Almost every social interaction I have, I feel some tension. I never know who I'm dealing with, what they believe, what's currently bothering them, etc. The conversation could easily go sideways real quick, and it's always on my mind. Every topic seems extremely divisive, not only politics and religion, but diversions as well. Hell, I don't even like talking about football anymore after that Chiefs/Swifties/rigged games stuff going on all year. We can't enjoy anything these days.
I have great respect for you, Steve, and love reading your substack. But I have never gotten your attraction to America's right-wing. I know that the left in the US is problematic, especially with regard to abortion, a terrible evil. However, when I look at the Republicans I see a party of syncophants (compare what Graham, Rubio, and Vance once said about Trump to what they say now, spineless!) and personality cult devotees whose leader is a con-man, adulterer, thin skinned, narcissistic, mean mouthed son of a b#@$h. Their policies seem to help the richest and do little for the poor or the working-class. Also, I have enough trouble relating to my own religion let alone the Evangelicalism that Republicans embrace. What a looney-toon pile of crap!
Anyway, as the US stock market plunges and a billionaire and his acne faced acolytes rummage through your social security, Medicaid, and veteran affairs, I wish you all well and truly do hope and pray for the best. But in my limited vision and view it seems like both sides in the US are problematic in different ways and deciding between the two is roughly like chosing between Nazis and Communists in 1930's Germany. There are no good guys, nobody is going to make things better, no one will save the day.
I agree. I love your writing. Don’t love your politics. You say “On the Left, the unifying power of hatred towards goodness, decency, common sense, and responsibility remains a force to be reckoned with.” I absolutely disagree. What does it mean to be “left”? Anyone who’s a “democrat”? Anyone who didn’t vote for Trump? I myself am liberal leaning and have many friends who are may be considered “left” and they are some of the finest people I know. Kind, considerate, loving, giving, and, yes, inclusive. There is no hatred in them for goodness and decency… unless you consider Trump good and decent. And even then, the friends I know don’t hate him… close, but they are just trying to make sense of all the chainsaw dismantling that is blatantly marginalizing and harming people. How is that good and decent? Too much rhetoric and hyperbole and not enough specifics. I speak with real humans both right and left and they are all good humans. Twitter/X is nothing more than an agitator tool that takes humanity out of the equation. That darkness you are feeling, I believe, will indeed be our undoing. You couldn’t pay me to get on Twitter and listen to millions of people vomit their bullshit. No, thank you.
“On the left” or in internet parlance, “shitlib” is someone who is a moralizing fool and hypocrite. Example: No human being is illegal! Ok, we are sending illegals to Martha’s Vineyard. Get these people off my island! Shitlibs play on human emotions of guilt and compassion to obtain my tax money which is given to an NGO and donated back to the Democratic Party.
Forget X. Go to Reddit and look at the Politics blog. It’s compassionate liberals calling for the death of Trump and Musk and MAGA non-stop.
Yes, just like the 1930’s in Germany. As the Trump administration tells 60 colleges to cut the anti-Semitic nonsense or loose federal funds. Just like Hitler did, right?
Liberals are so, so, so intelligent and sophisticated. Trump=Hitler! As Trump goes after anti-Semites. How did you guys achieve this level of learning and knowledge of history? Shitlibs. What can you do?
I think that I was pretty clear in not liking either side and wrote that it was "roughly like" not the same as. There really are a large contingent of us who are neither liberal nor conservative, pro one or the other. Imagine!
Trump is an agent of chaos who was almost imprisoned and killed by shitlibs driven crazy by their wacky media and political elites. His predecessor had dementia and we were forced to look down at our feet and pretend for four years that the emperor had clothes.
This is Trumps revenge. Don’t cry, he was a product of our culture. Non-stop news, victimhood and now the sewer of social media.
We killed God. Steve has killed God. There won’t be enough buckets to catch all of the rivers of bloodshed that come from that choice.
God gave us a choice: life or death. Order or chaos. We, like every society before us, chose the latter. Steve is smart, but he’s no Nietzsche. This has all been predicted and played out before.
We are certainly in uncertain times. We just went through 4 years of lies piled ontop of lies, signed with an auto pen. Gaslighting was the order of the day. Crawling out of that will feel icky and uncomfortable, but that’s the way forward.
I think the time we are in is characterized by short-swing backlashes from one or the other side. 16 was a backlash against the excesses of Obama's executive order regime in his second term. 20 was a backlash against Trump, and the Biden admin's actions during his term in many ways sought to punish Trump and his supporters in various ways. 24 was a backlash against the excesses of that backlash. And on and on.
We're kind of stuck in a cycle of backlash and counter-backlash precisely because the country is so divided. Trump won in 24 by a larger margin than he did in 16, but it was still a very close election, because the country is still very closely divided. This means every election has the potential to be a strong backlash election (the 22 midterm was an exception to this, because it, itself, was a backlash against Dobbs). What happens is that the people who ride into power on the back of a backlash election then tend to overstep, which intensifies the backlash against them, and it just cycles.
I honestly think the backlash cycling has shortened to a great degree due to the rise of social media and the power it has to organize and project dissent so effectively. The impact of this in both 16 and 24 was apparent, and I think it's leading to shorter backlash cycles now, fueled as well by the sharp, close division in the country.
My impression is that the current administration is overstepping. Biden did as well, although in very different ways because the agenda was different, but he created a backlash based on the things he did do nonetheless. The overstepping is creating the roots of a counter-backlash. This is now being manifest in the pushback we're seeing, for example in this comment thread (I'm not criticizing the pushback, by the way, just noting that there was generally no such pushback a month ago, while there is now, pretty much everywhere you look). A backlash is certainly coming.
While it seems likely to me that the specific modalities of the current administration may be accelerating the backlash formation (and this was to be expected, in any case, Trump is who he is after all), ultimately the formation of a strong backlash was inevitable. The electorate is simply too divided for it not to happen.
What has not yet happened, though, is for the organized political manifestation of the backlash -- ie the Democratic Party -- to come up with a coherent approach for how to run the backlash effectively, how to harness and ride it to retail political victory. In a sense they still have time to do that, because the midterms aren't that close, and holding the cards back, for now, allows them to adapt their retail approach to the specific backlash that ends of taking shape. And so we will see how that ends up looking as we get closer to 26.
I do think you're right, though, that there is a backlash already underway. The Democratic party is in disarray, still, but their supporters are moving into backlash mode now, which is different from where they were a month ago, quite notably.
I fully agree. If the Democratic Party learns that they need to reach out to ordinary people, they will start winning elections again. But I think as long as they are held hostage by the radical left and all its weird pathologies, they will continue to push people away into the arms of Trump.
People like Bill Maher and Anna Kasparian have been pointing this out almost daily, and yet few seem to listen. Anna will never be a conservative, but her eyes have been opened to the insane left which she wrote about on her Substack some months ago.
Almost every social interaction I have, I feel some tension. I never know who I'm dealing with, what they believe, what's currently bothering them, etc. The conversation could easily go sideways real quick, and it's always on my mind. Every topic seems extremely divisive, not only politics and religion, but diversions as well. Hell, I don't even like talking about football anymore after that Chiefs/Swifties/rigged games stuff going on all year. We can't enjoy anything these days.
I have great respect for you, Steve, and love reading your substack. But I have never gotten your attraction to America's right-wing. I know that the left in the US is problematic, especially with regard to abortion, a terrible evil. However, when I look at the Republicans I see a party of syncophants (compare what Graham, Rubio, and Vance once said about Trump to what they say now, spineless!) and personality cult devotees whose leader is a con-man, adulterer, thin skinned, narcissistic, mean mouthed son of a b#@$h. Their policies seem to help the richest and do little for the poor or the working-class. Also, I have enough trouble relating to my own religion let alone the Evangelicalism that Republicans embrace. What a looney-toon pile of crap!
Anyway, as the US stock market plunges and a billionaire and his acne faced acolytes rummage through your social security, Medicaid, and veteran affairs, I wish you all well and truly do hope and pray for the best. But in my limited vision and view it seems like both sides in the US are problematic in different ways and deciding between the two is roughly like chosing between Nazis and Communists in 1930's Germany. There are no good guys, nobody is going to make things better, no one will save the day.
I agree. I love your writing. Don’t love your politics. You say “On the Left, the unifying power of hatred towards goodness, decency, common sense, and responsibility remains a force to be reckoned with.” I absolutely disagree. What does it mean to be “left”? Anyone who’s a “democrat”? Anyone who didn’t vote for Trump? I myself am liberal leaning and have many friends who are may be considered “left” and they are some of the finest people I know. Kind, considerate, loving, giving, and, yes, inclusive. There is no hatred in them for goodness and decency… unless you consider Trump good and decent. And even then, the friends I know don’t hate him… close, but they are just trying to make sense of all the chainsaw dismantling that is blatantly marginalizing and harming people. How is that good and decent? Too much rhetoric and hyperbole and not enough specifics. I speak with real humans both right and left and they are all good humans. Twitter/X is nothing more than an agitator tool that takes humanity out of the equation. That darkness you are feeling, I believe, will indeed be our undoing. You couldn’t pay me to get on Twitter and listen to millions of people vomit their bullshit. No, thank you.
“On the left” or in internet parlance, “shitlib” is someone who is a moralizing fool and hypocrite. Example: No human being is illegal! Ok, we are sending illegals to Martha’s Vineyard. Get these people off my island! Shitlibs play on human emotions of guilt and compassion to obtain my tax money which is given to an NGO and donated back to the Democratic Party.
Forget X. Go to Reddit and look at the Politics blog. It’s compassionate liberals calling for the death of Trump and Musk and MAGA non-stop.
Better, go to Ground News. And yes, calling for people's death is just plain wrong.
Yes, just like the 1930’s in Germany. As the Trump administration tells 60 colleges to cut the anti-Semitic nonsense or loose federal funds. Just like Hitler did, right?
Liberals are so, so, so intelligent and sophisticated. Trump=Hitler! As Trump goes after anti-Semites. How did you guys achieve this level of learning and knowledge of history? Shitlibs. What can you do?
I think that I was pretty clear in not liking either side and wrote that it was "roughly like" not the same as. There really are a large contingent of us who are neither liberal nor conservative, pro one or the other. Imagine!
Trump is an agent of chaos who was almost imprisoned and killed by shitlibs driven crazy by their wacky media and political elites. His predecessor had dementia and we were forced to look down at our feet and pretend for four years that the emperor had clothes.
This is Trumps revenge. Don’t cry, he was a product of our culture. Non-stop news, victimhood and now the sewer of social media.
We killed God. Steve has killed God. There won’t be enough buckets to catch all of the rivers of bloodshed that come from that choice.
God gave us a choice: life or death. Order or chaos. We, like every society before us, chose the latter. Steve is smart, but he’s no Nietzsche. This has all been predicted and played out before.
I didn’t kill god. He did that to himself.
Hi Steve,
We are certainly in uncertain times. We just went through 4 years of lies piled ontop of lies, signed with an auto pen. Gaslighting was the order of the day. Crawling out of that will feel icky and uncomfortable, but that’s the way forward.
Mike
I think the time we are in is characterized by short-swing backlashes from one or the other side. 16 was a backlash against the excesses of Obama's executive order regime in his second term. 20 was a backlash against Trump, and the Biden admin's actions during his term in many ways sought to punish Trump and his supporters in various ways. 24 was a backlash against the excesses of that backlash. And on and on.
We're kind of stuck in a cycle of backlash and counter-backlash precisely because the country is so divided. Trump won in 24 by a larger margin than he did in 16, but it was still a very close election, because the country is still very closely divided. This means every election has the potential to be a strong backlash election (the 22 midterm was an exception to this, because it, itself, was a backlash against Dobbs). What happens is that the people who ride into power on the back of a backlash election then tend to overstep, which intensifies the backlash against them, and it just cycles.
I honestly think the backlash cycling has shortened to a great degree due to the rise of social media and the power it has to organize and project dissent so effectively. The impact of this in both 16 and 24 was apparent, and I think it's leading to shorter backlash cycles now, fueled as well by the sharp, close division in the country.
My impression is that the current administration is overstepping. Biden did as well, although in very different ways because the agenda was different, but he created a backlash based on the things he did do nonetheless. The overstepping is creating the roots of a counter-backlash. This is now being manifest in the pushback we're seeing, for example in this comment thread (I'm not criticizing the pushback, by the way, just noting that there was generally no such pushback a month ago, while there is now, pretty much everywhere you look). A backlash is certainly coming.
While it seems likely to me that the specific modalities of the current administration may be accelerating the backlash formation (and this was to be expected, in any case, Trump is who he is after all), ultimately the formation of a strong backlash was inevitable. The electorate is simply too divided for it not to happen.
What has not yet happened, though, is for the organized political manifestation of the backlash -- ie the Democratic Party -- to come up with a coherent approach for how to run the backlash effectively, how to harness and ride it to retail political victory. In a sense they still have time to do that, because the midterms aren't that close, and holding the cards back, for now, allows them to adapt their retail approach to the specific backlash that ends of taking shape. And so we will see how that ends up looking as we get closer to 26.
I do think you're right, though, that there is a backlash already underway. The Democratic party is in disarray, still, but their supporters are moving into backlash mode now, which is different from where they were a month ago, quite notably.
I fully agree. If the Democratic Party learns that they need to reach out to ordinary people, they will start winning elections again. But I think as long as they are held hostage by the radical left and all its weird pathologies, they will continue to push people away into the arms of Trump.
People like Bill Maher and Anna Kasparian have been pointing this out almost daily, and yet few seem to listen. Anna will never be a conservative, but her eyes have been opened to the insane left which she wrote about on her Substack some months ago.