patrick.net

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think @AmericanKulack predicted this at one point.

Patrick says

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

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

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

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

I think AmericanKulack predicted this at one point.

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

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

This will lead to the breakup of our society. With no commonality, you don't have a society.

https://twitter.com/karma44921039/status/1657015531931664384?ref_src=patrick.net

He is correct. How one reacted to the Covid fraud shows who would have betrayed neighbors to the Gestapo, NKVD, and Stasi.

Patrick says

I think AmericanKulack predicted this at one point.

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

It doesn't necessarily mean religious belief, it can also be in Astrology and Crystal Crap, which is skyrocketing among antidepressant taking childless women.

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

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

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

The Oscar-winning film director, producer, and screenwriter made the admission while criticizing the Biden administration’s policies.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1685705282020597760

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

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

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.”

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.

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.

Long but good: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/pUW58GSD

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?

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.

https://notthebee.com/article/dallas-mayor-announces-hes-becoming-republican-because-democratic-policies-have-exacerbated-crime-and-homelessness

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/politics/dallas-mayor-eric-johnson-republican/index.html

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

TBH I don't remember ever hearing about him before.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/22/gavin-newsom-andrew-tate-joe-rogan-jordan-peterson-ai/

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.

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.

Patrick says

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

?? Did you mean catalytic converter sawed off?

@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

HeadSet says

?? Did you mean catalytic converter sawed off?

Yes, I did.

My mistake.

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!

@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!

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.