First, it’s time to say farewell to this site Messages to Millennials, which has been such a labor of love for me, since late 2011 to now, August of 2023. I will leave the site up and all my posts archived for posterity (I was age 30 to 42 during that period).This site will no longer be updated. This post was simultaneously published on substack and can be read here https://sarahreynolds.substack.com/p/i-like-rfk-jr-plus-thoughts-on-refusing. I’m still in DC and still politically motivated. Rooting for RFK Jr now which will surprise no one who has been reading this blog from the beginning! Thank you, friends.
Heads up! If you are reading this, you are unfortunately on my old blog, my Messages to Millennials Blog hosted by WordPress.May I suggest you subscribe to my substack? Substack is a platform that is 100% committed to the freedom of speech and expression necessary to maintain a thriving constitutional republic. All my posts are free to read, and if you subscribe, you will get an email in your inbox every time I publish. Thank you kindly! The URL is https://sarahreynolds.substack.com/
I think it will surprise no one that I have very high hopes for RFK, Jr. Or at least it will surprise no one who has followed me since my Bernie to Trump transition days in 2016 (on twitter). As a Millennial who voted for Obama twice, Trump twice (after caucusing for Bernie in St Paul, MN — yes, I’m one of the 8% of Bernie supporters who switched to Trump), and floundering in a sea of bewilderment over the past two and a half years of the Biden administration’s devastating policy whims, I finally feel a semblance of inspiration as I watch Robert Kennedy, Jr. fight lie after smear after lie, one podcast at a time. I don’t know if he can win. And if he does, I would certainly bet on the deep state having a grassy knoll contingency plan waiting in the wings. Still, our country is worth fighting for — and our countrymen and women are too*, even the divided and conquered, blue vs red paradigm-entrenched ones. It may seem like a majority because twitter and the news are so uniquely equipped to make people like us — who read, think, and reflect a lot — feel overwhelmed and hopeless every time we turn on the TV or log onto twitter or the internet in general; but in reality, the majority of Americans just want peace and prosperity, as RFK, Jr. has pointed out again and again.
RFK, Jr. checks all the boxes on my political love-map, so to speak — there’s intelligence, strength, articulation, fearlessness, a proven track record of victory in battle, plus a willingness to die on principle. In spades
Here’s an interesting piece on the man: “What RFK Jr. Gets Right—and What He Gets Wrong:” the author indulges in the flagrant spread of disinformation first, and then, even more interestingly, dog whistles to the deep state, specifically in his closing statement: “To many citizens, Kennedy sounds like a man who can’t be bought and won’t be silenced. Those in power should be listening closely.” You can read the piece here.
Some will say he has no chance. Some will say even Trump has no chance. But this is demoralization banter, and I like to refuse demoralization. Sort of like when someone offers you a tall glass of iced pee when you asked for iced tea. “No, thank you,” I say politely. Lots of powerful people get off on us feeling hopeless, useless, and cynical. The future ought to look bright — for example, every day I wake up and see the Nats Stadium outside my window instead of four feet of snow is a day I’m reminded I am alive and well, that I have already escaped the cold Gitmo known as Minnesota where I grew up, and that I’m living in my future right now in our nation’s capital. Time waits for no one. I recently attended the funeral of my 76-year-old friend here in DC: she was born in 1947, the same year as my mom who died in 2000. As I walked home from the church, I had the thought, “If I live to be as healthy and as long as [my friend who passed away last month], then I have 34 years left on this earth.” So let’s enjoy our health while we have it, and even when we feel disappointed by corruption and deception in our government, let’s put it in perspective and remember how lucky we are to have the rights and privileges we still do have (for example, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances or the right to gather peacefully to protest body-autonomy violating mandates or to start our own blog and ask our readers to object to abuse of power by their corrupt governors, each enshrined in the First Amendment), especially compared to the torment that citizens in other countries have to put up with. I’d hate to be a practitioner of Falun Dafa in China or an unmarried woman trying to test drive a car before trying to get a car loan in KSA, that’s for sure — or vote. “But why bother? The system is rigged**!” I hear some people pointing out. Maybe it is. And the dark web is for sure filled with animal torture p*rn. And the banks are totally predicated on fractional reserve lending (which I thought had to be a conspiracy theory when I first found out it existed, but lol, no — totally real). So, who wants to opt out? Ready to boycott the internet? Live off the land? Go back to bartering? Sounds like a lot of work. I’m going to stay here, and meet reality in reality realm, the emotional space where we feel gratitude for all the good things in our lives, like family, friends, food, indoor plumbing, and refrigerators, and then feel inspired to take action, on the side, to do what we can to ameliorate the bizarrely horrifying things in reality. Why gratitude and inspiration? Because gratitude and inspiration are what we specifically declare when we generally refuse demoralization: we plant the flag of occupation of our own emotional territory, and we plant it with joyful vigilance.
But ok. Fair enough. For those who really feel disheartened, how about this: don’t vote because “it matters” or because “your vote counts.” Vote because the alternative is monarchy. Vote because another alternative is overt tyranny. Vote because the very concept of representative government is fascinating: it’s astonishing to me as a student of philosophy that human beings even came up with it as a thought experiment, to say nothing of the gall and high pain tolerance, I imagine, it must have taken to attempt to see if it worked in practice. And it ought to go without saying that our constitutional republic system of government in the US still has some kinks to be ironed out; what I am saying is, better a flawed system than an overtly oppressive one. Direct democracy, in contrast, is plainly logical, but too time-consuming and tedious to be a sustainable second job for everyone in society to have to work part-time (and really, volunteer), even if the crew was reduced to only those who desired to work that unpaid part time job. What I’d love to see is a Senate and House filled with licensed philosophers who practice reason, in the same way lawyers are licensed to practice law and doctors are licensed to practice medicine: let’s call them elected philosopher representatives instead of philosopher kings. (“Plato argued that the ideal state – one which ensured the maximum possible happiness for all its citizens – could only be brought into being by a ruler possessed of absolute knowledge, obtained through philosophical study” — “[t]he concept of a city-state ruled by philosophers [which] is first explored in Plato‘s Republic, written around 375 BC.,” read more here.)
When I was young, I used to say often that I wanted to make a difference in the world. My mom would invariably reply, “Everyone makes a difference in the world, Sarah Louise, for better or for worse — there is no neutral effect. And when we don’t vote, we’re casting a weighted ballot for everything to stay the same.” I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but there’s another reason we should vote on principle: because we are people who have principles. And the reason we have principles is, once more, because we are people who eschew demoralization. I posit that it is this joyful vigilance that precipitates the intellectual refining of principles: while the values and beliefs may change over time as the mind reflects and reasons and draws new conclusions, the emotionally fertile soil of joyful vigilance or joyful skepticism stay at more or less consistent levels and are what allow the seed of a new idea, potentially a mind-changing one, to take root.
I also sometimesvote to make good on my promise to legislators that if they support x-y-z unethical immoral unconstitutional bill, I will vote for their opponent on election day. But at the beginning of the day, I always vote because it ideally would matter, and I am an idealist. In 2016, I found out that the ability to write-in candidates is only allowed in 41 states; ideally, it would be allowed in all 50 states so we can all truly be free to vote for the person we desire to be elected to serve the public, instead of only voting against the person we do not want. Imagine living your whole life always having to choose the thing you dislike least, and never being able to express pure desire for the thing you do want because, of the available options, there’s not one you do, truly, want. Interesting, isn’t it, that our minds and hearts are essentially servant-trained from a very early age to be ever-ready to say “yes, ok” and assent to something we don’t actually wholeheartedly desire? And in fact don’t really want much at all? Almost as if someone wants us to not want to vote enough to show up and cast an actual ballot. And then, to become inured to settling for the reduced pain of apathy, feeling and concluding that doing nothing was what we “wanted,” and then carrying that mindset into every other area of our lives, rendering us essentially … demoralized.
Imagine living your whole life always having to choose the thing you dislike least
As I mentioned, my mom used to say that when we don’t show up to cast our physical ballot, it’s the same as voting for everything to stay the same. But I think not voting is actually tantamount to casting a weighted ballot for everything to get worse because of the exponential increase of power and authority accrued (hoarded) by elected officials the longer they stay in office. And then in a way, we tacitly condone the suffering that that abuse of power causes our fellow Americans too: case in point, my friends who complained about Bush II for four years and then didn’t show up to vote in 2004 come to mind. Then again, who would they have voted for? They wouldn’t have voted for anyone. Just against someone. Now, that may not be totally true either: I myself wrote-in a candidate because in Minnesota, they allow write-ins on the ballot. I wrote in Howard Dean because I liked that he got angry during the debates. I believed I witnessed his passion.
Finally, while we obviously vote with our ballots, we vote with our dollars and our time too and may not realize we’re making demoralized choices in those situations as well. When we spend dollars on items manufactured in a given country, we are voting for the practices of that country’s government, especially their labor laws. We vote with our minutes by spending them on whatever it is we oppose by fighting against it with our time, and spending them on whatever ideals we desire by fighting for them with our time.
When we don’t speak up (talk back) to people in a position of power by calling, writing, or paying a visit to our elected leaders’ offices in order to protest injustice, our silence is a de facto prayer for things to get worse. How? Because our silence guarantees that things will get worse, as though we are praying for further deterioration and then answering our own prayer, ironically. To wit, members of congress have said the most surprising mode of communication they have been on the receiving end of is the handwritten letter. Anyone can email or call; it just takes a few minutes. Writing a letter and putting a stamp on it is old fashioned — and it takes time.
New mandates may be on the horizon.
I regret to inform you that new mandates may be on the horizon. When the time comes and I suspect it will soon, let’s speak up and invoke our existing rights to privacy and freedom. It’s a numbers game, pure and simple. Math. The more of us who object, the louder the cacophony of truth-tellers and liberty-demanders. The thing elected officials never expect is to hear the promise, not the threat, that we will vote for their opponent, if they don’t do what we want, next election day. (If you click here, and scroll way down, you will see four templates I created for people to use to write their elected officials over the 2021 mandates.)
“It’s a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Let’s take action to keep it.
*Still, our country is worth fighting for — and our countrymen and women are too:this is a big claim and I don’t offer much evidence to justify it in this essay. Suffice it to say, I view the Bill of Rights as a collective national moral compass which guides me as far as how to act as an American, and how to treat other Americans. My patriotism and my moral code are inextricably linked. It feels like Oprah on Favorite Things day, shouting, “and you get the benefit of the doubt and you get due process and you get a jury trial and you get freedom of religion and you get a defense attorney and you get freedom of speech and you get …” you get the picture. It’s not that I assume people are good or worthy of freedom or have earned the fantastic privileges outlined in the Bill of Rights — the opposite. You probably don’t deserve freedom or the benefit of the doubt, but no government deserves to deprive you of it. Tyranny (a government abusing power over the masses, power that we have granted them) is more abhorrent to me than the pain caused by any one person abusing their will by inflicting pain on another person.
**Rigged: here, I simply refer to the rumor circulating of late that we select, not elect, our members of Congress and our President from a predetermined cadre of establishment-approved candidates.
Thank you for reading, dear substack subscribers!!
Want to read about my thoughts on the gun control psy-op? Click here.
Want to read about the glass of life being half filled with water and half filled with air? Click here.
Check out my post “You aren’t pro-choice or pro-privacy rights if you don’t oppose forced personal medical history disclosure (which means we have to discuss The Truth About HIPPA)” here
Remember, if you’re going through hell, keep going!
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Evolution is a theory ergo all conspiracy theories are also the best generally agreed upon versions of what probably happened. This is a hypothesis!
Heads up! If you are reading this, you are unfortunately on my old blog, my Messages to Millennials Blog hosted by WordPress.May I suggest you subscribe to my substack? Substack is a platform that is 100% committed to the freedom of speech and expression necessary to maintain a thriving constitutional republic. All my posts are free to read, and if you subscribe, you will get an email in your inbox every time I publish. Thank you kindly! The URL is https://sarahreynolds.substack.com/
Professor Emily Oster got dragged in the last day since her opinion piece in the Atlantic sparked anger, disgust, defiance and outrage on twitter, facebook, tik tok and other sites (substack too, see two excellent posts from Chris Bray here and here). Why? For sharing the truly bizarre suggestion that we as a nation should move on from division and culture wars and instead embrace “Pandemic Amnesty.”
Now “amnesty” is a very specific word. It doesn’t mean forgiveness, it literally means a pardon, i.e. the absence of punishment … for a crime committed in the past.
It is a stark and loaded word indeed when used to refer to anything Covid-related because it establishes two parties: victims and perpetrators. Group 1: Those who committed crimes and could be in the legal sense pardoned of the criminal behavior they engaged in; and Group 2: those who will consequently not get justice.
The implication of such a dichotomy (if one were to appear) is horrifying.
The author alludes to the appeal and inevitability of forgiveness; I posit in contrast that forgiveness is a spiritual concept, one that may be inextricably linked to a religious belief for some, so she’s jumping the gun here because Forgiveness would be the stage after Justice, and only for those whose religion, faith, or spiritual practice also inspires or compels it.
Use of the word amnesty is terribly concerning to me because it insinuates that grave injustice has been committed. And if some other even more horrible truth is coming out soon, her piece in the Atlantic serves as a way to beta test our/society’s future reaction to it — acting as the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
In other words, if we’re this outraged now knowing only what we know so far, how outraged will we be then, after this (speculated by me) coming newsflash triggers national indignation from coast to coast?
The most revealing part of the Professor’s piece in the Atlantic is this statement:
“The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.”
No, vacuums are complicated. All those attachments.
Tyranny is quite straight-forward, in contrast.
Years ago, I read a book that taught the reader that people are often confessing and how to detect it. If you look at and listen to their word choices, you can sometimes find what it is they did in the past, what they fear will happen in the future, and clues about whether or not they are capable of remorse. Many of you who have watched my youtube or read my blog before I got on substack know how I like to do a communication analysis, and delineate a) what’s literally being said, b) what the person really meant, and c) the third and most important/revealing part, what’s being left unsaid. And I rarely hear people say, “it’s complicated,” unless they are feeling profound regret, fear of the consequences of those “complicated choices,” and plenty of denial of the emotional origin of that particular word choice. They don’t even know why they were compelled unconsciously to use that word…but we do. The stark truth would likely be anything but complicated and possibly horrifying. (For example, what if Oster got on twitter tomorrow and tweeted out, “I don’t think I feel regret or remorse like other people. Intellectually, I get it: the Pandemic response caused human beings unbearable pain and society irrevocable damage but it doesn’t really bother me per se and sometimes I even feel gratified by it, especially when I witness overt force (mandates) replace emotional manipulation (shame).” Now I’m sure Oster is a wonderful person with a fully intact moral compass who’s 100% able to empathetically relate to others!! But … IF … on the off chance it were a true statement so she did declare it on twitter, it might seem complicated to her, but to us it would be the simplest most logical explanation for her actions. We’d go, oh! She’s a sociopath! Oh my God, now it all makes perfect sense! Hahahahaha I get it now hahahahaha because we live in hell!!)
Continuing our analysis of the paragraph now, remember when former President Obama said, “We can’t go back, we can only go forward,” in regard to the DOD/CIA black sites and “enhanced interrogation methods” used under former President Bush? Well, Emily here is pulling a Barack: hey now, folks, we can’t go back so what’s the use in doom looping?
But doom, like amnesty, is an astonishing word to use. It means death and destruction. Yes, we use it in the vernacular because doom and gloom rhyme. But really doom means we are shortly to find ourselves the subject of the wrath of God himself. “Doomed for eternity” ring a bell? We know it means getting punished, by GOD, for making a terrible terrible mistake — forever! This is the word choice of someone who is in a dark place psychologically. (At one point, in what is now considered to be an archaic use of the word, per the Oxford Dictionary, Judgment day was also known as the Last Doom.) And the doom loop sounds a lot like the hell loop referenced in the TV show “Lucifer” where the person can never escape hell and must relive the most horrible moments of their lives over and over and over, as punishment for being bad people on earth. Doom means what we did is so bad that it precludes redemption. My God, Professor Oster, what did you do? You are getting shame all over the floor and the twitter and the Atlantic — go clean up! It does not mean she feels guilt or regret. I posit that guilt is what we feel when we regret causing someone pain; shame is what we feel when we get caught.
Now let’s go to Churchill. You know the quote: “Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.” But she misquotes it and says, “those who forget history.” It’s not uncommon to insert/embed little secret command statements in both written and spoken speech when we are trying to persuade (manipulate) someone.
Just forget history.
Work together.
Build back.
Move forward.
And why would we want to avoid learning from history? If what we did during that history would earn us a punishment so severe it rivaled the wrath of God.
In that vein, let’s look at another passage from her piece:
“All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.”
Now, my first read-through, I heard her condescending HR tone, patronizingly correcting you for directly confronting a bully coworker instead of going crying like a baby to tattle to mommy in Human Resources. But — then — I realized that she was confessing when she writes, “getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing.” Oh but it was. It was egregiously and gravely remiss of anyone to demand or coerce churches and schools to close and keep Walmart and Target open while the mom and pop shops went under and out of business. It was unethical, immoral, and unjust to developmentally delay tiny babies and little children by covering your and their face with a mask. It was ludicrous and sadistic to change definitions of the words “vaccine” and “herd immunity.” Forcing people to disclose their medical records to bosses and coworkers was a blatant violation of privacy that the corrupt infiltrated ACLU even backed, to say nothing of the obscenity of being forced to endure a medical procedure against your will in order to keep your job! Yes, Emily, you failed. You morally failed.
So … now read it again as if the FBI (we’re speculating in a fun thought experiment! The FBI doesn’t actually care about you — but pretend for a second they do and their bosses won’t have the evidence disappeared) has discovered personal email chains going back and forth between her, B Gates, Dr Garden Gnome & cc-ing everyone on the Pfarma board from February 2020 about how it’s almost go-time and they’re all going to be filthy rich from vaccine mandates and hey, bae/boo, looking forward to partying with you all in Barbados on Klaus’ yacht. Obviously, this is ridiculous and over the top (because Emily Oster is no major player, she’s a pawn parrot, er I mean, canary) but when someone tells me further discussion would ultimately be unproductive, I hear the desire underlying the words: desire for silence, secrecy, and sweeping something under the rug. All of a sudden, the fear underlying the overconfident tone, the arrogant presumptuous prediction of the future as requiring you, unvaxxed untouchable, to sit down and shut the fuck up rises to the top. It’s as though she’s poo-pooing us! Why would that be? Fear. Because she’s afraid she did something so wrong that it might be considered illegal. (And if not her, whoever encouraged her to write the piece.) Finally, each of the five sentences is a declaration of reality from a position of authority — these types of statements are made by judges and people who write policy. Read each sentence again: each one is a statement of opinion as if it were a fact. Let’s pick one: “Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.” A non-psycho would say, “If I had known then what I do now, I wouldn’t have wanted our kids to be locked down, masked, and learning over Zoom, and I don’t want this issue to keep dividing our country. I wish I had known and made different choices.” Nope, each sentence is crafted very VERY carefully to avoid any acceptance of responsibility (culpability!) or regret. There’s not one I-statement in the entire paragraph! Remember “we made complicated choices”? LOL! Not an iota of emotion or responsibility for anything. So condescending. Then I go back and I read it again in vocal creak as if I, in my Deep State Valley Girl character, was the one who wrote it and I cheer myself up. I do my best to find the humor in this gray area realm called Earth, and I hope you do too.
I don’t think this woman feels bad for a second for behaving like an actual monster. (She feels bad she got caught.) But her speech/writing patterns seem to reveal, in my analysis, that’s she’s very very worried that you might be angry. That we all might be very very angry. And ready to demand justice. The only thing we’re going to forget is Amnesty. And what are we going to embrace? Atonement.
Heads up! If you are reading this, you are unfortunately on my old blog, my Messages to Millennials Blog hosted by WordPress. As you may have noticed, the site is truly subpar when it comes to navigating your way around and trying to find a particular post. May I suggest you subscribe to my substack? Substack is a platform that is 100% committed to the freedom of speech and expression necessary to maintain a thriving constitutional republic. All my posts are free to read, and if you subscribe, you will get an email in your inbox every time I publish. Thank you kindly! The URL is https://sarahreynolds.substack.com/ .
I have been toying with the idea of attempting to prove, via philosophical argument, the conclusion that we actually do live in hell. Yes, though technically a planet, I posit that Earth is in fact also a realm within which God orchestrates as many opportunities to forgive (i.e. tragedies, injustices, and tragic injustices) as possible and achieves this by giving us each a survival instinct that renders us overwhelmingly subject to tendencies to be a) hungry b) tired c) curious d) horny e) competitive and f) violent and only through rigorous training (religious programming, societal norm-learning, rigorous parenting) are our natural tendencies broken down and through the regular practice of resisting temptation or avoiding punishment are we cajoled to be moderate in our responses to these survival instinct urges.
I think it would be too hard to prove though. Especially because I don’t want to use religious texts as sources.
So instead, I’ve resorted to referring to Earth, our world, as a dungeon. My present thesis is: All of Earth is a dungeon and one day God lets us out via the mercy of our inevitable natural death.
There is more to say on the topics of God, love, life, consent, freedom, free will, and death (including suicide where we use our free will to choose to no longer consent to be alive and subsequently let ourselves out of the dungeon), but this post is for specifically delineating what it means to be a human woman. Recently, Matt Walsh asked people on the street, “what is a woman?” and the answer that kept bubbling up in my mind was that it has meant for me an existence spent in near constant fear of being raped and getting pregnant from that rape, a hypervigilance that especially permeated my awareness in my teens and 20’s.
So today I state my answer to this question of what a woman is. A woman is a female human being who has a uterus which can, during a finite period of years during her life, gestate another human, ensuring the very survival of humanity itself.
And a man is a male human being who has testes which act as the origin of sperm which can, during a finite period of his life, fertilize a human woman, ensuring the very survival of humanity itself. In order to fertilize her, he must have an orgasm.
The human female need neither experience orgasm (or even non-orgasmic sexual pleasure) nor give consent in order to be fertilized.
(Because … wait for it … we live in hell!)
There’s a very funny comedienne named Nikki Glaser who does a routine about how everyone here is here today because some guy came. Starting at 4:10 …
It’s hilarious.
The problem is that we don’t know if everyone here is here today because some woman (our/their mom, grandma, great grandma, great great grandma, great great great grandmother) consented to, enjoyed, or orgasmed during sex. Maybe one of those things applied to the fertilizing act of coitus, and possibly none of those things applied (because we live in … you get it).
And this is where the greatest supply and demand horror show ever devised begins.
For men, sex equals orgasm.
(Please, we’re not referring to people with geriatric dick; they’re not fertilizing anyone without pharmaceutical assistance and rarely inhabit a partnership where fertilization is even on the table.)
For women, sex might mean pleasure, it might mean orgasm, it might mean rape. It doesn’t “equal” orgasm.
If every time I open a present, I love it, I’m always going to look forward to my birthday.
If sometimes I open a present and it’s humiliating, degrading, the last thing I was wanting to do at that moment, possibly associated with coercion, force, fear, violence, blood, regret, pain, and only sometimes associated with pleasure, to say nothing of the slim chance of orgasm during a “part b into slot a” interaction, well then? I might not look forward to my birthday (but I might hype birthdays up to other girls my age in order to dupe them into thinking birthdays are awesome so that I get to know they experienced the same suffering/embarrassment/regret I did or I might even withhold information from my own daughter to make sure she does it and gets it over with so I get grandchildren – the possible motives are endless).
If one entire HALF of a population always enjoys Thing X, they become the party that wants it: the customer. They are on the demand side of the supply and demand graph.
And if the other half of a population comes to associate Thing X with a fundamental injustice (i.e. orgasm disparity: how come he always has an orgasm and I rarely/never do?), they then become the party that provides it, the supplier. They are on the supply side of the graph. (Yes, there are exceptions. We’ll get to it!) And the more I resent that disparity, the more I might leverage Thing X as a service to barter. Or, I might opt out of that marketplace altogether if I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the horror of such an unfair premise.
These supply and demand roles flip when the product is pregnancy and the man becomes the provider and the woman becomes the customer, if/when the female has delayed allowing sex to naturally result in pregnancy and is now under biological pressure to get pregnant as the survival instinct clock counts down.
(Profanity alert – please stop reading if certain words offend you!!)
In my follow up to this stack, I will delineate and describe the terms slut, whore, bitch and cunt; and how each player affects the supply, demand, and value of first sex and then pregnancy, both wanted and unwanted. The supply and demand dynamic I have described above really only pertains to average straight men and women who want to be in a partnership (so only the vast majority of humanity). Women who experience pleasure from the act of sex (of the part b into slot a, consensual variety) that is greater than the pleasure of clitoral orgasm are rare but they are out there. I posit that slut and whore are temporary stages of a particular woman’s sex life rather than defining labels and have observed this in many women I’ve met who eventually entered a monogamous partnership after such a phase. (More on this in the follow-up post. Also, clearly, literal prostitutes are not who I refer to with the vernacular “whore.”)
Now, I am a woman (spoiler alert!) and I have female friends who have confided in me and I also know firsthand how amazing sex is with a certain type of man. (I have concluded that while it appears that there are types of sex, there are really only types of men — but I will continue to research this hypothesis.) I also know that a lot of women aren’t having orgasms during sex: these are the average women mentioned above who usually feel frustrated, high and dry, and often disappointed after p in v sex (and loooooove getting eaten out). This is tragic (not the oral sex part lol). And I mean, truly devastatingly tragic because there is no reason in this day in age to feel unsatisfied now that we have handheld battery operated devices to assist! Ladies, please, go buy yourself a magic bullet and remedy this situation. He wants you to come – and if it were as simple to get you the friction you need as it is for him to get the friction he needs, he would do it!
Why isn’t the clitoris inside the vagina? Anyone know? Seems odd. Huh. Oh wait, no … it actually makes … perfect sense … once you remember, we live in hell!!
And guess what (I assume you’re curious and I think it’s germane), because of religion, I waited waaaaay too long to have sex. And it wasn’t only because of religion but, as mentioned in previous posts, I did attend all-girls Catholic school and later a women’s college, and the rhetoric influenced me to no small degree. I was terrified of getting pregnant if I had sex. Nothing is 100% effective at preventing pregnancy and there was nothing scarier to me than the potential poverty my own fertility could inflict upon me. In my 20’s, I barely made enough money to take care of myself — the terror of having to take care of another person, vulnerable and completely dependent on me, kept me on high alert. Penis! Baby! Poverty! Run away!! Yes, I’m pro-choice. For you. Abortion is not a choice I would make. (Please see my post about the 6 things my mom taught me about abortion for more of my thoughts on the topic.) Ah, you thought it was the “save sex for marriage” Catholic school rhetoric that influenced me? No, it was the “abortion is murder” rhetoric. (It is — I wouldn’t wish life on earth on anyone though.)
Another cause of my late blooming was that I was sooooo sure that I was going to meet my soulmate — any day — and he would be a person I could (reduce the) risk (of) parenthood with, together. He wouldn’t mind cycle beads and Basal body temperature tracking to avoid fertile days and would share all my unique political and spiritual views and also literally believe that we were twin flames, designed and destined for each other by God! But … that day I imagined of looking into another person’s eyes and realizing, it’s you!! didn’t happen in my 20’s or 30’s (let’s see how my 40’s go — yes, we live in hell but I have observed several soulmate relationships here; and death is the only thing that could keep me from continuing my search). I firmly believe in marriage and monogamy as a cultural anchor and view family ties as the structure that saves society from chaos. I salute the bravery of people who would risk divorce. And I still (!!) believe in soulmates. But the longing and yearning for that one person hurts so much less now that I (can, sometimes) have sex. Seriously. If I could tell my 25 year old self to go for it, (and how beautiful and amazing the penis is!) I would.
Please subscribe if you enjoyed this post! Thank you so much for reading.
The following should be considered a brief aside: Some readers will send me links to examples of scenarios where a cattle prod was used on a man to “force” his ejaculation. This is absurd — not every Law and Order: SVU plot is actually and truly ripped from the headlines. And men do not have to be vigilant about groups of women in foreign countries ganging up on them to collect a non-consent based sperm sample or read newspaper reports about such (fantastical and nonexistent) crimes. This is a lot like saying, hey Sarah, here’s an article about a person who won the lottery twice in the same decade — see, an exception! Gambling isn’t so bad!
Yes, it is. Gambling is immoral, unethical and unjust. The “exception” only further proves the rule and the rule is that people who win only win because other people lost. People — many people — had to lose in order for that guy to win twice. If they hadn’t all lost, your article guy couldn’t have won. Not once. Not twice. And not as much money as he did (after years of loss) eventually win.
Because … wait for it … we live in hell!
(I morally object far less to sweepstakes by the same token: winners win at no expense to others. Yes, some time was lost/wasted by the people who don’t win but the winner doesn’t get the lost minutes of the non-winning players. The winner’s winnings is comprised of advertising revenue. Their length of time on earth – the winner’s lifespan – isn’t increased one single iota. And the people who didn’t win aren’t losers, they simply didn’t win. I.e. there’s no transfer of money.)
Heads up! If you are reading this, you are unfortunately on my old blog, my Messages to Millennials Blog hosted by WordPress. As you may have noticed, the site is truly subpar when it comes to navigating your way around and trying to find a particular post. May I suggest you subscribe to my substack? Substack is a platform that is 100% committed to the freedom of speech and expression necessary to maintain a thriving constitutional republic. All my posts are free to read, and if you subscribe, you will get an email in your inbox every time I publish. Thank you kindly! The URL is https://sarahreynolds.substack.com/ or click HERE.
First, as far as vaccines:
This post is not about vaccine efficacy.
This post is not about a global pandemic.
This post is about privacy and body autonomy.
A year ago, I spoke at the Arlington County Board meeting about the policy instated by the Arlington County (Virginia) Treasurer Carla de la Pava to require her employees to disclose whether or not we had been vaccinated to her and her deputies. She had instated a mask policy in an office in a government building that was more restrictive than Governor Northam’s.
And can listen for yourself to my 2 minute statement at the meeting here. And yes, if 2 minutes sounds even more disrespectful than the standard 3 minutes most public servants bestow upon their constituents, it is.
In the end, Carla fired me for “displaying a profound distrust in the leadership team.” (Lol.) If you are an adult person with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex and you don’t know that trust isn’t a real concept anchored in reality: please read my piece on trading trust for reduced risk here.
Not only did I get fired for even questioning the concept of forced medical record disclosure, other County employees got fired for not getting the vaxx, long before President Biden’s mandate.
But then there was the … coercion. After I was fired, someone I worked with was repeatedly, approached by the Treasurer’s Deputy. This person, who told me about this incident as it was happening, hadn’t scheduled their vaccination appointment (in June of 2021). They were accosted over and over again by the Deputy who demanded, “when are you going? when is your appointment? why haven’t you scheduled it yet?” When the employee said they hadn’t decided if they were going to get vaccinated yet, the deputy said, “what do you MEAN??? you need to make sure you get it scheduled.” After a week of this hourly browbeating, the employee scheduled their Covid-19 vaccination appointment.
Despicable.
The ACLU — the same organization that ostensibly views Edward Snowden as a warrior for 4th Amendment rights and privacy from our government’s prying eyes — declared their full support of employers forcing their employees not just to get vaccinated but to disclose that personal, private medical information to their co-workers and supervisors, people who are de facto strangers (or less than strangers, as the song goes). Again, this post is not about
a) how effective the c vaccine or any other vaccine is, or
b) how safe the c vaccine or any other vaccine is.
It’s about being forced to disclose whether or not a personal, private, medical procedure, happened. To strangers. You and your doctor, you and your nurse – people who literally listen to your heart in a profoundly intimate way – talked to you in a private room. Door closed. And then a procedure occurred. Or it didn’t. And that is no one’s business but yours and the “health care provider.”
Here’s where I take a moment to share my respect with you, dear reader, for physicians and nurses. They are human beings. They are healers. They actually take an oath — a sworn oath — not to harm other human beings. Insurance companies reduce them to objects by labeling them “health care providers.” That twisting of language is disrespectful and unkind. My dad was a doctor and when I learned about the Hippocratic oath, I thought it was so cool, in that way you feel awe as a child. Wow! You’re giving your word that you will help heal others or at least do your best not to hurt them! This is serious business, you guys. The other oath I knew about was the one to protect and defend the Constitution — even if it meant your own death. I knew an oath was like a pact, in essence a promise you made — to God — to be amazing. Awesome, brave, heroic. That’s how I saw the members of my family who had taken these oaths. People so fearless that they didn’t hesitate to make a public declaration that they would always do the right thing. Cool!!
Here’s a video of me telling the story of my dad walking a burglar backwards down the stairs at gunpoint in 1982, advising the miscreant gentleman to rethink his life decisions, and telling him, “Good news, it’s your lucky day.” (Imagine the cadence of the Raymond Reddington character on the show “Blacklist.”) “I’d certainly like to shoot you for trying to cut my wife’s finger off but … I took the Hippocratic oath so I can’t.” My mom later said, “well, I didn’t take any Hippocratic oath” to which my dad replied, “then you should have slept with a 45 under your side of the mattress.” Lol! (And that story got better and better every time my mom told it, as stories are wont to do.)
Now, I realize that health insurance companies may also be privvy to interactions and procedures that take place between doctor, nurse, et al and patient. Ok, but in my opinion even that is a violation of privacy and the (I know “sacred” is a bit over the top as far as adjectives go so let’s say personal) very personal nature of the relationship between patient and caregiver.
I want people to understand that IF we are saying, “It’s ok for an employer to use force to require their employees to divulge their personal medical history,” THEN we must naturally feel curiosity regarding the limitations regarding such force as it pertains to reduced privacy and compelled divulsion.
Where does this end?
Does Hobby Lobby get to demand access to any records in your medical history pertaining to being prescribed birth control and/or getting an abortion and then deny you employment based on that information?
Does Tesla get to demand access to any records in your history pertaining to being prescribed antidepressants or hospitalization for a suicide attempt and then deny you employment based on that information?
Chuckle. (Chuckle in your myopia, which none of my subscribers are victims of.) And lack of foresight. I don’t know where it will end but I know it began the day we consented to disclosing our vaccine status to our employers.
This brings us to the government’s prying eyes into our medical records. In fact, many of my conservative friends oppose a single payer health care system for this reason. Oh no, Uncle Sam would see all my medical history! Lol. The federal government already has COMPLETE AND TOTAL INSTANT ACCESS to the records of every doctor visit you’ve ever had, every drug you’ve ever been prescribed, and any medical procedure from strep swab to colonoscopy you’ve ever endured. How? A little law called HIPPA.
Hey, remember when 99 psychopaths in the Senate passed the PATRIOT Act in 2001 which was the opposite of how a Patriot would act? Naming it in such an ironic way just to be sadistic and screw with us?
The same with HIPPA.
It stands for:
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Public Law 104-191, was enacted on August 21, 1996. Sections 261 through 264 of HIPAA require the Secretary of HHS to publicize standards for the electronic exchange, privacy and security of health information.
Oh and there’s a privacy rule!! Thank GOODNESS! And, look, it’s designed to give you a RIGHT to CONTROL your personal information! Neat! Yes, insert (and hype) the phrase “privacy rule” and egads, American as apple pie.
Not quite.
Yes. You read that correctly. Law enforcement can go to any health care provider, any hospital, and clinic or doctor’s office and access your personal PRIVATE medical records. On demand.
HIPPA “corrected” the issue the federal government had getting access to the psychiatrist notes of one Daniel Ellsberg, renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower.
“After Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, the notorious Plumbers broke into his psychiatrist’s office, looking for a way to discredit him,” says the article. Only a CrAaZy man would take an action that would make the President look bad (never mind that seeing a psychiatrist was en vogue at the time for those financially secure enough to afford one).
They were going to do whatever it took to make the whistleblower look bad in retribution for exposing the myriad of militaristic mistakes made in Vietnam.
The *actual* filing cabinet that held Ellsberg’s records is in the Smithsonian — theeeee Smithsonian! A museum! The ACLU loves this guy and yet they give zero fucks about whether or not the government or your employer has a right to view your medical history.
Private means exactly that: none of your business. Privacy is dead but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t …
a) morally oppose that injustice
b) vocally oppose that injustice via written and spoken protest, i.e. petitioning the government for a redress of grievances and peaceful assembly
c) organize in order to add the power of numbers to increase the strength of our objection
d) vote with our dollars for companies and products that do respect privacy
And so, when it comes to abortion, we ought to have a seriously nuanced conversation, not a black and white one.
I suspect that a cap on receiving payment for performing abortions and/or a ban on selling fetuses or in any other way monetizing the organs of an aborted fetus would profoundly reduce the number of abortions performed each year. And human traffickers – pimps – get away with forcing their victims to get abortions as way of exploiting them without the unsightly interruption of a pregnancy. It’s amazing to me that in our society, a social worker will stop by a house if a child comes to school exhausted or unkempt but the idea of requiring a social worker to take a photo of any minor getting an abortion is not a policy already in place. Run the photo against the database of missing or abducted children. Guys, I have to show my unexpired ID to the doordash person who delivers me 5% Truly (hard seltzer). Seriously? We’re that culture that doesn’t take 30 seconds to verify if a person is showing up to an abortion clinic under duress?? Oh right, asking the person who’s under duress to tell us of they’re there under duress will work! No. Lies. Insanity.
As a society, we would ideally prioritize PREVENTION. Let’s teach women their natural fertility patterns & educate them so they can effectively discern fertile and non-fertile days of our cycles and take action accordingly. Teaching women the nature of their own fertility cycle would truly empower them (us) and instill in all women the autonomy necessary to prevent getting pregnant in the first place. But this would mean that getting pregnant in the first place would become a choice. And I have seen that there are those in the religious community who want only 2 choices for women: abstinence (a.k.a. chastity) or motherhood. Not the true freedom of true body self-governance. And I have seen the deranged talking point that abortion is healthcare by those radical “pro-choice” people who want only ONE choice for women: that abortion, and having at least one, is inevitable. Wrong. Ladies, YOU are in control of your body.
In the same way that pro-choice people promote “hashtag shout your abortion,” pro-life people could promote “hashtag shout your unplanned pregnancy.” I’m serious. New life is a beautiful amazing thing, right? The mysterious power over the population itself that all women hold? The pregnant female human form is beautiful and to be revered. Waterbirth could be a rite of passage, ushering all women into a sisterhood of motherhood, no? Well, I suspect that some religious pro-life people may feel anxiety at the prospect of a world where marriage would cease to be necessary within the context of hippie commune-esque circles of partners raising all the children in the tribe together, where dads are present but not identified as specific progenitors. In all seriousness, my pro-life friends and readers: I don’t think this would happen. It might truly be a beautiful world of people raising all their kids together but the marriage contract will stick. Yes, it might be your kids with your first spouse, then your kids with your second spouse, then (well, for men), your kids with your third spouse. And this means acknowledging that serial monogamy is a thing (it already was) and that it’s not necessarily bad. Look, I’m an idealist. As I mentioned in a previous post:
What a beautiful world we would inhabit if everyone could fall in love, stay in love, and all children came into existence as a result of making love? This is not the state of our world but it is the world I pray for every day.
But the reality of existence is much more nuanced. I wouldn’t be here today typing at my laptop on a rainy overcast day as I look out on the Anacostia River with the Nats Stadium in the frame of my floor to ceiling window if only soulmates were capable of procreative sex. LOL. (Click here for my mom’s six hottest takes on abortion, the things she taught me about why we were pro-choice when I asked her what that meant in 1992.)
What I DO know is it’s not your employer’s business if you’ve had an abortion.
And it’s sure as HELL not your employer’s business if you have been vaccinated for anything. Ever.
Oh wait – they’re literally calling him a king because he legally filed a title change with the SEC to rename his position “Techno King.”
See for yourself: https://youtube.com/shorts/2pDhCcav_6I?feature=share Oh how human beings love being ruled, love monarchy, and looooooove anyone they can throw the label benevolent on. Like throwing velcro at plexiglass.
Elon Musk is a human being. And when human beings tell you who they are, believe them.
Now, I don’t completely agree with Tom Molloy’s take below but let’s definitely analyze Musk’s argument, which, from a philosophical/logical analysis, appears to “beg the question.”
So much for absolute free speech.
Lots to unpack here but let’s stick with just the carry-on. Very quickly, there’s an assumption in line 3 (a false premise) that people ask their governments to pass laws. It’s totally bizarre (illogical). People barely give a shit about voting (in the United States, less than half the eligible population shows up on election day – and that’s IF it’s a Presidential election!) to say even less about the DIY wisdom tooth extraction people act like you’re asking them to perform when you suggest they pick up a telephone and call their legislator to ask them to vote a certain way on a given bill. LMAO – what the hell are you talking about, Elon???
Then in line 4 he says, “going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.” But for that to be true, “staying within the law is consistent with the will of the people” would have to also be true. That’s quite the assumption, and he offers no evidence to back up such a broad claim. In contrast, the writers of the US Constitution specifically delineated their desire to avoid direct democracy (i.e. the will of the people) in order to prevent the “tyranny of the majority.” Representative government (in the US, our democratic republic, also known as a constitutional republic) might lead to laws being passed that are consistent with the will of the people. And other times, definitely will not. By design! By the founding fathers’ strategic pre-meditated design.
Ok, so are we to infer that he’s totally on board with censoring speech as long as it’s within the law? Yes, read line 2 again.
What happened??? OMFG!
They got to him. (Remember when Bernie said, “if I ever tell you to vote for Hillary Clinton, don’t believe me”? And then he endorsed her?)
Who’s “they”? The EU. To wit:
Be it cars or social media, any company operating in Europe needs to comply with our rules – regardless of their shareholding.
Mr Musk knows this well.
He is familiar with European rules on automotive, and will quickly adapt to the Digital Services Act.#DSA
Ah. I see. Mr Musk knows this well. (He does now.)
And who is telling Musk that he WILL comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (which specifically outlaws freedom of speech) whether he likes it or not?
A censorship czar.
Now, people change … but not much, as wise PsyD and author Dr. Neal Clark Warren says. When people say something really wackjobial (here, the job in wackjobial is pronounced like the eponymous book of the bible), so wackjobial as to be completely out of character, something has indeed changed. But not the person’s personality preferences.
Six Possible Reasons people could say or do something out of character (here we refer to people over the age of 25 whose prefrontal cortex has finished growing so that their personality is fully “set” so to speak):
Head injury
NLP
Blackmail
They are being held a gunpoint
The person(s) they love most is being held at gunpoint
Bribery
Take your pick! It’s so SO easy to get people to move. Soooooo easy. Right, Terry? And lest you doubt that Elon Musk ever truly was a free speech absolutist, here is a small sampling of times he said he was.
… And …
Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit! I guess Elon Musk had a change of heart! He traded his devotion to absolute free speech (this is anything except shouting fire in a theater and calling for imminent violence, such as tweeting, “let’s go set this crowded theater on fire right now”) for “speech which matches the law.” Yep, the law will be quite different in the EU from what it is in the United States, Elon. Terry made that CRYSTAL clear.
Gee, I wonder which of the Six Reasons people say or do something out of character applied in this particular instance?
In England, the law is even more restrictive — and capricious as it is dependent on the whims of whoever happens to occupy their Secretary of State office (see the middle column, second paragraph).
The Online Safety Bill will give ministers the power to suppress lawful online speech – from pandemic views to migrant journeys.
— Big Brother Watch (@BigBrotherWatch) May 1, 2022
But Musk’s cray free speech tweet was not even the impetus behind my composing this substack. This tweet about the “encrypted communication” app Signal was:
Twitter DMs should have end to end encryption like Signal, so no one can spy on or hack your messages
Here are both the times he has tweeted about Signal so far:
Lol!! This is hilarious! Signal is a government op. No, seriously. As Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley:The Secret Military History of the Internet writes in his substack:
Exactly how much cash Signal got from the U.S. government is hard to gauge, as Moxie and Open Whisper System have been opaque about the sources of Signal’s funding. But if you tally up the information that’s been publicly released by the Open Technology Fund, the Radio Free Asia conduit that funded Signal, we know that Moxie’s outfit received at least $3 million over the span of four years — from 2013 through 2016. That’s the minimum Signal got from the feds.
Three mil might not seem like much these days, especially because Signal recently got a huge infusion of WhatsApp oligarch cash to keep its operation going. But it’s important to know that without this early U.S. government seed money, there would be no Signal today. And that makes you think: If Signal’s super crypto tech truly posed a threat to the feds and to our oligarchy’s power, why would the feds bankroll its creation? And why would Facebook and Google rush to adopt its super-secure protocols? H’mmmmm…
As I put it succinctly in 2021 after both Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk started pimping the app (coincidentally, just after the January 6 Live Action Role Play at the Capitol), Signal was first promoted for journalists and then later for everyone else because it was created as a dragnet for all communications sent specifically with the intention of hiding them from the government (same with TOR).
Hint: if one branch of the government literally gathers/collects (SURVEILS) communications which they affectionately term “Signals Intelligence” and then one day you are mysteriously encouraged to send communications using an app coincidentally NAMED Signal, they’re telling you (teasing you, laughing at you, etc.) up front — right out in the open — that they have categorized in advance all of those texts as signals. And you know what happens next, right?
To end on a bright note, (not that you need it, you human rock of resiliency), check this math: only 22% of Americans even use twitter! Ha! After the margin of error, basically 1 in 5. It has no power to sway elections. Hillary didn’t lose because of Wikileaks any more than Trump “lost” because the Hunter Biden laptop story was censored. Twitter is an insane asylum echo chamber which is probably why the new owner is walking around mumbling to himself so we all can hear.
Please subscribe to my substack to get an email for Part 2 of my analysis!
Well, it turns out omicron is a cold. Scotland, Mexico and El Salvador lifting C-19 restrictions is just the beginning. The Pandemic is wrapping up nicely. (Read more in my latest substack here.) After a year of fighting vaccine mandates and vaccine passports (see my previous post on this blog), I am thrilled and relieved that someone finally organized a march here in DC from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial to Defeat the unconstitutional Mandates. It’s happening this Sunday, January 23, 2022. Per the website, meet at the Washington Monument by 10:30 a.m. Walking begins at 11:30 a.m. There is a mandate in place here in DC to show your vaxx card in order to enter restaurants, forcing restaurant owners and their employees to act as an enforcement arm of the state. It took effect January 15, 2022. Buuuuut there’s no mandate across the river in Arlington, Virginia where the newly sworn in Governor of the Commonwealth is so anti-mass psychosis that he may even withhold funding to school districts who enforce a mask mandate! Yep, it’s over. (Mayor Bowser, just tell the deep state operatives you tried. They’ll give you an A for effort for sure!!)
And here’s how we really know even the CDC is grasping at straws. They’re calling people like me and asking them to participate in a vaccination survey. On January 11, 2022 they did call me. After ignoring their first attempt to reach me, I decided I would answer the phone this time.
It was only a 10 minute survey and the guy was really nice. He thanked me after every answer! (LOL, because it’s a very effective NLP/mind control/interview technique which works on people who respond to praise from parental/authority figures — HR people use it a lot; to be fair, this guy was just reading a script albeit very sincerely. I swear I heard just the hint of amusement in his voice when I said, “decline to answer” to about 7 questions in a row).
First words out of his mouth were:
In no way will your answers affect the amount of public assistance you receive or qualify for in the future (!!!)
And the first out of mine were,
How’d you get my number?
He said they call a random sampling of cell phone numbers. This is probably actually true. I used to conduct phone surveys and my boss, the owner of the research company, often purchased phone numbers based on the billing zip code on record with the carrier, regardless of the area code.
They asked my zip code, age, gender (and if I identified as transgender) and I was happy to answer these questions. They asked me the number of people in my household and I was happy to answer that. When they asked for my level of education, income, sexual orientation, marital status, and whether or not I was pregnant or attempting to become pregnant, I declined to answer.
They asked me if I had been vaccinated once, twice, or zero times, I said zero. They asked me how likely I would be to get vaccinated. I said never. They asked me how easy would it be for me to get vaccinated if I wanted to, I said extremely easy. They asked me if to my knowledge I had ever had Covid-19, I hesitated and conceded that I do not know since I’ve never been tested. They asked me if my employer required me to be vaccinated, I gleefully answered NO.
They asked me if my employer required me to be vaccinated, I gleefully answered NO.
They asked me to estimate, of all my family and friends, about how many were vaxxed. I said about half. They asked me if I had health insurance; I suspect this is a way of ascertaining whether a respondent’s insurance (if any) is through their employer or through Medicaid.
What a difference 8 months make, I can tell you that much. Last May (of 2021) I was incensed over the idea of having to disclose my vaccination status — my personal health information — to anyone. I lost my job over it in fact! (Read more about that here.) Today I’ll tell anyone who points in my general direction, HELL NO I’M NOT VAXXED AND I PRAY TO GOD YOU AREN’T EITHER. IT’S CALLED ANTIBODY DEPENDENCE ENHANCEMENT, GOOGLE IT. THAT’S WHAT THESE EXPERIMENTAL GENE THERAPY INJECTIONS CAUSE.
So what’s the point? What’s the purpose behind the CDC’s data gathering? Recon.
So what’s the point? What’s the purpose behind the CDC’s data gathering? Recon.
They know they’ve reached a plateau: way way fewer Americans than expected have been duped by the vaxaganda & way way fewer Americans than predicted think mandates are acceptable. So they’re sticking their feelers out to see if the “hesitancy” is rooted in a certain demographic so they can tailor the next round of radio spots, the next round of TV ads, the next round of MSM fear porn, to specifically LGBT or specifically to Blacks or specifically to people with PhD’s, etc.
What I decided between the first call from the CDC and the second was to give the CDC exactly enough data to be counted. I ignored the first call (screw you, CDC, I thought, none of your business if I’m vaxxed) but on second thought realized, hey wait a sec, this is very much like voting. My voice as a woman in Washington, DC who has not been vaccinated and never fucking will consent to be gets to be heard — and counted. That’s why I picked up the phone. And that’s why you should too if you happen to get a phone call.
This collective global insanity is almost over, praise God. Want to make your voice heard in another fantastic way?? Join me and SHOW UP at the Defeat the Mandates March here in Washington, DC on Sunday, January 23, 2022. See you there!
This post was inspired by the fact that I was fired from my job at the Arlington County Treasurer’s Office just for questioning the vaccine mandate the Treasurer imposed on employees. If you would like to watch the video version of this blog post, see above – I tell the whole story!
First and foremost, when people ask, why are you so opposed to this vaccine, please let’s make sure we a) have a ready concise response and b) cite our source.
Here’s mine: Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) — a term we will hear all over the news in the coming months. From the NIH website: “Vaccines … consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies … may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Why? “COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated.” This is straight from the NIH website. The scientists also stated: “The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being recruited for the trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in order to meet the medical ethics standard of patient comprehension for informed consent.”
(But that is by no means the only reason. Go to No Jab For Me to see that there are many many more.)
NEXT, let’s contact our elected officials, locally and federally, and demand that they instate a national ban on vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. We can stop this slide down the slippery slope to fascism but it’s going to take a significant percentage of us speaking up and demanding our Constitutional right to privacy and freedom. It’s a numbers game, pure and simple. Math. The more of us who object, the louder the cacophony of truth-tellers and liberty-demanders. Simply put, it’s our patriotic duty to contact our elected officials. You might think “they work for us” is an old trope, but why do you think the bizarrely illogical “defund the police” concept took root? Loudness. Repeated loud demands for change. Well, we don’t have to yell or riot or loot or even be loud. We just have to have a greater number of people speak up. The Silent Majority must transform into consistently vocal objectors of injustice and demanders of civil liberties and American rights to freedom from tyranny.
We must also contact the Department of Labor to ask them to restore their former OSHA policy regarding VAERS. VAERS stands for Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System and prior to May 23, 2021, if an employer was mandating or even pressuring their employees to get a vaccine, then they were required by law to report to VAERS any of their workers’ side effects. But as of May 23, 2021, because they don’t want to “disincentivize” (which is literally not even a word!!!!) any employer’s efforts to coerce their employees to get the vaccine, the Dept of Labor is no longer enforcing this policy. (In the template I will provide below for you to copy/paste and send to your elected officials, we will mention this disturbing development, and to our 3 members of the U. S. Congress, we will ask them to haul the Secretary of Labor — I mean, invite him to appear — before the Senate and the House (so Senator Paul and perhaps Congresswoman Greene can grill him about this policy reversal ).
A few bees we will put into the bonnets of our members of congress: forcing private businesses to require customers to show their vaccine card renders these business owners a proxy of the state, a de facto enforcement arm of the government. WHO is behind this pattern of division and statism? (WHO — did you see what I did there)
To put it in perspective, if federal agents or even local government employees who work for the Health Department were standing outside the business, demanding to see your papers, we would overwhelmingly resist that kind of blatant, overt, tyranny. We must demand the passage of legislation barring any private business from requiring proof of vaccination.
Let’s also ask for legislation barring employers from even asking employees if they’ve been vaccinated. What business is it of theirs whether we’ve been vaccinated? For Covid or any other vaccine? Or experienced any particular medical procedure, for that matter? It starts with “have you been vaccinated” and ends with, “list any prescription drugs you are currently taking or have ever taken.” No one should have any right to coerce anyone into disclosing their personal medical history. It is a fundamental violation of our sacrosanct American right to privacy.
If you live in Arlington County and you want to protest the discriminatory treatment that I experienced in the Arlington County Treasurer’s office last week when they forbade me, as an unvaccinated person, to eat or drink in the office so that I had to go downstairs to the lobby to even get a drink of water, and could not even remove my mask at my desk when all alone in my cube (which had been the policy during the middle of the pandemic) you can email treasurer@arlingtonva.us and countyboard@arlingtonva.us. To learn more about those elected officials, go to arlingtonva.us. In your email, be sure to mention where you live, how long you’ve lived in Arlington, and that you vote in every election. (No template will be provided.)
Finally, you know whose influence and strong support of freedom would help out right now? President Trump’s. There will be a template letter you can tweak to your liking to ask him to take a stand against any vaccine mandate or vaccine passport too. All templates are below.
AND — don’t forget to PRAY, pray your heart out. If you’re Christian, you know the drill! We are called to pray for our enemies. I deeply believe that by praying for God to fill all people’s hearts with the holy spirit or divine love (which is a kind of pre-forgiving, if they haven’t hurt you — YET), we can prevent future pain of the same nature! How? Because when God fills a person’s heart with love, they can feel joy again. And people who can feel God’s Love aren’t out there setting up a fascist state, step by pre-calculated step. They no longer take actions to hurt others because they have no desire to! (Again, it’s a numbers game: the more of us who are praying for enemies of liberty to be healed of all hatred and pain in their hearts, and filled with God’s Love, the faster we will get off the slippery slope and back to normal life.)
In closing, please remember these 3 things: when we don’t vote, when we don’t show up to cast our physical ballot, it’s the same as voting for everything to stay the same. And when we don’t speak up to people in a position of power (elected leaders) in order to object to injustice and abuse of power by authority, we’re tacitly consenting to the suffering it causes our fellow Americans (especially when it hasn’t affected us personally — YET). Thirdly, our silence is a de facto prayer for things to only get worse (meaning, it has the same effect; our silence guarantees that things will get worse). If you are a person of faith, may I remind you to pray every day, for world peace and world joy, and then TAKE ACTION, as passionately and organizedly as the mentally ill mob who want to cancel anyone who sends mean tweets. We can’t afford to wait for a miracle (they do happen but by definition, are statistically rare). Let’s speak up and demand our right to privacy and freedom. It’s a numbers game, pure and simple. Math. The more of us who object, the louder the cacophony of truth-tellers and liberty-demanders. Simply put, it’s our patriotic duty to contact our elected officials. And tell them we WILL vote for their opponent if they don’t get the job done. And pronto.
TEMPLATES BELOW
First, find your LOCAL state legislators here: https://openstates.org/ (does not work in the Edge browser, but fine in google chrome)
Then click on the link to each of your elected officials, and their email address will appear. If you want to send snail mail, so much the better. The mailing address will also appear. Open a new email, copy and paste the template below, filling in your name at the bottom and the elected official’s name at the top. Repeat for each official.
TEMPLATE FOR LOCAL OFFICIALS
Dear Senator/Representative/Assemblyperson NAME,
As your constituent, I want you to know that I am morally and ethically opposed to any vaccine mandate or vaccine passport, whether at the national or local level; I ask you to take a firm public stand against either of these, and indeed draft and vote for a state ban on any type of "show proof of vaccination" requirement. Did you know that "COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated, due to something called antibody-dependent enhancement"? This quote is from the NIH website, from the summary of a study entitled, "Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease."
Further, forcing private businesses to require customers to show their vaccine card renders these business owners a proxy of the state, a de facto enforcement arm of the government, and there is no room for this type of fascism in our free America. To put it in perspective, if federal agents or even local government employees who work for the Health Department were standing outside the business, demanding to see our papers, we would overwhelmingly resist that kind of overt tyranny. I ask you to draft, promote and vote to pass legislation barring any private business from requiring proof of vaccination here in our state.
I also ask you to support legislation barring employers from even asking employees if they’ve been vaccinated. What business is it of theirs whether an employee has been vaccinated? For Covid19 or any other vaccine? Or experienced any particular medical procedure, for that matter? It starts with "have you been vaccinated" and ends with, "list any prescription drugs you are currently taking or have ever taken." It's a slippery slope and no one should have any right to coerce an employee by threatening them with loss of employment if they don't get a vaccine or don't want to disclose their personal medical history. This is both a blatant violation of our sacrosanct American Constitutional right to privacy and an egregious violation of civil liberties.
I am a registered voter and I will vote for your opponent in the next election should you decline to uphold your oath to our state Constitution and ensure unvaccinated people are not discriminated against, as well as communicate to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that informed consent, to say nothing of American values such as liberty and privacy, are at the top of your list of priorities as a public servant.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
Second, find your national legislators. To find your TWO Senators, click here. To find your one Representative, click here.
These two sites are great because you can click on the image of your member of congress when it pops up, and it will take you to that person’s individual website. There you will see either “email me” or “contact me.” Fill out all required fields with your name, copy/paste the template and again, changing the name to match your elected official’s name, and typing your name in the bottom.
TEMPLATE FOR YOUR MEMBERS OF THE U.S. CONGRESS
Dear Senator/Congresswoman/Congressman NAME,
As your constituent, I want you to know that I am morally and ethically opposed to any vaccine mandate or vaccine passport, whether at the national or local level; I ask you to take a firm public stand against either of these, and indeed draft and vote for a national ban on any type of "show proof of vaccination" requirement. Did you know that "COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated, due to something called antibody-dependent enhancement"? This quote is from the NIH website, from the summary of a study entitled, "Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease."
Further, forcing private businesses to require customers to show their vaccine card renders these business owners a proxy of the state, a de facto enforcement arm of the government, and there is no room for this type of fascism in our free America. To put it in perspective, if federal agents or even local government employees who work for the Health Department were standing outside the business, demanding to see our papers, we would overwhelmingly resist that kind of overt tyranny. I ask you to draft, promote and vote to pass legislation barring any private business from requiring proof of vaccination.
I also ask you to support legislation barring employers from even asking employees if they’ve been vaccinated. What business is it of theirs whether an employee has been vaccinated? For Covid19 or any other vaccine? Or experienced any particular medical procedure, for that matter? It starts with "have you been vaccinated" and ends with, "list any prescription drugs you are currently taking or have ever taken." It's a slippery slope and no one should have any right to coerce an employee by threatening them with loss of employment if they don't get a vaccine or don't want to disclose their personal medical history. This is both a blatant violation of our sacrosanct American Constitutional right to privacy and an egregious violation of civil liberties.
Lastly, it has come to my attention that the Department of Labor has suddenly reversed a longstanding policy: OSHA will no longer enforce 29 CFR 1904's recording requirements which require employers who unconstitutionally mandate the vaccine for their employees to report any side effects those employees experience to VAERS. But as of May 23, 2021, because OSHA doesn't want to "disincentivize" any employer's efforts to coerce their employees to get the vaccine, the Dept of Labor is no longer enforcing this policy. As your constituent, I find this deeply disturbing. This vaccine is known to have a multitude of side effects, some fatal, is only authorized under an Emergency Use Authorization, and is NOT FDA approved. Please schedule a congressional hearing to question Secretary of Labor Walsh immediately as to why this irresponsible and unethical policy was instituted.
I am a registered voter and I will vote for your opponent in the next election should you decline to uphold your oath to the U. S. Constitution and ensure unvaccinated people are not discriminated against, as well as communicate to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that informed consent, to say nothing of American values such as liberty and privacy, are at the top of your list of priorities as a public servant.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely, YOUR NAME
Third, email or regular mail a letter to the Secretary of the Deptartment of Labor, Secretary Walsh, regarding the OSHA policy.
Mail
The mailing address for the Secretary of Labor is:
Secretary of Labor 200 Constitution Ave NW C-2318 Washington, DC 20210
You can send a fax to the Secretary of Labor at 202-693-6111.
TEMPLATE for emails/letters to Secretary Walsh:
Dear Secretary Walsh,
It has come to my attention that the Department of Labor has suddenly reversed a longstanding policy: OSHA will no longer enforce 29 CFR 1904's recording requirements which require employers who unconstitutionally mandate the vaccine for their employees to report any side effects those employees experience to VAERS. I have learned that as of May 23, 2021, because OSHA doesn't want to "disincentivize" any employer's efforts to coerce their employees to get the vaccine, your Department of Labor is no longer enforcing this policy. I find this deeply disturbing. Did you know that "COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated, due to something called antibody-dependent enhancement"? This quote is from the NIH website, from the summary of a study entitled, "Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease." This vaccine is known to have a multitude of side effects, some fatal, is only authorized under an Emergency Use Authorization, and is NOT FDA approved. I have contacted my two Senators and one Representative asking them to schedule a congressional hearing to question you, Secretary of Labor Walsh, thoroughly and immediately, as to why this irresponsible and unethical policy was instituted.
I ask you to use your authority as Labor Secretary to revert to the prior policy and, as a public servant, take action to contribute to the health and wellness and safety of your fellow Americans in the workplace.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
Fourth, email President Trump and ask him to take a stand against any vaccine mandate or vaccine passport too. Click here to contact him: fill out all required fields and then copy and paste the text into the comment box, tweak to your liking (because I wrote it as person who likes him because I do and I voted for him twice) and hit send! THANK YOU!
TEMPLATE
Dear President Trump,
I am reaching out as a long time supporter and someone who voted for you twice. I'm so sad to see that you are no longer in office, but I have a good feeling that 2024 will be a great year.
The reason for my email is that I am very concerned about the talk, and in many places, such as New York City, the action, around vaccine mandates or vaccine passports. I know that Operation Warp Speed is your success story, but I also heard you say the other night in your OANN interview, that you are for freedom and people's right to not get the vaccine as well. Did you know that "COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated, due to something called antibody-dependent enhancement"? This quote is from the NIH website, from the summary of a study entitled, "Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease." Even though you are not technically in office, you still have incredible power of influence and so I humbly ask you to please take a public stand against both vaccine passports and vaccine mandates.
It's a slippery slope, Mr. President, and we are witnessing private businesses being pressured to require customers to show their vaccine card which renders these business owners a proxy of the state, a de facto enforcement arm of the government, and there is no room for this type of fascism in our free America. To put it in perspective, if federal agents or even local government employees who work for the Health Department were standing outside the business, demanding to see our papers, we would overwhelmingly resist that kind of overt tyranny.
I also ask you to issue a statement in support of legislation barring employers from even asking employees if they’ve been vaccinated. What business is it of an employer -- a stranger, certainly not family -- whether an employee has been vaccinated? For Covid19 or any other vaccine? Or experienced any particular medical procedure, for that matter? No one should have any right to coerce an employee by threatening them with loss of employment if they don't get a vaccine or don't want to disclose their personal medical history. This is both a blatant violation of our sacrosanct American Constitutional right to privacy and an egregious violation of civil liberties.
We all wish you were still in the White House but who knows what the future holds? I am praying every day that, as you say, "the best is yet to come."
Thank you for your time and consideration, Mr. President.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
Here’s a great prayer — anyone of any religion can use this prayer and it’s a great way to start your day in Quarantine!
Dear God,
I join in prayer with the circle of angels that perpetually surround the earth & envelope it in a cocoon of divine love. Please heal all human beings of all suffering, sickness + disorder & flood all hearts with divine love. Thank you, God.
Amen.
You can say it as is or specifically invoke the deity of your religion. As you can see in the tweet below, I thank Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Miracles are events that involve a) clear divine intervention and b) defy statistical probability. Angels are uniquely equipped to act as conduits for miracles, so joining in prayer with them increases the probability that whatever we’re asking God for could actually become a reality on earth.
Asking God to heal every single person on Earth is a big ask. Your logical mind will tell you it’s not just statistically improbable, it’s impossible. Pray anyway. Pray on principle. And join in prayer with the angels to take any edge off the intention in your heart.
It can be hard to pray for people on earth who have bad intentions for humanity. Too fucking bad. Pray even harder for those assholes. If you absolutely cannot find in your heart to pray for your enemies or the enemies of people you love (or enemies of humanity, et al), ask God to simply put the desire to forgive in your heart.
Obviously God knows what’s in your heart already, but be frank and say what’s on your mind. Something like this:
God, I hate the child pornographers & human traffickers and I want to personally murder them. Not in a mean way, just in a, “oh wow, now you’re no longer on earth to hurt people, you fucking sick fucks! Bye!” way. But I know, I know, murder and vengeance are bad. All the same, I would be soooo happy if one day tribunals for these g.d. sadistic psychopaths were held on the National Mall followed by executions via firing squad. So if that’s not your will, then please just put the desire to forgive in my heart.
Now, 4 things: hate and hatred are always declarations of impotence. So whenever you find yourself feeling hate, know that you have forgotten how incredibly immeasurably powerful prayer is.
Thing 2: when we declare judgment against a person (not their actions — and this is an important distinction: when judging, we would ideally label the action as good or bad and not the person) we put ourselves at the level of God. So in order to allow the final decision/judgment to stay where it belongs, in the hands of God and not in our hearts, where it could fester in vengeance and slowly eat away at our ability to have empathy for suffering, we would ideally stay away from predicting a person’s divine future (such as, going to hell, etc.)
Thing 3: careful with murder fantasies! Isn’t a desire for public execution a murder fantasy? It is. Now if that’s what’s in your heart, that’s what’s in your heart, God already knows that and you might as well be honest. And capital punishment is certainly warranted in some cases (that is this writer’s view). But once we start indulging murder fantasies, we go into the same dark place as the producers of sn**f pornography. We can’t go back but we can go forward — and acknowledge that we’re human and flawed, and then pray for the miraculous healing of everyone on earth!
Which brings me to thing 4: we don’t want want to miss an opportunity to prevent future pain and suffering of the same nature. Imagine just 10% of the population on earth start praying every morning for everyone on earth to be healed by the power of divine love, and that just 10% of those who commit atrocities were healed: it would have a profound domino effect. Here’s why. The first thing that happens when God opens your heart is the ability to feel guilt, regret, and remorse.
Remorse is very uncomfortable. It doesn’t go away without confession. And I’m talking about confession to law enforcement not to a priest. One confession leads to another, which leads to an arrest, which leads to another confession — and so on. In a matter of months, whole criminal networks are disbanded by the power of guilt and confession, instead of years of investigators having to hunt down and re-hunt down the same ghosts.
One prayer. Every morning. A domino effect of pain-prevention! Please start your day and every day with the miraculous power of joining in prayer with the Circle of Angels to ask God to heal everyone on earth of all suffering. And then take a moment to reflect on how lucky you are to be able to feel guilt and regret — it means your heart is open! If it weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to feel joy either.
(None of my comments here should be interpreted to mean prayer should preclude or replace a system of justice and legal framework which allows judges and juries to sentence criminals. In a way, we could view prison itself to be a quarantine for those members of society who are sick and suffer from the inability to feel regret and remorse and to prevent themselves from hurting others again, in the same way in the future.)
Target: are you seriously forcing your employee to re-gift her GoFundME? What’s wrong with you??
In case you live in the real world and not in the de facto divide-and-conquer operation/echo chamber known as Twitter, you may have missed the absolute fiasco that occurred at a Target store in New England last week.
A guy name David Leavitt freaked out and actually called The Cops when a Target store manager wouldn’t honor a ridiculously low and obviously erroneously priced electric toothbrush. It was priced at one cent. Yes, a penny.
— David Leavitt 🎲🎮🧙♂️🌈 🔜 Pax East (@David_Leavitt) January 17, 2020
Lol:
Corporations like @target are not above the law. The police officer told me they’d testify that they saw the price and that the manager wouldn’t sell me the item for the price listed.
— David Leavitt 🎲🎮🧙♂️🌈 🔜 Pax East (@David_Leavitt) January 17, 2020
The police told him they’d testify that they saw the price — oh, at the store manager’s trial? Where she’s charged for … apologizing? Taking responsibility for some poor minimum wage earner who accidentally mispriced merchandise during their overnight shift? Who is this guy?
Here’s who he is — or at least his twitter bio:
Yes, he’s a classic omega male: plays magic the gathering (#MTG), but assures us he is a casual player only, publicly humiliates himself with abandon, can’t afford a toothbrush, declares this to everyone and doesn’t feel embarrassed about admitting it, pulls authority figures (police) into drama unnecessarily, feels absoLUTEly certain that people in an authority position are out to get him (i.e. store managers). These things don’t make him a bad person. They indicate that he is a sad person. (And sad people will do bad things, do and say things that hurt others, even when they are desperately trying not to.)
That’s when the amazing memesmith known as Carpe Donktum rode up on his twitter steed, and gallantly started a GoFundMe, to send Tori on a vacation because, “anyone who has to deal with this twerp [omega male David Can’t-Leavitt-Alone] definitely deserves one.”
I have started a GoFundMe to send Tori on a vacation.
If you have a moment, check Carpe’s TL and replies to his original tweet to see how the Daily Beast and other assorted negative Nelly naysayers twisted this and pretended that he was actually going to keep the money for himself, and even lied about reaching out to him for comment, as they tried to portray his good will as something selfish and sordid. But whyyyyyyy, you might ask, did Carpe call David a twerp? A significant label for someone obviously on the far side of mental illness having a very public breakdown over an incorrectly priced electric toothbrush, no? Well, because Leavitt hates Trump. Like many omegas, Leavitt suffers from black and white thinking, where there is no middle ground, where people — politicians and other authority figures, especially — are all good or all bad. And nothing in between. This inability to see reality — to see the Glass of Life as it truly is, as half filled with water and half filled with air — is a personality weakness. A gaping personality wound. But Leavitt is in good company. Many people have this problem.
And in contrast, Carpe likes President Trump. And is (I believe, I didn’t check with him) sick of people like Leavitt and other members of the mainstream media lying about Trump. Interestingly, a few Trump supporters suffer from the same black and white thinking as our Omega male, David Leavitt, but in reverse, and see Trump as all good, as a savior. The majority of Trump supporters know that President Trump, because he is human, is not perfect. But they like POTUS’ policies and policy goals. Trump is fearless and strong (this is objectively true, whether a voter approves of his actions and words or not), which is better than perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist so perfect can’t check things off the to-do list. Perfect procrastinates and has the best of intentions but never gets anything accomplished. Fearless and strong is who you call when you want to get shit done.
People who were shamed early in life by authority figures for being imperfect often feel compelled to throw public tantrums over perceived external imperfections. Their life, their very existence, has become the crib, and they are still crying out for attention, to Dad (the police, in this example) and Mom (the store manager, Target Tori) to come pick them up and comfort them over something that to you and I would be no big deal, but to them, feels like an outrageous injustice.
It’s as sad as it sounds. (If you are a religious or spiritual person as I am, you might take a moment to pray for David and ask God to send him the professional helpers who can assist him in climbing out of the crib and standing on his own feet, so that in his joyful future, he opens his mouth to release words that help others instead of hurt them. “Please God, let David be miraculously healed of all pain and suffering by the power of your love” is a quick prayer we could all send up. Please invoke the deity of your choice, if you wish.)
Now back to the actual injustice: David harassing this most likely tired and overworked Target store manager in front of her peers and all the other customers, doxing her in an even larger public square — twitter — and generally succeeding at making her life miserable. People are infuriated. The twitterverse is incensed. The outpouring of support for her in reply to David Leavitt’s nasty tweets is astounding. But while yes, it’s true that twitter is very chatty, money really talks. And soon, subjects of the Twitterdom are getting out their wallets as quickly as they can send tweets. Carpe’s GoFundMe’s original $5,000 goal was met in a day. Then donations doubled. Then quintupled. (Yes, as of this blog publication date, Tori could afford a very excellent adventure indeed with the more than $30k crowdfunded by Carpe and Company.)
So, a few days pass and Tori is tracked down and made aware of her good fortune, her reward, as it were, for her patience and good customer service. Carpe announces the good news to his followers and then turns the entire account over to Tori, once he has confirmed with Target Corporate that she is THEE Tori.
And then, to my surprise, she tweets … simply this:
In case her tweet mysteriously disappears, I have saved the image and embedded it in my post. I will also transcribe the text below.
I would like to thank all of you for your generosity. It is inspiring to see so many people united for a good cause.
If I have learned anything from this experience, it is that people are good and that these acts of kindness cannot stop with me.
I am currently working with resources to find a cause that is worthy of your generosity and something that you would ALL be proud to donate to.
Your support has changed my life.
Now, my first thought was immediately, “Tori, no, YOU are the cause everyone was proud to donate to. No one made a donation to some other organization, or wanted to. What? Why are you saying this??”
But then I read it again, slowly. And the word “resources” stuck out like a red flag from the pit of human resources hell. Ah, yes. Ever worked for corporate America and learned their version of Newspeake? HR “specialists” who say, “On the go-forward, we’ll …” and who ooze, “Thank you for sharing that with me!” in an eerily gleeful response no matter the issue and bark, “What questions can I answer!” instead of asking sincerely, “are there any questions?” And assure everyone in a meeting that, “This is just a high level view. View from a thousand feet.” Yuck. Why don’t they just say, “going forward, we’ll….” or say, “I don’t want to go on and on about boring details, this is just an overview” instead of using language that is literally condescending? Let’s not answer those questions now, let’s instead analyze the text of the message that Target Tori tweeted because there are several indicators that someone who speaks HR Newspeake wrote it, and not a normal person who would have been properly socialized to be able to work directly with customers, face to face, as Tori clearly was.
Line 1: “I would like to thank all of you for your generosity.” Fair enough. Saying thank you is always good. “I would like to …” is the HR intro. Normal people tweet, “Thank you so much for …!!” But ok. Not terrible yet. “It is inspiring to see so many people united for a good cause.” This literally isn’t a good cause. Who wrote this? This is everyday people uniting to give Tori a gift of money for having to put up with dickhole behavior. This is not a normal gofundme. Store managers have to put up with horrible customers every day all day. That’s why stores have managers. Literally (and to schedule workers’ shifts). Tori’s car didn’t break down. She’s not crowdfunding a surgery for her kid. There’s no good cause. No one’s homeless or trying to pay for college. This is pure vengeance. This is sticking it to David Leavitt. This is the tribe saying, “David, if you hadn’t been such a dick, maybe someone would have crowdfunded YOU the money to buy an electric toothbrush. But no. So instead we’re going to raise enough money for the woman you treated like shit to buy a MILLION electric toothbrushes.” (Someone, please correct my math — it’s late.) LOL, HR — “good cause.”
Line 2: “If I have learned anything from this experience, it is that people are good and that these acts of kindness cannot stop with me.” There was nothing kind about any single one of the acts of donating money. Generosity? Yes. Kindness? No. TARGET. Do you know what kindness is? LOOK AT YOUR EMPLOYEE, Tori.Look at her face in the photograph Leavitt took, as she humbly and gently tolerates a mentally ill customer’s attempts to humiliate her, in front of her peers and other customers, in your store, after a long day spent constantly on her feet. THAT is the face of kindness. People aren’t good! LOL! (As you well know: remember when you were motivated by greed to lay off half the employees at Target HQ in Minneapolis back in 2017?) Target HR, you lucked out when you hired Tori. TORI is good. Tori is kind. “People” as an aggregate are often neither. And why can’t the acts of kindness stop with her? What weirdo wrote this? It’s rude — impolite — to reject a gift. Are you seriously forcing your employee to re-gift her GoFundME? What’s wrong with you??
Target: are you seriously forcing your employee to re-gift her GoFundME? What’s wrong with you??
Line 3: “I am currently working with resources to find a cause that is worthy of your generosity and something that you would ALL be proud to donate to.”
First of all, Tori, YOU are the cause that was worthy of everyone’s generosity and not one single person who donated to you wanted their money to be “paid forward.” They wanted YOU to spend it. On YOU. Literally, Carpe specified that he wanted you to use it to go on a vacation away from Target. Is Target unwilling to give you PTO or to let you use your PTO? If that’s the case, then you need to talk to an employment lawyer. PLEASE. If their HR team is coercing you to give YOUR money away, again, please talk to a lawyer. Target doesn’t care about you. They care about THEM and their public relations. A WHOLE SHIT TON of Trump supporters cobbled together $30 grand for their beleaguered employee. They don’t want any PR “complications” (read: blowback) from that fact.
But back to the words specifically chosen for line 3: someone, some Head of Human Resources, removed the word “human” before resources because it made it seem like HR was influencing Tori’s decision as far as what Tori will (read: is ALLOWED TO) do with her money. (HER money. Not YOUR money, Target.) But the word pattern takes on a whole new level of sinister when the word “human” is removed. Who or what IS “resources”??? Who or what, indeed, is Tori being forced to “work with” in order to “find a cause”? Gross. My hope is that you the reader can feel the primal pull in your gut when you read the last line, as you imagine the fakiest fake faker of an HR person you’ve ever met pulling Tori off the floor, into a back office, and saying, “We just want to explore the space we’re in as far as gofundme’s in general on the go-forward. So-and-so wanted me to circle back and really engage your thoughts while we thoughtfully path-consider. My hope would be that we can really expand on the team vision while we goal-set and dream-weave and partner in a future that’s 100% focus-based and unity-oriented. Does that make sense? What questions can I answer?”
Yeah. No. If you were one of the many people who donated to Tori’s GoFundMe, I hope you will consider sharing this post and then reaching out to her with a kind tweet (reply to @realTargetTori) to let her know that SHE is the good cause, that SHE is worthy of receiving ALL the money and spending it on whatever SHE wants.
I’m no financial advisor, but that’s what I would wish for anyone who came into an unexpected small fortune. Please, Internet friends and twitter family, let’s not let Target ruin this blessing for Tori.
Remember that guy who claimed that the “kindness” of Sarah Silverman on twitter caused him not only to drop support for Trump but become a Dem & then declare support for Elizabeth Warren? It’s even more ridiculous than it sounds! Let’s break it down:
Who is David Weissman and why should I care? you might be asking.
Who he is doesn’t matter. It’s very unlikely he wrote the post in question (which you can read here) himself. The tone is too varied to indicate one writer anyway (the voice shifts from humble to condescending to patronizing to contrite to patriotic to corporatist faster than Linda Blair on an Exorcist Merry Go Round) so the who isn’t relevant. The what is why you should care.
The what?
I said, that’s why you should care.
LOL. But seriously, this anti-Trump piece of propaganda — er, I mean, opinion piece — is some heavy duty power of suggestion-based nonsense. The multiple tones of voice are just the beginning! Wait till we get to the word myopic!! LOL!! I’m dying.
The premise is that the author claims he attacked liberal activist Sarah Silverman on twitter, and the fact that she reacted with kindness to him instead of just blocking him causedhim to FIRST decide not to support Trump and SECOND to magically become a Democrat! Let’s start with the headline (which you can see for yourself here). It states: “In 2016, I was a conservative Trump supporter but I’m backing Elizabeth Warren in 2020. Trump supporters who once knew me now call me a traitor, a sellout, a Dem plant, a fraud — which surprised me because I thought they were friends.”
Headlines are great, because they tell us exactly what the writer wants us to walk away thinking in our own mind. The headline is the bright red neon sign that says, “This is the take-away. Not the conclusion you might draw with your own ability to reason and apply logic if you took the time to read the entire article, oh, noooooo. Put your deductive reasoning cap on ebay; you won’t be needing that anymore, because instead, I’m going to tell you which conclusion to draw!”
That conclusion? That it’s ok — you have permission — to switch from Trump to a Democrat candidate in 2020, just like the writer has, and specifically, to the DNC’s pre-annointed victor, Elizabeth Warren. And, by the way, the writer continues, people I thought were my FRIENDS are now calling me mean names!! Trump supporters! Being mean to me!!
Does this sound familiar? Because something similar actually did happen. Many many — to the tune of millions — of Bernie supporters (1 in 10) flipped to Trump in 2016 after he endorsed Hillary. And between 8 and 12 million Obama voters in 2012 magically transformed into Trump voters in 2016. And these people who flipped were then as a consequence ruthlessly mercilessly harassed and shamed and pummeled with insults and hate for months and even years on the internet and at rallies if they went public with that information. Including yours truly, who voted for Obama twice, supported Bernie in the primaries, and switched to Trump after I read his now famous tweet, “Bernie Sanders endorsing Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs,” during the summer of 2016.
The target audience of this propaganda piece is anyone and everyone who flipped to Trump in 2016. And the purpose of the piece is to influence that group of people to flip back.
The ways to get people to do something they would not otherwise do are to give them a reward (for example, a bribe), threaten them with a punishment, or do it in a far more sinister way, such as by using the power of suggestion so that they believe it is something they already want to do and then go ahead and DO it with little resistance. We’ll come back to that word BELIEVE (because it is sprinkled liberally throughout the piece).
The “opinion” piece begins:
It’s been over a year since I decided to stop supporting President Trump and join the Democratic Party. I have also decided to support Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primaries. To this day, I am still asked why I made the transition — and I feel that I need to explain why.
I want to ask you a question, dear reader: do we as Americans, or even just as human beings, decide on a certain candidate? Or do we feel desirefor a certain candidate? Desire is a powerful word, in terms of the power to influence your action. But the word decide is even more powerful. You might desire neither candidate and subsequently take no action. But if you are repeatedly told to DECIDE, well, that’s a whole other area of suggestion. It’s a command statement. You have to choose. You have to pick one. You have to take decisive action. You HAVE TO VOTE. DECIDE DECIDE DECIDE. Pick one!!!!!
Lol.*
Deep dive into the word decide:
I never decided on Trump. I was devastated that Bernie had been absolutely robbed of any fair chance to be the Dem nominee and I looked around and saw Trump. And Trump wanted to get us out of Afghanistan, bring back manufacturing jobs (he literally said “I’m for fair trade not free trade” at a rally I was watching live in 2016; as I picked my jaw up off the floor, I was like, holy shit, does this guy have a membership at the co-op too? I’m gonna shit my pants! I could just imagine him and Melania measuring bulk organic rolled oats, “it’s tare .37 on that tupperware container” as they approach the register with their cart filled with free range chicken and grass fed beef — LOL), get us out of the TPP (which he did on day one, almost literally day one — I think it was week three), and end endless war. I was like, oh wow. I’m gonna have to look into this guy. I never decided. I DESIRED. And Candidate Trump knew the power of humor too. Read the tweet mentioned above. I was like, omg, this guy wants China to stop fucking our country to death andhe’s funny as hell. Interesting! (We’ll get to some of the things he said that I didn’t agree with later, but I want to note here that I would fight and die in a war against China tonight if it mean ridding the world of their sick communist sadistic torture regime.)
So why does this overt piece of anti-Trump propaganda use the word “decide”? Because its target audience is the undecided voter, not the passionate desire-filled voter. Let’s go to the next paragraph:
I was a conservative activist and writer for a couple of years prior to the 2016 election. I decided to do this because I felt threatened by Democrats, and I believed that they wanted to take our rights away — rights like freedom of religion, and speech. I believed Islam was a religion of terror. I believed Democrats wanted to destroy the sanctity of marriage. I had a myopic view of the second amendment, without seeing its full context. I condemned socialism and abortion. I wanted a wall to stop immigrants from “invading” America.
I was originally a Ted Cruz supporter
Again with the “I decided” seed being planted (over and over) in your mind. But anyone who knows conservatives (and you’re talking to NOT one; I’m a pro-choice, pro-$15/hour minimum wage voter as well as being a pro-America FIRST policy, pro-gun voter) knows that certain views are non-negotiable. Conservatives are often religious. Let’s use deductive reasoning to figure out if this David Weissman character is probably one of them. He says “I condemned abortion” in the past tense. People who condemn abortion are almost always religious. They believe that abortion is murder because it stops a beating heart. If he condemned abortion, then we can safely conclude that he is probably a religious conservative (and not just fiscally conservative as many Independent voters are). What would be the reason he changed his mind on the abortion issue? Because Trump? Doesn’t quite pass the logic smell test, does it? Let’s say–for the sake of argument–that there is a person somewhere who was pro-life who switched to pro-choice later in life: I’d bet money that there are a few. Ok. But the author of this article? Who ostensibly supported Ted Cruz? A simple google search reveals Cruz’s political positions:
But if a person were against legal abortion, are they going to become pro-choice and stop condemning abortion because … twitter? No, if the Republican candidate isnot someone they can morally support, they’re going to hold their nose and vote for the pro-choice candidate anyway, as many of my Catholic friends did in 2008. It’s almost as if the team writing this piece of propaganda doesn’t know how to create a fake profile of a voter that is based on any semblance of reality. The portrait of this fictional flipper — er, I mean, very real human being named David Weissman — could just as easily have been of a fiscal conservative instead of a religious conservative who flips from Trump to Warren and it would have sold marginally better. And that is to say, still poorly!** OR, they could have left the abortion issue out of the article completely. Or the author could have said, “I remain pro-life but it’s not the most important issue for me.” Or any number of variations that would have made SENSE.
Same weird inconsistency with condemning socialism; that wouldn’t change either. (And why is this article trying to plant the seed of the idea that ANYONE should be ok with socialism? Hmmm? Let’s ALL condemn socialism.) And how about destroying the sanctity of marriage as between one man and one woman? Again, you’re talking to someone (me, Sarah) who believes gay marriage should be legal (but PSA: there are only 2 genders) especially since forbidding it hurts straight women, because as long as society condemns homosexuality, there will be those few gay men who will entrap an unsuspecting woman in a loveless marriage and use her as a beard while he has affairs with men. I love gay marriage. Marriage is a legally binding contract that says one sexual partner for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. It’s the ultimate cross fit class, the ultimate test of endurance and commitment. Idare you to get married. Straight or gay. I dare you to TRY to find someone you love so much you are willing to agree to only have sex with them till the day you die. I triple dog DARE you. (If you’re really feeling brave, may I suggest opening a joint checking account! HAHAHAHA! I’m not laughing at you. I’m crying with you.)
But I digress. The point is, a religious conservative person is not going to change on the gay marriage issue either. Again, they might stop liking Trump and go support a different Conservative, but to switch to a Democrat? I mean, the proposition is silly! And briefly, to touch on radical Islamic terrorism, that’s an unfortunate reality of life on Earth at this moment in time. Who doesn’t know that? How odd. Why did the propagandists “go there”? Plus, feminists morally oppose the hijab and female genital mutilation: all my female Boomer friends who tried to talk me out of voting for Trump (they voted for Hillary) think that the oppression of women inherent in radical Islam is deplorable. Bringing this issue up was unwise in this forum, to put it mildly. And you know why, my conservative friends, don’t you. Because conservative women — and every conservative man I’ve met and talked to about this issue while at the MAGA meetups I’ve attended — think that the oppression of women inherent in radical Islam is deplorable! Oh, what’s that? Common ground? Gee whiz! Who’d a thunk it! Propagandists, in your next piece, just don’t even go there. Really.
And it gets better! And even more absurd. I mentioned my religious friends who usually vote Republican but held their nose for a pro-choice candidate in ’08 thinking Obama would end the endless war (and death). Did you notice that NO WHERE in this article is the word Republican mentioned? No where. Not once. As I’ve mentioned in my previous blogposts, the three elements of communication are: the words that are coming out of the person’s mouth, what they’re really saying, and what’s not being said, i.e. what has been specifically omitted. And it’s the third category that can be most revealing. We get to ask, why were you afraid to say “Republican,” Mr. Weissman? You want people who voted REPUBLICAN in 2016 to not vote REPUBLICAN in 2020, but no where in the entire article do you utter the word? Why? Because the piece is purely an attack on MAGA, the movement to end endless war and crony capitalism that ships our jobs to China, Mexico and other countries and bring back union jobs that pay middle class salaries to hard working Americans. I am a Trump supporter. I’m not a Republican and I’ve never been a Democrat. This article is an attack on ME and the 8 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 and flipped to Trump in 2016.*** That’s why Mr. Weissman never uses the word “Republican.” But he uses the word MAGA. Several times.
Here’s how we know the piece is an attack on MAGA, this quote:
The insults continue to this day, but when it happened during that initial learning period [after the author supposedly spontaneously, and not as part of a pre-planned psychological operation, began a public discourse on twitter with liberal celebrity Sarah Silverman], it snapped me out of my MAGA trance. I saw how Trump thrives on this behavior, and that’s when I decided to no longer be part of MAGA.
This article is designed to paint the MAGA movement, the effort to drain the swamp, in a bad light. The effort to bring back manufacturing jobs? Imply that one would have to be in a trance to want that! The effort to end endless war? What have you been smoking? We’re in a trance to want jobs that have benefits and pay enough money to raise a family, and God forbid we want a national budget less bloated than a good year blimp. We must be hypnotized!! “I decided to no longer be a part of MAGA.” Again, the word decide. As we read a first person narrative, our mind automatically internalizes what the writer is saying as its own thoughts; only a very strong moral compass makes you simultaneously react, “whoa, this is some fucked up shit right here, yo.” The weak mind will not resist the “decide” command statement and the “I decided against MAGA” suggestion that is being given.
And no attempt to establish rapport with the MAGA tribe would be complete without inserting the phrase “fake news” somewhere in the piece:
After a couple of years of defending Trump and calling media that portrayed him in a bad light “fake news” — which was a thing before Trump — I had a conversation that changed my approach on social media.
Wow, “which was a thing before Trump,” B T W. F Y S A. Oh, we didn’t know that? We the reader are too ignorant to know that fake news didn’t take its first stroll down the escalator in 2015 (only to fall flat on its face at the feet of President Trump)? Gee, thanks for enlightening us. We would never have known that without you educating us. It’s an example of the patronizing tone I mentioned at the beginning, and only something a CNN/CNBC/MSM fan would feel compelled to point out — Fox News “fair and balanced” watchers have always wanted real news and known of the dearth of fair and balanced news sources. This is something an intern who googled “origin of the phrase fake news” as part of her research for ghostwriting this piece for Weissman would say. Now, let’s peel back one more layer. The writer is admitting that the media is portraying Trump in a bad light instead of a factual unbiased light! (That was a slip-up.)
Then suddenly the article takes on a fake-humble tone …
I realized I had always been aggressive and mean. I wanted to force my views on people. There was never a debate — I used insults and ad hominem attacks.
These tactics didn’t get me anywhere.
… as if the author is confessing to us, “I realized …” and the unspoken, “I confess that …” I used insults. But if the writer had truly wanted to create empathy, they would have apologized. They would include a “saw the light” statement, following up “these tactics didn’t get me anywhere” with something like, “and I’m sorry I hurt people I didn’t even know with things I wish I hadn’t said” or something along those lines. Because the author(s) is in no way humble, and in no way self-reflective, and in no way sorry for anything, these words are omitted. Ironically, the entire paragraph comes off as an extended insult (“Trump supporters are aggressive and mean, force their views on others, use insults and ad hominem attacks — I’m no longer a Trump supporter, er go I no longer have these personality traits”). And we all know how well insults work to change someone’s mind! (The irony!) But let’s get totally real: people who are aggressive and mean don’t stop being aggressive and mean when they switch political parties. They just become aggressive and mean about the new party. Is this news? This article acts like the author found Jesus, not Elizabeth Warren.
Here’s another slip-up; read this (unintentionally) sweetly complimentary description of POTUS:
Trump wanted the same things I wanted, so I thought he was an easy choice for President of the United States. I really believed Trump was a patriotic, successful businessman, who cared about all Americans, and that sold me on voting for him. I was aware he wasn’t a saint, but I felt no one is perfect and anyway, conservative news networks kept calling Hillary a criminal.
No one is perfect! Ain’t that the truth. What a healthy sense of self and others the author is pretending to have! But uh oh … here comes the sinister reveal.
At the time, I didn’t realize who Trump really was.
Yes, that’s right: you, dear reader, are not smart enough to see who Trump really is. You need Mr. Weissman to tell you. And then to tell you The Truth about Hillary and Obama.
Here’s who Trump really is, according to Weissman:
but then the Helsinki meeting with Putin came. I saw how he, the President of the United States, made himself vulnerable to Putin and Russia, agreeing to closed-door meetings and being recorded by our adversaries. What kind of president would do such a thing? When I saw someone tweeted a clip of the debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump where she called Trump a puppet of Putin, I was stunned. I now believe she was right. This is not the guy who I voted for, and yet it is. That was the moment when I decided I was no longer a Trump supporter. I went back over years of his corruption, lies and draft-dodging. My whole world was turned upside-down.
Is this the best they’ve got? Helsinki? The non-event that happened over a year ago? Putin hands Trump a soccer ball and says, “the ball is now in your court” in an OBVIOUS attempt to deliver Trump a message in a concealed way so that the message would not be intercepted by anyone in POTUS’ immediate circle and all of a sudden Trump’s a puppet to this guy? All diplomatic meetings are surveilled and recorded by the government of the country they’re being held in — LOL. I mean LMAO. Seeing that part of the clip from the debates changed Weissman’s mind? It’s laughably unrealistic. And yep, Putin’s a mean dick. And? How long have you lived on earth? You didn’t know that mean dicks fill power vacuums? Well, welcome to the shithole war planet. Here’s your accordion. (Old Far Side joke — ode to Gary Larson.) When mean dicks have nuclear weapons, you play nice so they don’t blow up the planet. Now go get a mirror. And don’t you TOTALLY wonder what was inside the soccer ball? I heard from this guy Comey once during a press conference that Hillary’s lawyers used a scrubbing software to wipe her emails from US State Department computers. In the same press conference, the guy Comey — oh yeah, he was like the FBI director at the time, omg — he totally said foreign actors had accessed her emails because the server in her bathtub at her house in NY was like totally NOT secured (yes, it was like LITERALLY IN HER BATHTUB – I know right?!?). But what if Russia had TOTALLY read all the emails and was like, lol, I heard it was your birthday, President Trump, here’s a flash drive buried inside a soccer ball with ALL her emails, yeah we made a copy — I know, you didn’t expect that, you thought we would just skim the subject lines but no, we actually printed them out too and bound them in a fun spiral bound book cover and laminated it, you know those fun laminating machines from the 80’s? Well, here you go — Putin heard a rumor Trump was a mean dick with access to nuclear weapons and this was his way of saying, please don’t blow up the planet! Hashtag GLASNOST!!!
So a couple of things. I hope you saw the humor in the previous paragraph, is probably number 1. Second, there’s a lot of gray area on earth. But this article reeks of black and white thinking. Yeah, Russia is our adversary. They’re also a nuclear power. Russia is a beautiful country with beautiful people with a shitty government. (Oh, is it mirror time again?) Freedom is hard. Half the people eligible to vote in our country don’t even show up on election day. “I don’t have time” and “I don’t think my vote matters” are the odd things I hear come out of the mouths of people who lack gratitude and reverence for their freedom. Elections have consequences, as former President Obama said. That they do. One lives in the White House right now. You know why? Because math. Votes are counted. Did anyone think the Berlin Wall was going to fall and Russia was going to be like, “oh, yeah, we’re totally cool with less geographical territory now that we’re not the USSR”? Sometimes the best we can hope for is peace but the most we can actually get is an absence of war. A little diplomacy goes a loooooong way. (Lol, did you know there is no gayness in Russia? True story!) Do you know why you don’t even remember Helsinki? Because nothing happened. Seriously. Anderson Cooper practiced his method acting skills in an attempt to display Shock and Chagrin, and a couple people on twitter pretended they had a heart attack, but really, two world leaders talked about politics, and maybe, MAYBE IF WE’RE LUCKY, we’ll get to find out what was so controversial in those State Dept emails that good people, career public servants, risked their jobs and security clearances and freedom (from JAIL) to cover for Madam Secretary. All because the Russians are nosy mo-fo’s! (Although, if it’s a nosiness contest, well then ….)
Trump is strong and scary, the quintessential Alpha male. That’s who he “really” is. He will stop at nothing to protect the United States of America and her people from danger. Period. Putin and Hillary are Alphas too. These aren’t “nice” people. Who do you want protecting your tribe? Nice or scary as hell?
But this article purports to tell us The Truth about Hillary and Obama too — again, because you aren’t smart enough to figure it out yourself. It should go without saying that anyone who tells you that they have The Truth, and that The Truth is ______ is full of The Bullshit. (Biggest red flag in the article — it’s almost as if they wantthis article to reinforce existing support for Trump!). Mr. Weissman says:
I learned the truth about President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats. I have learned of all the good they have done for our country. They are not twisted, evil people who wanted to destroy America from the inside. All they wanted to do was to help move our country forward
What does “move forward” mean? Linguistically, it’s nebulous — it could mean getting out of a rut or not standing still, but in contrast to “make America great again” which indicates going back to the way it was before NAFTA/WTO and twenty years of endless war, “move forward” clearly implies that going back is wrong and moving forward is right. Attacking MAGA is a divide and conquer strategy since it was THEE thing that united conservative voters and independent voters and old school union dems.
I would argue that those people were voting for MAGA, the idea, not Trump, the man, whereas people who voted for Hillary were voting for the woman, not the policies she represented. And as far as “the truth” about her and other “top democrats” that Mr. Weissman claims to have learned, what good was it that they did for our country? That’s a big claim. The author presents no evidence to back it up. Weissman says Trump was corrupt and dodged the draft, but we the American people aren’t looking at anything but the actions of the LAST THREE YEARS that affect us personally. And we see factory jobs coming back, factories coming back that help middle class families and communities, prison sentence reform that helps Black families, finally someone fighting China back on their currency devaluation and intellectual copyright violations and flooding our US market with deadly fentanyl. And more. The list goes on and on and on. At the top of it? Average increase of $5,000 a year per family in income. I mean, that’s so awesome (thank you, President Trump!).
“The average median income under President Bush rose only $400 over an 8-year period. Under President Obama, it rose $975 over an 8-year period…And under my administration, it rose $5,000 over slightly more than just 2 1/2 years. That’s a big difference.” – @realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/wq4K7wrldn
Hillary Clinton asked rhetorically, “What difference at this point does it make?” when being questioned about Benghazi. She said of Gaddafi, “We came, he saw, he died” and laughed strangely. These cringe-worthy moments were horrifying to me as a student of body language and speech patterns. But to my liberal friends who voted for her, it was so embarrassing for them to recall those moments that they would come up blank when I mentioned it to them. They would say, “How can you vote for Trump when he says “grab ’em by the pussy”? And I would say, “because it was said around all guys and men talk using language far worse than that and he had no idea he was being recorded. We all might be embarrassed by words we said in confidence. Hillary doesn’t even realize how awful she sounds when she KNOWS she’s being filmed, and broadcast live, and she can’t even reflect on how insensitive it sounded to gleefully cackle about Gaddafi or throw her hands up and ask what difference does it make when she and Obama are personally responsible for the attack on the compound in Benghazi. Yuck! I’m embarrassed FOR her!”
My friends couldn’t argue. Why? Because essentially we were in agreement: both Trump and Hillary had said things that were embarrassing. The “she’s so qualified” argument, I noticed, was often used by those who couldn’t confront how uncomfortable it makes people to observe Hillary Clinton’s social ineptitude: how patronizing, how smug, how arrogant and how out of touch she comes across as. Furthermore, Hillary Clinton was treated as if she were literally above the law. Her lawyers wiped her server (like with a cloth? No, with bleachbit) so that thousands of those emails would never see the light of day. Obama knew about it, indeed, aided and abetted it, and participated in it by replying to her non-government email address. And the FBI director didn’t care. What good DID Obama do? I can think of many broken promises but I can’t think of anything he actually accomplished that Trump isn’t undoing as we speak (Affordable Care Act, etc). When I think of Obama, I hear him saying, “The jobs aren’t coming back. There’s no magic wand.” And you know what I think? I think, what a prick.
AND I CAN’T WAIT TO VOTE FOR TRUMP ALL OVER AGAIN! Make America Great Again! Awesome union manufacturing jobs, come (back) to mama!
President @realDonaldTrump: "Past leaders wrote off American manufacturing as dead but their policies were the ones that were actually killing it"
Let’s wrap this up with a few more indicators that Weissman’s piece is purely political propaganda and not an authentic conversion of heart narrative.
As I began conversing with Silverman, other people began reaching out to me. I started learning more about Democratic values and people. In many ways, it was shocking.
“In many ways, it was shocking” … why, because you were living under a rock? You never heard of a living wage before? Government funded healthcare? You never heard of that even though Canada has it and Obama wanted a public option in 2008 and Hillary pushed for single payer in 1994? LOL. We might have been born at night. Not last night. Conservatives call it the nanny state. Again, “it was shocking to find out I had so much in common with people I would have disagreed with a year earlier” makes sense. He doesn’t say that. “In many ways, it was shocking,” which is what he did say, comes off as juvenile. It’s almost as if someone edited the piece to shorten it and went too far.
What [Silverman] did was inspire me to talk to other people who had different views to mine. She accepted me for being a Trump supporter and that’s what brought down my wall of hate and closed mind.
The “wall of hate” imagery is being used to plant the idea of the border wall, as in Build the Wall, is a wall of hate, and not a very real physical barrier against criminals trying to break into the back door of our house-country. Being accepted exactly as we are, warts and all, IS an extremely powerful precursor to transformation. But again, insulting Trump supporters by telling them they are filled with hate and have closed minds? Not going to change their minds. (The same irony as above, using a story of acceptance to shame someone for being different … so strange.)
Ok, read this one: this is the best deep state co-authored part of the WHOLE piece. LOL, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!
I maintained a myopic view on the right to bear arms, and believed that Democrats want to take all of your guns — but I’ve learned from the conversations I’ve had since that that’s far from true. I learned that while the second amendment states that we have the right to bear arms, it should be within the confines of a well-regulated militia. The history of an AR-15 makes it clear that it was meant to be a weapon of war. There’s no reason why a civilian should own weapons that are only meant for combat.
How many times is the intern — er I mean, Weissman — going to say, “I’ve learned”? Again, you the reader are being educated (yeah, RE-educated). Myopic literally means stupid. It means, “lacking intellectual insight.” Yep, “I maintained my stupid view on guns.” That’s not insulting! Not at all! How about this? “I maintained my low IQ view on the right to bear arms.” So here’s how we know this was always a propaganda piece. The AR-15 is NOT a weapon of war. But let’s say it is. For the sake of argument. This deep state tool/pawn says that he learned that “there’s no reason why a civilian should own weapons that are only meant for combat.” Oh, yes, sadly, there is a reason, a horrifying one indeed. It’s in case our government ever got so corrupt that we had to have another revolution. A revolution is a WAR. Which is why the Founders wrote the Second Amendment: to protect our right to be fully and sufficiently armed. In case we ever had to fight against our own government the way we had to in 1776 — via a WAR. Pray to God every day that we never have to do this. Revolutions are horrible: years of bloody filthy despair, dirty water, starving children, rape in the streets. Revolution is WAR. Please don’t ever throw this word around in casual speech (like Bernie Sanders does, unfortunately). Revolution is a very specific type of fight: pray that fate never calls you to such a battle. Because it will end in death even if it ends in victory. Bottom line? No conservative flips on this issue. Many liberal Dems love guns and the Second Amendment. You don’t have to be liberal or conservative to love guns. You just have to love your country. To the literal death. So get real. And then get thee to a gun show.
Next piece of BS:
I also learned that seeking asylum is a human right, and that immigrants who are fleeing for their lives deserve it. Yet, the Trump administration is inhumanely violating this right by separating families at the border.
Wrong. Obama separated kids from adults in their “families” at the borders first. It was one of a few good things he did that Trump has continued. Go bury your head in the sand if you don’t want to learn about human trafficking. In the past — prior to Obama past — DHS agents were more likely to release families with children than someone with no child after they were detained for crossing the border into the United States from Mexico illegally. OH DOES THIS CREATE AN INCENTIVE TO LITERALLY RENT A CHILD IN ORDER TO MANIPULATE BORDER AGENTS INTO RELEASING “FAMILIES”? Why, yes! You want to know what it costs to rent a child on average? $130. Now, what’s the value you would appraise your child at? Little bit higher? Oh, come now, it’s only for a few weeks! Yeah, go jump off a cliff, you CHILD TRAFFICKING ENABLING SICKOS. And thank you, President Trump for having DHS DNA test these “asylum seekers” to see if they are actually related to the children they are using as props. Oh, you didn’t like the link to Breitbart as evidence? How about this link to a CBS article about it from 2014? Oh look, inflation hasn’t caused the price of A HUMAN BEING CHILD to go up. Aside: Yes, seeking asylum is considered to be a human right. A request can be made at any official port of entry. But the use of the word “human right” is not a phrase a conservative would use. They might use the phrase “natural right,” “God-given right” or “Constitutionally protected” but they are generally highly sensitive to using any language that implies entitlement and often avoid saying the word “deserve.” YES, opinions change. Speech patterns — in an adult person over the age of 25 whose brain has completely finished growing — don’t. A person, of any political persuasion, is very unlikely to start using words that their core values and morals have compelled them not to use for years. The authors of this piece of hogwash weren’t even trying to sound believable.
This next part sticks out like a sore thumb:
Barack Obama constantly talked about empathy, the need for us to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. My journey is ongoing.
Then the author goes on to say, “I’ve learned what Islam is really about and all the good Muslims have done for America” and how similar Christianity and Judaism and Islam are. Fair enough, they’re all three abrahamic religions, but why bring up Obama? Why? I supported Obama for 8 years and I don’t remember him “constantly” talking about empathy or putting ourselves in other people’s shoes. And again, why the Obama puff piece? Is something bad about to come out about him? What does Obama’s soaring rhetoric from 2012 have to do with Elizabeth Warren running for President in 2020?
Next piece of BS, the closing statement by this so-called Elizabeth Warren supporter.
Do I agree with all of her policies? Absolutely not. But even with my disagreements, I believe she is the most put-together candidate to move our country forward.
Move our country forward? Again, the antithesis to Making America Great AGAIN (going back) is moving forward. And “put together”? That’s a reason we vote for people? No, that’s the reason we hire them to be a pharmaceutical company sales rep. “She was so polished and professional and put-together.” LOL, these people should write for SNL and Make SNL Funny Again! Put together. (Shakes head, maternally, with a mix of amusement and pity.) No one ever won a presidency because they were put together.
SO: was this thing written by a DIA intern over the summer? Do I get a prize for guessing right? LOL, did General John “Guilty as Charged” Kelly help edit it? Wait, was he like, “be sure to use the word myopic twice in reference to the Second Amendment”?? Because I want to really get this straight: we’re supposed to believe a Ted Cruz supporter would flip to Trump … and then to the Democratic Party and then …. to Elizabeth Warren? Really???????????????????
Thank you for reading, this was a long one! I would love your feedback below. And to support me on patreon, please click here. To follow me on twitter, please click here.
**Now, it’s possible a person could vote for Trump in 2016 and Warren in 2020, maybe if they were Catholic and came from a long line of family members who’d been a part of the Catholic Workers party, for example a nurse or other medical care provider who believed in subsidized healthcare for all, as part of upholding the belief in the sanctity of human life. I went to school and was educated by these people/nuns at a Catholic all girls school from 7th through 12th grade–when they say they are pro-life, they look over their shoulder as if Archangel Michael himself is going to smite them if they are morally inconsistent about it and don’t help the sick and the poor, whether pre- or post-birth.
Overall, if we estimate the raw totals using these percentages while working off of Trump’s nearly 63 million votes and Clinton’s almost 66 million votes, the ANES data suggest that about 8.4 million 2012 Obama voters backed Trump in 2016 and 2.5 million Romney voters supported Clinton. Click here to see the source site.
All alphas seek a leadership position within the tribe, whether the tribe is a gang, a corporation, a fraternity or an empire. They excel at seeing the best solution to a problem, and knowing exactly who should take action to solve it. They feel good when they are protecting and providing for their tribe.
All alphas are driven to succeed, and to seek respect and wealth. Alpha’s alphas (in contrast to beta’s alphas and sigma’s alphas) are also driven to be feared and to seek fame (to leave their name behind them along with their legacy). Put simply, they are compelled to get rich, successful and respected, and then feared and famous.
So what makes an alpha male a super alpha male? When they not only want success and prosperity for their tribe, but for all tribes. This is not altruistic: the super alpha knows that…
I definitely wasn’t expecting a seemingly random invite to a house party in Virginia to end with me brainstorming a completely new blog as I drove the Caddy back home to DC in near darkness as the road curved along the trail of the Potomac on a chilly night in January. The opposite. I was imagining that I might make some friends with people I would certainly attempt to convert into Trump voters (eventually, after establishing the requisite amount of rapport) and that I might write a blog post about types of people one might — if one were so inclined — try to pitch newly honed talking points to, and how to do it in the most effective way, and also imagining that maybe I’d write a hilarious voter-registration role-playing sketch, and try to rope Scott Presler into playing James Comey in an old-school SNL inspired piece of satire (“But I’m showing you’re a registered Republican — you’re not planning to vote for Trump in 2020?? Whaaaaaat?”).
That was not what happened. Being relegated to the non-alcoholic beverage table since I was driving, I returned to that part of the kitchen and poured myself another plastic cup of warm Cherry Coke (I love the warm fizz of room-temperature cherry coke — if you have never savored this truly unique sensation, I can offer nothing but my condolences). A fellow soda-drinker, a skeptical gentleman, introduced himself to me and we began discussing the price of rent in DC vs Arlington (which is where I’ll be moving to in 2020 so I can vote in Virginia in the 2020 election and actually have my vote count). He asked me what type of rent was I looking to pay in Virginia and I said that it depended on whether or not I could get a job working for the Trump campaign. He asked me what I do now and I launched into my shtick about a periscope a day and hashtag winning (that’s pound sign winning for you old-timers). I couldn’t help but mention how I love to do body language and speech pattern analysis through the lens of the tribal roles and he asked me about the roles, what are they? Now, if you’ve been following my Messages to Millennials blog or my time line on twitter, you know I’ve been almost hyper-vigilant with my concern regarding the 2020 election and getting POTUS re-elected. I hadn’t made a new youtube video in months and my passion for the Tribal Roles (it was my Sigma Male video that was my first viral video on youtube in 2017!) had somehow slid to the back burner. I found myself enthusiastically describing the four tribal roles, Alpha, Beta, Sigma and Omega, to this stranger and watching the interest and curiosity flicker in his eyes as he automatically self-categorized and then matched the roles I described to people in his life. I LOVE this part of my study of human nature — the part where people feel like they’ve clicked into something greater than themselves after just a brief introduction to the tribal roles. The irony is that we are all already part of this “thing” that is greater than ourselves: the Tribe! So we continued to chat and I heard myself say, “It’s not like there’s a book out there that I’m referring to. It’s just my personal observations about how people contribute to the tribe or act as a drain on resources.” And he said, “because you’re the one who’s going to write the book.” And I laughed. And he said he was serious. I immediately replied, “well, first I’d have to create a quiz for people to self-categorize and then interview them and it would have to be a big study!” And he nodded, yes, as if to say, of course! It was so much fun discussing the tribe with this new friend and that was when I realized that I really missed doing those videos because I’d been so stuck on politics.
So of course my Sigma female brain went into problem solving mode and I realized that there was no more fascinating member of the tribe than Trump himself, the quintessential Alpha Male. It dawned on me that there is no conflict between my political goals (to re-elect Trump and flip undecided voters and even old school liberals [not leftists] to the red side of the ballot in 2020) and my desire to continue to make tribal role videos. Why not merge them and do the analysis of Trump, the leader of the tribe? The classic Alpha’s Alpha?
As I drove home, I had fun thinking about all the possible video topics I could explore on youtube … and blog post ideas of analyzing people I’d met whose traits were equally fascinating.
I dove into the deep end of the Olympic size pool worth of video footage of POTUS. For your viewing pleasure, I created 6 different videos analyzing Donald J Trump, from 1980 to the present. You can watch them all here on my new Tribal Roles blog!
Coming up on tribalroles.com: once upon a time, an Omega female and a Beta Female were both groomed by their employers for “leadership.” In that post, we’ll discuss why this is an unfortunate waste of resources and how it actually backfires in people who are not naturally inclined toward leadership.
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**This post originally appeared on Patreon: click here to follow
Today, I submitted my resume and cover letter online to apply to work for the Trump Campaign in 2020 (or sooner!??). Flipping Virginia from blue to red is 100% doable. Here is how I pitched it in front of the White House on this lovely chilly snow-free Christmas Day.
And here was my pitch to the Hiring Team in my cover letter (I have removed one paragraph that specifically named references).
Dear Mr Parscale and the Trump 2020 Campaign Hiring Team:
This past June, I packed up my ’93 Cadillac Deville with everything I own and drove from St Paul, MN to Washington, DC with the sole purpose of inserting myself into the political scene here in our nation’s capitol and doing everything I possibly can, via youtube, twitter and periscope, to advance President Trump’s America First agenda. Now that the 2020 campaign is on the verge of ignition, my goal is to actively reach out to voters and “flip” them, from blue to red. As a former Obama voter who flipped from blue to red in 2016, I am uniquely motivated and equipped to reach other past Obama voters, establish rapport with them, and convert them to voting for President Trump in 2020 for the same reasons I did in 2016: bringing back manufacturing jobs, renegotiating “free trade” agreements, ending endless war (as Obama promised to in 2008), fixing the sham health care reform that was Obamacare and actually bringing down insurance premiums and prescription drug costs, and preserving social security for our seniors. Since learning — from POTUS on twitter! — that a lack of a secure border with Mexico is costing American taxpayers millions of dollars in benefits to illegal aliens and millions more to imprison criminal aliens in federal prison, to say nothing of the endless human trafficking and drug trafficking that only a wall can significantly reduce, I have now come to support not just an increase in border protection agents but “the wall” as well. I now communicate to others who misunderstand the border security issue (and admittedly, I used to be one of them) these three talking points: 1) Trump is using basic common sense when he says, “without borders, you don’t have a country.” The United States is our house. Of course people can visit but they can’t break in through the back door. Would you break into someone’s house? Of course you would never. 2) Obama’s catch & release policy was the best thing to happen to human traffickers since burner phones: Trump’s catch & detain policy prevents the supply of exploitable human beings that would otherwise be seen as a source of unpaid labor by traffickers on both sides of the border who work together to place illegal aliens from the shadows into situations that amount to indentured servitude or worse. 3) Senators Schumer, Clinton and Obama are all on record as supporting billions of dollars for border security when Bush was president in 2006 when they voted for the Secure Fence Act, which passed! The truth is Dems are perfectly happy to build a wall: they just don’t want Trump to get credit for it.
Click on the photo and Sarah’s twitter will open in a new window
I want to personally flip the state of Virginia from blue to red. My intention is to move from DC to Virginia so that I can vote for President Trump in Virginia in 2020. Each state is a battle in this 50 state war and I am uniquely equipped to flip socially liberal yet security minded Northern Virginians. Most of them voted for Obama in 2012 and 2008, just like me. I envision myself tabling at malls, events, and college campuses with a sign that says, “ASK ME WHY I VOTED FOR OBAMA IN 2012 AND TRUMP IN 2016.” As many as nine million Americans made that switch. As a good friend of mine (who votes absentee ballot in Ohio) says, “Americans vote for the person, not the party. And everyone loves a winner.” Please give me the opportunity to win Virginia for President Trump as a member of your re-election campaign team.
FACTS
Flipping Virginia is 100% doable. It’s a matter of three components: first, Trump’s opponent only won by 5.4% in 2016 in Virginia. Second, 5.9% of all votes in Virginia went to third party candidates; and third, an unknown percentage chose not to vote at all because they assumed Virginia would go blue so they didn’t even bother to show up. This means that the pool of voters to “flip” need not even be from the pool of 2016 Democrat voters. We can convert third party voters, people who didn’t bother to show up, plus the thousands of newly eligible to vote Generation Z students on college campuses.
WINNING
Currently, I am on a one woman crusade to motivate Trump supporters and combat trolls as part of my daily #TrumpTrain2020 periscope campaign. Every day since the midterms, I have done a livestream and my number of viewers grows daily. I talk about whatever the issue of the day might be and remind people to vote and/or to register to vote. Every day, I broadcast the number of days till the election (678 as of today, Christmas Day 2018); and I break the news to the haters: Not only is Trump going to win the electoral college in 2020, he’s going to win the popular vote, by a landslide.
PASSION
President Trump says, “Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.” I have the energy to knock on every door in Virginia (but let’s skip Comey’s house). I could do it much faster with a team though! Please consider me for a role in voter outreach in Northern Virginia. I am prepared to move to Virginia as soon as you want me to, and I look forward to speaking with you soon!
Huff Post, the internet’s most homogeneous enclave of “opinion,” whose thought police, thought judges, and thought jury overlords hand down verdicts for those of us NORMAL enough to watch nostalgic Christmas specials on TV, announced felt compelled to label the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special “problematic” last week.
The holiday TV classic "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" is seriously problematic. 😳 https://t.co/dOgqPF3bAP
Really? Problematic? Now, I’ve worked for a few big corporations in my time, and their HR Department’s favorite thing to do is tweak words and flip verb tense to make new and different meanings. Something (read: someone) isn’t just a problem, requiring a solution, something is “problematic.” Salient points in a discussion become “take-aways.” A raise becomes a “merit adjustment.” Justifications for not giving someone a raise are “constructive criticism.” Thinly veiled insults become “feedback.” (Note: feedback, by definition, is the horrifically painful-to-hear jarring noise of a microphone doing its impression of a battery being run up and down a cheese grater through the loudest speaker possible. But but but, “here’s some feedback! To help your growth!” Uhhh, no thanks, sadist. Have a really awesome day though!)
Words have meaning. Yes, I know my fellow Trump supporters have known this for some time. And we can tell that the thought police (a very small group of people who are incredibly loud, who are by no means the majority) are now saying “problematic” instead of “offensive.” If I came over to your house and you fed me a meal and I criticized your cooking, thatwould be rude. Impolite. Offensive. Mean! “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” is none of those things. Not even remotely.
And here is the best part: the more these mentally ill people attack obviously fun, spirited, joyful, happy moral stories, good vs evil fables, if you will, the more they alienate the masses. Even the left-leaning Democrat masses. For example, I consider myself to have mostly libertarian views with a few exceptions (yes, I was a Bernie supporter before I flipped to Trump) but I have long agreed that calling gay men the f word or black people the n word or women the c word is offensive. Mean. Rude! And most of my conservative friends agree! They — we — aren’t out using those words (that have meanings!) in the HR or leftist fashion, in ways that don’t make sense, to twist their meanings and use the words to control the speech and thought patterns of others. A woman I met at a women’s college once told me that her calling me a c–t is a compliment: that we have to usurp the patriarchy’s power to oppress women by taking the power of that word back, and by using it in empowering ways. I said, wrong. Whether a woman or a man calls me the c word, I am going to walk away from them and avoid seeing them ever again. She wanted to argue. Guess what I did. I cut her off. I literally said to her, “I don’t give my consent to be called a c—.” Yep, I used her consent language! (lol) And I saw a flicker in her eyes — for a just a split second, there was brief awareness that her reasoning was far from logical.
The more these mentally ill people attack obviously fun, spirited, joyful, happy moral stories — good vs evil fables — the more they alienate the masses.
Coincidentally, the very first clip Huff Post “exposes” in their anti-Christmas propaganda is Rudolph being bullied by the other reindeer. They call him horrible names. You know what he says? “Stop calling me names.” That in and of itself is incredibly brave. Most of us probably witnessed bullying at school on the playground as kids. The person being bullied just sits there and waits till it’s over. Teachers might intervene. They might not. Never did I observe anyone who was being bullied say — courageously — “Stop bullying me.” What a great movie for kids to watch: Rudolph protests the injustice as it’s happening to him. Nip it in the bud. Stand up for yourself. Stand up for those weaker than you. That’s what my parents taught me. And the message in the Christmas special gets even better!
Now, the wackjobs on Twitter want to call Rudolph’s dad saying, “There are more important things than comfort: self-respect” verbal abuse. Nope. We should all be so lucky as to have a strong father figure growing up who teaches us that temporary discomfort is worth it if it leads to an accomplishment we can be proud of down the line.
Yes, the basketball coach leading the gang-up on Rudolph is shitty and horrible. And we all knew a bad guy like that as kids. Stories like these teach us about the nature of good and evil. That sometimes evil is an adult who abuses power over kids. It’s usually NOT a horned devil. Kids need to know this. Show your kids this excellent TV special/parable today! Spoiler alert: Rudolph is vindicated in the end. And what does that teach kids? That there are good adults in a position of power as well, generous kind benevolent adults (Santa). That children have a choice regarding which path they’ll go down as they grow up.
Ok, Huffpost, you’re right: it’s mean that the dad of Clarice (the pretty girl reindeer that Rudolph likes) says he wouldn’t allow any daughter of his to be seen with a red-nosed reindeer. People are mean. Parents can be too. The whole point of the show is to teach kids that in the end, good leaders (Santa) identify what it is that each member of the tribe has to contribute to the overall happiness of the family/tribe.
And the young elf who wants to be a dentist who is berated for not wanting to be one, by his dad? Again, the lesson is that Santa (the good guy/alpha tribal leader in this context) sees that even if your whole family has been making toys for generations, you might be better off being the first dentist and helping the other members of the tribe in a way that more fully expresses your talents. Huff Post ridiculously analyzes this wonderful tale of love, acceptance and victory over bullies through a lens of PC purgatory. The note they insidiously end on? As Santa is flying though the sky to deliver toys, Rudolph proudly leading the entire herd, what suggestion do they implant in the viewer’s mind?
“Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable.”
Give me a break. A literal break.
Deviant behavior and traits can and should be punished. But Rudolph isn’t a deviant. His nose isn’t a deviation. It’s not a flaw. It’s a gift. Santa is the strong leader who recognizes strengths. Guess what, Huff Post? Exploiting strengths is awesome. Otherwise, the strength the elf had, the skill of cavity filling, would have been lost in a sea of toy-making. Rudolph’s brilliant nose would have been wasted if he’d been forced to cover it up.
Words matter. Exploiting people — forcing them into unpaid labor — is bad. Exploiting strengths, valuing them, and rewarding the person who uses them in constructive ways, is good! If Huff Post weren’t so full of actual feces, they would be talking about how Rudolph covering his red nose with a fake brown prosthetic so it looks brown could be seen as a metaphor for the niqab or burka which force a woman to veil her strengths and hide her very existence to the point of near invisibility, and this propaganda outlet could instead spark a discussion of how some religions value women only for their reproductive organs.
But they don’t. Because the point of this video is not reallyto expose anything sinister. Huff Post’s goal isn’t to shine the light of truth onto any darkness (Santa does that!). Huff Post’s goal is to fill people who watch their micro documentary with hate. To fill people who watch it with hate for those who looooooove Christmas. Trump supporters.
What Huff Post wants the most is to normalize hate. But especially to hate anything that promotes happiness and national unity. Remember when everyone loved holiday specials no matter what their political background was? These fun TV specials that air this time of year were loved by everyone. They’re fun! Hilarious sometimes. My Jewish friend in grade school watched them with her family! Christians don’t have a monopoly on Santa. It’s a fun character! You’ll find out soon enough that it’s your parents. But that too is fun because then you know that you get to grow up one day and “be Santa” for your kids!
The good news is that Huff Post and their cronies are losing the culture war. People are sick of this B.S. They just want to focus on their families and have money and a good job. They don’t want to talk politics! The more Santa — who is obviously a “good guy” — is villainized in this absurd (almost laughable) way, the more the entire overt operation to mainstream hate and normalize tension between family members and polarization between the two political parties, backfires.
And they are such a hate-filled tiny percentage of the population, screaming into a hate-filled echo chamber, that they have no idea. So let’s not tell them to put down their shovels. Let’s celebrate family, tradition, and the spirit of giving that inspires us to be generous and creative all December long!
This is the manifestation of my #WalkAway moment and there was more than a little cognitive dissonance as I found myself cavorting around Capitol Hill with a big pile of “sorry we missed you!” flyers for Republican candidate Michael Bekesha, of Ward 6, who is running for DC council.
You see, while I’ve never been a democrat, per se, I have almost always voted for dems, including Congresswoman Betty McCollum, Senator Al Franken, among others, and a guy you may have heard of, Barack Obama — twice!
Six years ago — literally six years ago to the day (a beautiful fall day in zip code 55105), I was canvassing for President Obama to be re-elected for his second term, going door to door in St Paul, MN. I was terrified — and despairing — that Romney could win and the Affordable Care Act would be repealed. I didn’t LIKE Obamacare, I liked one of its provisions, that any state could set up its own single payer option (and like every failed attempt at something decent and beneficial of Obama’s legacy, that too became an impossible dream that even Vermont (Vermont!!) couldn’t realize); additionally, I was worried that abortion would instantly become illegal, overnight. I believed that Romney as a devout Mormon would make sure of that.
I had neither of these fears with Trump. Not for a second, not for a millisecond.
You know why? Because by 2016, I’d given up on the absurd ridiculous bureaucratic nightmare that ACA devolved into, one that doubled my own insurance premiums so I couldn’t afford health insurance (to say nothing of the deductible I’d have to pay if I DID need to see an ACTUAL doctor) and forced me to pay HUNDREDS of dollars against my tax refund due to the individual mandate since I opted to go uninsured rather than pay for something I couldn’t afford anyway. And frankly, I don’t think Trump would ever touch the abortion issue with an executive order. He talks a pro-life talk to get the religious demographic to vote for him, but he’s no Pence.
There is only one person I wouldn’t vote for in a race against Pence and that is Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, I would vote against Pence.
I don’t sound very republican, do I? Well, it’s because I’m not. I hate labels, and have long eschewed them. There’s a reason I call myself a progressive patriot. I’m pro-legal abortion (I wouldn’t object to a 120-days-pregnant cut off), I’m for gay marriage (what do you think men who can’t marry other men because society shames them for being gay do? Sometimes they marry women. Some might perpetrate fraud against women and pretend they’re straight). At the same time, I want very secure borders, an America First domestic and foreign policy, where we fix NAFTA (Trump is working on it with the new USMCA) and pull out of the TPP (Trump did that on day one) and bring back manufacturing jobs. That’s all happening plus that garbage individual mandate from Obamacare has already been repealed, thank God. And I have hope Trump will finally get us out of Afghanistan as well and work with Rand Paul to offer a better health care solution, while protecting anyone with pre-existing conditions (the other good component of the ACA).
To me, Trump is the one who doesn’t sound very republican. (In fact in his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” he holds up the Canadian single payer health care system as an example of a plan that we could implement in the US; albeit an improved Trump-version of it, of course!) Or at least, Trump seems like a throwback to the populist Republicans of the early 20th century: he’s no corporatist like Paul Ryan or Romney. That’s why even so many Republicans didn’t like Trump!
Ever since the 2016 election, I have been hellbent on voting for anyone but Dems. And I do mean anyone. Some people might #WalkAway: I’m going to drag myself out of the clutches of the Democratic Party’s lying scheming duplicitous filthy claws and attempt to collapse their entire house of cards on my way out.
Some people might #WalkAway: I’m going to drag myself out of the clutches of the Democratic Party’s lying scheming duplicitous filthy claws and attempt to collapse their entire house of cards on my way out.
But after moving to Washington, DC and becoming a registered Ward 6 voter, even considering a Republican for my District Council member initially felt … so alien. I had figured I would vote for the independent or libertarian candidate. But then I found out about DC Log Cabin Republicans-approved Michael Bekesha.
This whole concept of an “urban republican” sounded interesting. It had a ring to it. It seemed sophisticated. It seemed like the perfect name to print onto the beige label of a bottle of 2019 Rose from the latest California vineyard. Ok, I thought, I’ll take a sip.
I went to Michael’s meet and greet and found out he’s an attorney for Judicial Watch (yay!). I found out he’s pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, and he’s just a cool down to earth guy all around! Super kind and friendly wife, they have a rescue dog, they know DC, having lived here a long time, etc. Good people. When we talked about not paying teachers and cops who work in DC enough to be able to also live (afford housing) in DC proper, he had real solutions to suggest, ones that have worked in other major cities. He’s genuinely worried about the recent uptick in violent crime. He cares about things that matter to every day people, like an aging metro system and getting the government out of the way so people can supplement their income by renting their home out through airbnb. All politics are local, as they say, and I even had a very interesting conversation with him about the role of government in regulating the sale of marijuana.
I thought, this is my type of Republican!! (Cue film noir voiceover: I looked in the mirror, and said to myself, could I be … an urban republican? Perhaps. Perhaps that longing and aching for a party … any party … could finally be … fulfilled!)
And as I canvassed door to door today, I had great conversations with the few registered Republican voters who happened to be home (or answered the door!) as I dutifully followed the trail of pindrops on the app on my phone. A whole lot more convenient than lugging around 20 pages of voters’ names and addresses on a bulky clipboard the way I did 6 years ago, I can tell you that much. This time, constituents shared that their biggest concern was crime and the quality of public schools. Everyone was nice — exactly the same as when I went door to door to registered Dem voters 6 years ago. Might “nice” be a personality trait of the registered voter?
People who vote, I posit, vote because they unconsciously feel that they are following a rule: just as you have to come to a complete stop at a stoplight on red, you have to vote on election day. There’s a good chance that the same people who taught us how to drive, also taught us how to vote — our parents. And this is where the current Dem party leadership takes such a sharp turn away from the Dem party voters. Who are rule followers. The Dem leaders, Feinstein, Pelosi, Schumer, et al, are literally praising rule-breaking — loudly and emphatically — on tv. And all these rule-followers are watching. And shaking their heads.
Which leads me from the local political scene to the national one. Being Republican in DC is basically a non-starter … unless you live in the White House and your name is Donald Trump. Bekesha likely won’t win the Ward 6 race but if he doesn’t run, it’s a total surrender to the one-party system that DC is entrenched in. A lot of people thought Trump was wasting his time and money. But standing firm in our views is never a waste. Every time we stand up and speak out, we add another layer to the snowball that eventually triggers an avalanche.
And President Trump is speaking very loudly: he’s saying things that ALL rule-followers are hearing. Registered voters from ALL parties. And they’re agreeing with those things. And nodding their heads.
One of the things Trump says is if you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country. It’s laughably obvious. He campaigned on enforcing **existing** immigration law. We have rules so that society doesn’t devolve into absolute chaos. No one thinks we put on the breaks at a stop sign so we can appreciate what a lovely job the local municipality did with such a vividly red octagonal accent piece. No one thinks we refrain from budging in line at the grocery store because it’s fun to wait our turn! No. We follow rules because we were taught to respect authority, orto fear authority and the negative consequences of not following the rules. The results are the same, either way: a compliant cooperative populace that *usually* stops at stop signs and doesn’t budge in line. Or kill. Or steal. Or break into someone’s house. Or break into someone’s country. Etc.
Even the Hill is coming to terms with the fact that the left has dug themselves such a deep rhetoric grave, that they’ve created an abyss. It’s very hard to scratch and crawl your way out of an abyss — the best strategy is to avoid falling into one (or for crying out loud, DIGGING ONE RELENTLESSLY) in the first place. The Hill retweeted President Trump saying, “The Democrats don’t like being called an angry mob but, really, that’s what they’ve become. They’ve gone so far left, they can’t even believe that they’re over there.” Now, the Hill wasn’t saying that because they agree with Trump, they were sending out a warning to the Dems: I read between the lines and I think the Hill is desperately trying to remind the Deep State (with whom they are a mainstream media partner and for whom they are a bullhorn) to reel back the gasping bloated struggling donkeys-out-of-water the Democrat Party has become.
But please don’t conflate “dems” with normal people. Because normal people (classical liberals) like me wanted GTMO closed, to get the hell out of Afghanistan, to put our own people first, to hold the big banks accountable for crashing the economy in 2008, to have job and retirement security for Americans, but the Democrat Party leadership have become such shills for a globalist, border-free, US sovereignty violating world order that they’ve lost touch with the everyday man and woman. No, not the “forgotten man and woman,” the blue collar workers whose lives were devastated by NAFTA and other “free” (globalist) trade agreements, who elected President Trump by an electoral college swinging margin in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, no, I mean the AVERAGE person: the other group of normal, middle-of-the-road, working, tv-watching Americans. And those people PLUS all the forgotten men and women are watching that TV, and they’re seeing with their own eyes thousands of migrant people, mostly men of working age. And they’re reflecting. And they’re drawing a conclusion based on available information, as human beings who aren’t brain-dead are wont to do. And they are agreeing with the sentiments of Tera Marie Major below: this is not a caravan, it’s an invasion.
This is not a caravan, it’s an invasion.
No. This is not a caravan; this is an invasion. Also, why are “asylum seekers” who are running away from their own country proudly marching with a flag but not bothering w/clothing for their babies?— And who are the “organizers” of them as referenced in the article?? pic.twitter.com/L5zVdaHORA
Wouldthe Dems be ok with 4,000 Russians illegally crossing our border? We know the answer. If 4,000 Russians attempted to illegally force their way through our southern border, the Dems would be UP IN ARMS. On the national mall, in front of the White House, parading down 5th Avenue, blockading the subways, the airports and the freeways. “Russian collusion, Russian collusion,” they’d chant, like deranged zombies.
Borders are laws. And laws are designed to prevent chaos (and other types of pain, of course). President Trump is right: the Dems have gone so far left, theycan’t even believe they’re over there. Everything they’ve done — from showing us that it’s one tier of justice for you and me, and a separate tier for people with the last name Clinton, to the DNC claiming in open court that they have every right to rig the primaries, regardless of what their charter says, to claiming bizarre denial of reality (i.e., there are more than 2 genders, gender is fluid, and attempting to normalize the sexualization of minors by glorifying child “drag queens” as glamorous instead of acknowledging that those MINORS are being exploited by adults) has shown the WORLD that they are losing their minds. They have no idea that they seem crazy. And they operate in an echo chamber (such as the one established and sustained by the crypt keepers of the abyss known as Twitter) so not only do they avoid any real debate that could lead to a change of heart, their existing viewpoint is freakishly and cultishly reinforced, thanks to such a high degree of isolation.
And I am so thankful I got away from that cult.
Vote Michael Bekesha for Ward 6 DC Council on November 6!!
Messages to Millennials 