?" Then fell asleep again. I told him later when he was in the hospital before we found a hospice that I didn't hate him but he stared at me so blankly im not sure it registered.
People hit a limit is what I'm saying, even with people they live dearly.
Gato 🐈⬛
Please STOP 🛑 harassing the Gays of Whoremuz.
Happy Easter! I have been reading (and enjoying) your substacks since Covid times and am glad that you have kept writing on a broader range of topics. You seem to want good things for our world.
Just returned from SF. Yep. Tenderloin was just like it was in the '90's. Pac heights was very nice. Son just graduated, moved to pac heights and took a wicked good position. And, No lines at all at SFO.... Week before, San Sebastián eating pintxos with a bunch of Russians. drank way too much cider and stupid levels of grilled pulpo. Conversation was excellent and about ai and humanity. Two weeks prior- Paris- lamb tagnie w a bunch of Turks who wanted to talk only about '69-70 Boss Mustangs. iconic muscle.
such fun things in life to discuss. If only we'd seek the commonality and not the differences.
Re:
there is an old adage: if everyone you meet all day is an asshole, the problem is not the world.
Right. You probably live in a blue neighborhood...
Woot Woot… proud American BBQ loving Gma here… it should be noted that we do draw the line at grilling feline but we are welcoming open door bovine grill masters… konnichiwa! Great writing Bad Cat! 👏👏👏 perfect and oh so needed right now 🫶👍
The video was hilarious.
But it goes to show that a foreigner's view of us is based on nonsense TV. But we all do like our burgers.
no it doesn't, it shows creativity and a sense of humor. Which "cultural appropriation" has outlawed. Am I right? says Blue Cowboy.
When I arrived in Morocco as a tourist in the 1970s, my boyfriend and I were surrounded by kids happily jumping around and shouting "Kojak" at us.
I was on a 5 day rowing trip in southern France (Canal du Midi) and one of only two Americans. At a dining stop I began conversing with a women on the trip with her family. After suffering my stunted French for a while, she broke into English and stated in a surprised voice, "You're nothing like the Americans we see on TV". She meant it as a compliment, of course. We had an interesting discussion after that. But I basically told her no one is like the people on TV shows or at least no one I know.
Excellent post!
I saw the Hormuz straight/gay video earlier & haven't stopped SMH.
The Japanese thing is uplifting!
All Straits Matter
It’s systemic microaggressions
George agrees
> and both sides are doing it. self styled “informed conservatives” talk about san francisco like it’s some tim burton horror of needles and feces and crime with no redeeming graces whatsoever. i was just there in january. it’s lovely. the food is 20 times better than just about any other city in the US. i had a great time.
Gonna have to disagree with you on this one, and I have standing.
San Francisco is, in almost every way, worse than what the conservative commentators say. At least, it was when I moved away, in 2018.
The thing is, and this is a lesson I learned the hard way, visiting San Francisco is extremely different from having to live there. Just trust me on this one.
I will give you the food thing, though. Best food in the world there, and, at least before I left, it was surprisingly cheap compared to everything else. Next time you're there, go to House of Nanking. It's simply the best there is
EDIT: Adding recommendations in a child comment. I have no idea if these places are still in business
BEST PLACES TO GET FOOD AND DRINK IN THE BAY AREA:
SF:
Humphrey Slocombe: Ice cream shop with a unique flavour, my favourite ice cream in the world: Bourbon and Corn Flakes
House of Nanking: the best chinese food in the world
Cafe Prague: Hungarian food. I *think* this place died during covid
El Farolito: The first burrito I ever had. Won second place for best burrito in north america
Senor Sisig: My favourite burrito. Filipino fusion burritos
East Bay:
Blind Tiger: nice little brew pub just north of downtown
Mama's Royal Cafe: best brunch I've ever had
Bowl'd: Best Korean food I've ever had
Philz: Best coffee I've ever had
Mint Leaf: Random Vietnamese place near Berkeley Bowl west. It's not the *best* vietnamese I've ever had, but it's pretty good, and that place is always empty so you never need to wait or make a reservation
Sushi: There's three sushi places on Solano Ave. One of them is the best sushi place I've ever been to, but I never made a note of which one. Checking gmaps, I don't recognize any of the names of sushi restaurants there, so IDK which one it was. But, one of them.
Looking over what i have starred in Gmaps is sad, half of my favourite places are permanently closed now. :(
Cafe Prague was my secret go to. Fantastic food, beer and the waitresses were always Eastern European, smokin’ hot and never there for too long. Always made me wonder if it was a stop on some sort of sex/prostitution/illegal immigration ring or something.
I never noticed that about the staff there, I just really liked their food.
Tlaloc is near Cafe Prague, too, and while there are cheaper, more convenient, and better burritos in the city, Tlaloc is pretty good burritos and also other Mexican food
If you like sweet potatoes.
But yes, it's good.
House of Nanking! Ha! It doesn’t matter what you order, they bring you whatever happens to be sitting it the hot window at that moment. How else you going to churn ‘em and burn ‘em? It’s pretty humorous, and tasty.
In 2014, I worked on a team that was, apart from me, entirely born-in-the-bay-area ethnic chinese, and we were two blocks from HoK. At least once a week, we'd go there, and one of my teammates would order in Mandarin. They'd just bring out a bunch of random food, and we'd go family style and split the bill evenly. It was, by far, the best chinese food I have ever had
I *really* like their eggplant dish.
Oh yeah, there was also this random hole-in-the-wall bakery/deli place we'd go to get pork buns, and they sold chow mein for $2 a pound.
I'm sure whatever they do to make it be only $2 a pound is both very illegal and very unsafe for me, but I don't care because it's delicious, and it's $2 a pound
Were some people actually offended by the "ni howdy" video? Out of morbid curiosity, I want to read or watch their reactions to it.
"...and honestly, i think “america” goes to the first group that figures out how to gather the middle around something positive and communal and pulls us out of the endless scabbling over “you need to let our jerks take power because the other side are bigger jerks” jerktopian jerktocracy."
Could not agree more!! We need to stop trying to find reasons to hate and mistrust each other and unite in our hatred and mistrust of all the Swamp Creatures in DC (of BOTH parties) who have been engineering most of this conflict in order to deflect from their decades of pure corruption!!