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Another Democrat Reaches Enlightenment


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2021 Dec 9, 2:03pm   41,798 views  267 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (59)   💰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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33   richwicks   2022 May 19, 12:40pm  

Patrick says

richwicks says
You're viewing it through nostalgia. It seemed like a simple happy life, but was it?


Sure, as a kid it was pretty good.

It might be a little confining as an adult.


For me it's the opposite, It was extremely confining as a kid, I could better tolerate it as an adult.

When my father was in his 20's he rode a snowmobile for 20 miles through the woods to another town. The snowmobile broke down at the destination and he had to abandon it to to return with friends and come back to repair it after driving there. Once the family dog got incredibly ill, so he packed the dog up with my (at that time 4 year old) brother in a truck to drive 30 miles to the vet. The dog threw up on the car seat, my dad freaked out and was cleaning out the vomit the best he could and brushed his puke covered finger over my sleeping brother's face which made him immediately vomit.

There's crazy adventures in the outback, but they are nightmares at the time. As a child in the area, it was the lack of information as we technologically evolved - now that it's stagnating, perhaps I can tolerate it and retreat back to something like it.
34   Patrick   2022 May 19, 10:00pm  

At one time I would have thought this an exaggeration, but no more.



https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/there-is-nothing-new-under-the-sun
35   Patrick   2022 May 23, 10:04pm  

https://carolinedooner.substack.com/p/welcome-let-me-tell-you-whats-up


And now that I’m losing my (“liberal”) religion, I get wayyyyy worse DMs from leftists (who used to “love” me) saying… horrrrrrible things. I’m dangerous, I’m harmful, I’m killing people by being anti-mandate… in fact, the mildest label they give me is “problematic.”

I am still socially liberal in most ways, I’ve just developed an allergy to the group-think. And once you’re not allowed to say or think something… we sometimes have to wonder… why.
37   Hircus   2022 Jun 12, 1:23pm  

Patrick says
I am still socially liberal in most ways, I’ve just developed an allergy to the group-think.


Watch her in a few years when she realizes most of the social liberal crap is also formed from groupthink.

[insert pic of a woman with laser red led eyes knocking on the conservative's door]
38   Patrick   2022 Jun 16, 12:16pm  

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/deprogramming-from-the-woke-cult-former-social-justice-warrior-overcomes-fear-to-speak-up_4525434.html?utm_source=share-btn-copylink


Deprogramming From the ‘Woke’ Cult: Former Social Justice Warrior Overcomes Fear to Speak Up

For Keri Smith, deprogramming from what she calls the cult of “wokism” didn’t happen overnight.

But the behavior of her former friends within the social-justice world during the 2016 presidential election, with their support of violence, censorship, and gaslighting, certainly sped up the process, setting off a parade of red flags.

Social-justice warriors (SJW) were advocating for acts of aggression against supporters of former President Donald Trump, contradicting what she said she understood the essential nature of liberalism to be.

“It was the first indication that I might not really understand what was going on in the world,” Smith told The Epoch Times. ...

“It wasn’t a fast process,” she said. “It was just as slow as it was getting into a cult. That’s how slow it is getting out of a cult.”

She found herself going down a rabbit hole on YouTube watching videos of Trump supporters being attacked by people on the left.

“There was one video where this mob surrounded this woman, a Trump supporter, and threw eggs at her,” she said. “There was another where they were chasing these guys down the street and throwing bricks at them. They bloodied this guy’s head. This was jarring to me.” ...

She wrote an essay titled “On Leaving the SJW Cult and Finding Myself,” which she publicly shared, leading to what she called The Great Unfriending.

https://kerismith.medium.com/on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and-finding-myself-1a6769b2f1ff
39   Patrick   2022 Jul 3, 2:50pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/jeff-bezos-humiliates-joe-biden-its-either-straight-ahead-misdirection-or-a-deep-misunderstanding-of-basic-market-dynamics/


Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has humiliated Joe Biden by mocking the Democrat president’s “deep misunderstanding of market dynamics.”

Bezos was responding to a post on social media about inflation from Biden’s official account.

In response, Bezos said Biden either doesn’t understand inflation or his comments are “straight-ahead misdirection.”

Biden said:

My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril.
Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product.
And do it now.


Enter Jeff Bezos who said:

Ouch.
Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this.
It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.


This is not the first time Bezos mocked Biden.

He said earlier of Biden and the White House:

Look, a squirrel!
This is the White House’s statement about my recent tweets.
They understandably want to muddy the topic.
They know inflation hurts the neediest the most.
But unions aren’t causing inflation and neither are wealthy people.
Remember the Administration tried their best to add another $3.5 TRILLION to federal spending.
They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40-year high.
In fact, the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves.
Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent.
Misdirection doesn’t help the country.




Could Bezos be on his way to enlightenment about the true nature of the Democratic Party?
41   HeadSet   2022 Jul 5, 2:00pm  

Patrick says

Could Bezos be on his way to enlightenment about the true nature of the Democratic Party?

No. Remember the First Law of Patrickdynamics - "It is impossible to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding that something."
Trump et al, would be a threat to Amazon's Chinese offshoring, so Bezos will still hang with the Dems. Even now my Dem Senator Tim Caine is on a tirade of how any tariffs on China just cause inflation.
42   Misc   2022 Jul 6, 12:53am  

Let's see...if lowering the tariffs on Chinese made stuff lowers inflation ... then having the Federal Government subsidize the Chinese made crap would lower inflation even more ????

... We could even use this reasoning for lowering gasoline prices, food prices and use it as a basis for a "living wage".

----------------- What could go wrong ?????
43   Patrick   2022 Jul 8, 3:13pm  

https://www.tiktok.com/@alex_pearlman/video/7113244831861820714

Lol, this guy figures out that the Democratic Party is just a big grifting scam, responding to every issue with requests for donations.

Would like to grab the video, but haven't figure out how.

Oops, @HunterTits already posted it here: https://patrick.net/post/1346566/2022-07-08-turns-out-those-fund-raisers-are
44   Patrick   2022 Jul 24, 10:55am  

https://www.westernjournal.com/ny-times-columnists-finally-admit-truth-biden-facebook-trump-voters/?seyid=12965


Bret Stephens, in his mea culpa piece, recounted that in the first sentence of the first column he ever wrote about Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2015 he argued, “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”

Stephens stood by his “dozens of columns denouncing Trump as a unique threat to American life, democratic ideals and the world itself. I regret almost nothing of what I said about the man and his close minions. But the broad swipe at his voters caricatured them and blinkered me.”

(Blinkered refers to having a limited understanding or the blinders used on horses to keep them looking straight head; it’s properly an adjective, not a verb as Stephens used it here, which might be why I had to look it up.)

Stephens explained his regret in caricaturing Trump voters, as “It also probably did more to help than hinder Trump’s candidacy.”

“[I]n my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me,” Stephens added.


Not really enlightenment, but a step towards it anyway.
45   Patrick   2022 Aug 1, 11:21am  

Vaxxed Nurse Commends The Unvaxxed Who Were Right All Along - She Says She Regrets It


original link
47   Patrick   2022 Aug 8, 1:57pm  

https://www.westernjournal.com/just-horrific-lifelong-democrat-powerfully-turns-biden-live-air-dismantles-entire-party/?seyid=15193


'It's Just Been Horrific': Lifelong Democrat Powerfully Turns on Biden Live On-Air, Dismantles Entire Party

A Pennsylvania woman registered as a Democrat for 34 years is making a party switch, citing many of the objections that are fueling middle-class voters to turn against the party.

Beth Ann Rosica broke down her transformation in a Thursday Fox News interview.

“As a former Democrat for 34 years prior to the pandemic, I too thought that the Democratic Party was really focused on the people that they pretend to support,” the Pennsylvania mother told “Fox & Friends” host Carley Shimkus.

“What I saw through the pandemic was that the Democratic Party basically abandoned all of those people.”

Rosica cited the Democratic Party’s mismanagement of the economy and sky-high inflation. The mother also cited big government’s failure to meet the educational needs of students, closing schools during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think the economy is huge, and I also think a lot of the school issues for parents across the state of Pennsylvania, it’s just been horrific watching what’s happened to our kids academically, socially, emotionally.”

“What I saw through the pandemic was that the Democratic Party basically abandoned all of those people,” Rosica explained.

“And so that was why I left the party, or as I like to say, the party really left me, and I think that a lot more people are really starting to see that.”

The Democratic Party has endured institutional decline in Pennsylvania and other Rust Belt states.
50   Patrick   2022 Aug 22, 10:01am  

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/leftist-turned-conservative-podcasters-unapologetically-question-pervading-progressive-ideologies_4676156.html?utm_source=share-btn-copylink

(paywall, but that goes away if you turn off javascript in the developer tools and reload - ask if you want more info about how to do that)


Leftist-Turned-Conservative Podcasters Unapologetically Question Pervading Progressive Ideologies
'I’m just trying to be a voice of reason'

As the religion of “wokism” continues to grow, censor, and demand sacrifices in the form of shame-induced public apologies at its alter, former leftist-turned-conservative podcasters seek to unapologetically question its pervading narratives.

“We are seeing young people grow up with the mindset that they need to reduce themselves down to race, gender, and their sexuality,” Amala Ekpunobi, host of the podcast “Unapologetic,” told The Epoch Times. “Those three very superficial identities have become so pivotal in how people introduce themselves and whether they are viewed as victims or champions. The more we go down the path of this false narrative, the more we are oppressing them and entertaining a culture of victimhood that is sheerly unsustainable.” ...

“I was told that I was simply unaware of how oppressed I was and that it wasn’t their fault that I wasn’t angry, but that I should be because of how I was treated in this country,” Ekpunobi said.

From there, Ekpunobi researched ideas that didn’t reinforce but instead challenged her preconceived notions, she said.

She discovered social theorists and commentators such as Thomas Sowell and PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager, she said, which, for her, “started a new journey,” she said.

“I had always grown up with the idea that white people carry these inherent biases and that they were a part of a structure of oppression that was working against me, whether they knew it or not,” Ekpunobi said. “So, it was really difficult there toward the end to justify having those opinions, then going home to a family who cared for me.”

‘I Was Becoming Increasingly More Conservative’ ...

To provide an alternative message, Ekpunobi made her own videos in which she discussed her journey and how she arrived at her conservative belief system.

... What passes for so many as education and news, Rose said, is in fact propaganda designed as a component of manipulative social experiments with the endgame of dehumanizing and controlling people.

“People are being introduced to ideas that they normally would have no reason to look at, and then there’s this mechanism that’s adopting new terms and changing language,” she said. “It’s very Orwellian, and it’s very unsettling.” ...

“I’m just trying to be a voice of reason to help people continue to question and discuss things so we don’t all feel so crazy and alone,” Rose said. “That’s been the main goal of my platform: to let people know, ‘Hey, it’s not just you. I see it, too.’”
52   Patrick   2022 Sep 20, 3:25pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/nba-legend-turns-on-dems-after-getting-assaulted-in-san-diego-you-have-failed-us-i-can-no-longer-say-that-sd-is-a-safe-healthy-clean-and-beautiful-place-i-can-no-longer-urge-my-family/


NBA Legend Turns on Democrats after Getting Assaulted an San Diego: ‘You Have Failed Us’

NBA legend and long-time Democrat Bill Walton has had enough of the crime and homelessness in his beloved hometown of San Diego.

Walton reached his limit and called out the California city’s Democrat leaders after getting assaulted, again.

“You have failed, us and yourself, you’ve done, and continue to do, nothing,” Walton said in an email to San Diego’s Democrat Mayor Todd Gloria.

“Once again, while peacefully riding my bike early this Sunday morning in Balboa Park, I was threatened, chased, and assaulted by the homeless population, in our park.

“You speak of the rights of the homeless, what about our rights, we follow the rules of a functioning society, why are others allowed to disregard those rules.

“Your lack of action is unacceptable, as is the conduct of the homeless population.”
53   Ceffer   2022 Sep 20, 10:42pm  

Lady that does my hair says she has had several clients who have told her they are leaving the Democratic Party and registering Republican. Of course, none of that matters, because California will probably be the last state to purge its election fraud.

We agreed that Newsom not being voted out on the referendum was absolute proof of election fraud. There were scraggly hippies in Santa Cruz of all places relentlessly manning tables over there getting signatures for the recall. The California public isn't voting the way the way they think it is, and the fraud will just have to get more aggressive.
54   Patrick   2022 Sep 22, 4:08pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/florida-dem-official-reaches-limit-snubs-party-and-endorses-ron-desantis-for-governor/


“It may come as a shock to many of you or at least many of my friends that as a Democratic elected officer in deep blue Palm Beach County, I’m endorsing the Republican governor.

“But I will not remain silent,” Kerner declared.

“There is too much on the line in this election.

“The governor’s Democratic opponent has already started talking about reallocation, which to me, by the way, is a code word for taking resources away from the men and women that protect us.

“It’s a code word for defunding the police.
56   Patrick   2022 Sep 28, 3:17pm  

https://www.wnd.com/2022/09/top-london-cardiologist-stop-covid-19-shots-now/

Technically not a Democrat, but same basic process.

He promoted the vaxx until it killed his father.
57   Patrick   2022 Oct 4, 3:00pm  


Michelle Tandler
@michelletandler

95% of my social world defines as Democrat.

Family, friends, colleagues, people I meet socially - virtually all Dems.

Recently I've been wondering - if I believe partisanship is one of our biggest issues, would it be "righteous" to switch sides to play devil's advocate?

In basically every single conversation that turns to politics - there is no dissent.

There is no debate.

There is no other side at the table.

It's just everybody agreeing with one another - talking down the evil Republicans and how they will "ruin America."
58   RC2006   2022 Oct 4, 5:22pm  

It's a real issue which is a larger problem on the left. I know plenty on the right that hate the Bushes, religious right, critical about Reagan, wars ect. On the left its crickets when it comes to left wing nuts and ideas.
59   Patrick   2022 Oct 12, 6:32pm  




Dunno if this is real or not, but millions of Democrats should be saying the same thing, publicly.
60   Ceffer   2022 Oct 12, 6:47pm  

Guess all the fiat bribe money is drying up. Whores is looking for other clients.
61   Patrick   2022 Oct 16, 3:29pm  

https://slaynews.com/news/52-of-democrats-blame-woke-politicians-for-rising-crime-in-america/


52% of Democrats Voters Blame ‘Woke’ Politicians for Rising Crime in America


Looks like 52% of Democrat voters are reaching enlightenment.
62   Patrick   2022 Oct 21, 7:35am  

https://www.foxnews.com/media/lifelong-democrat-attorney-ignites-twitter-switch-gop-republicans-pose-far-less-threat


A lifelong Democrat writer and civil liberties attorney said Thursday she will vote Republican for the first time, motivated by what she sees as the left's embrace of "authoritarian" measures during the COVID pandemic and censorship of opposing views.

"Though I was a lifelong Democrat until 2020, I will be voting red this November and in every election for the foreseeable future. I firmly believe that, despite my many disagreements with platforms of the Republican Party, it poses far less of a threat than Democrats," Jenin Younes wrote on Twitter this week. ...

"I would say I initially associated the Democrats with sticking up for the little guy, being anti-corporation, even anti-big government," she said while appearing on "Fox & Friends." ...

"Things have changed since then, and I would say especially with COVID where the Democrats really embraced authoritarian policies in terms of closing businesses and schools," she added.


And the fucking MANDATES, which continue in public service, entry to the US, and now schools.

Murder-by-vaxx is a great reason to dump the Democrats, not to mention crime and inflation.
63   Ceffer   2022 Oct 21, 11:10am  

cisTits says


The overwhelming percentage of them are still libtards. Which means they can't make the mental connection between who they vote for and crappy results.

Lol! The chronic fuck ups who mindlessly wreak disaster on everybody else while brimming with smug confidence.
64   GNL   2022 Oct 21, 4:43pm  

Patrick says

https://www.wnd.com/2022/09/top-london-cardiologist-stop-covid-19-shots-now/

Technically not a Democrat, but same basic process.

He promoted the vaxx until it killed his father.

And this is exactly what I'm talking about. Jabbers and anti-jabbers (well, me at least) won't get it until they experience pain in their circle.
65   GNL   2022 Oct 21, 4:45pm  

cisTits says



Sadly, I think this is their goal.
66   AmericanKulak   2022 Oct 21, 5:49pm  

cisTits says

Patrick says



Looks like 52% of Democrat voters are reaching enlightenment.


Ok, @Patrick

The overwhelming percentage of them are still libtards. Which means they can't make the mental connection between who they vote for and crappy results.

A non-libtard is just someone who can do competent pattern recognition.

I wonder if some of it is cowardice.

There's a pivot point where the cog diss kicks in, and they decide to go with normalization as a way to resolve it, in order to preserve their professional/social connections?
67   Patrick   2022 Oct 23, 5:27pm  

https://adambcoleman.substack.com/p/the-mainstream-media-lied-to-me-about


The Mainstream Media Lied to Me About Conservatives
How political media propaganda prevented me from understanding conservatives

Adam B. Coleman
Oct 21
Looking back, when I was a Democrat, I never personally knew any Republicans or conservatives yet my entire perception of what they stood for was based on left-leaning media filtering.

I felt that I was being informed when I was being highly misinformed about what an entire political spectrum generally believes and advocates for. Even more so, as a black man, I bought into the bad-faith political position that "all Republicans & conservatives are racist".

No political party or side has a monopoly on ignorance. We are a nation with over 200 million voting-aged adults and immoral people are going to be found on both sides. However, the wholesale belief that conservatism equals bigotry is undoubtedly false.

I realized that I was living my life in bad faith, seeing people for what I thought they were and never giving them the chance to show me who they really are.

I've lived in 5 states and a variety of types of areas throughout my life. I've noticed when people talk about "America is..." they're often projecting their impression of America based on the geography they're most familiar with. If they live in a run-down city, then America must be run-down. Me, I've lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

I've been one of four black kids in the entire middle school and one of many black kids in the school.

I say all of this to point out that I've lived around people of different races and political beliefs but it was incredibly rare that someone ever held racial animus towards me.

When I left the mainstream liberal media bubble & started listening to right-wing media to understand what they want, I became more aware of the world around me than ever before. Without the filter, I got to hear what conservatives actually believe & it's not what I was told.

Thank you for reading Speaking Wrong At The Right Time. This post is public so feel free to share it.

I removed my bad-faith preconceived notions and just listened to what they had to say but even more important, watched their actions based on their rhetoric. I have some disagreements but I understand them far better than I had previously.

Recently, an interviewer asked me about this political hurdle of "conservatives are racist" and my experience with it. I gave him an example of when I was invited to attend Turning Point's "Americafest" last year.

For a couple of days, I was at this conservative conference, everyone I spoke with was courteous and supportive and I felt completely comfortable. I didn't have people stare at me or give me the feeling that I wasn't welcome. Actually, quite the opposite.

The speakers that I saw on stage preached the importance of family, wanting smaller government, holding Republicans in office accountable, and their unwavering love for America despite our political gripes.

However, when I would go on Twitter, they would show clips from the event and reframed this benign conservative conference as being a "KKK rally". If Americafest was a KKK rally, then it was the lamest KKK rally ever.

But this is the power of political propaganda & it works. Someone would actually think that I, a black man, would actually purposely go to a hate-filled rally where my identity would be the main target to go after. They think I would sign up for my own lynching.

As sarcastic as I'm sounding, I also shamefully realized I was one of those people who would consider this illogical prospect. Being on both sides of the political spectrum has allowed me to see the political world for what it is; biased & imperfect.

Overwhelming, most Americans essentially want the same thing, they just have different pathways to reach that objective.

It's the few that want us to believe they're the majority and the media's job is to highlight the few as being the many so the many cower to the few.

And in every story, you need a villain. The mainstream media's storyline must paint conservatives as being perpetrators of racism because once you believe this bad-faith proposition, nothing else matters as to what they're saying.

It's a political brick wall that many have trouble maneuvering past because it's cemented into place with constant repetition of accusatory rhetoric.

But it's exaggeration & manipulation by the political liberal elite who never want their political foes to be seen as otherwise.

The elitist media propaganda made me overlook my real-life experience. The people who I would identify as conservatives today were actually my neighbors in small-town America and were generally kind to me, I just didn't know their politics but I recognize their behavior & ideals.

There is much to be gained by understanding all political ideologies along with reaching out to people with who you don't normally have a dialogue.

A media filter will always remove information that benefits them but leaves you without some nutrients of knowledge.

We're being malnourished.
70   Patrick   2022 Oct 28, 10:19am  

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/democrats-are-losing-because-liberalism-has-become-cruel/


Democrats are losing because liberalism has become cruel
The ‘stop hate’ party embraces vicious identity politics, and voters have noticed

Welp, so much for the blue wave. That towering electoral tsunami, which was to deluge the midterm races in a soggy detritus of worn masks and Planned Parenthood pamphlets, has given way to a stark reality: 2022 is a Republican year. It was always a Republican year, as some of us have been pointing out. Voters simply weren’t about to prioritize third-trimester abortions over rising crime and the price of beef. ...

Join me now in the DeLorean, darling, as we turn back the revolutionary calendar all the way to 2009. Obama has just been elected president, seemingly putting a pin in centuries of American racial strife. He opposes gay marriage and no one seems to care. Wokeness is not yet a thing. Neither is intersectionality. Suggesting children be given puberty blockers on demand can and will get you chucked off of a moving train. Crime is low; unity is high.

Now splinter back to today, when liberalism no longer seems idealistic or even woke so much as cruel. Consider as an example the recent debate between John Fetterman and Dr. Oz. Those who pointed out that Fetterman might be an unfit candidate due to his clear cognitive impairment — a reasonable enough observation a decade ago — were this year derided as ableist. The full shield of identity politics was brought to bear around Fetterman, with any criticism of his acuity ruled out of bounds. And then, when it came time to debate, when that shield had to come down, Fetterman was left pausing and stumbling and flip-flopping while the rest of us sank into our sofas. This wasn’t empowering; it was just…mean.

The same goes for Joe Biden’s recent trip to the mall in a Members Only jacket with trans TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney. Biden in that interview surrendered completely to trans ideology. He even went so far as to say states shouldn’t pass any laws against children receiving puberty-blocking hormones or sex-change surgeries. The policy is barbaric, of course, but the spectacle itself was also vicious. Here was this self-anointed cipher of the blue-collar Dems, this haunt of Irish-Catholic villages, being shanghaied into thumbs-upping child abuse by a preening man transitioning into — not a woman, mind you — but a girl.

I might even feel sorry for Biden had he not implied that I’m a domestic terrorist last month. And the list of cruelties rolls on: Covid lockdowns stunting children’s educational growth; soft-on-crime urban policies leaving addicts to die in sidewalk tents; feral Twitter hoards lying in wait for anyone who utters wrongthink. Remember: it’s the GOP that’s supposed to be the nasty party. The Democrats are all about equality and empathy and love. Yet this year has made the reality perfectly plain: liberalism doesn’t care about the disenfranchised so much as it fetishizes them in the abstract. And once they fall stray of the ideology, as actual people so often do, well, we’ve finished that story before, haven’t we?
71   Patrick   2022 Oct 28, 2:47pm  

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tim-robbins-and-the-lost-art-of-finding


Years later, the Oscar-winning actor known for left-liberal advocacy finds his thinking has shifted in significant ways. In part this is because the entertainment business remains mired in high-vigilance mode when it comes to pandemic restrictions, with an omerta still hovering over vaccine-related questions. Robbins himself was with the program early, which he now seems to regret. “I was guilty of everything that I came to understand was not healthy,” he says now. “I demonized people.” ...

That’s something I already knew as a writer. When you’re making a character, you try not to make it all black and white, good and evil. I really understood much more profoundly what happens with the turn, how people turn. You go from someone that is inclusive, altruistic, generous, empathetic, to a monster. Where you want to freeze people’s bank accounts because they disagree with you. That’s a dangerous thing. That’s a dangerous world that we’ve created. And I say ‘we,’ because I was part of that. I bought into that whole idea early on.
72   Patrick   2022 Oct 30, 7:09pm  

https://newspress.com/the-positive-effects-of-switching-parties/


Emily Seidel, head of Americans for Prosperity, said her network is seeing first-hand that suburban voters are distancing themselves from Democrats who represent extreme policy positions. But that doesn’t mean that they’re ready to vote against those lawmakers either. Candidates have to make their case, they have to give these voters something to be for, not just something to be against.

According to the AP, there was not a single “got ya” issue that convinced most of these Democrats to switch parties. Like Ronald Reagan said, they felt that the “Democratic party left them” when it became the party of progressives, socialism, special interests and the party of radical social justice.

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