Feb 14, 2022·edited Sep 22, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles
I think it was Dostoevsky who wrote, “Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”
That's all this is. Burning well-known and intelligent and successful people in effigy to condition the broader public into adopting a range of politically acceptable norms and behaviors.
Always love to see an example of someone not beholden to a delicate constitution stand pat. A rarity.
When one single ideology rules every single aspect of public life and actively seeks to silence and destroy anyone who disagrees, you live in a fascist country.
That's totalitarianism, but you're still right about the fascism. Fascism is corporations and government working together to control the population. We've been living an increasingly fascist society where between government and large corporations, individuals don't stand a chance. This is why you never let any entity get too big, and we've let many of them get way oversized.
One of my kids did her freshman year at a California school. We've all come to our senses and moved her back to a sane environment :) Despite being completely online she wanted to get out there and see her new world in person. All the cute little shops downtown were closed by government decree so we couldn't support them but guess what WAS open? Target. We were looking for dorm stuff. They had to bring out cones to support the lines of people in there. I counted 72 people in line. It made me want to cry. Small business = NO. Big business = YES. It was heartbreaking. To eat we were only allowed to get to-go food. We tried to take it to one of the many parks but they were full of homeless people lounging around. Not exaggerating one bit. They were everywhere. We tried sitting on a bench anyway but got accosted several times and couldn't let our guard down so we ate out of styrofoam boxes (hello environmentalists) in our rental car. Again, heartbreaking. This was what she worked so hard for. A college experience and it had been reduced to this for no good reason. While walking around the town square I noticed a couple closed stores had handwritten signs saying they were closed due to robbery. I asked the hotel desk clerk if a crime wave had happened. Sincerely envisioning armed robbers in masks. She said that was what those shop owners felt had happened to them by the government.
Yep. I’ve lived here all my life. As the state has devolved more and more into a bizarre totalitarian far-left mindless state, I watch as many say “enough” and use the equity in their overpriced homes as the financial pivot to move to states that, at least currently, have leadership that emulates a more conservative lifestyle. I stay here mostly because of my family is here and seems pretty much locked in. The other benefit is the weather and the countless miles of beaches. Otherwise - I’d be out of here as well.
Bingo Lillia.The term fascism has been basterdized. Maybe our schools will one day return to teaching history and kids can then teach their parents what Fascism was under Mussolini and the confluence of government corporations and lets not forget media (especially today)
We are teaching our children in the US plenty about fascism - they are living in it and witnessing the damage firsthand. Many are experiencing the damage firsthand. These children will one day teach in or schools how so few of their parents and grandparents bothered to notice the creeping fascism and tyranny because the real fascists distracted them by saying "orange man bad."
Yes, and fascism was illustrated perfectly yesterday at the Super Bowl. Political VIPs and corporate sponsors all maskless, while the city preached the official line to everybody else.
Lillia...nice and clear, i like that. If , overall, you do not get the people on your side by majority...you lost. I do not know your experience, but you have been there.
Truck drivers in todays world are going thru "what it takes to fight". Happening in that industry because, like you say, "gov and large corps." KEEP FREEDOM AWAY from the individual, yet the people, for the most part, do not yet see there lose, hidden by the Media.
My point, the trucking industry is highly regulated and heavily taxed, hence, the high cost of food, the people do not see this.
Truckers are now being asked to sacrifice More Time, in that they must submit to two weeks "down time" and testing, without Extra Pay , this amounts to "Fascism". They already are regulated to the extent that the overall Turn Over Rate is roughly 90%.
I had personnel contact with this industry and twice a VP for a (5th largest) large co. told me they had a turn over rate of 300%...wow, i did verify.
I do believe that our gov. (which is thru the people/Tax) pays for this high turn rate.
Nah - we are a long way from automated trucking. I'm 39 and I remember in middle school hearing how trucking was going to be fully automated by the time we are adults. Certainly, some in town automated deliveries are here and set to expand, but that's much different than a multi-ton vehicle going 70 mph on a shared highway.
Eventually we will be there, but it's still decades away. The mediocre woke urbanites - the base of these crazy leftist - are convinced everything from food to housing to money just magically appears. Its why they buy the WEF "in 2030 you will own nothing, and you will be happy" insanity. They have no clue who ensures society actually runs.
25% of truckers calling in sick for a full week would cripple the economy - and those most impacted would be the crazy leftist - the rest of us would simply prepare first. LOL!!!
Anth...I've Not answers, other than, we are looking to move from our World , some day down the road, sooo maybe we should just "stop" wherever we IS, and "fly me to the moon, Jupiter or Mars".
I prefer to say 'corporate bodies' because it includes large scale power systems like religious and educational institutions. I don't think fascism is only about the military and business, it also requires moral and social conditioning communicated through religious and secular cultural centers.
True. The current ideology has spread everywhere. The Media, churches, schools, large and small companies, etc.. The only way to stop this and turn it around is to speak up. Before it is too late and probably to donate to those that fight these toxic ideologies. PragerU, Daily Wire, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Larry Elder, Turning Point USA, etc..
President Trump was the exact opposite of Mussolini. He vigorously opposed by actions the three countries most abusive of human rights: Russia, Iran and China. He is ranked the 3rd toughest President on the Soviet Union/Russia (behind only Truman and Reagan) while Obama was the 2nd weakest (above only Franklin Roosevelt). He is the only President to be well informed about Communist China and took action against their crimes.
He was a strong supporter of human rights: religious freedom (unique conferences in Washington), women's rights, LGBTQ rights (the only President so far for the latter).
He opposed the oligarchs and favored the workers. His tax reform (the first in 30 years) benefited all but the top 2%, who saw their taxes rise due to the limit on the SALT deduction (and the Democrats now favor the wealthy, wanting to repeal the tax reform!). Black unemployment reached the lowest level on record.
They forced her out and offered a million dollars for her silence. They created a hostile work environment, and yes being tortured by bigots for years and having your life upended represents having your lifestyle destroyed.
Was there ever a time when saying controversial things in public wasn't met with pushback and condemnation. It comes with the territory. She shouldn't be surprised by that. If she wants to become a full-time culture warrior that's up to her. But she should understand why Levis' felt like she was damaging their brand identity with her public statements.
The "controversy" here is "don't abuse children for no reason." I have no understanding how anybody finds that "controversial".
Absolutely nothing she did was unethical. She disagreed with the authoritarians and they got their revenge.
Levi's has now done far, far more to damage their brand than she ever could have. They'll never get their reputation back. They also lost a valuable, experienced leader, and a potential female CEO they could have been proud of. Even from a business perspective, their actions were as stupid as they were evil.
And yes, I saw your previous comment. You're victim-blaming. Standing up to tyrants for the health of children is not being a "full-time culture warrior" nor was she "expecting nothing but applause" - also you ignored the critical point that she agreed with leftist culture on virtually everything else.
One disagreement is enough. If you don't think children should be traumatized for no reason, you're a racist. That's the level of intellect and ethics I can expect from "progressives" now. "Progress" means totalitarianism and authoritarianism from an incompetent government that praises itself for wrecking your life and your children for their own profit.
And you want to justify this? Do you want Trumpers to take over and behave the same? Do you want a society of intolerance and hate, where you lose your job for speaking up for what's right?
"Condemnation" for saying we shouldn't harm children. Unbelievable.
She got a severance package. You only get a severance package if you are let go, fired, dismissed, terminated. The severance would have included $1 million if she had signed an NDA. That's what she refused. I have a feeling she very much wanted to keep her job. But you tell ourself whatever it takes to get you to sleep at night.
You are correct. Isn't it ironic that those that call others "Fascists" are the actual Fascists? But that's not an accident. It's by design. Those that promote these ideas know that projection is effective. It confuses people and if they say something often enough many will think it is true.
It's an essential part of the gaslighting too, like when they started branding Republicans as "conspiracy theorists" spreading "misinformation" after Mueller showed the three-year Russia conspiracy was nonsense.
Anth...people get excited, when i disagree, so i agree with you ,...but aint fascist "militaristic"? Not that issues will not turn. What is happening now, is a long loooong time coming. Great to see Jennifer make such a move, which is anti fascist...thanks.
Fascism has a military component but that is just one part of it. Fascism starts with indoctrination. Then it moves to making sure that anyone that disagrees is silenced or punished. Sound familiar? Look at prewar Germany for just one example. Many Communist countries started with the same strategies. Communism and Fascism are not that different from each other in actual practice.
Sir, she was fired. Anyone who follows corporate governance knows that she was pressured to quit, which is the same as being fired. Or worse, because it's more psychologically damaging to the victim in many cases, to pressure them until they quit.
The authors situation became a textbook example of The Kafka trap.
Non disclosure agreements have lost their effectiveness in recent times - I'd have taken the money and used it to sue the Levi's Company for libel at least.
As for Levi's - that company doesn't even manufacture ONE STITCH of clothing in the US anymore and hasn't for years. Look for sweatshops in India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Indonesia for mfg.
Everytime I read anything lauding Levi's as the All American product representing strong American values like strength, self-reliance or rugged individualism I just roll my eyes.
Levi's has become a poster child for American greed through offshore manufacturing
Probably true. But there is another aspect to this. For a company like Levis to compete they have to sell their products for a somewhat competitive price. That often means offshore manufacturing. Also, the people in many of these 3rd world countries are probably glad to have a job and may make more $ working for Levis than they would make at another local job. Besides that, how do you know that these factories are "sweat shops"? Is there proof of that? If so please show the source. I would love to see more Americans employed in this country. But I am not sure that is practical anymore for all products that we purchase, unfortunately.
This thing exists only to destroy, and for some, that has a dark appeal. It's kind of the Tonya Harding theory of personal advancement: I will get ahead by breaking your leg, by cutting you down. It doesn't want to liberate, it wants to control and scapegoat. The enemy is the individual. The same old story. Retribution and destruction, all those fun things, - of cities, of standards and institutions,of human beings, the latter figuratively, at least for now. Freud's destructive Thenatos, more or less. It's hostile to this nation and its people, actively seeking the breakdown of law and order. Break down, tear down, a license to dehumanize others, studied arrogance, that's their shtick. Many wouldn't have a vocabulary without the word, f@#k. The ideology and its unappealing enforcers exist only in relation to tearing down the "other," they feed on it, which is why it is appealing to the mob mentality and so dangerous.
I love the quote but i don’t think this was said by Dostoyevsky. I believe it is a false attribution. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s any less valid. So here is my question. How do we fight back? How do we stop dying on our separate hills?
Well, the first thing is to realize that you are not in the minority and never will be. Unfortunately, this appears to be manifesting itself right now as a class warfare. The truckers, for example, against the Zoomers that spent most of the pandemic in their pajamas. I have been an indelible member of BOTH worlds, as have a lot of people. We have to get organized. This thread and the responses I see are very hopeful.
I have been watching the Freedom Convoy since day 1 with great hope and admiration, and seeing it spill into Europe Amd Down Under. I was FURIOUS when GoFundMe stole my donation to the truckers and had to contact them to have it returned. The nerve! And fraud. Americans need to get more vocal and organized too.
What did D. (or someone of that era) say about "progress," about what sort of crimes would be committed to appear to be on the "right side of history"?
Feb 14, 2022·edited Feb 14, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles
Thank you for speaking out so bravely for children. As a public school teacher I have witnessed the catastrophe of what these school closures, remote education and incessant masking did to kids. I wish you the best and am glad you decided to do the right thing by going against the groupthink.
As a public school teacher I have aided and abetted the catastrophe of school closures, remote education, incessant masking, and the related harms they- and I - have caused our children.
I won't even dignify that with a response other to say that you don't know me and your comments are beneath contempt. Your comments seem to suggest all teachers are a monolithic bloc which is simply foolish. Good day to you sir.
You most certainly are wrong. Attacking an ally who is doing right by young ppl (while you sit and throw stones on the internet) is pig headed and ignorant. I actually suspect you are far-left, COVIDian plant. Everyone needs to ignore you.
OK, what has Brian done in his school to reverse the damage that he and his fellow teachers have wrought on this generation of school kids? Besides throw himself plaudits on the internet, of course.
Maybe if you would have politely asked him rather than making baseless assumptions, he would have told you. Maybe he goes to the principals office daily to fight for change, maybe he tutors kids after school who fell behind? You’d be lucky if he did respond to you at this point because you exposed yourself as a mean jerk.
Walk a mile in his shoes. It’s like telling parents they’re complicit in mask wearing when they send their kids to school in masks. Some don’t have a choice.
Many do have a choice but chose the path of least resistance at the expense of their own kids. They use all kinds of self-justifications, but in the end for every child that genuinely doesn’t have any good options there is a child whose parents simply chose not to seek out better options.
Certainly there are costs with every choice, but often the parents weigh the cost to them with much greater importance than the cost to their kids’.
Where there is a will, there is a way. What many parents lack is the will, so they never bother to look for the way. It pains me to say, but I see it everyday.
We moved from North Carolina to South Carolina to get our kids in a school that didn't require masks. If that move didn't work we were prepared to pull and homeschool. You do what you need to do when you have to.
In the context of an article where an American hero gave up everything to make a stand for what's right, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who knew it was wrong but stayed silent out of fear.
Financial resources may make it easier to speak out in some ways, but speak out she did. How many with very little to lose other than Facebook likes are willing to do that?
It's fair to say she's not in any financial trouble and never will be. But she's going to lose her lifestyle, a lot of money, and a lot of relationships while also being thrown into a public controversy and risking her career future. She definitely made a sacrifice, and this is one of the first times I've ever sincerely said that it is brave and stunning.
I'm interested to hear what other thoughts you have about those who are 'just following orders.'
And for the record, the ones 'lacking' choice here are the parents, who are required to send their school-aged children to school under penalty of law. Yes, home schooling or private school is an option for some, but not all, and even then it might be a theoretical rather than actual option (e.g. no availability at the private school even if money is there).
I understand that another animal would force the kids to wear their masks if Brian were to resign in protest, much like some other drone will do today's author's job now that she has resigned.
But we heard an awful like of pablum about 'if it saves one life' with measures like, idk, forcing four year olds to wear masks in school. If it changes one mind, by a follower like Brian leading for a change, that would be worth it, no? At least Brian would have a clean conscience, which is worth something.
Alas, we have neither, but Brian still goldbricks his pension and benefits and three months off in the summer plus a week at Christmas, a week at Thanksgiving and another one in March while dumping his mental deficiencies on the backs of children to bear.
Easy for someone to say that this guy should just quit his job in protest without knowing his situation financially or how many people rely on his paycheck. And if I hear one more time about how great it is for teachers with their summers and vacation time when I know from watching my daughter in law who teaches 8th grade what it is like, the amount of time she commits beyond the school day, the “enrichment programs” she must attend during her summers, etc, for the meager pay she gets, I’m going to lose it. You’ve got a lot of nerve.
I would say by far that your opinion is held by a small minority population. Everyone knows teaching is an admirable job and one of the hardest today. I've heard those accusations too and they're wrong. I do believe the teachers union though is greatly in the wrong for shutting down the schools, masking children therefore causing a huge loss of learning on our most vulnerable population. Really tragic!
I'm told this is the tightest labor market in memory. No time like the present for the Brians of the world fed up with the directives to abuse children that they mete out each day in the classroom to find something less repugnant to do.
But the Brians of the world don't find anything else to do.
The Brians of the world, your daughter in laws of the world, they'd rather stay put and continue to abuse children while cashing a paycheck.
My daughter in law is in Florida so no masks and no closure so no “abuse” of kids. She also has to cash a paycheck to help keep food on the table and the lights on. Easy for someone on the outside to say “just quit” when you have no clue as to the individual’s reality.
The mental and harmful reprecussions of our children staying home months on end and as Jennifer stated, the most stable part of their lives is far, far worse than a child coming down with Covid.
You're being way over the top. All he can do is quit. He can't change the policy. This is up to the local community. All over the US, there are plenty of schools that reopened back in summer-fall 2020, and have been mask free for some time now. It is progressive run communities that continue to abuse these kids, and frequently a majority of parents are in on it, since they are themselves progressives. IDK where Brian teaches - he did not mention. But if it's in a progressive school district, then there is nothing he can do to help these kids beyond small measures like not enforcing it in his classroom or on the playground if he is in charge. But, he won't be able to do that very long, since he will get ratted out by some kid to her progressive parents.
Yeah… thanks so much- NOT. the drop out rate in the local high school is horrible; victims of your asinine policies of which you are so proud include my grandkid.
Stephen may be uncouth but he raises the fair point that a lot of these abusive policies came from the teachers union rather than from qualified science.
I don't know how many people here are aware that the CDC was running its guideline proposals by the teachers union for their approval and input. The CDC has never given any evidence that these policies work to prevent the spread. They are rooted in fear and authoritarianism.
I think Americans expected better from our educators, but by and large they've put their own feelings and safety above the health of the children, and that to me is unforgivable. I consider it the sacred life purpose of every person to leave a better world for the next generation, and traumatizing children so that people who've lived full lives can feel a little bit more safety - this to me is the pinnacle of immorality.
But none of that justifies personal attacks on you, and I'm sorry that it happens even in Bari's comments.
Feb 14, 2022·edited Feb 14, 2022Liked by Nellie Bowles
I too am a disaffected liberal who has seen the Democratic Party leave me in the dust as it enthusiastically supports censorship and government control over personal autonomy. I have watched over two years as most everyone in the Boston area lost their minds to fear and blame——towards the most vulnerable people in society, including their own innocent children! Their intolerance toward alternative viewpoints and cruelty towards the unvaccinated (bar them from medical care😥) became too concerning and too unattractive to ignore anymore. Now they are starting to see the light, but so much damage has already been done because those with power and influence made sure of that, and will not stop unless WE THE PEOPLE take back control. We cannot let this greed and venality continue or we will lose our freedom forever.
As a MA resident myself, I agree. Sadly, our elite colleges are at the center of this cultural collapse. They have dumbed down their curriculum with postmodernism and bogus grievance studies. They wantonly shred our society by injecting self-righteous ignorance into it. Ironically, they act like religious zealots themselves ("social justice" ministry), while trying to destroy the religion that held this country together, from the start. It is painful to watch and sad to think that the great state of MA can not right itself.
My respect for our local “elite” colleges has been shattered and I wouldn’t encourage my child to apply to any of them now. But it’s pervasive in most colleges, including my son’s current school in North Carolina, which forced a booster on him last month to return to campus, despite him having contracted a mild case of omicron over winter break. I contacted the dean at Wake Forest to explain that his natural immunity obviates this requirement and I received a careless form letter saying he needs the jab regardless. I no longer like that school and feel grateful he is graduating in May. Revolting how ignorant our “top” schools actually are.
That makes me sad. I know a dozen unvaccinated Wake students…….. most got religious exemptions very very early, but I also know of two who got docs to write medical exemptions for immunity.
Wake was the only school left in NC my husband and I would have considered paying for for our own children. Knowing they forced boosters on young men might shatter that option. 💔
One of the most depressing things of this whole nonsense has been watching young men comply with this insanity so willingly (mostly here I’m talking about the masks). What have we done to raise a generation of compliant young men? That’s not natural or healthy.
Universities further south have been much better in that many haven’t required vaccines at all. Not all schools, but many.
My daughter attends Purdue. They do not require the shots but the coercion to get them is just constant. They test unvaccinated students and faculty weekly, which is blatantly discriminatory given that we now know that the shot doesn’t stop the vaxxed from catching or transmitting the virus. I wouldn’t have a problem with contact tracing, but healthy people with no symptoms should not be subjected to weekly testing when there is no evidence of exposure. My daughter has never tested positive. She had covid last April so probably has some good long lasting immunity. She is sick of the intrusion of having to schedule a weekly test though, and may cave in. Society has trained these young people not to think for themselves and to be overly compliant.
I hope your daughter stands strong. I got my kids signed out of masks early because I wouldn't tolerate dehumanizing them (something much easier as they are in private Christain school). An unintended benefit is the strength it's given my daughter. She used to scare me because she always does everything "right." Straight A's, top athlete, reads an entire book every 1-2 days, extra sweet, will take cruelty on her rather than tolerate it being directed at others.
She has very much embraced standing up to the narrative - she loves going shopping now just to show her beautiful smiling face. Even in the airport on a recent international trip she refused to actually wear her mask most of the time (it was a fake mask and we insisted she wear it through security but let her take it off after we got through). She's learning to distinguish between right and wrong morally while still being that awesome, motivated, perfect little child in other ways. We have less concern about her gullibility. She's also watched a lot of her friends use their masks t hide from the world (10 to12 year old girls)
I'm sure it's hard for your daughter and you are absolutely correct the segregated treatment makes no sense. My daughter is standing up to the masking, but she is fully supported at her school. It's different to be a young adult not supported in choosing a medical treatment. My guess is she's in the home stretch. She's held firm for a long time which is awesome, and she will likely succeed either way, and she has learned an important lesson, but I am hoping she decides to hang on just a little longer. The Covidian régime is falling. She's earned her victory and I hope she gets it.
I’ve noticed the same thing about 10-12 year old girls as well.
My niece is 12. I took her and a friend out downtown a couple weekends ago, and it was like pulling teeth to get her friend to even look up from staring at the ground, let alone engage in any way.
Then, later, we met back up after I let them walk around alone for a bit…and her friend was wearing her mask. Outdoors :-/
She was clearly smiling under the mask, her eyes were twinkling…she was standing straight…making eye contact. It was so strange.
I go back and forth to Florida a couple times a month and many people at the airport (including me) take off their masks after TSA. No one says anything. Not even the police officers walking around. Gives me hope that everyone is getting closer to saying eff this. I have even gotten bold enough at the huge airport in Texas to keep it pulled down throughout the terminal. No one even gives me dirty looks.
When my daughter was in college in California in 2021 she was only allowed to personally interface with the person that tested her twice a week. Food was ordered by app and picked up from a box. She was alone. All...the...time. It was incredibly isolating and took a major toll on her mental health. All classes were online and she was descending into depression so we insisted she do the work from home. Texas was open and allowing normal life. I wondered when anyone would check on her. Didn't anyone notice that she moved out? No. A student goes missing and no one cares? Until 6 weeks later she was questioned about why covid tests weren't being turned in for her. She explained that she was in another state. They had the gall to threaten an already fragile student with cutting off her portal access to classes if she didn't get tested twice a week in Texas and turn in the results to California. What?!? I got involved and I guess I scared them into dropping that ridiculous mandate. The next semester she transferred to a Texas school and has happily been living a normal mask free life there. THIS is the madness the left has created. I grieve for the students that don't have a strong family and are being forced into isolation and depression. The fact that our government is not intervening and sounding the alarm on the shocking suicide rates is criminal. But I guess the people at Levis are totally cool with this.
The treatment she got in CA is literally much worse than how prisoners were treated. Apparently, the worst crime one can commit in CA is to be young and physically there. I'm so glad she is somewhere better getting to grow up not being imprisoned.
I received an.MSCE from Purdue in 1975 and have been a proud Boilermaker ever since. As I write, I am wearing a Purdue hoody. I am very disappointed to read your post.
Purdue was her dream school. She was accepted to every school she applied to. Purdue was the last acceptance. We were so happy that they allowed us to visit campus in 2021 when many weren’t doing that. Masks required but shots are optional. That sold us. She loves it there but I am increasingly disappointed at the c19 messaging coming from the school. I thought they were going to ease up but they seem to have doubled down. Emails every week to get boosted, get vaxxed if you aren’t. The weekly testing of people with no symptoms, only the unvaccinated, is wearing her down. Plus, all of her friends are vaccinated and they are “fine” She has even stated that if the school mandated the shots she would definitely do it because she worked too hard to be accepted to this school and doesn’t want to give it up. These are the things that make a 19 yr old (most of them anyway) want to just give in. We forced her to listen to Rogan’s interview with Dr Malone. I am hoping some of that sunk into her subconscious & keeps her vax free. Her 19 yr old boyfriend just got boosted a couple of weeks ago so I pray he will be ok. However, being ok right now is what she sees as the shot being no big deal. Ugh!
I begged my son to talk to the powers that be at Wake, as he didn’t want to take a booster either, but he’s 21 and decided he didn’t want to fight it. He wasn’t aware of the potential dangers of the vaccine Amd believed it had to be safe if the school was requiring it. I pray he will be spared any future vaccine injury, and I will always resent this school I once entrusted with my son’s safety.
I resent the school for the pressure they put on your son - and it's not even my kid!! If he makes it 6 months post booster, he will likely be fine, but that doesn't excuse the pressure from the school for the useless risk. To force him to inject something he doesn't need for a disease he's already immune to and/ or not at risk of, is cruel.
Thank you for sharing the story, maddening as it is.
Yes….my daughter attends The University of Alabama and the vaccine is not required. However, my daughter chose to get vaccinated, including the booster.
I’ve got no issue with personal choice. University of Alabama’s honors athletics program is already at the top of my daughters list. And she’s only 10. 😂
Yes my compliant “rule follower” 23 yr old went and got it too. At least she listened to me and took her chances with the J&J & hasn’t gotten any booster.The only thing she has noticed is an increase in menstrual cramps. A pretty severe increase in fact.
My kids universities wanted boosters too. I told my kids I was totally against it for their 21 and 19 yo healthy bodies. As adults they can make their own decisions but I begged them to just get tested weekly. My junior daughter is in a year long co-op in her engineering major, so working off campus. She was recently told she didn't even need to test!!! My son has not been contacted about being tested. I figured if we just waited it out a bit, it would implode and it looks like it is.
Count me as a fellow 'Masshole' too, the term people in Maine, NH and Vermont have always used for those of us who vacation in their beautiful states. I used to think that term was only funny - now I'm beginning to believe it's accurate. The radical woke mob is beginning to destroy everything. May they be next, and they eat themselves.
I saw this regressive intolerance in the Democratic party take root back in 2012. Prior to that, I tended to vote Dem in national elections but favored Rep in local stuff.
Democrats have been pushing censorship (aka: micro-aggressions) for a decade. Democrats have been tying identity to value and meaning for about 15 years now. It started subtle but is in full force now.
The Critical Theories forming these religious ideologies have full grip of the entire party now and I don’t know how to untie the party from the religion.
I never really paid attention to this “woke” culture other than to dismiss it as overindulgent parenting and teaching, and I’m sorry I didn’t grasp the nefarious nature of it until this pandemic revealed it fully. All I know is that I want nothing to do with the Democratic Party any longer. I was always a registered Independent who voted more Democratic nationally, like you, but GOP locally as I always liked Charlie Baker and always abhorred Elizabeth Warren. The D party is dead.
I noticed it starting about 20 years ago when I was a graduate student fresh out of college. The assumption that everyone thinks exactly like you…the dismissal and censorship of actually diverse voices…
It annoyed me but I kind of thought…I’ll get my degree and get out of here. They can have their little “safe” campuses populated by people who can’t make it in the real world. It’s not harming anyone.
Well. Now they’ve transplanted campus nonsense into the real world and it’s harming everyone.
I’m glad to see classical liberals like me saying…no more.
I too used to shake my head at “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” and didn’t think hard enough that these same coddled humans would expect the real world or government to take care of them and damage their critical thinking skills. It’s time for good, strong people to change this course before it’s too late. 🙏
Glad that more of you are seeing the light...you give me hope that it's not too late! I fear for my grandson who is entrenched in the woke community at CAL...as are his parents back in LA.
Maureen and Build the human spirit. You have a chance to change the direction. The Governor's race is coming up ans I implore you NOT to vote fot Maura Healey, as she will be the likely D candidate. Instead start to research and throw your support behind a R candidate. If yoi don't do the latter you are asking for more of the same, if not worse, since Baker attempted to use reason and since for public policy even through all the pushback. The attorney general's office has been closed to the public for 2 years now. Choose wisely.
I will not vote for any Democrat ever again, period. I can’t abide any party that supports censorship and government control. The government answers to us, not the other way around, and too many people have forgotten this fundamental fact of Our American ideology.
I completely agree. I am contemplating joining an R caucus as well here in MA. I need to put my money where my mouth is and start being more proactive. I see the writing on the wall to inactivity and I despise what I see.
I curse the Dems for their current sorry state, and also for making me remember how awful the Repulicans are. Right now, they seem to believe in nothing except opposing the Dems. But for right now, that' will have to be good enough. Otherwise (and I speak as a longtime skeptic and debunker) we will be served up to the contemplated global paonopticon, and a harshly judgemental and stupid one at that.
I was introduced to this brand of thinking back in graduate school, in the early 00s. Our English department was dominated by ideologues. The younger professors seemed to think that it was their moral duty to use their lecterns as bully pulpits for preaching that ideology.
I was planning to get a Women's Studies certificate along with my M.A., but the second Women's Studies class I took put me off the idea altogether. It was a Feminist Theory class, with both grad students and undergrads. It was rare for class to end without one student or another in tears as a result of being berated by the professor for some "wrong" belief. On one occasion, we were assigned to go to a play on campus; no one in the class agreed with the professor's opinion of the play, and she was furious at us.
I was one of a handful of students who was resistant to the ideology being preached in our department. It was astonishing to me that the tactics being used to try to "convert" me were disturbingly similar to the tactics of Fundamentalist Evangelicals--the only real difference was the "doctrine" I was required to believe in order to be considered a decent human being. When people talk about "Woke" being a religion, I can only think that yeah, I knew that 20 years ago.
One of my professors confessed to me that she had become more moderate as she got older, but she begged me not to reveal that to anyone. She said it would be "social suicide" (her exact words). Again, remember this was 20 years ago.
I have watched this ideology spread from Academia into the rest of society. Back in 2012, I began openly warning people about the risks of attacking others for not having the "correct" beliefs. No one took me seriously.
I have had a somewhat similar experience when I arrived to the US in 1998 as a Fulbright grant scholar from Russia. I was listening to my Political Science professor at a private college and thinking What-is-this-I-m-hearing?!? At the time I attributed it to the MidWest attitudes and close minded religious community.... When a Kansas City Star reporter spotted me at a public event one day and learnt I was a foreign student, he asked me what were my thoughts if the USA. So, I gave him a “Russian Feedback” (short and blunt). I said, well, it’s very much like the USSR here, hypocrisy and burocracy. The next day my quote graced the Kansas City Star pages and my professors were scandalised. 😹 Well, here we are, twenty years later, somehow that “close-minded-midwestern-mind-set” took over US leading institutions. Now, that was a twist… 😵💫
I have been a Reagan Republican since 1988. The problem I have with the GOP the last 4 years is their break from reality. The Dems have some terrible ideas, but we know what they are. The GOP is flat out asking us to believe things that are false and telling us they are true. That is the tell tale sign of Fascist or Authoritarian Governments. So for me, it's a question of which one is the greater evil. I can fight the wokism on my local level, but I can't fight authoritarianism on the National Level. Right now, today, I find the authoritarian branch of the GOP to be a greater threat to American than the woke left.
Sure. Let's start with Day 1)- Inauguration. Trump wanted the country to believe that more people attended his inauguration than Obama. Asking people to believe that which is false. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but that is how fascists do it, 1 small step at a time. 2) Believe that the election was stolen. Simply False. 3) Jan. 6 a) wasn't violent b) was a false flag operation.
And that’s more dangerous than what the Left has done with regards to the Russia lie, Hunter and his influence peddling, and the desecration of free speech? Really?
P.S. Ashli Babbit
P.P.S. See Ashli Babbitt AND my husband who is currently in ICU after heart surgery. Dude is young, fit; took the vax as it was promised by Dems to prevent Ovid, and well, you can guess the rest. You’re an idiot.
1) There was no Russia Lie (That's part of believing what isn't true-- don't forget Trump refused to testify under oath there) Russia did try to infiltrate the Trump Campaign- (His campaign manager was paid by the Russians) the campaign was just so unorganized, they couldn't do it. Russia did have (and still does have) an extensive facebook and social media operation to sow discord in America. 2) I agree, on the free speech, I really wish Sean Hannity and Donald Trump didn't excommunicate every Republican that speaks the Truth. 3) Ashli Babbit was shot entering the house chamber by a Capitol Policeman during a riot. Period, End of Story. You believing anything else is proof of the Fascist Lies. 4) The vaccine works and prevents almost all deaths. It prevented most transmission from the original Covid Strain and a lot Delta Transmission. Less effective in preventing Omicron Transmission. Still very effective in preventing severe disease and death. Unfortunately not 100% 5) I was more concerned with the Copyrights that Ivanka Trump got from China right at the beginning of the Trump Presidency. 6) Check out the Panama Papers. They sure used Trump Properties a lot. 7) No, I'm not in the least concerned by anything that Hunter Biden has done or will do. 8) I didn't call you names, but you called me an idiot. That isn't nice, but it is the last resort for the Fascists. Denigrate your oppponents. Make them less than human. Then annihalate them.
With your complaints, you must see the Democrats as full on autocrats from a dystopian future.
Take the 2000 election: 75% of Democrats believed Gore really won and the SCOTUS decided the election.
Take the 2016 election: Even Nancy Pelosi called Trump an illegitimate President for over 2 years. Over 50% of Democrats believed Hillary actually won.
Jan 6th was a cluster F and really was NOT violent. Compare it to the firely, but mostly peaceful, protests of the previous 6 months that left dozens murdered and peopled burned to death. This also included an assault on the Capitol.
How do you feel about the Democrats falsifying evidence against a political rival and leaking that to the FBI and press?
How do you feel about the Democrats pushing a known false narrative of Russian collusion for 18 months? This was done with data the Democrats manufactured.
How do you feel about the Democrats using that knowingly falsified evidence to get wire taps of their political rivals by lying to the FISA courts?
That is communist level authoritarian behavior.
Both parties have issues but we know the woke ideologies lead to the deaths of 10’s, if not 100’s, of millions.
Let's not forget when Seattle leftist radicals wrecked their downtown, then spent a month assaulting federal officers and federal buildings until the state ceded three blocks of land to them, which they declared independent from the federal government.
A lot of this phone 'insurrection' talk is meant to distract from the fact that the BLM riots included an actual armed insurrection against the federal government that occupied land for several weeks until people started dying from - guess what - homicides due to a lack of the police they were protesting.
Every single thing Democrats accuse Republicans of is something they've done far more of for far longer. Denying legitimate election results, misinformation and disinformation in public messaging, intolerant cultish behavior, promotion of violent radicalism in the youth, false conspiracy theories, etc.
When I was in Seattle in January 2020 I was warning everybody that coronavirus was serious and that we had only a few weeks to shut down the borders to keep the country from being infected. I was widely mocked as a right-wing conspiracy theorist spreading racist misinformation, because that's what the corporate propaganda was telling everybody.
And you think I'm the one that "broke from reality."
1) 2000 Election-- Al Gore conceded with a Dignified Speech on National Television There are sore losers and people saying why they lost ( Pat Buchanan votes on the Butterfly Ballot) and it was a loss by less than 500 votes in Florida. A little different that the theory of massive electoral fraud by Dems across 5 States.
2) Hillary Clinton a) Conceded the morning after the election; b) attended the inauguration. Perfectly normal behavior. I don't believe any state that says 50% of Dems believed she won. Maybe they think she would've won if not for Russia Interference ( I think she would've won if not for Comey 10 day before the election)
3) Tell the non-violent part to the police officers beaten with flag poles, sprayed with substances (bear spray) and beaten with clubs that it wasn't violent. As we are seeing, there was a plan to delay or stop the electoral college count.
4) I think you are referring to the Steele Dossier. I believe that was started by The Cruz campaign in the primaries. We also don't really know what was or wasn't true (How are those Trump Tax returns looking? Oh right, he never did produce it)
5) There was Russian involvement. Maybe not collusion, but the Russian wanted Trump to win and they did what they could to help him. He accepted their help by using the materials they made public (Wikileaks)
6) Any agent giving false information to a judge should be prosecuted.
7) We know that Fascists lead to deaths of 10's if not 100s of millions. How can you support a party where Liz Cheney of all people is no an enemy? she is the most conservative member of the Caucus. Right on every Right leaning issue from Abortion to taxes to immigaration. She just calls Donald Trump like she sees it and now she is persona non grata. Gimme a Break.
4)"Started by the Cruz campaign"? No, the evidence shows that it was paid for from the start by the Clinton campaign through their lawyers.
5) Russia wanted Trump to win? That is literally IMPOSSIBLE. Clinton was as faithful to doing what the Russians wanted during the Obama Administration and beyond and they knew she wouldn't change. Trump was the 3rd toughest President opposing Russia/Soviet Union, and his many actions make that clear.
Early in his Presidency Donald Trump said to his followers Don't believe what you are seeing. You talk about the 2000 and 2016 elections. I saw what happened. I saw how they were conceded by the losing candidate. You cannot possibly equate what is goin on now with how those candidates conducted themselves after the election. This all part of what we started talking about. Having people believe things that are false are true. Once that happens, he can get his people to do anything and they will feel justified. There are dangerous times ahead. Thanks to Donald Trump, we no longer have peaceful transitions of power and I fear we won't for some time to come. Ultimately, that is what Donald Trump has cost this nation.
Exactly right. For example, January 6 is considered the second worst attack on Congress in the last 5 years. James Hodgkinson's attempt to assassinate 24 Republican members of Congress was by far the worst attack in decades. And the massive invasion of the Capitol during the Kavanaugh hearings probably was worse than January 6: far more people invaded the building and the hearing room was invaded, too, for several days, not just a few hours.
Yes, 81 million votes for the perfect example of a narcissist. He is indeed uneducated, as he never had any non-government position. And certainly sociopathic: just look at the many times he disrupted events by grabbing young women and sniffing their hair! And the ultimate narcissist, whose career was always about him getting praise (even bragging about getting an award from George Wallace!) and money. His term is certainly doing a lot to divide us!
We live under fascism compliments of the Democrats. Sad you can’t see that at your age. Sad your going to sit by as this country is destroyed for the next generation. But hey, Hillary only committed treason, and the woke destroyed an entire generation of kids, but that’s cool with you because clearly not authoritarian orange man made mean tweets? Sad in you. And weak.
No. We live under a thriving capitalist system. We have freedom of speech, but not freedom from responsibility for that speech. My kids are great. Living a good life, thriving. I didn’t limit them or force them to hate our country, like you must be doing to your children. My children understand that we live in the greatest country ever. I wish you would teach that to your children.
No, we don't. We have government in bed with big business and the media on behalf of the Democrats - that is definitionally fascism. You need a dictionary. We have government actively destroying small businesses and funding big business. There is no healthy free market capitalism at this point. There is economic consolidation and blatant fascism.
Did you miss the DOJ's domestic terrorism memo this week? Or the one directed at parents? Or the emails where the government is working with big tech and the old people media to censor speech? Did you miss the media is covering up actual treason from the Durham investigation?
Sorry Craig, your comments are uninformed, and you aren't convincing anyone of anything other than your own gullibility to left wing political propaganda. There are plenty of criticisms an informed person can make about any politician in this country, and yet all you have is a regurgitation of the most left-wing partisan media fake talking points - much of it from today's articles no less!!!!!
Not going to comment on your professed opinion. But in making your point, is it really necessary to comment on Craig's age? How do you know how old he is? He could be younger than you. And the fact that he is weak? How do you know? Tell him why you disagree with him, NC - don't tell him what you think of him. You don't even know him. Stop with the personal crap.
1 - I was born while Regan was in office thus it is basically impossible for him to be younger than me
2 - I don't know how old he is, but assuming he doesn't get 5 boosters and die 'suddenly" of "natural causes" then he's at least middle aged and getting older. His age maters because he is entirely comfortable throwing a generation of kids out like trash. It's good to remind the woke crowd that while they may hate kids, one day they are going to be old and the kids they insist on destroying are who they will depend on for care, services, and pretty much everything else in their final days. Craig clearly doesn't care about destroying kids today, but most people don't want a very damaged and angry human wiping their bums in the nursing home. Maybe he should consider that.
3 - Only weak people are unable to see the truth about the Covid restrictions and Hillary Clinton. Weak people can't admit they were wrong. Weak people dispose of children like trash. Weak people buy every bt of clearly false narrative. Weak people link to Twitter as their news source. Weak people regurgitate articles they read that very day basically word for word.
4 - I have told hm why I disagreed with him. He came back with demonstrably false narrative. How exactly could Trump be fascists when business and the media hated him? You can't be fascist or authoritarian unless the institutions required to meet those definitions participate - as they clearly do with Democrats. The very organizations needed to have a fascist in office literally spread demonstrable lies for the entire time Trump was in office to undermine him.
You don't like my style. That's fine. But I don't know you and I certainly don't take it easy on humans knowingly and intentionally destroying my children's generation because you don't like it. Two-year-old's in the US are being treated worse than convicted murders under Biden. Convicted murderers have more bodily autonomy than Biden thinks the working population should have. If Craig doesn't want to be attacked personally, maybe he should stop supporting the attacks on the physical bodies of other adults and US children.
Now THAT's a dissertation! Without an ad hominem attack. I'll be brief - I think the 'kids' will be fine after two yo yo years of no school/school, no mask/mask. It's been an unholy mess, but they're resilient. They'll make it. You know who's not resilient? We are. The people commentating. We hate Hillary. We hate Trump. We hate Dems. We hate the GOP. We hate the USA the way it is today. We want the USA of yesterday. I get that. We basically hate each other. One half of this country intensely dislikes the other half. Right? How do we fix that? (assuming we want to.) By talking, with maybe fewer insults - and I've thrown a few in my day.
And as for 'demonstrable' lies - whatever lie was thrown Trump's way he clearly responded in kind. i don't think he could discern a falsehood from the truth - he just said what he wanted and needed to say. As he does today. Which is why more and more Repubs are (very) slowly pulling away from him.
No I really have been. I was in 6th grade when the Iran hostage events took pls e. My first real memories of big national events. I grew up with Reagan as President. I read the WSJ almost everyday since 1991. Sorry to disappoint you. But trump isn’t fit to hold Reagan’s socks.
I must disagree with "But trump isn’t fit to hold Reagan’s socks." The Trump admin accomplished what I call a miracle in creating the highly successful Abraham Accords. This achievement in furthering peace and prosperity is hugely significant and contributed to many suggesting he be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump gets the credit for getting the winning team together to make the Ab Accords happen. Yes, Trump has many flaws, but if you study history and the bible, most if not all our "heroes" have flaws. Obama is incredibly eloquent, handsome, charismatic, and a good role model - and he did win the Nobel Peace Prize for? what the world hoped he might accomplish? In reality he whimpered away from his "red line in the sand", allowed ISIS to dominate, and so many poor policies where he was a pushover and a disgrace. Most people are a mixed bag. Trump has a long list of achievements, though his character offends many of us.
Craig...what gets me, when you state " The Gop/ Dems is flat out..." , how can i consider what you say when you do not finish your thought, to what are the "false/ true"
This is great advice for life generally, but I don't see these things as a unified political force powerful enough to fight back against the tech companies, institutional ideology, or federal abuse. We need the kind of leadership and activism that has got leftist radicals into the streets for years, and I don't see that happening outside of maybe DeSantis.
I'm consider joining the Florida migration, but we need more than that to stop the withering of our rights and values.
Well, DeSantis is part of it. But there are others. GA has a lot of people standing up. The mid-west. Texas. Some in NC and SC.
We didn't get here overnight. We got here slowly, then quickly. We will get out of it the same. We have to take the progress we CAN get and keep building on it.
Go watch Devin Nunes interview on Epoch Times about Trump media (a genuine news organization founded by Chinese dissidents - well worth the money which isn't that much). Nothing gives me more hope than what they are doing - and it's not just social media. It also gives me hope Trump won't actually run but is teasing to keep heat off others who will. That is likely wishful thinking. DeSantis would probably take 48 states. I'll vote for Trump, but prefer someone else, and I'll vote for someone else in the primary. I think he has a bigger voice from the outside.
I too hope Trump's campaigning is a distraction, and that Trump will support an alternative candidate.
If the country survives another two years of this administration, getting involved in the Republican primaries will in my opinion be the single most important thing we can do.
That's not fair. Both parties changed over history. Decades ago the Dems were for working class and women's rights. Not more. And Decades before that the Republicans were for black civil rights. "Before" was a different time-space continuum.
Let me clarify. I am referring to more recent events, 20 years or so. Change is inevitable and IMO should be welcomed. But the move into Progressivism has thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
Yes I agree. I first noticed it about 20 years ago…specifically because I was in higher Ed.
Not everyone was though…and as I mentioned above I often thought…this is annoying but it has no real-world impact. People joked about the quirky, disconnected inhabitants of the “ivory tower” for a reason.
The movement to take this ideology from the classroom out into the public sphere is much more recent…and has accelerated at an alarming rate over the past 5-6 years.
A friend works for a large recruiting agency. One of the their biggest clients told her not to recommend white men for positions anymore. They said it in a word salad but that is the directive.
Why has it accelerated over the last 5-6 years? I think it's because of the rise of the right over the last 5-6 years. As the right got righter, the equal and opposite reaction is the left getting lefter. For example, First, it was the right primarying long standing Congressman to get a more conservative GOP Congress, now it the left doing it. The Progressive Left moves to Communism, the Alt Right moves to Fascism. But, it isn't a line, it is a Circle. Communism and Fascism meet and both bring the destruction of individual liberty. Don't forget that the Right was the first to cancel people-- The Dixie Chicks. Now both sides cancel with abandon, the right also, once someone is labeled a RINO- they are done.
No. In fact I pretty much think the exact opposite.
I think the current iteration of the far right is in response to the extremism, elitism, and negligence of the left, especially the progressive left.
I think the left calling anyone and everyone who disagrees with them racists, homophobes, bigots, white supremacists, and more has pushed normal people further to the right.
I think the elitist machinations of the progressive left (from the children of the 1% occupying Wall Street and burning down minority-owned businesses in the name of racial justice to Clinton, Cuomo, and his democratic congress passing terrible monetary policy and fixing interest rates in the housing industry to befriend Chinese investors...thereby setting the stage for the housing bubble and the Great Recession that cost millions of citizens their homes...which was also done in the name of social and racial justice, incidentally) pushed normal people further to the right and gave us Trump.
And I now think that the left's insane, anti-science response to the pandemic, their clear political maneuvering on the backs of our children, and their cheering for censorship and big tech against everyday citizens...is also pushing normal people further and further to the right.
I know this because I wasn't even on the right, and this behavior has pushed me here. I can't imagine how people who were already ideologically aligned with the right must feel. I suspect they feel sad and vindicated.
While I agree that both sides have their problems, and while I agree that the extremes of both sides meet in a circle and are not a straight line/continuum, it seems very clear to me which side is currently more dangerous to everyday citizens.
Because of this...the question of "who started it" is completely irrelevant and such a waste of time. (Though...to be clear...I think it was the left.) Ultimately, who cares? What does knowing "who started it" get me? How does it impact my life and my voting tendencies RIGHT NOW?
To me the bigger question is...which party is doing more to support freedom right now? Which party is more likely to try to harm me or my livelihood if I speak out against their ideology? If I have an even slightly differing viewpoint?
Which side seems to be consolidating power and seems willing to use that power against everyday citizens? Which side seems to think that the media should be its lapdog and work in lockstep with its ideology? Which side seems willing to alter facts and harm people, even minors, in its rush to narrative?
Which side cheers on censorship? Which side deplatforms people by the hundreds and pulled a well-researched article written by a reporter at a 100-year-old publication two weeks before a presidential election in an effort to affect the outcome of that election? Which side has taken alternative social media outlets off of its servers?
Which side would I be more terrified to disagree with on a public forum? (oh this one isn't even close!) Which side has big tech, big business, and the media all aligned in lockstep with its one approved narrative and is granting its stamp of approval to an ever-narrowing list of writers, thinkers and speakers? (The three most powerful organizations to ever exist in the history of the world are all acting in slavish devotion to one approved narrative...what could possibly go wrong?!)
Which side mocks and ridicules anyone who disagrees? Calls people who disagree racists and bigots? Calls people who even attempt a question or a reasonable discussion racists and bigots?
I think the answer to all these questions is abundantly clear. It's no contest. There's a reason you're reading this article on Bari Weiss' substack and not in The Washington Post. There's a reason Bari left The New York Times and why journalists of substance are leaving traditional outlets and flocking to Substack.
Like NCMom has stated, it will be a long, long time before I trust anyone with a (D) by their name enough to vote for them...because of all of these behaviors and more.
PS - I find it hilarious and the height of irony when leftist apologists try to defend cancel culture or say: 'But both sides do it!!!"
Invariably, they do what you did. They point to an isolated instance or two of the cultural right (usually the religious right) choosing not to buy something or participate in something due to differences in lifestyle choices.
So...yeah. You are correct that *some people* on both sides do this. Some people on the religious right burn their Dixie Chicks CDs and won't go to Disney World. Some zealots on the left refuse to step foot in Chic-Fil-A and delete their Spotify accounts.
A school board in a right-leaning district removes MAUS from its curriculum because of violence, language, and nudity. A school board in a left-leaning district removes TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD from its curriculum because Atticus is supposedly racially problematic. A pastor encourages his congregation to burn their HARRY POTTER books because wizards and witches are bad. A woke social justice warrior encourages her followers to burn their HARRY POTTER books because J.K. Rowling said that being a woman is a thing.
I may disagree with all of this nonsensical activity (and I do) but none of it is censorship or cancel culture. It's all run-of-the-mill boycotting, voting with your wallet...freedom of expression and association. It's actually the bedrock of the first amendment, not a challenge to the first amendment.
Censorship does not occur when parents and a school board work together to create a curriculum for their minor children. Censorship occurs when the government and big tech collude to decide who can and cannot speak in the public sphere. Censorship is when the powerful deplatform and silence the less powerful, particularly when the powerful party is the government or is acting in the interest of the government, as Twitter did when it prohibited people from sharing a legitimate news article even in their own direct messages. That is textbook censorship and a textbook violation of the first amendment.
Cancel culture does not occur when some fundamentalist family chooses not to go to Disney World on vacation. Cancel culture occurs when a New York Times author with nearly a million followers mobilizes an online mob to go after some random twenty-something woman and take everything from her on the basis of a 12-second videotaped interaction. Again, it's the person (or people) in the position of power using their power to take down a real person in the public sphere.
The reason I find this to be so hilarious and ironic...is because people on the left who are so uber-sensitive to any power imbalance, be it real or perceived...suddenly and conveniently don't understand power dynamics at all when discussing censorship and cancel culture. They're all like: "What power dynamic?? Where??? I don't see it..."
Puh. Lease.
Pardon me while I go puke. And pardon me if I don't agree to pretend like some po-dunk pastor somewhere burning a few copies of one of the most popular books of all time...is exactly the same thing as powerful big tech and social media companies systematically deplatforming people on the basis of their political beliefs. Or if I won't agree to pretend like 99% of all cancel culture stories don't come to us courtesy of the left.
So many of us have been with you getting attacked from day 1, despite being right from day 1. Wouldn’t it be nice if at least some of those Covidians who threw out poor and middle class children like trash would at least say “I was wrong and I’m so sorry”? But they won’t. It’s not the leftist way.
It’s the US leftist way to go to super bowl with tens of thousands maskless adults then demand 5 year olds in the same city today wear N95s on the playground. It’s the leftist way to fire already immune first responders for failure to “comply” with a failed medical treatment for a disease they are already immune to (with NYC and LA firing thousands this month despite the overwhelming evidence the stupid shots don’t work).
Subjugating the service class and treating children like nonhuman pawns is the fascists left way. It’s the Brandon way. It’s the Democrat way.
Levi’s carrying water for the leftist subjugating the service class and intentionally destroying kids is one of thousands of examples of woke corporations wanting to prove their loyalty to misguided Dem policy more than any other corporate goal. It’s cruel, it’s destructive, and it will only get worse as long as people keep supporting these woke companies in bed with Democrats, and as long as they insist on voting for fascists Democrats that will absolutely use the private sector to enforce their cruel and destructive ideologies.
What about Stacy Abrams smiling brightly and UNmasked in an actual classroom surrounded by a couple dozen masked 6 year olds!😡 So many hypocritical images like that have made our blood boil, and they’re too arrogant and tone deaf to care. And then turn more tyrannical when we object. I’ve had enough already. Abrams is the obese adult at serious risk but it’s the healthy young children who are forced to cover their faces.
Or the NFL having the super bowl unmasked in LA yesterday, but 5 year olds must wear an n95 on the playground today. Adults can lose the mask tomorrow, but kids must keep them in for “the foreseeable future” 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
And now we know these crooked Democrats and their media buddies committed treason by trying to fake server interactions between Trump and Russia. That’s treason!!!!! These lunatics are destroying children and committing blatant treason!!!!!
Every celebrity they were breaking LA mandates, Sofi policy and Super Bowl protocol and the they KNEW millions of people were watching live. They might as well have flipped off the cameras. Enough of this ridiculous mask stuff already. If the president wants his approval rating to go up he could go on tv tomorrow and say No More Masks! When the roar of the crowd and the applause died down he could then say Stop Disrespecting the Police! Now! I bet that would get him lots of poll points.
Of course she gaslights her critics with the usual racist label. They have zero merit so it’s all ad hominem attacks and thankfully few are buying it anymore.
I’m not nearly political enough a person. I’m far too blunt. I’m fortunate that I’m not scared to use my voice, and I have helped local politicians opposed to this crap with research and money.
I can’t be “nice” about discussing child abuse. So I wouldn’t last long. Right now I can be heard…..
I’ve had enough of “nice” politicians who stab us in the back. We all want honest and blunt in the people who would represent us, not lecture us as they do now. 🥵
Donald Trump proved that being blunt (or even offensive) isn't necessarily a liability. What the people crave is authenticity, of hearing what someone really believes—not pseudo-beliefs formed in response to public polls and study groups.
You should think about it. Start with a small, local position. School board? City council/County commissioner? Or precinct chair if you are in a populated area.
From reading your comments I think you would reach center folks and IMO that is what we need. I try not to tar all Democrats with the Progressive brush. After all if it were not for Manchin and Sina things would be worse.
My sister and her husband are Seattle Ivy League grads.
Sadly, I can confirm lockdowns made them richer, they care nothing at all about the suffering of the rest of the country, they quote propaganda and misinformation all the time, and as you said they are far too proud to admit fault on anything.
What Levi’s and other American corporations are doing by submitting to the woke Twitter mob is unamerican but it’s a direct result of over compensated executives who trade their morals and principles for unearned million dollars salaries.
Excellent point. They are patriotic to the all-mighty dollar, not to the country that it represents. (Heck, we might as well start using Indian Rupees and forget the dollar altogether... jk)
“I proposed to the company leadership that we weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city, San Francisco. We often take a stand on political issues”
————————————————-
Important to note that we are currently having a panic attack about how gay children in Florida will *kill themselves* if teachers don’t get to have an open dialogue with their students about sexual activity.
(vomit emoji)
SUMMARY: No sex talk with your teacher means you commit suicide BUT ALSO when schools are closed and you never see your teacher at all…….this is good and smart.
We must continue to emphasize that these people are dumb and terrible.
There is one thing I’m trying to figure out right now that I’m stuck on and that’s the question; why do they use the term “black bodies”?? They keep talking about bodies. Why?
I have some pretty easy ideas but I’d like to hear what you think.
I read a comment somewhere that suggested that the "black bodies" and "bodies of color" trope is supposed to evoke images of slave ships bringing "black bodies" from Africa to the United States (but not anywhere else in the Americas, I guess). I thought that sounded reasonable.
Yeah okay that’s what I thought also. Maybe you expand it to our broken bodies being exploited by the capitalist system and we should be able to express our carnal desires but there’s repression etc etc.
I think “black bodies” is definitely a slave thing. For the people who say it, it’s dehumanizing of yourself, which is weird, but the goal is to demonize someone else so you can easily rationalize dehumanizing yourself in pursuit of that.
I absolutely appreciate your point of view. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years. Earlier on I would have sided with you but I have changed my view.
This will sound needlessly crass but I hope you consider it.
You have to treat them like shit otherwise the average person observing will not realize how dangerously wrong they are.
Imagine if a rape was taking place and you said
“Pardon me, dear sir.”
If you debate them civilly it will appear the same as a discussion over the top marginal rate, when in fact we are discussing the difference between freedom and hell.
Obviously the tricky part is separating the people who are on the fence from the demonically possessed before taking this approach.
In this particular example, the people who are feverishly clawing, with spittle in their mouths and fire in their eyes, for the ability to talk intimately with children about sexual activity are human dogshit and I will treat them as such because it’s appropriate to treat them as such. It would be a moral failing to treat them with decency in my opinion.
Hope that makes sense. I don’t expect you to agree. Thanks for the kind reply!!
No need to mince words, tell us what you 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 think. 😀
Your position has merit. We have an old tradition that says "Anyone who becomes merciful upon the cruel will end by being cruel to the merciful."
Still, it's unlikely that any of the people you're talking about are actually 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 to hurt children. I don't expect you'll bring them around to your side, but I also don't expect many people who were on the fence to fall in behind you to do battle, so the result is just adding to the total of invective and ratcheting the bad feelings up higher.
I’m not sure intent matters when the outcome is evident……. Beating one’s wife and children is demonic even if the intent wasn’t to “really” harm them. Self-justification isn’t actual justification.
I have gone down the same path as Kevin. People are supporting and overseeing mass child abuse. It’s cruel. It’s evil. It’s based on incredible stupidity - why have gas masks and hazmat suites to deal with particles 25x -100x the size of a virus aerosol if a cheap tissue mask, or even n95, actually worked????
The Covidians are stupid people. Which is much kinder than the alternative - which is that they are intentionally cruel people who intend to harm children via mass child abuse. While this is likely true for the activists and policy makers, I’d prefer to hope the supporters are just morons who deserve to be called out as the idiots they are. For those who know better but support this crap anyway, pure evil is a good description.
While there are policy makers who create this stuff, the followers are just lemmings, incapable of independent thought. That there are so many is what truly disturbs me. Even the ladies who have been published on Common Sense of late are only coming around after seeing the damage to the children. How did they not see it coming? IMO the failure to do so makes them complicit. And the real test of them will come at the polling place. Will they be able to separate the candidates who support this type of thing from the ones who do not? My guess is no, they will see those candidates as viable for other reasons that they (the voter) still believe wholeheartedly. Perhaps their children will be different when they come of voting age.
I agree completely. I think their failure to apologize means they haven't actually learned anything as well. It is literally impossible for them to just say "I was wrong to support these draconian policies and I am so sorry."
At the same time, I see many more willing to say they were wrong and regret it and actually direct some anger at the people who intentionally lied to drum up fear and compliance. The question for them is the length of their memories. I used to vote for Democrats. While I woke up before 2020, I deeply regret many of my past votes. I was gullible and dumb. At 39 I can say that I may never vote for another Democrat again because I am so enraged at their insistence on pushing harmful ideologies and counterproductive policies. I see more people like me open their eyes every day. No one is more passionate than a convert that realizes they had been lied too over and over and over again
If Democrats, clearly still controlled completely by the far left, win in 2022 0r 2024, we have only seen a fraction of the damage and lost opportunity coming for our kids.
I have no crystal ball and cannot predict 20 years from now, but just as it was predictable that closing schools and forcing kids as young as 2 into dehumanizing face masks would have terrible outcomes, it is predictable that if people don't solidly and overwhelmingly vote these leftist tyrants from office on a massive scale that a much worse outcome with totalitarian control awaits us. But if we can get these creeps out of office then perhaps we will witness a resurgence of liberty and freedom.
I think the people who are most rabid about the Covid stuff are motivated most by political expediency…and their addiction to feeling superior.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a selfish conservative greedy bigoted garbage person on social media…because I question mask mandates, question vaccine mandates (I myself am vaccinated but believe in freedom), say that trans women being out into female prisons is cruel and unusual, say that I think the truckers are correct, question our school policies, grieve what we’re doing to our kids…
And other such moderate positions…which used to be common on the center-left.
At any rate. Like many others here, the Democratic Party is dead to me until they can get their radical zealots under control. I didn’t vote in the last presidential election and will likely vote R in the midterms and the next election regardless of candidate…just to send a message.
I agree Maddi. And I think the idea of the base staying home terrifies both parties. I too think of myself as centrist, but Center right. I have definitely been pushed right in reaction to events in the last few election cycles. But I acknowledge that would be problematic should the right seize long-tetm control.
I found myself where you were a bit earlier (somewhere between 2016 and 2020). It will be a LONG time before I consider voting for another Democrat. I hope one day the party is brought under control, but it will take a few consecutive wipe outs to get them there, and even then, I'm not sure I will ever personally trust them again.
What can I say? It's not effective with me (meaning I don't much care if someone calls me a racist or if I hear someone else called a racist), and even if it were -- dynamite is effective with me, but I avoid using it.
I feel you. I really do. Rhetorical dynamite would be something to avoid if the threat of actual dynamite and gunfire and tanks wasn’t on the other side.
Would we be better off if more people had told Lenin to his face that he was an emotionally possessed simpleton piece of shit engaged in single-factor analysis? Who knows. It’s worth trying.
Come now. If there's nobody in your family or circle of friends who thinks that schools should stay closed because they're too dangerous, you need to get out more.
I tend to agree with Kevin, I don't think we can make progress until we undo two years of indoctrination programming people to mindlessly repeat media narratives and then judge their neighbors on it.
Leftist radicalism and intolerance deserves to be called out and shame into silence.
Okay, folks, I'm going to retire from the field at this point. To summarize: It's implausible that many of the people who disagree with you are so terrible -- or that you are. From what I read at Heterodox Academy and elsewhere, the vast majority of people in the country are pretty sane, even while half of them disagree strongly with the other half on various issues.
It's also implausible that if we don't get our way on whatever issue is currently enraging us then we're all damned for eternity.
And, aside from the implausibility of our being justified in attacking people, we'd be well served to avoid doing it even when we 𝘢𝘳𝘦 justified, because that actually 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴 better, aside from making the world more pleasant.
While I understand where you are coming from, this isn't a disagreement about tax rates or infrastructure policy. This is literally an entire generation that has been thrown out like trash. It's allowed to happen because too many people act like wide scale child abuse is just another policy disagreement. Scale matters. Outcomes matter. The kids deserve our passion in supporting their just rage.
No, it's not tax rates or infrastructure. It's also not beating the kids with chains. Scale matters, outcomes matter and 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 matters. We can call politicians and union bosses who keep schools closed "child abusers", but if I conked one of them over the head to stop him I wouldn't like my chances with a jury trial -- as I might if he were 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 abusing a child.
Ever see the original 𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘣𝘺𝘦 𝘔𝘳. 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴? There's a line in there that I've always loved: "Give a boy a sense of humor and a sense of proportion and he'll stand up to anything." So yes, the kids deserve our passion, but they also deserve for us to teach them the limits of rage, to give them that sense of humor and that sense of proportion, to point out that if all the crazy, terrible stuff they hear about were actually happening as much as it seems, the street outside would look like 𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘰. The fact that it (mostly) doesn't should tell them, and us, something.
I disagree. We call isolating prisoners for extra fed periods of time torture, yet didn’t think twice about isolating kids for over a year. We rightly condemn the Taliban and other societies for dehumanizing women by demanding they cover their faces, then stand alone in the world dehumanizing toddlers as young as 2!!!!
These union bosses and policy makers deserve to be jail for torturing a generation of children. Your exact attitude is the issue. When North Korea tortures foreigners they don’t Kay a finger on them, and yet many Jill themselves, even upon repatriation, because of the isolation.
Slavery was once legal too - I doubt you’d be saying “it’s not that bad.” What we have done to children for almost 2 years is evil and cruel - just as cruel as beating them with chains!!!!!!
I tend to believe in peoples overall good nature but there are times where I think you have to seriously question their true motives.
In the case Kevin mentioned about the (what MSM has dubbed the “Don’t say gay law”), I seriously question the motivation of people objecting to the law.
Let me ask you one question.
Why do you think teachers should be able to discuss the positive benefits of masturbation and anal intercourse to 1st to 4th graders without this being shared with the child’s parent?
I disagree...... The last sentence is perhaps the most important to get people to realize what they are choosing to vote FOR and choosing to be a part of.......
What they mean is they often take a stand in support of whatever the Democrat leadership wants from them.
Missing from this article is a single reason why it's a bad thing to want to keep schools open. There's no conversation precisely because the people in power can't back up their policies with any justification do the only option is to use the power network to attack people personally.
Yes but what if your 7th grade public school teacher didn’t talk to you about sexuality? Maybe you would kill yourself, right?
Because gay people are all the same and they will kill themself if you don’t have a government program for it. We must save the children with sex talk!!!
*extreme sarcasm font
This shit is so insulting I would be absolutely livid if I was gay. My sister is gay and she just ignores it but I would be pissed.
My 12th grade, senior year, Spanish teacher wanted to have sex with me and I found out about it afterwards and it is the primary regret that I carry with me through life.
Truly devastated that I did not pick up those signals.
Regardless, I don’t want these people talking about sex with kids. Ever.
it's gross. I went to Catholic school and we did have sex education, taught by a married couple. It focused on the logistics of procreation, with a few things about "your changing body". That kind of stuff is fine. We don't need teachers to go into detail about sex or sexuality. Anyway! Hope you're having a good day. Nice chatting back and forth.
Jennifer, we need a million more like you. Who would have thought that it would be the truckers and people like you who would emerge as the revolutionaries rebelling by example, not by violence and silencing, against the tyranny of the cowardly new elite. The last Boston Tea Party created the greatest nation in human history, and let’s hope this one is on its way to the same place in history.
Excuse my crudeness but how did we get so fucked? And how do we get unfucked? This evil insanity is like nothing I’ve seen in my 62 yrs, and I can only hope that more and more people will unplug themselves from it.
I’m sorry you went through this, Jennifer. But I can only wonder how you ignored the creep of political correctness at Levi’s - creep like starting a DEI department and hiring for “diversity” rather than merit. The signs were there all around you I’m certain but you were oblivious to them until the beast came after you personally.
Many of you are like the proverbial frogs in the pot - you’re in hot water but don’t notice until it’s too late. You accept the PC ridiculousness and even embrace and advance it, using its language and tools, not seeing that road is leading to the inevitable steep cliff until you’re the one at the precipice.
The problem is the politics of instant personal destruction ("you're a racist!") incentivize good people to lower their heads.
Everyone now has seen examples of people losing their jobs and careers after making fairly innocuous comments that are seized by the Leftist mob and their media mouthpieces and turned into personal crises. It's been disappointing to see how quickly most corporate leaders will side with the mob and not even make a cursory defense of their employee/corporate leader. It make you wonder why our corporate leaders are such cowards?
They are cowards because they have seen how quickly the mob can turn on them if they do not kowtow to its fickle rage. They are cowards because they know the members of their Board are cowards, their employees are cowards, and the voices in media are cowards. It is a perfectly rational decision to slice an employee without a thought when you know that raising your voice in their defense will only lead to you being the next target and no one speaking up in your defense. When you have spent your lifetime building a career and have finally landed in the role of your dreams, it is very hard to put all that at risk when you know any act of self-sacrifice will only be met by sneers and claims of victory from the mob.
I don't know how to fix it, but it needs to start with more voices on the right celebrating acts of personal courage and standing up for people when they are denounced by the mob. Whatever his faults, one of Trump's strengths was his unwillingness to apologize to the mob. We need more people willing to take that stand.
When you talk about people lowering their heads, it reminds me of the only job I ever got fired from. It was at a "reform school for rich kids"--if you look up WWASP, you'll get the picture pretty quickly.
Only two types of people managed to stay employed there: the ones who eagerly went along with the bullying of the students and the ones who kept their heads down. I was one of a third type: the ones who asked questions and spoke up about things that weren't right. As a result, I was fired on a made-up pretext (we were never given a rule book; that enabled them to make up rules on the fly in order to get rid of any employee who wasn't quietly playing along).
As you note, this system seems to be spreading.
It's worth mentioning that the head of school is currently in jail for abuse and sexual grooming.
I was in college in the early 200s and can tell you the seeds were already growing then, and I've been resisting it my entire life.
Almost 20 years ago I remember thinking, "why are my friends changing the meaning of the word racism so they can find racism in everything? Where does this end?"
Turns out it ends in both violent and non-violent revolution by corrupt authorities using the philosophy as a weapon.
Graduated college in 2001, PhD work in 2004…saw it very clearly then but mistakenly believed it would stay confined to higher Ed bc I couldn’t imagine people in the real world being that daft.
I left with an M.A. in 2003 and didn't look back. I had intended to go for my PhD, but in grad school it became obvious that I would never get hired as a professor, since I was unwilling to pretend to embrace the ideology. It hadn't quite invaded Medieval Studies (my specialization) yet, but I knew that it eventually would, and that hiring would be done by a "Woke" English department committee, not by fellow Medieval Studies colleagues.
So we must be fairly similar in age. To be clear...I left with an M.A. as well. Did all the coursework for a PhD but didn't complete it for very similar reasons.
Also in English, also with a focus in Medieval Studies, which was a haven of near-sanity compared to the rest of the department.
After I left, I poked around in adjunct teaching and high school teaching for a while. Was a great teacher but couldn't stand the culture (or the pay.)
Now I'm in business and much happier. Being an entrepreneur suits me :-)
I may be a little older--I went to grad school in my 30s. But I, too, eventually became an adjunct (I decided to go back to SaHMing for a few years, due to the ages and needs of my kids.)
I discovered quickly that, despite the supposed dedication of Woke Academia to the better treatment of workers, adjuncts are both paid and treated like crap. If the Woke professors actually cared so much about income inequality, they would clean their own houses first.
In my state, you can't teach high school unless you have gone through a year's worth of "indoctrination." Six years of experience teaching college composition means nothing to the bureaucrats and the teachers' union.
You probably remember the people who dismissed the "social justice" types as "snowflakes" and predicted they'd change their tune when they graduated and entered the real world of earning a living.
Of course, the opposite happened: they changed the real world to reflect their values.
Some people predicted it. Those people understood that the academy is the fountainhead of the culture. Ayn Rand once said, “[I]f I had a magic power to change things fast, I would change the philosophy departments of today’s universities.”
A sizable number of people in this country are like the frogs you describe. I prefer to celebrate, rather than vilify, the ones who are smart enough to hop out of the pot.
In view of what she's sacrificed, and considering the increased hate/isolation sure to be coming her way, I'd argue that she went from the frying pan into the fire ~ if we want to keep going with the cooking analogies ~ 😸.
I'm not vilifying her, but I'm not celebrating her either. We should be looking at the circumstances with a cold eye in order to fix the underlying problems.
You are saying, more or less, that Jennifer Sey was on the wrong team. I'll take one Jennifer Sey who leads by example with words and action when it matters over 1000 disapproving but silent critics of woke culture. All those people who privately assured Jennifer that she was brave and awesome? I'm sure they were on the "right team," but what difference did it make? None.
At the end of last June I started travelling to Europe for business (I am involved in the fine dining world) which included eating indoors at restaurants with other people. Between June & December, when Omicron kicked in, I took 5 different trips and probably ate with 50 different people in four different countries. Not a single person at any of the meals came down with Covid, including me. On a discussion forum dedicated to food, someone asked if it was safe to eat indoors at restaurants and I related my story and concluded that I thought it was totally safe. Well you would have thought I said that the sun rises in the West as they treated me as if I was a crazy person. Then an endocrinologist friend of mine who practices in Las Vegas weighed in to say that since Vegas had been open, there were no reported cases of someone being infected in a restaurant. Unfortunately, that didn't sway any of the people who refused to believe we were telling the truth.
I am not sure what drives this phenomenon. People buy into this stuff with a religious fervor. If you are afraid to eat indoors at restaurants because of fear of getting infected, then no one is forcing you to do it. But I don't understand why people have a need to prevent others from giving different advice. They are treated as if they are telling people to walk off the edge of a cliff.
Absolutely right on! On covid, the left is following the same game plan they perfected on the climate -- say the science is settled and the experts all agree, then make it impossible for experts who disagree to publish or be heard. Attack, vilify and deplatform anyone who tries to tell the truth. Then use government coercion to force widespread compliance. Finally, reap the profits.
Exactly true about climate. Some of the best scientists in this area are continually vilified for presenting actual scientific research that does not agree with the political establishment. The IPCC reports have a front chapter that is political and then hundreds of pages about the science that present nuanced conclusions that point out the big uncertainties in their areas.
Yes. The IPCC report's summary for policymakers (written by bureaucrats and activists) says a warmer climate "could" cause more hurricanes, wildfires, drought, etc. The full report (written by scientists) says all such predictions have "low confidence" (meaning it probably won't happen) or "medium confidence" (meaning it is as likely not to happen as it is to happen).
They act like lemmings because they are fearful. It strikes me as the same phenomenon as fear of flying in a plane, but not being fearful of dying in an automobile. The statistics are meaningless to them because they fear dying in a particular manner over another manner and that makes them think about it in an irrational way.
You are very kind. But I view it as an erosion of the ability to think independently. I place that at the feet of our so-called educators. You have to give the progressive movement credit as they have certainly played the long game.
“I turned down $1 million severance in exchange for my voice.”
—————————————————-
I hate the government so much that when I read numbers like this I immediately do the math in my head on how much the government is going to steal and then deploy in pursuit of jackassery.
So depending on your zip code at the time, in California, it was really only like a $600,000 severance. A substantial sacrifice nonetheless.
Sports Twitter, which is surprisingly left-wing, loves it when someone gets signed for $200 million and I show up in the comments with
“Congratulations to the Democrats on their new $80 million contract as Yankees right fielder.”
The left is fascist. You must agree with them in everything. There is no diversity of thought, which is the most important diversity. Congratulations on being principled and brave. I disagree with you on many issues but agree about this criminally abusive treatment of children during this societal hysteria
Much respect!!! You have been a voice of hope to millions and an inspiration. I hope you are able to take comfort and pride in your actions. Good luck on the next stage of your journey and I hope to continue seeing you on Twitter. Thank you
I think it was Dostoevsky who wrote, “Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”
That's all this is. Burning well-known and intelligent and successful people in effigy to condition the broader public into adopting a range of politically acceptable norms and behaviors.
Always love to see an example of someone not beholden to a delicate constitution stand pat. A rarity.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/
Truth. Except they are not burning them in effigy, they are burning them. Their jobs, careers, reputations, families, communities. It's anti-American.
It's fascism.
When one single ideology rules every single aspect of public life and actively seeks to silence and destroy anyone who disagrees, you live in a fascist country.
That's totalitarianism, but you're still right about the fascism. Fascism is corporations and government working together to control the population. We've been living an increasingly fascist society where between government and large corporations, individuals don't stand a chance. This is why you never let any entity get too big, and we've let many of them get way oversized.
One of my kids did her freshman year at a California school. We've all come to our senses and moved her back to a sane environment :) Despite being completely online she wanted to get out there and see her new world in person. All the cute little shops downtown were closed by government decree so we couldn't support them but guess what WAS open? Target. We were looking for dorm stuff. They had to bring out cones to support the lines of people in there. I counted 72 people in line. It made me want to cry. Small business = NO. Big business = YES. It was heartbreaking. To eat we were only allowed to get to-go food. We tried to take it to one of the many parks but they were full of homeless people lounging around. Not exaggerating one bit. They were everywhere. We tried sitting on a bench anyway but got accosted several times and couldn't let our guard down so we ate out of styrofoam boxes (hello environmentalists) in our rental car. Again, heartbreaking. This was what she worked so hard for. A college experience and it had been reduced to this for no good reason. While walking around the town square I noticed a couple closed stores had handwritten signs saying they were closed due to robbery. I asked the hotel desk clerk if a crime wave had happened. Sincerely envisioning armed robbers in masks. She said that was what those shop owners felt had happened to them by the government.
Yep. I’ve lived here all my life. As the state has devolved more and more into a bizarre totalitarian far-left mindless state, I watch as many say “enough” and use the equity in their overpriced homes as the financial pivot to move to states that, at least currently, have leadership that emulates a more conservative lifestyle. I stay here mostly because of my family is here and seems pretty much locked in. The other benefit is the weather and the countless miles of beaches. Otherwise - I’d be out of here as well.
Bingo Lillia.The term fascism has been basterdized. Maybe our schools will one day return to teaching history and kids can then teach their parents what Fascism was under Mussolini and the confluence of government corporations and lets not forget media (especially today)
We are teaching our children in the US plenty about fascism - they are living in it and witnessing the damage firsthand. Many are experiencing the damage firsthand. These children will one day teach in or schools how so few of their parents and grandparents bothered to notice the creeping fascism and tyranny because the real fascists distracted them by saying "orange man bad."
Bad men make hard times.
Hard times make good men.
Good men make good times.
Good times make bad men.
"To everything, turn turn turn
There is a season turn turn turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven"
NC...Ba Ba ba bingo. Keep fingers crossed for the truck drivers, only after you send the Check.
Yes, and fascism was illustrated perfectly yesterday at the Super Bowl. Political VIPs and corporate sponsors all maskless, while the city preached the official line to everybody else.
Lillia...nice and clear, i like that. If , overall, you do not get the people on your side by majority...you lost. I do not know your experience, but you have been there.
Truck drivers in todays world are going thru "what it takes to fight". Happening in that industry because, like you say, "gov and large corps." KEEP FREEDOM AWAY from the individual, yet the people, for the most part, do not yet see there lose, hidden by the Media.
My point, the trucking industry is highly regulated and heavily taxed, hence, the high cost of food, the people do not see this.
Truckers are now being asked to sacrifice More Time, in that they must submit to two weeks "down time" and testing, without Extra Pay , this amounts to "Fascism". They already are regulated to the extent that the overall Turn Over Rate is roughly 90%.
I had personnel contact with this industry and twice a VP for a (5th largest) large co. told me they had a turn over rate of 300%...wow, i did verify.
I do believe that our gov. (which is thru the people/Tax) pays for this high turn rate.
Hidden by the media is the key phrase here.
Skep...absotivally, posalutally...yep.
They are evolving toward automated truckers anyway. They have no problems with angry truckers quitting. Economic suffering just empowers them more.
Nah - we are a long way from automated trucking. I'm 39 and I remember in middle school hearing how trucking was going to be fully automated by the time we are adults. Certainly, some in town automated deliveries are here and set to expand, but that's much different than a multi-ton vehicle going 70 mph on a shared highway.
Eventually we will be there, but it's still decades away. The mediocre woke urbanites - the base of these crazy leftist - are convinced everything from food to housing to money just magically appears. Its why they buy the WEF "in 2030 you will own nothing, and you will be happy" insanity. They have no clue who ensures society actually runs.
25% of truckers calling in sick for a full week would cripple the economy - and those most impacted would be the crazy leftist - the rest of us would simply prepare first. LOL!!!
Anth...I've Not answers, other than, we are looking to move from our World , some day down the road, sooo maybe we should just "stop" wherever we IS, and "fly me to the moon, Jupiter or Mars".
We can just forget the rest...yep.
I prefer to say 'corporate bodies' because it includes large scale power systems like religious and educational institutions. I don't think fascism is only about the military and business, it also requires moral and social conditioning communicated through religious and secular cultural centers.
True. The current ideology has spread everywhere. The Media, churches, schools, large and small companies, etc.. The only way to stop this and turn it around is to speak up. Before it is too late and probably to donate to those that fight these toxic ideologies. PragerU, Daily Wire, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Larry Elder, Turning Point USA, etc..
YES!!!
Fauci is the perfect face of fascism.
-Dumb, unscientific passive aggressive narcissist
-Holds tight to power
-Loves a bloated bureaucracy, with himself at the helm
He would have been the perfect little Mussolini toady.
Trump is the much better fit for this job. Even his gestures resemble those of Mussolini.
If Trump were a fascist he would have taken the excuse of Seattle's CHAZ zone to make a political coup of the city.
President Trump was the exact opposite of Mussolini. He vigorously opposed by actions the three countries most abusive of human rights: Russia, Iran and China. He is ranked the 3rd toughest President on the Soviet Union/Russia (behind only Truman and Reagan) while Obama was the 2nd weakest (above only Franklin Roosevelt). He is the only President to be well informed about Communist China and took action against their crimes.
He was a strong supporter of human rights: religious freedom (unique conferences in Washington), women's rights, LGBTQ rights (the only President so far for the latter).
He opposed the oligarchs and favored the workers. His tax reform (the first in 30 years) benefited all but the top 2%, who saw their taxes rise due to the limit on the SALT deduction (and the Democrats now favor the wealthy, wanting to repeal the tax reform!). Black unemployment reached the lowest level on record.
This made me picture him on a big yacht with a captain's hat.
Yikes now the format of this might make it look like I'm agreeing with Bernd. I am not. My reply was for ncube7 earlier.
She was neither silenced nor destroyed. She quit.
They forced her out and offered a million dollars for her silence. They created a hostile work environment, and yes being tortured by bigots for years and having your life upended represents having your lifestyle destroyed.
Please don't try to justify fascist intolerance.
Was there ever a time when saying controversial things in public wasn't met with pushback and condemnation. It comes with the territory. She shouldn't be surprised by that. If she wants to become a full-time culture warrior that's up to her. But she should understand why Levis' felt like she was damaging their brand identity with her public statements.
The "controversy" here is "don't abuse children for no reason." I have no understanding how anybody finds that "controversial".
Absolutely nothing she did was unethical. She disagreed with the authoritarians and they got their revenge.
Levi's has now done far, far more to damage their brand than she ever could have. They'll never get their reputation back. They also lost a valuable, experienced leader, and a potential female CEO they could have been proud of. Even from a business perspective, their actions were as stupid as they were evil.
And yes, I saw your previous comment. You're victim-blaming. Standing up to tyrants for the health of children is not being a "full-time culture warrior" nor was she "expecting nothing but applause" - also you ignored the critical point that she agreed with leftist culture on virtually everything else.
One disagreement is enough. If you don't think children should be traumatized for no reason, you're a racist. That's the level of intellect and ethics I can expect from "progressives" now. "Progress" means totalitarianism and authoritarianism from an incompetent government that praises itself for wrecking your life and your children for their own profit.
And you want to justify this? Do you want Trumpers to take over and behave the same? Do you want a society of intolerance and hate, where you lose your job for speaking up for what's right?
"Condemnation" for saying we shouldn't harm children. Unbelievable.
Exactly how was Levis being damaged? You are making assertions with no supporting information. That makes you a troll.
So why were previous political stances, by her, by others and by the company, acceptable?
It not about offending the public, it's about offending certain activists who have been given disproportionate power.
She got a severance package. You only get a severance package if you are let go, fired, dismissed, terminated. The severance would have included $1 million if she had signed an NDA. That's what she refused. I have a feeling she very much wanted to keep her job. But you tell ourself whatever it takes to get you to sleep at night.
And Socrates committed suicide.
Your point?
She only "quit" her job the way Socrates "committed suicide." This is why a classical education is important.
You are correct. Isn't it ironic that those that call others "Fascists" are the actual Fascists? But that's not an accident. It's by design. Those that promote these ideas know that projection is effective. It confuses people and if they say something often enough many will think it is true.
It's an essential part of the gaslighting too, like when they started branding Republicans as "conspiracy theorists" spreading "misinformation" after Mueller showed the three-year Russia conspiracy was nonsense.
Anth...people get excited, when i disagree, so i agree with you ,...but aint fascist "militaristic"? Not that issues will not turn. What is happening now, is a long loooong time coming. Great to see Jennifer make such a move, which is anti fascist...thanks.
Fascism has a military component but that is just one part of it. Fascism starts with indoctrination. Then it moves to making sure that anyone that disagrees is silenced or punished. Sound familiar? Look at prewar Germany for just one example. Many Communist countries started with the same strategies. Communism and Fascism are not that different from each other in actual practice.
They are moving into the military too, but ever since the nuclear bomb modern warfare has become more about economics and information warfare.
Weird that people who hate America would engage in anti-American activity…..
KD...or those that hate "the World" would want upheaval...weird about that division. Anyone for "lies"? How about "fake"?...Or just a puke bag?
She wasn't burned. She quit.
Sir, she was fired. Anyone who follows corporate governance knows that she was pressured to quit, which is the same as being fired. Or worse, because it's more psychologically damaging to the victim in many cases, to pressure them until they quit.
We should have Republicans use coercion and extortion to pressure women out of their jobs to see if this is illegal.
(it’s illegal)
Xi: stop pretending to be Matt.
The authors situation became a textbook example of The Kafka trap.
Non disclosure agreements have lost their effectiveness in recent times - I'd have taken the money and used it to sue the Levi's Company for libel at least.
As for Levi's - that company doesn't even manufacture ONE STITCH of clothing in the US anymore and hasn't for years. Look for sweatshops in India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Indonesia for mfg.
Everytime I read anything lauding Levi's as the All American product representing strong American values like strength, self-reliance or rugged individualism I just roll my eyes.
Levi's has become a poster child for American greed through offshore manufacturing
I was wondering about where the production takes place and what the conditions are as well.
That’s why tag is on the ass
That is funny.
Hey, I’m not that sophisticated, lol
Probably true. But there is another aspect to this. For a company like Levis to compete they have to sell their products for a somewhat competitive price. That often means offshore manufacturing. Also, the people in many of these 3rd world countries are probably glad to have a job and may make more $ working for Levis than they would make at another local job. Besides that, how do you know that these factories are "sweat shops"? Is there proof of that? If so please show the source. I would love to see more Americans employed in this country. But I am not sure that is practical anymore for all products that we purchase, unfortunately.
“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”
———————————————
Have you seen ‘Idiocracy’?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sIRDCR8xSO0
1:55 and after is the relevant portion
I've been pushing shit for years now, we are living out the plot of this movie in real time.
The Upgrayedd slideshow for military personnel is my favorite.
“A gentleman by the name of Upgrayedd, which he spells thusly…”
It’s the best comedy of all time.
I wish it was comedy. I worked in a cubicle when Office Space came out. Mike Judge is a better documentarian than Errol Morris.
I love that movie!
OMG this just reminded me of the look on Luke Wilson’s face when the ass probe and the mouth probe get mixed up.
😂😂😂
That's not what the other lawyer said ...
As an attorney, I have fact-checked this movie dialogue and I declare it to be mostly true.
Yeah I call him Ibram X Bergeron.
Robin Diablo?
Nicole Hanoi Jones?
This thing exists only to destroy, and for some, that has a dark appeal. It's kind of the Tonya Harding theory of personal advancement: I will get ahead by breaking your leg, by cutting you down. It doesn't want to liberate, it wants to control and scapegoat. The enemy is the individual. The same old story. Retribution and destruction, all those fun things, - of cities, of standards and institutions,of human beings, the latter figuratively, at least for now. Freud's destructive Thenatos, more or less. It's hostile to this nation and its people, actively seeking the breakdown of law and order. Break down, tear down, a license to dehumanize others, studied arrogance, that's their shtick. Many wouldn't have a vocabulary without the word, f@#k. The ideology and its unappealing enforcers exist only in relation to tearing down the "other," they feed on it, which is why it is appealing to the mob mentality and so dangerous.
"Some men just want to see the world burn,"- Alfred (Michael Cain) The Dark Knight. He's referring to the patron saint of post-modernism, The Joker.
Oops: Thanatos.
Oh yes. Here's the link.https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtc3JlZG1hbmVuZ2xpc2h8Z3g6MjdlZjYzZmNmMjFjMjgxZA
I think that gives them too much credit.
Excellent comment.
FYI a quick search indicates that the quote you reference is not from Dostoevsky.
Apologies if I misattributed, not sure why I have it written down as said by him 🙄
Could you properly attribute this quote? Help us make this accurate as it is true. Thanks!
Oh come on he’s got 240 likes you gotta delete this.
😂😂
Where is John Gault ?
As the founder of the Galt-right I must correct you on the spelling.
🤓🤓
OMG ! Thank You. I hate to spoil a message with poor spelling. (I am old, if that helps 😬)
Haha you should use the edit button to fix it so that this whole conversation looks confusing
😂😂
Jeff....thanks for bringing J G, still in print...yep.
I love the quote but i don’t think this was said by Dostoyevsky. I believe it is a false attribution. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s any less valid. So here is my question. How do we fight back? How do we stop dying on our separate hills?
Well, the first thing is to realize that you are not in the minority and never will be. Unfortunately, this appears to be manifesting itself right now as a class warfare. The truckers, for example, against the Zoomers that spent most of the pandemic in their pajamas. I have been an indelible member of BOTH worlds, as have a lot of people. We have to get organized. This thread and the responses I see are very hopeful.
I have been watching the Freedom Convoy since day 1 with great hope and admiration, and seeing it spill into Europe Amd Down Under. I was FURIOUS when GoFundMe stole my donation to the truckers and had to contact them to have it returned. The nerve! And fraud. Americans need to get more vocal and organized too.
My mistake if so, sorry! 🙄
An American original, refreshing to read. Be well.
What did D. (or someone of that era) say about "progress," about what sort of crimes would be committed to appear to be on the "right side of history"?
Thank you for speaking out so bravely for children. As a public school teacher I have witnessed the catastrophe of what these school closures, remote education and incessant masking did to kids. I wish you the best and am glad you decided to do the right thing by going against the groupthink.
As a public school teacher I have aided and abetted the catastrophe of school closures, remote education, incessant masking, and the related harms they- and I - have caused our children.
There, fixed it for you.
I won't even dignify that with a response other to say that you don't know me and your comments are beneath contempt. Your comments seem to suggest all teachers are a monolithic bloc which is simply foolish. Good day to you sir.
If I was wrong about any of that you'd say as much. That you can't says all we need to know about you.
You most certainly are wrong. Attacking an ally who is doing right by young ppl (while you sit and throw stones on the internet) is pig headed and ignorant. I actually suspect you are far-left, COVIDian plant. Everyone needs to ignore you.
OK, what has Brian done in his school to reverse the damage that he and his fellow teachers have wrought on this generation of school kids? Besides throw himself plaudits on the internet, of course.
Maybe if you would have politely asked him rather than making baseless assumptions, he would have told you. Maybe he goes to the principals office daily to fight for change, maybe he tutors kids after school who fell behind? You’d be lucky if he did respond to you at this point because you exposed yourself as a mean jerk.
Also of note - Brian put his full name, you didn’t.
Walk a mile in his shoes. It’s like telling parents they’re complicit in mask wearing when they send their kids to school in masks. Some don’t have a choice.
Many do have a choice but chose the path of least resistance at the expense of their own kids. They use all kinds of self-justifications, but in the end for every child that genuinely doesn’t have any good options there is a child whose parents simply chose not to seek out better options.
Certainly there are costs with every choice, but often the parents weigh the cost to them with much greater importance than the cost to their kids’.
Where there is a will, there is a way. What many parents lack is the will, so they never bother to look for the way. It pains me to say, but I see it everyday.
We moved from North Carolina to South Carolina to get our kids in a school that didn't require masks. If that move didn't work we were prepared to pull and homeschool. You do what you need to do when you have to.
In the context of an article where an American hero gave up everything to make a stand for what's right, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who knew it was wrong but stayed silent out of fear.
Evil wins when good people do nothing, right?
Financial resources may make it easier to speak out in some ways, but speak out she did. How many with very little to lose other than Facebook likes are willing to do that?
It's fair to say she's not in any financial trouble and never will be. But she's going to lose her lifestyle, a lot of money, and a lot of relationships while also being thrown into a public controversy and risking her career future. She definitely made a sacrifice, and this is one of the first times I've ever sincerely said that it is brave and stunning.
She's most likely a millionaire, Brian is a public school teacher. So apples and oranges.
So what if she's a millionaire? There are many millionaire, billionaire Democrats who are pushing this ridiculous woke nonsense.
I'm interested to hear what other thoughts you have about those who are 'just following orders.'
And for the record, the ones 'lacking' choice here are the parents, who are required to send their school-aged children to school under penalty of law. Yes, home schooling or private school is an option for some, but not all, and even then it might be a theoretical rather than actual option (e.g. no availability at the private school even if money is there).
I understand that another animal would force the kids to wear their masks if Brian were to resign in protest, much like some other drone will do today's author's job now that she has resigned.
But we heard an awful like of pablum about 'if it saves one life' with measures like, idk, forcing four year olds to wear masks in school. If it changes one mind, by a follower like Brian leading for a change, that would be worth it, no? At least Brian would have a clean conscience, which is worth something.
Alas, we have neither, but Brian still goldbricks his pension and benefits and three months off in the summer plus a week at Christmas, a week at Thanksgiving and another one in March while dumping his mental deficiencies on the backs of children to bear.
Shameful, no matter how you try to justify it.
Easy for someone to say that this guy should just quit his job in protest without knowing his situation financially or how many people rely on his paycheck. And if I hear one more time about how great it is for teachers with their summers and vacation time when I know from watching my daughter in law who teaches 8th grade what it is like, the amount of time she commits beyond the school day, the “enrichment programs” she must attend during her summers, etc, for the meager pay she gets, I’m going to lose it. You’ve got a lot of nerve.
I would say by far that your opinion is held by a small minority population. Everyone knows teaching is an admirable job and one of the hardest today. I've heard those accusations too and they're wrong. I do believe the teachers union though is greatly in the wrong for shutting down the schools, masking children therefore causing a huge loss of learning on our most vulnerable population. Really tragic!
But Mimi, who populates the teachers unions? Plumbers? Senators? Horses?
Hint, it’s teachers.
I'm told this is the tightest labor market in memory. No time like the present for the Brians of the world fed up with the directives to abuse children that they mete out each day in the classroom to find something less repugnant to do.
But the Brians of the world don't find anything else to do.
The Brians of the world, your daughter in laws of the world, they'd rather stay put and continue to abuse children while cashing a paycheck.
My daughter in law is in Florida so no masks and no closure so no “abuse” of kids. She also has to cash a paycheck to help keep food on the table and the lights on. Easy for someone on the outside to say “just quit” when you have no clue as to the individual’s reality.
Ann... lots of teachers in my family, nephew and wife together receive over $200,000/year...relax the nerve and thanks.
The mental and harmful reprecussions of our children staying home months on end and as Jennifer stated, the most stable part of their lives is far, far worse than a child coming down with Covid.
Perhaps Brian is the teacher who is known as the one who "lets us wear our masks on our chins." I'd definitely be that public school teacher.
You're being way over the top. All he can do is quit. He can't change the policy. This is up to the local community. All over the US, there are plenty of schools that reopened back in summer-fall 2020, and have been mask free for some time now. It is progressive run communities that continue to abuse these kids, and frequently a majority of parents are in on it, since they are themselves progressives. IDK where Brian teaches - he did not mention. But if it's in a progressive school district, then there is nothing he can do to help these kids beyond small measures like not enforcing it in his classroom or on the playground if he is in charge. But, he won't be able to do that very long, since he will get ratted out by some kid to her progressive parents.
Yeah… thanks so much- NOT. the drop out rate in the local high school is horrible; victims of your asinine policies of which you are so proud include my grandkid.
Are you a member of the teachers union Brian?
No.
👍
Stephen may be uncouth but he raises the fair point that a lot of these abusive policies came from the teachers union rather than from qualified science.
I don't know how many people here are aware that the CDC was running its guideline proposals by the teachers union for their approval and input. The CDC has never given any evidence that these policies work to prevent the spread. They are rooted in fear and authoritarianism.
I think Americans expected better from our educators, but by and large they've put their own feelings and safety above the health of the children, and that to me is unforgivable. I consider it the sacred life purpose of every person to leave a better world for the next generation, and traumatizing children so that people who've lived full lives can feel a little bit more safety - this to me is the pinnacle of immorality.
But none of that justifies personal attacks on you, and I'm sorry that it happens even in Bari's comments.
I too am a disaffected liberal who has seen the Democratic Party leave me in the dust as it enthusiastically supports censorship and government control over personal autonomy. I have watched over two years as most everyone in the Boston area lost their minds to fear and blame——towards the most vulnerable people in society, including their own innocent children! Their intolerance toward alternative viewpoints and cruelty towards the unvaccinated (bar them from medical care😥) became too concerning and too unattractive to ignore anymore. Now they are starting to see the light, but so much damage has already been done because those with power and influence made sure of that, and will not stop unless WE THE PEOPLE take back control. We cannot let this greed and venality continue or we will lose our freedom forever.
As a MA resident myself, I agree. Sadly, our elite colleges are at the center of this cultural collapse. They have dumbed down their curriculum with postmodernism and bogus grievance studies. They wantonly shred our society by injecting self-righteous ignorance into it. Ironically, they act like religious zealots themselves ("social justice" ministry), while trying to destroy the religion that held this country together, from the start. It is painful to watch and sad to think that the great state of MA can not right itself.
My respect for our local “elite” colleges has been shattered and I wouldn’t encourage my child to apply to any of them now. But it’s pervasive in most colleges, including my son’s current school in North Carolina, which forced a booster on him last month to return to campus, despite him having contracted a mild case of omicron over winter break. I contacted the dean at Wake Forest to explain that his natural immunity obviates this requirement and I received a careless form letter saying he needs the jab regardless. I no longer like that school and feel grateful he is graduating in May. Revolting how ignorant our “top” schools actually are.
That makes me sad. I know a dozen unvaccinated Wake students…….. most got religious exemptions very very early, but I also know of two who got docs to write medical exemptions for immunity.
Wake was the only school left in NC my husband and I would have considered paying for for our own children. Knowing they forced boosters on young men might shatter that option. 💔
One of the most depressing things of this whole nonsense has been watching young men comply with this insanity so willingly (mostly here I’m talking about the masks). What have we done to raise a generation of compliant young men? That’s not natural or healthy.
Universities further south have been much better in that many haven’t required vaccines at all. Not all schools, but many.
My daughter attends Purdue. They do not require the shots but the coercion to get them is just constant. They test unvaccinated students and faculty weekly, which is blatantly discriminatory given that we now know that the shot doesn’t stop the vaxxed from catching or transmitting the virus. I wouldn’t have a problem with contact tracing, but healthy people with no symptoms should not be subjected to weekly testing when there is no evidence of exposure. My daughter has never tested positive. She had covid last April so probably has some good long lasting immunity. She is sick of the intrusion of having to schedule a weekly test though, and may cave in. Society has trained these young people not to think for themselves and to be overly compliant.
I hope your daughter stands strong. I got my kids signed out of masks early because I wouldn't tolerate dehumanizing them (something much easier as they are in private Christain school). An unintended benefit is the strength it's given my daughter. She used to scare me because she always does everything "right." Straight A's, top athlete, reads an entire book every 1-2 days, extra sweet, will take cruelty on her rather than tolerate it being directed at others.
She has very much embraced standing up to the narrative - she loves going shopping now just to show her beautiful smiling face. Even in the airport on a recent international trip she refused to actually wear her mask most of the time (it was a fake mask and we insisted she wear it through security but let her take it off after we got through). She's learning to distinguish between right and wrong morally while still being that awesome, motivated, perfect little child in other ways. We have less concern about her gullibility. She's also watched a lot of her friends use their masks t hide from the world (10 to12 year old girls)
I'm sure it's hard for your daughter and you are absolutely correct the segregated treatment makes no sense. My daughter is standing up to the masking, but she is fully supported at her school. It's different to be a young adult not supported in choosing a medical treatment. My guess is she's in the home stretch. She's held firm for a long time which is awesome, and she will likely succeed either way, and she has learned an important lesson, but I am hoping she decides to hang on just a little longer. The Covidian régime is falling. She's earned her victory and I hope she gets it.
I’ve noticed the same thing about 10-12 year old girls as well.
My niece is 12. I took her and a friend out downtown a couple weekends ago, and it was like pulling teeth to get her friend to even look up from staring at the ground, let alone engage in any way.
Then, later, we met back up after I let them walk around alone for a bit…and her friend was wearing her mask. Outdoors :-/
She was clearly smiling under the mask, her eyes were twinkling…she was standing straight…making eye contact. It was so strange.
I really wonder what we’re doing to these girls…
I go back and forth to Florida a couple times a month and many people at the airport (including me) take off their masks after TSA. No one says anything. Not even the police officers walking around. Gives me hope that everyone is getting closer to saying eff this. I have even gotten bold enough at the huge airport in Texas to keep it pulled down throughout the terminal. No one even gives me dirty looks.
When my daughter was in college in California in 2021 she was only allowed to personally interface with the person that tested her twice a week. Food was ordered by app and picked up from a box. She was alone. All...the...time. It was incredibly isolating and took a major toll on her mental health. All classes were online and she was descending into depression so we insisted she do the work from home. Texas was open and allowing normal life. I wondered when anyone would check on her. Didn't anyone notice that she moved out? No. A student goes missing and no one cares? Until 6 weeks later she was questioned about why covid tests weren't being turned in for her. She explained that she was in another state. They had the gall to threaten an already fragile student with cutting off her portal access to classes if she didn't get tested twice a week in Texas and turn in the results to California. What?!? I got involved and I guess I scared them into dropping that ridiculous mandate. The next semester she transferred to a Texas school and has happily been living a normal mask free life there. THIS is the madness the left has created. I grieve for the students that don't have a strong family and are being forced into isolation and depression. The fact that our government is not intervening and sounding the alarm on the shocking suicide rates is criminal. But I guess the people at Levis are totally cool with this.
The treatment she got in CA is literally much worse than how prisoners were treated. Apparently, the worst crime one can commit in CA is to be young and physically there. I'm so glad she is somewhere better getting to grow up not being imprisoned.
That is so horrid. Glad you got her to a Texas school. We
Live in Houston and despite crappy leadership at least we live pretty free. No mandates.
I received an.MSCE from Purdue in 1975 and have been a proud Boilermaker ever since. As I write, I am wearing a Purdue hoody. I am very disappointed to read your post.
Purdue was her dream school. She was accepted to every school she applied to. Purdue was the last acceptance. We were so happy that they allowed us to visit campus in 2021 when many weren’t doing that. Masks required but shots are optional. That sold us. She loves it there but I am increasingly disappointed at the c19 messaging coming from the school. I thought they were going to ease up but they seem to have doubled down. Emails every week to get boosted, get vaxxed if you aren’t. The weekly testing of people with no symptoms, only the unvaccinated, is wearing her down. Plus, all of her friends are vaccinated and they are “fine” She has even stated that if the school mandated the shots she would definitely do it because she worked too hard to be accepted to this school and doesn’t want to give it up. These are the things that make a 19 yr old (most of them anyway) want to just give in. We forced her to listen to Rogan’s interview with Dr Malone. I am hoping some of that sunk into her subconscious & keeps her vax free. Her 19 yr old boyfriend just got boosted a couple of weeks ago so I pray he will be ok. However, being ok right now is what she sees as the shot being no big deal. Ugh!
I begged my son to talk to the powers that be at Wake, as he didn’t want to take a booster either, but he’s 21 and decided he didn’t want to fight it. He wasn’t aware of the potential dangers of the vaccine Amd believed it had to be safe if the school was requiring it. I pray he will be spared any future vaccine injury, and I will always resent this school I once entrusted with my son’s safety.
I resent the school for the pressure they put on your son - and it's not even my kid!! If he makes it 6 months post booster, he will likely be fine, but that doesn't excuse the pressure from the school for the useless risk. To force him to inject something he doesn't need for a disease he's already immune to and/ or not at risk of, is cruel.
Thank you for sharing the story, maddening as it is.
Yes….my daughter attends The University of Alabama and the vaccine is not required. However, my daughter chose to get vaccinated, including the booster.
I’ve got no issue with personal choice. University of Alabama’s honors athletics program is already at the top of my daughters list. And she’s only 10. 😂
Roll Tide, girl! Oh and I didn’t think you had a problem with personal choice and I hope I didn’t come across that way in my original post.
Compliant daughters too☹️
Yes my compliant “rule follower” 23 yr old went and got it too. At least she listened to me and took her chances with the J&J & hasn’t gotten any booster.The only thing she has noticed is an increase in menstrual cramps. A pretty severe increase in fact.
Wake Forest? OMG!!!! I thought you referred to a wokutopia like Duke or UNC.
Sadly Wake Forest celebrates this nonsense too. 😥
Money. Pfizer
My kids universities wanted boosters too. I told my kids I was totally against it for their 21 and 19 yo healthy bodies. As adults they can make their own decisions but I begged them to just get tested weekly. My junior daughter is in a year long co-op in her engineering major, so working off campus. She was recently told she didn't even need to test!!! My son has not been contacted about being tested. I figured if we just waited it out a bit, it would implode and it looks like it is.
Count me as a fellow 'Masshole' too, the term people in Maine, NH and Vermont have always used for those of us who vacation in their beautiful states. I used to think that term was only funny - now I'm beginning to believe it's accurate. The radical woke mob is beginning to destroy everything. May they be next, and they eat themselves.
I saw this regressive intolerance in the Democratic party take root back in 2012. Prior to that, I tended to vote Dem in national elections but favored Rep in local stuff.
Democrats have been pushing censorship (aka: micro-aggressions) for a decade. Democrats have been tying identity to value and meaning for about 15 years now. It started subtle but is in full force now.
The Critical Theories forming these religious ideologies have full grip of the entire party now and I don’t know how to untie the party from the religion.
I never really paid attention to this “woke” culture other than to dismiss it as overindulgent parenting and teaching, and I’m sorry I didn’t grasp the nefarious nature of it until this pandemic revealed it fully. All I know is that I want nothing to do with the Democratic Party any longer. I was always a registered Independent who voted more Democratic nationally, like you, but GOP locally as I always liked Charlie Baker and always abhorred Elizabeth Warren. The D party is dead.
I agree with you.
I noticed it starting about 20 years ago when I was a graduate student fresh out of college. The assumption that everyone thinks exactly like you…the dismissal and censorship of actually diverse voices…
It annoyed me but I kind of thought…I’ll get my degree and get out of here. They can have their little “safe” campuses populated by people who can’t make it in the real world. It’s not harming anyone.
Well. Now they’ve transplanted campus nonsense into the real world and it’s harming everyone.
I’m glad to see classical liberals like me saying…no more.
I too used to shake my head at “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” and didn’t think hard enough that these same coddled humans would expect the real world or government to take care of them and damage their critical thinking skills. It’s time for good, strong people to change this course before it’s too late. 🙏
Glad that more of you are seeing the light...you give me hope that it's not too late! I fear for my grandson who is entrenched in the woke community at CAL...as are his parents back in LA.
Maureen and Build the human spirit. You have a chance to change the direction. The Governor's race is coming up ans I implore you NOT to vote fot Maura Healey, as she will be the likely D candidate. Instead start to research and throw your support behind a R candidate. If yoi don't do the latter you are asking for more of the same, if not worse, since Baker attempted to use reason and since for public policy even through all the pushback. The attorney general's office has been closed to the public for 2 years now. Choose wisely.
I will not vote for any Democrat ever again, period. I can’t abide any party that supports censorship and government control. The government answers to us, not the other way around, and too many people have forgotten this fundamental fact of Our American ideology.
I completely agree. I am contemplating joining an R caucus as well here in MA. I need to put my money where my mouth is and start being more proactive. I see the writing on the wall to inactivity and I despise what I see.
Sorry to deadthread here, but bless you all.
I curse the Dems for their current sorry state, and also for making me remember how awful the Repulicans are. Right now, they seem to believe in nothing except opposing the Dems. But for right now, that' will have to be good enough. Otherwise (and I speak as a longtime skeptic and debunker) we will be served up to the contemplated global paonopticon, and a harshly judgemental and stupid one at that.
I was introduced to this brand of thinking back in graduate school, in the early 00s. Our English department was dominated by ideologues. The younger professors seemed to think that it was their moral duty to use their lecterns as bully pulpits for preaching that ideology.
I was planning to get a Women's Studies certificate along with my M.A., but the second Women's Studies class I took put me off the idea altogether. It was a Feminist Theory class, with both grad students and undergrads. It was rare for class to end without one student or another in tears as a result of being berated by the professor for some "wrong" belief. On one occasion, we were assigned to go to a play on campus; no one in the class agreed with the professor's opinion of the play, and she was furious at us.
I was one of a handful of students who was resistant to the ideology being preached in our department. It was astonishing to me that the tactics being used to try to "convert" me were disturbingly similar to the tactics of Fundamentalist Evangelicals--the only real difference was the "doctrine" I was required to believe in order to be considered a decent human being. When people talk about "Woke" being a religion, I can only think that yeah, I knew that 20 years ago.
One of my professors confessed to me that she had become more moderate as she got older, but she begged me not to reveal that to anyone. She said it would be "social suicide" (her exact words). Again, remember this was 20 years ago.
I have watched this ideology spread from Academia into the rest of society. Back in 2012, I began openly warning people about the risks of attacking others for not having the "correct" beliefs. No one took me seriously.
I have had a somewhat similar experience when I arrived to the US in 1998 as a Fulbright grant scholar from Russia. I was listening to my Political Science professor at a private college and thinking What-is-this-I-m-hearing?!? At the time I attributed it to the MidWest attitudes and close minded religious community.... When a Kansas City Star reporter spotted me at a public event one day and learnt I was a foreign student, he asked me what were my thoughts if the USA. So, I gave him a “Russian Feedback” (short and blunt). I said, well, it’s very much like the USSR here, hypocrisy and burocracy. The next day my quote graced the Kansas City Star pages and my professors were scandalised. 😹 Well, here we are, twenty years later, somehow that “close-minded-midwestern-mind-set” took over US leading institutions. Now, that was a twist… 😵💫
Nat...some comment for thought... nice.thanks.
Thank you for taking the time to share this.
I have been a Reagan Republican since 1988. The problem I have with the GOP the last 4 years is their break from reality. The Dems have some terrible ideas, but we know what they are. The GOP is flat out asking us to believe things that are false and telling us they are true. That is the tell tale sign of Fascist or Authoritarian Governments. So for me, it's a question of which one is the greater evil. I can fight the wokism on my local level, but I can't fight authoritarianism on the National Level. Right now, today, I find the authoritarian branch of the GOP to be a greater threat to American than the woke left.
Specifics, please. How is the GOP fascist under Trump? What do I believe that is outside of reality? Be precise, please.
Sure. Let's start with Day 1)- Inauguration. Trump wanted the country to believe that more people attended his inauguration than Obama. Asking people to believe that which is false. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but that is how fascists do it, 1 small step at a time. 2) Believe that the election was stolen. Simply False. 3) Jan. 6 a) wasn't violent b) was a false flag operation.
And that’s more dangerous than what the Left has done with regards to the Russia lie, Hunter and his influence peddling, and the desecration of free speech? Really?
P.S. Ashli Babbit
P.P.S. See Ashli Babbitt AND my husband who is currently in ICU after heart surgery. Dude is young, fit; took the vax as it was promised by Dems to prevent Ovid, and well, you can guess the rest. You’re an idiot.
1) There was no Russia Lie (That's part of believing what isn't true-- don't forget Trump refused to testify under oath there) Russia did try to infiltrate the Trump Campaign- (His campaign manager was paid by the Russians) the campaign was just so unorganized, they couldn't do it. Russia did have (and still does have) an extensive facebook and social media operation to sow discord in America. 2) I agree, on the free speech, I really wish Sean Hannity and Donald Trump didn't excommunicate every Republican that speaks the Truth. 3) Ashli Babbit was shot entering the house chamber by a Capitol Policeman during a riot. Period, End of Story. You believing anything else is proof of the Fascist Lies. 4) The vaccine works and prevents almost all deaths. It prevented most transmission from the original Covid Strain and a lot Delta Transmission. Less effective in preventing Omicron Transmission. Still very effective in preventing severe disease and death. Unfortunately not 100% 5) I was more concerned with the Copyrights that Ivanka Trump got from China right at the beginning of the Trump Presidency. 6) Check out the Panama Papers. They sure used Trump Properties a lot. 7) No, I'm not in the least concerned by anything that Hunter Biden has done or will do. 8) I didn't call you names, but you called me an idiot. That isn't nice, but it is the last resort for the Fascists. Denigrate your oppponents. Make them less than human. Then annihalate them.
The election was stolen.
No. It wasn’t. I bet you still believe the Antrim county lies.
So, you're a fake news fan then? No further explanation needed.
With your complaints, you must see the Democrats as full on autocrats from a dystopian future.
Take the 2000 election: 75% of Democrats believed Gore really won and the SCOTUS decided the election.
Take the 2016 election: Even Nancy Pelosi called Trump an illegitimate President for over 2 years. Over 50% of Democrats believed Hillary actually won.
Jan 6th was a cluster F and really was NOT violent. Compare it to the firely, but mostly peaceful, protests of the previous 6 months that left dozens murdered and peopled burned to death. This also included an assault on the Capitol.
How do you feel about the Democrats falsifying evidence against a political rival and leaking that to the FBI and press?
How do you feel about the Democrats pushing a known false narrative of Russian collusion for 18 months? This was done with data the Democrats manufactured.
How do you feel about the Democrats using that knowingly falsified evidence to get wire taps of their political rivals by lying to the FISA courts?
That is communist level authoritarian behavior.
Both parties have issues but we know the woke ideologies lead to the deaths of 10’s, if not 100’s, of millions.
Let's not forget when Seattle leftist radicals wrecked their downtown, then spent a month assaulting federal officers and federal buildings until the state ceded three blocks of land to them, which they declared independent from the federal government.
A lot of this phone 'insurrection' talk is meant to distract from the fact that the BLM riots included an actual armed insurrection against the federal government that occupied land for several weeks until people started dying from - guess what - homicides due to a lack of the police they were protesting.
Every single thing Democrats accuse Republicans of is something they've done far more of for far longer. Denying legitimate election results, misinformation and disinformation in public messaging, intolerant cultish behavior, promotion of violent radicalism in the youth, false conspiracy theories, etc.
When I was in Seattle in January 2020 I was warning everybody that coronavirus was serious and that we had only a few weeks to shut down the borders to keep the country from being infected. I was widely mocked as a right-wing conspiracy theorist spreading racist misinformation, because that's what the corporate propaganda was telling everybody.
And you think I'm the one that "broke from reality."
1) 2000 Election-- Al Gore conceded with a Dignified Speech on National Television There are sore losers and people saying why they lost ( Pat Buchanan votes on the Butterfly Ballot) and it was a loss by less than 500 votes in Florida. A little different that the theory of massive electoral fraud by Dems across 5 States.
2) Hillary Clinton a) Conceded the morning after the election; b) attended the inauguration. Perfectly normal behavior. I don't believe any state that says 50% of Dems believed she won. Maybe they think she would've won if not for Russia Interference ( I think she would've won if not for Comey 10 day before the election)
3) Tell the non-violent part to the police officers beaten with flag poles, sprayed with substances (bear spray) and beaten with clubs that it wasn't violent. As we are seeing, there was a plan to delay or stop the electoral college count.
4) I think you are referring to the Steele Dossier. I believe that was started by The Cruz campaign in the primaries. We also don't really know what was or wasn't true (How are those Trump Tax returns looking? Oh right, he never did produce it)
5) There was Russian involvement. Maybe not collusion, but the Russian wanted Trump to win and they did what they could to help him. He accepted their help by using the materials they made public (Wikileaks)
6) Any agent giving false information to a judge should be prosecuted.
7) We know that Fascists lead to deaths of 10's if not 100s of millions. How can you support a party where Liz Cheney of all people is no an enemy? she is the most conservative member of the Caucus. Right on every Right leaning issue from Abortion to taxes to immigaration. She just calls Donald Trump like she sees it and now she is persona non grata. Gimme a Break.
4)"Started by the Cruz campaign"? No, the evidence shows that it was paid for from the start by the Clinton campaign through their lawyers.
5) Russia wanted Trump to win? That is literally IMPOSSIBLE. Clinton was as faithful to doing what the Russians wanted during the Obama Administration and beyond and they knew she wouldn't change. Trump was the 3rd toughest President opposing Russia/Soviet Union, and his many actions make that clear.
Early in his Presidency Donald Trump said to his followers Don't believe what you are seeing. You talk about the 2000 and 2016 elections. I saw what happened. I saw how they were conceded by the losing candidate. You cannot possibly equate what is goin on now with how those candidates conducted themselves after the election. This all part of what we started talking about. Having people believe things that are false are true. Once that happens, he can get his people to do anything and they will feel justified. There are dangerous times ahead. Thanks to Donald Trump, we no longer have peaceful transitions of power and I fear we won't for some time to come. Ultimately, that is what Donald Trump has cost this nation.
Exactly right. For example, January 6 is considered the second worst attack on Congress in the last 5 years. James Hodgkinson's attempt to assassinate 24 Republican members of Congress was by far the worst attack in decades. And the massive invasion of the Capitol during the Kavanaugh hearings probably was worse than January 6: far more people invaded the building and the hearing room was invaded, too, for several days, not just a few hours.
Yes, 81 million votes for the perfect example of a narcissist. He is indeed uneducated, as he never had any non-government position. And certainly sociopathic: just look at the many times he disrupted events by grabbing young women and sniffing their hair! And the ultimate narcissist, whose career was always about him getting praise (even bragging about getting an award from George Wallace!) and money. His term is certainly doing a lot to divide us!
We live under fascism compliments of the Democrats. Sad you can’t see that at your age. Sad your going to sit by as this country is destroyed for the next generation. But hey, Hillary only committed treason, and the woke destroyed an entire generation of kids, but that’s cool with you because clearly not authoritarian orange man made mean tweets? Sad in you. And weak.
No. We live under a thriving capitalist system. We have freedom of speech, but not freedom from responsibility for that speech. My kids are great. Living a good life, thriving. I didn’t limit them or force them to hate our country, like you must be doing to your children. My children understand that we live in the greatest country ever. I wish you would teach that to your children.
No, we don't. We have government in bed with big business and the media on behalf of the Democrats - that is definitionally fascism. You need a dictionary. We have government actively destroying small businesses and funding big business. There is no healthy free market capitalism at this point. There is economic consolidation and blatant fascism.
Did you miss the DOJ's domestic terrorism memo this week? Or the one directed at parents? Or the emails where the government is working with big tech and the old people media to censor speech? Did you miss the media is covering up actual treason from the Durham investigation?
Sorry Craig, your comments are uninformed, and you aren't convincing anyone of anything other than your own gullibility to left wing political propaganda. There are plenty of criticisms an informed person can make about any politician in this country, and yet all you have is a regurgitation of the most left-wing partisan media fake talking points - much of it from today's articles no less!!!!!
Good points. There is real censorship.
The Durham investigation's revelations should have been on the front page of every newspaper and led the coverage on every TV news program, but have hardly been covered, except by objective site like JustThe News: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/durham-says-clinton-campaign-hired-techs-infiltrate-trump-servers is one example (also covered by Fox News).
Not going to comment on your professed opinion. But in making your point, is it really necessary to comment on Craig's age? How do you know how old he is? He could be younger than you. And the fact that he is weak? How do you know? Tell him why you disagree with him, NC - don't tell him what you think of him. You don't even know him. Stop with the personal crap.
A few specific responses
1 - I was born while Regan was in office thus it is basically impossible for him to be younger than me
2 - I don't know how old he is, but assuming he doesn't get 5 boosters and die 'suddenly" of "natural causes" then he's at least middle aged and getting older. His age maters because he is entirely comfortable throwing a generation of kids out like trash. It's good to remind the woke crowd that while they may hate kids, one day they are going to be old and the kids they insist on destroying are who they will depend on for care, services, and pretty much everything else in their final days. Craig clearly doesn't care about destroying kids today, but most people don't want a very damaged and angry human wiping their bums in the nursing home. Maybe he should consider that.
3 - Only weak people are unable to see the truth about the Covid restrictions and Hillary Clinton. Weak people can't admit they were wrong. Weak people dispose of children like trash. Weak people buy every bt of clearly false narrative. Weak people link to Twitter as their news source. Weak people regurgitate articles they read that very day basically word for word.
4 - I have told hm why I disagreed with him. He came back with demonstrably false narrative. How exactly could Trump be fascists when business and the media hated him? You can't be fascist or authoritarian unless the institutions required to meet those definitions participate - as they clearly do with Democrats. The very organizations needed to have a fascist in office literally spread demonstrable lies for the entire time Trump was in office to undermine him.
You don't like my style. That's fine. But I don't know you and I certainly don't take it easy on humans knowingly and intentionally destroying my children's generation because you don't like it. Two-year-old's in the US are being treated worse than convicted murders under Biden. Convicted murderers have more bodily autonomy than Biden thinks the working population should have. If Craig doesn't want to be attacked personally, maybe he should stop supporting the attacks on the physical bodies of other adults and US children.
Now THAT's a dissertation! Without an ad hominem attack. I'll be brief - I think the 'kids' will be fine after two yo yo years of no school/school, no mask/mask. It's been an unholy mess, but they're resilient. They'll make it. You know who's not resilient? We are. The people commentating. We hate Hillary. We hate Trump. We hate Dems. We hate the GOP. We hate the USA the way it is today. We want the USA of yesterday. I get that. We basically hate each other. One half of this country intensely dislikes the other half. Right? How do we fix that? (assuming we want to.) By talking, with maybe fewer insults - and I've thrown a few in my day.
And as for 'demonstrable' lies - whatever lie was thrown Trump's way he clearly responded in kind. i don't think he could discern a falsehood from the truth - he just said what he wanted and needed to say. As he does today. Which is why more and more Repubs are (very) slowly pulling away from him.
But I digress.
Nice talking with you. Enjoy the evening.
“I have been a Reagan Republican since 1988.”
————————————-
No you have not. You’re a concern troll.
No I really have been. I was in 6th grade when the Iran hostage events took pls e. My first real memories of big national events. I grew up with Reagan as President. I read the WSJ almost everyday since 1991. Sorry to disappoint you. But trump isn’t fit to hold Reagan’s socks.
I must disagree with "But trump isn’t fit to hold Reagan’s socks." The Trump admin accomplished what I call a miracle in creating the highly successful Abraham Accords. This achievement in furthering peace and prosperity is hugely significant and contributed to many suggesting he be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump gets the credit for getting the winning team together to make the Ab Accords happen. Yes, Trump has many flaws, but if you study history and the bible, most if not all our "heroes" have flaws. Obama is incredibly eloquent, handsome, charismatic, and a good role model - and he did win the Nobel Peace Prize for? what the world hoped he might accomplish? In reality he whimpered away from his "red line in the sand", allowed ISIS to dominate, and so many poor policies where he was a pushover and a disgrace. Most people are a mixed bag. Trump has a long list of achievements, though his character offends many of us.
Craig...what gets me, when you state " The Gop/ Dems is flat out..." , how can i consider what you say when you do not finish your thought, to what are the "false/ true"
thoughts you refer. thanks.
He’s a concern troll. Ignore.
“I used to be a hardcore fiscal conservative but then I saw the light and now I love communism because it’s better!!”
You’ve never met these people before? It’s fake.
Congratulations, you saw it earlier than a lot of others here. Not nearly when it started, but earlier, at least.
It's very, very hard to undo the decades of indoctrination that now drive the radicals of the left.
Personally I am desperate for leadership, but all I see are people saying "we need to do something" without saying what we need to do.
Here are a few things to actually do:
1 - stop voting for democrats for a t least a few election cycles and show up to vote in the republican primaries
2 - Stop complying - don't wear a mask, don't show a vaccine card
3 - Find community in people who respect your individual choices - build community with people who understand the term
4 - Spend money at businesses that have stood up to the tyranny - they are everywhere
Thank you! You are wise and courageous...keep speaking out!
This is great advice for life generally, but I don't see these things as a unified political force powerful enough to fight back against the tech companies, institutional ideology, or federal abuse. We need the kind of leadership and activism that has got leftist radicals into the streets for years, and I don't see that happening outside of maybe DeSantis.
I'm consider joining the Florida migration, but we need more than that to stop the withering of our rights and values.
Well, DeSantis is part of it. But there are others. GA has a lot of people standing up. The mid-west. Texas. Some in NC and SC.
We didn't get here overnight. We got here slowly, then quickly. We will get out of it the same. We have to take the progress we CAN get and keep building on it.
Go watch Devin Nunes interview on Epoch Times about Trump media (a genuine news organization founded by Chinese dissidents - well worth the money which isn't that much). Nothing gives me more hope than what they are doing - and it's not just social media. It also gives me hope Trump won't actually run but is teasing to keep heat off others who will. That is likely wishful thinking. DeSantis would probably take 48 states. I'll vote for Trump, but prefer someone else, and I'll vote for someone else in the primary. I think he has a bigger voice from the outside.
Thank you, you wonderful human soul.
I too hope Trump's campaigning is a distraction, and that Trump will support an alternative candidate.
If the country survives another two years of this administration, getting involved in the Republican primaries will in my opinion be the single most important thing we can do.
With all due respect, how did you not see it before?
That's not fair. Both parties changed over history. Decades ago the Dems were for working class and women's rights. Not more. And Decades before that the Republicans were for black civil rights. "Before" was a different time-space continuum.
The Republicans are still the party for black civil rights.
Let me clarify. I am referring to more recent events, 20 years or so. Change is inevitable and IMO should be welcomed. But the move into Progressivism has thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
Yes I agree. I first noticed it about 20 years ago…specifically because I was in higher Ed.
Not everyone was though…and as I mentioned above I often thought…this is annoying but it has no real-world impact. People joked about the quirky, disconnected inhabitants of the “ivory tower” for a reason.
The movement to take this ideology from the classroom out into the public sphere is much more recent…and has accelerated at an alarming rate over the past 5-6 years.
A friend works for a large recruiting agency. One of the their biggest clients told her not to recommend white men for positions anymore. They said it in a word salad but that is the directive.
Why has it accelerated over the last 5-6 years? I think it's because of the rise of the right over the last 5-6 years. As the right got righter, the equal and opposite reaction is the left getting lefter. For example, First, it was the right primarying long standing Congressman to get a more conservative GOP Congress, now it the left doing it. The Progressive Left moves to Communism, the Alt Right moves to Fascism. But, it isn't a line, it is a Circle. Communism and Fascism meet and both bring the destruction of individual liberty. Don't forget that the Right was the first to cancel people-- The Dixie Chicks. Now both sides cancel with abandon, the right also, once someone is labeled a RINO- they are done.
No. In fact I pretty much think the exact opposite.
I think the current iteration of the far right is in response to the extremism, elitism, and negligence of the left, especially the progressive left.
I think the left calling anyone and everyone who disagrees with them racists, homophobes, bigots, white supremacists, and more has pushed normal people further to the right.
I think the elitist machinations of the progressive left (from the children of the 1% occupying Wall Street and burning down minority-owned businesses in the name of racial justice to Clinton, Cuomo, and his democratic congress passing terrible monetary policy and fixing interest rates in the housing industry to befriend Chinese investors...thereby setting the stage for the housing bubble and the Great Recession that cost millions of citizens their homes...which was also done in the name of social and racial justice, incidentally) pushed normal people further to the right and gave us Trump.
And I now think that the left's insane, anti-science response to the pandemic, their clear political maneuvering on the backs of our children, and their cheering for censorship and big tech against everyday citizens...is also pushing normal people further and further to the right.
I know this because I wasn't even on the right, and this behavior has pushed me here. I can't imagine how people who were already ideologically aligned with the right must feel. I suspect they feel sad and vindicated.
While I agree that both sides have their problems, and while I agree that the extremes of both sides meet in a circle and are not a straight line/continuum, it seems very clear to me which side is currently more dangerous to everyday citizens.
Because of this...the question of "who started it" is completely irrelevant and such a waste of time. (Though...to be clear...I think it was the left.) Ultimately, who cares? What does knowing "who started it" get me? How does it impact my life and my voting tendencies RIGHT NOW?
To me the bigger question is...which party is doing more to support freedom right now? Which party is more likely to try to harm me or my livelihood if I speak out against their ideology? If I have an even slightly differing viewpoint?
Which side seems to be consolidating power and seems willing to use that power against everyday citizens? Which side seems to think that the media should be its lapdog and work in lockstep with its ideology? Which side seems willing to alter facts and harm people, even minors, in its rush to narrative?
Which side cheers on censorship? Which side deplatforms people by the hundreds and pulled a well-researched article written by a reporter at a 100-year-old publication two weeks before a presidential election in an effort to affect the outcome of that election? Which side has taken alternative social media outlets off of its servers?
Which side would I be more terrified to disagree with on a public forum? (oh this one isn't even close!) Which side has big tech, big business, and the media all aligned in lockstep with its one approved narrative and is granting its stamp of approval to an ever-narrowing list of writers, thinkers and speakers? (The three most powerful organizations to ever exist in the history of the world are all acting in slavish devotion to one approved narrative...what could possibly go wrong?!)
Which side mocks and ridicules anyone who disagrees? Calls people who disagree racists and bigots? Calls people who even attempt a question or a reasonable discussion racists and bigots?
I think the answer to all these questions is abundantly clear. It's no contest. There's a reason you're reading this article on Bari Weiss' substack and not in The Washington Post. There's a reason Bari left The New York Times and why journalists of substance are leaving traditional outlets and flocking to Substack.
Like NCMom has stated, it will be a long, long time before I trust anyone with a (D) by their name enough to vote for them...because of all of these behaviors and more.
PS - I find it hilarious and the height of irony when leftist apologists try to defend cancel culture or say: 'But both sides do it!!!"
Invariably, they do what you did. They point to an isolated instance or two of the cultural right (usually the religious right) choosing not to buy something or participate in something due to differences in lifestyle choices.
So...yeah. You are correct that *some people* on both sides do this. Some people on the religious right burn their Dixie Chicks CDs and won't go to Disney World. Some zealots on the left refuse to step foot in Chic-Fil-A and delete their Spotify accounts.
A school board in a right-leaning district removes MAUS from its curriculum because of violence, language, and nudity. A school board in a left-leaning district removes TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD from its curriculum because Atticus is supposedly racially problematic. A pastor encourages his congregation to burn their HARRY POTTER books because wizards and witches are bad. A woke social justice warrior encourages her followers to burn their HARRY POTTER books because J.K. Rowling said that being a woman is a thing.
I may disagree with all of this nonsensical activity (and I do) but none of it is censorship or cancel culture. It's all run-of-the-mill boycotting, voting with your wallet...freedom of expression and association. It's actually the bedrock of the first amendment, not a challenge to the first amendment.
Censorship does not occur when parents and a school board work together to create a curriculum for their minor children. Censorship occurs when the government and big tech collude to decide who can and cannot speak in the public sphere. Censorship is when the powerful deplatform and silence the less powerful, particularly when the powerful party is the government or is acting in the interest of the government, as Twitter did when it prohibited people from sharing a legitimate news article even in their own direct messages. That is textbook censorship and a textbook violation of the first amendment.
Cancel culture does not occur when some fundamentalist family chooses not to go to Disney World on vacation. Cancel culture occurs when a New York Times author with nearly a million followers mobilizes an online mob to go after some random twenty-something woman and take everything from her on the basis of a 12-second videotaped interaction. Again, it's the person (or people) in the position of power using their power to take down a real person in the public sphere.
The reason I find this to be so hilarious and ironic...is because people on the left who are so uber-sensitive to any power imbalance, be it real or perceived...suddenly and conveniently don't understand power dynamics at all when discussing censorship and cancel culture. They're all like: "What power dynamic?? Where??? I don't see it..."
Puh. Lease.
Pardon me while I go puke. And pardon me if I don't agree to pretend like some po-dunk pastor somewhere burning a few copies of one of the most popular books of all time...is exactly the same thing as powerful big tech and social media companies systematically deplatforming people on the basis of their political beliefs. Or if I won't agree to pretend like 99% of all cancel culture stories don't come to us courtesy of the left.
When Jews get called Nazis, demonic forces are at play.
Powerful story. Thank you.
So many of us have been with you getting attacked from day 1, despite being right from day 1. Wouldn’t it be nice if at least some of those Covidians who threw out poor and middle class children like trash would at least say “I was wrong and I’m so sorry”? But they won’t. It’s not the leftist way.
It’s the US leftist way to go to super bowl with tens of thousands maskless adults then demand 5 year olds in the same city today wear N95s on the playground. It’s the leftist way to fire already immune first responders for failure to “comply” with a failed medical treatment for a disease they are already immune to (with NYC and LA firing thousands this month despite the overwhelming evidence the stupid shots don’t work).
Subjugating the service class and treating children like nonhuman pawns is the fascists left way. It’s the Brandon way. It’s the Democrat way.
Levi’s carrying water for the leftist subjugating the service class and intentionally destroying kids is one of thousands of examples of woke corporations wanting to prove their loyalty to misguided Dem policy more than any other corporate goal. It’s cruel, it’s destructive, and it will only get worse as long as people keep supporting these woke companies in bed with Democrats, and as long as they insist on voting for fascists Democrats that will absolutely use the private sector to enforce their cruel and destructive ideologies.
Did they pass a law in LA prohibiting the wearing of masks at football games? It sure looked that way,no?
What about Stacy Abrams smiling brightly and UNmasked in an actual classroom surrounded by a couple dozen masked 6 year olds!😡 So many hypocritical images like that have made our blood boil, and they’re too arrogant and tone deaf to care. And then turn more tyrannical when we object. I’ve had enough already. Abrams is the obese adult at serious risk but it’s the healthy young children who are forced to cover their faces.
Or the NFL having the super bowl unmasked in LA yesterday, but 5 year olds must wear an n95 on the playground today. Adults can lose the mask tomorrow, but kids must keep them in for “the foreseeable future” 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
And now we know these crooked Democrats and their media buddies committed treason by trying to fake server interactions between Trump and Russia. That’s treason!!!!! These lunatics are destroying children and committing blatant treason!!!!!
Every celebrity they were breaking LA mandates, Sofi policy and Super Bowl protocol and the they KNEW millions of people were watching live. They might as well have flipped off the cameras. Enough of this ridiculous mask stuff already. If the president wants his approval rating to go up he could go on tv tomorrow and say No More Masks! When the roar of the crowd and the applause died down he could then say Stop Disrespecting the Police! Now! I bet that would get him lots of poll points.
Shhh, we don't speak of such things here!
The images of American "elites" smiling away amidst their masked servants and props are so 2022!
Let them eat cake! #arrogantassholes
Exactly, this is our history in the making.
Yep! I hope hope hope that photo is used in political campaigns far and wide. Websters should put it next to their definition of hypocrisy.
Of course she gaslights her critics with the usual racist label. They have zero merit so it’s all ad hominem attacks and thankfully few are buying it anymore.
You need to run for office.
I’m not nearly political enough a person. I’m far too blunt. I’m fortunate that I’m not scared to use my voice, and I have helped local politicians opposed to this crap with research and money.
I can’t be “nice” about discussing child abuse. So I wouldn’t last long. Right now I can be heard…..
I’ve had enough of “nice” politicians who stab us in the back. We all want honest and blunt in the people who would represent us, not lecture us as they do now. 🥵
Donald Trump proved that being blunt (or even offensive) isn't necessarily a liability. What the people crave is authenticity, of hearing what someone really believes—not pseudo-beliefs formed in response to public polls and study groups.
You should think about it. Start with a small, local position. School board? City council/County commissioner? Or precinct chair if you are in a populated area.
I'll think about it - a lot of people in my local area have asked, though I think they want the entertainment as much as the outcome. LOL.
From reading your comments I think you would reach center folks and IMO that is what we need. I try not to tar all Democrats with the Progressive brush. After all if it were not for Manchin and Sina things would be worse.
Do you know how to write mean tweets?
My sister and her husband are Seattle Ivy League grads.
Sadly, I can confirm lockdowns made them richer, they care nothing at all about the suffering of the rest of the country, they quote propaganda and misinformation all the time, and as you said they are far too proud to admit fault on anything.
NC there is so much truth in your post I can't stand it!
What Levi’s and other American corporations are doing by submitting to the woke Twitter mob is unamerican but it’s a direct result of over compensated executives who trade their morals and principles for unearned million dollars salaries.
Also, profit growth for many companies lies in foreign markets, so many executives think it's a liability to look American or support America.
But sanitized internation identitarianism, on the other hand, is so sacred you'll be pushed out of the company if you don't comply.
Excellent point. They are patriotic to the all-mighty dollar, not to the country that it represents. (Heck, we might as well start using Indian Rupees and forget the dollar altogether... jk)
“I proposed to the company leadership that we weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city, San Francisco. We often take a stand on political issues”
————————————————-
Important to note that we are currently having a panic attack about how gay children in Florida will *kill themselves* if teachers don’t get to have an open dialogue with their students about sexual activity.
(vomit emoji)
SUMMARY: No sex talk with your teacher means you commit suicide BUT ALSO when schools are closed and you never see your teacher at all…….this is good and smart.
We must continue to emphasize that these people are dumb and terrible.
"No sex talk with your teacher ..."
How is the teacher supposed to get any sex, then?
This is why you’re my favorite.
Thank you. I think you're pretty sharp, too.
The only discussion of LGBTQUIAETC needed in schools up to 8th grade (at least) is, "Be polite and kind to everyone."
(edited for oops)
There is one thing I’m trying to figure out right now that I’m stuck on and that’s the question; why do they use the term “black bodies”?? They keep talking about bodies. Why?
I have some pretty easy ideas but I’d like to hear what you think.
I read a comment somewhere that suggested that the "black bodies" and "bodies of color" trope is supposed to evoke images of slave ships bringing "black bodies" from Africa to the United States (but not anywhere else in the Americas, I guess). I thought that sounded reasonable.
Yeah okay that’s what I thought also. Maybe you expand it to our broken bodies being exploited by the capitalist system and we should be able to express our carnal desires but there’s repression etc etc.
I think “black bodies” is definitely a slave thing. For the people who say it, it’s dehumanizing of yourself, which is weird, but the goal is to demonize someone else so you can easily rationalize dehumanizing yourself in pursuit of that.
Too much -ize in that last sentence btw.
😂😂
Your point is absolutely correct, but we can make it without saying anything bad about the 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦.
I absolutely appreciate your point of view. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years. Earlier on I would have sided with you but I have changed my view.
This will sound needlessly crass but I hope you consider it.
You have to treat them like shit otherwise the average person observing will not realize how dangerously wrong they are.
Imagine if a rape was taking place and you said
“Pardon me, dear sir.”
If you debate them civilly it will appear the same as a discussion over the top marginal rate, when in fact we are discussing the difference between freedom and hell.
Obviously the tricky part is separating the people who are on the fence from the demonically possessed before taking this approach.
In this particular example, the people who are feverishly clawing, with spittle in their mouths and fire in their eyes, for the ability to talk intimately with children about sexual activity are human dogshit and I will treat them as such because it’s appropriate to treat them as such. It would be a moral failing to treat them with decency in my opinion.
Hope that makes sense. I don’t expect you to agree. Thanks for the kind reply!!
No need to mince words, tell us what you 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 think. 😀
Your position has merit. We have an old tradition that says "Anyone who becomes merciful upon the cruel will end by being cruel to the merciful."
Still, it's unlikely that any of the people you're talking about are actually 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 to hurt children. I don't expect you'll bring them around to your side, but I also don't expect many people who were on the fence to fall in behind you to do battle, so the result is just adding to the total of invective and ratcheting the bad feelings up higher.
I’m not sure intent matters when the outcome is evident……. Beating one’s wife and children is demonic even if the intent wasn’t to “really” harm them. Self-justification isn’t actual justification.
I have gone down the same path as Kevin. People are supporting and overseeing mass child abuse. It’s cruel. It’s evil. It’s based on incredible stupidity - why have gas masks and hazmat suites to deal with particles 25x -100x the size of a virus aerosol if a cheap tissue mask, or even n95, actually worked????
The Covidians are stupid people. Which is much kinder than the alternative - which is that they are intentionally cruel people who intend to harm children via mass child abuse. While this is likely true for the activists and policy makers, I’d prefer to hope the supporters are just morons who deserve to be called out as the idiots they are. For those who know better but support this crap anyway, pure evil is a good description.
While there are policy makers who create this stuff, the followers are just lemmings, incapable of independent thought. That there are so many is what truly disturbs me. Even the ladies who have been published on Common Sense of late are only coming around after seeing the damage to the children. How did they not see it coming? IMO the failure to do so makes them complicit. And the real test of them will come at the polling place. Will they be able to separate the candidates who support this type of thing from the ones who do not? My guess is no, they will see those candidates as viable for other reasons that they (the voter) still believe wholeheartedly. Perhaps their children will be different when they come of voting age.
I agree completely. I think their failure to apologize means they haven't actually learned anything as well. It is literally impossible for them to just say "I was wrong to support these draconian policies and I am so sorry."
At the same time, I see many more willing to say they were wrong and regret it and actually direct some anger at the people who intentionally lied to drum up fear and compliance. The question for them is the length of their memories. I used to vote for Democrats. While I woke up before 2020, I deeply regret many of my past votes. I was gullible and dumb. At 39 I can say that I may never vote for another Democrat again because I am so enraged at their insistence on pushing harmful ideologies and counterproductive policies. I see more people like me open their eyes every day. No one is more passionate than a convert that realizes they had been lied too over and over and over again
If Democrats, clearly still controlled completely by the far left, win in 2022 0r 2024, we have only seen a fraction of the damage and lost opportunity coming for our kids.
I have no crystal ball and cannot predict 20 years from now, but just as it was predictable that closing schools and forcing kids as young as 2 into dehumanizing face masks would have terrible outcomes, it is predictable that if people don't solidly and overwhelmingly vote these leftist tyrants from office on a massive scale that a much worse outcome with totalitarian control awaits us. But if we can get these creeps out of office then perhaps we will witness a resurgence of liberty and freedom.
I think the people who are most rabid about the Covid stuff are motivated most by political expediency…and their addiction to feeling superior.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a selfish conservative greedy bigoted garbage person on social media…because I question mask mandates, question vaccine mandates (I myself am vaccinated but believe in freedom), say that trans women being out into female prisons is cruel and unusual, say that I think the truckers are correct, question our school policies, grieve what we’re doing to our kids…
And other such moderate positions…which used to be common on the center-left.
At any rate. Like many others here, the Democratic Party is dead to me until they can get their radical zealots under control. I didn’t vote in the last presidential election and will likely vote R in the midterms and the next election regardless of candidate…just to send a message.
I agree Maddi. And I think the idea of the base staying home terrifies both parties. I too think of myself as centrist, but Center right. I have definitely been pushed right in reaction to events in the last few election cycles. But I acknowledge that would be problematic should the right seize long-tetm control.
I found myself where you were a bit earlier (somewhere between 2016 and 2020). It will be a LONG time before I consider voting for another Democrat. I hope one day the party is brought under control, but it will take a few consecutive wipe outs to get them there, and even then, I'm not sure I will ever personally trust them again.
Calling someone racist is the worst charge you can make against someone.
Why are the people who call everyone racist winning, despite the fact that they are forwarding a completely meritless position?
Because the tactic is effective.
😎😎
What can I say? It's not effective with me (meaning I don't much care if someone calls me a racist or if I hear someone else called a racist), and even if it were -- dynamite is effective with me, but I avoid using it.
I feel you. I really do. Rhetorical dynamite would be something to avoid if the threat of actual dynamite and gunfire and tanks wasn’t on the other side.
Would we be better off if more people had told Lenin to his face that he was an emotionally possessed simpleton piece of shit engaged in single-factor analysis? Who knows. It’s worth trying.
Amen!
“Still, it's unlikely that any of the people you're talking about are actually 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 to hurt children.”
They are sexual predators, pedophiles and groomers.
Come now. If there's nobody in your family or circle of friends who thinks that schools should stay closed because they're too dangerous, you need to get out more.
There are people in my circle that feel this way - they are idiots, period.
KD...good point, and i hope others will concur..."Pardon me, dear Mam/Sir."
I tend to agree with Kevin, I don't think we can make progress until we undo two years of indoctrination programming people to mindlessly repeat media narratives and then judge their neighbors on it.
Leftist radicalism and intolerance deserves to be called out and shame into silence.
I am all ears if you have a better solution.
Anth... now, no answer, but to remove "the Media" would shave 25 months from those 2 years... we gots Nothing until...
Okay, folks, I'm going to retire from the field at this point. To summarize: It's implausible that many of the people who disagree with you are so terrible -- or that you are. From what I read at Heterodox Academy and elsewhere, the vast majority of people in the country are pretty sane, even while half of them disagree strongly with the other half on various issues.
It's also implausible that if we don't get our way on whatever issue is currently enraging us then we're all damned for eternity.
And, aside from the implausibility of our being justified in attacking people, we'd be well served to avoid doing it even when we 𝘢𝘳𝘦 justified, because that actually 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴 better, aside from making the world more pleasant.
While I understand where you are coming from, this isn't a disagreement about tax rates or infrastructure policy. This is literally an entire generation that has been thrown out like trash. It's allowed to happen because too many people act like wide scale child abuse is just another policy disagreement. Scale matters. Outcomes matter. The kids deserve our passion in supporting their just rage.
No, it's not tax rates or infrastructure. It's also not beating the kids with chains. Scale matters, outcomes matter and 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 matters. We can call politicians and union bosses who keep schools closed "child abusers", but if I conked one of them over the head to stop him I wouldn't like my chances with a jury trial -- as I might if he were 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 abusing a child.
Ever see the original 𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘣𝘺𝘦 𝘔𝘳. 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴? There's a line in there that I've always loved: "Give a boy a sense of humor and a sense of proportion and he'll stand up to anything." So yes, the kids deserve our passion, but they also deserve for us to teach them the limits of rage, to give them that sense of humor and that sense of proportion, to point out that if all the crazy, terrible stuff they hear about were actually happening as much as it seems, the street outside would look like 𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘰. The fact that it (mostly) doesn't should tell them, and us, something.
I disagree. We call isolating prisoners for extra fed periods of time torture, yet didn’t think twice about isolating kids for over a year. We rightly condemn the Taliban and other societies for dehumanizing women by demanding they cover their faces, then stand alone in the world dehumanizing toddlers as young as 2!!!!
These union bosses and policy makers deserve to be jail for torturing a generation of children. Your exact attitude is the issue. When North Korea tortures foreigners they don’t Kay a finger on them, and yet many Jill themselves, even upon repatriation, because of the isolation.
Slavery was once legal too - I doubt you’d be saying “it’s not that bad.” What we have done to children for almost 2 years is evil and cruel - just as cruel as beating them with chains!!!!!!
I tend to believe in peoples overall good nature but there are times where I think you have to seriously question their true motives.
In the case Kevin mentioned about the (what MSM has dubbed the “Don’t say gay law”), I seriously question the motivation of people objecting to the law.
Let me ask you one question.
Why do you think teachers should be able to discuss the positive benefits of masturbation and anal intercourse to 1st to 4th graders without this being shared with the child’s parent?
How’s that work exactly?
Easy: Just leave out the last sentence.
I disagree...... The last sentence is perhaps the most important to get people to realize what they are choosing to vote FOR and choosing to be a part of.......
What they mean is they often take a stand in support of whatever the Democrat leadership wants from them.
Missing from this article is a single reason why it's a bad thing to want to keep schools open. There's no conversation precisely because the people in power can't back up their policies with any justification do the only option is to use the power network to attack people personally.
That is such a dumb conversation. I'm a gay man, and even I think this is ridiculous. FFS this is getting out of control.
Yes but what if your 7th grade public school teacher didn’t talk to you about sexuality? Maybe you would kill yourself, right?
Because gay people are all the same and they will kill themself if you don’t have a government program for it. We must save the children with sex talk!!!
*extreme sarcasm font
This shit is so insulting I would be absolutely livid if I was gay. My sister is gay and she just ignores it but I would be pissed.
No, I wouldn't have killed myself in that instance.
I would have killed myself IF my 7th grade teacher talked to me about my sexuality. That dude was a nasty creeper.
*extreme sarcasm right back atcha!
My 12th grade, senior year, Spanish teacher wanted to have sex with me and I found out about it afterwards and it is the primary regret that I carry with me through life.
Truly devastated that I did not pick up those signals.
Regardless, I don’t want these people talking about sex with kids. Ever.
it's gross. I went to Catholic school and we did have sex education, taught by a married couple. It focused on the logistics of procreation, with a few things about "your changing body". That kind of stuff is fine. We don't need teachers to go into detail about sex or sexuality. Anyway! Hope you're having a good day. Nice chatting back and forth.
The left always eats its own. Our Robespierre moment is approaching.
As long as it's their own, Bon appétit
Jennifer, we need a million more like you. Who would have thought that it would be the truckers and people like you who would emerge as the revolutionaries rebelling by example, not by violence and silencing, against the tyranny of the cowardly new elite. The last Boston Tea Party created the greatest nation in human history, and let’s hope this one is on its way to the same place in history.
Excuse my crudeness but how did we get so fucked? And how do we get unfucked? This evil insanity is like nothing I’ve seen in my 62 yrs, and I can only hope that more and more people will unplug themselves from it.
I’m sorry you went through this, Jennifer. But I can only wonder how you ignored the creep of political correctness at Levi’s - creep like starting a DEI department and hiring for “diversity” rather than merit. The signs were there all around you I’m certain but you were oblivious to them until the beast came after you personally.
Many of you are like the proverbial frogs in the pot - you’re in hot water but don’t notice until it’s too late. You accept the PC ridiculousness and even embrace and advance it, using its language and tools, not seeing that road is leading to the inevitable steep cliff until you’re the one at the precipice.
The problem is the politics of instant personal destruction ("you're a racist!") incentivize good people to lower their heads.
Everyone now has seen examples of people losing their jobs and careers after making fairly innocuous comments that are seized by the Leftist mob and their media mouthpieces and turned into personal crises. It's been disappointing to see how quickly most corporate leaders will side with the mob and not even make a cursory defense of their employee/corporate leader. It make you wonder why our corporate leaders are such cowards?
They are cowards because they have seen how quickly the mob can turn on them if they do not kowtow to its fickle rage. They are cowards because they know the members of their Board are cowards, their employees are cowards, and the voices in media are cowards. It is a perfectly rational decision to slice an employee without a thought when you know that raising your voice in their defense will only lead to you being the next target and no one speaking up in your defense. When you have spent your lifetime building a career and have finally landed in the role of your dreams, it is very hard to put all that at risk when you know any act of self-sacrifice will only be met by sneers and claims of victory from the mob.
I don't know how to fix it, but it needs to start with more voices on the right celebrating acts of personal courage and standing up for people when they are denounced by the mob. Whatever his faults, one of Trump's strengths was his unwillingness to apologize to the mob. We need more people willing to take that stand.
When you talk about people lowering their heads, it reminds me of the only job I ever got fired from. It was at a "reform school for rich kids"--if you look up WWASP, you'll get the picture pretty quickly.
Only two types of people managed to stay employed there: the ones who eagerly went along with the bullying of the students and the ones who kept their heads down. I was one of a third type: the ones who asked questions and spoke up about things that weren't right. As a result, I was fired on a made-up pretext (we were never given a rule book; that enabled them to make up rules on the fly in order to get rid of any employee who wasn't quietly playing along).
As you note, this system seems to be spreading.
It's worth mentioning that the head of school is currently in jail for abuse and sexual grooming.
Read up on the role of Black Rock in this.
… like Bari and Nellie, who run this blog.
I was in college in the early 200s and can tell you the seeds were already growing then, and I've been resisting it my entire life.
Almost 20 years ago I remember thinking, "why are my friends changing the meaning of the word racism so they can find racism in everything? Where does this end?"
Turns out it ends in both violent and non-violent revolution by corrupt authorities using the philosophy as a weapon.
Same.
Graduated college in 2001, PhD work in 2004…saw it very clearly then but mistakenly believed it would stay confined to higher Ed bc I couldn’t imagine people in the real world being that daft.
I left with an M.A. in 2003 and didn't look back. I had intended to go for my PhD, but in grad school it became obvious that I would never get hired as a professor, since I was unwilling to pretend to embrace the ideology. It hadn't quite invaded Medieval Studies (my specialization) yet, but I knew that it eventually would, and that hiring would be done by a "Woke" English department committee, not by fellow Medieval Studies colleagues.
So we must be fairly similar in age. To be clear...I left with an M.A. as well. Did all the coursework for a PhD but didn't complete it for very similar reasons.
Also in English, also with a focus in Medieval Studies, which was a haven of near-sanity compared to the rest of the department.
After I left, I poked around in adjunct teaching and high school teaching for a while. Was a great teacher but couldn't stand the culture (or the pay.)
Now I'm in business and much happier. Being an entrepreneur suits me :-)
I may be a little older--I went to grad school in my 30s. But I, too, eventually became an adjunct (I decided to go back to SaHMing for a few years, due to the ages and needs of my kids.)
I discovered quickly that, despite the supposed dedication of Woke Academia to the better treatment of workers, adjuncts are both paid and treated like crap. If the Woke professors actually cared so much about income inequality, they would clean their own houses first.
In my state, you can't teach high school unless you have gone through a year's worth of "indoctrination." Six years of experience teaching college composition means nothing to the bureaucrats and the teachers' union.
The corporations are using it to maintain and grow their wealth with ample assistance from our corrupted government.
You probably remember the people who dismissed the "social justice" types as "snowflakes" and predicted they'd change their tune when they graduated and entered the real world of earning a living.
Of course, the opposite happened: they changed the real world to reflect their values.
Some people predicted it. Those people understood that the academy is the fountainhead of the culture. Ayn Rand once said, “[I]f I had a magic power to change things fast, I would change the philosophy departments of today’s universities.”
A sizable number of people in this country are like the frogs you describe. I prefer to celebrate, rather than vilify, the ones who are smart enough to hop out of the pot.
While I agree I fear she’s not actually hopping out of the pot………. Only swimming around in it
In view of what she's sacrificed, and considering the increased hate/isolation sure to be coming her way, I'd argue that she went from the frying pan into the fire ~ if we want to keep going with the cooking analogies ~ 😸.
Seems she was pushed out.
Of Levi's not leftism, but I hope you are correct.
I'm not vilifying her, but I'm not celebrating her either. We should be looking at the circumstances with a cold eye in order to fix the underlying problems.
You are saying, more or less, that Jennifer Sey was on the wrong team. I'll take one Jennifer Sey who leads by example with words and action when it matters over 1000 disapproving but silent critics of woke culture. All those people who privately assured Jennifer that she was brave and awesome? I'm sure they were on the "right team," but what difference did it make? None.
Well, get back to us when you have 4 kids and you reach the point where you can take or leave a million dollars.
While I commend her finally seeing things clearly, she is very late to do so.
X 1000
You’re a courageous woman and a good person.
and one to be very proud of.
At the end of last June I started travelling to Europe for business (I am involved in the fine dining world) which included eating indoors at restaurants with other people. Between June & December, when Omicron kicked in, I took 5 different trips and probably ate with 50 different people in four different countries. Not a single person at any of the meals came down with Covid, including me. On a discussion forum dedicated to food, someone asked if it was safe to eat indoors at restaurants and I related my story and concluded that I thought it was totally safe. Well you would have thought I said that the sun rises in the West as they treated me as if I was a crazy person. Then an endocrinologist friend of mine who practices in Las Vegas weighed in to say that since Vegas had been open, there were no reported cases of someone being infected in a restaurant. Unfortunately, that didn't sway any of the people who refused to believe we were telling the truth.
I am not sure what drives this phenomenon. People buy into this stuff with a religious fervor. If you are afraid to eat indoors at restaurants because of fear of getting infected, then no one is forcing you to do it. But I don't understand why people have a need to prevent others from giving different advice. They are treated as if they are telling people to walk off the edge of a cliff.
It’s the latest iteration of the climate change religion.
Apparently, when you believe in nothing, you’ll believe anything.
Absolutely right on! On covid, the left is following the same game plan they perfected on the climate -- say the science is settled and the experts all agree, then make it impossible for experts who disagree to publish or be heard. Attack, vilify and deplatform anyone who tries to tell the truth. Then use government coercion to force widespread compliance. Finally, reap the profits.
Exactly true about climate. Some of the best scientists in this area are continually vilified for presenting actual scientific research that does not agree with the political establishment. The IPCC reports have a front chapter that is political and then hundreds of pages about the science that present nuanced conclusions that point out the big uncertainties in their areas.
Yes. The IPCC report's summary for policymakers (written by bureaucrats and activists) says a warmer climate "could" cause more hurricanes, wildfires, drought, etc. The full report (written by scientists) says all such predictions have "low confidence" (meaning it probably won't happen) or "medium confidence" (meaning it is as likely not to happen as it is to happen).
Gotta fill that spiritual void with something.
What drives this: Mass Formation Psychosis.
Lemmings.
They act like lemmings because they are fearful. It strikes me as the same phenomenon as fear of flying in a plane, but not being fearful of dying in an automobile. The statistics are meaningless to them because they fear dying in a particular manner over another manner and that makes them think about it in an irrational way.
You are very kind. But I view it as an erosion of the ability to think independently. I place that at the feet of our so-called educators. You have to give the progressive movement credit as they have certainly played the long game.
They sure do. Which is what confuses me the most. Why?
I have thought about it and I cannot even speculate. But I am not objective.
Totally off topic, I’ve enjoyed perusing your OAD website over the years :-)
Thanks so much that means a lot to me!
I respect your integrity. You capture a dynamic occurring in many organizations and boardrooms where ideological diversity is less tolerated.
Wow what an impressive woman! Please run for any office. America needs you more than ever.
“I turned down $1 million severance in exchange for my voice.”
—————————————————-
I hate the government so much that when I read numbers like this I immediately do the math in my head on how much the government is going to steal and then deploy in pursuit of jackassery.
So depending on your zip code at the time, in California, it was really only like a $600,000 severance. A substantial sacrifice nonetheless.
Sports Twitter, which is surprisingly left-wing, loves it when someone gets signed for $200 million and I show up in the comments with
“Congratulations to the Democrats on their new $80 million contract as Yankees right fielder.”
The left is fascist. You must agree with them in everything. There is no diversity of thought, which is the most important diversity. Congratulations on being principled and brave. I disagree with you on many issues but agree about this criminally abusive treatment of children during this societal hysteria
Much respect!!! You have been a voice of hope to millions and an inspiration. I hope you are able to take comfort and pride in your actions. Good luck on the next stage of your journey and I hope to continue seeing you on Twitter. Thank you