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Francisco d’Anconia's avatar

Great piece! You touch on what I see as the most important dynamic in this cycle - that the left media, blogosphere, etc actually contributed quite significantly to Trump’s victory. Their constant doubling down on every gaslighting is just so offensive. It pushed me to vote for him for the first time and my wife too and that’s the first time we have ever voted republican on anything. That’s a huge step and it has less to do with loving Trump than it does being totally disgusted with the other option. There is plenty I like about Trump and plenty I dislike but there is no possible way I will ever vote for any democrat ever again.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

I know many people who had never voted Republican who said the exact same thing as you.

Many have told me the difference was that free speech became the 2nd most important issue, after the economy, as the election season wore on.

It was alarming to many normies because, before now , NOBODY could conceive of a question about freedom of speech being an "issue" in the US, let alone understand that it was under attack.

Trump can still make your ass pucker at any given point when he shoots off his mouth, but i do think he's a changed man in relation to his first stint.

But it came down to totalitarianism or not totalitarianism. Easy choice.

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Kevan Hudson's avatar

I went from a seven time Green candidate in Canada (from 1993 to 2002), to voting Conservative in the recent British Columbia election in October. I am still very active in the local environmental community, but I am just tired of the lying, silliness and stupidity of the center left parties in Canada (Greens, Liberals and NDP). Plus, they helped cancel several friends.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

That's really cool. I wasn't even political until I watched the sprawling state try to take down a sitting president.

Here's what gave me chills:

"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”

- Chuck Schumer

Not only did he say it, it's exactly what happened.

I've never heard something that dangerous from a politician.

As far as the environment, I'd really like to understand what the objectives are rather than the constant doomsday predictions. I think most people want a clean environment, and are willing to act accordingly...but not by being beat over the head.

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Anthony S.'s avatar

Isn't it interesting, Ryan, that the press has been alerting us to the dangers of Trump taking revenge on his political enemies, but where was this perspective when Schumer offered his "six ways to Sunday" quote, or his "you have unleashed the whirlwind"?

Where was the respect for institutions then?

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

Nobody holds them accountable. The media and D.C. vote 90% D. So i put just as much blame on the media.

DJT is an existential threat to them because he represents a peasant uprising to the sprawling state, media and Democrat hegemony. Very dangerous to have both hegemony and a captured media.

They're never going to change because they're at court inside the palace gates. They'll never tell The Truth because they despise us. People rarely tell the truth to people they think are unworthy of it.

At this point, expecting journalists to report facts about people they run around with or who line their pockets, is like expecting a 3 year old to snitch on the Cookie Monster for stealing them cookies

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Kevan Hudson's avatar

Recently had the pleasure of meeting the last living signatory of the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Constitutional Act of 1982). It is former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford. Still pretty sharp at 82 years old.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Peckford

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Tardigrade's avatar

Free speech was #1 for me, but yeah.

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Sandra Pinches's avatar

Ditto!

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AKG's avatar

Everyone I know who voted for DT did so because they were infinitely more disapproving of the Dems than they were of DT, in spite of his many flaws. And yet the Democratic Party won't look in the mirror. The rise of Donald Trump is totally the result of the Dems embrace of Woke and their demonization of everyone who won't fall in line with their ideology. As far as the progressives are concerned, over half of the country is garbage. Who would vote for people like that? (And then there is also inflation, immigration, various wars, vaccine mandates, and lying about Biden's dementia...)

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Tardigrade's avatar

I saw this comment earlier today:

A lot of us don’t trust Trump.

We hate him less than you.

Learn the difference.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

Kudos Brad!

You are such an incredible writer. I always look forward to your postings whether I comment or not.

We have, in general, been focusing a lot on the mental illness of the Left. However, I've been watching closely for people who have awakened.

Here's a person that had rabid TDS until he found out the media lied to him:

https://x.com/MichaelRapaport/status/1856733150614860168?s=19

He's not the only one.

I've seen more of this than I thought. I suspect more will come around once they figure out the MSM is DEAD. IMO, the best thing that ever happened was the pollsters and The MSM lying to their audiences about Kamalas chances of getting elected. There's nothing like having expectations so out of line with reality to make people face cognitive dissonance. It has forced many to face reality. And that is the first step in pulling someone out of a cult. It also feels like this time around (with the exception of the zealots) that their grumblings are half hearted.

We are the journalists now. And the implosion of the MSM will drive many people outside of their echo chambers. At minimum they won't be able to hide behind a near autistic level of selective amnesia.

I'm feeling bullish about AMERICA!

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Brad's avatar

Hey, did you just get a post from me called "How Dressing Up My Daughter as Chewbacca Made the Best Halloween Ever"?

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

No. Is this a trick question?...you rascal?

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Brad's avatar

😆

No, the weirdest thing just happened. I got three different emails notifying me that a subscriber liked my post titled "How Dressing Up My Daughter as Chewbacca Made the Best Halloween Ever," but I never wrote a post with that title.

Thanks for the compliments by the way!

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

Sounds like something all those soy boys who finally synced their ovulation with the AWFLS would be interested in.

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Tardigrade's avatar

You're the third substack author to make that observation. One of the others was Rat.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Not to mention everyone lying about Joe Biden's condition. That was an obvious one.

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Ministry of Truth's avatar

That's also one they at least somewhat admitted to by changing their tune. Other stuff they just memory-hole.

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Frank Lee's avatar

My experience helping people with addiction problems is to offer a replacement addiction that is healthier. For example, a friend of mine was an alcoholic and his marriage was on the rocks. We both stopped drinking and I introduced him to cigars. When his wife was again ready to dump him because he smoked too many cigars, we started lifting weights. I drink a little, smoke a few cigars and lift a lot less than he does, but he is obsessed with weight lifting now, and his wife is very happy with him!

So, what can we offer to these over-educated, under-employed cretins to offset their obsession for being dominate scolds? It seems that their lives are empty of meaning and they are too vested in their politics as the placebo. Maybe free underwater welding certification training?

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Tardigrade's avatar

Bacon is a good substitute for addictions; it's what I recommend to my carb-addicted friends ;)

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Ministry of Truth's avatar

They can keep LARPing "The resistance" on social media. Perhaps Twitter can build them an echo chamber, just add an option for heavy filtering so it's more of an echo chamber.

The only other alternative I can think of is for them to have children and I don't wish that on any child, however it may be preferable to them trying to parent everybody else.

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Frank Lee's avatar

Not always, but often, getting married and having children reorders the brain synapses into more rational capability.

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Heyjude's avatar

Great post Brad!

A couple of years ago I had several discussions with a progressive relative. I pointed out that her ideas could only be implemented through coercion. She agreed, but that was OK with her. Because “how else can you get people to do what they are supposed to do?”

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Ministry of Truth's avatar

Doesn't surprise me, they always seem to think about this as a sort of parent-child relationship and if the kids don't voluntarily go along with what's good for them you force them to brush their teeth and eat their vegetables. This is especially egregious with childless women, the type you often find in corporate HR departments. Ironically those who are actually parents are usually terrible at it.

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Heyjude's avatar

Yes, this relative is a 75 year old childless woman.

We have another generation of them coming up, in even larger numbers. We must be vigilant in keeping them in check.

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Anthony S.'s avatar

One thing this essay really gets is the Left's overriding motivation to be seen as the most virtuous, the most moral, with a parallel desire for not merely top-down, but linear social control that is enforced through every social institution. Each desire reinforces the passions and vigor of the other.

All of society becomes a panopticon that can cancel you at any moment for deviating from the journey toward Progress.

In electing Trump, society repudiated Harris's inevitability -- an absurd premise we saw as we went through it -- just as they did with Clinton eight years prior. And baked into that inevitability was this idea of managerial competence that is guided by enlightened morals.

Both Harris and Clinton were the most qualified candidates ever within this worldview, so to reject them was to reject the moral foundations of their most ardent supporters, the ones who needed them to ascend to the throne as proof of purpose. That rejection is understandably traumatizing and puts into perspective the angry reactions coming from the Left (the 4B movement among them).

When your worldview has been consistently reflected back and confirmed for you through paragovernmental institutions, academic think tanks, Big Tech social platforms, corporate compliance with DEI diktats, the mainstream press, and popular culture, it's going to be stunning to watch the nation reject that to favor a MAGA movement seen as morally bankrupt and unworthy of leadership.

In 2016, the progressive, consensus-making leviathan could blame Russian disinformation. But in 2024, after four years of President Biden returning the country to sensible management by the adults in the room, when surely everyone could see how much better things had turned out -- the economy, the pandemic -- what else could they blame but a politics of resentment, of anger and fear at the prospect of being replaced, of white supremacy and wanting to oppress others.

It was the uneducated masses, ignorant not just in how things work to achieve to noble aims, but ignorant of the value of the noble aims themselves. Morally unworthy of the project, and yet in control of the nation's destiny. Hence the sneering, "you broke it, you bought it" and "just you wait" of the Left intelligentsia, taste makers, and those who follow them.

I don't think the Left's desire for power is something they're trying to overtly justify with their ideology. It's not a "strategy." At a deep psychological level, I think so. But -- and this is the hurdle we as nation must overcome through discourse -- some of them honestly believe that:

- they are nearly 100% right on every issue (or at least have to act as if they are for social credit),

- that they've perfectly diagnosed the ills,

- and that their prescriptions are informed by the most enlightened experts and perspectives.

Hence their expressions of disdain and derision. What just happened doesn't compute for them.

It's going to take some time to move even a few of them to get to "well-intentioned but flawed." When comfort in your own identity depends on being the most virtuous, and when the most virtuous deserve to lead the nation, well, it's not hard to see that challenging the "core values" will also provide an impediment to a striving class of PMCs reaching for its destination: a place of power that directs the nation and the lives of its citizens. Of leaving behind a legacy of having brought goodness into the world.

And yet there's that word -- power. At some deep level, the power motive is what justifies the undermining of the First Amendment, the censorship of opinions that don't lead to the desired outcomes, the removal of candidates from the ballot, the nonstop, hivemind slandering of character.

It's how you get to places like "We need more justices on the Supreme Court" and lawfare and spying on campaigns and making up crises out of whole cloth to place us in a state of panic over "Democracy."

The panic leads to those workshopped bromides that have to do the heavy lifting of swaying public sentiment but that are transparent in their aim to manipulate.

It's how you get the Fourth Estate and government elites pining for the days when the press was the referee on what counted as truth.

I don't think this is a cynical exercise, either. The NYT, WaPo, CNN -- they really think they are closer to distinguishing truth from falsehood, good from bad, by dint of their institutional power, legacy reputation, and mission. Complicating that view and the actions they may take in service of it are the twin needs for power and virtuous reputation.

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DMC's avatar

your first paragraph brings back the fact that religion is likely hard wired into us. In abandoning traditional religion, Progressives merely replaced it with another form of religion. In doing so practicing the worst aspects of the Pharisees, virtue signaling.

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Ministry of Truth's avatar

This does have a lot of parallels to communism, one major aspect of things that happened in communist autocracies was that whenever the policies didn't work out it was always blamed on "wreckers" and saboteurs, who were rounded up and murdered. Barring any actual wreckers and saboteurs of course people were just arrested and killed at random. The atomization of society, the reach of ideology into every aspect of life, the spying and snitching, the false allegations to further your own station and a press filled with lies and censorship of alternatives those are also hallmarks of communist countries.

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DD's avatar

Terrifically written overview of the current political, cultural situation......"pompous, pontificating prigs" reminds me of Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism".....well done!

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Joe Craig's avatar

I note with great JOY that the major legacy of the Obaminton DNC is LOSING TO TRUMP TWICE!!!

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Adam's avatar

Great analysis, if a little heavy on the thesaurus. Takes a lot of patience to stomach that much contact with the mainstream media, I'm sure...

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Artemus Gordon's avatar

The leviathan is being hunted by Ahab, Starbuck and Queequeg in the form of Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy. The supreme court cases (link below) which embody the notion that bureaucrats are not entitled to make laws will be the undoing of many of the wasteful and useless departments who squander our tax dollars. I am looking forward to seeing how much damage they can inflict on Moby DC. Hopefully the story ends better for our heroes and Moby doesn't drag them down as it dies. But it won't give up without a fight.

https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1856725762130260383

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Secret Squirrel's avatar

This is the last stand, isn’t it? The Constitution is under attack. Our country is invaded. And the enemies Domestic are flexing their powers. I am praying this new administration lives to take power and strikes down the enemy. Solidly and permanently.

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Dave Vierthaler's avatar

Brad, loved the revealing of truth in this article. I know America was enthralled with Obama…I was not…I always thought he was a closet socialist. He restructured our economic classes from: poor, working class (blue collar), white collar and rich to middle class and rich…ultimately pitting them against each other to agitate, separate and influence. I have searched for the WSJ article that described this in detail but have failed. (BTW I had to lookup more words in this article than any other I have ever read…bravo!)

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kristin's avatar

If you come across a confused person. You'll know it when you see one... Just take one of the copies of this article that you printed off your computer and politely Hand it to them. And let them know this one article explains it all and wish them well and be on your way.

Thank you.

Really. The clearest, most no nonsense and truly honest explanation Of It All. Without any faux outrage .

I love this.

And I'm so proud of everyone in this country too for stepping up and out to vote for something Way better.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Brilliant writing, and explains very well why a lot of us voted for Orange Cthulhu™.

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Marc DB's avatar

I disagree with 2 of your assertions. 1) our country moved center not right as Bill Malher so sanguinely observed, when you (Liberals) move so far Left, people go to the right. But he missed that too as he’s so deeply mired in the Liberal ideology. Our country saw us being driven to the edge of a cliff & veered back center to safe ground. 2) the current liberal state of mind could be traced back to Hillary Clinton’s plagiarism of Mao Tse Tung use of the term” politically correct”. And half the country became deplorable. Now many more of us are in the muck. As the voting showed.

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Brad's avatar

But in order to move back to the center, the country had to move right.

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Ministry of Truth's avatar

Many aspects of Trumps foreign policy remind me of the promises made by Obama about war. Of course instead he stayed the course of the Bush era and even struck off a few more items on the neocon bucket list, but I remember him promising peace.

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Durling Heath's avatar

Brad- Was it you who listed the 7 Deadly Sins against Wokeism (racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc.)? I have been searching for that post for days. Does anyone recall it?

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Brad's avatar

Nope, not me. Don't recall seeing a post with that title anywhere, but I'll keep an eye out.

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