10
0

Another Democrat Reaches Enlightenment


 invite response                
2021 Dec 9, 2:03pm   41,638 views  267 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (60)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-turn-liel-leibovitz?source=patrick.net


The Turn

When I saw the left give up everything I believe in, I changed politically. You can, too.

For many years—most of my politically cognizant life, in fact—I felt secure in my politics. Truth and justice, I believed, leaned leftward. If you were some version of a decent human being, you cared about those less fortunate than you, which meant that you supported a whole host of measures designed to even the playing field a little. Sometimes, these measures had unintended consequences (see under: Stalin, Josef), but that wasn’t reason enough to despair of the long march to equality. Besides, there was hardly an alternative: On the other end of the political transom lurked despicable creeps, right-wing orcs who either cared for nothing but their own petty financial interests or, worse, pined for benighted isms that preached prejudice and hate. We were on the right side of history. We were the people. We were the ones giving peace a chance. And, no matter the present, we were always the future.

This belief carried me through high school, and a brief stint in a socialist youth movement. It accelerated me in college, sending me anywhere from joint marches with Palestinians to a two-week hunger strike in Jerusalem trying (and failing) to lower tuition for underprivileged students. It pulled me to New York, to Columbia University, to more left-wing politics and activism and raging against Republicans whose agenda, especially in the 2000s, seemed like nothing more than greed and war.

And it wasn’t just an ideology, some abstract set of convictions that were accessible only through cracking open dusty old books. It was the animating spirit of life itself: The dinner parties I attended on the Upper West Side required dismissive comments on President Bush just as much as they did a bit of wine to make the evening bright, and there was no faster or surer way to signal to a new acquaintance that you were a kindred spirit than praising the latest Times editorial. It wasn’t performative, exactly. At least, it felt real enough, the reverent rites of a good group of people protecting itself against the bad guys.

I embraced my people, and my people embraced me. They gave me everything I had always imagined I wanted: a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university; a professorship at NYU, complete with a roomy office overlooking Washington Square Park; book deals; columns in smart little publications; invitations to the sort of soirees where you could find yourself seated next to Salman Rushdie or Susan Sontag or any number of the men and women you grew up reading and admiring. The list goes on. Life was good. I was grateful.

And then came The Turn. If you’ve lived through it yourself, you know that The Turn doesn’t happen overnight, that it isn’t easily distilled into one dramatic breakdown moment, that it happens hazily and over time—first a twitch, then a few more, stretching into a gnawing discomfort and then, eventually, a sense of panic.

You may be among the increasing numbers of people going through The Turn right now. Having lived through the turmoil of the last half decade—through the years of MAGA and antifa and rampant identity politics and, most dramatically, the global turmoil caused by COVID-19—more and more of us feel absolutely and irreparably politically homeless. Instinctively, we looked to the Democratic Party, the only home we and our parents and their parents before them had ever known or seriously considered. But what we saw there—and in the newspapers we used to read, and in the schools whose admission letters once made us so proud—was terrifying. However we tried to explain what was happening on “the left,” it was hard to convince ourselves that it was right, or that it was something we still truly believed in. That is what The Turn is about.

You might be living through The Turn if you ever found yourself feeling like free speech should stay free even if it offended some group or individual but now can’t admit it at dinner with friends because you are afraid of being thought a bigot. You are living through The Turn if you have questions about public health policies—including the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and most vulnerable in our society—but can’t ask them out loud because you know you’ll be labeled an anti-vaxxer. You are living through The Turn if you think that burning down towns and looting stores isn’t the best way to promote social justice, but feel you can’t say so because you know you’ll be called a white supremacist. You are living through The Turn if you seethed watching a terrorist organization attack the world’s only Jewish state, but seethed silently because your colleagues were all on Twitter and Facebook sharing celebrity memes about ending Israeli apartheid while having little interest in American kids dying on the streets because of failed policies. If you’ve felt yourself unable to speak your mind, if you have a queasy feeling that your friends might disown you if you shared your most intimately held concerns, if you are feeling a bit breathless and a bit hopeless and entirely unsure what on earth is going on, I am sorry to inform you that The Turn is upon you.

The Turn hit me just a beat before it did you, so I know just how awful it feels. It’s been years now, but I still remember the time a dear friend and mentor took me to lunch and warned me, sternly and without any of the warmth you’d extend to someone you truly loved, to watch what I said about Israel. I still remember how confusing and painful it felt to know that my beliefs—beliefs, mind you, that, until very recently, were so obvious and banal and widely held on the left that they were hardly considered beliefs at all—now labeled me an outcast. The Turn brings with it the sort of pain most of us don’t feel as adults; you’d have to go all the way back to junior high, maybe, to recall a stabbing sensation quite as deep and confounding as watching your friends all turn on you and decide that you’re not worthy of their affection any more. It’s the kind of primal rejection that is devastating precisely because it forces you to rethink everything, not only your convictions about the world but also your idea of yourself, your values, and your priorities. We all want to be embraced. We all want the men and women we consider most swell to approve of us and confirm that we, too, are good and great. We all want the love and the laurels; The Turn takes both away.

But, having been there before, I have one important thing to tell you: If the left is going to make it “right wing” to simply be decent, then it’s OK to be right.

Why? Because, after 225 long and fruitful years of this terminology, “right” and “left” are now empty categories, meaning little more than “the blue team” and “the green team” in your summer camp’s color war. You don’t get to be “against the rich” if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not “a supporter of free speech” if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you. You are not “for the people” if you pit most of them against each other based on the color of their skin, or force them out of their jobs because of personal choices related to their bodies. You are not “serious about economic inequality” when you happily order from Amazon without caring much for the devastating impact your purchases have on the small businesses that increasingly are either subjugated by Jeff Bezos’ behemoth or crushed by it altogether. You are not “for science” if you refuse to consider hypotheses that don’t conform to your political convictions and then try to ban critical thought and inquiry from the internet. You are not an “anti-racist” if you label—and sort!—people by race. You are not “against conformism” when you scare people out of voicing dissenting opinions.

When “the left” becomes the party of wealthy elites and state security agencies who preach racial division, state censorship, contempt for ordinary citizens and for the U.S. Constitution, and telling people what to do and think at every turn, then that’s the side you are on, if you are “on the left”—those are the policies and beliefs you stand for and have to defend. It doesn’t matter what good people “on the left” believed and did 60 or 70 years ago. Those people are dead now, mostly. They don’t define “the left” anymore than Abraham Lincoln defines the modern-day Republican Party or Jimi Hendrix defines Nickelback.

So look at the list of things supported by the left and ask yourself: Is that me? If the answer is yes, great. You’ve found a home. If the answer is no, don’t let yourself be defined by an empty word. Get out. And once you’re out, don’t let anyone else define you, either. Not being a left-wing racist or police state fan doesn’t make you a white supremacist or a Trump worshipper, either. Only small children, machines, and religious fanatics think in binaries.

Which isn’t to diminish the anger, hurt, and confusion you’re feeling just now. But it’s worth understanding that your story has a happy ending. The freedom you feel on the other side is so real it’s physical, like emerging from a long stretch underwater and taking that first deep breath in the cool afternoon air. None of it makes the lost friends or the lost career opportunities any less painful; but there’s no more potent source of renewable energy than liberty, and your capacity to reinvent—yourself, your group, your life—is greater than you realize.

So welcome to the right side, friend, and join us in laughing at all the idiotic name-calling that is applied, with increasing hysteria, to try and stop more and more normal Americans from joining our ranks. Fascists? Conspiracy theorists? Anti-science racist TERFs? Whatever. We have a better word to describe ourselves: free.


« First        Comments 119 - 158 of 267       Last »     Search these comments

119   Patrick   2023 Mar 9, 4:02pm  

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-conservatives-i-am-sorry


Dear Conservatives, I Apologize
My "Team" was Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda

There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere.

It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without every acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways. ...

The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson [https://www.axios.com/2023/03/08/mccarthy-defends-jan-6-footage-tucker-carlson-fox-news].

While “fact-checkers” state that it is “misinformation” to claim that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on that day [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/27/fact-check-nancy-pelosi-isnt-in-charge-capitol-police/8082088002/], the fact is that the USCP is under the oversight of Congress, according to — the United States Capitol Police: [https://www.uscp.gov/the-department/oversight]. ...

There is no way to unsee Officer Brian Sicknick, claimed by some Democrats in leadership and by most of the legacy media to have been killed by rioters at the Capitol that day, alive in at least one section of the newly released video. The USCP medical examiner states that this Officer died of “natural causes,” but also that he died “in the line of duty.” Whatever the truth of this confusing conclusion, and with all respect for and condolences to Officer Sicknick’s family, the circumstances of his death do matter to the public, as without his death having been caused by the events of Jan 6, the breach of the capitol, serious though it was, cannot be described as a “deadly insurrection.” [https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes] Sadly, though the contrary was what was reported, Officer Sicknick died two days after Jan 6, from suffering two strokes. https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-after-suffering-two-strokes-day-after-jan-6-report/ ...

And remember, by law that footage belongs to us — it is a public record, and all public records literally belong to the American people. “In a democracy, records belong to the people,” explains the National Archives. [https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html] ...

I was oddly unsurprised to see the “Q-Anon Shaman” being ushered through the hallways by Capitol Police; he was ready for the cameras in full makeup, horned fur hat, his tattooed chest bare (on a freezing day), and adorned in other highly cinematic regalia. I don’t know what Mr Chansley thought he was doing there that day, but so many subsequent legacy media images of the event put him so dramatically front and center — and the barbaric nature of his appearance was so illustrative of exactly the message that Democrats in leadership wished to send about the event — that I am not surprised to see that his path to the center of events was not blocked but was apparently facilitated by Capitol Police.


She's not quite there though. My response as a comment on that Substack post:


I'm glad you're trying, but you're still spinning things for the benefit of people who deeply hate half of the country. You talk about "the violence of Jan 6" but fail to mention the only real violence that occurred: the murder of unarmed veteran Ashley Babbitt by a Capitol Police Officer. Nor do you mention that all of the people let into the Capitol that day (and they were deliberately let in) were unarmed. Please correct those omissions and you'll have more credibility.
120   Patrick   2023 Mar 25, 11:11pm  

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/protest-porn


A few days after the November 2016 elections, I sat down to write out my feelings, which consisted mainly of fear and loathing. The president-elect, I intoned, was a dangerous lunatic, one likely to recall the ghosts of Fuehrers past. His election meant the death of America, of democracy itself, and maybe even scores of Americans. “Assume the worst is imminent,” I advised. Celebrities I’d admired my entire life praised the piece on Twitter. NPR came calling. Seven years later, my cri de coeur remains one of Tablet’s most widely read articles.

As a piece of writing, it was moving, forceful, and … entirely wrong.

You can find much to dislike about Trump—his policies, his personality, and an assortment of other failings—and, over the next four years, I did just that, often and with gusto. But my piece remains an embarrassment, more hysterical ululation than an attempt at the kind of useful or correct analysis that readers deserve. Reading it today, I realize that, for a brief moment there, I lost my goddamned mind. ...
121   Patrick   2023 Mar 25, 11:17pm  

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/democrats-have-nothing-left-but-trump#details


Why did every conversation, every late-night joke, almost every Tweet, every “good liberal’s” Facebook feed, every speech, every essay, and every headline for four straight years from 2016 to 2020 center on Trump?

Because the truth is, it was never really about Trump. It was about us. What we were before Trump, what we did while Trump was in office, and what we’re doing now. Sooner or later, the clock is going to run out on this madness. Democrats can’t live with or without Trump.

I always knew that sooner or later the mass hysteria was going to evaporate because it always does. Although I left the Democratic Party before the election, I still voted for Biden. Even as I did so, I knew that there was something wrong with the Left, and that it was much more dangerous for that power to capture our government than Trump could ever be.

It wasn’t something I could face just yet, and certainly not something I could say out loud but I thought it. My gut told me I wasn’t wrong. As more of us come out of the haze that was the last seven years of complete and total insanity, we will try to make sense of what we just lived through.
122   Patrick   2023 Apr 8, 11:33pm  

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/bidens-america-a-society-that-has#details


I believed the lie that Trump brought the chaos and that if Biden won, things would calm down. But now we know it wasn’t Trump at all. It was them.

It has to be one long emergency because if it isn’t, and the ball finally stops spinning, then they have to face themselves, and they will have to hang their heads in shame for what they’ve done.

That’s why Trump is a necessary component of their definition of themselves. Without that imminent threat, they can’t keep pushing their ideology on the rest of us to “fix” this broken country. They can say don’t look at us as long as he's a threat. Look at him.

Trump supporters might have chanted “lock her up” at rallies, and that alone was meant to be fascism. Now, the Biden administration actually does it, locking up protesters for years by now, many of them thrown into solitary confinement and languishing in jail with no charges brought. They do this with impunity because no one in the mainstream legacy media gives a damn. Throw them away like human garbage. ...

His win shattered every myth about the Left’s power, including the idea that we were so awesome everyone wants to be us, right? Wrong. A slap in the face on that large of a scale meant that suddenly the dominant society that drove much of this country had their notions of reality shattered. There was no preparing for it. ...

The Democrats and the Left want to see Trump go to jail, even if it’s a weak case. They want what they’ve been promised and are perfectly happy to corrupt the justice system to give them the relief they so desire.
123   Patrick   2023 Apr 20, 1:35pm  

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/no-elon-musk-did-not-ruin-twitter#details


The Democrats seem to only want power now. They’ve sacrificed everything they used to value, from objecting to dark money and Citizens United, to aligning themselves with the Deep State, defending the FBI and the CIA. They’re certainly not the Democratic Party I grew up supporting. ...

The Left colonized the internet first, and especially the social media empires. Twitter was co-opted by Barack Obama’s campaign back in 2008 as a revolutionary way to mobilize young people. From then on, the Democrats, or left-leaning, college-educated eggheads, dominated Twitter.

Trump was the first major threat to that power as Trump used Twitter in a way no other Republican or even any politician had. He used it to go over the heads of the media and get his message to the people directly. The more he tweeted, the bigger his follower count grew.

Trump was the existential crisis to the Left not because of anything he did but because of what he said. That he was overtly offensive at a time of extreme word policing was his superpower, and the thing about him that sent much of the Left cascading into waves of hysteria for the four years he was in power.

But that was always what Trump represented. He was the guy who shocked people with what he said because it was brutally honest. That was true in the 80s and true on his show. Anyone who was a fan of The Apprentice often took what Trump said with a grain of salt. But the eggheads on Twitter, the intellectuals, weren’t watching The Apprentice so they took what he said literally.
124   Patrick   2023 Apr 23, 8:53pm  

https://palexander.substack.com/p/did-the-fraud-pandemic-give-us-one


‘A greater share of young adults say they believe in a higher power or God.

About one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds say they believe—more than doubt—the existence of a higher power, up from about one-quarter in 2021, according to a recent survey of young adults. The findings, based on December polling, are part of an annual report on the state of religion and youth from the Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit.

Young adults, theologians and church leaders attribute the increase in part to the need for people to believe in something beyond themselves after three years of loss.’


I think @AmericanKulack predicted this at one point.
125   richwicks   2023 Apr 23, 9:03pm  

Patrick says

https://palexander.substack.com/p/did-the-fraud-pandemic-give-us-one



‘A greater share of young adults say they believe in a higher power or God.

About one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds say they believe—more than doubt—the existence of a higher power, up from about one-quarter in 2021, according to a recent survey of young adults. The findings, based on December polling, are part of an annual report on the state of religion and youth from the Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit.

Young adults, theologians and church leaders attribute the increase in part to the need for people to believe in something beyond themselves after three years of loss.’


I think AmericanKulack predicted this at one point.


I predicted this, although I cannot prove it. During times of strife, people tend to become more religious. I think though that organized religion has failed, and is as corrupt as any other institution. I think the result will be individual development of religious belief.

The so-called powers that be have been using centralized institutions to misinform and control the population, which results in the population no longer trusted centralized institutions. Who can say they trust anything in the "mainstream news", or believes any institution in government? Got any faith in any intelligence agencies? How about our judicial system? The last one to fall will be any faith in the military, because so many people were a part of that.

This will lead to the breakup of our society. With no commonality, you don't have a society.
127   HeadSet   2023 May 13, 9:08pm  

He is correct. How one reacted to the Covid fraud shows who would have betrayed neighbors to the Gestapo, NKVD, and Stasi.
129   AmericanKulak   2023 May 14, 10:32am  

Patrick says

I think AmericanKulack predicted this at one point.

It is and I did, because materialism alone is unfulfilling.

It doesn't necessarily mean religious belief, it can also be in Astrology and Crystal Crap, which is skyrocketing among antidepressant taking childless women.
131   Patrick   2023 Jul 29, 12:33pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/oscar-winning-hollywood-mogul-admits-made-mistake-voting-biden/


Oscar-Winning Hollywood Mogul Admits He ‘Made a Mistake’ Voting for Biden

Hollywood movie mogul Oliver Stone has expressed his deep regret in voting for Democrat President Joe Biden, admitting that he “made a mistake.”

The Oscar-winning film director, producer, and screenwriter made the admission while criticizing the Biden administration’s policies.
134   Patrick   2023 Aug 2, 1:03pm  

https://themindcollection.com/st-george-in-retirement-syndrome/

Many who fight injustice come to define themselves by their fight against injustice, so that as they defeat the injustice, they must invent new injustices to fight against simply to retain a sense of purpose in life. (Looking at you, progressives.)
137   Patrick   2023 Sep 6, 7:19pm  

https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/megyn-kelly-publicly-says-she-regrets?r=6gdz


Megyn Kelly Publicly Says She REGRETS Taking the COVID Vaccine, Suspects It Caused New Medical Issue

Megyn Kelly joins Dan Bongino, becoming one of the few high-profile personalities to express vaccine regret publicly.

“I regret getting the vaccine even though I’m a 52-year-old woman because I don’t think I needed it. I think I would have been fine. I had got COVID many times, and it was well past when the vaccine was doing what it was supposed to be doing.

And then, for the first time, I tested positive for an autoimmune issue at my annual physical. And I went to the best rheumatologist in New York, and I asked her, do you think this could have to do with the fact that I got the damn booster and then got COVID within three weeks? And she said yes. Yes. I wasn’t the only one she’d seen that with.”

So, Megyn Kelly has a new autoimmune issue, and she suspects it is highly likely that the vaccine caused it.

Kelly also revealed last year that her sister died suddenly and unexpectedly.

“I got to tell you that something really sad happened in my family over the weekend,” announced Kelly on October 24, 2022. “My sister died. She was 58. Her name was Suzanne Crossley. And she died suddenly on Friday of a heart attack.”


138   Patrick   2023 Sep 6, 8:16pm  

https://4columns.substack.com/p/quit-being-a-democrat-and-try-to


I knew that rural areas like most of West Virginia had been decimated by the loss of manufacturing jobs, the decline of the coal industry, and the resulting dissolution of families. I was aware that these communities were plagued by suicides and opioid-related deaths. I knew that Wal-Mart had crushed the small businesses that once occupied storefronts in many of the towns I drove through. But it took me a while to grasp the love for Trump.

When I returned home, however, I started to notice how nasty Democrats were when the subject of Trump and his supporters came up. I watched as Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and countless other left-wing celebrities casually trashed people from places like West Virginia. It became clear to me that most liberals viewed Trump supporters as subhuman, long before January 6, 2021. And I realized I had done the same thing for many years, making jokes about rednecks and so forth. I kept thinking to myself, is hating Trump supporters really any different than racism itself?

The Women’s March irked me. Women were pre-emptively claiming in the most performative and emotional way that THEY WERE ALREADY VICTIMS of Donald Trump the day after he had taken office. I found this “women-first” approach alienating and realized it was just another way that leftist women demand a kind of cultural female supremacy that values their lives over men’s, over babies in the womb, and over boys who might be interested in STEM if they didn’t hate modern American schools. ...

After decades of believing all of these absurd, incoherent left-wing aphorisms, it finally occurred to me: BEING A LEFTIST IS PRETTY MUCH CHOOSING TO BE MISERABLE. ...

When I look back at how I gradually abandoned the left, I can think of a few particular moments that drove me away:

Being subjected to diversity training shortly after 9/11.

Hearing how racist America STILL was after the election of Barack Obama.

Observing for years how any opposition to Obama was presented as evidence of racism.

Seeing Title IX used to deny due process to men on college campuses.

Watching Obama try to force every public school in America to change their bathroom policies for a tiny minority.

Reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.

Driving through West Virginia in January 2017.

Listening to Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James complain about how racist America is for years.

Watching the Democrats try to destroy Brett Kavanaugh based on the flimsiest, most absurd, most conveniently difficult-to-refute accusations one could imagine.

The cumulative effect of these events made me conclude that the Democratic Party, the modern left, people who vote for Democrats, liberals, leftists, whatever you want to call them, are largely animated by rejecting truth and distorting reality. They are determined to see a good guy and a bad guy in every situation, with nothing in between. And I realized the only path forward for me and likely America was to restore the simple wisdom of putting God, then family, then country above all else. Without these foundational values, misery is almost assured.
139   Patrick   2023 Sep 8, 1:06pm  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/mandate-freedom-friday-september?r=6gdz


Let’s begin with a local-interest story that nicely frames the main action, a shocking story about the radical red-pilling of a sold-out woke democrat party official. The events were accurately summarized by yesterday’s New York Post headline, “Anti-cop Minnesota Democratic party official left bloodied in violent carjacking — now calls for tougher crime laws.”

Oh, the irony.

Meet Shivanthi Sathanandan, the Second Vice Chairwoman for the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, who once swore to “dismantle” Minneapolis’ Police Department. Here is the Chairwoman, both before and after she crashed into reality going about 90 m.p.h.:




Chairwoman Shivanthi’s June, 2020 Facebook post will give you an idea of her previous point of view. She didn’t just want to “dismantle” the police department. She wanted to dismantle the police department in ALL CAPS, with clapping between each word:




The date of Shivanthi’s post, June 5th, 2020, was a few days after George Floyd died on May 25th, 2020. Along with others, over the next three years Chairwoman Shivanthi would help defenestrate the Minneapolis police department.

Minneapolis, as you may recall, was ground zero for the George Floyd disaster. It’s been over three years since George Floyd’s accidental death. A New York Times article published this June reported on Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station, which was looted and burned down during the mostly-peaceful protests over felonious Floyd’s death. The Third Precinct was never rebuilt. Today, it remains a silent monument to mob rule, an abandoned, boarded-up shell, decorated with graffiti and framed with barbed wire fence.




As of this June, the Minneapolis Police Department had only 585 officers, down from 912 in 2019. As police ranks have thinned out by almost half, violent crime has soared, shocking only liberals (and people who live in Portland, but I repeat myself).

Gang violence, once only a speck of a blip on Minneapolis’ radar, in under three years has become such a rampant and destructive problem that federal prosecutors charged 45 people with being gang members in a pair of racketeering indictments in May this year — a historic first in the city.

But back to Chairwoman Shivanthi. On Tuesday, she endured what sounds like a very painful ordeal. She got violently carjacked by a gang of four masked hoodlums. In her own driveway. At home. In broad daylight. With her kids right beside her (a 4-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son).

On Wednesday, the Chairwoman uploaded a distraught, emotional post to her Facebook page. Here’s how she described what happened:

“Yesterday my children and I were violently car jacked in the driveway of our home in Minneapolis. Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me. All in broad daylight. Look at my face in the picture. This is the face of a mother who just had the s* beaten out of her. A mother whose only thought was ‘let me run far enough so that my kids have a chance to get away.'”

She was beaten pretty badly. Shivanthi said she had a broken leg, deep lacerations on her head, and cuts and bruises all over her body. They stole her car and abandoned it after a joyride.

In other words, the barbaric thugs didn’t even do it for the money. They just did it for fun.

Shivanthi is understandably upset. And the attacks seems to caused a kind of mental sea-change in her overall thinking about the value of local law enforcement. Here’s how the second half of her post continued:

I have rage. These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot erase. With no hesitation and no remorse.

I'm now part of the statistics. I wasn't silent when I fought these men to save my life and my babies, and I won't be silent now. We need to get illegal guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM. PERIOD.

Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.

And so we arrive at the crux. Yes, by all means, let us hold them accountable. Hold them in custody and prosecute them. But, Shivanthi … who will do the holding and the prosecuting? Here’s a hint:




The police will hold them accountable and prosecute them The police.

Say it with me.

Shivanthi told local news she was “not ready” to be interviewed about her terrifying, world-shattering experience. It’s too bad that it took something like this to educate the Farmer-Labor Democrat about the value of a local police department.

We pray the lesson will stick and will not have been in vain.
141   Patrick   2023 Sep 8, 3:42pm  

A lot of people at https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/mandate-freedom-friday-september/comments are pointing out that something about this has to be fake:




She didn't smear the blood? She was taking a selfie with a broken leg?
143   Patrick   2023 Sep 17, 11:06am  

https://patriots.win/p/17r9RsDENL/i-redpilled-6-people-with-1-conv/


Three coworkers and two clients heard me talking to a client. I used to just shrug but I decided to speak my mind in this case.

Client asked me what I think of President Trump's mug shot.

I said 'he'll get more votes now.'

It took the guy awhile to realize I am on Trump's side. He said something like he doesn't know why people would vote for Trump. I said people are tired of being told what they can do.

And so he said that I don't look like a Trump supporter

I asked him what a Trump supporter looks like.

He said they have horns. I said that Trump supporters are against the endless wars. He said really? I said Trump was the first President in decades to not send us to wars.

I said Trump has done the most for the working class. And he asked what. I said Trump had record low unemployment numbers and record low inflation numbers and was trying to get manufacturing jobs back and better trade deals. And again I talked about how the working class is tired of sending their kids to die in endless wars.

And I talked about the democrats going along with Bush's war cause they all got rich off of it.

He tried to talk about Trump supporters overturning the election. He tried about 3-4 times to stay on that but I kept refuting it.

He first tried to say that Trump supporters were trying to get the election overturned. I said that is not what they were trying to do. I said they were asking questions that no one was answering. This really seemed to stick with him because he dropped it quick and went on to:

Trump supporters had an insurrection against the capitol and killed people while doing it. (Notice how he had to change his claim and make it a bigger claim then when he started). I said that nobody died. I said the capitol police officer died of a heart attack the next day and the New York Times corrected the story but they buried it in the back in small print that nobody reads. He was surprised at this and he said "I'll give you that cause I don't know much about that."

And he said Trump supporters broke into the capital. I said he isn't seeing all the video footage. I said they were let in -- the gates were opened for them. And I said he is only seeing what the news is showing him.

And then he said that Trump didn't believe in Democracy.

I said we aren't a Democracy. He said we are.

I said Greece was a Democracy. We are a Republic.

And he dropped that.

I asked him where he gets his news. He said the New York Times.

I said they aren't a valid news source.

haha.

I can't believe I said that. I mean, it is true, but I'm not used to saying that a major newspaper that has "authority" has actually no authority at all.

He asked if I get my news from Fox News.

I said Fox News is not a valid news source either - that is mainstream media and they are paid by the very top who have all the money and power that want us always in a war because they get rich off of war. I said a Senator doesn't start out with any money and they get into office and suddenly they have millions of dollars. Where do they get that. I said we don't pay them millions to be a Senator. I said they are getting paid by the very rich to keep us in wars.

And he did agree that there is a power structure there.

So then he said he won't bug me more about it and he was on his way out.

And I made sure to wish him a very good day because I want him to know that us Trump supporters are very nice people.

And I also said that everyone gets to decide for themselves and how hard it is also to get accurate information to be able to decide.
146   AD   2023 Sep 23, 3:16pm  

Patrick says

Dallas mayor announces he's becoming Republican because "Democratic policies have exacerbated crime and homelessness”


I'm no more than 10% surprised as he has always been about low taxes, pro business and support the police

He campaigned on trying to make Dallas a very competitive city to attract new businesses
147   Patrick   2023 Sep 23, 3:26pm  

TBH I don't remember ever hearing about him before.
149   Patrick   2023 Sep 25, 9:30am  

I just read-read the original post and again think it is really excellent.

I think the left, at this point, exists solely as a primal reflex, an "enemy" nerve, that makes everything about the other side seem repulsive.

One key to enlightenment is to trigger the same feelings about the left that people on the right have every day. Feelings are important.

So the busses of illegals from Texas to NYC are good, because now leftists in NYC feel threatened with the flood of illegals the same way that people in Texas do.

What else?

Men who reach enlightenment about the biologically programmed motives of women, which evolved that way because they work.

Getting mugged, or getting your carburetor sawed off your car.

Inflation.

Knowing that there are a lot of true things you are simply not allowed to say. This is probably the biggest one. Just ask leftists what true statements would get them ostracized from their fellow leftists.
151   Ingrid   2023 Sep 25, 11:07am  

detested trump. but had to pay a fee for not being able to afford healthcare under obama, and 2 years into trump I got a govt supported health plan. then came biden and i lost my healthcare again, and now on SS. Yes SS like in nazis ! they harassed me several times a week and sometimes up to 3 calls a day till I blocked them from email and phone, and now they send me snail mail twice a month or so. Considering giving up on this SS.
And yes, these last 3 years have made me move to the opposite camp too. I have been watchign what the dems do, and found out that I agree with the reps more often. Not that many stood up, but I can see how they vote for the things I want. Greene is considered and extremist, but she is very often right (although her wording is not always too well chosen) and Rep Allen stands behind withdrawing from the WHO, which I think is a terrorist org.
152   HeadSet   2023 Sep 25, 11:54am  

Patrick says

Getting mugged, or getting your carburetor sawed off your car.

?? Did you mean catalytic converter sawed off?
153   Patrick   2023 Sep 25, 12:18pm  

@16f74cb186970f994fc6bf8ee2ba2c52 Thanks for your comment! Not sure why it got into moderation.

You can change your default user name at https://patrick.net/edit_profile
155   Patrick   2023 Sep 25, 12:57pm  

HeadSet says

?? Did you mean catalytic converter sawed off?


Yes, I did.

My mistake.
156   Patrick   2023 Sep 25, 3:18pm  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/labs-of-liberalism-monday-september


Tucker Carlson gave an interview to Switzerland’s Weltwoche this weekend. Topics ranged from his sudden and unexpected departure from Fox News to things like Biden’s mental incompetence, Ashley Biden’s diary alleging Joe’s molestation, and Larry Sinclair. Out of all of it, I thought you’d enjoy this final, optimistic bit the most:


Weltwoche: In general, what gives you hope in a rather worrisome time, looking into the future?

Carlson: “That the stakes have suddenly gotten so high that smart people are rethinking their assumptions. I see it all around me. I see people all around me asking themselves, “I used to believe this. Is it still true? Was it ever true? What is the truth?” People are focused on questions of truth and falsehood, I think, much more deeply than they ever have been, and that's a good thing.

I also see an awakening of spiritual awareness and religious faith in the United States that I think is great. Not everyone is reaching the same conclusions that I'm reaching, but that's okay. It's better than thinking that Amazon's going to make you happy, because Amazon is not going to make you happy, actually. That's not true. That's a lie. And more and more people seem to be concluding that it's a lie, and I think that's a great thing.

There's this idea that somehow the main threat to our happiness is from religious people. That's absurd. The main threat to our happiness is from people who think they're God. They're the dangerous ones. I'm much more comfortable around religious people. I'm a Christian, but they don't have to share my views.”


Tucker unleashed!
157   Patrick   2023 Oct 3, 9:22am  


@M1ssundrstood

I wish we never got the vaccine. My spouse went deaf,our daughter developed renal hypertension and kidney problems months later. I couldn’t forgive myself until recently. I shldv trusted my gut! We’re on the right side now. Never going back!

« First        Comments 119 - 158 of 267       Last »     Search these comments

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions   gaiste