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Another Democrat Reaches Enlightenment


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2021 Dec 9, 2:03pm   41,651 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.


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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!
159   Patrick   2023 Oct 9, 11:35am  

https://robertfkennedyjr.substack.com/p/kennedy-independent-presidential-candidate


As I’ve surrendered my attachment to taking sides, I’ve been able to listen with new ears to people with whom I disagree, and see solutions that would otherwise have been invisible.

I’ll give you an example. Six months ago, I thought that an open border was a humanitarian policy, and that sealing the border meant you were a xenophobe or perhaps even a racist. I was wrong.

How did I learn I was wrong?

It wasn’t just that I listened to the other side. It was when I actually visited the border and listened to the people who weren’t on either side.

My views changed as I spoke to border patrol officers, to local officials, to aid workers, and to the migrants themselves.
160   HeadSet   2023 Oct 9, 12:59pm  

Patrick says

I’ll give you an example. Six months ago, I thought that an open border was a humanitarian policy, and that sealing the border meant you were a xenophobe or perhaps even a racist. I was wrong.

This makes him unfit. He is no different than Biden changing his mind only when politically forced to do so. If RFK cannot see why immigration needs to limited to those who use legal channels, then RFK is just more of the same Pollyanna bleeding hearts.
162   Patrick   2023 Oct 18, 1:51pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/billionaire-democrat-admits-wrong-trump-did-lot-really-great-work/


Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, a prominent Democrat voter, has spoken out to admit that he was wrong about President Donald Trump.

Speaking on his “All-In Podcast” Saturday, Palihapitiya admitted that Trump’s America-first policies have actually helped the country.

He also claimed Democrats with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) have done more harm than good by trying to stop the 45th president.

Palihapitiya, a successful venture capitalist, asserted that Trump did “really great work” on a range of issues.

He noted that Trump’s achievements are especially impressive when measured up against Democrat President Joe Biden.

“I voted for Hillary Clinton,” Palihapitiya said.

“I voted for Joe Biden.

“But this is the honest assessment.

“[Trump] did, for the things that he was supposed to do, a good job.

“And for where every other president found a way to make our situation a little bit worse, specifically around wars, he did not do that.

“And that’s a huge accomplishment that needs to be acknowledged.”

“As a Democrat, who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center, but probably leaning increasingly right, I’m left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger of the message, of the Trump administration, because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight.”

As reasons to reconsider support for the 45th president, Palihapitiya cited the Trump administration’s foreign policy successes that prevented new regional wars.



original link
164   Patrick   2023 Oct 24, 8:21am  

From the above:


Call it a realignment, call it a political awakening, call it a vibe shift. Something has changed since the attacks on Israel.

Here’s an example of what we mean: a friend, appalled at the equivocation and apologia in the West after the brutal Hamas killings, told one of us that he used to consider himself a “conscientious objector” in the culture wars. “Not anymore,” he said. October 7 changed that.

Liberal friends were suddenly talking about buying guns. Progressive friends were texting about topics like border security and immigration. In a whisper, one even admitted to watching Fox News.

For a sense of what this real-time political transformation can look like, watch this clip of venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya on the podcast he co-hosts, All In. Palihapitiya, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, explains that he is rapidly revising his view of Trump’s time in office: “As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now definitely in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger, of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight.”

Chamath continued:

So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that’s what is so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. When are we gonna stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word?

If it’s clear that the last two weeks have been a wake-up call, the next question is: Why?

Part of the answer is the sheer depravity of Hamas’s terrorism. That depravity has made the justification and celebration of their acts by those who police pronouns that much starker. The contradictions and moral bankruptcy of a worldview that spends years worrying about microaggressions and tone policing, but can’t decide what side it is on after the beheading of babies, aren’t exactly difficult to spot.

To put it another way: when Black Lives Matter organizations are lionizing Islamist terrorists by posting a paraglider logo, you’d be a fool not to reassess things.

As Konstantin Kisin writes in his powerful essay today in The Free Press: “The events of the last week have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree.”

The other aspect of it, we think, is the sense of how thin the line is between civilization and barbarism. And how the West, which so many take for granted, is more vulnerable than we ever imagined.

We’re curious: Have you noticed something similar in conversations with friends in recent days? We love the fact that this community of half a million is so politically diverse. And we wonder, has the war in Israel and the reaction to it caused you to change your mind about anything? Or maybe something else has forced you to reconsider your opinions? If so, tell us about it in the comments.
165   stereotomy   2023 Oct 24, 9:38am  

Erstwhile "liberals" are rediscovering why their parents thought and behaved the way they did. I guess it's better late than never. My only concern is it too late to do any good?
166   Patrick   2023 Oct 24, 12:14pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/detroit-jewish-leader-stabbed-death-own-home/


A prominent Jewish leader has been stabbed to death in her Detroit, Michigan home.

40-year-old Samantha Woll was board president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue in Detroit.

Woll, who was also a prominent Democratic Party activist, was murdered on Saturday and was found dead on the doorstep of her home.

In addition to being a Jewish community leader, Woll was a co-founder of the interfaith organization Muslim-Jewish Forum of Greater Detroit.


It was either black violence or Muslim violence. Democrats support both kinds of violence.
167   Patrick   2023 Nov 6, 10:10am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/one-year-monday-november-6-2023-c


You’re not going to believe this — I had to read it several times to make sure — the very first personal interest interview in the article was of a never-Trump democrat (“you can’t be worse than Trump”) who now says … he’s planning to vote for Donald J. Trump:

“I actually had high hopes for Biden,” said Jahmerry Henry, a 25-year-old who packages liquor in Albany, Ga. “You can’t be worse than Trump. But then as the years go by, things happen with inflation, the war going on in Ukraine, recently Israel and I guess our borders are not secure at all.”
Now Mr. Henry plans to back Mr. Trump.

Mr. Henry was wrong that nobody could be worse than Trump, but he’s back on track now. The lifelong democrat learned that in fact, someone can be worse than Trump. And that someone is Joseph Robinette Biden. Mr. Henry even had the issues listed right.

Henry wasn’t the only example in the story. Travis Waterman, 33, was quoted saying that other world leaders “don’t respect” Biden. The article also quoted Spencer Weiss, democrat, 53, who now, reluctantly plans to cast his vote for Trump.

“The world is falling apart under Biden,” said Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Bloomsburg, Pa., who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but is now backing Mr. Trump, albeit with some reservations. “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”
168   Patrick   2023 Nov 6, 10:12am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/one-year-monday-november-6-2023-c


And so, it begins. Here was CBS’s headline:




I guess democrats should only vote for Trump if they want to stay out of war and have better finances. Thanks, CBS!
170   Ceffer   2023 Nov 13, 11:29am  

Patrick says





Another great moment in the annals of DUHHHHHHH!
171   Patrick   2023 Nov 29, 11:20am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/rising-narratives-wednesday-november


Rising’s November 24th episode was the ‘followup’ interview with Dr. Sachs (probably really just the second part of the original interview), titled, “Jeffrey Sachs on Rising: I Was a Democrat... COVID CHANGED THAT.” ...

As you listen or read the highlights below, consider how significant it is that someone like Dr. Sachs, with so much personal investment in the official narratives, and so much insider knowledge about what really happened, is coming around to our way of thinking.

Dr. Sachs began the segment with a bold statement that might've been copied and pasted from a Coffee & Covid post:

SACHS: “(There are) many hints (that Covid) could’ve come out of a U.S. lab, or a Chinese lab, or a partnership in the research. The problem with trusting anything is, when we have secretive government that is telling us lies, it just generates a huge amount of distrust about everything.”
Dr. Sachs wasn’t always on board. As he explained to the nodding anchors, he originally bought the official lab-leak explanation. Because science...

At that point Dr. Sachs’ entire worldview began crumbling. He’d spent his life in government and politics. He was used to relying on the government to at least stumble around to doing the right thing, at some point. ...

But then, Dr. Sachs lived through covid. And in his attempt to uncover the truth about what happened, he watched the democrats — his lifelong political party — circle the wagons to protect the government from any critical scrutiny, just when when the government was behaving at its worst:

SACHS: “I began to really see, close up, that there was so much lying coming out of NIH, coming out of Fauci, coming out of, unfortunately, the government — protecting all this. And now, it’s spilling out. But what is true to this moment — weirdly — the democrats don’t wanna look. So where Congress is looking is on the House side, where there’s majority Republicans in the House Oversight Committee, (they) are looking into this. But on the Senate side, with the democratic majority, it is absolutely ‘circle the wagons’ around Fauci — who is not even there! — or around NIH, or around G-d knows what.”
To Dr. Sachs, getting gain-of-function research under control isn’t a partisan issue. It is a life or death issue:

SACHS: “As someone who’s been a lifelong democrat — but I’ve left the party because I don’t want to have anything to do with any of these parties right now — I have to say it’s shocking to me that democratic Senators cannot understand this is not a partisan issue. This is a life and death issue. What kind of research is going on? What kind of laboratory manipulation is going on? What is going on under what we euphemistically probably, or perhaps, call our ‘biodefense industry?’” ...

And to put some icing on the episode cake, here are a few examples from the episode’s comments from folks who — like Jeffrey Sachs — also ditched the democrat party over covid and/or the jabs:




... We are either already in a new phase, or we are rapidly moving into a new phase where the pandemic’s liars have lost the argument.
172   Ceffer   2023 Nov 29, 12:34pm  

Patrick says

pandemic’s liars have lost the argument.

Never was an argument, just blunt force, intimidation, and lots and lots of corrupto bucks.
173   Patrick   2023 Dec 1, 9:37am  

https://www.aussie17.com/p/the-normie-report?publication_id=1242457&post_id=139288713&isFreemail=true&r=6gdz


I couldn’t understand why they would choose to lose their job and career instead of just getting a vaccine that would actually keep them from getting sick and dying from covid. This was how I felt at the time, but my entire perspective changed almost 180 degrees in 2022 when a good friend suddenly dropped dead while riding their pushbike home from work.

Personally, I had no major problems from the covid vaccine, but I sure saw several people at my work getting sick and then when my friend dropped dead, casually riding his bike home, the trauma that caused was just awful. He was married with two kids, super fit and somehow he just had a heart attack. His funeral was hugely traumatic, as his young wife and infant children were just so sad. I will never forget how sad that funeral was. The sounds coming from her body were terrifying and those poor kids had no idea what was going on. A friend at the funeral sort of said to me ‘told you those vaccines were dangerous’ and I have to say, I could have punched him in the face. How dare he say that, there.

The funeral really had an impact on me and I started to read a few things people had emailed me. Things I would have previously just ignored or deleted. An email came through about ‘died suddenly’ and heart attack stuff and that really was a moment I remember reading it and just thinking ‘why isnt this on the news!’. I read more and more of these sorts of things, started listening to podcasts on Joe Rogan I started to think ‘holy shit’ by about Christmas 2022. I guess I started to ‘wake up’ as these people were saying. ...

I feel a bit silly for not having seen it immediately when, in Australia, our government started telling me what I could do, like literally communist-like telling me I couldn’t go here, do this, visit my mum in another part of the country. I actually can’t believe I went along with ‘all that’ and knowing what I know now I am ashamed that I mocked people who wouldn’t wear a mask or get the vaccines, for in my mind (today) they are the real heroes who somehow saw through it all.
174   Patrick   2023 Dec 5, 12:01pm  

https://notthebee.com/article/black-chicagoans-are-mad-we-are-done-with-the-democratic-party


Any Republican candidate in the city of Chicago, now is your time! Because we are done with the Democratic Party. Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker and President Biden have shown us what they think about the black community all over this country...

We don't have to support the Democratic Party...

It's gonna be a great day in the city of Chicago when the Democratic Convention comes here and then they find out in March that a lot of black folks took Republican ballots. Deal with that!

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