What it is Like to Start Seeing the Progressive Left for What it is.

Fascinating video. This woman recently started seeing the DNC and progressive left for what they are. She describes the experience of scales falling from her eyes.

I created a transcript of her 3-minute video:

I feel like I have a unique perspective with this whole election thing. Because I used to be very, very far left, like I was one of the people having a fucking mental breakdown in 2016 when he won, right? And I didn't even like him up until six months ago, when it became very obvious that they were staging a coup and tried to assassinate him. And then some shit started clicking. So I'm still very new to this whole side of things. But the thing is, when I was very far left, like, radically far left, I thought I knew what was going on. I genuinely believed I was informed. I thought I knew better than everybody else, and that's what these people think, too. And the thing is I would get so triggered and so angry when people would question me because I didn't actually know what the hell I was talking about. I thought I did, but really I didn't actually know any policies. I didn't actually know any politics. All I actually knew was what I had seen online, in mainstream media, and because everybody was saying, I just assumed it had to be right, right. And I think where a lot of this comes from is like, people just don't want to be wrong. Like, it's humbling and it's embarrassing to acknowledge that you were wrong or that you didn't know as much as you thought you did, but I would get so defensive and fly off the handle when and whenever somebody would question me, because I didn't actually have any talking points, and the talking points I did have were inaccurate.

But I didn't want to be wrong so I just kept fucking regurgitating. I just kept echoing the same shit that I was hearing over and over again, and that's what people are still doing. And I I don't blame them. I'm not mad at them, because really, I mean, if you're only exposed to that, then that's what you're gonna believe.

But it's crazy to be on the other side of it for this election and see just how misinformed people are, and they will argue with you, and I won't have a card, because they will argue with you till they're blue in the face because they are just so convinced that they're right, and I was one of those people, and the fear they're feeling is very real. I'm not invalidating the fear. I'm just it's just that the fear is not founded in anything factualbecause it's not the things that they're scared about. It's not going to happen. It didn't happen last time, it's not going to happen this time.

And it's just it's so crazy. It's like being the sober person at a party full of drunk people.

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Bernie Sanders Misses the Boat

Here's one way to lose all credibility: Say something very important--something that you strongly believe--when it's too late to matter. Apparently Bernie Sanders was trying to make sure that we were ruled by Democrat elitists who "ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economy and political system." I canvassed for Sanders in 2020. His silence during this campaign is incredibly disappointing. If he runs for anything again, his slogan should be "I should have told you so."

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Political Power and the Need for Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff of FIRE:

In a democracy, the majority doesn’t need special protection for freedom of speech because their power is protected by the majority vote. The bully and the bigot easily get their way if they have the votes.

The fact is that only those with opinions that are unpopular with the majority or the ruling elite need the special protection of freedom of speech. It is not, in fact, a coincidence that the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s rights movement, and the gay rights movement (just to name a few) only really took off when the protections of the First Amendment became strongly interpreted beginning in the 1950s. Prior to that, without a strong First Amendment, those movements were easy to shut down.

But the powerful in higher education find this narrative inconvenient. This is because, frankly, they are unsatisfied with the amount of power they have over speech and thought (which is already immense, and regularly abused). They prefer a narrative in which they are still the underdog (which they've never really been) and still the hero (which they very rarely are). At the same time, they’d like to continue to censor “bad” speakers and “bad” speech — not just with new tools, but with a continued sense of self-righteousness about their authoritarian impulses.

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Mike Benz: It’s time to take apart the Death Star of government censorship.

I've followed Mike Benz for several years. He formerly worked in the US State Department. His analyses of the US censorship industrial complex are detailed and credible.

Question:

I want to ask you about the protections that we need for social media companies. How can we stop the government from being able to bully social media companies into censoring content that it dislikes.

Benz:

With control over the executive branch, it would be surprisingly easy not to take the whole thing out, but to devastate it in effectively a single blow. All you would need is an incoming day one executive order that prohibits government grants and contracts by any government agency to any outside group involved in regulating, flagging or downranking so-called "disinformation." It does what the Supreme Court should have done and said that the funding of censorship by the government is censorship by the government. So that Executive Order will allow you to go agency by agency and kill all of those grants and contracts that comprise the censorship industry. There are hundreds of 1000s of people now around the world, and 10s of 1000s of people here in the US whose full time--their paychecks, their livelihoods, their mortgages are effectively paid for by doing full-time 24/7 censorship work. This field did not exist eight years ago. It was created after the 2016 election as a response to Trump winning to stop a night like tonight where he might win again.

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Only 20% of Americans Deny that “Words Can Be Violence”

Remember the old chant many of us said as kids? The website "US Dictionary" indicates it was already considered to be an old adage in 1862 when it appeard in a publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. US Dictionary describes this adage further:

The phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones" is a well-known children's rhyme. It is often used as a retort to verbal insults or name-calling, suggesting that physical harm from sticks and stones might injure one, but words will not cause any physical harm.
I remember using this saying when I was a kid into adulthood.

How was this adage used over the years? US Dictionary:

The phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones" is a classic saying that serves as a defense against verbal bullying or insults. It's often completed with the line, "But words will never hurt me." The idea behind the phrase is that physical objects, like sticks and stones, can cause physical harm, but intangible words cannot cause physical pain. This phrase is frequently taught to children as a way of coping with name-calling or verbal bullying, encouraging them not to be hurt by hurtful words.

More about the phrase's meaning:

It's often used to encourage resilience against verbal abuse or insults.

The phrase emphasizes the distinction between physical and emotional harm.

It serves as a reminder that words, while potentially hurtful, cannot inflict physical pain.

It is often used in educational settings to teach children about coping mechanisms for bullying.

Similar phrases include "Words can never hurt me" and "I'm rubber, you're glue."

In other words, the Sticks and Stones saying is time tested wisdom, but then something happened. In a recent poll by FIRE, "SHOCKING: 4 in 5 Americans think ‘words can be violence’"

The poll results:

In a new FIRE poll, 4 in 5 Americans (80%) agree at least slightly with the idea that “words can be violence.”

Democrats and women were most likely to agree words are violence, and Republicans and men were least likely to agree.

Only slightly more than a third of Americans (37%) think citizens should have the right to use profanity when speaking to elected officials.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 31, 2024 — In a disturbing new finding from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 4 in 5 Americans agree to at least some degree with the idea that “words can be violence.”

In the latest edition of the quarterly National Speech Index, FIRE asked 1,000 Americans, “How much, if at all, does the following statement describe your thoughts: ‘Words can be violence.’”

Nearly half of Americans said that statement describes their thoughts either “mostly” (23%) or “completely” (22%).

Around a quarter responded that it describes their thoughts “somewhat” (22%). Another 12% responded that it matches their thoughts “slightly.”

Only a fifth (20%) responded that the statement “does not describe my thoughts at all.”

FIRE's poll results show that women who are democrats are the biggest advocates for this widespread idea that words can be violence.

Based on these results, one might conclude that words can actually be a form of violence. As FIRE explains, however, this is not true:

“Equating words with violence trivializes actual physical harm, shuts down conversations, and even encourages real violence by justifying the use of force against offensive speech,” said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. “Free speech isn't violence, it's the best alternative to violence ever invented.”

Similarly, consider this statement on the topic by Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt:

Lukianoff and Haidt argue that equating stress-causing speech with “violence,” as Feldman Barrett does, isn’t simply an overstatement. Instead, it’s students’ overblown perception of their own fragility — not exposure to the occasional offensive viewpoint — that’s causing widespread mental health problems among today’s college students.

Their prescription is sure to spark discussion in our nation’s college classrooms — and beyond.

“Free speech, properly understood, is not violence. It is a cure for violence.”

The above excerpt comes from an article in the Atlantic: "Why It's a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence: A claim increasingly heard on campus will make them more anxious and more willing to justify physical harm." Here is the opening paragraph href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/07/why-its-a-bad-idea-to-tell-students-words-are-violence/533970/">to that article:

Of all the ideas percolating on college campuses these days, the most dangerous one might be that speech is sometimes violence. We’re not talking about verbal threats of violence, which are used to coerce and intimidate, and which are illegal and not protected by the First Amendment. We’re talking about speech that is deemed by members of an identity group to be critical of the group, or speech that is otherwise upsetting to members of the group. This is the kind of speech that many students today refer to as a form of violence.

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