I am just reading this, after being on vacation. So. Important. And. Correct. I am now trying to figure out who to share with....amazing Maya. So glad you are joining the team.
Way to go! I’m glad you were able to vote with your feet and refuse what I consider to be the illegal mandate to be vaccinated with a currently investigatory medication (commonly called a vaccine). My educated guess is that you will look back on the decision in years ahead and know you made the right choice for you after examining both the pleasant and unpleasant impact it had on your life.
Thank you for publishing this, Bari. For all my concern about the coercive conformism that has gained so much strength so quickly, I hadn't realized that things were this bad.
Somebody -- it may have even been you, Bari -- said that the only answer to the cowardice of conformity is courage. Although it may be socially awkward, all of us, when we hear leftwing cant, have to call it what it is. Politely, non-stridently, but clearly and without compromise. Who knows? When others hear us, it may give them the courage also to speak out for common sense.
Would you have forgiven her if she had never been threatened by the mob herself, and instead had maintained her woke zealotry, particularly toward you?
Ideological blindness is the destruction of a nations industrial base bringing about the collapse of her major cities and the impoverishment of her citizens. The passage of laws that allow faceless corporations to capture a political system and buy politicians at will. The creation of a drug war to build a for profit prison industrial complex, senselessly incarcerate millions, violate civil rights, circumvent the Constitution and build a surveillance state. The criminal looting and destruction of a national economy. The subversion of American education and the place of work with the installation of an across the board kangaroo court commissariat promoting the use of informers, group think and the object lesson destruction of lives deemed "politically incorrect". Etc., etc. etc.
The topic of guns, like every other subject of major American social and political concern has been captured, exploited and industrialized. The entire point of subscription journalism is the creation of a new national dialogue free from the propagandized hysteria now preventing the discussion and creation of real solutions to the very real problems now destroying us. Blaming "guns", while ignoring the real time human mental, spiritual and emotional trauma that the kind of social disintegration we are now experiencing, is just another cover-up and distraction, by the criminal enterprise now dragging us from crisis to crisis with no solution forthcoming, ever.
Let's not totally dismiss the cancel culture. After we have gotten rid of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, we should begin to dismiss all those guys who founded and belonged to that organization whose members wore white sheets. And while we are at it we should get rid of the political party that they subscribed to.
Whoops, please disregard above. Too close to home. Never mind
I'm glad to see that you've come to see the folly of the Left's intolerance. Like you, I'm a progressive who got a bit more taken in to all the BLM hysteria than I'd care to admit. I say "a bit" because I'm probably twice your age, so I've seen enough of this sanctimonious, self-obsessed, excessively pious (not to mention often logically incoherent) intolerance over the years that it didn't take too long for my alarm bells to go off.
What I'm most glad to see, however, is that you haven't abandoned your progressive leanings and principles because you've seen others serving as a poor witness to them. I'm also glad that you can get along with your more conservative friend (something I've also learned to do over the years). Even if you end up coming to agree with her on some things that you don't now, I'm confident it will be for the right reasons, not the cultural ones that seem to motivate so many these days.
And when I talk about culture, both the Left and Right are complict in their malefaction. Too few people seem to appreciate (sadly, I've come to make the same criticism of this site) the ways in which the right and left have fed off each other in this regard. It is no mere coincidence that our current wave of McCarthyist intolerance has come during the ascendance of Donald Trump, a demagogue whose perfidy and malignance are so blatant it's as if his followers have never cracked a history book. He has erected a cancel culture of his own on the right such that acquiescence to his election lies has practically become a litmus test for Republican politicians and public figures - not to mention all the people who have to keep their sanity in the closet since "Trumpism" has taken root in their families and communities. His followers are every bit as ignorant of reality as the hyper-woke left - and it's important to recognize that this is the problem. Both sides seem to think the other is evil, when the problem is that both of them have segregated to such a degree that now entire institutions have become blinded to biases seldom challenged from within.
So my hope for you and your friend is that you both continue to remain appropriately detached from the *culture* of your ideals and perspectives, while maintaining a steadfast but open-minded adherence to their *substance*. Here's to your invaluable and newly strengthened friendship. Well done.
German school.teachers and university professors reported "dissident" students.to.the Gestapo. We are seeing the equivalent in the US via social media. It's not good.
Welcome to the real world, Maya. You came out at a cheap price.
I am just reading this, after being on vacation. So. Important. And. Correct. I am now trying to figure out who to share with....amazing Maya. So glad you are joining the team.
I hope Ms. Rackoff no longer cozies up to antisemites.
Way to go! I’m glad you were able to vote with your feet and refuse what I consider to be the illegal mandate to be vaccinated with a currently investigatory medication (commonly called a vaccine). My educated guess is that you will look back on the decision in years ahead and know you made the right choice for you after examining both the pleasant and unpleasant impact it had on your life.
Honest and beautifully written !!
Thank you for publishing this, Bari. For all my concern about the coercive conformism that has gained so much strength so quickly, I hadn't realized that things were this bad.
Somebody -- it may have even been you, Bari -- said that the only answer to the cowardice of conformity is courage. Although it may be socially awkward, all of us, when we hear leftwing cant, have to call it what it is. Politely, non-stridently, but clearly and without compromise. Who knows? When others hear us, it may give them the courage also to speak out for common sense.
Would you have forgiven her if she had never been threatened by the mob herself, and instead had maintained her woke zealotry, particularly toward you?
Ideological blindness is the destruction of a nations industrial base bringing about the collapse of her major cities and the impoverishment of her citizens. The passage of laws that allow faceless corporations to capture a political system and buy politicians at will. The creation of a drug war to build a for profit prison industrial complex, senselessly incarcerate millions, violate civil rights, circumvent the Constitution and build a surveillance state. The criminal looting and destruction of a national economy. The subversion of American education and the place of work with the installation of an across the board kangaroo court commissariat promoting the use of informers, group think and the object lesson destruction of lives deemed "politically incorrect". Etc., etc. etc.
The topic of guns, like every other subject of major American social and political concern has been captured, exploited and industrialized. The entire point of subscription journalism is the creation of a new national dialogue free from the propagandized hysteria now preventing the discussion and creation of real solutions to the very real problems now destroying us. Blaming "guns", while ignoring the real time human mental, spiritual and emotional trauma that the kind of social disintegration we are now experiencing, is just another cover-up and distraction, by the criminal enterprise now dragging us from crisis to crisis with no solution forthcoming, ever.
Don't be fooled.
Thank you, Lynne, for your reply.
Let's not totally dismiss the cancel culture. After we have gotten rid of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, we should begin to dismiss all those guys who founded and belonged to that organization whose members wore white sheets. And while we are at it we should get rid of the political party that they subscribed to.
Whoops, please disregard above. Too close to home. Never mind
Definition of a Puritan: Someone who is worried that somewhere someone is having a good time.
Your writing is wonderful, especially at such a young age....
I'm glad to see that you've come to see the folly of the Left's intolerance. Like you, I'm a progressive who got a bit more taken in to all the BLM hysteria than I'd care to admit. I say "a bit" because I'm probably twice your age, so I've seen enough of this sanctimonious, self-obsessed, excessively pious (not to mention often logically incoherent) intolerance over the years that it didn't take too long for my alarm bells to go off.
What I'm most glad to see, however, is that you haven't abandoned your progressive leanings and principles because you've seen others serving as a poor witness to them. I'm also glad that you can get along with your more conservative friend (something I've also learned to do over the years). Even if you end up coming to agree with her on some things that you don't now, I'm confident it will be for the right reasons, not the cultural ones that seem to motivate so many these days.
And when I talk about culture, both the Left and Right are complict in their malefaction. Too few people seem to appreciate (sadly, I've come to make the same criticism of this site) the ways in which the right and left have fed off each other in this regard. It is no mere coincidence that our current wave of McCarthyist intolerance has come during the ascendance of Donald Trump, a demagogue whose perfidy and malignance are so blatant it's as if his followers have never cracked a history book. He has erected a cancel culture of his own on the right such that acquiescence to his election lies has practically become a litmus test for Republican politicians and public figures - not to mention all the people who have to keep their sanity in the closet since "Trumpism" has taken root in their families and communities. His followers are every bit as ignorant of reality as the hyper-woke left - and it's important to recognize that this is the problem. Both sides seem to think the other is evil, when the problem is that both of them have segregated to such a degree that now entire institutions have become blinded to biases seldom challenged from within.
So my hope for you and your friend is that you both continue to remain appropriately detached from the *culture* of your ideals and perspectives, while maintaining a steadfast but open-minded adherence to their *substance*. Here's to your invaluable and newly strengthened friendship. Well done.
A beautifully written and thought-out article. Something that is rare in almost all public forums. This revives by faith in Common Sense.
The idea that "politics is personal" was and is an abomination.
German school.teachers and university professors reported "dissident" students.to.the Gestapo. We are seeing the equivalent in the US via social media. It's not good.