Democrats Who Want to 'Listen' Now
This is a response to a piece by over on the blog Persuasion. You may want to read the Persuasion piece before you finish this essay of mine.
While I hope that Mr. Warren and others like him will be willing and able to listen to this critique as they say they’re ready to, I’m not toning it down in order to accomplish that. There are plenty—too many—people right now toning it down and thinking foolishly that if we just “speak the nice way liberals like that everything will be better.” That this has not worked for decades does not change their minds.
The Democrats need some slaps directly in the face, Cher-in-Moonstruck-style, to snap out of it. Pain is required to wake up when you’re this deeply asleep. I know, because it happened to me.
And what follows is exceedingly mild compared to what party denizens on that side morally deserve.
The Democrats don’t have an “empathy problem” in the sense the author means. Like most, he misunderstands the term. “Empathy” does not mean “feel emotional sympathy for, be sorry for, and show how you sorry you feel with public emotional rhetoric.” Empathy means “to understand.”
The Democrats have a reality problem. They also have a moral values problem, but one thing at a time.
This line from the above-mentioned Persuasion essay jumped out at me. It’s what I was waiting for, and what I knew I would find. It is the tell that gives the lie to the author’s claim to be ready and willing to listen to another perspective. It was accompanied by an image:
By contrast, the state Republican Party sent ads in support of my sister’s opponent that were so offensive and ridiculous, it’s hard to take them seriously. One of them showed three shirtless Hispanic men covered in tattoos with the title, “MEET YOUR NEW NEIGHBORS: Democrats’ open borders are letting illegal immigrants, drugs, and crime flow into New Hampshire.”
Here is that image:
That image is accurate. That ad is accurate. These are the kinds of young illegal men who are flooding into New England because our government is bringing them. I see them. They’re in town with me. I walk past their Spanish-only gangs of shouting men on our streets.
Though I don’t have much hope, perhaps the outraged author,
, who writes “Team Common Sense,” can begin listening now, the way he says it’s time for him and the party to listen.No, those ads were not “offensive and ridiculous.” No, they were not “race-baiting.” You are still stuck in a mythical fantasy where good white people love all brown people no matter what, and bad people are white people who hate all brown people no matter what.
Mr. Ed Warren, I mean this, and I don’t mean it as an insult: You, personally, are still in a fantasy. You don’t know it, but you are. You do not recognize reality. That image above is reality. You find reality “offensive.” But you will not acknowledge that it is reality.
So you’ve written what appears to be a mild-mannered, reasonable bit of reconsideration. Like many on the left, you would like to believe that all your side needs to do is make conservatives ‘feel seen’ and ‘feel heard.’ No, that will not work. We expect substance, not the appearance of substance. We want to sit in a room with real furniture, not on stage props that are merely a false front with no actual wood to hold them up.
I’m a former Democrat who lives just over the New Hampshire border in Vermont. In 20 years, I have watched Vermont sink under the weight of Democrats. Burlington now has a crime rate higher than Detroit. Prostitutes and drug addicts are fighting and dying on the streets, even in the toney shopping districts. I cannot use an ATM in downtown Burlington (an upscale shopping district of formerly quaint Victoriana) because the vestibules have been taken over by pimps, gang members, and whores. The last time I tried, a year ago, nine of them had moved their “furniture” into the Key Bank vestibule and smoked crack as I walked up.
No one said anything. No police in sight. It’s just theirs now, like every front porch downtown is “theirs” now. For OD’ing, for puking booze up, or for shitting. Yes, shitting, Mr. Warren. We have human feces in “nice” neighborhoods on the lawns now.
People are overdosing in broad daylight, every single day. We’ve had what, 11 shootings downtown? Unheard of before your party, the Dems, went full feminized-empathy lunatic.
Our schools teach children that they’re born in the wrong body. They are pushing them to take fertility destroying drugs in preparation for having their genitals mutilated. Don’t tell me it’s not happening because it is. I have the receipts and I’ve shown them on my shows. Almost 40 percent of Burlington middle and high school students told the school they identify as “LGBTQ.” How do you explain that? My guess? You won’t. You’ll ignore it and say it’s “transphobic” to mention it.
Walking down the streets now it is obvious that we have a huge influx of Central and South American young military age men here illegally. They walk the streets in packs, shouting in Spanish, and acting menacingly toward young American girls in pizza shops. I live here. I see it.
Do not tell me that I do not see what I see.
I want them all gone. Deported with prejudice. Not because “racism.” Not because I hate brown people (here, I’ll do the thing you want me to do so you can make this “racist”, too: one of my closest friends for decades is Mexican). I want third world savages gone because I like civilization, order, and obedience to the law. Nothing to do with skin color. Everything to do with barbarism versus civilized behavior.
Just like you do. You think you don’t, but that’s because it hasn’t affected you yet. That’s the only reason you can say something so blinkered and insulting as “these ads are RAY-CISS!” Until you can stop doing that, I will assume that you like third-world savagery, and that you enjoy seeing young American white women menaced by them.
Your party needs to do much, much more than fine-tune your messaging. You need to acknowledge reality. You are so far from it (you, Ed, are in that group still, though you seem to be able to consider changing) that it’s usually pointless to talk to any of you. I could say the sun is out, and you’d vehemently tell me I was seeing the moon, and that I was crazy.
Your sister lost her Democratic seat because she is in a party of smug, self-satisfied people who are deluded, but who abuse the rest of us and say that it is we who are deluded. Your party is not “kind”; your party is made up of fragile narcissists who only want to be seen by others to be performing “empathy.” For everyone but their countrymen. It’s quite obvious how much you hate us, and how much we trigger your disgust reaction.
If you’ve made it this far, you should also know I’m a gay man. For almost all my life, I was you, your sister, and your party. Lefty. Democrat. Progressive. Union supporter. “Believed all women.”
I was wrong about facts.
And the party you and your family still belong to abused me and millions of people so badly that you’re lucky the most extreme thing we did was leave and call you out for it. Your side deserves much worse for your foul, awful, dishonest behavior. I lost my 20 year career because of your party, that used to be my party, because I told the truth in public.
I would have said all this to you on your blog, as you said it was time for your side to start listening. But I’m not a paid subscriber. Maybe you’ll “listen,” here, but I won’t believe it until I see it.
Thank you for summarizing how many of us feel. The democrats are sadistic abusers, and I too was one of them for decades. I was a democrat until I was told to be a good one I need to hate white people, hate Christians, hate Jews, love illegal aliens, love an open border, love DEI hiring practices, fear the environment, fear the common cold, agreeably get in line to be injected with poison, say a man in a dress and lippy is a woman, promote child sterilization and genital mutilation, LOVE endless war, get behind 2-tier policing and lawfare, and much much more. I'm done.
The casual way Democrats refer to themselves as 'kind' is stunning. I am from New Hampshire. The way we turn into Massachusetts is slowly, and then all at once. The voters here, for the local races anyway, said NO. In NH we are surrounded by toxic blue. It is destroying the unique spirit of New England. Instead of stoic hardworking New Englanders, we are now the land of 'I have three degrees and drive 65 down your cute little roads and buy up all the craft beer.' NH already has over 10,000 "migrants." Massachusetts has at least a quarter of a million, and Maura Healey has openly suggested sending some of theirs to NH. To that we say fuck you, to the Dems pretending to listen and to the Dems who aren't. Nothing about them is kind. Just look at cities they control. Unacceptable and it will not be tolerated here. Great essay Josh!