I've just had something of a paradigm shift when it comes to
politics. And it's going to sound cynical, but it struck me as being remarkably
true. So here it is. Up until recently, I've considered two different sides in
politics, my side and the other side.
And I've always kind of assumed that people on the other
side didn't have all the facts, maybe didn't see another point of view. It's
just even more information in order to see things my way. Maybe they wouldn't
agree with me, but if I just gave them some more facts, more information, maybe
explain my point of view in a compelling way using examples or whatever, that
maybe they would, if they didn't agree with me, they could at least see I had a
point. And just recently, I've started to realize that they do see my point of
view, or if they do, it doesn't matter. They simply lie. They don't care about
other facts or information.
They don't even believe the things they believe. They just
want what they want, and facts don't matter. And one example came with this
presidential debate that happened on Tuesday, and it struck me as I was stewing
in bed afterward trying to sleep.
What occurred to me is the moderators, they didn't fact
check Kamala about a number of things, like Project 2025 and Charlottesville,
saying that Trump said that Nazis were very fine people or whatever, and it hit
me.
These moderators are steeped in politics. They know those
things aren't true, but they deliberately did not fact check or call out Kamala
about them. And I realized, yeah, I knew they were biased, but now I realize
they're dishonest.
And not only dishonest, they don't care about the facts.
They don't care about the truth. They want to see this woman get elected, even
if it means lying. And I'm realizing that goes toward everyone on the left.
I could present every fact and every piece of information,
and they wouldn't even have to refute it. They just have to say, well, that's
just disinformation. Oh, that's not proven yet. No, no, so -and -so said that's
not true, and therefore it's not true.
It doesn't matter. Those are just conspiracy theories. And
what I thought up until now is that they were just mistaken, that they just
were incorrect about their beliefs, and maybe if I showed them some more
compelling evidence, they would change their mind.
No, they know it's true. They just don't care. And that
struck me as I realized we're up against not convincing people with arguments.
We're just to get up against evil. People who don't care about truth or what's
right, they just want their side to win at all costs, and it doesn't matter
what the truth is.
And so that really changed my frame of reference, because up
until now in politics, I've always thought it was a game of persuasion, of
trying to convince people of your point of view. And I know this isn't
everybody, but it's a substantial number of people who simply don't care what
your point of view is.
They don't even care if you have a perfectly reasonable case
and deserve to be heard. They don't want you to be heard, because it will hurt
their side. They're against the truth, because the truth might damage them in
the next election.
And as soon as I realized that, I realized, oh, these aren't
just people who disagree with us. These are our enemies. These are our enemies,
because there is no persuading them. There is no convincing them and finding
common ground.
They just want to win no matter what. And there's no sharing
a country with that. And I think one of the things that really made me
understand this is because there are still reasonable Democrats out there.
There are still Democrats who understand that there are
different points of view, different sets of facts that people operate from. And
they can have their minds changed on an issue or two. I was thinking
specifically of Mary Ann Williamson, who was trying to tell Democrats not to
dismiss stories from Springfield, Ohio, about Haitian immigrants eating pets.
She said, no, this is something that can happen, and you're
making it sound like we're just elites in urban coastal cities dismissing the
actual concerns of regular people. She's one of the few people on the left I
know of who can at least understand facts or not just understand them, who
wants to.
Someone who wants to look at different sides and different
sets of facts and different points of view. Who cares about something more than
just winning? Robert F. Kennedy was one of these other people.
Telsa Gabbard was one of these other people. There are fewer
and fewer people on the left like this. They eventually gradually moved to the
right because the right now consists of really the right consists of
conservatives and liberals now, except that they both understand that they want
they both have an understanding that they want to find the truth and they want
to hear each other's sides points of view and they can both be convinced of
different things.
The actual left today is simply a monolith. They don't want
to hear all the facts because hearing all the facts doesn't help their cause.
In fact, nothing that hurts their cause is allowed on their side.
It doesn't matter how true it might be. They're anti -truth
because the truth might hurt them and that's what we're up against and that's a
real paradigm shift for me because it's no longer about persuasion.
It's simply about winning and I don't necessarily want to
take that point of view of myself but the thing is I have to understand what
we're up against and so maybe what we're really doing is trying to convince the
convincible, however few there may be, but that's on one side.
On the other side is we do need to win no matter what
because if we don't, the people who will be in charge are the rights like
freedom of speech. This is something that struck me about their treatment of
Elon Musk because he was a hero to the left because he invented an electric car
that was very commercially successful.
Government grants and tax exemptions notwithstanding, but at
the same time he became an instant villain the moment he started championing
free speech and I think what I'm realizing now is that freedom of speech is not
a principle to the left and you might think it once was but really freedom of
speech was just a means to an end.
You see they'll claim freedom of speech because they want
their point of view to be heard but they absolutely want to squash your right
to free speech because you speaking is not convenient to them. There's no
reciprocity there and I think freedom of speech now is for them all it is is
protecting giving porn to kids because for the left they want to indoctrinate
your kids and make them sexual deviants and freedom of speech is their excuse
that's the only freedom of speech they'll defend is pornography.
There's absolutely nothing else that they won't censor
because it's disinformation. Disinformation has to be censored but child
pornography is great. Okay anyway that's our enemy, everybody. I know I'm
not supposed to say they're enemy because I'm supposed to live another delusion
that we're all sharing a country and we all have different points of view and
could talk to each other reasonably.
I'm realizing now that's not true and that doesn't mean I'm
going to start acting like the left but I am going to start understanding who
they are and I'm not going to try to convince them anymore. I'm going to try to
defeat them and that's it.
The end.