I recently had an email exchange with a friend and co-worker, who was trying to convince me not to be fearful of the Leftist movement in the country; the radicals are just a few isolated bad apples with a messaging problem!
I spent a good few hours writing this reply to him, and I think it turned out well enough to be a blog post too. Obviously, I've removed any references to anything specific my friend wrote, as well as anything personally identifying either of us.
The Message
[REMOVED]- Thanks for writing back! I haven't had a good email exchange with a Lefty since [REMOVED] retired!
To be honest, I actually had no idea you were of the SJW-bent. I always took you for right-of-center. So this was quite a surprise to me!
I love writing, and have written perhaps even millions of words since 1996, which is when I taught myself HTML and started "blogging"-- before that term had even been coined or popularized (there is some dispute as to the origins of the web "weblog"). So if you chuck this entire subsequent message in the metaphorical trash can, fine by me-- I'm composing it as a relaxing exercise, as I do with all of my writing.
The brain is like a muscle, so I find this stuff stimulating.
Initial Thoughts
I appreciate the transparency, and that you're trying to make me feel better by downplaying how radical the Left has become in this country! And trust me, I would never in a million years write someone off or not be friends with them for their political views: most of my friends were and are Democrats, and we find lots of common ground all of the time. I'm glad to hear we're on the same page about that.
That said, I am going to disagree with you in that it's just a "few bad apples" on the Left. It used to be, but now many of these views are mainstream, to the point where they are embedded in our workplace, in popular culture, held by sitting members of Congress, and in the actual Democratic presidential primary debates.
Let's start with your own message: you explain that your fellow Leftists ask you to hate Conservatives for their political views, that they tell you that you can't be friends with Conservatives, that you should "drop them out of your life" due to their "ignorant views", then admitting [REMOVED]:
Doesn't this give you pause about your own circle?
[REMOVED] I don't agree with your implied dichotomy, that somehow reason and the ability to listen are contrary forces, rather than complimentary ones. You should always listen-- I know that I do. We agree about that. But perhaps we differ on that you should filter what you hear through reason?
The example I recently gave to my daughter: "If someone's feelings are that they want to murder someone, then you should not validate those feelings-- in fact, you should hurt their feelings by attempting to stop the murder!"
That wasn't the whole conversation obviously-- we also talked about empathy and compassion, and when it's good to feel those things. I'm just extracting the one part to illustrate the principle relevant for this conversation: just because someone makes a claim about their feelings, doesn't exempt them from having to support their argument with logic.
Reason, after all, is quite literally the only thing separating man from beast. We should embrace it, not shy away from it!
Preface and Background
Fifteen or even ten years ago, I would have agreed with you, that it was only radicals who had these views. I was best friends with [REMOVED] growing up (either just search that page, or scroll down), who is the son of [REMOVED], who was a significant DFL figure in Minnesota politics in the 1980s and 90s. The latter ran for Minneapolis mayor in [REMOVED], and in fact I spent multiple occasions hanging out at his campaign office during that time. Almost every single one of my other friends were also DFL'ers.
The best man in my wedding was/is gay, and married to a black man, who is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. My friend's house was like a second home to me, and even though his mother is a die hard activist-style liberal (by 1980-1990s standards), I view [REMOVED] like a second mother myself.
I had a lot in common with Democrats in those days. They were in favor of "color blindness", strong border controls, fiscal responsibility, law and order, and being tough on crime. I provide this example in an attempt to qualify my own credentials: I have personally, first-hand seen how radically mainstream-- not just fringe-- Democrats have changed since the 1990s. I've been there the whole time.
Cultural Marxism
Did you watch the "What is Cultural Marxism" video I sent you?
I have yet to meet a contemporary Democrat under the age of sixty who does not buy into that philosophy, sad to say. They don't call it by name, and most of the time aren't even aware of the origins of the philosophy-- but they state its conclusions unquestioningly.
At [REMOVED], the head of marketing told us all, in a room in person, that the marketing group was going to focus on "hiring women and minorities". Make a Venn diagram: what's the only group not part of "women and minorities"?
But rather than identifying that as racist and sexist against whites and men respectively, they see no double standard whatsoever, and in fact cheer it on! If I were to propose the opposite-- that we focus on hiring white men-- I'd be fired on the spot.
And again, I'm not talking about a radical fringe: this is mainstream, right out in the open, right in meetings in which I'm personally a part of. And this is just a singular example, out of a million I could name, both at work and elsewhere.
The company had a white basketball player in the office. He was literally the only white guy on the team. Yet he was the one with the problem, with the "unconscious bias". Why? How? Well, the video explains that: "There can be no racism against whites, because racism = prejudice plus power." Clear as mud.
Recall from the video: whites are "oppressive", so just like Herbert Marcuse says, uplifting the "powerless, oppressed" minorities is more important than the rights of the "oppressive" majority, i.e. white males. Think about how creepy that is, where we supposedly value equality before the law, and all men are created equal.
What about poor white people? What about rich black people? What about passive, gentle men? What about violent women? What does "white" and "black" even mean, when there has been cross-breeding for so many generations? Aren't we all just human? Can groups even be oppressed? Isn't everyone's lived experience different? Is it fair to stereotype?
I hope you'll agree that all of those questions show how silly and superficial this sort of world view is, and that people like [REMOVED]'s head of marketing and tens of millions of other Democrats today should do a better job questioning their core assumptions.
The First Amendment
I agree that the protesters like the First Amendment-- when it benefits them. But every time they hear something they disagree with, all principles fly out the window, and it's cancel culture central.
Unfortunately, I see this kind of hypocrisy with the Left all of the time, it's a daily basis sort of thing. I just wrote about a neighbor, for instance, who has hilariously contradictory signs on her fence.
Do you know Oliver Darcy? Look him up if you don't. He's a grown man who spends his life trying to get the tech companies to censor conservatives, like a playground snitch. And there are hundreds upon hundreds of Leftists just like him, on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube promoting the same approach.
I got banned from an online game forum once for basically nothing. They literally called me a "white supremacist", then perma-banned my account with no warning, so I couldn't even defend myself.
Social media companies are now putting "fact checking" tags on Conservative posts, with links to places like CNN. Again, not fringe: this is on the most visited social media websites on the internet. Here is a book for you, with hundreds of footnotes painstakingly documenting the fake news perpetrated over many years by CNN and other mainstream news outlets, incidentally.
When Stefan Molyneux went to give a talk in New Zealand, Leftists showed up trying to tip over and set fire to a bus full of people. His speech got canceled. In England, when "Count Dankula" made a joke video for his girlfriend, ironically teaching the dog to do a Nazi salute, he was fined and eventually sentenced to prison when he refused to pay the fine.
When Tommy Robinson stood outside a court house, on public property, covering the Muslim rape gang trials, he was sent to prison and survived off of one can of tuna per day, in solitary confinement for months, with the Muslim prison population shoving feces through the slatted windows in his tiny cell.
When I personally wrote a blog post that hurt the feelings of a "trans" person, they tried to turn me into the police.
As a group, the Left does not value Free Speech highly as a principle. Obviously there are individuals within who do: but by and large, Lefties do not.
They'll promote it for selfish reasons when it suits them, but otherwise they hide behind the expression "we need to regulate 'hate speech'", and when pressed for what constitutes "hate speech", it winds up amounting to whatever hurts someone's feelings, and only in one of the Cultural Marxist-defined victim groups.
I've seen this view espoused on national television many times, via guest panels-- it's not just a few bad apples.
The Police
Did you see this? This doesn't sound like a messaging problem-- it seems pretty unequivocal to me: literally defund the police, or get the fuck out, in their words. And I take them at their word. And this is no small crowd either. And this is Minneapolis's Democrat mayor, not just some random guy.
That's not to say there aren't Leftists out their with more nuanced opinions of course: in fact, I'm not a huge fan of American police myself. But to say the radical view is fringe does not mirror what I'm seeing with my own eyes.
Take a look at web sites for Antifa and Black Lives Matter. They too are pretty unequivocal towards their hatred of cops. Antifa are outright anarchists, whose own blog site is called "itsgoingdown.org". That doesn't sound like reform to me. Major Democratic politicians have explicitly endorsed those two groups. Many of my neighbors have yard signs endorsing one or both groups.
Once again, it's not just a few bad apples.
Black Supremacy
I almost hate to send you these-- they're pretty disturbing. But it sounds like this has completely flown under your radar.
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
I stopped at three, but could have probably done twenty five. Frankly, I didn't care to watch anymore. Obama floated in the past that racism was in white's "DNA". I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he meant "DNA" figuratively-- but then I started hearing more and more Leftists espousing this position, which got me wondering.
Look up Munroe Bergdorf. Tucker Carlson covered that, among many other items, in a recent monologue.
Communism
The CIA defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.
Have you ever read about the origins of Black Lives Matter and Antifa? These are the groups driving the mainstream of the Democrat's official platform planks today. According to the CIA's definition, they are terrorist organizations.
Bernie Sanders' campaign was filled with Communists who want to throw Conservatives into gulags. One organization, "Project Veritas", actually infiltrated his campaign and outed some of these people. Personally, I don't like the dramatic music and cinematography "Project Veritas" uses, since their actual content stands on its own: but try to tune that out, as annoying as it is.
Again, I take these people at their word-- I have no reason to doubt them. Whenever Communists come to power, the first thing they do is take people behind the shed and put two between the eyes. This happened with the Bolsheviks, with Mao, in North Korea, and many other places.
Bernie Sanders himself honeymooned in the USSR. He repeatedly praised Communist dictators like Mao and Castro up and down. He even explained once that bread lines were a good thing, because "in Capitalism only the rich have the food". I guess he's never been to Cub Foods.
Bernie Sanders was a whisker away from being the Democrat nominee for President not just once, but twice.
Did you read the "Green New Deal"? I did-- every word. Hardly anything had anything to do with "the environment"-- rather, it was about forcefully extracting wealth from Cultural Marxist "oppressor" groups, and handing it over to the "oppressed" groups, at gun point.
Are you familiar with the United Nations' "Project 2030"? I covered that in a blog post here. They don't call it Communism, but that's what it is, and on a global scale. They also support eugenics and forced sterilization. This isn't some fringe-- it's the United Nations, for Pete's sake.
Back in 2017, [REMOVED]-- our own company's CEO-- signed a petition that wound up being from a Communist front group. I wrote about it here.
Control
Just to clarify something, if it indeed even needs clarifying: I have zero problem with women or black characters in video games. I recently finished "Dragon Quest XI", and my favorite character by a mile was "Sylvando", who is very obviously homosexual, and who even has "girl eyelashes", as my daughter pointed out. He fit so organically into the game's world, that I couldn't even imagine the game without that character.
The problem I have is when game developers, department managers at work, or film producers are sitting around with giant spreadsheets: "Let's see, do we have enough transgendered black single mothers with rickets in our game / movie/ department?"
So they start shoe-horning in Cultural Marxist dogma-satisfying characters, just to appease the Twitter mob, who almost certainly wouldn't have bought their game anyway. Or hiring people based on whether or not they have a vagina.
If Control's characters feel natural, then I'm all for it.
Conclusion
I've given you lots of arguments here, fully-cited. Again, if you chuck it in the trash, that's fine-- I had fun writing it at least. Maybe for your "Courageous Day of Action" or whatever the heck it's called, you could stand up to some of the people usurping control of the Leftist movement in this country?
I'm not a very emotional person in general, but I do fear for the future of this country, and for my own personal safety and the safety of my wife and kids. The views mainstream Democrats hold today were unimaginable just a decade ago-- what will their platform be in another ten years? That's a big part of why I bought the house up North, and also own firearms.