Posted on 07/21/2019 3:38:05 PM PDT by DGravalloni
Hello to the people of the Free Republic.
This is in two parts. In Part One, as my first post here, I want to tell you a little about myself and it leads into an issue I want to discuss: A lifelong (for 36 years) Democrat, I did what I could for my beliefs and my country. I did research and gave talks on the far-right groups who I felt wanted a theocracy and blah blah blah. I had several ex-Communist-country friends and they told me how the economy and the media worked and disinformation and so many things. Like all Americans of either party, I was totally against that. While I was disturbed by some directions in my party, you never agree with anyone ALL the time. I did learn to respect some Republicans and Right-Wing people that I felt showed great integrity. Who wrote, spoke, or did things not from ideology but from sticking firmly to facts as they saw them, to thinking and not emotion.
When Trump announced I mocked. But then it got weird His slogan was "Make America Great Again" and always it was in context of economics and military. I was not thrilled with the idea of a ton of money to the military complex but I figured he didn't have a chance anyway. But the mainstream media (MSM) began to say he wanted to go back to Jim Crow and subjugated women. I knew THAT wasn’t what he meant from his own words and yet the whole mainstream media immediately said it. Then videos were spliced together making it appear he praised white supremacists in Charlottesville. And I heard a live speech where Trump said that "These countries release criminals to come to the country with the immigrants, and 95% of them are the violent ones, racist and murderers" or something to that affect. The MSM spliced it to say "Illegal immigrants, 95% of them, are rapists and murderers" and then the commentators were all "He said HISPANICS were rapists and murderers." They did the same thing with his comment that "MS-13 aren't humans, they are animals" to say “illegals are animals” and then they said "He said Hispanics are animals." Because of my ex-communist friends, I began to realize I was seeing very standard-issue communist-style disinformation. I independently researched and pretty much, when the MSM claimed Trump did or said anything, I knew and confirmed he hadn't done or said that.
Holding my nose, I started watching FOX and found, as much as I hated so much of it, that they were more accurate in their news. At the same time, Bernie's commie platform was gaining strength. This obscured just how lefty Hillary was. When she was finally the sole candidate and I heard what she was saying, without Bernie to compare it to. I could see now how much further (way to the left of standard-issue Socialism) she had gone. I still was going to vote for her, but after staring at my mail ballot, getting up, thinking, going back, staring, for hours, and actually moving my pen toward her spot to fill in for her, my hand felt physically dragged to vote for him. Since his election, for 2 1/2 years now, the MSM has never alked accurately about what he has done. They splice together or misrepresent videos of gestures, speeches, meetings with foreigners, pictures, and everyone instantly believes them and freaks. And every time they said he said or did something, it was misrepresentation. Every.time. The only ones who gave me some of what was really happening, much as I might dislike it, was FOX. And of course, his tweets. And so often, the tweets everyone freaked about weren’t actually what he said.
But I started seeing something impossible to deny. His tweets forced the Democrats, by their reaction to them, to expose who they really are. I am in my 50s, I know what a Democrat is, and there was no question, these people are no Democrats. This wasn't the Democrat party. While I am dubious about a wall, I had lost so much respect for Pelosi and Shumer and the rest when, after saying for years we need a wall they flaccidly, FLACCIDLY, wussed out and turned against it under the pressure. But now I had to face it, they had NEVER been for a wall. They had been lying all this time, trying to look like Democrats but Trump had forced out of them what they really thought. I started to feel the knife of having been lied to and realizing I have no party. None. The Republicans, when I analyzed it, spend on social programs and all about what the Democrats used to, fiscally they are Democrats. Libertarians are Democrats socially. Republicans are Republicans socially and Libertarians are Republicans fiscally. Democrats--aren't. That label is a lie, it’s really the Communist party. So both the Democrats and Republicans have to realize that we are without a party. We have to choose between two parties, Republican and Libertarian, that have split our respective agendas. Most Democrats feel that, no matter what the social laws, you can find a way to do or sleep with or whatever, what you want but if that money for programs isn’t there, you’re screwed. So we have to chose the fiscal and vote Republican. It's gross. Republicans tend to go more for the social, so they too, vote Republican and not Libertarian as much. His tweeting, or more the reactions it provoked, made me totally clarify the reality of where we all are.
I wonder, most illegals are actually very socially conservative and various religions. The Democrats have taken social stuff to the lunatic fringe. They just might vote Republican, and I bet you’re right—they will have that wall up FAST!
What?
Thank you, I just want to get part 2 up as soon as I can and get it all off my chest, but then a LOT of reading.
When Truth intrudes, epiphanies abound...Welcome.
Good luck with figuring out how the world works.
Atlas Shrugged is a long and windy book but she makes the argument for free enterprise and small government.
Another fiction book that sealed my conservative mind was Unintended Consequences. I was always comfortable around firearms, but the history and facts woven into this book support for need the Second Amendment.
Awesome! Hopefully your parents and others will wake to know that this is not JFKs democrat party, but is veiled communism. There are a lot of excellent books, fiction and non fiction, which will reinforce that you have made an excellent life decision.
Thanks for the book referral. I’ll check my local library to see if they have it or can get it.
Welcome, hope you post part 2 on this thread it will be great reading.
Steel sharpens steel around here. Debate gets lively, and sometimes very heated, especially if nominations for national elections are not clearcut at first, like 2016 -- there were epic struggles here until Trump emerged as the top candidate. Be sure to read the FreeRepublic Welcome Page and the Posting Guidelines so you can make full use of the site, remain collegial and not get banned, and also to push back within the guidelines if people become personally insulting (in case you are still in lib-dem mindthink from time to time).
I am a convert from cultural liberalism 30 years ago, before it became outright marxism. I'm now a broken glass conservative. (i.e. "would crawl across broken glass to preserve the Constitution...") So grateful for the explanations, links, resources and even the rebukes I have received from conservatives once I started to see the light but still hadn't done enough reading and refining of my views.
Please elaborate :)
Thank you so much.
Thank you. I love to read and research and am going in many new directions now.
Good too see you posting.
ping me when you get part 2 up.
Thank you. Do I do it on this thread or I a separate post? Still trying to figure this out.
Here is some reading matter
Saul Alinsky’s Rules from Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinsky describes 24 rules in Rules for Radicals. Of those 24 rules, 13 are rules of “power tactics”:
1. “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy
thinks you have.”
2. “Never go outside the experience of your people.”
3. “Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the
enemy.”
4. “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
6. “A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.”
7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
8. “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and
actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”
9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing
itself.”
10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of
operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will
break through into its counterside.”
12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive
alternative.”
13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The remaining 11 rules Alinsky describes are concerned with “the ethics of means and ends”:
1. “One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue … Accompanying this rule is the parallel one that one’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s distance from the scene of conflict.”
2. “The judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.”
3. “In war the end justifies almost any means.”
4. “Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.”
5. “Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.”
6. “The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.”
7. “Generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.”
8. “The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.”
9. “Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.”
10. “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.”
11. “Goals must be phrased in general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ ‘Of the Common Welfare,’ ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’ or ‘Bread and Peace.’”
and a bonus:
“THE EIGHT STAGES OF GENOCIDE ARE CLASSIFICATION, SYMBOLIZATION, DEHUMANIZATION, ORGANIZATION, POLARIZATION, PREPARATION, EXTERMINATION, AND DENIAL.”
Stages of Genocide. Seems we are entering into the polarization phase. We’ll see if there ever have the balls to cross the line of departure and walk into the teeth of the 2nd amendment.
Thank you, this site, which I found kind of by accident, has a ton of stuff.
Sure.
Glad you are here, glad you got sane.
Thank you, I am answering when I get time, I didn’t expect this huge respose!
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