To the Editor;
Our most recent period of isolation has given me time to reflect on just how much our lives have changed this year — and are likely to change in the months ahead.
Losing so many people and so much of our way of life has been like watching a car crash in slow motion with many of us shouting stop stop stop but standing by helplessly while the car crashes anyway.
Emergencies make us realize what really matters, and that usually makes better people of us all, but we have spent a lot of time fighting amongst ourselves. I’m hoping we can get past that and get on with being a country we can be proud of and a world leader people look up to again.
Stay well.
Julie Stephenson/ El Sobrante
I am the opposite and hoping for a dogfight. The Democrats started talking impeachment even before Trump was sworn in, continued with a shocking barrage of negative media coverage (91% negative among the major broadcast networks according to one study), ad hominem attacks, BLM and anarchist demonstrations arson and looting with anti-Trump signs and themes, a meritless impeachment, and so on. This last four years has been planned viciousness with race and class warfare, and themes of “resist” and “not my president.” And if a Trump supporter were to wear a simple red MAGA hat while walking around most Bay Area towns, he/she would be physically assaulted. Your own call for peace could not even finish without making your distain for Trump clear in the last sentence. Think about it. You call for peace but then declare your political stand? No, I am hoping the Republicans begin impeachment immediately, go after Biden’s son for the money he got from China, and drag Harris through the mud for her “activities” with Willie Brown for political advancement. And hopefully, that is just the start. Any other result would be like a mugger turning to their victim on the ground and saying, “let’s call it even.” I got an 8 pound cannister of Orville Redenbacher’s ready for the show.
Society has a scornful disdain for liberals, and I agree with everything you just said.
You guys are watching the wrong channel! All the entertainment – Four Seasons Dumpster Press Conference, Leaking Rudy, MAGA’s Parade of “Star Witnesses,” Topknot Melissa, Nodding Jenna, “Cockblocking” Votes Woman, are all part of the Continued Clown Show we’ve seen surround this administration since the inauguration. You’ve bought in and think it’s more fun triggering “liberals” than it is moving the country forward again. That’s your choice. And if you think investigating the past romantic entanglements of political figures is fair game you must have had a field day with your choice for president.
Hi Hunter-Maartz: I would like to respond to your last point! While Trump had romantic entanglements as you call it, Harris alone is accused of a physical relationship for professional political advancement. These are very different things, morally and legally.
Actually, I’ll also respond to your earlier “points” of a clown show. Under Trump, the number of US service members killed in conflicts has dropped tremendously compared to earlier administrations. Unlike the smears against him, he does his best to avoid armed conflict and US deaths. How is Biden’s record? During the Obama/Biden administration, for the first time since the end of the Cold War the relations between the US and Russia had deteriorated so badly that US and joint strike force fighter jets were practicing landing on highways near Russia. The Jerusalem Post said recently that if Biden tries implementing his policies, there will be war in the Middle East. And Biden antagonistically compared the North Korean leader, the guy with the nuclear missiles, to Hitler during the debates.
She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine AM
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
I’M A ROCKET MAN!
I, Society, have “a scornful disdain for liberals…”
Much as your solar system seems to revolve around Old Orange Face I believe the author was referring to the forward motion of the country and not your boy. He was never a world leader.
As much as you think he’s “your boy” I’m a Republican, but not a Trump supporter. I didn’t vote for Trump or Biden. I just happen to despise everything liberals stand for, and the fact that they’ve ruined California. Even my liberal friends admit liberal policies ruined this state as well as the country.
“Even my liberal friends admit liberal policies ruined this state as well as the country.”
FASCINATING. In your world view, mistakes can be admitted…by those you detest but not by those politically dearest to you. And you say you have liberal friends. Fascinating.
Methinks someone’s been eating the pizza.
Unfortunately, yes. And Lamorinda Pizza disappoints again. I got there when told to, and then waited another 20 minutes in the cold. Different employees came out, asked names of people waiting, went in and only came out with one order at a time. Maybe they can only remember one name at a time? I am convinced it was ready when I got there, because by the time they got it to me and I got home, it was literally cold and the cheese had separated and gone gooey. Yuk.
Your stated views are a minority position, not even within earshot of a majority. So, speak your mind, as a member of the minority of say 25 – 30 % who kind of like authoritarianism and the loud talk of kickin ass…enemy of the people and so forth. You speak a language of dangerous fantasy.
Try the LP Special. Times are hard for small businesses. Maybe I just got lucky, but it was pretty good.
Well finally you talk. I’m well aware of your political views and have read this site for a while. The authoritarian label not so much works. Take masks: Trumps’ emphasis on individual freedom and state’s rights is so strong he will not mandate masks, but Biden announced today he will mandate masks immediately upon taking office. Which of those two is authoritarian? One is telling you what to do, the other leaves it up to you. Anyway, lots of people share your views and it is to be expected with the steady river of propaganda from the leftist media. I understand. I used to go to Pennini’s all the time but they had some quality issues at the start of the pandemic. Next time I will go there instead. They have tables and such set up outside now although I would just do the take out thing.
Pennini’s? Not Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria? As I said, methinks someone’s been eating the pizza.
Um, no. I am not letting you off the hook. In the last 4 years, one tactic of choice among leftists has been to shovel out a constant barrage of accusations, ad hominem attacks, and just outright lies. Most taken by themselves quickly are shown to be fake, but they just keep shoveling and changing the subject hoping to make up in quantity what they lack in quality. Ain’t gonna happen here. You called him and me authoritarian, so Google says the definition is, “favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.” Great. Now, compare that definition to the mask issue. We will move on to other examples later such as the ObamaCare requirement to purchase insurance as authoritarian versus Trump’s believing it is inherently unconstitutional to force people to buy anything. But first, masks. Go. Show Trump’s alleged authoritarian bias in his approach to masks. One a side note, I also like Patxi’s.
Can’t wait until January 20. We have the champagne chilled and waiting.
I will raise the flag!
Look at the bright side:
Approximately 39,000,000 people living in California.
20,000 of these people have died from covid 19.
Roughly 40% of these people that died (8000) were living in long term care facilities (LTCF)
leaving the remaining 12,000 deaths as Non-LTCF
So if you divide 39,000,000 by 12,000 deaths you will get 1 death for every 3250 people
Bright side? It can be defeated by changes in behavior. So why this mobius strip of darkness? To quote Marge Gunderson: I just don’t understand.
Now back to the letter: good letter but I’m not holding out for a happy ending. There are way more kool aid drinkers out there than I thought.
Idiocracy cum hominum horribilis…now playing
I’ll see your Latin 101 and raise you a: Sic Semper Tyrannus! Don’t let the White House door hit you in the butt on your way out. I’ll read about any forthcoming indictments — otherwise I don’t want to even hear the name again. This country needs to smarten up.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are some cities in Contra Costa that are proceeding as if there was no SIP at all. Some have just come out and blamed our governor for their decision.
We’ve noticed…
How about reading this all the way through and everyone might just learn something new about the democrat party and you can not deny it cause its come out of their mouths. While everything with this politically obsessed society, references to the novel “1984” are so common that they are at risk of becoming cliché. Terms like “thoughtcrime” and “doublespeak” are effective retorts to the reliable buffet of political lies told every day. Democrats have made so many repeated attempts to claim that this country under the Trump administration is synonymous with the “dystopian world in which war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength” as described in the novel “1984” however, when you analyze those themes in that dystopian novel, you should increasingly feel that we are reading what appears to be the democrats playbook
1. History
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
On multiple occasions, the ones you support have demonstrated a desire to rewrite history with these two primary objectives. The 1st is to escape their own history, and the second is to reshape history to enable their future. After all, if you actually studied history and know anything about the Democratic Party you will know this is true that they will be forever tarnished by the legacy of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow. Even after the controversial and refuted “switch,” Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s repeated use of the phrase “n***er bill” during the Civil Rights era exemplifies the fact that the democrats never have or truly banished racism from its platform. Instead, they embraced a paternalistic bigotry and racism of low expectations of minorities and uneducated people which exists today.
While this asinine strategy is being applied to our nations history through absurdities like the intellectually fraudulent “1619 Project,” they’re putting the same effort onto what is being exerted against inconvenient elements of world history. The fact that they reject fascism while communism, socialism, and Marxism are accepted I will say is testament to the success of the left is that they are purposefully failing to educate younger generations on the inevitable failure of Leftist regimes.
Because of this erasure of history, comments from Joe Biden like “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black” or that Mitt Romney would put African Americans “back in chains” are ignored. It is why those who openly describe themselves as communists, socialists, or Marxists are embraced and celebrated. This is why we are going to be repeating all the mistakes of the past. Once they make sure that “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the left is and will always right.”
2. Language
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
After they make sure history is reformatted to be politically convenient, the next component of the Left’s strategy will be to gain control of our language in order to achieve their ideological ends. There are countless examples of this tactic, including the redefinition of racism to align with the flawed notion of intersectionality, they demand that you prove fealty by chanting “Black Lives Matter” with no regard for its underlying premises or the radical organization it supports, or the assertion that we must “Believe Women” despite the obvious fact that men and women are equally capable of duplicity.
The Left understands that achieving full control of language will open the gateway to their subsequent goal of controlling our culture. The generational removal of methods of dissent or disagreement, alongside the subjective redefinition of words for political gain, will be difficult, if not impossible, to undo. For this reason, and this reason alone, the Left focuses on speech more than anything else. “Speech is violence” justifies a violent reaction to speech, until the only speech that remains is deemed politically acceptable. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
3. Truth
“Doublethink which you should know what it means, if here you are “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
As your left you love so much puts a grip on our language while trying to get even a tighter hold on it, just know that historical excerpts which debunk their radical principles and positions are intentionally going to be wiped away, then they will finally be equipped to target and redefine the ultimate and central metric of ideological debate: truth and logic
Propaganda
“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.” No oppressive regime can exist in a vacuum, and all require a method of enforcing their demands. While the (remaining) pages of history are riddled with stories of power achieved through violence alone, your mainstream left is potentially more dangerous because they exercise control and power not through the violence of groups like Antifa whom they are happy to passively support but through the control of truth through curated propaganda in the form of “objective journalism.” Even I will admit the term “fake news” is so overused (and often misused) that it has lost all meaning. Unfortunately, this has allowed the dishonesty of the mainstream media to hide in plain sight. Instead of performing their assumed “duty” as objective journalists, they have morphed into an elitist gaggle of fucktard activists. Instead of screaming their demands in the streets, they shape their version of reality in our collective psyche through their words and voices. Ultimately, the blame for this prevalence of shameless lies falls not just on the declining fraternity of journalists, but on society as their audience and consumers. However, it is arguably impossible for a society to question the given narrative when its freedom has been diluted, its ability to question stunted, and its understanding of contextual history rewritten. The nail in this coffin is the despicable compulsion of the political and journalistic classes to present adherence to subjective policy as proof of one’s virtue. By doing so, they bypass the need for debate or justification, instead providing people with a lazy method of proving virtue and ideological purity.
The MSM have abandoned any hint of objectivity, but continue to benefit from the generational levels of trust and respect earned by their predecessors. Until all that changes, their deceitful words will remain powerful, and as a result they will continue to be convenient mouthpieces for the Left. “Orthodoxy means not thinking; not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
If you have ever read the marvelous yet terrifying novel “1984” it is a hauntingly appropriate novel to reference when criticizing the actions of any political movement. Though more now over the last few years it appears as if the left have started to treat it not as a work of fiction, but as a guidebook for their rise to have full power over us.
Their basic objective is so simple it’s hiding in plain sight, for if the children can’t and don’t read and more crucially understand the profound political works like 1984 and other literature they’ll will and easily be able to control society. Come on, I know you’re not that stupid, but on second thought you do support the left so maybe you are, just sit back and think about it, why do you think the left wants to control our education, rewrite our history, and our words?
Just a little fact for you reading this, I’ve been a registered democrat since I was 18 and still am, the only difference between me and most democrats is I finally started seeing through their bullshit, of deceitful lies and corruption, all awhile they’re trying to brainwash us into believing that its the conservatives that are doing all of this. Its almost the same tactics that was used in taking over Russia, China, N. Korea Vietnam, Cuba, Yugoslavia and Venezuela. Do you really want that to happen here in our nation? It will if the left has any say so about it.
Kaczynski’s manifesto was 35,000 words long. That was a lot of grievance. He was a very stable genius. Poof!