patrick.net

"Gradually, then suddenly"

It started with PC movement in 90's, when you suddenly could not joke any more.

Polish and Italian jokes were big when I was in fourth grade.

Probably have to send the nine year old to juvenile hall if he told a stereotypical joke today.

I can't explain all the whys, but I do know that the rapid change in society seemed to coincide with social media's appearance and proliferation.

I think various things, like PC speech, catalyzed with social media and smartphones. Social media + everyone w/ a handy video camera changed society big time. Before it, only a few small news organizations regularly had the power to broadcast speech and messages to wide audiences. But now, lots of people can broadcast, and audio/video recording devices assist them.

In the past, you could say things, and only your circle of friends was a potential audience to it. The first-hand audience was small, the rest were second-hand hearsay. But now, the audience is enormous, and with digitally permanent record.

I also think the social media algos, which "give you the news/info that you want" magnify things, and likely screw with the human brain via confirmation biases.

Anyway, sometimes wokeness feels like a reputational self defense mechanism for this new environment. There's suddenly enormous consequence for saying the wrong thing, so people defer to the safe herd opinion. And, the loss of free speech is part of wokeness.

Fortwaynemobile says

Slow erosion of rights. How the fuck did we get here?

A certain group of people control the media..

Booger says

Fortwaynemobile says

Slow erosion of rights. How the fuck did we get here?

A certain group of people control the media..

You play right into the hands of the media like that.

Now you're an anti-Semite, and they have good reason to discredit you, and this site, and everything we say here.

It's very counter-productive to post that image. I'm not going to remove it, but it's frankly stupid if you want anything to change.

These things are only trends, not absolutes. There is a liberal Jewish crowd prominent in the media, but it is not a monopoly.

Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post as uses that to spin everything they say to protect his business which destroys US jobs by buying everything from China.

Bezos is not Jewish.

There are Jewish people who are extremely conservative, and some who are very pro-gun: http://jpfo.org/

Patrick says

but it's frankly stupid if you want anything to change.

How do you propose that we potentially change the media? It not like you or I can get jobs in the media. The people in charge aren't going to hire any conservatives.

Good question!

There is already alternative media. Read it, support it, quote it. The Epoch Times and https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ and https://spectator.us/ and https://redstate.com/ and many more.

TV is hard of course, because it takes a lot of money and connections to start and run a TV station. There are probably some conservative billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel who might be interested in running such a station. What would it take? That's the kind of thing we need to figure out.

But consider that there are individual YouTube channels with more daily viewers than CNN, or so I've read. The real media action has already moved away from TV. Now it seems to make sense to create our own videos and post them on https://rumble.com/

We have to understand more about liberal psychology to reach them. It's possible, if things are put the right way. Correct spelling and grammar is a big part of that. A lot of liberals put in a lot of time learning to write and speak "correctly" and automatically discount any comment or website with poor grammar.

A single "greedy Jew" image like you posted immediately devastates a whole website's credibility. Similarly stereotypical images about black people do the same thing if not connected to specific events. They may be fun to post, but it's political suicide.

To be honest, tits on a website also kill search engine rankings.

Website technical quality has to be good too, clean, no glitches.

There is a lot that can be done with a professional-looking news website.

Booger says

How do you propose that we potentially change the media? It not like you or I can get jobs in the media. The people in charge aren't going to hire any conservatives.

Don't consume any media. Don't go to movies, don't subscribe to any newspapers except Epoch Times, don't subscribe to Netflix or any other streaming services. Tell your friends to do that, if they agree with you politically. If enough conservatively thinking people do that, media will start changing how they behave as they will lose $$$.

If even relatively conservative Patnetters whine that "I can not cancel netflicks or cable because wifey does not let me" then nothing will ever change. Posting memes which blame Jews will certainly not help, and as Patrick says, will likely be counterproductive. I had a few Texan Jewish students, and they were quite conservative. In fact, I yet have to meet a progressive Jewish person in my Texan circle of friends, however this sample might be slanted due to my preferences.

Voting with dollars is probably more effective in America now than voting with votes.

It is a power remaining to us, and we should use it as much as we can.

ThreeBays says

educated liberals

Is that like "jumbo shrimp?

ThreeBays says

Onvacation says

ThreeBays says

educated liberals

Is that like "jumbo shrimp?

That would be an educated conservative.

Useless without separation between real and BS education.

Liberals are OK. They don't want to take my freedoms.

It's those progressives that want to fundamentally change America that I have a problem with.

Onvacation says

Liberals are OK. They don't want to take my freedoms.

It's those progressives that want to fundamentally change America that I have a problem with.

Right the original liberals are today's conservatives/libertarians. What the lamestream fake news leftoid media dubs as liberal are batshit insane retard leftoid marxists.

ThreeBays says

FuckCCP89 says

Useless without separation between real and BS education.

You're welcome to share other data.

That data is supressed so there is no way for me obtain and share it. But the very fact that the breakdown by type of edumacation is omitted in your data speaks volumes.

FuckCCP89 says

Useless without separation between real and BS education.

That's a great point! Not really any more informative than breaking down between who drives red cars vs. blue cars. Except maybe that:

1. Majority of people are indoctrinated.
2. People who have only a HS education are less likely to be indoctrinated but still 52% apparently are.

Reminds me of the statistic: Teenage pregnancy drops precipitously after age 18.

ThreeBays says

via denial of science

Said the non-scientist to the scientist.

ThreeBays says

Republican politics is a dying breed. Older base that's dying, the base also is suicidal via denial of science, and then if Biden offers free college that will influence future young voters.

What will be the new ballgame? Alt-right activism (aka Trolling) had it's turn and backfired during the era of covid.

If you're talking mainstream Republicans then yes but otherwise the Trump fraction has never been doing better, you just don't hear about it in the lamestream media. It's just the D/R uniparty that is under attack from leftoids and new American patriots.

just_passing_through says

ThreeBays says

via denial of science

Said the non-scientist to the scientist.

Yah lately it’s been the Left that’s actively denying and censoring science and scientists who want to do science without filtering it first through left wing politics. Left owns such gems as gender denial, denial of vaccine risks, pro-masks and lockdowns which have been tried and proven ineffective, and also continued closure of schools when that was thoroughly debunked by scientists as a very bad idea.

Left can’t deal with truth and science is the means of discovering and expressing truth.

ThreeBays says

Republican politics is a dying breed.

Thank God!

The way the republicans and democrats have sold out this country is scary. It seems that most of our "representatives" are compromised puppets.

We need to get back to the principles of freedom and liberty that our founders founded our country upon.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

How far we have come. At least as far as Patrick.net, there was outrage over mortgage fraud. Now what are we dealing with? Election fraud, big pharma fraud (opioid addiction), NSA fraud (Snowden, universal surveillance), media collapse and subsequent fraud/propaganda, election fraud 2020, Covid fraud, lockdown fraud . . . the list goes on.

Stop this merry go round - I want to get off.

Onvacation says

ThreeBays says

educated liberals

Is that like "jumbo shrimp?

To be "educated" in America is to prove your subservience, obedience, and willingness to suspend reason in order to please your masters.

The more "educated" you are, the more terrified you are of being accused of independent thought:

https://patrick.net/post/1338725/2021-04-07-the-elite-are-the-most-likely-to-censor

As Nassim Taleb puts it, we have a whole class, tens of millions of "intellectual yet idiot" people:

https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577

Before we can discuss where freedom of speech was lost and the hows and why’s we must remember how freedom of speech was won. It was won by people who pledged their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to throw off the rulers who sought to infringe on those inalienable rights.

The right to free speech was won with fire, violence, printing presses, pulpits, swords, boats, bayonets, bombs and arms. It was won by people willing to risk all, because they believed that living free was worth fighting and dying for. They believed that death was better than life under rule of tyrants. They gave us a Republic where it is the responsibility of the people to preserve and defend it.

Did our people preserve and defend it?

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Quite possibly one of the most important paragraphs ever written. We're not nearly at "absolute despotisim" yet in my view, but the overall trend has not been good as of late. (That is to say the long slow decline over the past 20 to 25 years)

GreaterNYCDude says

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Quite possibly one of the most important paragraphs ever written. We're not nearly at "absolute despotisim" yet in my view, but the overall trend has not been good as of late. (That is to say the long slow decline over the past 20 to 25 years)

GreaterNYCDude says

We're not nearly at "absolute despotisim" yet in my view

When one person can unilaterally decide which businesses/schools can open or must close, Or prohibit churches from holding events, and force face diapers as a condition of travel and business I’d say we are already there.

When private businesses collude to prevent truth about a candidate from reaching the public and the justice department colludes with one party and all of mainstream media to impeach a president based on lies I’d say we are already there.

When election laws are violated without any willingness of the courts to hear the cases, I’d say we are already there.

stereotomy says

How far we have come. At least as far as Patrick.net, there was outrage over mortgage fraud. Now what are we dealing with? Election fraud, big pharma fraud (opioid addiction), NSA fraud (Snowden, universal surveillance), media collapse and subsequent fraud/propaganda, election fraud 2020, Covid fraud, lockdown fraud . . . the list goes on.

Stop this merry go round - I want to get off.

I wanna get on the Xanadu timeline where I can rollerskate around all day to ELO and drink a beer with Gene Kelly talking about the girls' tight little asses.

farmer2021 says

So who are elites among Jews?
Zionists?

Woke Leftist Jews are ANTI-Zionist.

Just like Congress Party in India is ANTI-Hindu.

Fortwaynemobile says

Seriously been pondering this. There are groups and people no one is allowed to criticize or cancel culture nazis come and cancel you. There are words people aren’t allowed to say... depending on whom is saying it and whom ruling class protects. Problems you are not allowed to point out.

Slow erosion of rights. How the fuck did we get here?

The liberals abandoned their core values and sucked on the teets of the hard left. Once the ACLU no longer actually stood for defending civil liberties, it was all over.

Moronic assholes.

ThreeBays says

Patrick says

Onvacation says

ThreeBays says

educated liberals

Is that like "jumbo shrimp?

To be "educated" in America is to prove your subservience, obedience, and willingness to suspend reason in order to please your masters.

The more "educated" you are, the more terrified you are of being accused of independent thought:

https://patrick.net/post/1338725/2021-04-07-the-elite-are-the-most-likely-to-censor

As Nassim Taleb puts it, we have a whole class, tens of millions of "intellectual yet idiot" people:




Intellectuals abandoned free speech as a core tenant. It morphed to speech that doesn’t offend and now to speech deemed suitable by the corporate establishment as dictated by the educated pink and blue haired fascists.

Vilifying intellectuals will happen if the right abandons the constitutions and strikes back at the Democrats using the Dems own playbook. None of us want that, but I guarantee you that as much as the moronic left( IE millenials) is ok with communism:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/for-millennials-socialism-and-communism-are-hot-capitalism-is-not-2019-10-28

There’s an good number of religious conservatives who would be a-ok with Gilead https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Republic_of_Gilead_(Novel)

The few remaining liberals shouldn’t have been such shitheads. They went from guardians of individual liberties to quelching free speech, in quite rapid fashion

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/crossways-tuesday-october-7-2025

It began quietly, slowly, almost invisibly, around 2013— a revolution without a manifesto, ignited not by riotous mobs in the streets but by millions of disenchanted viewers and readers cutting cable and closing browser tabs. It may have begun with Edward Snowden, who first cracked the façade of benevolent governmental authority; then Gamergate exposed the cultural gatekeeping of legacy press; and folks fled corporate media to Twitter, Patreon, and YouTube, which gave the dispossessed their own printing presses.

That was round one in the conservative counter-revolution. Cue the counter-counter-revolution.

When Democrats and the Autopen took control in 2020, the country was mired in the terrifying fog of covid, and the crisis provided both a mandate and a mechanism for reasserting centralized control. The moral authority of “public health” became a catch-all justification for executive orders, speech regulation, and mass data coordination between government and private tech platforms.

What might once have required long legislative debate could now be implemented overnight by “emergency guidance.” Bureaucracies metastasized; censorship was relabeled as “misinformation management.” In that sense, 2020 wasn’t a restoration of normal governance— it was the beginning of a technocratic counter-counter-revolution, where the institutions that had lost narrative power during the 2013-to-2019 social media decentralization seized a new flag to rally under: safety.

The pandemic emergency gave the old establishment one last lever —control through fear and public-health bureaucracy. But —sadly, for them— it was but a temporary reprieve. As the crisis receded, the public fumed over how much it had been censored, coerced, and patronized. Independent platforms had multiplied; podcasts, Substacks, and alternative networks had already trained millions to think and talk outside the approved script.

The central institutions tried to stuff the free-thinking genie back into the bottle, with “disinformation boards” and fact-checking partnerships, but the social contract had flipped: distrustful audiences no longer assumed legitimacy came from authority. By 2024, after the Twitter Files debacle, the Democrats’ bony grip on speech had slipped. ...

Last week, Gallup’s 2025 survey found only 31% of Americans trust the media to report news “fully, accurately, and fairly,” with only a pitiful 7% expressing “a great deal” of trust. That’s the lowest level since Gallup began tracking trust in the 1970s. After covid, Russiagate, and censorship scandals, legacy media institutions have been fully exposed as sold-out political actors.

Now, the conservative counter-revolution is spreading from its new media redoubt to overtake legacy media as well.

I'm sure that millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis in WWII, along with about 15 million non-combatant or POW Slavs.

But it is wrong to imprison anyone for disputing historical facts.

Clearly we started to put security over freedom. It started in 2001 / 2002 and amplified in 2020 / 2021. Government rarely wastes an opportunity to exploit a crisis. Our right to simply be left alone is gone. Cameras everywhere. The ubiquitousness of credit cards over cash. Targeted ads based on browsing history. I can't even read the news without feeling like I'm being sold a line of goods. We're devolving from citizens of a free nation to widgets to be exploited by big business.

So... What do we ultimately do about this? Can we get back to the free, independent, unified America of our youth? Did such a country ever even exist or am I simply romanticizing the past?

FuckTheMainstreamMedia says

The liberals abandoned their core values

Censorship IS a core value for liberals. That is the problem.

GreaterNYCDude says

Clearly we started to put security over freedom. It started in 2001 / 2002 and amplified in 2020 / 2021. Government rarely wastes an opportunity to exploit a crisis. Our right to simply be left alone is gone. Cameras everywhere. The ubiquitousness of credit cards over cash. Targeted ads based on browsing history. I can't even read the news without feeling like I'm being sold a line of goods. We're devolving from citizens of a free nation to widgets to be exploited by big business.

So... What do we ultimately do about this? Can we get back to the free, independent, unified America of our youth? Did such a country ever even exist or am I simply romanticizing the past?

Unified? Reagan was hated by the left as much as Trump, if not more. Blamed for not saving fudgepackers from dying of AIDS (as if it was in his power), called a bloodthirsty warmonger for putting Pershing-2 missiles in Europe, etc. Unified my ass.

GreaterNYCDude says

Did such a country ever even exist or am I simply romanticizing the past?

Yes and no. As children I think most of us felt more free and remember that more guessing the demo here. As we age and with widespread internet access developing over the last 30-40 years, notification of what is happening is a constant barrage of information.

Basically we feel like we're being told what to think. All the stuff was always going on, we just didn't hear about it unless we were in the know. It was phone calls and mail to transfer information. Your local plumber could only get information from a newspaper or TV if they could afford it.

I'll pull a former user Rickwicks line, you have a computer in your pocket now that is far more advanced than anything in the 80's or 90's.

I don't agree with it, but with AI a UBI welfare system is coming. I don't think it's near with Trump being in office but I could see in 10-20 years it being a thing unless true conservatives keep the judicial and executive branches. That would be a long stretch though.

Clarence Thomas needs to retire after the midterms. 2028 is no guarantee for Vance, Rubio, Desantis, etc. Thomas is 77 and has exceeded the life expectancy of a black man. Strike while the iron is hot. He seems to be loyal to conservative views. Retire and enjoy what is likely to be maybe another 10-15 years on this planet.

WookieMan says

I'll pull a former user Rickwicks line, you have a computer in your pocket now that is far more advanced than anything in the 80's or 90's.

Didn't stop him from being a complete ignoramus on basic history, geography and engineering topics, lol.

Eric Holder says

WookieMan says

I'll pull a former user Rickwicks line, you have a computer in your pocket now that is far more advanced than anything in the 80's or 90's.

Didn't stop him from being a complete ignoramus on basic history, geography and engineering topics, lol.

Just want to say that myself I’m also very darn average in all of those topics and claim no expert knowledge in any of the subjects.