I have a friend, Jorge, who grew up in Cuba during the Castro madness. His grandparents' farm was destroyed and their animals were taken. His father was a political prisoner for protesting. Jorge worked on a sugar plantation as a small child, reaping the crop with a machete. He said some of the children lost fingers.
Eventually, Castro deported political prisoners and homosexuals.
Jorge was able to immigrate to the United States. When he came home on his 18th birthday, his bags were packed and waiting for him on the porch.
He got married, had children, and eventually ended up in Atlanta.
His son was accepted into Georgia Tech, graduated this year, and landed a job at Google.
During his time at GT, Jorge's son became more and more woke in his beliefs. They fought about it. Luckily, Jorge was able to "set him straight", so to speak.
It was touch and go.
If the son of a Cuban immigrant, grandson of victims of a dictatorship can be brainwashed to believe communism is a good thing...any young adult can be. They are just that good.
Side note: Jorge has told me stories we were NEVER taught in school.
He said people wanted to go to prison. He said even though the prisons were absolute torturous nightmares, being a political prisoner meant one day you MIGHT get deported.
It never once occurred to me how easy I have it, and how lucky I am.
Imagine purposely assigning yourself to Hell with the tiniest hope you'll reach Heaven. And, that's if you survive. Many didn't.
Now, imagine you're having a family dinner with your son, and having to hear how backward America is. How marxism and communism are the only ways to save it. How the LGBTQ community is oppressed by society. How only the left understand (and care) about the poor. How you "just don't get it."
The kicker? His son is very intelligent. Like I said, he works at Google in a position hundreds of college students went after. This kid is no brainless automaton, and they STILL got him. Since he entered "the real world" so to speak, his views have changed for the better. Not all of them, but at least a fair bit.
All of this made me ask myself: Do you realize there are billions of people who would do anything to switch lives with you?
Except for Ron DeSantis! Of course, these stories are being erased. It's actually taboo in academia to criticize communism (although, fortunately, former or current members of Communists parties are still forbidden from immigrating to America legally. A side note: many of them were forced to join under threat and detest the ideology). I think we should have constant conversations with young people at home. If they trust their elders/parents, they will learn. Young first-generation Americans from the Eastern Block, especially the Soviet Union, are rarely woke and tend to have political views that are relatively similar to their parents'. They all go to college, but family legacy and its frequent discussions make them less trusting.
But you know what Yuri? In some ways this is harder than when I was woke. Delusion can be awfully nice while it lasts.
What I know now is much heavier on the soul. I was playacting before. I wasn't the oppressed minority (after the early 90s actual bigotry pretty much disappeared) I thought I was. Now, instead, I know what it feels like to be a true odd man out.
What did it take if you don’t mind my asking. I get it if it’s too personal. But how can we as long time conservatives (50 years for me, what with Vietnam and Walter Cronkite) make cracks in that emotional armor?
Josh, do you know the story of the real Yuri Bezmenov? If you don’t, you should find his interview with G. Edward Griffin from the 1980s. It’ll blow your mind open even further.
I don’t think you need an abusive mother to understand authoritarian lying. That is what has happened on the left with the trans ideology overtaking everything with their lies about men becoming women! I used to call myself liberal, but now the former liberals are as illiberal as it gets. Freedoms of speech is no longer upheld by them…just ask Kamala Harris! So many of us former liberals are now homeless.
You aren’t homeless. You just have to understand that conservatism is about freedom. It’s not fascism. It’s not nazism. It’s certainly not communism. One is free to do what one wishes, as long as it doesn’t harm or force others to do things they don’t wish to do. Want an abortion? Find a place that does them. Far away? Welp, your state actually voted that way. Go find one that didn’t. Want to eat yourself to death? Fine. Don’t expect others to pay for the ramifications. Eat till you die. It’s called choice. And when you truly wake up, you will realize you are conservative. Conservatives are close to libertarianism, without the ridiculous. Libertarians are closer to anarchism. But even that is better than big nanny. And that is where liberalism leads. More control.
Thanks for the post. I also write a fair amount about the relationship between ideologies and mental disorders. I do think some people are reachable via rational argument. In particular, pointing out the similarities in behavior between political activists and Cluster B behaviors. I believe that if it becomes common knowledge, most Center-Leftists will abandon support for the hard-core Leftists.
But I agree that most individuals have to hit “rock bottom” first. I would argue, however, that it does not necessarily have to be an individual rock bottom. It could also be a rock bottom of national electoral results for the Democratic Party. Most of them have so wrapped up their moral identity with politics that three straight Presidential election losses and the loss of Congress during that time period will cause a “crisis of faith” that resembles an individual “hitting rock bottom.”
What I've found useful is thinking of audience and purpose. The goal isn't to get the ideologue to change his/her mind. It's to get the audience to recognize and reject what he/she is pushing.
By extension: there's no point engaging him/her if there's no audience. This weeds out a lot of pointless time-wasting discussions, especially online.
For the past 2 years, I've helped to run a local alternative newspaper on a small, very liberal Island community. We have defined our "audience" to include those who relatively agree with us AND those who might be on the fence towards agreeing with us. (We're not bothering at all to make linguistic accommodations for those who are set against us.)
We've had some really controversial issues come up that we have addressed directly and have found that, when we draw out that "on the fence" group by dint of providing accurate and useful information, there's absolutely a shift in the tone of our community discussion -- towards greater engagement on real issues and more rejection of voices only peddling extremes and irrationalities.
I've begun to notice this over the past 6 months. It has been very powerful to see this (mostly, I've seen it in many FB discussions and some live ones).
This is why I've never bought the "vote Harris to end woke." Woke will end the way Political Correctness ended, when smashing electoral loses force triangulation.
Same with how COVID restrictions were ended by Democrats doing poorly in the Nov 2021 elections.
Eliminating Kamala will not end woke because it is diversified throughout the system but it can stop the codification into federal agency rules and guidelines and legal support by the justice dept in support of legislation. Once it# codified into law its impossible to resist and problemativ to change the laws back.
That could apply as much to the right as to the left. If Trump loses in November those Republicans who reluctantly (and cowardly) went along with MAGA may turn against it and attempt to return their party to the more moderate and conservative party it once was, back in the days of Romney, McCain, Bush, Cheney and Reagan. And if Trump loses the popular vote, Republicans will only once have won the popular vote in presidential elections this century.
Cowardly? Romney, McCain, Bush Cheney more moderate? I am not sure what you are saying here, and it appears that you do not either. Opposing the "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" Washington DC and supporting policies that improve the lives of American citizens is in no way "cowardly". I do find it quite amazing that the "No blood for oil" crowd have enthusiastically voted for Hillary and "sharp as a tack" joe while adorning their cars and digital profiles with Ukraine flags in full support of billions of US taxpayer dollars get flushed down the drain. I guess I am old enough now to not be too surprised by the complete disconnect from critical thinking and the gross hypocrisy that gets displayed by the subjugated collectivists.
LOL. OK. I see you are one who is easily manipulated by the ministry of truth. What is it like to live life just blindly believing anything you see on TV?
Your gaslighting will not work here, Paul. You will not succeed in taking up oxygen with your leftist histrionics.
I give the orders here, and this is a direct command: do not make one more shitlib comment on my Substack or I will silence you. I will leave your comment up for others to mock, but you will be prevented from responding.
Fun thing about studying ethology, especially primate behavior: I no longer see people using words to express ideas. All I can see are apes hooting and thumping their chests to assert dominance. Not communication, but signaling. You can't parse it like language, only understand its intended effect.
This turns out to be a depressingly useful rubric for understanding a lot of this behavior.
Couple of years ago I finished law school as a bit of mid-life dilettantism. So I got to spend lots of time around careerist millennial young women. This behavior was very common. There was an obvious competitive purpose to it, although it seemed to be more intuitive than calculated.
(On the plus side, this behavior was so off-putting that it stopped any creepy-old-man impulses on my part. And being older and established gave me a lot of freedom to speak out and push back, since I wasn't worried about how it would affect my career.)
Charles - your story about studying law later on in your career and life is interesting! What was your motivation and how are you using that education and experience now. I live the idea that the timing of it in your life allowed you to speak out and push back on the status quo world view of the dominate group of students and professors.
George Mason is actually one of the few conservative (-ish) law schools. Really it's more libertarian and GOP-establishment, but by law school standards it's right-leaning. Self-censorship wasn't driven by the school, but by prospective employers. BigLaw and the government are both very big on DEI and the internet is forever.
GMU's also a public university, though, and a lot of students are there DESPITE its conservative reputation. You could tell that they were used to having authority figures on their side, and they resented that their usual crybullying tactics didn't work anymore. They tried a big push during the George Floyd brouhaha in 2020, but it didn't get much traction, especially because Covid drove everything online, so they didn't have the chance to protest and disrupt.
The millennial woke white girls totally lived up to the caricature. Spoiled brats cosplaying as Red Guards. My favorite was the self-righteous white-savior lectures about racism and diversity and the needy -- from girls who grew up in places like Cos Cob, and who were living in expensive white neighborhoods. As I pointed out, economists would call that a "revealed preference". (Meanwhile I was commuting from a down-market Hispanic neighborhood and volunteering at an 80% non-white high school.)
My favorite was the one girl who melted down and started shouting that she was dating a black guy and he'd be shtupping her that very night. I conceded that there was at least ONE black person she wasn't paying a hefty premium to avoid. Good times.
Before law school I was an Army officer and DOD civilian analyst. Some mental health problems ended up getting the better of me. Got fired, sued them, we settled, I retired on disability. My goal was that this would only be temporary. Law interested me anyway, but I also saw law school as an "audition" that would prove I could do something demanding again. Got about halfway through before I started falling apart again. Still finished and passed the bar exam, but then ended up having to do some outpatient hospital treatment. Now I'm trying to figure out my niche. For the moment I'm trying to get involved with the GOP's election integrity efforts, but I'm not licensed in a swing state, so there's a limit to how much I can help.
The far looney left has always been there but was a very small minority. What changed? First the rise of the nanny state that began in the 1990s, jumped after 9/11 and then got a huge boost around 2013-2015. (And then got sent to the outer limits with COVID and trans). The entrance of Trump put fuel on the fire and quicken the pace. Second, coinciding with that 2013-2015 period was the second election of Obama and gay marriage. Essentially the SJW movement had no more purpose. But what's a $500K a year SJW Non Profit Director suppose to do to keep their $500K a year job and all the perks that went with it?
"Reintroduce" mass racism, which does not exist, and replace the G, L and Bs with the T. But the problem was the small number of "T"s. Enter the children. Some of us, like Josh, woke up to the con. But many on the left went with all the bullshit, no natter how stupid, evil and crazy it has become. They are people weak in character and confidence and are petrified of being kicked out of the clan.
One thing to keep on mind these ideas are not new. Foucoult wrote these papers in the 60's Rubin developed Queer Theory in the 80's in addition to the overall socialistic bent of college education. People who get these high level social justice jobs believe these theories, they are their religion. To implement their ideas the current democratic republic needs to be destroyed. The implementation of rights for gays could have been achieved a number of ways. The way that was chosen spilt the Christian Church which us what it was designed to do. Remove a socal bulwark to the current order. Whats happening in society is a feature not a bug in its redesign.
I agree with your timeline and diagnosis. I think the initial recovery movement in the 1980s also propelled or helped reveal the change. While the movement helped people recognize the legitimate harm caused by dysfunctional families, it also made victimhood a way to get status, at least in my community.
I was a teenager in the 1970s, and everyone seemed sane enough. Then the 80s came and people began to compete for the worst childhood, the most brokenness. The competition was fierce. Finally, a friend decided that she had uncovered memories of satanic abuse. Her entire neighborhood had participated in the abuse, so she won the worst-childhood prize.
Adults who couldn't or wouldn't regulate their emotions became "empaths" whom we were supposed to admire. Standards for behavior were lowered because everyone has their private struggle, and we must always be kind and make allowances. I think that just created more dysfunctional parents.
The repressed satanic memories fad got debunked, and now it's trans. Once that gets debunked, something else will be dusted off or invented, as long as American society rewards the special victims and their special saviors.
I left the US in 2010 and have mostly lived in less wealthy places. There's way less woke specialness. When people aren't so comfortable, and when they still have strong communities and traditions, they don't need to shake things up by becoming a victim or savior.
Thank you! I have taken this a little deeper in my own understanding and break from the maternal family system of clusterB and worse abuses, control, gaslighting, manipulations. And from the female side, it has ALL been emotional exploitation because I believed they were my family and they would love me and protect me.
In my recovery I realized I had HUGE blind spots out in the wild. When people would “love bomb “ me I believed them, because it was so familiar and comfortable - it was like the family cult manipulated me to get what they wanted: loyalty, my attention, love, be a doormat, ride my coat tails, exploit my successes and in the end, betray me, malign me, and hate me. For years I had a bulls eye in my back for female friendships who were narcissistic and ultimately controlling and abusive. And when I quit the friendship they continued to betray and malign me to everyone. I first realized this was a pattern and the coming denominator was me. I got help.
So to back up - I believe ANY emotional only choices without discernment are because one feels and believes whatever lies or manipulations are being perpetuated. I believe a lot of people may also come from either internal family, relationship, social media, job or careers, mainstream media abuses that they are unaware of. It just FEELS right to them. Probably because it is familiar, used to it, and having been victimized at some point, rather than getting help and healing, they are put on a pedestal as the best PR victim that WE will take care of. Then they are left behind by those who made the promises because they got what they wanted: blind loyalty.
I see it in both “sides”. Many who have had narcissistic or other bad abusive relationships with fathers or adult men will hate Trump and glom onto the negative press that was shoved at people for years. Many who see thru Harris may have had a cold soul less mother or female relationship and go the opposite direction emotionally. The media is a huge drama inciting propaganda machine. It feeds on us and creates the most offensive drama and ugly disgusting presentations telling us that we want that kind of thing.
It takes true healing of ourselves to be able to discern what is best for us and what is not. One may leave a relationship that was clusterb abusive but if never getting the help and the understanding and awareness, it will just come along again.
Thank you for connecting the dots - I hope many are able to and I wish the best for ALL to find their way back to their authentic discerning selves.
I want to also mention: it takes self forgiveness and acceptance, letting the ego and self blame step aside (as you mentioned earlier Joshua.
And how everyone has been divided so much has been based on emotions NOT facts. There have been many years, if not decades, where it was learned to appeal to the emotions to gain attention or support. Now it’s just being used on us like a weapon.
Today for some reason I 've been feeling hopeless about this situation. Probably information overload. The election is too close for comfort and when Trump is gone unless we have a miracle in R change of behavior, we're sunk and any political power will be totally out of reach possibly forever.
This is when I start to think maybe they should win. When the facistic takeover is complete they will hit rock bottom. They're expendable and no longer useful. The public private partnership will no longer need revolutionaries. And their antic will no longer be tolerated, bad for business.
It's also possible they will not hit rock bottom and will go their exile punishment or death believing they are being true to the cause and somehow socially transformative like Mao's revolutionaries thought when they were banished to the countryside to starve to death. They thought they were becoming more red.
How do you combat this kind of fanaticism without destroying yourself and everthing you want to preserve?
I've read others' commentaries that agree with this position - that we're not quite at the bottom yet, and that it may be required sink further into a situation of true desperation before things flip. Sadly, I'm starting to feel this may be our short-/mid-term fate.
But I also believe that almost everything in the universe follows the sinusoidal wave pattern, and that if we're not at the bottom, we're damned close. In answer to your question, that's probably the thing that keeps me from complete despair on a daily basis.
I don't believe Iran is involved in anything. This smells like the CIA creating an additional rationale for war with Iran. They have been itching at this for decades. Thought they had it with W. Isreal has also wanted it fot years
Selfishly, I'm glad you broke free when you did. I'm glad you started Disaffected when you did. I don't believe it is a coincidence that I found you. If I hadn't, I'd still be walking around in a fog.
I'll never forget watching your first episodes and thinking, "It's a thing? Wait...other people see it, too? Oh my God I'm not crazy."
It's hard to picture you as a woke. Hell, I may have gone down the same path without your help. I was feeling BIG VICTIM for having an adult autistic son. I would fly into a rage when people on X "appropriated" his actual, real disorder. I was feeling BIG VICTIM that he's gay. I would fly into a rage on X when people called me homophobic.
I wanted to hurt these people emotionally. I was obsessed with it. It was never enough.
Through your show, I learned I was NEVER going to have ANY effect on these people. I stopped engaging them. Eventually, I laughed at them.
I've always been on the right, but I could feel myself being pulled into left nonsense. It IS a cult. You can't change them, as you said. I couldn't understand why my admonishments fell on deaf ears.
They cannot be reasoned with. Ever.
I can't tell you how much your break from the left has helped me. I thank God you did.
It has to be. I mean, I was perusing a Substack written by a mostly rational Liberal Party (of Canada) author but the comments below were just… they actually think the opposition Conservatives are *fascists* (oooooh scaaaaaryyyy).
It’s so detached from any reality whatsoever - for instance any coherent definition of fascism. “Pierre Pollievre wants poor people to DIE”.
Problem is, while I don’t need to talk politics with such people, they still get to vote on the reality I have to live in
I grew up with a borderline mother--one who would spitefully donate money to cop-killers and would tell officers that when they pulled her over for speeding, and one I'm told that during COVID was one of those people who screamed at others for not wearing masks. I say this so you can get an idea of her politics.
I'm convinced the only reason I was able to be relatively normal (other than lots of good therapy and having a consistent spiritual practice) is because my dad was around. Is he perfect? No. He's an alcoholic and it took me a long time to forgive him for not leaving my mother when we were kids (they divorced in my early 20s). But he would drive me to school in his work truck and we would listen to talk radio. He showed interest in my interests. He would call me out if I behaved like my mom/my aunts.
I think single-mom homes have a lot to do with the rise in Cluster B. I am not blaming women or men, per say, but without the balancing role of a (presumably) rational man around, women and their kids go unchecked. I have friends who aren't Cluster B but hate men because they were raises by single moms who played the victim.
I know some young men raised by single Moms. Pretty normal guys until the going gets tough. Then, instead of grit, fight, and determination they fall into ‘woe is me’ and get emotional. Because that is what they saw growing up. That’s what you do when times are tough. They do tend to grow out of it but not til their 40s.
Hey Josh, another good one. I've been saying this for years: that these folks' brains have absolutely zero influence / control over their hearts.
I'll extend the thought a little by noting that they "think" (er, feel) in the micro, rather than the macro. What I mean by that is that they believe that they hold true compassion by flooding their hearts on behalf of individuals - the "trans" kids, the Trayvon Martins, etc. - without applying their brain to actually think about A) the demonstrable scope of an issue (as you noted in the article w/ police brutality) or B) the societal implications of the position they've taken.
We can have genuine feelings for individuals and we can (and should) extend both our care and our benevolence to help those sufferers through tough times. But, IMO, compassion only begins to take meaningful effect after we push through our feelings, and then apply real thought around their societal impact, and the decisions and actions that arise from them.
Yes. Just talking about the trans cult for a moment, the left wants to be the "Be Kind" people. But as you said, they do not play out the ramifications of some of their bleeding heart beliefs. I've said it elsewhere: men are not buying "Be Kind" lawn signs (which make me throw up a little in my mouth.) Women have fallen all over themselves in support of narcissistic trans men, with no regard to how that has played out in the real world: women/girls' sports being eviscerated, women's hard-won private spaces being intruded upon, the rise of the "trans widow." Re: trans kids, well... for the most part, they're like vegan dogs or cats. We know who's really in charge. (Although there ARE many parents who are being persecuted and vilified for not wanting to go along with it, and they can't be forgotten.) My hope is that the tsunami of detransitioners on the horizon will provide the left with the "tug at the heartstrings" kind of stories that may cause them to eventually change their mind about the trans cult. They can't discount hundreds and hundreds of stories, can they? (Can they??)
And it’s important imo to show compassion and care locally rather than asking government to do that which always results in abuse and fraud. How much easier it is to voice compassion than to actually give care to someone in your orbit. Takes a lot more effort but is more authentic and rewarding.
There is just no explaining. I'm one of four children. We had a great childhood and were secure financially and emotionally. I ultimately became an individualist, my older sister is a progressive (in other words, has no idea what the facts are), my brother just likes to argue and is essentially harmless, and my younger sister is a fundamentalist Christian. I have no idea how the four of us could have come from the same family. We love each other and there is nothing that we wouldn't do for each other, except listen to each other's politics.
Welcome back to reality.
Thanks, but it's more like a first-time visit for me!
Fair enough.
Great take, totally spot-on. I was there, too!! Thank you for what you are doing. If only my woke daughter could read this. 😏
I have a friend, Jorge, who grew up in Cuba during the Castro madness. His grandparents' farm was destroyed and their animals were taken. His father was a political prisoner for protesting. Jorge worked on a sugar plantation as a small child, reaping the crop with a machete. He said some of the children lost fingers.
Eventually, Castro deported political prisoners and homosexuals.
Jorge was able to immigrate to the United States. When he came home on his 18th birthday, his bags were packed and waiting for him on the porch.
He got married, had children, and eventually ended up in Atlanta.
His son was accepted into Georgia Tech, graduated this year, and landed a job at Google.
During his time at GT, Jorge's son became more and more woke in his beliefs. They fought about it. Luckily, Jorge was able to "set him straight", so to speak.
It was touch and go.
If the son of a Cuban immigrant, grandson of victims of a dictatorship can be brainwashed to believe communism is a good thing...any young adult can be. They are just that good.
Side note: Jorge has told me stories we were NEVER taught in school.
Cuban here. Jorge's story is our story.
Our children and grandchildren are born with privilege in the US - many of them have been brainwashed by the lunatic Leftists in academia.
One of the stories told me really resonated.
He said people wanted to go to prison. He said even though the prisons were absolute torturous nightmares, being a political prisoner meant one day you MIGHT get deported.
It never once occurred to me how easy I have it, and how lucky I am.
Imagine purposely assigning yourself to Hell with the tiniest hope you'll reach Heaven. And, that's if you survive. Many didn't.
Now, imagine you're having a family dinner with your son, and having to hear how backward America is. How marxism and communism are the only ways to save it. How the LGBTQ community is oppressed by society. How only the left understand (and care) about the poor. How you "just don't get it."
The kicker? His son is very intelligent. Like I said, he works at Google in a position hundreds of college students went after. This kid is no brainless automaton, and they STILL got him. Since he entered "the real world" so to speak, his views have changed for the better. Not all of them, but at least a fair bit.
All of this made me ask myself: Do you realize there are billions of people who would do anything to switch lives with you?
Except for Ron DeSantis! Of course, these stories are being erased. It's actually taboo in academia to criticize communism (although, fortunately, former or current members of Communists parties are still forbidden from immigrating to America legally. A side note: many of them were forced to join under threat and detest the ideology). I think we should have constant conversations with young people at home. If they trust their elders/parents, they will learn. Young first-generation Americans from the Eastern Block, especially the Soviet Union, are rarely woke and tend to have political views that are relatively similar to their parents'. They all go to college, but family legacy and its frequent discussions make them less trusting.
Thanks for sharing, Josh. Your writing and frameworks are powerful. Can you reason with a demoralized person?
I don’t believe you can. No one could have reasoned with me.
I’m demoralized enough now, but it was so much worse when I was woke.
But you know what Yuri? In some ways this is harder than when I was woke. Delusion can be awfully nice while it lasts.
What I know now is much heavier on the soul. I was playacting before. I wasn't the oppressed minority (after the early 90s actual bigotry pretty much disappeared) I thought I was. Now, instead, I know what it feels like to be a true odd man out.
Sending hugs. Losing that sense of certainty and belonging is so hard.
What did it take if you don’t mind my asking. I get it if it’s too personal. But how can we as long time conservatives (50 years for me, what with Vietnam and Walter Cronkite) make cracks in that emotional armor?
“Heavier on the soul.” Delusion can be comforting. I am convinced that’s part of the reason for so many refusing to see the truth.
Josh, do you know the story of the real Yuri Bezmenov? If you don’t, you should find his interview with G. Edward Griffin from the 1980s. It’ll blow your mind open even further.
I don’t think you need an abusive mother to understand authoritarian lying. That is what has happened on the left with the trans ideology overtaking everything with their lies about men becoming women! I used to call myself liberal, but now the former liberals are as illiberal as it gets. Freedoms of speech is no longer upheld by them…just ask Kamala Harris! So many of us former liberals are now homeless.
You aren’t homeless. You just have to understand that conservatism is about freedom. It’s not fascism. It’s not nazism. It’s certainly not communism. One is free to do what one wishes, as long as it doesn’t harm or force others to do things they don’t wish to do. Want an abortion? Find a place that does them. Far away? Welp, your state actually voted that way. Go find one that didn’t. Want to eat yourself to death? Fine. Don’t expect others to pay for the ramifications. Eat till you die. It’s called choice. And when you truly wake up, you will realize you are conservative. Conservatives are close to libertarianism, without the ridiculous. Libertarians are closer to anarchism. But even that is better than big nanny. And that is where liberalism leads. More control.
Thanks for the post. I also write a fair amount about the relationship between ideologies and mental disorders. I do think some people are reachable via rational argument. In particular, pointing out the similarities in behavior between political activists and Cluster B behaviors. I believe that if it becomes common knowledge, most Center-Leftists will abandon support for the hard-core Leftists.
But I agree that most individuals have to hit “rock bottom” first. I would argue, however, that it does not necessarily have to be an individual rock bottom. It could also be a rock bottom of national electoral results for the Democratic Party. Most of them have so wrapped up their moral identity with politics that three straight Presidential election losses and the loss of Congress during that time period will cause a “crisis of faith” that resembles an individual “hitting rock bottom.”
It may take some time to get there…
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/where-does-ideology-come-from
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/radical-ideologies-feast-on-mental
I hope you're right, or more right than I am, on what it takes for people to change.
What I've found useful is thinking of audience and purpose. The goal isn't to get the ideologue to change his/her mind. It's to get the audience to recognize and reject what he/she is pushing.
By extension: there's no point engaging him/her if there's no audience. This weeds out a lot of pointless time-wasting discussions, especially online.
Well put. Online you are talking to the larger audience.
CPK, this makes huge sense to me. Thank you.
For the past 2 years, I've helped to run a local alternative newspaper on a small, very liberal Island community. We have defined our "audience" to include those who relatively agree with us AND those who might be on the fence towards agreeing with us. (We're not bothering at all to make linguistic accommodations for those who are set against us.)
We've had some really controversial issues come up that we have addressed directly and have found that, when we draw out that "on the fence" group by dint of providing accurate and useful information, there's absolutely a shift in the tone of our community discussion -- towards greater engagement on real issues and more rejection of voices only peddling extremes and irrationalities.
I've begun to notice this over the past 6 months. It has been very powerful to see this (mostly, I've seen it in many FB discussions and some live ones).
Thanks Caitlin for identifying what works for those “on the fence.”
This is why I've never bought the "vote Harris to end woke." Woke will end the way Political Correctness ended, when smashing electoral loses force triangulation.
Same with how COVID restrictions were ended by Democrats doing poorly in the Nov 2021 elections.
Eliminating Kamala will not end woke because it is diversified throughout the system but it can stop the codification into federal agency rules and guidelines and legal support by the justice dept in support of legislation. Once it# codified into law its impossible to resist and problemativ to change the laws back.
That could apply as much to the right as to the left. If Trump loses in November those Republicans who reluctantly (and cowardly) went along with MAGA may turn against it and attempt to return their party to the more moderate and conservative party it once was, back in the days of Romney, McCain, Bush, Cheney and Reagan. And if Trump loses the popular vote, Republicans will only once have won the popular vote in presidential elections this century.
I think there will have to be a whole new party.
Cowardly? Romney, McCain, Bush Cheney more moderate? I am not sure what you are saying here, and it appears that you do not either. Opposing the "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" Washington DC and supporting policies that improve the lives of American citizens is in no way "cowardly". I do find it quite amazing that the "No blood for oil" crowd have enthusiastically voted for Hillary and "sharp as a tack" joe while adorning their cars and digital profiles with Ukraine flags in full support of billions of US taxpayer dollars get flushed down the drain. I guess I am old enough now to not be too surprised by the complete disconnect from critical thinking and the gross hypocrisy that gets displayed by the subjugated collectivists.
Previous Republican presidents supported the Constitution. Trump tried to overturn the result of the last election.
LOL. OK. I see you are one who is easily manipulated by the ministry of truth. What is it like to live life just blindly believing anything you see on TV?
Ask Donald. “I’ve seen people on television… People on television said their dogs were taken and used for food.”
Yep, that’s right. So have I.
Your gaslighting will not work here, Paul. You will not succeed in taking up oxygen with your leftist histrionics.
I give the orders here, and this is a direct command: do not make one more shitlib comment on my Substack or I will silence you. I will leave your comment up for others to mock, but you will be prevented from responding.
They're eating the dogs
woah-woah-woah-woah
They're eating the cats
meow-meow-meow-meow
They're eating the pets
of the people that live there.
Fun thing about studying ethology, especially primate behavior: I no longer see people using words to express ideas. All I can see are apes hooting and thumping their chests to assert dominance. Not communication, but signaling. You can't parse it like language, only understand its intended effect.
This turns out to be a depressingly useful rubric for understanding a lot of this behavior.
Couple of years ago I finished law school as a bit of mid-life dilettantism. So I got to spend lots of time around careerist millennial young women. This behavior was very common. There was an obvious competitive purpose to it, although it seemed to be more intuitive than calculated.
(On the plus side, this behavior was so off-putting that it stopped any creepy-old-man impulses on my part. And being older and established gave me a lot of freedom to speak out and push back, since I wasn't worried about how it would affect my career.)
Charles - your story about studying law later on in your career and life is interesting! What was your motivation and how are you using that education and experience now. I live the idea that the timing of it in your life allowed you to speak out and push back on the status quo world view of the dominate group of students and professors.
George Mason is actually one of the few conservative (-ish) law schools. Really it's more libertarian and GOP-establishment, but by law school standards it's right-leaning. Self-censorship wasn't driven by the school, but by prospective employers. BigLaw and the government are both very big on DEI and the internet is forever.
GMU's also a public university, though, and a lot of students are there DESPITE its conservative reputation. You could tell that they were used to having authority figures on their side, and they resented that their usual crybullying tactics didn't work anymore. They tried a big push during the George Floyd brouhaha in 2020, but it didn't get much traction, especially because Covid drove everything online, so they didn't have the chance to protest and disrupt.
The millennial woke white girls totally lived up to the caricature. Spoiled brats cosplaying as Red Guards. My favorite was the self-righteous white-savior lectures about racism and diversity and the needy -- from girls who grew up in places like Cos Cob, and who were living in expensive white neighborhoods. As I pointed out, economists would call that a "revealed preference". (Meanwhile I was commuting from a down-market Hispanic neighborhood and volunteering at an 80% non-white high school.)
My favorite was the one girl who melted down and started shouting that she was dating a black guy and he'd be shtupping her that very night. I conceded that there was at least ONE black person she wasn't paying a hefty premium to avoid. Good times.
Before law school I was an Army officer and DOD civilian analyst. Some mental health problems ended up getting the better of me. Got fired, sued them, we settled, I retired on disability. My goal was that this would only be temporary. Law interested me anyway, but I also saw law school as an "audition" that would prove I could do something demanding again. Got about halfway through before I started falling apart again. Still finished and passed the bar exam, but then ended up having to do some outpatient hospital treatment. Now I'm trying to figure out my niche. For the moment I'm trying to get involved with the GOP's election integrity efforts, but I'm not licensed in a swing state, so there's a limit to how much I can help.
That sounds like material for a book!
The far looney left has always been there but was a very small minority. What changed? First the rise of the nanny state that began in the 1990s, jumped after 9/11 and then got a huge boost around 2013-2015. (And then got sent to the outer limits with COVID and trans). The entrance of Trump put fuel on the fire and quicken the pace. Second, coinciding with that 2013-2015 period was the second election of Obama and gay marriage. Essentially the SJW movement had no more purpose. But what's a $500K a year SJW Non Profit Director suppose to do to keep their $500K a year job and all the perks that went with it?
"Reintroduce" mass racism, which does not exist, and replace the G, L and Bs with the T. But the problem was the small number of "T"s. Enter the children. Some of us, like Josh, woke up to the con. But many on the left went with all the bullshit, no natter how stupid, evil and crazy it has become. They are people weak in character and confidence and are petrified of being kicked out of the clan.
One thing to keep on mind these ideas are not new. Foucoult wrote these papers in the 60's Rubin developed Queer Theory in the 80's in addition to the overall socialistic bent of college education. People who get these high level social justice jobs believe these theories, they are their religion. To implement their ideas the current democratic republic needs to be destroyed. The implementation of rights for gays could have been achieved a number of ways. The way that was chosen spilt the Christian Church which us what it was designed to do. Remove a socal bulwark to the current order. Whats happening in society is a feature not a bug in its redesign.
The last sentence...100%
I agree with your timeline and diagnosis. I think the initial recovery movement in the 1980s also propelled or helped reveal the change. While the movement helped people recognize the legitimate harm caused by dysfunctional families, it also made victimhood a way to get status, at least in my community.
I was a teenager in the 1970s, and everyone seemed sane enough. Then the 80s came and people began to compete for the worst childhood, the most brokenness. The competition was fierce. Finally, a friend decided that she had uncovered memories of satanic abuse. Her entire neighborhood had participated in the abuse, so she won the worst-childhood prize.
Adults who couldn't or wouldn't regulate their emotions became "empaths" whom we were supposed to admire. Standards for behavior were lowered because everyone has their private struggle, and we must always be kind and make allowances. I think that just created more dysfunctional parents.
The repressed satanic memories fad got debunked, and now it's trans. Once that gets debunked, something else will be dusted off or invented, as long as American society rewards the special victims and their special saviors.
I left the US in 2010 and have mostly lived in less wealthy places. There's way less woke specialness. When people aren't so comfortable, and when they still have strong communities and traditions, they don't need to shake things up by becoming a victim or savior.
I disagree with your "what changed".
What changed was "power". The "long march through the institutions" completed.
The Leftists were this awful the entire time; they just had to play nice while they didn't have power.
Thank you! I have taken this a little deeper in my own understanding and break from the maternal family system of clusterB and worse abuses, control, gaslighting, manipulations. And from the female side, it has ALL been emotional exploitation because I believed they were my family and they would love me and protect me.
In my recovery I realized I had HUGE blind spots out in the wild. When people would “love bomb “ me I believed them, because it was so familiar and comfortable - it was like the family cult manipulated me to get what they wanted: loyalty, my attention, love, be a doormat, ride my coat tails, exploit my successes and in the end, betray me, malign me, and hate me. For years I had a bulls eye in my back for female friendships who were narcissistic and ultimately controlling and abusive. And when I quit the friendship they continued to betray and malign me to everyone. I first realized this was a pattern and the coming denominator was me. I got help.
So to back up - I believe ANY emotional only choices without discernment are because one feels and believes whatever lies or manipulations are being perpetuated. I believe a lot of people may also come from either internal family, relationship, social media, job or careers, mainstream media abuses that they are unaware of. It just FEELS right to them. Probably because it is familiar, used to it, and having been victimized at some point, rather than getting help and healing, they are put on a pedestal as the best PR victim that WE will take care of. Then they are left behind by those who made the promises because they got what they wanted: blind loyalty.
I see it in both “sides”. Many who have had narcissistic or other bad abusive relationships with fathers or adult men will hate Trump and glom onto the negative press that was shoved at people for years. Many who see thru Harris may have had a cold soul less mother or female relationship and go the opposite direction emotionally. The media is a huge drama inciting propaganda machine. It feeds on us and creates the most offensive drama and ugly disgusting presentations telling us that we want that kind of thing.
It takes true healing of ourselves to be able to discern what is best for us and what is not. One may leave a relationship that was clusterb abusive but if never getting the help and the understanding and awareness, it will just come along again.
Thank you for connecting the dots - I hope many are able to and I wish the best for ALL to find their way back to their authentic discerning selves.
I want to also mention: it takes self forgiveness and acceptance, letting the ego and self blame step aside (as you mentioned earlier Joshua.
And how everyone has been divided so much has been based on emotions NOT facts. There have been many years, if not decades, where it was learned to appeal to the emotions to gain attention or support. Now it’s just being used on us like a weapon.
Beautiful post
Today for some reason I 've been feeling hopeless about this situation. Probably information overload. The election is too close for comfort and when Trump is gone unless we have a miracle in R change of behavior, we're sunk and any political power will be totally out of reach possibly forever.
This is when I start to think maybe they should win. When the facistic takeover is complete they will hit rock bottom. They're expendable and no longer useful. The public private partnership will no longer need revolutionaries. And their antic will no longer be tolerated, bad for business.
It's also possible they will not hit rock bottom and will go their exile punishment or death believing they are being true to the cause and somehow socially transformative like Mao's revolutionaries thought when they were banished to the countryside to starve to death. They thought they were becoming more red.
How do you combat this kind of fanaticism without destroying yourself and everthing you want to preserve?
I've read others' commentaries that agree with this position - that we're not quite at the bottom yet, and that it may be required sink further into a situation of true desperation before things flip. Sadly, I'm starting to feel this may be our short-/mid-term fate.
But I also believe that almost everything in the universe follows the sinusoidal wave pattern, and that if we're not at the bottom, we're damned close. In answer to your question, that's probably the thing that keeps me from complete despair on a daily basis.
I totally get you. There are many days I feel the same.
https://x.com/shelbytalcott/status/1836540474208731531
I don't believe Iran is involved in anything. This smells like the CIA creating an additional rationale for war with Iran. They have been itching at this for decades. Thought they had it with W. Isreal has also wanted it fot years
My point was they are claiming "victimhood" as Josh was saying in his writing.
Selfishly, I'm glad you broke free when you did. I'm glad you started Disaffected when you did. I don't believe it is a coincidence that I found you. If I hadn't, I'd still be walking around in a fog.
I'll never forget watching your first episodes and thinking, "It's a thing? Wait...other people see it, too? Oh my God I'm not crazy."
It's hard to picture you as a woke. Hell, I may have gone down the same path without your help. I was feeling BIG VICTIM for having an adult autistic son. I would fly into a rage when people on X "appropriated" his actual, real disorder. I was feeling BIG VICTIM that he's gay. I would fly into a rage on X when people called me homophobic.
I wanted to hurt these people emotionally. I was obsessed with it. It was never enough.
Through your show, I learned I was NEVER going to have ANY effect on these people. I stopped engaging them. Eventually, I laughed at them.
I've always been on the right, but I could feel myself being pulled into left nonsense. It IS a cult. You can't change them, as you said. I couldn't understand why my admonishments fell on deaf ears.
They cannot be reasoned with. Ever.
I can't tell you how much your break from the left has helped me. I thank God you did.
Thank you Josh for your honesty...continued strength to you.
It has to be. I mean, I was perusing a Substack written by a mostly rational Liberal Party (of Canada) author but the comments below were just… they actually think the opposition Conservatives are *fascists* (oooooh scaaaaaryyyy).
It’s so detached from any reality whatsoever - for instance any coherent definition of fascism. “Pierre Pollievre wants poor people to DIE”.
Problem is, while I don’t need to talk politics with such people, they still get to vote on the reality I have to live in
I grew up with a borderline mother--one who would spitefully donate money to cop-killers and would tell officers that when they pulled her over for speeding, and one I'm told that during COVID was one of those people who screamed at others for not wearing masks. I say this so you can get an idea of her politics.
I'm convinced the only reason I was able to be relatively normal (other than lots of good therapy and having a consistent spiritual practice) is because my dad was around. Is he perfect? No. He's an alcoholic and it took me a long time to forgive him for not leaving my mother when we were kids (they divorced in my early 20s). But he would drive me to school in his work truck and we would listen to talk radio. He showed interest in my interests. He would call me out if I behaved like my mom/my aunts.
I think single-mom homes have a lot to do with the rise in Cluster B. I am not blaming women or men, per say, but without the balancing role of a (presumably) rational man around, women and their kids go unchecked. I have friends who aren't Cluster B but hate men because they were raises by single moms who played the victim.
So true. There’s a reason children have both a mother and a father.
Never a more profound statement!
I know some young men raised by single Moms. Pretty normal guys until the going gets tough. Then, instead of grit, fight, and determination they fall into ‘woe is me’ and get emotional. Because that is what they saw growing up. That’s what you do when times are tough. They do tend to grow out of it but not til their 40s.
Hey Josh, another good one. I've been saying this for years: that these folks' brains have absolutely zero influence / control over their hearts.
I'll extend the thought a little by noting that they "think" (er, feel) in the micro, rather than the macro. What I mean by that is that they believe that they hold true compassion by flooding their hearts on behalf of individuals - the "trans" kids, the Trayvon Martins, etc. - without applying their brain to actually think about A) the demonstrable scope of an issue (as you noted in the article w/ police brutality) or B) the societal implications of the position they've taken.
We can have genuine feelings for individuals and we can (and should) extend both our care and our benevolence to help those sufferers through tough times. But, IMO, compassion only begins to take meaningful effect after we push through our feelings, and then apply real thought around their societal impact, and the decisions and actions that arise from them.
Yes. Just talking about the trans cult for a moment, the left wants to be the "Be Kind" people. But as you said, they do not play out the ramifications of some of their bleeding heart beliefs. I've said it elsewhere: men are not buying "Be Kind" lawn signs (which make me throw up a little in my mouth.) Women have fallen all over themselves in support of narcissistic trans men, with no regard to how that has played out in the real world: women/girls' sports being eviscerated, women's hard-won private spaces being intruded upon, the rise of the "trans widow." Re: trans kids, well... for the most part, they're like vegan dogs or cats. We know who's really in charge. (Although there ARE many parents who are being persecuted and vilified for not wanting to go along with it, and they can't be forgotten.) My hope is that the tsunami of detransitioners on the horizon will provide the left with the "tug at the heartstrings" kind of stories that may cause them to eventually change their mind about the trans cult. They can't discount hundreds and hundreds of stories, can they? (Can they??)
And it’s important imo to show compassion and care locally rather than asking government to do that which always results in abuse and fraud. How much easier it is to voice compassion than to actually give care to someone in your orbit. Takes a lot more effort but is more authentic and rewarding.
There is just no explaining. I'm one of four children. We had a great childhood and were secure financially and emotionally. I ultimately became an individualist, my older sister is a progressive (in other words, has no idea what the facts are), my brother just likes to argue and is essentially harmless, and my younger sister is a fundamentalist Christian. I have no idea how the four of us could have come from the same family. We love each other and there is nothing that we wouldn't do for each other, except listen to each other's politics.