How the Right Got Right, and the Left Got Left - Lessons From An Abusive Relationship
“When you find yourself on a vicious cycle, for goodness sake, stop pedaling and get off.” -- Swami Beyondananda
One of the biggest challenges for me in the wake of the election results has been speaking into the field of grief, anger, profound disappointment, hopelessness and despair so many of my progressive co-hearts have been experiencing.
And …I’ve been watching this slow-motion train wreck for nearly four years, so I was not surprised.
I began this election day by taking my own advice and following my conscience. I abstained from voting for President. My choice was neither of the above. My prayer was for the American people to make the wisest choice possible – and I let it be with that.
I went about my business peacefully, spent time in nature, watched inspiring, entertaining and educational programs Tuesday night and went to bed without following the “hearse-race.”
In sharp contrast to my rage and horror when it happened in 2016, I awoke to the news peacefully, and – please hear me out – relief that uncommon common sense prevailed, and the American people soundly rejected what has passed as “progressivism” in recent years.
Am I pleased Trump was elected? Well …there’s a reason I didn’t vote for him. Check out Bill Maher’s rant on this very topic.
You can watch our own Front and Center reflection here.
Where to begin?
I keep thinking about a conversation I had just over a year ago with a long-time friend who was such a rabid anti-Trumper that if he bit you, you’d have to get a shot. After he informed me that Trump was evil incarnate, that anyone who supported him was evil, and anyone who didn’t believe he was evil was evil as well, I asked him a few questions.
We’ll call him DINO, which stands for Democrat In Name Only.
“DINO,” I asked, “How do you feel about ‘woke’ and all of the new language we are being told to use?”
“I hate it!” he replied. “I hate people telling me what I can and can’t say.”
“And transgender?” I inquired.
“I can’t even comprehend it. Absolutely fucking nuts!” he said.
Then I asked, “What’s your take on the immigration issue?”
“Are you kidding?” he responded. “You can’t just have open borders and let everyone in!”
This was at the time that gangs of youngsters were descending on stores and stealing everything they could get their hands on, and no one was being prosecuted. “How about ‘catch and release’ policing?”
He rolled his eyes. “Incomprehensible,” he said.
I said, “DINO, I don’t know how to tell you this, but … you’re a Republican. The only thing keeping you in the Democrat fold is …Donald Trump.”
He didn’t say anything. What could he say? Several months after that, when he found I was supporting Bobby Kennedy’s campaign, he called to officially terminate our 40+ year friendship.
From Election Trauma to Awakening Beyond Woke
Believe me, I empathize with those going through political trauma. That was me in 2016, full of rage and inconsolable. However, in early 2017 I embarked on an inquiry – how could this have happened? One of the most eye-opening pieces was Andrew Markel’s post shedding a light on progressivism’s complicity in the divide-and-conquer racket. I suggest if you haven’t read it, you read it now. It will prepare you for the rest of my post.
In 2020, I cast my vote for Joe Biden – or rather, against Donald Trump – and was greatly relieved we finally had an “adult” in the room. I was as outraged by January 6th as any of my progressive co-hearts. But then something happened that began to turn me around – the COVID shot campaign and the mandates.
Based on everything I knew from my own background using the holistic approach to healing, what my own doctor was telling me, and from what I learned by reading and viewing “outside the corral”, it became apparent that we were being lied to – by the Biden Administration and their media mouthpieces. This was borne out recently, when the Pfizer Papers were released indicating that the Administration knew there was no evidence the shot prevented infection or transmission as had been claimed, but in fact caused alarming injuries and even death.
A $900 million PR campaign was launched to sell the shot, and “influencers” were paid to do the promo.
(In answer to your unasked question, one possible reason why you haven’t heard a peep about this book might be because pharma ads now constitute 75% of TV ad revenues.)
Most of my progressive friends went along with the program, and dutifully repeated the catechism, “safe and effective” and “follow the science.” I was canceled and ostracized, and while I’ve been welcomed back into the fold, not one individual has apologized. The more I saw, the more I recognized this as some form of mass-hypnosis – what some with a darker view might call a “PsyOps.”.
A Successful “Con” Always Involves “Self-Hypnosis”
As I began to do my own research and exploration in 2021, someone who helped me gain clarity was Mattias Desmet, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism who spoke of the phenomenon of “mass formation”. You can watch an interview here.
In exploring how otherwise intelligent people get enrolled into false narratives, I am reminded of the two instances when I myself got conned by a “con-man.” In both of these cases, there came a moment where I was expected to make a leap of faith to believe something that any outside observer would say contradicted reality. And, both times, I did a “reality bypass” because I’d hypnotized myself into believing that this individual would deliver the goods.
A conman will blow smoke up your ass. They will dissuade you from finding out the truth for yourself, and make sure you limit your inquiry to their “trusted sources” – in other words, they blow secondhand smoke up your ass.
But a really, really good conman will convince you to bend over backward and blow smoke up your own ass.
In one of my own conman cases, I was so under this guy’s spell that I had already lost a long-time relationship with my attorney, who warned me against working with this individual, and my marriage was in danger as well, as Trudy had already awakened to the scam. A kind and casual intervention by a friend broke the trance. He said, “You know, I don’t think (the guy’s name) has your best interests at heart.”
Just like that, I snapped awake. I got on the phone with the guy, and before I said a word, he knew the jig was up. I ended our business relationship, and immediately my life took a turn for the better.
So … progressive, liberal and Democrat friends, never-Trumpers and ever-faithful …
Consider this an intervention.
Are You In An Abusive Relationship? You Decide.
Listen to this thoughtful conversation with Meredith Miller expert on “relationship trauma.”
Democrat voters …you’ve been in an abusive relationship, and it’s time to break the spell.
You’re at least 8 years behind the average Republican voter, so you have some catching up to do. In the 2016 primaries, Republicans had a chance to vote for Jeb Bush, who represented the neocon branch of that party, and they sent him home in his underwear.
Why?
Flash back to 2003, when we were on the brink of the Iraq invasion. I was at a business seminar and asked a respected colleague – a Republican – what his thoughts were on the “weapons of mass destruction.” He told me he had deep reservations about the war, but since he respected Colin Powell and Powell said there were weapons, he supported the invasion.
Remember that old George Bush riff. “Fool me once …?”
By the time 2008 rolled around, the Republican rank and file had enough of Bush-Cheney. They recognized their valor had been betrayed by an administration that led them to war under false pretenses. (I was watching a MAGA rally video, and when the name Dick Cheney was mentioned he was booed as roundly as RFK, Jr. was cheered.)
Sadly – tragically, if you consider the election of Donald Trump a tragedy – Democrat voters are swilling the same uncool Kool Aid that had them say nothing when Bernie Sanders (a candidate who could have defeated Trump in 2016) was defeated by the Party machinery. When Democrat “star of the future” Tulsi Gabbard was de-platformed for objecting, Democrat voters once again went along with the “program” and canceled her as well – without even questioning.
Most Democrat voters bought the COVID catechism “safe and effective” and “follow the science” and put up a stone wall to prevent any contradictory information from getting in. Trudy and I spent the first year of the lockdown educating ourselves outside the narrative corral. At first, I would send articles to friends that offered a different perspective. My offerings came up against a willful wall of denial, so I gave up.
I watched the constant fear narrative pumped 24/7 and saw signs of insanity – like people wearing masks inside their cars driving alone or protecting themselves by wearing masks hiking in the woods. Talk about mass-formation.
And on another topic …on my cross-country tour a year ago, I spoke with dozens of progressives about the imposed “woke” and transgender narratives. They all – to a person – hated those narratives, but dared not speak up.
Then came the 2024 election season – and they went along with the Democratic (sic) Party in not holding any debates and keeping Joe Biden cryogenically frozen until the debate with Trump, where he actually made the latter sound coherent in contrast. Finally, they pulled a “debate and switch” and installed one of the least popular candidates in the 2020 primary, Kamala Harris as “candidate designate” and made sure she never uttered a spontaneous word, hoping she’d run out the clock.
And now the revelations from the Pfizer Papers that indicate that the Biden-Harris Administration knew the shots were not effective in preventing either infection or transmission – and in fact caused injuries – and still imposed the mandates. (It is some measure of justice that those fired for not taking the shots are beginning to win lawsuits, but then who pays the price of that? Ultimately, we do.
By the way, don’t expect to read about those lawsuits in the New York Times. You have to go all the way to Reuters to find an article about them.
Is It Nazism – Or Not-Seeism?
Oh, one more thing.
Let’s address Donald Trump as the “existential threat” who would install himself as dictator so that we would “never have another” election – the whole Trump as Hitler narrative.
So … let’s assume that’s true, that Trump is an existential threat, at the level of Hitler. A month or more prior to Trump reaching out to him, RFK, Jr. approached the Harris campaign about joining forces with THEM to defeat Trump. They didn’t bother to respond.
Even though this inconvenient truth is being downplayed, it wasn’t MAGA that put Trump over the hump, it was MAHA – Kennedy’s campaign -- that convinced undecided independent voters that their best choice was Trump. Had Kamala (or her handlers) said yes, many of those voters would have been delivered to Kamala and Make America Healthy Again would be “owned” by the victorious Democrats – the very people who would normally support such a campaign had they not been poisoned against it.
Regarding existential threats, when the allied powers were faced with the threat of the real Hitler, they made an alliance with evil dictator Josef Stalin, who very likely killed more people than Hitler through his “low-tech genocide” (i.e., starvation).
So if Trump REALLY WAS such an existential threat, surely an alliance with Bobby Kennedy, Jr. wouldn’t be at the level of partnering with Stalin, would it?
So – and I will be even more blunt than usual here – Democrat voters were so brainwashed and mind-fogged, that they aligned behind a party that embraced Dick Cheney and excommunicated Bobby Kennedy (who had been considered for EPA director by the Obama administration by the way).
Bottom line – the Democratic Party misleadership was more interested in running against Trump than they were in defeating him.
Put that in your hopium pipe and smoke it.
Are You Ready to Declare Your Independence?
Welcome to 21st century warfare – where the battlefield is our minds. That’s what soft-cloth totalitarianism is about. I think I mentioned in a previous post that on the eve of World War II which began with Germany invading Poland, all the headlines in every Berlin newspaper blared “Poland Set to Invade Germany.”
Nowadays, headlines are not required to gain compliance – when “the powers that be” have a line right to your head, through the narratives that come from the media brainwashing machine stuck on spin.
After a brief moment of self-reflection, the windows and doors seem to be closing, and once again the Dems are defending themselves against anything that contradicts their limited view of reality. Now the faithful are supposed to abandon X, the Musk-run operation (hmmm …maybe they should give up their Teslas and solar panels too), for Bluesky, a new social media that will protect progressives from impure thoughts, and make sure they never venture outside the corral.
And …
If we want to empower a wise body politic and a sane and sacred center, we have to declare our independence from simply believing what our side is saying and begin to explore outside the boundaries that have been set for you.
So, consider “breaking up” with the Democrats, or if that is too radical a step, at least declare yourself in an “open relationship.”
“I know we’ve been together for a long, long time – but I’ve decided I’m going to see other points of view.”
Be curious.
Take a Republican to lunch. Call on a friend, associate or family member who switched teams over the past several years. Say those two magic words that can open wide the doors of perception, “I’m curious.”
“I’m curious …what made you leave the Democratic Party and vote for Trump?” Then listen.
Second thing is, begin to explore the world outside the narrative that has had you captured.
Read, and watch videos of those who have left the corral: RFK, Jr. …Tulsi Gabbard … Naomi Wolf … Glenn Greenwald … Matt Taibbi …Jeffrey Sachs. All tie-dyed-in-the-wool progressives. As you will hear many of them say or at least infer, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.”
Step off the battlefield of automatically opposing everything Trump does or says. Don’t worry, there will be plenty to oppose.
However, two of his ideas should be supported unconditionally. First is his pledge to end censorship and promote free speech. Hey, isn’t that what every dictator does on day one?
Second, support RFK, Jr.’s campaign to Make America Healthy Again so that it becomes a transpartisan movement of all the people and not a captured Republican narrative.
Finally …
51% of American voters now identify as independent. That is the future of politics in America, if we are to have one. There is no “political savior” on any side … rather what will save us is the collective wisdom of we the people.
Join the upwising!
Support our work at Front & Center, where we set three parameters for a wise and independent body politic:
From political battlefields to cooperative playing fields.
Seek the whole truth together.
Put government on the side of the people.
We have met the solution – and it is us!
Like propaganda everywhere…you have led aspects of truth mixed in with flawed assertions and assumptions. But I admit your essay does get me thinking in a different way. Let’s start with RFK(jr). His crazy ideas can’t be ignored, including his anti-vax danger. Aren’t you glad you don’t have polio? Thank your doctor and public health for that. Of course we need to get rid of chemicals and the industrial food complex that pushes sugar over nutrition. But has he given one iota of a plan other than removing all regulations and agencies? Do we hate science and experts so much that we don’t believe decades of study? The Dem machine is corrupt. Both parties are owned by kleptocracy. With Trump and his band of criminals, it has been normalized like any banana republic. Most Dems I know are heartbroken and retreating inward. If there is a new path forward, I’d like to see it.