Posted on 01/19/2017 2:10:23 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck
Well.
It has been 16 years more or less that I have been on FR.
My participation began with the contested Bush-Gore election in late 2000.
I've seen a lot of debate, a lot of discussion, and a wide palette of points of view from left to right and on many spiritual subjects.
I believe the present season, with not just Trump but a new salvational consciousness on the horizon, is an answer from God to the confusion.
Anyhow, as the "age of Trump" comes upon us, are there wiser ways to use FR than to chew the fat on behalf of particular parochial views? Perhaps it would be the time, instead, to look at how a full-salvational God consciousness can bridge what looked like unbridgeable gaps.
I got into a debate today on Facebook. It was with a women's protest movement that, typical of our modern Left, took the LGBT etc. under its wing. Well we know that's folly. I tried to sell them on the point that it was folly. I got asked back whether I'd ever met any of these folks. Well here's where I took a turn I might have taken differently. Rather than saying yes, I've seen them do thus and such, which emphasized how much I knew, I could have pulled the mirror out right there and then, and asked how many conservatives or even centrists that person had met, and are they all the same?
Conservatives can get so fixed on the idea that the Left is ghastly wrong, that they can also forget that even blind squirrels smell out some nuts. A full authoritarian brain wash job towards the Left isn't needed, if we can rightly capitalize on, even empathize with, what they correctly identify as desiderata. Sometimes it's just our own pride or lack of patience that has caused us to get frozen into a certain attitude. As even Trump said, "I'm going to bring us together." Let's give both God and Donald a chance.
What, specifically, to they consider desiderata that are correct? To what extent are they even honest abut such alleged desiderata.
For example, the left blathers endlessly about gun control for the purpose of 'safety', or 'public health', or 'crime control'. In fact, they're lying through their teeth on the topic. For them, it's not about safety, or health, or ending crime. It's about control.
For another example, the left blathers endlessly about helping the poor. OK ... we as individuals have a Christian duty to do that. For the left, though, it's not about helping the poor (which their government programs do very badly at best), it's about enriching themselves, building a government leviathan, and controlling the lives of productive people.
There may be common ground with the low information voters. We can show people who want safety and less crime that gun control doesn't provide what they're looking for. We can show people who want to help the poor that government does a catastrophically bad job of it. We can show them that as Christians and Constitutionalists, we have ideas more likely to produce the desired result.
But with the leadership, we have no common ground. They're Alinskyites. The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
I once grabbed an oupusi.
There are three general groups of leftists:
1.) Those that are ignorant/ill informed/don’t care, but all in all are decent people who form their opinions by emotion. We can talk to some of these, the others may be unreachable or uninterested. They still vote, sometimes. These are the nice, useful idiots who are sometimes surprised to find they support something that is bad, if ever scratch the surface.
2.) The True Believers. The dogmatic, spittle-lipped, fever-faced cannon fodder of the left. These people are the ones that swallow all the dogma of the left, hook, line, and sinker, and will do anything to advance it. They are Code Pink and MoveOn.org types. These are the people who cried when Hillary lost, and threatened to leave the country. These people are akin to the people in the Gulags who cried when Stalin, the man who put them there, died. I think many of these people are dangerous and unstable. I avoid these people like the plague, they not only cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be talked to. I met many of them at protests in DC. These are the people (when the last third of liberals described below come to power) who scream as they are dragged away “Wait! What are you doing this for? I am on your side!”
3.) The last third are evil. People like Clinton, Alinsky. Obama, Ayers, Cloward, and Piven. These people only want power and money, and they believe tyranny is the way to get both. They don’t believe for a second all the crap they preach. They only understand power, and have no moral framework to inhibit them in any way. These people are to be fought, not reasoned with.
It is true that a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. But the one-way ratchet that is liberalism has only one ending point when the ratchet has no more cable to pull in and no more teeth to grab. That ending point is tyranny and misery.
Conservatives have to practice introspection and reflection on the things we believe in, because we are hit with a flood of counter principles each day from the media, Hollywood, liberal politicians and people from all three groups described above. They are validated by each other and the flood of media. We have to think about these principles every day, turn them over and examine them to ensure we are viewing them correctly.
Liberals don’t have to do that. And they don’t. IMO, we can only talk to a portion of the people in group #1 above. The others are unreachable.
Yes. I miss sunkenciv. I communicated with him a while back. I enjoyed conversation with him, and the articles he posted.
Agreed. See my post at #23.
In my 11 plus years here; I've seen this warning/prediction over and over again. "If free Republic doesn't ___________ then it will ____________"
Well as you know, FR never did ______________ and it's still standing strong.
And I miss the wise Thackney, too.
I want the leftists (or at least their army of low information voters) to cease being leftists. Leftism is evil; it is an ideology which demands the destruction of Christianity and of America. The ideology must be destroyed. Leftists, OTOH, can be persuaded to abandon their evil ideology. Some of them anyway. Not all are hopelessly brainwashed ... with God, all things are possible.
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
All the leftist I personally know are barking moonbat insane: there IS no possibility of rationally engaging these people. Period.
My strategy is to stay as far the F possible away from these EXTREMELY unpleasant oh-so-tolerant-as-long-as-you-think-exactly-the-same-way-as-do people. So far, my strategy has worked extremely well: I’m a MUCH happier and healthier person than otherwise.
I learned a LONG time ago that my job is not to fix the stupid and deliberately ignorant, particularly since there are so many of them.
President Trump! I didn't know you posted on here!
Watch out for bald assertions that can fail under circumstances that we may even have some power over, or see other factors having some power over.
Like that “one way ratchet.” This did not happen in a vacuum. It is not independent of all other factors.
I’m glad that we’re at least trying to think beyond our existing box at all. Even saying that not all Leftists are the same is a start. Let’s not stop with just a start. And the FR of the past is not our manifest destiny.
And so will you be really even helping Donald Trump? Or will you be digging in against him?
When the atmosphere changes, when the waters change, so do the chemical reactions that take place in it.
FR was also standing in pretty much the same political and spiritual national chemistry that it had been standing in from the start.
Bush was feebler than we wanted to give him credit for. We learned that especially during the Trump campaign. The other night, a friend of mine pointed out that trouble was brewing during both the Bush and Obama regimes. Remember how we complained that Bush never really robustly defended the GOP point of view?
The earth is not the only place that the climate could change.
“Let him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall.” 1 Cor 10:12
Are you looking for kinder, gentler? I have been there. I have tried that.
Nothing for it but culture war, in my opinion.
“And so will you be really even helping Donald Trump? Or will you be digging in against him?”
Let me repeat:
I learned a LONG time ago that my job is not to fix the stupid and deliberately ignorant, particularly since there are so many of them.
I actually have about 4 lefties that are my friend on Twitter that I can have a real discussion with, often not related to politics and they have got to the point they can laugh and don’t continually try to insult me.
I feel that is an accomplishment.
One of them is/was a Marine. I tell him often he is the only Leftie Marine I know. And he is not offended.
It is a very rare thing to find them but some exist.
I agree with you on SunkenCiv. I didn’t know what happened to him. He just disappeared. FR is intellectually much poorer without him.
We debate all the angles here, and the talkers present the refined arguments over the radio.
-PJ
Well anyhow, this is sort of a mini-opus.
Not the opus that says “I quit this place” — but the opus that says “I intend, so help me God, to quit this attitude.”
The Left has been such a colossal nuisance for the last however many years, that the devil has managed to use it to distract us into painting ourselves into our own little corner.
When did we even see a president so bent on defending what he honestly thought was true? While at the same time willing to negotiate about what is wise? We’ve had so much politeness and parochialism that it’s sickening.
Can we doubt that God set this up? Politics sure as hell (literally speaking) didn’t! This is not Donald Trump’s first try. Many factors added up in the zeitgeist to “make way for the way of the Lord” if I may wax biblical about it.
Generally, in history, when people are suffering, if it isn’t for the sake of helping other sinners on the way to God, then it’s because they got stupid towards God. Refusing His blessings, the only thing left was the devil’s curses.
Let’s, of course, not worship Donald Trump. The God who set Donald in place is worthy of the worship. But let’s try not to fight him when he does things that are biblically correct, either. And no, the bible didn’t stop at the Old Testament.
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