Springtime for Substack

I went Nazi hunting on Substack and it was hard work. Thank God Jonathan Katz pointed out ALL 16 of them. Out of 17,000+ Creators. Let me do the math - #000bunchmorenumbers. Thanks HP12c Platinum.

‘I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away’

So says Merle Haggard. So say I. Because both of us were in prison. Because both of us knew intimately the sting and pain of a loss of freedom. Every single person that’s never been to prison or has otherwise been forcefully detained cannot fully comprehend what that feels like. I didn’t before I went to prison. My writing always starts there, acknowledging every day that we have freedom. But I worry for how long.

I’m writing this post from the street corner of observation. I’m watching a wreck happen in real time, and I’m describing it as I see it. Not as I wish it was or hope it to be. I want to get this out right off the top - I voted for Obama twice and I voted for Trump twice. The choices this year are what they are. I’m using my eyes to see each candidate speak and act. I’m writing about what I see and how people are reacting to my observations.

I completely understand the polarization these two men, Biden and Trump, cause between tribes. What troubles me is the just complete denial of reality and the absurd intellectual positions taken by spokesholes and silly-surrogates. We have leaders of society completely dismissing what the public observes on their televisions and phones.

We are seeing in real-time what’s being denied. It’s that cognitive dissonance that causes our collective discord. I’ve made a point of staying away from rank political discourse, and I remain so. This post is about comparisons. Of times. Of people. Of political parties. Of propaganda. And mostly about projections and purpose.

---

Once the most synonymous name on Earth for dictatorial villainry, Hitler has been so overused that we can’t ever forget. The problem is, all that never forgetting means that we never remember what Hitler actually DID. He killed people. Lots of them. He caused intergenerational trauma worldwide. He wiped out centuries of progress. He predicated future dystopia. He destroyed humanity.

Beyond killing so many people, or to kill so many people, he enraptured a susceptible population with crafted and created propaganda. The History books are filled with the studies of Third Reich movies, posters, daily life, etc. All that reinforcement of a single theme. And what we have here is like that.

The dis and mis - information industry is now combatting a decentralized enemy - your eyeballs. You see something and you say something, as they scolded us to do. Now they admonish why are you saying that? In Nazi-land, the media creation, production, distribution, and reward system all came from one source and had one message. Watch this disturbing documentary about the Queen of Auschwitz.

In 2024, we don’t have one media source, we have many. But we have one just source of media opinion. There is only one narrative to work from, and any straying from that is heresy. Yet the narrative keeps falling apart and failing logic. And when asked about the fail, the gatekeepers chide, “That’s so disrespectful - how can you ask such a question?”

Sounds like the Galileo affair. That’s not true! Stop asking and you’re a bad person for even noticing! Don’t keep watching us and stop asking.

And in the beginning, it was easy to laugh off the rubes. Remember Don Lemon and his Expert Republicans? Can’t find Ukraine on a map, yuck, yuck. Complete with an Okie-from-Muskogee drawl.

Don Lemon clarifies remarks after President Trump called him the 'dumbest man on television'

‘Okie From Muskogee’: The Story Behind Merle Haggard’s Country Classic

“The main message is about pride,” Haggard said of the track in 2012, speaking to The Music Hall magazine. “My father was an Okie from Muskogee when ‘Okie’ was considered a four-letter word. I think it became an anthem for people who were not being noticed or recognized in any way – the silent majority. It brought them pride. And today the song still speaks to conditions going on in this world.”

I grew up with that song. And I grew up with that pride. That pride is what created this Substack. My belief in my God, my Country, and my Self. I’m watching that country now devolve into a cesspool of name-calling and hatred. I’m wondering if a Biden supporter can string together 100 words on why he should be reelected - without mentioning Trump once. I haven’t seen it done.

I posted this note mainly in disbelief - that an illegal-alien cop-beater got sprung with no bail in less than three hours - and is now absconded with no arrest warrant issued. This is what my eyeballs saw. And the resulting diatribe by Spence in Austin merely convinces me that we can see the same image and derive vastly different meanings from just one image. (The fact he’s wearing a Kobe shirt is even more priceless!)

I see that migrant as representative of the abuse of the system, and a symbol of the current administration. Spence argues it as a comparison to the last administration. Again, can we talk about current-day reality without traveling back in time to three or more years ago? Obviously not, per Spence.

“Family, God, country … those just aren’t the top values for the Democratic Party.”

Every time Trump is called anything, but especially any on the list above, his popularity soars. His support among blacks and other minorities is bordering on historic. And what of the individuals that leave the party and publicly support MAGA?

Why black, Latino and Asian voters are leaving Democratic Party

They too, are disparaged, discounted, and dismissed. From the article, a female black college student describes the recent political arc of her life.

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, then-Smith College student Sidni Standard took to the streets to protest.

“The day after Donald Trump’s election, it was as if there was a death,” she told The Post. “Everybody was in black. We had this meeting at our campus center. People were crying. It was something I’d never witnessed before in my life. It was crazy, and I was a part of it.”

But by the next election, the 28-year-old podcaster and hobby coder from White Plains, New York, had done a complete 180 and cast her ballot for Trump.

“It wasn’t until I got outside of the college bubble and I really started to work on myself that I picked up on the fact that most of my values are conservative,” Standard said. “I was really indoctrinated into [a far left] way of thinking. The more that I pulled back the layers, the more that I saw that actually I don’t even align with this.”

One major catalyst, Standard says, was “seeing our freedoms being taken away” during COVID-19 lockdowns. Identity politics running rampant and left-leaning politicians pandering to black Americans in 2020 also turned her off.

“I started to recognize that this whole notion of like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna help you  — you’re black, you need our help’ is very condescending because it’s implying that I look this way and therefore I can’t help myself,” Standard said.

Today, she identifies as a political independent, though she “resonates more with what the Republicans are selling.” Looking toward the 2024 election, Vivek Ramaswamy is a favorite.

Since her politics have shifted, Standard has lost all of her friends from Smith, she said — adding that the backlash was harshest from her black friends and her white liberal friends.

“So many people that I knew from high school and college just started attacking me,” Standard recalled. “People who knew me forever are now saying I’m this horrible person, I’m this racist — meanwhile, I’m black, right?”

Nonetheless, she stands firm as a proud, independent thinker: “Especially within the black community, there’s such a box around how you’re supposed to act, what you’re supposed to do, what you’re supposed to like. It’s almost like you have to think a certain way.”

And from a Hispanic voter

So Dominguez, the daughter of a construction worker from Mexico, fell in line. She registered as a Democrat and voted for Obama twice.

It wasn’t until she joined the Air Force in 2011 that she began questioning that allegiance.

“When I finally got out of the bubble I was raised in and started having conversations with diverse people that I respected, that started to sway my ideals,” she recalled. “I realized Democrats aren’t talking about the biggest issues that affect Latinos. They ignore us as if they’re just expecting our vote.”

It was the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and an uptick in rioting and anti-police sentiment that pushed Dominguez to vote for Donald Trump in 2016.“I thought about safety, security, good jobs, good education — all that stuff is very important to my family and my community,” she recalled. “And when I broke down those values between Democrats and Republicans, to me it was obvious who stood up for my values.”

But her shift rightward wasn’t without consequences.

“A lot of my family distanced themselves from me. I did lose a lot of friendships,” she said. “Sometimes I tell my family, ‘I was raised this way. You raised me this way.’”

But she’s also found a new like-minded community: “The Latino people that I talk to — just getting something fixed at my house, going grocery shopping, going to the DMV — it seems like we’re all in the closet [about being conservative], and we’re all kind of shy about talking about it.”

And let’s not forget the Asian voter

Zhang immigrated to the United States as a student 32 years ago with her husband, two suitcases and debt owed for their airfare. She credits education for her ascent up the economic ladder. But now, as a mother of three, she feels the next generation is unfairly disadvantaged by race-based affirmative action.

“Affirmative action, to me, is indefensible,” she said. “What about Asian Americans? We came here with nothing. We were discriminated against for a long time, all the way back to the Chinese Exclusion Act [of 1882] and Japanese internment [during World War II].”

Zhang has noticed more and more Asian American friends shifting right, especially following the recent Supreme Court decision overturning race-based affirmative action — and also social unrest in 2020.

“Rioting, looting, pulling down historical statues, defacing American flags, defunding the police — a lot of those things are too radical for us,” she said. “What kind of society is that?”

What’s this all about? I understand vilifying Trump. I don’t understand vilifying the people that voted for him. Especially vilifying them as a monolithic block of evil, dumb, white people who hate all people of color, want to bring back slavery, and are under the spell of a dictatorial Hitleresque caricature and too fat and lazy to resist his demonic spell. That is a blatant lie and should be pushed back on strongly.

And what of the minorities that switch sides? Oh boy, watch your back. Black Face of White Supremacy and so forth. They’re too dumb, lazy, gullible, or angry to understand they’re being played by evil white people, so says the remaining tribalists (usually other white people).

I’m left to wonder if we can pull out of this tailspin? Most likely yes. But with a ton of collateral damage and a generation of discontent. Spence and I seem to be at an impasse, but engaging in civil discourse in the public square was truly what this country was founded upon. Not everyone always got along. That’s ok.

But let’s stop calling people Hitler and Nazis. It literally is the weakest arrow in your quiver, and it’s your opening, middle, and closing salvos. Is that the only arrow you have? For the longest time, Gen X dealt with Grandparents and Parents that held racist views.

I would call that cohort Generational Racists in their language but beginning to see through it. War makes all men brothers. And WWII did as much to break racial barriers as did all other wars, in their time. Calling people “Colored” (always privately) would prompt a smartass question from one of us “What color is she?”

When speaking of a friend of family friend named Yuki, Grandma would say “Her Oriental friend” and we would say “Rugs are Oriental - People are Asian.”

People are people and can vote for whomever they choose. Labeling almost half the country as racist Nazi’s is neither true nor helpful. I don’t care who you vote for, and will never call you names for exercising your fundamental right as a citizen.

But the fundamental right of a human being is freedom of thought. And I’ll choose to keep mine thank you very much.

Ric

I shoulda been a Cowboy! RIP Toby.