Damn that was a good read. I can’t stand Trump the man, but the lefts insistence on Orwellian type policies and culture is why I voted for him in 2020. They’ve doubled down and I hope people continue to wake up/be red pilled.
"A red-pilled America is probably starting to think the reaction to Trump, rather than Trump himself, might be the even bigger threat." Yes, I've often wondered why front row America lost their mind over a man they could vote out 4 years later. Your observation, "once people are dehumanized, as Trump and his supporters have been, there are no limits to what can be done to them," is what disturbs me most.
Jefferson Smith's plea to "love thy neighbor," reminds me of the only rule I had posted in my classroom: Treat your classmates how you want to be treated. A take on "love thy neighbor," it's Golden for a historical reason -- it works.
I am thrilled RCP linked to this piece -- it bears reading and rereading. Thank you, Sasha.
There is a common belief that the Left went crazy when Trump became president. But, the reality is they started on that path to lunacy when Obama arrived on the scene.
Look at the crazy in the women's eyes and the submissive supplication from the men. Look at the communist-style graphics in the opening scene. Listen to the pledges of loyalty to dear leader. The Fourth Turning started in 2009.
This train got rolling during the first Obama term. If you recall, Bill Daley was Obama's Chief of Staff. He left after a very short tenure because, and I don't recall the exact quote but it is close to this: everything was about politics. (remember - Bill Daley was from the Chicago machine - for someone like him to rue overt politicization is pretty remarkable)
It used to be that good policy made good politics, and that was the route to power. Overall, it worked and power, via the consent of the governed, was earned. When Obama ushered in the era of politics above policy, only successful politics was good politics. And with control of the media, all Dem politics are now pre-ordained as successful. Power was no longer earned, it was either taken or fabricated. Power is now mostly fabricated. And thus the loss of consent of the governed.
There are people I love who are caught up in this hysteria. They are genuinely terrified of Trump and people who voted for him. It is very hard for me to find anything I can say that will promote calm, objective thinking. I voted for Trump in 2016, and they can see that I'm not a monster, but that doesn't help. This essay might help.
I don't want people to like or vote for Trump, or think anything at all about him except to see the terrible danger that accompanies hate, the rot that sets in when we nurture the contempt in our hearts towards any human being, when we boast about and take pride in it.
Thank you for this essay. I will send it to some of the people I care about the most in the hope that they can both remember their core solidarity with other human beings and put aside the fear, anger and hatred that now obscures it.
This is one of the most succinct pieces about the history and feelings of the non-partisan-minded, thoughtful-but-not-Trump-deranged person in the Trump era.
It's near-perfect, but I do have some (important) semantic issues I wanted to chime in on. The pill registered, but disgusted democrats/old liberals/"original formula" lefties, et al., are taking is maybe better described as what Matt Taibbi called the "neither pill." I'd maybe go one step further and say it's the "something better has to emerge, and I'll support any efforts towards that something better and stop voting for either of these horrible parties" pill.
I really think calling the modern democratic party, or their newly-minted young, faux-progressive foot soldiers "left" or "far left" is a misnomer. No properly-thinking liberals or leftists of the past would so gleefully support censorship, compelled speech, party unification with the most massively rich corporations in history, using the power of the government to spy on private citizens and/or punish political enemies, the cynical embrace of extreme essentialism over universalism, and/or outright hatred towards farmers, truckers and the working class in general.
The modern cohort of Twitter-brained imbeciles absolutely loves being called "far left." The new flanks of a Republican party, that's quickly and fairly radically overstepping their win-by-default on culture war issues, also loves tarring them "far left," and the feedback loop of continues, into infinity. All of the questionable contrivances that have been being used to describe this young, broken cohort — like "cultural Marxism" — make little sense. If Karl Marx were alive today, does anyone actually believe he'd side with people who'd make laws compelling the use of preferred pronouns over laid off workers, truckers facing byzantine regulations, or top-down policies forcing farmers to go out of business?
I'm no Marxist, and I agree with many prominent thinkers that the old designations of "left" and "right" are becoming meaningless in today's age, but I think what you've so wonderfully written about here — which is tantamount to finding real, true clarity and intelligence in a deeply chaotic time — shouldn't be limited by the outmoded terms that are being wielded like a weapon by the people we're trying to escape.
As the Irish say, good AND bad things come in threes. The ruling class oligarchy is in the process of getting its third, very valuable data set regarding American behavior. The first two concerned Covid and the transgender agenda. The former was about knowing how many people will unquestioningly obey any order, now matter how unconstitutional, if it's framed as "following the science," and/or "keeping you safe."
The latter is about knowing what percentage of Americans are willing to abide the destruction of objective reality and the government coercion that enables it, in exchange for avoiding confrontation and/or being called a name. Because if you insist a man can't get pregnant or menstruate, or that you won't abide the bastardization of pronouns, or children shouldn't be "transitioned" without parental knowledge, the Biden administration has announced it will withhold lunch funding from from your school.
The third data set is all about the raid and learning the percentage of Americans who would effectively abide a de facto police state as long as "their side" is "winning."
Expect all of this data to be exploited at every opportunity. It what the progressive movement is all about.
Given how dogged the attacks on Trump have been, starting even before Day 1 of his presidency, there is no other conclusion to be reached except that the centralized and elite powers with the most influence over our nation fear him greatly. But the unanswered question is “Why?” Given the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the attack effort, I am left to conclude that they fear him because he stands in the way of the Globalists, who want to make the US subservient to a broader international body, and the only way to achieve that is to weaken it: by stoking internal societal division, manipulating media and elections by diminishing/tarnishing anti-Globalist voices, devaluing the currency so it can no longer serve as the global standard, and ceding our independence to international organizations and treaties. I do not know whether the Globalists’ desire is due simply to a belief in the threat of climate change and the need to reduce energy consumption (even if it lowers standard of living for people globally) or is a more nefarious plan to centralize wealth and power in a true 1984-style structure of global governance (the Davos set and China apologists). But I cannot escape the conclusion that this is the most unifying explanation for our current chaos and the ongoing destruction of our long-established sociopolitical norms.
I am an Iowa conservative. I hated Trump. I wrote the state party to complain about their coddling of Trump as far back as 2011. 2 things changed my mind. 1) the campaign assaults against people trying to see Trump for themselves.. in Chicago and Phoenix and other cities and how the media ignored those assaults.. and 2) 2 very good and respected friends were open Trump supporters.. they caused me to take a second look at his philosophies and his positions on topics… from that moment on, I saw Trump not as a sideshow distraction, but as a representative of the common man.. a person who spent his life as much around New York construction workers as celebrities …
You have excellent company: Glenn Greenwald, Batya Ungar Sargon, Bari Weiss and others. What you are chipping at here with your incredibly brave and articulate piece is a foundational principle that I see very few people recognize: The Left and the Right NEED each other. They also need the one to check the other when out of balance. I don't like to use the moniker "Trump Derangement Syndrome" but in a digitally, and I would argue, economically and socially isolated group dynamic, it is akin to Mass Formation Psychosis- a traumatic event affecting the entire community (Trump's election) leads to a cognitive dissonance resolved by latching onto a cause or even a solution that is then echoed incessantly as the ONLY resolution. This is why I am torn apart on Twitter or Facebook by certain people and NO amount of reasoning or facts budges their sudden and consuming hatred of me for merely suggesting that Trump may not be guilty and that despite his many flaws was demonstrably a pretty good president for America over all.
People essentially on the Right may be shocked to realize that we need our Left brothers and sisters to come to their senses, not so they can vote for our candidates or even just agree with us on the nature of reality, but so that we can see one another as fellow human beings that contribute, in unique ways, to our continued survival and even prosperity. This essay is a beginning. That, trust me, is a tremendous compliment coming from an Uber Conservative like myself. :)
To me the biggest redpill moment was how the deep state worked to sabotage a president they didn't like. It never dawned on me before that the administrative state views working for Republicans as optional.
The second was the left's blackballing of anyone who worked for the Trump administration, whether they did anything wrong or not. After that, I do not grant the left the assumption of good faith and concern for country any more.
Everything was spot on except Trump never mocked a disabled person. That was yet another story manipulated and weaponized by corporate media. There's numerous videos of him contorting his body anytime he mocks a person, he even did it mocking Ted Cruz. Search "Trump mocks disabled person lie" on YouTube and filter the results by upload date.
Damn that was a good read. I can’t stand Trump the man, but the lefts insistence on Orwellian type policies and culture is why I voted for him in 2020. They’ve doubled down and I hope people continue to wake up/be red pilled.
"A red-pilled America is probably starting to think the reaction to Trump, rather than Trump himself, might be the even bigger threat." Yes, I've often wondered why front row America lost their mind over a man they could vote out 4 years later. Your observation, "once people are dehumanized, as Trump and his supporters have been, there are no limits to what can be done to them," is what disturbs me most.
Jefferson Smith's plea to "love thy neighbor," reminds me of the only rule I had posted in my classroom: Treat your classmates how you want to be treated. A take on "love thy neighbor," it's Golden for a historical reason -- it works.
I am thrilled RCP linked to this piece -- it bears reading and rereading. Thank you, Sasha.
Excellent piece.
Please reconsider the Trump mocking a disabled reporter story. https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/fake-news-trump-did-not-mock-disabled-reporter-and-other-lies-from-the-left/
It's the fake news that first woke Brandon Straka up and inspired him to start Walk Away.
Excellent.
There is a common belief that the Left went crazy when Trump became president. But, the reality is they started on that path to lunacy when Obama arrived on the scene.
Watch this Obama ad from 2009: https://youtu.be/51kAw4OTlA0
Look at the crazy in the women's eyes and the submissive supplication from the men. Look at the communist-style graphics in the opening scene. Listen to the pledges of loyalty to dear leader. The Fourth Turning started in 2009.
This train got rolling during the first Obama term. If you recall, Bill Daley was Obama's Chief of Staff. He left after a very short tenure because, and I don't recall the exact quote but it is close to this: everything was about politics. (remember - Bill Daley was from the Chicago machine - for someone like him to rue overt politicization is pretty remarkable)
It used to be that good policy made good politics, and that was the route to power. Overall, it worked and power, via the consent of the governed, was earned. When Obama ushered in the era of politics above policy, only successful politics was good politics. And with control of the media, all Dem politics are now pre-ordained as successful. Power was no longer earned, it was either taken or fabricated. Power is now mostly fabricated. And thus the loss of consent of the governed.
There are people I love who are caught up in this hysteria. They are genuinely terrified of Trump and people who voted for him. It is very hard for me to find anything I can say that will promote calm, objective thinking. I voted for Trump in 2016, and they can see that I'm not a monster, but that doesn't help. This essay might help.
I don't want people to like or vote for Trump, or think anything at all about him except to see the terrible danger that accompanies hate, the rot that sets in when we nurture the contempt in our hearts towards any human being, when we boast about and take pride in it.
Thank you for this essay. I will send it to some of the people I care about the most in the hope that they can both remember their core solidarity with other human beings and put aside the fear, anger and hatred that now obscures it.
This is one of the most succinct pieces about the history and feelings of the non-partisan-minded, thoughtful-but-not-Trump-deranged person in the Trump era.
It's near-perfect, but I do have some (important) semantic issues I wanted to chime in on. The pill registered, but disgusted democrats/old liberals/"original formula" lefties, et al., are taking is maybe better described as what Matt Taibbi called the "neither pill." I'd maybe go one step further and say it's the "something better has to emerge, and I'll support any efforts towards that something better and stop voting for either of these horrible parties" pill.
I really think calling the modern democratic party, or their newly-minted young, faux-progressive foot soldiers "left" or "far left" is a misnomer. No properly-thinking liberals or leftists of the past would so gleefully support censorship, compelled speech, party unification with the most massively rich corporations in history, using the power of the government to spy on private citizens and/or punish political enemies, the cynical embrace of extreme essentialism over universalism, and/or outright hatred towards farmers, truckers and the working class in general.
The modern cohort of Twitter-brained imbeciles absolutely loves being called "far left." The new flanks of a Republican party, that's quickly and fairly radically overstepping their win-by-default on culture war issues, also loves tarring them "far left," and the feedback loop of continues, into infinity. All of the questionable contrivances that have been being used to describe this young, broken cohort — like "cultural Marxism" — make little sense. If Karl Marx were alive today, does anyone actually believe he'd side with people who'd make laws compelling the use of preferred pronouns over laid off workers, truckers facing byzantine regulations, or top-down policies forcing farmers to go out of business?
I'm no Marxist, and I agree with many prominent thinkers that the old designations of "left" and "right" are becoming meaningless in today's age, but I think what you've so wonderfully written about here — which is tantamount to finding real, true clarity and intelligence in a deeply chaotic time — shouldn't be limited by the outmoded terms that are being wielded like a weapon by the people we're trying to escape.
As the Irish say, good AND bad things come in threes. The ruling class oligarchy is in the process of getting its third, very valuable data set regarding American behavior. The first two concerned Covid and the transgender agenda. The former was about knowing how many people will unquestioningly obey any order, now matter how unconstitutional, if it's framed as "following the science," and/or "keeping you safe."
The latter is about knowing what percentage of Americans are willing to abide the destruction of objective reality and the government coercion that enables it, in exchange for avoiding confrontation and/or being called a name. Because if you insist a man can't get pregnant or menstruate, or that you won't abide the bastardization of pronouns, or children shouldn't be "transitioned" without parental knowledge, the Biden administration has announced it will withhold lunch funding from from your school.
The third data set is all about the raid and learning the percentage of Americans who would effectively abide a de facto police state as long as "their side" is "winning."
Expect all of this data to be exploited at every opportunity. It what the progressive movement is all about.
It is dangerous to "other" the MAGA crowd. It will lead to no good. Hate is poisonous to the hater.
Great piece. The left has lost its mind and it's getting scarier and scarier.
Excellent article. Thank you.
Given how dogged the attacks on Trump have been, starting even before Day 1 of his presidency, there is no other conclusion to be reached except that the centralized and elite powers with the most influence over our nation fear him greatly. But the unanswered question is “Why?” Given the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the attack effort, I am left to conclude that they fear him because he stands in the way of the Globalists, who want to make the US subservient to a broader international body, and the only way to achieve that is to weaken it: by stoking internal societal division, manipulating media and elections by diminishing/tarnishing anti-Globalist voices, devaluing the currency so it can no longer serve as the global standard, and ceding our independence to international organizations and treaties. I do not know whether the Globalists’ desire is due simply to a belief in the threat of climate change and the need to reduce energy consumption (even if it lowers standard of living for people globally) or is a more nefarious plan to centralize wealth and power in a true 1984-style structure of global governance (the Davos set and China apologists). But I cannot escape the conclusion that this is the most unifying explanation for our current chaos and the ongoing destruction of our long-established sociopolitical norms.
I am an Iowa conservative. I hated Trump. I wrote the state party to complain about their coddling of Trump as far back as 2011. 2 things changed my mind. 1) the campaign assaults against people trying to see Trump for themselves.. in Chicago and Phoenix and other cities and how the media ignored those assaults.. and 2) 2 very good and respected friends were open Trump supporters.. they caused me to take a second look at his philosophies and his positions on topics… from that moment on, I saw Trump not as a sideshow distraction, but as a representative of the common man.. a person who spent his life as much around New York construction workers as celebrities …
Ms. Stone,
You have excellent company: Glenn Greenwald, Batya Ungar Sargon, Bari Weiss and others. What you are chipping at here with your incredibly brave and articulate piece is a foundational principle that I see very few people recognize: The Left and the Right NEED each other. They also need the one to check the other when out of balance. I don't like to use the moniker "Trump Derangement Syndrome" but in a digitally, and I would argue, economically and socially isolated group dynamic, it is akin to Mass Formation Psychosis- a traumatic event affecting the entire community (Trump's election) leads to a cognitive dissonance resolved by latching onto a cause or even a solution that is then echoed incessantly as the ONLY resolution. This is why I am torn apart on Twitter or Facebook by certain people and NO amount of reasoning or facts budges their sudden and consuming hatred of me for merely suggesting that Trump may not be guilty and that despite his many flaws was demonstrably a pretty good president for America over all.
People essentially on the Right may be shocked to realize that we need our Left brothers and sisters to come to their senses, not so they can vote for our candidates or even just agree with us on the nature of reality, but so that we can see one another as fellow human beings that contribute, in unique ways, to our continued survival and even prosperity. This essay is a beginning. That, trust me, is a tremendous compliment coming from an Uber Conservative like myself. :)
To me the biggest redpill moment was how the deep state worked to sabotage a president they didn't like. It never dawned on me before that the administrative state views working for Republicans as optional.
The second was the left's blackballing of anyone who worked for the Trump administration, whether they did anything wrong or not. After that, I do not grant the left the assumption of good faith and concern for country any more.
Everything was spot on except Trump never mocked a disabled person. That was yet another story manipulated and weaponized by corporate media. There's numerous videos of him contorting his body anytime he mocks a person, he even did it mocking Ted Cruz. Search "Trump mocks disabled person lie" on YouTube and filter the results by upload date.