The knitting (yes, knitting) website Ravelry has banned all pro-Trump content. They did this, so they said, to be inclusive of “all”. I noted to them on their Twitter account that “all” has a meaning and they should look it up. I haven’t received a response. But, that aside, we should really think about what they are doing here: they are saying that being pro-Trump (you know, like most of us who come here are, to one degree or another) is inherently evil.
I’m a middle aged man of no particular importance. Just a regular guy, as it were. I’ve got my stack of sins, just like everyone else but I also at least try to do the right thing, as most people do. I’m not evil. That is, I don’t desire evil to happen – I don’t seek it out; I don’t enjoy it; I don’t wish for anyone to suffer evil in their lives. But what of people who wish to silence me because I voted for a particular person for President? Are they good? Or, more to the point, do they and I have the same idea of what “good” is?
That is the really decisive thing in a country, after all. In general, most things, most of the time, have to be agreed to by nearly everyone. If you and I have opposite understandings of what “up” and “down” are, we’re going to find it hard to cooperate in any real sense. We’ll keep having fundamental conflicts with each other as we each try to get the other to do the exact opposite of what is desired. Eventually, we either have to give up and go our separate ways, or one of us must surrender his definition of what “up” and “down” are to the other person. As Our Lord said – and Lincoln reiterated – a house divided against itself cannot stand. It must cease to be divided, or it must fall.
Until just recently, I held firmly to the opinion that it was really no business of mine, at all, what other people believed. But now I realize something: tolerance can only go so far. We tolerated the bizarre ideology of the leftists because we felt ourselves safe – after all, it was ridiculous what they believed and no rational nation would ever allow themselves to be ruled by such lunacy. But the left is no longer a fringe of lunatics we can laugh at. They control the media, the large corporations, the education establishment, the bureaucracy and a large portion of the judiciary. The very craziest leftwing nutjob we laughed at 25 years ago is now in a position to enforce insanity upon us; and they are doing so. We are now forced to watch what we say, lest an unguarded word puts our job at risk. We are forced to fight tooth and nail just to secure the right to be left alone – and even when we win, the left just keeps coming right back at us, never accepting any defeat as anything more than a temporary setback.
And it isn’t that we and the left want the same things. We might both say we want “justice” but what they mean by the word and what we mean is entirely different – so different that it is like trying to say “black” and “white” are the same thing. To us, justice means people get what they are due…to them, justice means anyone they hate gets punished. Facts and logic mean nothing to the left – but they mean something to us. And we also know that we can’t have anything without rigid adherence to facts and logic. But the left views it differently – they do think they can, by a sort of incantation, make the world fit their mental image, rather than taking the world as it is. And just how do we get along? How do we find a way to march down the road together when we want to be on the road while the left is insisting that that the cliff is the road and we should walk over it?
In the end, I don’t want us to stay together if it is to be like this – in theory, I want the entire territory of the United States to be intact and for all of us to be patriotic citizens of the same country. In reality, though, it can’t be that way. At least, not right now. And maybe not ever. I can’t live in a nation where it is implied I am evil because of whom I voted for…or that I’m evil because of the skin color I was born with, or that I’m evil because of the religion I adhere to, or that the emblems of my nation must all be torn down. You get the picture. I can’t live with people who don’t see the world largely as I do. And I don’t think anyone else can, either. It might be mere inertia that is keeping us going right now – but I fear that this is a fading quality and a crisis is coming.
It is being provoked by the left – and I honestly don’t think they’re smart enough to understand fully what they are doing – and it could lead to a civil war…wherein either they’d kill all of us or we’d kill all of them. In either case, the nation would cease to be divided against itself. It would become all one thing. I’d prefer what some are calling a national divorce…where we just nearly divvy up the national debt on a per-capita basis and everyone votes, State by State (I prefer county by county, actually) which nation they want to belong to. Each resulting nation would become a nation of people who largely agree – and that is how it has to be, if a nation is to exist, at all.
Blogs For Victory 
It was only a couple of years ago when, if you said you were concerned about Thought Police, you were considered a tinfoil-hat paranoid. Now it is an accepted idea, and many, possibly as many as half, of Americans think it is OK to punish people for what they think or believe. Politically, religiously, socially, even sexually—–a line of accepted Groupthink is being established, and straying beyond it is considered a valid reason for some degree of punishment. It might be being banned from a web site, it might be being fired from a job (or not considered for one) and as we have seen in the past three or four years it has been considered a valid reason for federal agencies to spy on citizens, hoping to find a crime to pursue. You can be fined, or banned from a country, for failing to guess the accepted pronoun for someone so gender-fluid that no gender-related pronoun can be correct for very long anyway. If you are on the wrong side of Groupthink social media platforms can and often do tolerate insults and even death threats from people on the sites. Threats against the life of the president, or the welfare of his ten year old son, are considered acceptable, even praiseworthy.
I’m fine with splitting up the country. It is better to save part of it than to lose all of it. Split California into three states, let the productive areas of Colorado kick the Leftist moocher areas to the curb, let upstate New York free itself from the bondage of the five boroughs, let Illinois go ahead and carve out Chicago from the sane part of the state. And you know what you would get? You would get the areas that produce food, goods, petroleum products and minerals on the side of the Right, no longer obligated to fund the foolishness of the Left, and you would get a few more impoverished Third World states whose primary revenue comes from taxing service industries, such as banking and insurance and investments.
It might be easier than developing some national voices to ridicule the notion that the level of melanin in the skin is related to morality or intelligence or honor. It’s a concept so bizarre it is obvious when it is articulated, but I don’t see people doing that. It might be easier than developing a national voice capable of explaining the defects of Leftism and willing to do so. It might even be cheaper than buying an hour of prime time television and putting on an entertaining and informative show telling the truth about the memes of the day, as presented by the Left. If we can’t get an hour of really good comedy out of the antics of the Left, we deserve to go under.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:
> We had a deal with [China], and it was very close, we were just finishing it, and you know my whole life is deals. I know when we have them and when we don’t—like with Mexico, we made a deal with Mexico…they know what we have, and if we don’t have intellectual property, theft protections, the opening of China…if we don’t have the opening of China, if we don’t have the things we negotiated, maybe even more than that…and right now, look, we’re getting 25% on $250 billion worth of goods, nobody ever heard of such a thing, it’s massive amount of money. Don’t play, don’t let anyone tell you that China’s not paying for it, China’s paying for it…and we’re not paying for any of it.
Since tariffs have been on, the market has been going through the roof if you know what I’m talking about…Now you have another $325 billion I haven’t taxed yet. IT’S. RIPE. FOR. TAXING. For putting tariffs on…. It‘s been an incredible thing. Am I happy now? Absolutely…. When you say, ‘Are we going to make a deal?’ It’s possible we’re going to make a deal, but I’m also very happy where we are now, we’re taking in a fortune…. There’s no way you can beat the tariffs, there‘s no way you can make that money…[the tariffs] help us in ways that nobody even wants to talk about, that I don’t want to talk about them.
Oh, and he added this pearl of wisdom too:
“European nations were set up in order to take advantage of the United States”
LOL
Ho hum. Poor little simoneeeeeeek’s panties are in a wad. Again. Still. Damp and tightly twisted. I’m not sure what he finds so distressing in the quotations he shares with us, but then—-who cares? It’s just another TDS Lefty howling at the moon.
Hey, Simon—-instead of tossing out quotations that for some reason have you all fretful, why don’t you just explain to us, using words of only one or two syllables if that will help, just what, exactly, IS your political philosophy? Is it, as it appears, no more meaningful than an obsession with scouring the Internet looking for Trump quotations that get your little heart going pitter-pat with outrage and scorn, or have you actually given this some thought and actually have an idea of how you think the nation should be governed, and why?
I ask because in the more than twenty years I have been asking overwrought Lefties this question, only one—ONE—has been able to answer me, and he was a hardcore Marxist. All the little emoters could ever do was come up with something like “well, like, you know, I like believe that, you know, things should be more, like, you know, FAIR” and then launch into shrill attacks on an Invented Other that existed only in their sad little (and I DO mean “little”) minds. What we have learned here (and shared with others) is the realization that you people don’t actually THINK, but just FEEL, and that you latch onto a personality—-sometimes led there by your minders—–and suckle on your created loathing for that personality like starving little rodents desperate for the satisfaction that for some reason you get from mindless hatred.
You root around in quotations and video clips till you find something that you think, for some reason, is especially tasty, something that makes you tingle all over with glee, and then you scurry to sites like this to post your finds. And the rest of us—that is, the sane, the normal, the rational—look at what got you all fluttery and wonder what the hell you are nattering on about now. It does not escape us that if you had an actual THOUGHT about the performance of Donald Trump as president, you would share THAT with us, analyze it and explain it and discuss it.
What it comes down to is that if you actually have something to say, you’d SAY it instead of just lobbing quotations at us. If you had a thought in your pointy little head, you would express it, instead of just tittering at something you seem, for some reason, to find meaningful. I’m not sure what, exactly, you are trying to accomplish by sharing the words that for some reason get you so overwrought. Do you think that if you throw enough of them at us we too will become mindless little automatons, abandon thought and reason and start to obsess about personalities instead of caring about reality?
And BTW, it is intellectually dishonest to add emphasis to a quotation without admitting that this WAS added, to show the perception of the quoter and does not necessarily represent the way the words were actually spoken or the emphasis given by the speaker. Not that we expect anything better from you and your kind, just an observation from the Sane Side.
What IS happening is that the goofier you people get, the more who used to be somewhat, mildly, a little bit around the edges swayed by the hysteria are getting tired of it and simply don’t want to be on the same side as you shrill little screechers. So screech away, or whimper, or snivel, or whatever your posts are supposed to tell us about you.
There was a pesky fly buzzing around here earlier, but it seems to have left.
Spook, pesky flies seem to leave this realm when they get thoroughly swatted.
Want to trade quotes? Here’s one that actually means something:
Truth is an obstacle to be overcome in the service of leftism.
Ladies and Gentleman former President Barack Obama:
“It is just wonderful to be back in Oregon. And over the last 15 months we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go.”
Or, more to the point, do they and I have the same idea of what “good” is?
You do not have the same idea Mark and the sooner we all realize that the better. Most conservatives still think that we are just in a political battle for the country while the left is fully involved in an all out war for control. The Democrats hypocrisy has stopped being funny and is now dangerous and life threatening as we all watched unfold with the tragic deaths of the father and daughter immigrants. Instead of apologizing for using the border as a political football and doing nothing, they instantly blame their political opponent. These are not serious people. Just look at the way they govern their municipalities like LA, SF, NY, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, etc., etc.,…. people literally shit on the streets and live in it in Nancy Pelosi’s district – have you seen her lift one finger to help out? NOPE
Progressivism is a cancer and needs to be treated as such. I did see that Tulsi Gabbard won the debate last night according to a few polls and that bears well for conservatives. Tulsi is the most sane of all the other cartoon characters on the stage last night and that suggests that the majority of Democrat voters are not as stupid as simon … also meaning that Trump will most likely win in a landslide if Democrats nominate a wing nut.
And thank God Trump is addressing the trade imbalances to protect working Americans. Something of which every President before him ignored and cared little about. And that’s what Simon is mocking – a President who is actually doing something constructive to protect American labor. I guess that’s funny to the left.
a President who is actually doing something constructive to protect American labor. I guess that’s funny to the left.
It should be terrifying to the Left. Maybe when millions of union members vote with their wallets it’ll hit them that they blew it. Not only are wages rising for the first time in a decade, they’re rising fastest for those at the lower end.
Not only are wages rising for the first time in a decade unions can’t take credit for it.
I hope someone starts to point that out.
Wow … I just heard an MSNBC panel on Stephanie Ruhle’s show say that Trump won the debate last night. Their opinion was that if the Democrats were going “that far left”, Trump will win.
I know. I was a little shocked too.
I tuned in to the debate last night right around the middle, just in time to hear Chuck Todd ask “how are we going to get rid of all these guns.” (paraphrase, but pretty close). They were having mic problems, that lasted long enough that I didn’t waste time waiting for the answer. Besides, we all know what their answer is — take them away. Fine — come and take them!
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I saw some really great things for women happening with Elizabeth Warren last night. Because she was aggressive, she was pissed off, she was very, very clear about her point. She made it very clear she had lived her message, she has lived the dream she has for American consumers, for Americans overall in terms of their economic security. And on top of it, all the stereotypes you didn’t want to have for a woman, to hold her back, she just threw it away and said I don’t care. I am going to be aggressive. I am going to be angry. Because that’s what I am right now.
The commentary below is priceless:
Sure, in the general election, Angry Elizabeth Warren might appeal to a certain demographic, mainly women who supported Hillary in 2016. But Mika needs to remember that the gender gap works both ways.
Mika claimed that Warren “has lived her message, has lived the dream.” Which message and dream? That of climbing over more-deserving people by exploiting phony Native American credentials?
Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in the debate. “The Democratic Party has a problem. We no longer connect with working class people.”
Yeah, turns out most working class people would rather have a job than free stuff.
Yeah, turns out most working class people would rather have a job than free stuff…. or, possibly more to the point, working class people don’t feel like working so what they earn can be confiscated to be given to those who don’t feel like working.
I’d prefer what some are calling a national divorce…where we just nearly divvy up the national debt on a per-capita basis and everyone votes, State by State (I prefer county by county, actually) which nation they want to belong to.
I think this is already happening by default. Productive people are migrating away from states that restrict freedom and penalize success toward states that value freedom and reward success. Non-productive people are migrating away from states that don’t offer a lot of free stuff toward states that do. I think the problem will solve itself.
A problem is that people running away from the oppressive policies of their home states take their determination to vote for those policies along with them to wherever they decide to land. I wouldn’t have a problem with people from California moving to Colorado if they would leave their California politics behind. But they are destroying this state, which is rapidly turning into Eastern California.