‘Look outside. You see the homelessness, people dying in the streets from overdoses, people having psychotic breaks. It’s in shambles. It wasn’t always like this.’
For any normal voter, simple walk trough downtown Portland or Seattle (in Washington) is best argument to stop voting for Democrats. 15 years ago, both cities were amazing with booming economy, today well, they look more as several gated communities for the elites, while rest of population is leaving in dystopian world overrun with crime drugs where no law exists.
I personally didn't believe that those cities got so bad, untill one of my friends (young progressive voter) told me she is leaving Portland since city isnt livable anymore, she is tired crime that is out control. Then she told me, that all is fault of Republicans and their racist policies, well I just continued to laugh, some people will never change.
But good to see that not everyone is like my friend
"that all is fault of Republicans and their racist policies"
How do you even begin to have a rational conversation with someone who utters such drivel? Someone with zero concept of cause and effect? How are Republicans (a.k.a. White People) to blame for anything in a city and state run by sociopathic Democrats for decades? Oh, right. "Higher Education".
You can never argue with an ideologue right or left. As an example, just look a comprof and R T.
Those morons on the Left Coast deserve everything they get. They have been voting for the rainbow, unicorn party all their lives and they are seeing the results of their votes.
That the governor's race is tight demonstrates they want the status quo. They are voting for chaos and thuggery. They want homeless thugs to ruin their cities and threatening honest citizens. Idiots all!
I have yellow dog Democrat friends that if they saw the ever senile Joe having sex with a goat, and Jill holding the goat's head and Harris filming it all, they would not only vote for Joe, they would vote for the goat.
I saw a video a while back--a middle-class white woman weeping and *raging* about the price of gas while sitting in her car. In the end, she blamed "Christian nationalists" for it. Complete break with reality.
It's not just "Higher Education". It metastasized into our entire public school system when the apparatchiks graduating from universities and teacher colleges made it their mission to indoctrinate our youth with their Marxist ideology. Is civics even taught anymore?
There is hope though. Keep an eye on the Harvard/UNC affirmative action case currently before the Supreme Court. If they finally validate meritocracy over faux racism I think it will have a positive cascading affect over our entire education system.
My friend received a letter in August that the ultra fancy New York private school her six year old was enrolled in was requiring Covid shots. This would have to be political-based healthcare as that age group has a statistically zero risk of dying from Covid and the shots do not stop transmission. Some countries—such as Denmark—do not even offer them for that age group much less mandate them for access to education.
If gov. money "follows the kid" they will not be competative, since parents will not like--market economy decision making IF government school monopoly is broken [voucher, private, charter, etc.] and it has to compete. Clearly K-12 "bad product."
Agreed, the SC has our biggest social problem before it as it considers "equity" in higher ed. My belief is, however the Court rules, that higher ed will ignore any ruling, and continue its ways until the real revolution burns it down.
The alternative to burning it down is to starve it but that will require the other two branches of government to step up. Congress should restrict guaranteed student loans to S.T.E.M. curricula and trade schools. We've been subsidizing "liberal" education for far too long. It's time for woke administrators and the social warriors they've spawned to experience the reality of the market place.
I wish the alternative you mention was possible. The education lobby in DC is too big to be tamed, too extensive to be tied down, and has too damned much money and grass roots power to ever bend a knee to the "public."
The NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) once tried and failed to launch "Hire a Humanities Post-Doc" [programs in business, science, or anything and every thing...just make them productive, and, useful and shut up about the rest of us ordinary citizens. Didn't work. Like Dire Straits, can't beat "something for nothing, and the chicks for free."
Tucker did a great piece on this tonight. I happened to have just read about Thomas' questions of the attorney and it was quite fascinating. Tucker also mentioned that Sotomayor (making the point about affirmative action) was using the incorrect law language during her questioning and was corrected by Roberts (I believe) at least twice.
This will be a fascinating case to watch. I always ask my law professor brother his take on it, but he waits until the written decision is out.
"Is civics even taught anymore" = nevermind civics, you'll be lucky if your kid sees ALGEBRA before graduating. I've been looking at middle school math curriculum... it's like something the Communist Party of China designed for american kids. If you set out expressly with the goal of teaching kids to loathe math forever, this is the curriculum you'd devise.
You are 100% right on; BIG deal; bigger than reversal of Roe--although same "basis" i.e. fed overreach of Constitutional authority OR blattenly contrary to it [equal protection, looking at color and/or race].
SCOTUS will have to do some heavy logical gymnastics to justify banning private institutions like Harvard from using race as a metric. Public schools are government owned and therefore can be told to eliminate AA. But how can this conservative court ban affirmative action by private colleges at the same time it tells other private merchants--such as the Colorado wedding cake baker--that discrimination is legal?
Because they take government grants and student scholarships and research grants and therefore unconstitutional to racially discriminate. They ain’t no baker or Hillsdale College. 🤠
Thanks for this, Kent. Good points all. I dimly recall that Bob Jones University faced that dilemma years ago: change its ways or lose federal tax grants. BJU chose to give up the money. I don't like BJU, but I admire its grit in living up to its own beliefs.
Unlike the Colorado baker, they enjoy tax exempt status. So does their multi-billion dollar endowment. Eliminate that I suspect the sanctimonious virtue signaling will come to an abrupt halt
There are two streams of federal funds flowing to higher ed.; institutional support like scholarship support, and individual grants to faculty for research etc.
Harvard can claim it's "private" on the basis of its massive endowment, but it dearly cherishes its (among the top ten recipients) federal research funds. Harvard and all major, prestigious schools live off public funds.
Thanks for these revenue stream definitions, Philip. Yes, there is a lot of money at stake for Harvard and others to deny SCOTUS. I wonder if the feds can legally deny funds as an enforcement tool for a court ruling? That seems dangerously close to extortion.
Not a lawyer, but yes courts, especially those whose existence/creation derives from the Sect. III, US Constitution, may use monetary rewards and punishments to enforce a ruling. Such actions derive from laws or prior court rulings, not ad hoc or capricious decisions. If by law a court may take your life, and liberties, it may surely take your money too.
I am definitely on the right side on this issue. However , I read some statistics (I’ll come back and cite them) highlighting athletes , legacies, faculty kids that get in under similar standards and dwarf the number of minorities via affirmative action. If Harvard needs to fill their squash , cricket , golf teams with athletes , do you think low income minorities have any change to play these sports on scholarship? Obviously not. Do you think minorities have the same legacy numbers ? Obviously not. So there are avenues for wealthy white students to go to top schools without meeting the same standards. From that perspective, affirmative action for minorities makes sense to me. It’s all about the magnitude of the numbers for which I will try to find my source. But I understand that these numbers are larger (or as large) as affirmative action beneficiaries
It was hard to read as all Slate material is to me. Trying to weed overlook the bias is very distracting as I keep having WTF moments. Having said that, I am glad I did as it is yet more reason to be unimpressed with "elite" schools. I knew instinctively they could care less about disadvantaged minorities despite all the hand-wringing to the contrary. I also doubt the ALDCs are up to snuff academically and likely drag overall academic performance down. This article also focuses on white versus black, Hispanic and Native students. (It is after all a liberal groupthink rag) and ignores that it is Asian students who filed the actions. I am a white person and am supposed to be for nothing but whiteness but Asian students seem to have a remarkably good work ethic which serves them very well and for which I think they should be acknowledged and rewarded. So here is a thought. Let's improve K-12 education and then let college admissions be truly merit based. It will take a generation or two to right the ship but it can be done. Lastly I was not joking about fencing. It is not a team sport like lacrosse and it does not require a horse like polo. It can be done with minimal financial.outlay. If you are good there will be some travel expense (think Olympics) but in the go fund me age that should be doable. It is a very small class of people and in my experience very welcoming and inclusive.
Independent thought has been the first casualty of higher education for decades. And now that is being stripped out of ever more younger students. We are conditioning entire generations of mindless, conforming bots.
Rationality has never been able to match the appeal of herd warmth, except perhaps for Enlightenment philosophers; and how many people are intellectually equipped to become one of those?
I blame it on Portlandia. LOL. It is one of the funniest shows on TV ever.. I watch it whenever I want to laugh myself silly.. bit the Portland I knew. the quite wonderful vibrant own full of "hippes". is long gone
Portlandia was the beginning of the end for Portland. Been a resident there for 25 years. It's always been a great place to live until about 5-6 years ago. Now downtown is a shit show.
Since you live there, is the shit show confined to downtown, where the Summer of Floyd was centered? Or did it spread through Portland? It's a lovely town to drive through, or at least was when I did. I cannot imagine any politicians stupid enough to kill that through hostility to normal Portlanders. But they did.
Thanks for this update. What a shame that local and state political leaders were so blind, stupid, or both to allow this mess to get a foothold, let alone continue.
I actually knew a 20-something a few years back who moved to Portland, sight unseen, because of Portlandia. I tried to hint that the show was satire, but she just nodded and gushed and said she couldn't wait to get there.
I know a lot of them personally. They are fantastically self-deluded cultists, and the path forward for the rest of us cannot be to fix them. They have chosen to be unfixable; we must cordon them off from civil society and improve without them.
I would ask the friend to elaborate, i.e., to explain how the crime and deterioration is the fault of Republicans. I doubt there would be a coherent answer forthcoming but I genuinely want to understand this thinking. Perhaps someone here who agrees with Raziel's friend can explain. I mean this sincerely.
obviously it's because the Republicans stances are a little too close to being rational, which pushes progressives further left to enhance their differences
I think it is because Republicans have been labeled “White Supremacist, Marxist, Elitist, Insurrectionist, Anti-Government, Deplorable, Gun Toting, Bible Thumping, Racist, Bigots, Hateful (fill in the blank with any negative label) by the Democrat powers that be! Even some of our Presidents, and I’m not referring to Trump. The sheeple blindly follow their lead, because many Republicans ARE overwhelming white, Christian, believe in the 2nd Amendment, believe in less government and TERM LIMITS for ALL politicians, MORE personal accountability and responsibility (not everyone deserves a trophy), leave sex education up to parents to decide, and NO indoctrination of children in schools, tough on crime, FUND the Police and Border Agents & CONTROL OUR BORDER, STOP allowing abortion to be used as a means of birth control (or be paid for by tax payer dollars), while allowing necessary abortions, but NOT full term & with sensible guidelines, ALLOW people freedom of speech (even if you disagree with what they are saying, because not every speech you disagree with is HATE speech!)
Ok, I’m rambling here, but hopefully you get my point. I’m saying that not everyone on the Right is all of the above, NOR is everyone on the Left like Biden et al. But it is a lie that generally speaking the Right hates America and wants to destroy democracy!
IF MSM would stop following in lockstep with the WOKE Left and be honest with both the positive & negative of BOTH sides, perhaps more people would stop believing the lies!
A good example of how they are now, “ANTIFA doesn’t exist except as an ideology, and the 2020 riots were mostly peaceful protest” PORTLAND WOULD DISAGREE!
We live part time in Seattle and used to spend a lot of time in Portland. It is stunning how Portland, especially, changed in just two years, but Seattle doesn't look like the same place, either. The open, overt crime. Graffiti. Homeless squalor.
Ted Wheeler of Portland has got to be the single worst Mayor ever. I had to sadly laugh at your young friend. They really are that brainwashed and ignorant.
I also was a lifelong Democrat. Senator Hillary Clinton sponsoring legislation to criminalize burning the flag is what woke me up. I started really reading what I was voting for, besides nice-sounding wordy words. Burning a flag is a deeply offensive statement to those of us whose family members have served their country. Yet what military members fought for, ideally, not always in practice, was the right to burn a flag in protest. Freedom of speech, freedom from compelled speech.
When I actually started reading what Democrats supported, the combination of ineffective permissiveness, paternalistic authoritarianism, reverse racism, elevation of victimhood for government control ends, fiscal insanity that we are seeing play out now ... Republicans aren't great, but they cleaned up the exact same kind of dysfunction in East Coast cities from the 1970's.
I'd vote for Manchin or Sinema but the rest, forget it.
If you pull the D lever because you think a candidate is "not like the other Dems," you're making a big mistake. When it comes to crunch time, they all fall in line.
Take a look at 100%--all--dem. votes in Congress on really bad Biden "policies". Never was like that before. Sort of like the recent ChiCom [like the ring of that old term] Party Congress and unison clapping Stepford wife style.
I enjoyed reading the statement about yourself on your profile. I used to teach in Sterling. It's a beautiful part of IL, but your'e right....you're still living in the hellacious IL. Go west a bit further and it'll be better!
Manchin is a snake. He preens and pretends to be independent but he holds out his vote until he can get Schumer to fill it with his pork list. Then he votes for the bill the Democrats want. I hope West Virginia wakes up.
Naomi, I agree with your concern about his switching his vote to get pork. I may amend my opinion of Manchin; keeping an eye on him. He spared Democrats from some of their worst impulses but it may not have been principled.
Unfortunately, Portland has a 'weak mayor' form of government. Wheeler has no more power than anyone else on the city commission. But all of Portland's electeds are awful. And disappointingly, Wheeler's opponent in the last election was way way to the left of him.
There is a ballot measure right now to change the system. More members on the city commission and ... finally.. a city manager. As it is now, each elected commissioner is in charge of one city department (Parks, Transportation, Police...) -- it's been a recipe for disaster.
Fortunately, we have someone poised to win a seat on the commission -- Rene Gonzalez -- who has his priorities right. His focus: crime, safety and smarty policies for dealing with the Addicts-in-Tents (aka the "homeless"). I suspect that until the city rights itself, others of his stripes will be favorites to take over. Portland is so tired of how things currently are.
Locusts, nothing more. Destroying cities and states with their moronic policies and then moving on to destroy their new homes; learning nothing but being cocksure about everything.
Easy on the PA shit. Not everyone from this state is like the Progs of Philthadelphia. Philly has been a shit hole for decades. Eagles fans? They have had a court house in the football stadium to arraign criminals during games. Saw several openly pissing in the walkways to the seats at the old Veterans Stadium. Just a loser city. And the wealthy suburbs? Gaggles of elites insulated from the nonsense voting with their feelings. The rest of the state - save for shrinking zones in Erie, Pittsburgh for diehard lefties - is pretty sane, You know, where all the "deplorables live, clutching their guns and bibles.
This is a key point. Many states have two constituencies, the progressive urban "elite" and a more conservative rural population.
I'm a card-carrying member of the educated urban types who has lived in rural areas long enough to have tremendous respect and sympathy.
I listen to my Prog friends sneer at Trump voters and I wish they could hear themselves, their own closed-minded, ignorant, self-serving disdain. They can't hear me, for sure, when I say that they would do better to listen to the concerns of Trump voters, than to contemptuously lecture them.
It is the age old urban/rural dichotomy. It was around before the inception of the country. It is why Congress is structured the way it is. I an definitely on the rural side. I grew up in small cities but have deep rural roots. I left city life when I had children. It is not for everyone. Neither are. I used to be tolerant of the urban perspective until I realized the intolerance, arrogance, and condescension urbanites have for their rural peers. It is tiresome.
Hell no. I have no interest in giving those wanna be Nazi racist morons the attention they crave. If no one showed up to counter protest the “march” they would have marched around in a circle with no audience , it wouldn’t have been newsworthy, and no one would have died.
Uh, Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and inherited millions of dollars and real estate. Love him or hate him he’s not remotely “blue collar”.
at last he knows a balance sheet and actually worked for a living in a capitalist society and does not regale us with stories of "around the kitchen table with Dad" tryin to pas as a blue collar supporter. without union money Biden would be nowhere
Yes, he was born into a rich family but his father put him to work. Trump is no slouch. He works. He understands and respects those people who do real work. They know it and respond to him. Ever watch his rallies? He speaks to the working middle class and they know it.
While I don't see Trump as you do, I don't demonize him, either. One thing many people responded to was his fearlessness in saying what he chose. He does also treat blue collar workers with respect, long overdue. I can understand his appeal. It is cynically misrepresented by his opposition.
You may not be aware you have been captured by the mass formation. You should try to learn what has been done to you. I highly recommend Mattias Desmet's book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism."
Plus, Trump was (is) a businessman NOT a politician, which inflamed most all politicians both Right & Left (hence the RINOS & Liz Chaney types).
Trump has no filter. If it’s in his head it’s out his mouth! He openly without shame pisses people off. He doesn’t come close to having a politician personality. He’s like a bull in a China shop. He’s a loudmouth blowhard sending out too many mean tweets, and said the quiet part out loud.
He didn’t pander to a base (like politicians do so well). He didn’t care if you liked him, but he cares about America! You were either with him, or against him, or you voted for him in 2016 because up against Hillary most people couldn’t stomach her nor wanted another Clinton, or Bush for that matter!
Hillary is a good example of an out of touch politician She didn’t even campaign in some rural areas where “deplorable, gun toting, Bible carrying” people live and work. Trump did.
But the elite Left wasn’t having any of it, and brought out ‘ole Joe from the basement. They propped him up and knew they could use his name recognition to attract uninformed voters + they could manipulate him so Obama could have his 3rd term.
I wasn’t a fan of Trumps, but good lord I miss his trying to “Make America Great Again”. Please tell me WHY that term was (still is) so offensive?? How’s Biden’s “Build Back Better” working out?
On a personal note, my retirement (investment) account has dropped 35% under Biden. At this rate I may be forced to vote Democrat, so I qualify for their Marxist government programs to take care of me, because the Left is telling me Republicans are going to do away with my Social Security AND push me off a cliff! Typical pathetic
Tom, so true. If you already know it all then the world desperately needs your shining pearls of wisdom. Sadly the Dems only pearls are Racist! Fascist! Nazi! Terf! And then they wonder why nobody likes them, poor dears :)
I wish someone could articulate more clearly what those "concerns" are - a lot if seems like amorphous "cultual" issues and generalized resentment, which is pretty unclear messaging.
I kinda assume the sane people in PA know how to drive in two lane country roads.
It’s become cliche around here. People driving expensive new cars doing 35 in a 55 zone, slamming on the brakes at every mild curve but well past the normal “learning to drive” age, inevitably turning into one of the new high priced subdivisions that have sprouted in old corn fields.
I know the story. They sold their overpriced homes in PA/CT/MD/NY/etc. and moved here to spend the proceeds. They complain in check out lines that we don’t have XYZ stores or ABC brands. They complain about our accents and yards and animals and weather.
My mouth filter has slipped a couple of times and I’ve told a few to take their sorry asses back where they came from. We don’t want them here.
That old Robin Williams routine about having bazookas in the front bumper has become my reality
Live in Northern California and went up to Tahoe last spring for a weekend and up there the locals have bumper stickers that say "Go back to the f@#kin' bay". You can tell how they really feel up there. I am not living or from the Bay Area so I just laughed.
They're still at it. Reports yesterday are saying 254K ballots were sent to unverified voters. They have a weird law that puts verification on the counties instead of on the election commission. In effect, anyone in the world could send in ballots.
Democrats will be relentless and myopic in positioning themselves to win the seat back in four years.” Maybe that’s part of the problem; they should turn their attention to the tedious and conflict-prone area of governing. Where people even of different parties can have good ideas worth pursuing. Dividing people into friends and enemies and doing what your friends say and punishing your enemies. Not that both parties can’t be guilty of that, but there are few Rs running big cities. Let’s face it, if these elections are close, people in the other party are your constituents and should be listened to, at least.
Of course, everyone should be listened to.. point being, calling half the voters stupid and immoral when you ultimately need to work together is not going to be successful governance.
OMG I've heard about it and just watched it. Thanks for the link. Now that's the way you deal with idiots and if the Democrat Party had even an ounce of Burr's honesty and courage their Party wouldn't be ruining this great country of ours. If Burr were writing this response he'd close with something like this. "What you weak kneed pandering Democrats need to do is throw pc out the window for a day or two and clean house on these idiots who are running your Party you morons!"
That is a true Burr Classic! Many, was he wound up at that crowd of Philly folks. Gave 'em what they needed but it no doubt went over their small heads
I agree! Writing from safe, clean and orderly Williams Township, PA! Full of friendly, hard-working people, most of whom--apart from the new NYC refugees (the ones with the "Fetterman" signs on their front lawns)--are good shots.
I hear ya, brother. Former Hazleton coal cracker here. You can draw an arc with the center in Philly and extend from the Delaware River near you counterclockwise around to the Pa-MD state line .... to the North and west is sanity. Otherwise is Democrat and Death.
So true! Why Fetterman is even close in the polling proves it! I’d rather elect any one of my neighbors—chosen randomly—instead of Fetterman or for that matter anyone else in the entire Philly city administration + the DA.
I don't understand how otherwise intelligent people cannot make the connection between their voting patterns and the consequences of these elections. The main line of PA used to be waspy and now it's woke. You can also same the same for southern NH. They ruin everything.
Southern NH is easy to explain: MA folks with excess cash can make the move to somewhat cheaper and more livable terrain. But they carry their stupidity with them. Plus the general urge of Northeasterners to be woke.
That same thing applies to the Mainline folks and the Bucks folks in PA. They live in an intellectual and political vacuum, so long as they can "hedge" their moola they are happy. F the rest of the Commonwealth and the Country. Little by little, if the Republican are smart - a thing that has yet to be demonstrated (Mastriano anyone?) - that could change. However, the cognitive disfunction of the eastern PA folks who see the rest of the Commonwealth as a bunch of country Fs, makes that entirely unlikely. They vote as they do to distinguish themselves from that rabble.
The best thing that could happen is for the folks outside the Philly/Mainline/eastern PA locales to split from PA and become a new state. Western NY is the same thing. Won't happen which is why PA will be purple for decades to come and the NYers in the north and west of the state are just gonna eat that bowl of crap the Downstate keeps feeing them.
Oh, and it would help greatly if Donald Trump just STFU. Trump is why Mastriano is the Republican nominee for Gov and OZ has so much trouble defeating a clearly - pre-stroke - a-hole. Anyone without OZ's baggage could have sent Fetterman packing much earlier and not need a stoke to do it.
I disagree. Parenting is the key issue. Bring back “in loco parentis”, Latin for "in the place of a parent" refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent.
No. That is what the idiots who support pre-pubescent medical intervention and drag queen story hours rely on. The progressives have for years bemoaned trickle down economics and then employed trickle down social programs. They have not a single solution other than throw money at the problem of the hour.
Not really. "Absent parenting" is in the eye of the beholder. Usually teachers or holier than thou moms who think they know it all. There are an abundance of remedies for abusive or neglectful parents.
Here in TX we don’t love to see those Cali plates. A woman moved to our very tiny neighborhood with Cal plates on her Tesla. She doesn’t like to wave at us (we walk the dogs daily) and never slows down. Not cool. I know lots of other Texas people don’t love the Californians bringing their political ideas here.
It is kind of bewildering. Why leave California for a place very different from CA and then want this new place to become like the place you left? Unless you think the California way of life should spread out to other places, I guess.🤔
That was the fallacy of democrats importing “illegals” that they assumed would be good plantation dwellers and vote D in gratitude for the rest of their lives.
That is finally melting away being culturally, if not a gangbanger, the “migrants” are now gravitating towards their natural state of conservatism.
Many fled the end results of leftism, hence your question; why recreate what they fled?
White educated suburban liberals are a different beast entirely.
Their arrogance won’t let them think for a moment that they’ve been wrong on so many levels.
They just relocate to a more comfortable “red area” where their stupidity festers, comfortably, safely.
They move for the cheaper housing, not because they’ve drawn a logical line from their political votes to the unmanageable cost of living in California.
Right, but wouldn't one reasonably hope they would understand why the housing is cheaper than in California and let go of the policies that made it that way.
Many move from California to Texas because their employer relocated. They have no concept of why there is a job for them in Texas but not in California.
lol, that's just what people do. Especially if they have money and resources. A million people moved from the Midwesten states to Phoenix, Arizona in the 70s and 80s and busily set about reconstituting the culture of Iowa and Minnesota and Indiana, etc. The places that they had just left.
For that matter, it's possible to find native-born California Bay Area folk- now in their 70, and older- who will tell you about how much their part of the state changed when the "East Coast people" and "New Yorkers" began showing up in large numbers in the late 1960s and afterward.
The bottom line is: we're one nation. We need to look out for each other and take care of each other. And not lean too hard, for being strangers. My rule of thumb when moving to a new location was always to put more on the table than I took from it. Just slightly into the credit part of the ledger is sufficient. That's a modest and reasonable guideline, and no one deserves trouble if they meet that standard. But if they don't, they need to get back to where they once belonged.
She's been trained, probably all of her life, to be hateful and cynical. It's going to take a while to cleanse that filth from her little brain. May never happen. I, myself, grew up in Oklahoma, son of eastern transplants, and in our household there was a lot of joking and contempt for the "rednecks". Shameful.
Yikes! Sounds like a new wave of segregation, Mandi. Instead of white vs black, it's now red vs blue. It must be said that there are millions of conservatives who live in California - just like there are millions of liberals living in Texas..
Why shouldn’t people move to/live in a place that aligns with their political values? I myself am originally from a very, very, very conservative Republican family in California, but moved here to Texas as a new bride 25 years ago. It was very different then. I know people in the Dallas area who moved there from California because they wanted to live in a more conservative area than the Austin area. We are very happy that our rural area was redistricted to put us into the conservative state district, compared to the people closer to the big city, where population has boomed in the past few years, which has a very blue rep.
I only commented on your last line, in which you say you don't want Californians bringing their political ideas to Texas. But as you yourself admit, there are conservatives in California, your family for example - so it stands to reason that the many Californians moving to Texas might be conservatives themselves..
Coastal Dixieland native here. NY, NJ and PA are our Big Three transplants here. MANY are fired up conservatives who moved here with a reason and a purpose after enduring dumb Democrat policies. Of course we’ve got the other sort too. This election will tell us the ratios.
Don't be too fast with running us off the road. Three of my friends just moved to TN from NJ and are as conservative as can be. And my son just moved to FL. He's embarrassed that he still has his Jersey plates.
I live in a red county adjacent to a blue city in a red state. When I see cars with NY and CA tags I just smile. They are typically refugees coming as additional enforcements.
100%. I visited Portland about 7 years ago and was chased down the street by a crazed homeless man. Despite its excellent food and wine scene, The city was so dirty and scary. The hotel staff told us where we needed to avoid walking in the tourist areas. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Total anarchy! I won’t go back unless things change. I can’t even imagine living there.
Last time we were in Portland was 2010. We had a limited amount of time there, so the only place downtown we stopped was Powell's Books. We didn't see any of the stuff people are talking about now. But based on what we used to see when we visited more often (when we lived in Oregon back in the early 90s), it's easy to imagine how it has spiraled out of control.
Hey, we're not all bad. Doing our best to turn things around. NYC is hopeless, but in CT, my full time home, we've got some competitive races going. Fingers crossed to reverse the lunacy. If not........"Hi, y'all.............."
@Bruce Miller I’ve read enough of your posts to welcome you to Texas. 😜 Come on down, though depending on where in Texas you’ll need to buy more flip flops and less snow boots. 😁
We got the nicest compliment when we moved from Maryland to Texas, “you guys moved here, did community things, and never mentioned how to change things to how Maryland did things.” We ran away from Maryland because of all the insane rules, regulations, why do that to Texas?
Ah Texas, land of Big Country dreams. Thanks but horses seem to hate me. Have been thrown on desert in Arizona, a creek bed in Colorado and even a mountain trail in St. Barth (ok that one served me right). So much for cowboy fantasies......
Asheville? No thanks. But not a bad idea to let them all congregate in one place like some science experiment gone very badly wrong. Think Kurt Russell's "escape" flicks.
Agree!!! My crazy leftist sister who believes in all of this nonsense & thinks she's the smart & tolerant one but is a bloody foot-soldier of the intolerant marxists who took over the Dem party......lives in Asheville.
Five years ago, when we first escaped to NC from California, Asheville was THE place to visit when our tiny community seemed too small. Now, it's the place to avoid at all costs. Such a shame! We left California to LEAVE California. What's wrong with these people!
They are not irrational. They are quite literally brainwashed. Their critical thinking skills have been purposely destroyed. "Progressive" education K-12, then dystopian insanity in college.
As a former Seattle resident (I moved north when the first inklings of crazy reared their head) and continuing Republican, I find it laughable that anyone can think this isn't totally a Democratic failure. The City is run by Democrats, the County is run by Democrats and the state is run by Democrats - how can anyone seriously believe that Republicans played any part of these failures?
This is the saddest part of it. I know quite a few (well to do) people who have relocated from California or Oregon for both financial and personal safety reasons, but that didn’t stop them from taking all their idiotic leftist fetishes to their new home, where they keep voting for the Democrats.
By the way, imagine what kind of absolute landslide we would see in the elections if the Republicans would have been able to come up with a consistent slate of moderates.
We have been worried about that in Florida too. We have about 1,000 people a day moving here. However, so far they seem to realize WHY they came to Florida and are registering as Republicans. In 2018 when DeSantis ran for governor there were approximately 350,000 more Democrats than Republicans in Florida. God help us, we nearly got Gillum for governor. It was so close.
Now there are 306,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.
Moderate Republicans? The Republican base is sick and tired of the Mitt Romneys and the Lisa Murchowski's. If we have a real Republican primary, the waffling, appeasing "moderate" Republicans will lose every time.
Moderate Republicans might as well be Democrats. They stand for nothing and are afraid of their own shadows.
To me, a moderate Republican is not somebody who rubberstamps the “leftist consensus”, but somebody like Drazan, somebody who can win, as opposed to an extremist who opens the state Capitol doors to armed protesters who pepper-spray cops and attack journalists (as per the article). Generally, no loonies who can’t get elected but got their badge from Trump for endorsing his dark narcissistic elucubrations about the “Big Steal”.
I go by what the article says. As far as cultists, loonies and assorted extremists in the ranks and often at the front of Republicans - if you don’t see them, you must be blind. What matters though is that the rest of Americans see it, so our chances of getting rid of the far left are diminished. Beyond that, it’s just talk.
Yeah, those nasty extremists. The ones who go to work every day, raise families, attend church, pay taxes, and don't break into their neighbors cars or homes. You betcha, we are just full of them.
There are other voting systems from the traditional primary process. California has the jungle primary which guarantees they will remain a one party state. Alaska has ranked choice voting. This is a complicated system that just about guarantees the third or fourth tier candidate will get elected.
It is optional to register your party affiliation. However, if you wish to vote in the primary to choose a specific party candidate for the general election, you must be registered for that party in most states.
I, too, would like to see more moderate Republicans, because I am an independent. It's a debatable line. Sometimes supporting consensus positions that represent most people is the way to go. Other times, one has to stand for unpopular principle, when there is reason to believe it is in everyone's long term best interest.
If either party came up with a slate of moderates, it would be fine with me.
Personally, I am not ready for revolution. I am encouraged by cultural changes toward tolerance, like with gay and civil rights. I am discouraged by deficit spending like there is no tomorrow, and weaponizing identity ideologies, and violence.
The current crop of America First candidates would have been considered moderates back before Bill Clinton. Now the media has branded them as radicals. There is nothing radical about wanting law and order, treating the drug addiction of the homeless, securing our borders, not getting involved in foreign wars that are not in our national interest, balancing the budget, or spending less, honoring the flag, not wanting our children sexually neutered or sterilized, not letting our kindergartners be indoctrinated into the LBGT movement. Not exposing our children to drag queen story hour, wanting American history taught in schools, wanting schools to teach children the 3 R's instead of politicizing them, allowing parents to know what their children are being taught. I could go on.
Tell me which of these positions are not moderate, and are not in line with traditional American values.
Yes, the kiddie drag shows perplex me. It is not the same as being for equal rights for LGBT+ people. Imagine the outrage if cis-males sponsored strip shows for little girls. (Maybe children's beauty pageants are that, like the sort poor little JonBenet Ramsey participated in. Those pageants do seem creepy.)
If you see some of the children's library books featuring illustrated guides on how to give LGBT+ blow-jobs, the hypocrisy is stunning. No way would, again, adult males illustrating for young girls how to give bj's, be acceptable. (This brings up the issue of demonizing older, white males, but that is a whole other topic.)
So it is not gayness or transness that is the issue. That is a red herring.
It seems to me that some people just want to find a new boundary to transgress for transgression's sake. They seem to want to feel as though they are on the frontier of establishing rights, instead of acknowledging that many of these battles have been won by previous generations, and that this is something to celebrate.
Traditional American values include what were once revolutionary concepts, liberty and equal rights. We approached those ideals more closely by the late 20th century. What a surprise the 21st is.
Alice K, always nice to be preached at with other people’s reading lists. I agree Republicans are lining up very unpalatable candidates in some places and pursuing some extreme policies in others (abortion ban after 6 weeks). They’ve definitely got some dumb ones. You’re the politically homeless and it sucks. I can split US politics into two issues: the economy and the culture wars, and for me both of those are an easy R even if the guy or gal is a partial dumbass.
Abortion is back in the states where it always should have been. Each state's legislature can decide after debate where they want to set the boundaries and limits. Florida chose 15 weeks based on when the fetus feels pain.
If you live in a state and are not happy with the limits they have legislatively set on abortion then mount a campaign and win enough adherents to get the law changed. That's they way it's done in a representative democracy.
Yes, me too. I want impassioned pragmatism for all Americans. Ultimately I think it boils down to the quality of the electorate. The politicians are just a reflection of the sad state of voters in the country. Garbage in, garbage out.
Following that thought, maybe there is a fundamental problem with democracy dominated by two parties. The electorate do vote on the nominees in primaries, so they/we are guilty in that regard. Yet when it comes time to vote, I do not find viable choices on either side. Rock and hard place!
Maybe ranked choice voting will help. It seems to scare a lot of politicians.
Yes, I agree. Thank you for resisting my pessimism. I am also frustrated with the current "Pepsi or Coke" paradigm. They are really just two elites fighting with each other, while we are caught in the middle.
Yes I agree. If we had someone like an Eisenhower to lead the country and was interested in competent governance, the GOP would be much more appealing to me.
If I recall my history correctly, Ike was considered an amiable, golf-playing dunce by the government/media conglomerate of the 1950s. It took decades for him to be reconsidered.
(It does seem that, when being compared to the current Republican president, every old Republican president rises in estimation as a much saner alternative.)
That's correct. The media dislikes Republicans. Ike was a brilliant manager. I grew up in the 1950's and it was an idyllic time to be a child.
I grew up in Brooklyn. It was like a small town. Everyone knew everyone and all their friends and relatives. It was safe. There was no crime. No one had to lock their doors.
I read a biography of Eisenhower this year. He was a remarkable man. He is underrated.
Yes, he was a prolific reader. He was well educated and intelligent. He quickly stood out in every command he was assigned to because he was able to get along with everyone, pull people together seemingly effortlessly and accomplish the goal at that time.
He was the right person to be Supreme Commander in World War 2. No one else could have managed it the way he did. He dealt with some mighty twitchy personalities and managed to hold it all together and win the war. As the war was ending, when the concentration camps were liberated, he brought in the Army photography units to thoroughly document the horror they had discovered. He knew at some point in the future, without the thorough proof, there would be those who would deny it had ever happened. As we see today.
He was a deeply humble and honest man. He kept his personal political views to himself. Both parties wanted to draft him as their candidate in 1952. He chose the Republican Party.
He was the best of America, a decent, God fearing, midwestern farm boy.
I used to love the show Portlandia and yes, I know that it was a parody but I have friends who lived there and they said the vibe was pretty accurate. It was as if NPR took over a city; now the vibe is a post apocalyptic war zone. In two years, nothing has been rebuilt and all attempts are thwarted. "They" want it to remain this way. Finally(!) the citizens are fed up and I pray they give Republicans a chance.
Oh, I know! I loved Portlandia, too!!! It poked such gentle humor from the inside.
I agree, it really did perfectly represent the vibe of Portland several years ago.
Then came Antifa. No humor allowed. Physical violence from grimly humorless, performative upper middle class young people. It is too sad and vicious and hateful to make fun.
The fundamental problem with progressive policies is that they are founded are in conflict with human nature. They are built on a fantastical utopian vision that is in conflict with reality and everything that history teaches us.
The problem with progressives is that their mentally unable to adjust. Once committed to an idea they are never able to admit it might have been a bad idea and instead push to double down on that bad idea as a solution to any failure. They are never able to grasp that an idea that sounds good in theory can fail when confronted with reality.
In some ways, they are like the academic economists that could never understand how completely unchecked free trade could actually produce bad results.
Progressives make policy based on how they wish the world was. Conservatives make policy based on how the world actually is. Both are valuable. The key here is BOTH. Everything works best when both views are working in tandem to siphon off the excess of any one ideology.
I don’t disagree with that. But I suspect most democrats don’t love the direction the party is taking but are so caught up with party loyalty they just hope this insanity is part of the recipe that creates utopia. My hope is they all have their stupid lawn signs up but vote red at the ballot box in secret.
They’re brainwashed to think that way. When I was liberal I literally though conservatives were evil people. I don’t think liberals are bad people. Just misguided. It seems to me that all the people that advocate for these terrible policies have no ability to think for themselves. ‘The TV and Facebook said I should think this way so I do.’ I remember basing my entire political stance on Jon Stewart And the daily show.
Please help me understand how someone who believes complete strangers are “evil people” based on nothing but a TV host’s “comedy” routine aren’t by definition bad people?
Is it not wrong to be prejudiced?
I have nothing but contempt for Democrat politicians. I have trouble mustering sympathy for people who vote for Democrat politicians but I don’t assume they’re ALL evil. They desire evil for me and mine and I’ll resist them at every opportunity but because I don’t know them I can’t assume they are individually evil.
That must be a sterling, highly quotable quote that so nails the times we live in: "Groupthink is so powerful that people fear ostracism for merely pointing out lunacy". Brilliant! And too bloody true, sadly.
That is the point I am at too. I see the wisdom of Felina's point but until I see some contrition and acknowledgment that another POV exists there is no compromise by me.
Someone has to make that first offer of contrition. Someone needs the humility and courage to acknowledge the partial truths that can be found in most points of view. This is a difficult switch to make. But it’s the beginning of Truth and Love arising in our unhappy world.
Very much agree. Unfortunately, studies on such things show Democrats are much less likely to listen to a differing opinion. Democrat college students in much greater numbers than Republican would refuse to room with an opposing party member, much less date one.
My side has been dismissed as desperately clinging to guns and Bibles since 2008, warned that they go low since 2012, called deplorable by their next presidential candidate, had their people told to get up in our faces since 2016, had our Cengressmen and staffers shot and shot at, had a Senators repeatedly accosted and one's ribs broken, had a planned assassination of Supreme Court Justice who was nominated by a Republican, and have several conservative Justices that can't live at home now. What exactly has the conservative side done?
Isn’t it called “insanity” when you keep doing the same thing and get the same results?
The enticing thing about progressives is that their intentions seem so “nice” while conservatives are viewed as “mean” because we expect people to (gasp!) work and be responsible. Weak people are going to like progressives because they excuse their failings, even enable them.
Thomas Sowell writes about the two visions in "A Conflict of Vision." The Unconstrained Vision that human nature is essentially good so that men are morally perfectible. That there is an ideal solution to every problem so that compromise is not acceptable. The Constrained Vision is that man is inherently self-interested and that there are no ideal solutions only trade offs.
But would you advicate compromise with Hitler... or with Putin? Sometimes compromise is simply not possible, and you then have to defend yourself and finally defeat evil.
"The fundamental problem with progressive policies is that they are founded are in conflict with human nature. They are built on a fantastical utopian vision that is in conflict with reality and everything that history teaches us." THIS. I have argued this for years.
"The problem with progressives is that their mentally unable to adjust...... they double down on that bad idea." I couldn't agree more with you, which is why I don't like they idea of these cult minded virtue signalers fleeing to red states. I'm actually at a point now where we should concede that this disease infected Party is terminally ill and that we should just divide the country into Left and Right. Let them run their half into the ground and allow the rest of us to live normal and peaceful lives. Yes, I know I know, the Republicans have their share of problems but in my unworkable country R we will welcome all moderate thinking people, we'll allow for diverse opinions and marginalize any radical faction. And that is the problem with the current Democrat Party, the once marginalized radicals are now in power and the rest of the Party is "mentally unable to adjust."
Which goes right back to the Garden of Eden and satan’s temptation to make Adam and Eve as gods. For centuries mankind struggled with that idea. Then along came Nietsche and, well, here we are in our sad Godless mess.
NC - Nietzsche wrote that when God is dead we each become god. That’s where we are now. The logical end of unbridled godness will be anarchy because millions of gods can’t all be omnipotent at the same time. That’s why leftists turn on each other and why the puritanical goalposts keep moving. Every time a leftist cancels someone he gains that person’s power. It’s like Highlander - in the end there can be only one. Or should I say One.
Yup, same thing. Unfortunately 'permitted' and 'good' aren't always synonymous. Unfettered freedom means no boundaries, which means one person intruding on and therefore limiting another's freedom. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who had a good quote on that - something about, if it doesn't break my leg nor pick my pocket.
Yes! The Bible says clearly humans are not inherently good. If we just listen to the ancient wisdom we learn how to properly govern and be governed. To think that man can reach perfection or that we could have a utopia is foolhardy. But to think we can do both without God is laughable.
The complete failure of Democrat logic escapes me.
The diesel shortage on the east coast (coming soon to your area) was predicted at my dinner table after CA and the feds decided that their Utopia requires everyone to drive electric cars and gasoline will be outlawed.
Why would any refinery make repairs to an installation when the powers that be have announced intentions to criminalize your industry?
If the government told you your house is being taken by eminent domain and you’ll be forced to leave it in two years are you going to go through with the kitchen remodel? Upgrade your AC? Of course not!
Hence we’ve lost millions of gallons of refining capacity. Duh.
Legalize heroin and meth smoking yet surprised to watch your city/state devolve into an open air cesspool-- there’s a relationship between the two.
The only word I can think of for people who think this way: juvenile.
It isn't logic, it's ego and feeling. Nearly every Democrat policy is driven as some point by, "it's not fair."
Not "this is a great idea that works well in the long run" but rather, "we need radical change now because things aren't fair."
That's why the young radicals in Seattle and Portland can't hold substantive conversations about policy, but they can wave flags, shoot up, and chant nonsense with passion.
It is also... money. Billions of taxpayer dollars are going into relatively few hands who run 'green'(which really means very dirty) industries that produce failure. It really is a crime as far as I am concerned.
I am totally stealing your kitchen remodeling/eminent domain analogy. It's perfect.
(To think more like a finance person, if your business is going to die, you are obligated to extricate as much cash out of it as possible before it goes under, to keep the shareholders off your back. Kind of like what Shell, etc. is doing right now.)
They don’t know how many petrochemicals are required to make those electric cars (for example to mine copper that goes in all of them). It’s magical thinking.
My question for the common sense staff is, “how did this particular brand of progressive politics become so ensconced in American institutions?”
I left my career as a Southeastern academic physician partially due to the internal pressure to conform to progressive medical views and moved to a rural part of Georgia that I only half jokingly refer to as Trumpistan. I am a political moderate and was actually nervous about landing in such a conservative hotbed.
Not 6 months into my new job our hospital administration announces Ibram Kendi as a guest speaker. Our catchment area and hospital staff is almost 90% rural white Appalachian types or Hispanic immigrants, two groups I view as relatively anti-progressive in a political sense.
I cannot square how this could have happened spontaneously, but I tend to view conspiracy theories with trepidation.
Does anyone have a rational explanation as to how much of the power structure running American organizations came to believe such a non-functional and maladaptive worldview? I enjoy the coverage of how this is a problem in Portland and other areas, but what I’m really searching for and would be interested in from the common sense view is: how and why it came to be.
The administrators who run your hospital are university educated. They are totatlitarian by nature and are brainwashed to bring this crap everywhere they go. Since you area is poor and white they guilt the others into going along or else they brand them as racist. It's extortion, basically.
Women administrators in every institution are largely responsible for this. Women are particularly susceptible to social fads and religious manias and that is what this nonsense is (covid fanaticism too). Not to say men don’t participate of course, but the social contagion aspect wouldn’t be possible without a largely female class of administrators with the interest in spreading Goodthink and the power to impose it.
"Men" only participate for one reason. And the soy boys who think it works end up being reviled by the very women spouting that nonsense. Just desserts, sort of.
Oh for heaven's sake. Ok let's run with your theory for a minute and say women are susceptible to social fads and religious manias. But who the fuck are the sources of all these shit? Men! Kendi is a man. Fauci, a man, started your covid fanaticism. Men don't just "participate". They're the ones who start every kind of these bullshit, and put the money behind it. When women don't listen to men, you whine and say it's women's fault. When women listen to men and amplify their words, you whine and say it's women's fault. So which is it?
If your theory that women are susceptible to social fads, how about you tell men to stop starting up nonsense fads and start up only good fads, so those do-gooder women would only ever spread good fads?
While we're on the subject of susceptibility to fads and religious manias, I suppose women are also responsible for the 9/11 attack, and all those boys and men becoming Taliban fighters.
Yeah it's extra lame, as you point out, that most women are little followers and will swallow the evil BS that powerful men think up and spread it around like obedient little footsoldiers. Come on ladies. Stop it. Grow a pair. Think for yourselves.
Your comment isn't super coherent so I can't respond to all of it but I will say that there is no such thing as "good fads." And when midwit status conscious women are in charge, as they are, we are in for serious decline as a culture. Here, perhaps this excerpt from another piece by the insightful substacker Eugyppius might help you get your mind around this concept:
"There’s probably some reason to be sceptical of Charlton’s concept of the creative genius, but he’s dead right about the malign influence of Head Girls like Oster. Modern social institutions—particularly schools—have been caught for decades in an escalating spiral of harsh selection for conscientiousness and conformity. Since 2000 especially, Head Girls have cemented their dominance across a great many bureaucratic institutions and white-collar professions, and they have used their growing influence and seniority, above all, to recruit and promote more Head Girls like themselves. The problem is that traits like conscientiousness correlate not at all with raw intelligence and ability. Thus, our world has come to be steered by fleets of extremely agreeable, deeply concerned, highly productive and overly socialised Emily Osters—midwits who have very few original thoughts, and who make up for that by caring a lot about what other conformist midwits of similar status think about them.
There’s nothing wrong with Head Girls, when their worst tendencies are counterbalanced by a sufficient number of disagreeable, intelligent, and less conformist colleagues. When they become the predominant personality type in newsrooms, faculties and government offices, though, you start to have serious problems. Then, your schools and your media organisations come to be dominated by committees and meetings, by the avoidance of open conflict, by the constant erection of and sheltering within consensus positions, and by preference cascades kicked off by clamorous organised minorities. All of these characteristic symptoms of government by Head Girl are intolerable to everyone who isn’t a Head Girl, and talented people with any other options at all will ultimately leave their influential positions in Head Girl-dominated institutions, driving the Head Girls to ever greater ascendancy.
One of the reasons things like lockdowns and mass vaccination frenzies have become possible in the first place, is the uniformity of outlook and opinion among the governing elite. When everybody, from university professors to the minister president of Bavaria to municipal police administrators, believes that with enough social distancing we can eradicate SARS-2, and that the unvaccinated are responsible for prolonging the pandemic, the result is a powerful if erratic and ever-shifting social tyranny. Social media technologies have been particularly noxious for the consensus formation of the Head Girls, widening the range of issues on which they have functionally identical opinions and enforcing conformity more thoroughly than was ever before possible. And should one of their runaway preference cascades go off the rails and destroy society, they’ll rapidly reunite around the new consensus position, that nobody could’ve known any better and all the worst offenders—especially their friends and colleagues—acted in good faith with the knowledge that was available at the time."
People are simply afraid to speak truth. Every sentient being knows that Henry Rogers is nothing but a jive-talking, racist huckster. But, as Dr. Malone pointed out, we are in the midst of a mass formation psychosis, where half of our country has gone full out barking mad.
Jennifer’s comment is correct. It’s not the rural community that you are living and serving in who educated or hired your hospital’s administration. Unfortunately it’s the hospital staff who will be subjected to and coerced into the group think. It will unfortunately pass down to the patient in the form of poor care policy and distracted doctors and nurses worried about saying/doing the wrong thing and then their position is questioned or in jeopardy. For God’s sake can’t we let doctors and nurses do what they do best?
Masterful response, Red. I live in a rural area and my doctor who is originally from Africa regularly prescribed off-treatments such as 'horse de-wormer' for his educated patients. However, in November 2021 his medical board threatened his license if he continued actual medical treatment rather than government mandated treatments such as Remdecivir, etc.
Our institutions are fundamentally corrupt and we need to purge them. Stat.
Two answers for you. First it is not a conspiracy theory if true. Second, I think your answer is pretty obvious if your hick Appalachian town (I say this with fondness bordering on reverence) is hosting Ibrim Kendi. Your hospital is likely owned by an out of state conglomerate (as most are) and influenced by insurance companies (as all are). The algorithm has dictated that indoctrination is required in your area. And Kendi's pockets need lining. The real question is, who controls the algorithm? You need to believe your lying eyes.
In the grand scheme of things, there is a relatively small group of people that are pushing this. Your DE&I Vice President is going to conferences and workshops that provide guidance on how to grow and maintain the grievance industry. They then make a proposal to the board with the implicit assumption that refusal to participate would be racist. The board approves the speaking fee (shakedown?) to an actual racist like Kendi because they don’t want to be thought of as racists themselves.
It's the product of decades of masterful indoctrination combined with the silencing of white voices through the manipulation of white guilt. Without white guilt these race baiters wouldn't have succeeded in silencing so many intelligent people. It may be too late now because the price one has to pay to begin speaking truth to lies is now a steep on. Let's hope we're on the precipice of the beginning of the end to this hateful and divisive radical takeover of our institutions. These midterms will tell us a lot about how metastasized this cancer is.
It's likely your hospital administration is highly educated. I'm in grad school and every communication I get is about progressive policies and the school's "opinion" on it. I suspect when I move into the alumni network, it will be the same.
You can start by looking at our institutions of "higher learning". They have been indoctrinating our children with this nonsense for at least a decade, if not two. The fruits of their labors are now coming into positions of authority.
I think the way we select leaders and administrators in our organizations plays a big role. We select people for their intelligence and work ethic; fair enough. But we also select individuals who are ambitious and skilled at small-group politics. There are some traits that would be desirable, but not on the list. Here are some: philosophical (logical and ethical), strategic, knowledgeable about human nature and how big groups behave.
So, our leaders care deeply about what their peers think. Whatever is the fad among that group of people will be implemented widely, but not with depth of insight. Kendi is cool? You get lots of Kendi. Police are immoral? Defund the police. Four feet good! Two feet bad! (Animal Farm reference.)
they push systemic communism in our academic institutions, k-higher Ed. Go to any college campus and you'll find students pushing this crap, taught by their communist teachers (who were taught by communists themselves). I see it in my college's monthly newsletter (Colorado College). Then, they work their way up to the highest points of governments and other institutions, capturing them and pushing their agendas. We need to recapture the schools. I've even seen elementary schools with communist propaganda on their walls. History isn't being taught anymore. at least honest history. The last time I was in a communist country, my friend quietly criticized her government while we waited in line, then looked around terrified that someone heard her. She'd had friends taken away, never heard from again. We've got older friends who escaped this crap from Russia, Bosnia, etc, and see it happening here, to their horror. They try to tell their younger relatives about what's happening, and they won't listen; because their teachers tell them differently and supposedly they are the "experts". The MSM isn't helping either, but that's also captured by the leftists. we have to get them back, and make them balanced. But I just don't know how at this point.
I think that the Department of Education was started under Jimmy Carter. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time? But, I think that it is high time to shut it down and also to have the $$ follow the students not the schools. The fact that Merrick Garland wants to investigate parents who are concerned for their children is beyond terrible. The central control is a problem. And, drag queens in kindergarten??? We once agreed that sexualizing children was not a good thing. And, that keeping secrets from parents was not a good thing. The groomers at school know better?
agreed. this admins weaponizing of the DOJ is horrifying- Biden's admin gaslights us all the time and that one was a doozy. And drag queens in kindergarten is disgusting- i moved to a red state (and i vote accordingly!) and they tried to have it here during their Pride event in our largest city (its blue, lots of college kids (ahem communists) and weirdos). The community around the state rallied and got the drag show shut down as soon as it hit LibsofTikTok. They tried to spin it as anti-LGBTQ etc, but all the sponsors noted that Pride was still supported, but the sexualizing of children shouldn't be. I'm so pissed that they even had to even say that part out loud for the leftists- however they are really idiotic and disgusting, so I really shouldn't even that surprised. In my old town in the Bay Area, I was weird when I didn't want to take my kids to drag story hour! Blue states are the worst. I used to be a democrat, lifelong Californian, but since Obama I've been moving slowly right, especially after foreign (not MSM) news published evidence of his "bug splatting". Never again will I vote blue. They ruined my home state in less than 20 years, and I'll be damned if they ruin the beautiful, kind one I'm in now. We're working hard with the local Repub groups to make sure to get out the RINOs and fake republicans (who are really democrats) and really let voters know what's going on in our schools. we need to change it for the sake of our children's futures
Sure. The Darwinian Revolution brought into focus the concept that human value systems are based on no reality that is independent of the social interactions of humans as a species. Critical Theory formulates this situation into a worldview where all cultural norms are simply a product of the power structure of the dominant culture, because there are no ultimate criteria of truth legitimizing any particular culture.
Originally Critical Theory was just an academic exercise. But it went on to gain political traction. The political manifestation of this view is that societal changes are brought about by deconstructing the power structure of the current society, which in practice means attacking societal norms around which society is organized. The potency of it lies in the strong psychological impetus humans have to form coalitions along various dimensions of homophily, mostly race and ethnicity. Hence, the anti-white focus.
In other words tear it all down. Never mind that the
generosity and tolerance of the "power structure of the current society" is what allowed you to flourish and arrive at the conclusion that it now needs to be destroyed. That is not only biting the hand that fed you, it is destroying the golden egg laying goose. Both warnings deeply embedded in the psyche of the "power structure of the current society". I suspect nothing remotely comparable will be built in its stead. See Portland, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, and SF for reference. (By "you" I do not mean you personally, but rather the you who espouses this doctrine.)
You ask a really great question, William. It seems to me that CRT and Radical Trans Dogma have taken over medicine (and just about everything else). There's been an institutional capture. Medical Societies have been radicalized by the small number of believer/fanatics & a great deal of money has poured in from activist groups that get their money from Pritzkers & Jon Stryker. I've talked to people with kids in medical school and the students who don't like this stuff feel that they need to keep quiet.
It turns out that most BLM money went to the 3 BLM founders (who bought property for themselves) and to Trans activist groups - nothing went to help the down and out as far as anyone knows (documented in Candace Owens documentary where she looked at tax records and followed the $$ and in Notthebee reporting). I think George Soros also pours money into these causes. CRT & the trans cult are promoted from the top in government, education, and medicine...
You might find this one from the PITT substack interesting for some thoughts on what is happening in medicine today:
The "Why" part is another question: Transhumanists? Those who want to normalized sex with children by Minor Attracted People? Profit (a big part of the first link)? Thrashing Victimhood translates to votes? I don't know exactly...
This is the crux of it. And by not speaking up you validate their decision to bring that racist into the mix. This way they can go to conferences and boast about how enlightened and progressive they are.
Ah, freedom from the "trap" of marriage and family now shits on the streets of Portland. That damned "patriarchy" -- so OPPRESSIVE. Better to be high all day, on some kind of welfare, childless and dead in an unmarked grave!
An elderly white man was beaten up on the subway in NYC the other day for asking the "oppressed" to turn down their music. Imagine. A (ssshhhhhh,,,black) man and a (sshhhhhh black) woman BEAT HIM IN THE HEAD.
Of course they did. White man bad! White man OPPRESS! White man cause HARM just by sitting there being white!
(I learned this in faculty meetings).
Police BAD for hauling these monsters into prison for no reason other than they black! Now they can rob, beat, and disturb everyone with their shitty music thanks to:
PROGRESSIVES.
Finally allowing myself to see through the bullshit, I defected from the Democratic Party several years ago. I do hope that more and more people see through it.
But then I read memes on Facebook that scream they're voting for the party that doesn't "force women to give birth."
Ironically, if they did give birth, they'd be forced to GROW THE HELL UP.
And regarding the part of your post dealing with the black people who attacked the elderly man - I don't have a problem w/black people in general. Black people in general are fine, just like white or Asian people.
But it's past time to call out the toxic element in American black culture, that street thug/violence/crime element. This subculture is subhuman. They don't want to obey the constraints of a civilized society. I would like it if more "leaders" in the black community would make a point of denouncing this toxic subgroup. I mean, amongst whites most would strongly condemn the actions of, say, the KKK or white supremacists in general (though the term "white supremacists" now has been twisted to mean practically anything).
And yes, if you don't respect the freedoms of other people you belong in prison around the others who share your outlook.
No, please don't. No culture or subculture is subhuman. The behaviors you rightly denounce should be denounced by everyone, "black leaders" and everyone else. They are exhibit A for some of the degradation that human beings can fall to, that any human can fall into, not something subhuman. White-guilty-brainwashed folk need to quit pretended it is racist to call a spade a spade, quit acting like black people are all like the crowd you call subhuman, and like it is racist to denounce thug behavior. We should all hold each other up to high standards, and not make excuses based on race and class. And we should all scour our own consciences for clean-up too. Turning it into a race thing is not helpful. Unfairly stigmatizes black people, and unfairly prevents white people - and other non-black people - from recognizing their own moral filth.
Having worked with the victims ( mostly fatherless young black men) of the Gangsta Rap? Thug Life sub culture I unequivocally state it is toxic and often lethal.
Re black street culture. I agree, each race has to hold its own accountable. A lot of this is acceptance of gang culture. Every race has had its gangs too. But we are progressing from gangs to cartels. If, as I am reading lately, the Sinoloa cartel controls portions of SF and Portland we are well on our way to being Colombia or Mexico.
yeah, it's almost like the 1920s, when the Italian and Irish cartels ran the illegal trade in prohibited alcohol. x100. Over the course of an Drug War era that's lasted four times as long as the duration of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act that was supposed to banish Demon Rum forever. (Or nearly eight times as long, depending on where someone feels like marking the beginning.)
I've repeatedly read references to "the end of the Drug War" in recent years, mostly by clueless liberal commentators. But all user decriminalization does is keep users from being arrested. It does nothing to get rid of the market. It merely signifies a shift to the less punitive era of 1920s Prohibition, which didn't lock people up for personal possession of alcohol. But that move does nothing to get rid of the criminal monopoly over the supply.
Meanwhile, Skid Row and hobo jungles full of alcoholic vagrant single males have long been a part of the American scene- before, during, and after Prohibition. But it's only been in the last ten years or so that some local governments have supplied them with tents and food and temporary housing vouchers and...almost everything a shiftless freeloading able-bodied adult might require in order to live on the streets with no responsibilities, apparently. Including impunity from arrest for trespassing, public defecation, public intoxication, shoplifting, failure to appear in court...practically any offense short of mayhem or murder, for all practical purposes. Is it possible to beat someone senseless while robbing someone in a homeless encampment and get away with it? My close-up personal observations of the social milieu suggest that the answer is "yes." The fact that the pool of victims is much greater than the number of predators does nothing to change that reality.
And regarding the part of your post dealing with the black people who attacked the elderly man - I don't have a problem w/black people in general. Black people in general are fine, just like white or Asian people.
But it's past time to call out the toxic element in American black culture, that street thug/violence/crime element. This subculture is subhuman. They don't want to obey the constraints of a civilized society. I would like it if more "leaders" in the black community would make a point of denouncing this toxic subgroup. I mean, amongst whites most would strongly condemn the actions of, say, the KKK or white supremacists in general (though the term "white supremacists" now has been twisted to mean practically anything).
And yes, if you don't respect the freedoms of other people you belong in prison around the others who share your outlook.
YES! to both Dog & Dan. I live in Memphis (about 65% black) and live & work with lots of nice, normal middle-class blacks everyday of my life. Progressives make divisions based on skin color instead of the individual's behavior ----thus elevating all blacks as oppressed-&-thus-can-do-no-wrong, making the hard-working God-fearing black person the equal of the horribly-criminal black. We have had several very high-profile murders recently that have drawn sharp attention to the revolving door of our prisons & to parole. Memphis is like many cities in our country------perpetually votes blue but protected from their stupidity by the red state they live in. We have said for many years------until the law-abiding blacks can truly walk away from the criminal blacks (the way other races & ethnicities do), black culture won't be able to wrest itself from the criminal/gang/violence/victim culture that persists in all black cities.
Last night was Halloween. Democrats are like the parents who allow their kids to gobble up all the candy and then express dismay when they get sick. Except they allow the kids to eat candy all year round. Or kowtow and bribe the toddler having a fit in the supermarket.
This lunacy could be ended in a hot second if we wanted it to end. It is simply a failure of will. Giuliani proved that in NYC decades ago.
At this point I'm not sure I even want to live in the same neighborhood, let alone the same country as people so lacking in common sense. And, as far as the coming election......if the so-called red tsunami fails to materialize, we'll know that the suspicions about 2020 were not tinfoil hat fevered dreams. Because what's going on may really not be the sheer stupidity described in Oregon, but something much darker.
I'm beginning to believe in the darker theory. Why does anyone think border chaos is a good thing? Sympathy for poor people I can understand, but with that chaos comes criminals, cartels, terrorists, and drugs, resulting in among many other things record fentanyl overdose deaths, not to mention the abuse of those poor people by human traffickers.
Why does anyone think the chaos in our cities, of which Portland is just one example, is a good thing? Why does anyone think that we can avoid chaos in our economy by pumping trillions of government dollars into a supply-constrained, covid-shut-down economy? Why does anyone think that you can avoid chaos in our energy markets by shutting down fossil fuel production and just passing a bill to subsidize unproven and expensive renewables, no transition plan needed?
I am beginning to believe that there is a plan and there are enemies of the USA deliberately fomenting this chaos on many levels and in many of our institutions.
Why were our medical experts so stupid they let the virus in the front door, declared racism is more important, and then tried to blame it on Donald Trump?
More fundamental is the question, why does this entire generation think racism is the only serious moral issue, but we shouldn't "judge" anything else? Why is the language of the Communist Chinese the same as the Democratic Party?
I lived in Manhattan for the last 2 years of the Giuliani era, the entirety of Bloomberg's regime and the first 2 years of the DeBlasio reign of terror. Rudy's and Bloomberg's tenures were a sort of "golden age" for NYC, but I've come to believe they were also an aberration. I believe Hochul will win the gubernatorial race, dems will continue to control Albany and the NY city council. And so it goes...and so it goes.
Yes, because once the bleeding is staunched, they revert to form. The UWS and West Village types who were so horrified when a vagrant defecated or harassed their wives and kids in the playground, that they voted for Rudy, listened to Big Bird's siren song and brought back the horror. And just wait til the "fun" starts from the Climate Bill enacted in Albany that will ban fossil fuels by 2050. New York City will be a dystopian hell.
A good piece for sure. The reason I subscribe here is that it is a gateway for real people to talk once again. Generally speaking, conservatives tend to run organizations that have risk(for-profit) and progressives run ones without risk(non-profit). When there is risk the right decisions tend to made for the benefit of everyone.
For decades conservatives have allowed progressives to frame us and that was violently disrupted with the election of Trump. We ended slavery, gave women the right to vote, and passed the CRA. We man the military, fire hoses, and police stations. We run businesses that benefit everyone overall by providing the tax revenue needed to fund said police, fire, roads and sanitation, et al. We take care of our own business and leave everyone else alone. Live and let live.
Progressives take. They contribute only to themselves and their tribes. They are pro-crime and anarchy.
Vote Drazan, folks. Johnson is only there to siphon votes from Drazan - do not fall for it.
If she works at the US Bank downtown, I bet she's more working class and probably not a trust fund hipster.
I actually have sympathy, I was a smoker in Portland about ten years ago and even then the street people were very entitled and extremely rude. You could barely smoke in peace without being accosted.
My friends and I started just saying "No." When approached while smoking before they could even ask.
If we weren't smoking and a homeless person approached you we'd say, "Hey do you have a cigarette?" Before they could open their mouths.
They're shocked, SHOCKED to discover that there's public human defecating, homelessness, rampant drug addiction and unending, often violent crime going on here.
Great article. Only question is why are Liberals so damn dumb. They have to completely destroy and ruin everything around them. Then they pause with finger to lip and think, ah maybe this wasn't a good idea!
Disregard everyone telling you that. No you have a better idea and can make it work. For me, you reap what you sow. Want a shit city, well you got it.
The only hope is if the entire country says to hell with Liberals and there bag of snake oil. You can't save the world. Save your area and hope others do the same. However Brandon and his merry band of idiots are trying to double down. Just can't fix Stupid!
Born and raised in Oregon for 45 years and left last year to live in a red state. I just couldn't raise my kids there anymore. Even if Drazan wins, I believe there will be so much opposition that not much will change, it will just slow down the monstrous decline.
Yes, I was wondering about the state legislature races. If they can override her vetoes, very little will change. The governor can do some stuff but she basically can't enact new legislation on her own, nor kill bad old laws.
If Drazen wins they’ll give her the Trump treatment, block her at every turn, and then claim that voting for her was obviously a mistake. Ted Wheeler will then be the next Governor.
Thank you, Mr. Woodhouse. I live in Austin, Texas, the home of progressive city government in the Lone Star state. I recently went downtown for breakfast with a colleague. The smell of urine and feces on the sidewalks of Congress Avenue was overwhelming. We left downtown immediately.
I live near Austin and was watching their local news, a few years ago, do a story on the increasing cost of living. The woman being interviewed, clearly a liberal who was undergoing an "education" said "I've lived here for almost 30 years, and voted for every civic improvement tax increase they requested. Now I can't afford to live here anymore."
My niece lives in Austin, she was horrified by the leftist mayor that let the homeless camps grow, is a moderate Dem, but she's voting for Beto! For guns & climate. She may live & learn, but I doubt it.
You could write this about SF too. My home town was always a bit edgy, but it wasn’t dirty and lawless. To what kind of mindset can you attribute the willing decline into decay?
The total unmooring from cultural and religious traditions leads to madness and self-hatred. Then people decide to destroy the very structures that gave them life.
Have been to SF 30-40 times but not since 2012 or so. It was already crazy and dirty back in the late 90s. I also went many many times to Seattle back in those days and always viewed Seattle as a cleaner safer version of SF. NO more as Seattle is SF north. Both were great cities . Such a shame and such a waste
The mindset that wants to remake the entire nation or as POTUS Obama dreamed of "to fundamentally change America". He and his minions said it often and openly. That's the goal. That's the game in play.
And Hillary, when she becomes POTUS in 2024 will seek to have the great dream finally made manifest.
The problems started when all of high fallutin nonsense bruited about in the faculty lounges of our "great" universities got translated into Democrat policy. Everyone of them is contra to human nature! What damn fool couldn't see that homelessness is not about affordable housing; defunding police will bring a helluva a lot more than social justice. Your High School diploma is not worth the paper it's printed on and so on ad infinitum. We have let the inmates run the asylum and now we have to start again from scratch to rebuild and if you ever vote again for a Democrat u deserve what u get!
I have recently commented on the absurdities emanating from our over educated betters as to how we should be running this country so that everything should be fair and equitable. I have a few more absurdities foisted on us by the likes of Hilary Clinton, Obama and the ecretable J R Biden and their fellow travelers who have been tagging along for the ride a perfect example being our do nothing governor in NYS who thinks this merits her election;
Defund the police; no more cash bail for a wide variety of crime; DA's that refuse to prosecute legislated crimes; universities and government run by politicians and grievance majors who never earned an honest paycheck in their lives; but always remember that we are "deplorables" and "desperate c lingers to our guns and Bibles;" We were made to suffer through the nonsense of BLM and only white people can be racist. Add to that 50 years of never ending affirmative action. We are forced to acknowledge the importance of CRT and Disparate Impact and diversity on college campuses while noting black only dorms and graduation ceremonies. Oh and the Universities must provide safe spaces for our little darlings and also remember: always believe the woman. BTW don't forget to check your pronouns while Trans males have full use of the WOMEN'S locker room and bathroom. And did u know it's federal crime to criticize your local school board even if your daughter gets raped by a Trans male in the women's bathroom? Finally I will end this screed upon the knowledge that the most recent Harvard and or Yale educated Supreme Court Justice is unable to answer the question as to what is a woman? Let us get real as a people and throw these bums out in the upcoming election!
“The problems started when all of high fallutin nonsense bruited about in the faculty lounges of our "great" universities”
And it metastasized into our public school system when the apparatchiks graduating from said universities made it their mission to indoctrinate our youth. Is civics even taught anymore? Kids today may not be so good at reading, writing, and arithmetic but they know which pronoun to use. Unfortunately, there is no quick solution. If the Supreme court ends “affirmative action” and demands a return to meritocracy in secondary school admissions, it will be a good start.
When society deteriorates to the conditions described in this article (assuming the "conditions" are more endemic than anecdotal), a governing position to restore order for the good of the community is necessary. Restoring order requires a change in Portland governance and leadership which I doubt is forthcoming. I would expect the downward spiral to continue until the corporate entities in Portland begin to vacate downtown and take their employees with them and the city growth rate in general declines. The best way to effect change in Portland is to leave.
For any normal voter, simple walk trough downtown Portland or Seattle (in Washington) is best argument to stop voting for Democrats. 15 years ago, both cities were amazing with booming economy, today well, they look more as several gated communities for the elites, while rest of population is leaving in dystopian world overrun with crime drugs where no law exists.
I personally didn't believe that those cities got so bad, untill one of my friends (young progressive voter) told me she is leaving Portland since city isnt livable anymore, she is tired crime that is out control. Then she told me, that all is fault of Republicans and their racist policies, well I just continued to laugh, some people will never change.
But good to see that not everyone is like my friend
"that all is fault of Republicans and their racist policies"
How do you even begin to have a rational conversation with someone who utters such drivel? Someone with zero concept of cause and effect? How are Republicans (a.k.a. White People) to blame for anything in a city and state run by sociopathic Democrats for decades? Oh, right. "Higher Education".
You can never argue with an ideologue right or left. As an example, just look a comprof and R T.
Those morons on the Left Coast deserve everything they get. They have been voting for the rainbow, unicorn party all their lives and they are seeing the results of their votes.
That the governor's race is tight demonstrates they want the status quo. They are voting for chaos and thuggery. They want homeless thugs to ruin their cities and threatening honest citizens. Idiots all!
I have yellow dog Democrat friends that if they saw the ever senile Joe having sex with a goat, and Jill holding the goat's head and Harris filming it all, they would not only vote for Joe, they would vote for the goat.
I saw a video a while back--a middle-class white woman weeping and *raging* about the price of gas while sitting in her car. In the end, she blamed "Christian nationalists" for it. Complete break with reality.
This would be funny if it would not be utterly nuts.
It *is* funny. What's tragic is that this person might produce spawn.
Sad as that is, you've just got to laugh. You can't convince someone that deluded.
On the one hand, it's funny. On the other hand, you realize that these people vote. That makes it horrifying.
🙄
My grandfather was a “yellow dog Democrat” who swore till the day he died that Republicans had pushed gay marriage through the courts and legislation.
I rest my case!
Hola Gringa. De que parte en Tejas es Vd?
A sad truth - so many are so hung up on "party" that they refuse to see the damage unthinkingly checking all boxed, either red or blue, will cause.
lol. over the line!
It's not just "Higher Education". It metastasized into our entire public school system when the apparatchiks graduating from universities and teacher colleges made it their mission to indoctrinate our youth with their Marxist ideology. Is civics even taught anymore?
There is hope though. Keep an eye on the Harvard/UNC affirmative action case currently before the Supreme Court. If they finally validate meritocracy over faux racism I think it will have a positive cascading affect over our entire education system.
Elite private schools will double, even triple down on their own affirmative action policies.
My friend received a letter in August that the ultra fancy New York private school her six year old was enrolled in was requiring Covid shots. This would have to be political-based healthcare as that age group has a statistically zero risk of dying from Covid and the shots do not stop transmission. Some countries—such as Denmark—do not even offer them for that age group much less mandate them for access to education.
If gov. money "follows the kid" they will not be competative, since parents will not like--market economy decision making IF government school monopoly is broken [voucher, private, charter, etc.] and it has to compete. Clearly K-12 "bad product."
Agreed, the SC has our biggest social problem before it as it considers "equity" in higher ed. My belief is, however the Court rules, that higher ed will ignore any ruling, and continue its ways until the real revolution burns it down.
The alternative to burning it down is to starve it but that will require the other two branches of government to step up. Congress should restrict guaranteed student loans to S.T.E.M. curricula and trade schools. We've been subsidizing "liberal" education for far too long. It's time for woke administrators and the social warriors they've spawned to experience the reality of the market place.
I wish the alternative you mention was possible. The education lobby in DC is too big to be tamed, too extensive to be tied down, and has too damned much money and grass roots power to ever bend a knee to the "public."
The NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) once tried and failed to launch "Hire a Humanities Post-Doc" [programs in business, science, or anything and every thing...just make them productive, and, useful and shut up about the rest of us ordinary citizens. Didn't work. Like Dire Straits, can't beat "something for nothing, and the chicks for free."
Agree
Tucker did a great piece on this tonight. I happened to have just read about Thomas' questions of the attorney and it was quite fascinating. Tucker also mentioned that Sotomayor (making the point about affirmative action) was using the incorrect law language during her questioning and was corrected by Roberts (I believe) at least twice.
This will be a fascinating case to watch. I always ask my law professor brother his take on it, but he waits until the written decision is out.
Unfortunate but probably true.
It's not ignored at all. It's made a substantial difference in the demographics of California universities.
"Is civics even taught anymore" = nevermind civics, you'll be lucky if your kid sees ALGEBRA before graduating. I've been looking at middle school math curriculum... it's like something the Communist Party of China designed for american kids. If you set out expressly with the goal of teaching kids to loathe math forever, this is the curriculum you'd devise.
"new math" is also designed to instill distrust in children against their parents. It's incredibly sinister.
"Boy dad sure is dumb, he can't even help me with subtraction. I guess I'll ask teacher how it's really done tomorrow"
More than a few years back the idiots admitted the new math was BS.
With the Dems/Communist in charge, I wouldn't be surprised that Communist Party of China did design the curriculum.
On a related topic Black History Month:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/morgan-freeman-completely-silenced-mike-wallace-during-his-60-minutes-interview/ar-AA13AbY7?cvid=8fc39083d36c45a9bfb4512855fe1722
Scroll down the whole article. The author gets side tracked on a different topic. The meat and potatoes are further down.
You are 100% right on; BIG deal; bigger than reversal of Roe--although same "basis" i.e. fed overreach of Constitutional authority OR blattenly contrary to it [equal protection, looking at color and/or race].
SCOTUS will have to do some heavy logical gymnastics to justify banning private institutions like Harvard from using race as a metric. Public schools are government owned and therefore can be told to eliminate AA. But how can this conservative court ban affirmative action by private colleges at the same time it tells other private merchants--such as the Colorado wedding cake baker--that discrimination is legal?
Because they take government grants and student scholarships and research grants and therefore unconstitutional to racially discriminate. They ain’t no baker or Hillsdale College. 🤠
Thanks for this, Kent. Good points all. I dimly recall that Bob Jones University faced that dilemma years ago: change its ways or lose federal tax grants. BJU chose to give up the money. I don't like BJU, but I admire its grit in living up to its own beliefs.
After reading Kent's post maybe not so good.
👍🤠
Unlike the Colorado baker, they enjoy tax exempt status. So does their multi-billion dollar endowment. Eliminate that I suspect the sanctimonious virtue signaling will come to an abrupt halt
There are two streams of federal funds flowing to higher ed.; institutional support like scholarship support, and individual grants to faculty for research etc.
Harvard can claim it's "private" on the basis of its massive endowment, but it dearly cherishes its (among the top ten recipients) federal research funds. Harvard and all major, prestigious schools live off public funds.
Thanks for these revenue stream definitions, Philip. Yes, there is a lot of money at stake for Harvard and others to deny SCOTUS. I wonder if the feds can legally deny funds as an enforcement tool for a court ruling? That seems dangerously close to extortion.
Not a lawyer, but yes courts, especially those whose existence/creation derives from the Sect. III, US Constitution, may use monetary rewards and punishments to enforce a ruling. Such actions derive from laws or prior court rulings, not ad hoc or capricious decisions. If by law a court may take your life, and liberties, it may surely take your money too.
Good point.
God willing!
I am definitely on the right side on this issue. However , I read some statistics (I’ll come back and cite them) highlighting athletes , legacies, faculty kids that get in under similar standards and dwarf the number of minorities via affirmative action. If Harvard needs to fill their squash , cricket , golf teams with athletes , do you think low income minorities have any change to play these sports on scholarship? Obviously not. Do you think minorities have the same legacy numbers ? Obviously not. So there are avenues for wealthy white students to go to top schools without meeting the same standards. From that perspective, affirmative action for minorities makes sense to me. It’s all about the magnitude of the numbers for which I will try to find my source. But I understand that these numbers are larger (or as large) as affirmative action beneficiaries
Or just middle income white students. I recommend fencing. Good for full ride scholarships.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-affirmative-action-case.html
If the data in here is accurate , it is hard for me to argue against affirmative action
It was hard to read as all Slate material is to me. Trying to weed overlook the bias is very distracting as I keep having WTF moments. Having said that, I am glad I did as it is yet more reason to be unimpressed with "elite" schools. I knew instinctively they could care less about disadvantaged minorities despite all the hand-wringing to the contrary. I also doubt the ALDCs are up to snuff academically and likely drag overall academic performance down. This article also focuses on white versus black, Hispanic and Native students. (It is after all a liberal groupthink rag) and ignores that it is Asian students who filed the actions. I am a white person and am supposed to be for nothing but whiteness but Asian students seem to have a remarkably good work ethic which serves them very well and for which I think they should be acknowledged and rewarded. So here is a thought. Let's improve K-12 education and then let college admissions be truly merit based. It will take a generation or two to right the ship but it can be done. Lastly I was not joking about fencing. It is not a team sport like lacrosse and it does not require a horse like polo. It can be done with minimal financial.outlay. If you are good there will be some travel expense (think Olympics) but in the go fund me age that should be doable. It is a very small class of people and in my experience very welcoming and inclusive.
Key word: rational.
Yes this is the KEY word. I've been saying for years you can't have a rational conversation with someone who is irrational.
What I find odd is that many of these people hold advanced degrees yet seem to embrace really preposterous ideas.
One must spend a lot of time and money training one’s brain to invert the data carried my the optic nerve.
Independent thought has been the first casualty of higher education for decades. And now that is being stripped out of ever more younger students. We are conditioning entire generations of mindless, conforming bots.
My daddy had a saying - there is folks that are smart in school but dumb on the bus.
my bad - is it folx now?
Rationality has never been able to match the appeal of herd warmth, except perhaps for Enlightenment philosophers; and how many people are intellectually equipped to become one of those?
I blame it on Portlandia. LOL. It is one of the funniest shows on TV ever.. I watch it whenever I want to laugh myself silly.. bit the Portland I knew. the quite wonderful vibrant own full of "hippes". is long gone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rZ3uq8JZ6o
"We have 13 vagina pillows. My bed looks like a bunch of women exploded on it"
Portlandia was the beginning of the end for Portland. Been a resident there for 25 years. It's always been a great place to live until about 5-6 years ago. Now downtown is a shit show.
Since you live there, is the shit show confined to downtown, where the Summer of Floyd was centered? Or did it spread through Portland? It's a lovely town to drive through, or at least was when I did. I cannot imagine any politicians stupid enough to kill that through hostility to normal Portlanders. But they did.
Downtown is definitely the epicenter, but the homeless tent clusters, garbage, graffiti, and growing crime wave extends well into many other areas.
Thanks for this update. What a shame that local and state political leaders were so blind, stupid, or both to allow this mess to get a foothold, let alone continue.
I actually knew a 20-something a few years back who moved to Portland, sight unseen, because of Portlandia. I tried to hint that the show was satire, but she just nodded and gushed and said she couldn't wait to get there.
I know a lot of them personally. They are fantastically self-deluded cultists, and the path forward for the rest of us cannot be to fix them. They have chosen to be unfixable; we must cordon them off from civil society and improve without them.
I would ask the friend to elaborate, i.e., to explain how the crime and deterioration is the fault of Republicans. I doubt there would be a coherent answer forthcoming but I genuinely want to understand this thinking. Perhaps someone here who agrees with Raziel's friend can explain. I mean this sincerely.
obviously it's because the Republicans stances are a little too close to being rational, which pushes progressives further left to enhance their differences
how about that?
Maybe but I sincerely doubt that is how Raziel's friend would explain it. I want to hear *their* perspective.
I think it is because Republicans have been labeled “White Supremacist, Marxist, Elitist, Insurrectionist, Anti-Government, Deplorable, Gun Toting, Bible Thumping, Racist, Bigots, Hateful (fill in the blank with any negative label) by the Democrat powers that be! Even some of our Presidents, and I’m not referring to Trump. The sheeple blindly follow their lead, because many Republicans ARE overwhelming white, Christian, believe in the 2nd Amendment, believe in less government and TERM LIMITS for ALL politicians, MORE personal accountability and responsibility (not everyone deserves a trophy), leave sex education up to parents to decide, and NO indoctrination of children in schools, tough on crime, FUND the Police and Border Agents & CONTROL OUR BORDER, STOP allowing abortion to be used as a means of birth control (or be paid for by tax payer dollars), while allowing necessary abortions, but NOT full term & with sensible guidelines, ALLOW people freedom of speech (even if you disagree with what they are saying, because not every speech you disagree with is HATE speech!)
Ok, I’m rambling here, but hopefully you get my point. I’m saying that not everyone on the Right is all of the above, NOR is everyone on the Left like Biden et al. But it is a lie that generally speaking the Right hates America and wants to destroy democracy!
IF MSM would stop following in lockstep with the WOKE Left and be honest with both the positive & negative of BOTH sides, perhaps more people would stop believing the lies!
A good example of how they are now, “ANTIFA doesn’t exist except as an ideology, and the 2020 riots were mostly peaceful protest” PORTLAND WOULD DISAGREE!
We live part time in Seattle and used to spend a lot of time in Portland. It is stunning how Portland, especially, changed in just two years, but Seattle doesn't look like the same place, either. The open, overt crime. Graffiti. Homeless squalor.
Ted Wheeler of Portland has got to be the single worst Mayor ever. I had to sadly laugh at your young friend. They really are that brainwashed and ignorant.
I also was a lifelong Democrat. Senator Hillary Clinton sponsoring legislation to criminalize burning the flag is what woke me up. I started really reading what I was voting for, besides nice-sounding wordy words. Burning a flag is a deeply offensive statement to those of us whose family members have served their country. Yet what military members fought for, ideally, not always in practice, was the right to burn a flag in protest. Freedom of speech, freedom from compelled speech.
When I actually started reading what Democrats supported, the combination of ineffective permissiveness, paternalistic authoritarianism, reverse racism, elevation of victimhood for government control ends, fiscal insanity that we are seeing play out now ... Republicans aren't great, but they cleaned up the exact same kind of dysfunction in East Coast cities from the 1970's.
I'd vote for Manchin or Sinema but the rest, forget it.
If you pull the D lever because you think a candidate is "not like the other Dems," you're making a big mistake. When it comes to crunch time, they all fall in line.
There’s no such thing as voting for the person any more. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for the entire party.
And at this point, it is a vote for perpetual one-party rule. That is the "democracy" that Democrats keep saying is threatened.
I'd say one-party rule is, by definition, totalitarianism.
It is. But they have relabeled it "democracy."
Agree!
Take a look at 100%--all--dem. votes in Congress on really bad Biden "policies". Never was like that before. Sort of like the recent ChiCom [like the ring of that old term] Party Congress and unison clapping Stepford wife style.
I enjoyed reading the statement about yourself on your profile. I used to teach in Sterling. It's a beautiful part of IL, but your'e right....you're still living in the hellacious IL. Go west a bit further and it'll be better!
Kind of planted on the land here now... Haven't made it west of Savana for a long time.
Equity is pure Marxism, always was always will be
We visited Seattle last spring. My teenagers saw homeless people shooting up right in the middle of the street mid-day.
I spent several months in Washington this summer. The Seattle solution is spreading up the coast. Homelessness, drug use and theft everywhere.
Manchin is a snake. He preens and pretends to be independent but he holds out his vote until he can get Schumer to fill it with his pork list. Then he votes for the bill the Democrats want. I hope West Virginia wakes up.
Naomi, I agree with your concern about his switching his vote to get pork. I may amend my opinion of Manchin; keeping an eye on him. He spared Democrats from some of their worst impulses but it may not have been principled.
Be a little charitable--ALL the rest are 100% weasel.
I fear you are right.
Amen to that. He's a weasel of the first magnitude.
“ ineffective permissiveness, paternalistic authoritarianism, reverse racism, elevation of victimhood”
Amazing quote
Unfortunately, Portland has a 'weak mayor' form of government. Wheeler has no more power than anyone else on the city commission. But all of Portland's electeds are awful. And disappointingly, Wheeler's opponent in the last election was way way to the left of him.
Maybe that is what needs to change. Check your statutes. See what it takes.
There is a ballot measure right now to change the system. More members on the city commission and ... finally.. a city manager. As it is now, each elected commissioner is in charge of one city department (Parks, Transportation, Police...) -- it's been a recipe for disaster.
With a one party state there never really is a choice.
Fortunately, we have someone poised to win a seat on the commission -- Rene Gonzalez -- who has his priorities right. His focus: crime, safety and smarty policies for dealing with the Addicts-in-Tents (aka the "homeless"). I suspect that until the city rights itself, others of his stripes will be favorites to take over. Portland is so tired of how things currently are.
Locusts, nothing more. Destroying cities and states with their moronic policies and then moving on to destroy their new homes; learning nothing but being cocksure about everything.
Your friend is the reason I want to run newcomers from the NE off the road every time I see one in a car with a NY, PA, CT, etc tag.
Easy on the PA shit. Not everyone from this state is like the Progs of Philthadelphia. Philly has been a shit hole for decades. Eagles fans? They have had a court house in the football stadium to arraign criminals during games. Saw several openly pissing in the walkways to the seats at the old Veterans Stadium. Just a loser city. And the wealthy suburbs? Gaggles of elites insulated from the nonsense voting with their feelings. The rest of the state - save for shrinking zones in Erie, Pittsburgh for diehard lefties - is pretty sane, You know, where all the "deplorables live, clutching their guns and bibles.
This is a key point. Many states have two constituencies, the progressive urban "elite" and a more conservative rural population.
I'm a card-carrying member of the educated urban types who has lived in rural areas long enough to have tremendous respect and sympathy.
I listen to my Prog friends sneer at Trump voters and I wish they could hear themselves, their own closed-minded, ignorant, self-serving disdain. They can't hear me, for sure, when I say that they would do better to listen to the concerns of Trump voters, than to contemptuously lecture them.
It is the age old urban/rural dichotomy. It was around before the inception of the country. It is why Congress is structured the way it is. I an definitely on the rural side. I grew up in small cities but have deep rural roots. I left city life when I had children. It is not for everyone. Neither are. I used to be tolerant of the urban perspective until I realized the intolerance, arrogance, and condescension urbanites have for their rural peers. It is tiresome.
Same here. I’m an anomaly in Albermarle county VA ( surrounds Charlottesville ).
Ditto
Were you at the march?
Hell no. I have no interest in giving those wanna be Nazi racist morons the attention they crave. If no one showed up to counter protest the “march” they would have marched around in a circle with no audience , it wouldn’t have been newsworthy, and no one would have died.
Trump is a blue collar guy. He understands the lunch bucket crowd. It's why he is so popular.
The elites despise him, and his constituency.
Trump loves America, and he loves workers. It is patently obvious.
Uh, Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and inherited millions of dollars and real estate. Love him or hate him he’s not remotely “blue collar”.
at last he knows a balance sheet and actually worked for a living in a capitalist society and does not regale us with stories of "around the kitchen table with Dad" tryin to pas as a blue collar supporter. without union money Biden would be nowhere
Yes, he was born into a rich family but his father put him to work. Trump is no slouch. He works. He understands and respects those people who do real work. They know it and respond to him. Ever watch his rallies? He speaks to the working middle class and they know it.
While I don't see Trump as you do, I don't demonize him, either. One thing many people responded to was his fearlessness in saying what he chose. He does also treat blue collar workers with respect, long overdue. I can understand his appeal. It is cynically misrepresented by his opposition.
LOL! Trump wouldn't piss on you if you were in fire.
He wasn't at the Trump/White Nationalist March in Charlottesville, was he?
Yeah, didn't manage to go to Capitol with all supporters like he said he would. Stayed back, watched it on TV.
The only thing that's pretty obvious is almost half of America got played for some suckered by life-long con artist.
You may not be aware you have been captured by the mass formation. You should try to learn what has been done to you. I highly recommend Mattias Desmet's book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism."
Plus, Trump was (is) a businessman NOT a politician, which inflamed most all politicians both Right & Left (hence the RINOS & Liz Chaney types).
Trump has no filter. If it’s in his head it’s out his mouth! He openly without shame pisses people off. He doesn’t come close to having a politician personality. He’s like a bull in a China shop. He’s a loudmouth blowhard sending out too many mean tweets, and said the quiet part out loud.
He didn’t pander to a base (like politicians do so well). He didn’t care if you liked him, but he cares about America! You were either with him, or against him, or you voted for him in 2016 because up against Hillary most people couldn’t stomach her nor wanted another Clinton, or Bush for that matter!
Hillary is a good example of an out of touch politician She didn’t even campaign in some rural areas where “deplorable, gun toting, Bible carrying” people live and work. Trump did.
But the elite Left wasn’t having any of it, and brought out ‘ole Joe from the basement. They propped him up and knew they could use his name recognition to attract uninformed voters + they could manipulate him so Obama could have his 3rd term.
I wasn’t a fan of Trumps, but good lord I miss his trying to “Make America Great Again”. Please tell me WHY that term was (still is) so offensive?? How’s Biden’s “Build Back Better” working out?
On a personal note, my retirement (investment) account has dropped 35% under Biden. At this rate I may be forced to vote Democrat, so I qualify for their Marxist government programs to take care of me, because the Left is telling me Republicans are going to do away with my Social Security AND push me off a cliff! Typical pathetic
scare tactics.
Lol....
What were "the quiet parts out loud?"
An entire multi-paragraph post praising Trump..
"But I wasn't a fan of Trumps...."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/us/politics/republicans-social-security-medicare.amp.html
Wait for it Naomi all the TDS sufferers are going to weigh in now!
Fun, fun, fun.
Listen? Why does anyone who knows it all (definition of most of the libs I know) need to listen to anyone else?
Tom, so true. If you already know it all then the world desperately needs your shining pearls of wisdom. Sadly the Dems only pearls are Racist! Fascist! Nazi! Terf! And then they wonder why nobody likes them, poor dears :)
I now live in Oregon, IL 100 miles west of Chicago--EXACTLY my reaction from living out here.
And that is why we have the electoral college. Without if, every national election would be decided by the idiots living in NYC, LA, DC, Chicago, etc.
YES!!!
Lol.
Yes...best to have it decided by idiots living in Cullman, AL.
I think a good solution would be if you are a "Welfare state" (i.e. suck up more tax dollars than you contribute) your vote should count 1/2 as much.
I wish someone could articulate more clearly what those "concerns" are - a lot if seems like amorphous "cultual" issues and generalized resentment, which is pretty unclear messaging.
I kinda assume the sane people in PA know how to drive in two lane country roads.
It’s become cliche around here. People driving expensive new cars doing 35 in a 55 zone, slamming on the brakes at every mild curve but well past the normal “learning to drive” age, inevitably turning into one of the new high priced subdivisions that have sprouted in old corn fields.
I know the story. They sold their overpriced homes in PA/CT/MD/NY/etc. and moved here to spend the proceeds. They complain in check out lines that we don’t have XYZ stores or ABC brands. They complain about our accents and yards and animals and weather.
My mouth filter has slipped a couple of times and I’ve told a few to take their sorry asses back where they came from. We don’t want them here.
That old Robin Williams routine about having bazookas in the front bumper has become my reality
Live in Northern California and went up to Tahoe last spring for a weekend and up there the locals have bumper stickers that say "Go back to the f@#kin' bay". You can tell how they really feel up there. I am not living or from the Bay Area so I just laughed.
Yeah, Bay Area techies have driven up the price of housing so locals can no longer afford homes or even rent
I also live in NorCal burbs. but I see people talking red but voting blue
Things about to change with this election! The talking Red I think will be voting red they are sick and tired of the blue.
Same here. My tiny town has an Indivisible branch.
Kermit Gosnell
Does anything else need to be said about Philly?
Tell me about 2020 and all those Philly precincts that had more than 100% of their registered voters voting. Hmmm...fraud anyone?
They're still at it. Reports yesterday are saying 254K ballots were sent to unverified voters. They have a weird law that puts verification on the counties instead of on the election commission. In effect, anyone in the world could send in ballots.
Yip they still at it
It needs to be said over and over, until even a few Democrats start to understand.
Democrats will be relentless and myopic in positioning themselves to win the seat back in four years.” Maybe that’s part of the problem; they should turn their attention to the tedious and conflict-prone area of governing. Where people even of different parties can have good ideas worth pursuing. Dividing people into friends and enemies and doing what your friends say and punishing your enemies. Not that both parties can’t be guilty of that, but there are few Rs running big cities. Let’s face it, if these elections are close, people in the other party are your constituents and should be listened to, at least.
Of course, everyone should be listened to.. point being, calling half the voters stupid and immoral when you ultimately need to work together is not going to be successful governance.
Most politicians aren’t in it for their district or state - it’s become all about power and money. They’re in it for themselves.
Bill Burr’s “Philadelphia Incident”. This is side splittingly funny. Here ya go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jMhoGUiIkk
OMG I've heard about it and just watched it. Thanks for the link. Now that's the way you deal with idiots and if the Democrat Party had even an ounce of Burr's honesty and courage their Party wouldn't be ruining this great country of ours. If Burr were writing this response he'd close with something like this. "What you weak kneed pandering Democrats need to do is throw pc out the window for a day or two and clean house on these idiots who are running your Party you morons!"
WOW!
That is a true Burr Classic! Many, was he wound up at that crowd of Philly folks. Gave 'em what they needed but it no doubt went over their small heads
I agree! Writing from safe, clean and orderly Williams Township, PA! Full of friendly, hard-working people, most of whom--apart from the new NYC refugees (the ones with the "Fetterman" signs on their front lawns)--are good shots.
I hear ya, brother. Former Hazleton coal cracker here. You can draw an arc with the center in Philly and extend from the Delaware River near you counterclockwise around to the Pa-MD state line .... to the North and west is sanity. Otherwise is Democrat and Death.
So true! Why Fetterman is even close in the polling proves it! I’d rather elect any one of my neighbors—chosen randomly—instead of Fetterman or for that matter anyone else in the entire Philly city administration + the DA.
Bucks County is becoming liberal after the NYers ran with their tails between their legs durig covid.
Becoming? Bucks was a bare vote or two from Prog Heaven for lotsa years now. The pansy NYers will just cement that delusion.
I don't understand how otherwise intelligent people cannot make the connection between their voting patterns and the consequences of these elections. The main line of PA used to be waspy and now it's woke. You can also same the same for southern NH. They ruin everything.
Southern NH is easy to explain: MA folks with excess cash can make the move to somewhat cheaper and more livable terrain. But they carry their stupidity with them. Plus the general urge of Northeasterners to be woke.
That same thing applies to the Mainline folks and the Bucks folks in PA. They live in an intellectual and political vacuum, so long as they can "hedge" their moola they are happy. F the rest of the Commonwealth and the Country. Little by little, if the Republican are smart - a thing that has yet to be demonstrated (Mastriano anyone?) - that could change. However, the cognitive disfunction of the eastern PA folks who see the rest of the Commonwealth as a bunch of country Fs, makes that entirely unlikely. They vote as they do to distinguish themselves from that rabble.
The best thing that could happen is for the folks outside the Philly/Mainline/eastern PA locales to split from PA and become a new state. Western NY is the same thing. Won't happen which is why PA will be purple for decades to come and the NYers in the north and west of the state are just gonna eat that bowl of crap the Downstate keeps feeing them.
Oh, and it would help greatly if Donald Trump just STFU. Trump is why Mastriano is the Republican nominee for Gov and OZ has so much trouble defeating a clearly - pre-stroke - a-hole. Anyone without OZ's baggage could have sent Fetterman packing much earlier and not need a stoke to do it.
Are bibles and guns not popular in PA?
I disagree. Parenting is the key issue. Bring back “in loco parentis”, Latin for "in the place of a parent" refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent.
No. That is what the idiots who support pre-pubescent medical intervention and drag queen story hours rely on. The progressives have for years bemoaned trickle down economics and then employed trickle down social programs. They have not a single solution other than throw money at the problem of the hour.
Controlling student behavior in lieu of absent parenting not their sexual preferences is the goal.
Not really. "Absent parenting" is in the eye of the beholder. Usually teachers or holier than thou moms who think they know it all. There are an abundance of remedies for abusive or neglectful parents.
Agree!
Here in TX we don’t love to see those Cali plates. A woman moved to our very tiny neighborhood with Cal plates on her Tesla. She doesn’t like to wave at us (we walk the dogs daily) and never slows down. Not cool. I know lots of other Texas people don’t love the Californians bringing their political ideas here.
It is kind of bewildering. Why leave California for a place very different from CA and then want this new place to become like the place you left? Unless you think the California way of life should spread out to other places, I guess.🤔
That was the fallacy of democrats importing “illegals” that they assumed would be good plantation dwellers and vote D in gratitude for the rest of their lives.
That is finally melting away being culturally, if not a gangbanger, the “migrants” are now gravitating towards their natural state of conservatism.
Many fled the end results of leftism, hence your question; why recreate what they fled?
White educated suburban liberals are a different beast entirely.
Their arrogance won’t let them think for a moment that they’ve been wrong on so many levels.
They just relocate to a more comfortable “red area” where their stupidity festers, comfortably, safely.
Taxes. For many they want what they want when they want it and how they had it, but they want it on the cheap.
They move for the cheaper housing, not because they’ve drawn a logical line from their political votes to the unmanageable cost of living in California.
Right, but wouldn't one reasonably hope they would understand why the housing is cheaper than in California and let go of the policies that made it that way.
Nah, Cali libs can't think anything this complicated. Vote blue no matter who, even if it has a brain damage.
Many move from California to Texas because their employer relocated. They have no concept of why there is a job for them in Texas but not in California.
lol, that's just what people do. Especially if they have money and resources. A million people moved from the Midwesten states to Phoenix, Arizona in the 70s and 80s and busily set about reconstituting the culture of Iowa and Minnesota and Indiana, etc. The places that they had just left.
For that matter, it's possible to find native-born California Bay Area folk- now in their 70, and older- who will tell you about how much their part of the state changed when the "East Coast people" and "New Yorkers" began showing up in large numbers in the late 1960s and afterward.
The bottom line is: we're one nation. We need to look out for each other and take care of each other. And not lean too hard, for being strangers. My rule of thumb when moving to a new location was always to put more on the table than I took from it. Just slightly into the credit part of the ledger is sufficient. That's a modest and reasonable guideline, and no one deserves trouble if they meet that standard. But if they don't, they need to get back to where they once belonged.
She's been trained, probably all of her life, to be hateful and cynical. It's going to take a while to cleanse that filth from her little brain. May never happen. I, myself, grew up in Oklahoma, son of eastern transplants, and in our household there was a lot of joking and contempt for the "rednecks". Shameful.
Yikes! Sounds like a new wave of segregation, Mandi. Instead of white vs black, it's now red vs blue. It must be said that there are millions of conservatives who live in California - just like there are millions of liberals living in Texas..
Political ideas don't stop at state lines.
Why shouldn’t people move to/live in a place that aligns with their political values? I myself am originally from a very, very, very conservative Republican family in California, but moved here to Texas as a new bride 25 years ago. It was very different then. I know people in the Dallas area who moved there from California because they wanted to live in a more conservative area than the Austin area. We are very happy that our rural area was redistricted to put us into the conservative state district, compared to the people closer to the big city, where population has boomed in the past few years, which has a very blue rep.
I only commented on your last line, in which you say you don't want Californians bringing their political ideas to Texas. But as you yourself admit, there are conservatives in California, your family for example - so it stands to reason that the many Californians moving to Texas might be conservatives themselves..
Interestingly, a study of blue Californians moving to red Texas shows that, within 3 years, they move right, because they see it works.
Coastal Dixieland native here. NY, NJ and PA are our Big Three transplants here. MANY are fired up conservatives who moved here with a reason and a purpose after enduring dumb Democrat policies. Of course we’ve got the other sort too. This election will tell us the ratios.
I sure hope you’re right!
Don't be too fast with running us off the road. Three of my friends just moved to TN from NJ and are as conservative as can be. And my son just moved to FL. He's embarrassed that he still has his Jersey plates.
I have soft heart for Jersey girls 😍
I have cousins and friends in Jersey so don’t worry 😊
Your son is smart!
That's heatlthy.
NE? Nebraska? Thank you for clarifying.
Sorry. North East.
You did clarify with "the" before NE. "the Nebraska" would make no sense.
True but it wasn’t terribly clear. I’ve no problem clarifying.
Are you down here in Florida? I feel the same way!
Not quite that far south.
I live in a red county adjacent to a blue city in a red state. When I see cars with NY and CA tags I just smile. They are typically refugees coming as additional enforcements.
I'm from MA I feel you! :)
They may be escaping the scene in those states.
100%. I visited Portland about 7 years ago and was chased down the street by a crazed homeless man. Despite its excellent food and wine scene, The city was so dirty and scary. The hotel staff told us where we needed to avoid walking in the tourist areas. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Total anarchy! I won’t go back unless things change. I can’t even imagine living there.
Haven’t been in Portland since the 80s but it sounds a lot like Mogadishu.
Last time we were in Portland was 2010. We had a limited amount of time there, so the only place downtown we stopped was Powell's Books. We didn't see any of the stuff people are talking about now. But based on what we used to see when we visited more often (when we lived in Oregon back in the early 90s), it's easy to imagine how it has spiraled out of control.
Please tell me she’s not moving to NC!
Hey, we're not all bad. Doing our best to turn things around. NYC is hopeless, but in CT, my full time home, we've got some competitive races going. Fingers crossed to reverse the lunacy. If not........"Hi, y'all.............."
If I lose my patience and run you off the road, I apologize in advance.
@Bruce Miller I’ve read enough of your posts to welcome you to Texas. 😜 Come on down, though depending on where in Texas you’ll need to buy more flip flops and less snow boots. 😁
We got the nicest compliment when we moved from Maryland to Texas, “you guys moved here, did community things, and never mentioned how to change things to how Maryland did things.” We ran away from Maryland because of all the insane rules, regulations, why do that to Texas?
Ah Texas, land of Big Country dreams. Thanks but horses seem to hate me. Have been thrown on desert in Arizona, a creek bed in Colorado and even a mountain trail in St. Barth (ok that one served me right). So much for cowboy fantasies......
OK Bruce, but promise you’ll come and dilute out the crazies in Asheville.
Asheville? No thanks. But not a bad idea to let them all congregate in one place like some science experiment gone very badly wrong. Think Kurt Russell's "escape" flicks.
Agree!!! My crazy leftist sister who believes in all of this nonsense & thinks she's the smart & tolerant one but is a bloody foot-soldier of the intolerant marxists who took over the Dem party......lives in Asheville.
I have the same sister...in Baltimore of course...
Five years ago, when we first escaped to NC from California, Asheville was THE place to visit when our tiny community seemed too small. Now, it's the place to avoid at all costs. Such a shame! We left California to LEAVE California. What's wrong with these people!
We lived in Eugene for 2 yrs in the 80’s. We were in Asheville last fall and we thought OMG it’s Eugene!
or FL!
Lucky winner :D
They are not irrational. They are quite literally brainwashed. Their critical thinking skills have been purposely destroyed. "Progressive" education K-12, then dystopian insanity in college.
It is almost Stockholm Syndrome.
As a former Seattle resident (I moved north when the first inklings of crazy reared their head) and continuing Republican, I find it laughable that anyone can think this isn't totally a Democratic failure. The City is run by Democrats, the County is run by Democrats and the state is run by Democrats - how can anyone seriously believe that Republicans played any part of these failures?
These people cannot admit that they might have been wrong. Everything is the Republicans' fault, even things they had nothing to do with.
This is the saddest part of it. I know quite a few (well to do) people who have relocated from California or Oregon for both financial and personal safety reasons, but that didn’t stop them from taking all their idiotic leftist fetishes to their new home, where they keep voting for the Democrats.
By the way, imagine what kind of absolute landslide we would see in the elections if the Republicans would have been able to come up with a consistent slate of moderates.
We have been worried about that in Florida too. We have about 1,000 people a day moving here. However, so far they seem to realize WHY they came to Florida and are registering as Republicans. In 2018 when DeSantis ran for governor there were approximately 350,000 more Democrats than Republicans in Florida. God help us, we nearly got Gillum for governor. It was so close.
Now there are 306,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.
Moderate Republicans? The Republican base is sick and tired of the Mitt Romneys and the Lisa Murchowski's. If we have a real Republican primary, the waffling, appeasing "moderate" Republicans will lose every time.
Moderate Republicans might as well be Democrats. They stand for nothing and are afraid of their own shadows.
To me, a moderate Republican is not somebody who rubberstamps the “leftist consensus”, but somebody like Drazan, somebody who can win, as opposed to an extremist who opens the state Capitol doors to armed protesters who pepper-spray cops and attack journalists (as per the article). Generally, no loonies who can’t get elected but got their badge from Trump for endorsing his dark narcissistic elucubrations about the “Big Steal”.
The "extremists" who opened the doors were CAPITOL HILL POLICE. Do you get it?
Like I said Naomi TDS!
Remember before there was TDS there was Bush Derangement Syndrome.
I go by what the article says. As far as cultists, loonies and assorted extremists in the ranks and often at the front of Republicans - if you don’t see them, you must be blind. What matters though is that the rest of Americans see it, so our chances of getting rid of the far left are diminished. Beyond that, it’s just talk.
Yeah, those nasty extremists. The ones who go to work every day, raise families, attend church, pay taxes, and don't break into their neighbors cars or homes. You betcha, we are just full of them.
Naomi, I am an Aussie, so I am merely an observer of US politics. But I have a question:
you say they most of your imports to Florida are 'registering as Republicans'.
Why does a citizen register their party affiliation? Is it optional? What is the benefit of registering? Is voting in the US a 'secret ballot' ?
There are other voting systems from the traditional primary process. California has the jungle primary which guarantees they will remain a one party state. Alaska has ranked choice voting. This is a complicated system that just about guarantees the third or fourth tier candidate will get elected.
It is optional to register your party affiliation. However, if you wish to vote in the primary to choose a specific party candidate for the general election, you must be registered for that party in most states.
Well summarized.
I, too, would like to see more moderate Republicans, because I am an independent. It's a debatable line. Sometimes supporting consensus positions that represent most people is the way to go. Other times, one has to stand for unpopular principle, when there is reason to believe it is in everyone's long term best interest.
If either party came up with a slate of moderates, it would be fine with me.
Personally, I am not ready for revolution. I am encouraged by cultural changes toward tolerance, like with gay and civil rights. I am discouraged by deficit spending like there is no tomorrow, and weaponizing identity ideologies, and violence.
The current crop of America First candidates would have been considered moderates back before Bill Clinton. Now the media has branded them as radicals. There is nothing radical about wanting law and order, treating the drug addiction of the homeless, securing our borders, not getting involved in foreign wars that are not in our national interest, balancing the budget, or spending less, honoring the flag, not wanting our children sexually neutered or sterilized, not letting our kindergartners be indoctrinated into the LBGT movement. Not exposing our children to drag queen story hour, wanting American history taught in schools, wanting schools to teach children the 3 R's instead of politicizing them, allowing parents to know what their children are being taught. I could go on.
Tell me which of these positions are not moderate, and are not in line with traditional American values.
Good points, all.
Yes, the kiddie drag shows perplex me. It is not the same as being for equal rights for LGBT+ people. Imagine the outrage if cis-males sponsored strip shows for little girls. (Maybe children's beauty pageants are that, like the sort poor little JonBenet Ramsey participated in. Those pageants do seem creepy.)
If you see some of the children's library books featuring illustrated guides on how to give LGBT+ blow-jobs, the hypocrisy is stunning. No way would, again, adult males illustrating for young girls how to give bj's, be acceptable. (This brings up the issue of demonizing older, white males, but that is a whole other topic.)
So it is not gayness or transness that is the issue. That is a red herring.
It seems to me that some people just want to find a new boundary to transgress for transgression's sake. They seem to want to feel as though they are on the frontier of establishing rights, instead of acknowledging that many of these battles have been won by previous generations, and that this is something to celebrate.
Traditional American values include what were once revolutionary concepts, liberty and equal rights. We approached those ideals more closely by the late 20th century. What a surprise the 21st is.
You owe it to yourself to read Christopher Rufo's in depth article on drag queen story hour and why the Left is going after the children.
https://christopherrufo.com/the-real-story-behind-drag-queen-story-hour/?mc_cid=532dc146d3&mc_eid=ba67974cb6
Reading, thx.
Alice K, always nice to be preached at with other people’s reading lists. I agree Republicans are lining up very unpalatable candidates in some places and pursuing some extreme policies in others (abortion ban after 6 weeks). They’ve definitely got some dumb ones. You’re the politically homeless and it sucks. I can split US politics into two issues: the economy and the culture wars, and for me both of those are an easy R even if the guy or gal is a partial dumbass.
Abortion is back in the states where it always should have been. Each state's legislature can decide after debate where they want to set the boundaries and limits. Florida chose 15 weeks based on when the fetus feels pain.
If you live in a state and are not happy with the limits they have legislatively set on abortion then mount a campaign and win enough adherents to get the law changed. That's they way it's done in a representative democracy.
Yes, me too. I want impassioned pragmatism for all Americans. Ultimately I think it boils down to the quality of the electorate. The politicians are just a reflection of the sad state of voters in the country. Garbage in, garbage out.
Following that thought, maybe there is a fundamental problem with democracy dominated by two parties. The electorate do vote on the nominees in primaries, so they/we are guilty in that regard. Yet when it comes time to vote, I do not find viable choices on either side. Rock and hard place!
Maybe ranked choice voting will help. It seems to scare a lot of politicians.
Yes, I agree. Thank you for resisting my pessimism. I am also frustrated with the current "Pepsi or Coke" paradigm. They are really just two elites fighting with each other, while we are caught in the middle.
IMO, RCV is great if You want the third or fourth best candidate to win. That's why Yang and Co. are in favor. Only way they *could* get elected.
Yes I agree. If we had someone like an Eisenhower to lead the country and was interested in competent governance, the GOP would be much more appealing to me.
Eisenhower was a brilliant manager. Understated, humble, but NOT moderate. He seemed that way because he had such a sweet manner.
If I recall my history correctly, Ike was considered an amiable, golf-playing dunce by the government/media conglomerate of the 1950s. It took decades for him to be reconsidered.
(It does seem that, when being compared to the current Republican president, every old Republican president rises in estimation as a much saner alternative.)
That's correct. The media dislikes Republicans. Ike was a brilliant manager. I grew up in the 1950's and it was an idyllic time to be a child.
I grew up in Brooklyn. It was like a small town. Everyone knew everyone and all their friends and relatives. It was safe. There was no crime. No one had to lock their doors.
I read a biography of Eisenhower this year. He was a remarkable man. He is underrated.
Hi bio was great. And he was a formidable intellect, in spite of being a Midwestern rube like me :)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?15026-1/president-dwight-eisenhower-farewell-address
Yes, he was a prolific reader. He was well educated and intelligent. He quickly stood out in every command he was assigned to because he was able to get along with everyone, pull people together seemingly effortlessly and accomplish the goal at that time.
He was the right person to be Supreme Commander in World War 2. No one else could have managed it the way he did. He dealt with some mighty twitchy personalities and managed to hold it all together and win the war. As the war was ending, when the concentration camps were liberated, he brought in the Army photography units to thoroughly document the horror they had discovered. He knew at some point in the future, without the thorough proof, there would be those who would deny it had ever happened. As we see today.
He was a deeply humble and honest man. He kept his personal political views to himself. Both parties wanted to draft him as their candidate in 1952. He chose the Republican Party.
He was the best of America, a decent, God fearing, midwestern farm boy.
I hope she hasn't moved to Florida. We love our state and want to keep it liveable.
I used to love the show Portlandia and yes, I know that it was a parody but I have friends who lived there and they said the vibe was pretty accurate. It was as if NPR took over a city; now the vibe is a post apocalyptic war zone. In two years, nothing has been rebuilt and all attempts are thwarted. "They" want it to remain this way. Finally(!) the citizens are fed up and I pray they give Republicans a chance.
Oh, I know! I loved Portlandia, too!!! It poked such gentle humor from the inside.
I agree, it really did perfectly represent the vibe of Portland several years ago.
Then came Antifa. No humor allowed. Physical violence from grimly humorless, performative upper middle class young people. It is too sad and vicious and hateful to make fun.
My progressive friends also lie by seeking a fake reason why “republicans are responsible.”
It is the same kind of magical thinking that had Druids flinging maidens down a well in hopes of having a bounteous harvest.
Yep, both were lovely cities in the early aughts.
The fundamental problem with progressive policies is that they are founded are in conflict with human nature. They are built on a fantastical utopian vision that is in conflict with reality and everything that history teaches us.
The problem with progressives is that their mentally unable to adjust. Once committed to an idea they are never able to admit it might have been a bad idea and instead push to double down on that bad idea as a solution to any failure. They are never able to grasp that an idea that sounds good in theory can fail when confronted with reality.
In some ways, they are like the academic economists that could never understand how completely unchecked free trade could actually produce bad results.
Progressives make policy based on how they wish the world was. Conservatives make policy based on how the world actually is. Both are valuable. The key here is BOTH. Everything works best when both views are working in tandem to siphon off the excess of any one ideology.
Sounds nice but you're advocating a compromise with insanity.
No thank you.
I don’t disagree with that. But I suspect most democrats don’t love the direction the party is taking but are so caught up with party loyalty they just hope this insanity is part of the recipe that creates utopia. My hope is they all have their stupid lawn signs up but vote red at the ballot box in secret.
That's even sadder. The groupthink is so powerful that people fear ostracism for merely pointing out lunacy.
They’re brainwashed to think that way. When I was liberal I literally though conservatives were evil people. I don’t think liberals are bad people. Just misguided. It seems to me that all the people that advocate for these terrible policies have no ability to think for themselves. ‘The TV and Facebook said I should think this way so I do.’ I remember basing my entire political stance on Jon Stewart And the daily show.
Hi,
Please help me understand how someone who believes complete strangers are “evil people” based on nothing but a TV host’s “comedy” routine aren’t by definition bad people?
Is it not wrong to be prejudiced?
I have nothing but contempt for Democrat politicians. I have trouble mustering sympathy for people who vote for Democrat politicians but I don’t assume they’re ALL evil. They desire evil for me and mine and I’ll resist them at every opportunity but because I don’t know them I can’t assume they are individually evil.
How is that not the very definition of prejudice?
That must be a sterling, highly quotable quote that so nails the times we live in: "Groupthink is so powerful that people fear ostracism for merely pointing out lunacy". Brilliant! And too bloody true, sadly.
That is the point I am at too. I see the wisdom of Felina's point but until I see some contrition and acknowledgment that another POV exists there is no compromise by me.
Someone has to make that first offer of contrition. Someone needs the humility and courage to acknowledge the partial truths that can be found in most points of view. This is a difficult switch to make. But it’s the beginning of Truth and Love arising in our unhappy world.
Very much agree. Unfortunately, studies on such things show Democrats are much less likely to listen to a differing opinion. Democrat college students in much greater numbers than Republican would refuse to room with an opposing party member, much less date one.
I agree.
My side has been dismissed as desperately clinging to guns and Bibles since 2008, warned that they go low since 2012, called deplorable by their next presidential candidate, had their people told to get up in our faces since 2016, had our Cengressmen and staffers shot and shot at, had a Senators repeatedly accosted and one's ribs broken, had a planned assassination of Supreme Court Justice who was nominated by a Republican, and have several conservative Justices that can't live at home now. What exactly has the conservative side done?
Isn’t it called “insanity” when you keep doing the same thing and get the same results?
The enticing thing about progressives is that their intentions seem so “nice” while conservatives are viewed as “mean” because we expect people to (gasp!) work and be responsible. Weak people are going to like progressives because they excuse their failings, even enable them.
Thomas Sowell writes about the two visions in "A Conflict of Vision." The Unconstrained Vision that human nature is essentially good so that men are morally perfectible. That there is an ideal solution to every problem so that compromise is not acceptable. The Constrained Vision is that man is inherently self-interested and that there are no ideal solutions only trade offs.
Tom Sowell should be required reading in every high school.
Indeed.
Thomas Sowell... an invaluable American.
But would you advicate compromise with Hitler... or with Putin? Sometimes compromise is simply not possible, and you then have to defend yourself and finally defeat evil.
If the world had compromised with what came before each of those regimes, neither Hitler nor Putin would have come to power.
"The fundamental problem with progressive policies is that they are founded are in conflict with human nature. They are built on a fantastical utopian vision that is in conflict with reality and everything that history teaches us." THIS. I have argued this for years.
"The problem with progressives is that their mentally unable to adjust...... they double down on that bad idea." I couldn't agree more with you, which is why I don't like they idea of these cult minded virtue signalers fleeing to red states. I'm actually at a point now where we should concede that this disease infected Party is terminally ill and that we should just divide the country into Left and Right. Let them run their half into the ground and allow the rest of us to live normal and peaceful lives. Yes, I know I know, the Republicans have their share of problems but in my unworkable country R we will welcome all moderate thinking people, we'll allow for diverse opinions and marginalize any radical faction. And that is the problem with the current Democrat Party, the once marginalized radicals are now in power and the rest of the Party is "mentally unable to adjust."
Yep, the fallacy of "man is perfectable."
Which goes right back to the Garden of Eden and satan’s temptation to make Adam and Eve as gods. For centuries mankind struggled with that idea. Then along came Nietsche and, well, here we are in our sad Godless mess.
NC - Nietzsche wrote that when God is dead we each become god. That’s where we are now. The logical end of unbridled godness will be anarchy because millions of gods can’t all be omnipotent at the same time. That’s why leftists turn on each other and why the puritanical goalposts keep moving. Every time a leftist cancels someone he gains that person’s power. It’s like Highlander - in the end there can be only one. Or should I say One.
To quote Dostoyevsky,
When there is no God, everything is permitted.
Yup, same thing. Unfortunately 'permitted' and 'good' aren't always synonymous. Unfettered freedom means no boundaries, which means one person intruding on and therefore limiting another's freedom. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who had a good quote on that - something about, if it doesn't break my leg nor pick my pocket.
I don’t think Nietsche thought god being dead was a good thing
Yes! The Bible says clearly humans are not inherently good. If we just listen to the ancient wisdom we learn how to properly govern and be governed. To think that man can reach perfection or that we could have a utopia is foolhardy. But to think we can do both without God is laughable.
Wrung - you just described arrested development. Magical thinking and irrational stubbornness. Leftists have never mentally grown up.
Top 2 progressive responses when their ideas are put into action and fail yet again:
1) It didn’t work because we weren’t committed enough/didn’t go far enough
2) Things would have been even worse if we hadn’t done it
Rinse, repeat
The complete failure of Democrat logic escapes me.
The diesel shortage on the east coast (coming soon to your area) was predicted at my dinner table after CA and the feds decided that their Utopia requires everyone to drive electric cars and gasoline will be outlawed.
Why would any refinery make repairs to an installation when the powers that be have announced intentions to criminalize your industry?
If the government told you your house is being taken by eminent domain and you’ll be forced to leave it in two years are you going to go through with the kitchen remodel? Upgrade your AC? Of course not!
Hence we’ve lost millions of gallons of refining capacity. Duh.
Legalize heroin and meth smoking yet surprised to watch your city/state devolve into an open air cesspool-- there’s a relationship between the two.
The only word I can think of for people who think this way: juvenile.
It isn't logic, it's ego and feeling. Nearly every Democrat policy is driven as some point by, "it's not fair."
Not "this is a great idea that works well in the long run" but rather, "we need radical change now because things aren't fair."
That's why the young radicals in Seattle and Portland can't hold substantive conversations about policy, but they can wave flags, shoot up, and chant nonsense with passion.
It is also... money. Billions of taxpayer dollars are going into relatively few hands who run 'green'(which really means very dirty) industries that produce failure. It really is a crime as far as I am concerned.
Juvenile delinquents.
A thousand likes Marie.
I agree except juvenile may be too advanced. More like toddlers still fascinated by shiny objects.
Preach, sis
I am totally stealing your kitchen remodeling/eminent domain analogy. It's perfect.
(To think more like a finance person, if your business is going to die, you are obligated to extricate as much cash out of it as possible before it goes under, to keep the shareholders off your back. Kind of like what Shell, etc. is doing right now.)
Yeah it’s not all that technical but it gets the point across
They don’t know how many petrochemicals are required to make those electric cars (for example to mine copper that goes in all of them). It’s magical thinking.
Do you think it's legality that keeps most people from smoking crack?
Between the prospects of jail and facing their parents, my kids have not and are very unlike to ever smoke crack.
Same with 99.9% of everyone else i suspect
My question for the common sense staff is, “how did this particular brand of progressive politics become so ensconced in American institutions?”
I left my career as a Southeastern academic physician partially due to the internal pressure to conform to progressive medical views and moved to a rural part of Georgia that I only half jokingly refer to as Trumpistan. I am a political moderate and was actually nervous about landing in such a conservative hotbed.
Not 6 months into my new job our hospital administration announces Ibram Kendi as a guest speaker. Our catchment area and hospital staff is almost 90% rural white Appalachian types or Hispanic immigrants, two groups I view as relatively anti-progressive in a political sense.
I cannot square how this could have happened spontaneously, but I tend to view conspiracy theories with trepidation.
Does anyone have a rational explanation as to how much of the power structure running American organizations came to believe such a non-functional and maladaptive worldview? I enjoy the coverage of how this is a problem in Portland and other areas, but what I’m really searching for and would be interested in from the common sense view is: how and why it came to be.
The administrators who run your hospital are university educated. They are totatlitarian by nature and are brainwashed to bring this crap everywhere they go. Since you area is poor and white they guilt the others into going along or else they brand them as racist. It's extortion, basically.
Women administrators in every institution are largely responsible for this. Women are particularly susceptible to social fads and religious manias and that is what this nonsense is (covid fanaticism too). Not to say men don’t participate of course, but the social contagion aspect wouldn’t be possible without a largely female class of administrators with the interest in spreading Goodthink and the power to impose it.
"Men" only participate for one reason. And the soy boys who think it works end up being reviled by the very women spouting that nonsense. Just desserts, sort of.
Oh for heaven's sake. Ok let's run with your theory for a minute and say women are susceptible to social fads and religious manias. But who the fuck are the sources of all these shit? Men! Kendi is a man. Fauci, a man, started your covid fanaticism. Men don't just "participate". They're the ones who start every kind of these bullshit, and put the money behind it. When women don't listen to men, you whine and say it's women's fault. When women listen to men and amplify their words, you whine and say it's women's fault. So which is it?
If your theory that women are susceptible to social fads, how about you tell men to stop starting up nonsense fads and start up only good fads, so those do-gooder women would only ever spread good fads?
While we're on the subject of susceptibility to fads and religious manias, I suppose women are also responsible for the 9/11 attack, and all those boys and men becoming Taliban fighters.
Yeah it's extra lame, as you point out, that most women are little followers and will swallow the evil BS that powerful men think up and spread it around like obedient little footsoldiers. Come on ladies. Stop it. Grow a pair. Think for yourselves.
Your comment isn't super coherent so I can't respond to all of it but I will say that there is no such thing as "good fads." And when midwit status conscious women are in charge, as they are, we are in for serious decline as a culture. Here, perhaps this excerpt from another piece by the insightful substacker Eugyppius might help you get your mind around this concept:
"There’s probably some reason to be sceptical of Charlton’s concept of the creative genius, but he’s dead right about the malign influence of Head Girls like Oster. Modern social institutions—particularly schools—have been caught for decades in an escalating spiral of harsh selection for conscientiousness and conformity. Since 2000 especially, Head Girls have cemented their dominance across a great many bureaucratic institutions and white-collar professions, and they have used their growing influence and seniority, above all, to recruit and promote more Head Girls like themselves. The problem is that traits like conscientiousness correlate not at all with raw intelligence and ability. Thus, our world has come to be steered by fleets of extremely agreeable, deeply concerned, highly productive and overly socialised Emily Osters—midwits who have very few original thoughts, and who make up for that by caring a lot about what other conformist midwits of similar status think about them.
There’s nothing wrong with Head Girls, when their worst tendencies are counterbalanced by a sufficient number of disagreeable, intelligent, and less conformist colleagues. When they become the predominant personality type in newsrooms, faculties and government offices, though, you start to have serious problems. Then, your schools and your media organisations come to be dominated by committees and meetings, by the avoidance of open conflict, by the constant erection of and sheltering within consensus positions, and by preference cascades kicked off by clamorous organised minorities. All of these characteristic symptoms of government by Head Girl are intolerable to everyone who isn’t a Head Girl, and talented people with any other options at all will ultimately leave their influential positions in Head Girl-dominated institutions, driving the Head Girls to ever greater ascendancy.
One of the reasons things like lockdowns and mass vaccination frenzies have become possible in the first place, is the uniformity of outlook and opinion among the governing elite. When everybody, from university professors to the minister president of Bavaria to municipal police administrators, believes that with enough social distancing we can eradicate SARS-2, and that the unvaccinated are responsible for prolonging the pandemic, the result is a powerful if erratic and ever-shifting social tyranny. Social media technologies have been particularly noxious for the consensus formation of the Head Girls, widening the range of issues on which they have functionally identical opinions and enforcing conformity more thoroughly than was ever before possible. And should one of their runaway preference cascades go off the rails and destroy society, they’ll rapidly reunite around the new consensus position, that nobody could’ve known any better and all the worst offenders—especially their friends and colleagues—acted in good faith with the knowledge that was available at the time."
Good point QX. And the above-mentioned Kendi is also a man.
Kimberle Crenshaw is a woman. Don't underestimate the vileness of either sex, or the creativity.
Agreed - women aren't just mindless fad followers. We can certainly come up with all kinds of BS on our own lol!
People are simply afraid to speak truth. Every sentient being knows that Henry Rogers is nothing but a jive-talking, racist huckster. But, as Dr. Malone pointed out, we are in the midst of a mass formation psychosis, where half of our country has gone full out barking mad.
Jennifer’s comment is correct. It’s not the rural community that you are living and serving in who educated or hired your hospital’s administration. Unfortunately it’s the hospital staff who will be subjected to and coerced into the group think. It will unfortunately pass down to the patient in the form of poor care policy and distracted doctors and nurses worried about saying/doing the wrong thing and then their position is questioned or in jeopardy. For God’s sake can’t we let doctors and nurses do what they do best?
Masterful response, Red. I live in a rural area and my doctor who is originally from Africa regularly prescribed off-treatments such as 'horse de-wormer' for his educated patients. However, in November 2021 his medical board threatened his license if he continued actual medical treatment rather than government mandated treatments such as Remdecivir, etc.
Our institutions are fundamentally corrupt and we need to purge them. Stat.
My husband is a 61 yo physician and doesn’t use pronouns or refer to gender (ENT so not necessary.) best way to avoid complaints.
Because the algorithm forbids that. It truly is dystopian.
Two answers for you. First it is not a conspiracy theory if true. Second, I think your answer is pretty obvious if your hick Appalachian town (I say this with fondness bordering on reverence) is hosting Ibrim Kendi. Your hospital is likely owned by an out of state conglomerate (as most are) and influenced by insurance companies (as all are). The algorithm has dictated that indoctrination is required in your area. And Kendi's pockets need lining. The real question is, who controls the algorithm? You need to believe your lying eyes.
In the grand scheme of things, there is a relatively small group of people that are pushing this. Your DE&I Vice President is going to conferences and workshops that provide guidance on how to grow and maintain the grievance industry. They then make a proposal to the board with the implicit assumption that refusal to participate would be racist. The board approves the speaking fee (shakedown?) to an actual racist like Kendi because they don’t want to be thought of as racists themselves.
It's the product of decades of masterful indoctrination combined with the silencing of white voices through the manipulation of white guilt. Without white guilt these race baiters wouldn't have succeeded in silencing so many intelligent people. It may be too late now because the price one has to pay to begin speaking truth to lies is now a steep on. Let's hope we're on the precipice of the beginning of the end to this hateful and divisive radical takeover of our institutions. These midterms will tell us a lot about how metastasized this cancer is.
The universities are the fountainhead of the culture.
It's likely your hospital administration is highly educated. I'm in grad school and every communication I get is about progressive policies and the school's "opinion" on it. I suspect when I move into the alumni network, it will be the same.
You can start by looking at our institutions of "higher learning". They have been indoctrinating our children with this nonsense for at least a decade, if not two. The fruits of their labors are now coming into positions of authority.
William,
I think the way we select leaders and administrators in our organizations plays a big role. We select people for their intelligence and work ethic; fair enough. But we also select individuals who are ambitious and skilled at small-group politics. There are some traits that would be desirable, but not on the list. Here are some: philosophical (logical and ethical), strategic, knowledgeable about human nature and how big groups behave.
So, our leaders care deeply about what their peers think. Whatever is the fad among that group of people will be implemented widely, but not with depth of insight. Kendi is cool? You get lots of Kendi. Police are immoral? Defund the police. Four feet good! Two feet bad! (Animal Farm reference.)
they push systemic communism in our academic institutions, k-higher Ed. Go to any college campus and you'll find students pushing this crap, taught by their communist teachers (who were taught by communists themselves). I see it in my college's monthly newsletter (Colorado College). Then, they work their way up to the highest points of governments and other institutions, capturing them and pushing their agendas. We need to recapture the schools. I've even seen elementary schools with communist propaganda on their walls. History isn't being taught anymore. at least honest history. The last time I was in a communist country, my friend quietly criticized her government while we waited in line, then looked around terrified that someone heard her. She'd had friends taken away, never heard from again. We've got older friends who escaped this crap from Russia, Bosnia, etc, and see it happening here, to their horror. They try to tell their younger relatives about what's happening, and they won't listen; because their teachers tell them differently and supposedly they are the "experts". The MSM isn't helping either, but that's also captured by the leftists. we have to get them back, and make them balanced. But I just don't know how at this point.
I think that the Department of Education was started under Jimmy Carter. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time? But, I think that it is high time to shut it down and also to have the $$ follow the students not the schools. The fact that Merrick Garland wants to investigate parents who are concerned for their children is beyond terrible. The central control is a problem. And, drag queens in kindergarten??? We once agreed that sexualizing children was not a good thing. And, that keeping secrets from parents was not a good thing. The groomers at school know better?
agreed. this admins weaponizing of the DOJ is horrifying- Biden's admin gaslights us all the time and that one was a doozy. And drag queens in kindergarten is disgusting- i moved to a red state (and i vote accordingly!) and they tried to have it here during their Pride event in our largest city (its blue, lots of college kids (ahem communists) and weirdos). The community around the state rallied and got the drag show shut down as soon as it hit LibsofTikTok. They tried to spin it as anti-LGBTQ etc, but all the sponsors noted that Pride was still supported, but the sexualizing of children shouldn't be. I'm so pissed that they even had to even say that part out loud for the leftists- however they are really idiotic and disgusting, so I really shouldn't even that surprised. In my old town in the Bay Area, I was weird when I didn't want to take my kids to drag story hour! Blue states are the worst. I used to be a democrat, lifelong Californian, but since Obama I've been moving slowly right, especially after foreign (not MSM) news published evidence of his "bug splatting". Never again will I vote blue. They ruined my home state in less than 20 years, and I'll be damned if they ruin the beautiful, kind one I'm in now. We're working hard with the local Repub groups to make sure to get out the RINOs and fake republicans (who are really democrats) and really let voters know what's going on in our schools. we need to change it for the sake of our children's futures
William, I think you want to read Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. It explains the phenomenon at the root.
Can you give a summary?
Sure. The Darwinian Revolution brought into focus the concept that human value systems are based on no reality that is independent of the social interactions of humans as a species. Critical Theory formulates this situation into a worldview where all cultural norms are simply a product of the power structure of the dominant culture, because there are no ultimate criteria of truth legitimizing any particular culture.
Originally Critical Theory was just an academic exercise. But it went on to gain political traction. The political manifestation of this view is that societal changes are brought about by deconstructing the power structure of the current society, which in practice means attacking societal norms around which society is organized. The potency of it lies in the strong psychological impetus humans have to form coalitions along various dimensions of homophily, mostly race and ethnicity. Hence, the anti-white focus.
In other words tear it all down. Never mind that the
generosity and tolerance of the "power structure of the current society" is what allowed you to flourish and arrive at the conclusion that it now needs to be destroyed. That is not only biting the hand that fed you, it is destroying the golden egg laying goose. Both warnings deeply embedded in the psyche of the "power structure of the current society". I suspect nothing remotely comparable will be built in its stead. See Portland, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, and SF for reference. (By "you" I do not mean you personally, but rather the you who espouses this doctrine.)
You ask a really great question, William. It seems to me that CRT and Radical Trans Dogma have taken over medicine (and just about everything else). There's been an institutional capture. Medical Societies have been radicalized by the small number of believer/fanatics & a great deal of money has poured in from activist groups that get their money from Pritzkers & Jon Stryker. I've talked to people with kids in medical school and the students who don't like this stuff feel that they need to keep quiet.
It turns out that most BLM money went to the 3 BLM founders (who bought property for themselves) and to Trans activist groups - nothing went to help the down and out as far as anyone knows (documented in Candace Owens documentary where she looked at tax records and followed the $$ and in Notthebee reporting). I think George Soros also pours money into these causes. CRT & the trans cult are promoted from the top in government, education, and medicine...
You might find this one from the PITT substack interesting for some thoughts on what is happening in medicine today:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
and maybe this one for a theory of race-based social identity threat and identity exit
https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-is-this-happening-to-my-family
The "Why" part is another question: Transhumanists? Those who want to normalized sex with children by Minor Attracted People? Profit (a big part of the first link)? Thrashing Victimhood translates to votes? I don't know exactly...
"how and why it came to be" Lack of law enforcement.
I’m talking about progressive views in upper administration of academics and private companies, not the downstream effects on society.
They are counting on you not to speak up.
This is the crux of it. And by not speaking up you validate their decision to bring that racist into the mix. This way they can go to conferences and boast about how enlightened and progressive they are.
The 'long march through our institutions' by Frankfurter school types such as Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramschi.
Check out Mattias Desmet's theory of Mass Formation. He has a great book and a lot of interviews on YouTube.
Ah, freedom from the "trap" of marriage and family now shits on the streets of Portland. That damned "patriarchy" -- so OPPRESSIVE. Better to be high all day, on some kind of welfare, childless and dead in an unmarked grave!
An elderly white man was beaten up on the subway in NYC the other day for asking the "oppressed" to turn down their music. Imagine. A (ssshhhhhh,,,black) man and a (sshhhhhh black) woman BEAT HIM IN THE HEAD.
Of course they did. White man bad! White man OPPRESS! White man cause HARM just by sitting there being white!
(I learned this in faculty meetings).
Police BAD for hauling these monsters into prison for no reason other than they black! Now they can rob, beat, and disturb everyone with their shitty music thanks to:
PROGRESSIVES.
Finally allowing myself to see through the bullshit, I defected from the Democratic Party several years ago. I do hope that more and more people see through it.
But then I read memes on Facebook that scream they're voting for the party that doesn't "force women to give birth."
Ironically, if they did give birth, they'd be forced to GROW THE HELL UP.
You nailed that!
And regarding the part of your post dealing with the black people who attacked the elderly man - I don't have a problem w/black people in general. Black people in general are fine, just like white or Asian people.
But it's past time to call out the toxic element in American black culture, that street thug/violence/crime element. This subculture is subhuman. They don't want to obey the constraints of a civilized society. I would like it if more "leaders" in the black community would make a point of denouncing this toxic subgroup. I mean, amongst whites most would strongly condemn the actions of, say, the KKK or white supremacists in general (though the term "white supremacists" now has been twisted to mean practically anything).
And yes, if you don't respect the freedoms of other people you belong in prison around the others who share your outlook.
No, please don't. No culture or subculture is subhuman. The behaviors you rightly denounce should be denounced by everyone, "black leaders" and everyone else. They are exhibit A for some of the degradation that human beings can fall to, that any human can fall into, not something subhuman. White-guilty-brainwashed folk need to quit pretended it is racist to call a spade a spade, quit acting like black people are all like the crowd you call subhuman, and like it is racist to denounce thug behavior. We should all hold each other up to high standards, and not make excuses based on race and class. And we should all scour our own consciences for clean-up too. Turning it into a race thing is not helpful. Unfairly stigmatizes black people, and unfairly prevents white people - and other non-black people - from recognizing their own moral filth.
Having worked with the victims ( mostly fatherless young black men) of the Gangsta Rap? Thug Life sub culture I unequivocally state it is toxic and often lethal.
Re black street culture. I agree, each race has to hold its own accountable. A lot of this is acceptance of gang culture. Every race has had its gangs too. But we are progressing from gangs to cartels. If, as I am reading lately, the Sinoloa cartel controls portions of SF and Portland we are well on our way to being Colombia or Mexico.
yeah, it's almost like the 1920s, when the Italian and Irish cartels ran the illegal trade in prohibited alcohol. x100. Over the course of an Drug War era that's lasted four times as long as the duration of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act that was supposed to banish Demon Rum forever. (Or nearly eight times as long, depending on where someone feels like marking the beginning.)
I've repeatedly read references to "the end of the Drug War" in recent years, mostly by clueless liberal commentators. But all user decriminalization does is keep users from being arrested. It does nothing to get rid of the market. It merely signifies a shift to the less punitive era of 1920s Prohibition, which didn't lock people up for personal possession of alcohol. But that move does nothing to get rid of the criminal monopoly over the supply.
Meanwhile, Skid Row and hobo jungles full of alcoholic vagrant single males have long been a part of the American scene- before, during, and after Prohibition. But it's only been in the last ten years or so that some local governments have supplied them with tents and food and temporary housing vouchers and...almost everything a shiftless freeloading able-bodied adult might require in order to live on the streets with no responsibilities, apparently. Including impunity from arrest for trespassing, public defecation, public intoxication, shoplifting, failure to appear in court...practically any offense short of mayhem or murder, for all practical purposes. Is it possible to beat someone senseless while robbing someone in a homeless encampment and get away with it? My close-up personal observations of the social milieu suggest that the answer is "yes." The fact that the pool of victims is much greater than the number of predators does nothing to change that reality.
You nailed that!
And regarding the part of your post dealing with the black people who attacked the elderly man - I don't have a problem w/black people in general. Black people in general are fine, just like white or Asian people.
But it's past time to call out the toxic element in American black culture, that street thug/violence/crime element. This subculture is subhuman. They don't want to obey the constraints of a civilized society. I would like it if more "leaders" in the black community would make a point of denouncing this toxic subgroup. I mean, amongst whites most would strongly condemn the actions of, say, the KKK or white supremacists in general (though the term "white supremacists" now has been twisted to mean practically anything).
And yes, if you don't respect the freedoms of other people you belong in prison around the others who share your outlook.
YES! to both Dog & Dan. I live in Memphis (about 65% black) and live & work with lots of nice, normal middle-class blacks everyday of my life. Progressives make divisions based on skin color instead of the individual's behavior ----thus elevating all blacks as oppressed-&-thus-can-do-no-wrong, making the hard-working God-fearing black person the equal of the horribly-criminal black. We have had several very high-profile murders recently that have drawn sharp attention to the revolving door of our prisons & to parole. Memphis is like many cities in our country------perpetually votes blue but protected from their stupidity by the red state they live in. We have said for many years------until the law-abiding blacks can truly walk away from the criminal blacks (the way other races & ethnicities do), black culture won't be able to wrest itself from the criminal/gang/violence/victim culture that persists in all black cities.
If nobody gave birth then eventually nobody will be here. I think that’s their utopian vision.
You will be pleased to know that San Francisco responds in 2 minutes to its white men being hit in the head. Who would have ever thought?
Last night was Halloween. Democrats are like the parents who allow their kids to gobble up all the candy and then express dismay when they get sick. Except they allow the kids to eat candy all year round. Or kowtow and bribe the toddler having a fit in the supermarket.
This lunacy could be ended in a hot second if we wanted it to end. It is simply a failure of will. Giuliani proved that in NYC decades ago.
At this point I'm not sure I even want to live in the same neighborhood, let alone the same country as people so lacking in common sense. And, as far as the coming election......if the so-called red tsunami fails to materialize, we'll know that the suspicions about 2020 were not tinfoil hat fevered dreams. Because what's going on may really not be the sheer stupidity described in Oregon, but something much darker.
I'm beginning to believe in the darker theory. Why does anyone think border chaos is a good thing? Sympathy for poor people I can understand, but with that chaos comes criminals, cartels, terrorists, and drugs, resulting in among many other things record fentanyl overdose deaths, not to mention the abuse of those poor people by human traffickers.
Why does anyone think the chaos in our cities, of which Portland is just one example, is a good thing? Why does anyone think that we can avoid chaos in our economy by pumping trillions of government dollars into a supply-constrained, covid-shut-down economy? Why does anyone think that you can avoid chaos in our energy markets by shutting down fossil fuel production and just passing a bill to subsidize unproven and expensive renewables, no transition plan needed?
I am beginning to believe that there is a plan and there are enemies of the USA deliberately fomenting this chaos on many levels and in many of our institutions.
Why were our medical experts so stupid they let the virus in the front door, declared racism is more important, and then tried to blame it on Donald Trump?
More fundamental is the question, why does this entire generation think racism is the only serious moral issue, but we shouldn't "judge" anything else? Why is the language of the Communist Chinese the same as the Democratic Party?
I lived in Manhattan for the last 2 years of the Giuliani era, the entirety of Bloomberg's regime and the first 2 years of the DeBlasio reign of terror. Rudy's and Bloomberg's tenures were a sort of "golden age" for NYC, but I've come to believe they were also an aberration. I believe Hochul will win the gubernatorial race, dems will continue to control Albany and the NY city council. And so it goes...and so it goes.
Yes, because once the bleeding is staunched, they revert to form. The UWS and West Village types who were so horrified when a vagrant defecated or harassed their wives and kids in the playground, that they voted for Rudy, listened to Big Bird's siren song and brought back the horror. And just wait til the "fun" starts from the Climate Bill enacted in Albany that will ban fossil fuels by 2050. New York City will be a dystopian hell.
A good piece for sure. The reason I subscribe here is that it is a gateway for real people to talk once again. Generally speaking, conservatives tend to run organizations that have risk(for-profit) and progressives run ones without risk(non-profit). When there is risk the right decisions tend to made for the benefit of everyone.
For decades conservatives have allowed progressives to frame us and that was violently disrupted with the election of Trump. We ended slavery, gave women the right to vote, and passed the CRA. We man the military, fire hoses, and police stations. We run businesses that benefit everyone overall by providing the tax revenue needed to fund said police, fire, roads and sanitation, et al. We take care of our own business and leave everyone else alone. Live and let live.
Progressives take. They contribute only to themselves and their tribes. They are pro-crime and anarchy.
Vote Drazan, folks. Johnson is only there to siphon votes from Drazan - do not fall for it.
Respectfully.
The dichotomy of safe, comfortable, gated communities for the elite surrounded by dystopian shambles has been a staple of futuristic movies forever.
The future is now here.
“I work really hard for my $10 pack of cigarettes”
The progressive hipster lament, uttered while sipping their $8 Starbucks latte and trashing Donald Trump and The Patriarchy.
A Portlander hipster would not drink Starbucks.
If she works at the US Bank downtown, I bet she's more working class and probably not a trust fund hipster.
I actually have sympathy, I was a smoker in Portland about ten years ago and even then the street people were very entitled and extremely rude. You could barely smoke in peace without being accosted.
My friends and I started just saying "No." When approached while smoking before they could even ask.
If we weren't smoking and a homeless person approached you we'd say, "Hey do you have a cigarette?" Before they could open their mouths.
Ah, a Sleetstak!
I can’t believe I know this, but that’s actually Enik, who is not an ordinary Sleestak. That is a super-cool profile picture!
No Sleetstak is ordinary!
I have no pity or compassion for Portlandians.
They're shocked, SHOCKED to discover that there's public human defecating, homelessness, rampant drug addiction and unending, often violent crime going on here.
I’m with you.
Right...how did this happen?!
Great article. Only question is why are Liberals so damn dumb. They have to completely destroy and ruin everything around them. Then they pause with finger to lip and think, ah maybe this wasn't a good idea!
Disregard everyone telling you that. No you have a better idea and can make it work. For me, you reap what you sow. Want a shit city, well you got it.
The only hope is if the entire country says to hell with Liberals and there bag of snake oil. You can't save the world. Save your area and hope others do the same. However Brandon and his merry band of idiots are trying to double down. Just can't fix Stupid!
Born and raised in Oregon for 45 years and left last year to live in a red state. I just couldn't raise my kids there anymore. Even if Drazan wins, I believe there will be so much opposition that not much will change, it will just slow down the monstrous decline.
Yes, I was wondering about the state legislature races. If they can override her vetoes, very little will change. The governor can do some stuff but she basically can't enact new legislation on her own, nor kill bad old laws.
Well if she was a democrat she could!
If Drazen wins they’ll give her the Trump treatment, block her at every turn, and then claim that voting for her was obviously a mistake. Ted Wheeler will then be the next Governor.
Thank you, Mr. Woodhouse. I live in Austin, Texas, the home of progressive city government in the Lone Star state. I recently went downtown for breakfast with a colleague. The smell of urine and feces on the sidewalks of Congress Avenue was overwhelming. We left downtown immediately.
Austin should have just stayed weird and clean
I’m in a suburb of Salt Lake City. Same exact thing. You can’t pay me to go downtown in the only blue dot in this state.
Austin has never been weird.
If one can predict with 100% certainty what city consensus will be on any topical issue, it ain't weird. It's predictable, dull and joyless
That once beautiful downtown library is practically useless now. Sure you can check out books, but you don't stay to study or read. No sir.
No! You interlibrary loan to your safe suburban branch for sure.
I live near Austin and was watching their local news, a few years ago, do a story on the increasing cost of living. The woman being interviewed, clearly a liberal who was undergoing an "education" said "I've lived here for almost 30 years, and voted for every civic improvement tax increase they requested. Now I can't afford to live here anymore."
Well duh sweet girl. Math matters. Linear thought matters.
She probably moved to my neck of the cedars and joined the Indivisibles. Ugh!
I live 45 minutes south of there and will not even go there anymore.
Hey neighbor!
Howdy.
My niece lives in Austin, she was horrified by the leftist mayor that let the homeless camps grow, is a moderate Dem, but she's voting for Beto! For guns & climate. She may live & learn, but I doubt it.
Latest polls from The Hobby School in Houston (a very progressive instituting) has Governor Abbott defeating Beto by 11 percentage points.
If she votes for Beto she shouldn't be surprised by what Beto provides should he be elected. Though his victory seems unlikely.
You could write this about SF too. My home town was always a bit edgy, but it wasn’t dirty and lawless. To what kind of mindset can you attribute the willing decline into decay?
The total unmooring from cultural and religious traditions leads to madness and self-hatred. Then people decide to destroy the very structures that gave them life.
Really. Even if you did not believe in the deity, the norms were the foundation of a workable society. You know, the foundation of Rule of Law.
Have been to SF 30-40 times but not since 2012 or so. It was already crazy and dirty back in the late 90s. I also went many many times to Seattle back in those days and always viewed Seattle as a cleaner safer version of SF. NO more as Seattle is SF north. Both were great cities . Such a shame and such a waste
The City was fabulous in the late nineties.
The mindset that wants to remake the entire nation or as POTUS Obama dreamed of "to fundamentally change America". He and his minions said it often and openly. That's the goal. That's the game in play.
And Hillary, when she becomes POTUS in 2024 will seek to have the great dream finally made manifest.
Woe unto us!
The problems started when all of high fallutin nonsense bruited about in the faculty lounges of our "great" universities got translated into Democrat policy. Everyone of them is contra to human nature! What damn fool couldn't see that homelessness is not about affordable housing; defunding police will bring a helluva a lot more than social justice. Your High School diploma is not worth the paper it's printed on and so on ad infinitum. We have let the inmates run the asylum and now we have to start again from scratch to rebuild and if you ever vote again for a Democrat u deserve what u get!
I have recently commented on the absurdities emanating from our over educated betters as to how we should be running this country so that everything should be fair and equitable. I have a few more absurdities foisted on us by the likes of Hilary Clinton, Obama and the ecretable J R Biden and their fellow travelers who have been tagging along for the ride a perfect example being our do nothing governor in NYS who thinks this merits her election;
Defund the police; no more cash bail for a wide variety of crime; DA's that refuse to prosecute legislated crimes; universities and government run by politicians and grievance majors who never earned an honest paycheck in their lives; but always remember that we are "deplorables" and "desperate c lingers to our guns and Bibles;" We were made to suffer through the nonsense of BLM and only white people can be racist. Add to that 50 years of never ending affirmative action. We are forced to acknowledge the importance of CRT and Disparate Impact and diversity on college campuses while noting black only dorms and graduation ceremonies. Oh and the Universities must provide safe spaces for our little darlings and also remember: always believe the woman. BTW don't forget to check your pronouns while Trans males have full use of the WOMEN'S locker room and bathroom. And did u know it's federal crime to criticize your local school board even if your daughter gets raped by a Trans male in the women's bathroom? Finally I will end this screed upon the knowledge that the most recent Harvard and or Yale educated Supreme Court Justice is unable to answer the question as to what is a woman? Let us get real as a people and throw these bums out in the upcoming election!
“The problems started when all of high fallutin nonsense bruited about in the faculty lounges of our "great" universities”
And it metastasized into our public school system when the apparatchiks graduating from said universities made it their mission to indoctrinate our youth. Is civics even taught anymore? Kids today may not be so good at reading, writing, and arithmetic but they know which pronoun to use. Unfortunately, there is no quick solution. If the Supreme court ends “affirmative action” and demands a return to meritocracy in secondary school admissions, it will be a good start.
When society deteriorates to the conditions described in this article (assuming the "conditions" are more endemic than anecdotal), a governing position to restore order for the good of the community is necessary. Restoring order requires a change in Portland governance and leadership which I doubt is forthcoming. I would expect the downward spiral to continue until the corporate entities in Portland begin to vacate downtown and take their employees with them and the city growth rate in general declines. The best way to effect change in Portland is to leave.