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A former leftist sees the light

Link here.

I have been wondering why more people on the left are not speaking up against violence, in favor of free exchange of ideas and dialogue, in favor of compassion. But I know why. I was in the cult. Part of it is that you are a true believer, and part of it is that you are fearful of being called an apostate — in being trashed as a sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, fascist, white supremacist nazi. A friend recently wrote to me privately to say they find my latest posts “refreshing,” and that they believe in free speech, but as someone who works in entertainment, they can’t say anything that might cause them to lose their job. As someone who has gone through and is still going through a change in my underlying systems of belief, I can say this: when you finally get past fear, it is so liberating. After a lot of self-reflection, I eventually came to the opinion that if I lose friends or jobs over trying to speak and find the truth in situations, and to do so in a way that reflects my belief in compassion, then perhaps those were not friends or jobs that were healthy for my growth.

There is a lot more. Read it all. The key is that the violence, thuggery, and outright viciousness of the modern left is actually doing nothing to persuade anyone. If anything, it is offending people, turning them off, and making people like the writer above rethink their assumptions. Suddenly, she finds herself listening to conservatives, and discovering that they are actually not fascists, but believe in freedom, tolerance, justice, and treating people with respect, ideas that have increasingly disappeared from the leftist community.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • Matt in AZ

    This reminds me a bit of an article I read on Medium the other day, by a “hard-left Australian” calling out American Democrats on their frenzied derangement.

    https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/still-not-a-bro-still-not-a-russian-agent-still-glad-hillary-lost-24f57aae29df

    “It was like watching a glass plate shatter in slow motion. After more than a year of being told the world would end if Trump got in, Trump got in. After more than a year of being told Trump couldn’t win, Trump won. Democrats stood stupefied for a moment like a little kid who just got hit with a ball but hasn’t started crying yet… and then all the crazy came pouring right out into the open.”

    Unfortunately, I think articles like this and the one you linked to above will be falling on deaf ears for quite some time yet, though I’d love to be wrong.

  • Matt in AZ wrote “Unfortunately, I think articles like this and the one you linked to above will be falling on deaf ears for quite some time yet, though I’d love to be wrong.”

    I tend to agree with you, but then I also note the slow but steady crash of Democrats, losing elections. And there is this Gallup poll released yesterday:

    So far, Trump’s unpopularity as president has done little to erode Americans’ views of the GOP, perhaps because they were already quite negative. However, Americans are now less positive toward the Democratic Party than they were last fall.

    The decline in Democratic Party favorability is mostly a result of lower ratings from self-identified Democrats. In November, 83% of Democrats had a positive opinion of the Democratic Party; now, 77% do. Independents are also slightly less positive toward the Democratic Party, while Republicans’ negative views of the opposing party are steady.

  • wodun

    Being a Democrat isn’t about an ideology or policies, it is about identity. This is why they always have such high regard for themselves no matter what their party does.

    A lower opinion about the Democrat party is a big deal because it is really because they feel less positive toward their own identity. When the cultish group think says you are cooler, smarter, more attractive, more enlightened, and more evolved than other humans, it is pretty hard to have a low opinion of your own identity.

  • Matt in AZ

    The current breakdown of Senate seats in play in the 2018 election has the Democrats very much on defense, with 25 Democrat incumbents up for reelection and only 8 Republican ones, making a turnover all the harder. On top of that, many of these Dems are in Trump-voting states, while every Republican is – with Arizona and Texas being the most blue-leaning!

    Despite all of this, I keep hearing plenty of statements from the left of how they will topple the Republicans in a “wave election” in 2018, thanks to Trump’s unpopularity, and the policies he’s enacting. It’s increasingly treated as an obvious truth (much like HRC’s assumed win), and has become their Plan B if their fantasy of a Trump impeachment fails to materialize.

    If, despite 2 years of America under Trump, the Republicans actually GAIN seats then, I see the left becoming far more violent and unruly.

  • wodun

    In fact, I’m partially writing this because I know a lot of my liberal friends are blessedly NOT privy to this part of the left.

    These are the useful idiots.

    Picture three concentric circles. In the innermost circle, you have the base of the Democrat party. This is the party leadership, thought leaders, militant activists, Islamists, Black Nationalists, Antifa, Marxists/Socialists, professors, and political consultants. They control how money is spent, policy, messaging, indoctrination, party activities like protests, ect.

    The next circle out, you have the useful idiots. They vote, give money, and show up to protests. They wont engage directly in strategy, violence, or leadership in general but they support those who do. A lefty friend of mine once put it like this, “I would never engage in violence but if someone else did…”

    A way to think of this is how the Antifa have color codes. Red is for those who will use any means necessary. Yellow is for those who will defend them. The yellows are the ones you see at Democrat protests that stand in front and shield those who engaged in violence from being apprehended by their victims or the cops.

    The last circle, the outside circle, are the ones being red pilled by reality and are drifting away from the Democrat party.

  • wodun

    Matt in AZ

    The current breakdown of Senate seats in play in the 2018 election has the Democrats very much on defense, with 25 Democrat incumbents up for reelection and only 8 Republican ones, making a turnover all the harder.

    Every Democrat incumbent elected will be portrayed as defeating an incumbent Republican and a defeat for Trump by the DNC controlled media, rather than just hanging onto their seat. Every Republican win will be portrayed as a moral victory for the Democrats.

  • Cotour

    Related, the seeds of the further destruction of the Democrat party? Will the general public have enough of it and make them further pay in 2018? :

    On believing Comey over Trump:

    The default position must be to believe neither of them, by definition they are both lying because they are both politicians. There is no truth in politics only positions and strategy.

    Look at the facts as we know them and then determine what is true and what is not and if it really matters or is it just a talking point in the continuing political battle.

    “Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. ”

    This is second hand information apparently leaked by friends of Comey’s in the FBI? Who released this information? Anonymous? Anonymous gets to accuse the president of illegal activity without any culpability?

    ““I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.”

    “I hope you can let this go”, if indeed that is what Trump suggested, and I do not doubt that he would say something like that, does not IMO reach the threat or quid pro quo level of attempting to influence an investigation. These little tid bits of information serve to continue the daily assault on the Trump administration, that is the Democrats strategy and that is what they are going with, and I say fine bring it on. The people of America will tire of this eventually and eventually ask themselves what is really going on?

    Again in the end its not a matter of who do you believe in this particular instance, its a question of what are the real facts and do they really actually matter. These narratives that are being crafted in the Liberal media are designed, they are not the result of earth shaking revelations, like they would like everyone to believe.

    In addition if Mr. Comey thought that what the president said to him was soooo outrageous, soooo out of order and potentially criminal why did he not take this now vital information to a judge or the Attorney General, at least for discussion?

    Why? Because its another nothing burger that the media is serving up for general consumption and / or that Comey socked away for potential future leverage over the president? (If he dared think to fire him?) It either is or it isn’t. In this case it appears it isn’t as far a Mr. Comey is concerned, but it sounds great in the media. Sounds like Comey, who did not release the “memo” will remain silent on the subject because if he were to enter into the conversation he might have a bigger legal problem then the president, who has none as far as I can see.

    And president Trump who is apparently still on a learning curve must continue to suffer his naivete and his stream of consciousness speaking style (read big mouth).

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “Sounds like Comey, who did not release the “memo” will remain silent on the subject because if he were to enter into the conversation he might have a bigger legal problem then the president, who has none as far as I can see.

    Sounds to me like Comey is merely suffering from sour grapes for being fired. It is hard to say what the unnamed sources read, and it is hard to question them on it when they are so anonymous.

    So we have a game of telephone going on. The president says something, Comey writes a note, someone sees the note (perhaps as explained by Mr. “Sour Grapes” Comey) and tells a reporter about it who then writes an article explaining what the president said and meant in the first place. I count four levels of (mis)interpretation. Five, if an editor got involved.

    If this kind of thing is typical of the left, then I am glad that I am not in the moronic cult of PC compliance (cult of complicity?).

  • Cotour

    THE STUPIDITY AND SUICIDAL NATURE OF THE LEFT

    https://sputniknews.com/europe/201902221072648224-sweden-jihadist-haven/

    There can be only one result from the embrace of the Liberal, Leftist philosophy and the rejection of the American Constitutional and capitalist model of governance and freedom.

    Only one.

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