Posted on 08/04/2024 8:25:23 AM PDT by MtnClimber
I walk my dogs around my town twice a day. I’ve always known it was a 96% white and 99% liberal town. It’s the kind of California town with yoga studios and health food stores. The rules are very strict. My brother, who is building a house here, had to go to court three times to fight for a gas stove in his new house. It’s the kind of place that has those lawn signs, you know:
I’ve lived here for about a year. I am ordinarily a city girl, but there are reasons for me to be here right now. It’s been strange getting used to the slower way of life. I don’t exactly fit in.
But I know the vibe because I grew up in California. This is the hybrid-driving, green juice-drinking, MSNBC-watching utopia. It’s the kind of place where there is no crime to speak of, no abused pets tied up in the yard. It hardly ever rains. There are birds everywhere. You’d almost think you were in a David Lynch movie.
I don’t mind it too much. It’s beautiful and clean, and I don’t have to worry about my car being stolen. No sirens are blaring, and no helicopters are flying over.
I often see the same people out walking their dogs. Most of them are very friendly. Every so often, there is an angry person. As much as they want to project a loving and tolerant attitude, if you break the rules, they will come for you.
I’ve been chatting with a woman who walks her dog around town. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. After I broke my arm, she advised me on how to exercise it back to health. She is a Pilates teacher. We always say hello and have been doing so for a while.
Today, our conversation went a little deeper than usual. It was something about getting old and how fast time goes by the older you get. And it’s true. It does. I said to her, “I can’t believe it’s Friday already.”
Then she said, “Things are getting so scary. November is coming.” I pretended not to know what she was talking about. I didn’t add to the conversation or pretend to agree. I just said, “And it’s so hot.”
“We do seem to have just gotten some hope,” she said. I imagine that to her, hope means Kamala Harris now has the nomination. Again, I said nothing. What could I say? “It was looking dire for a while there,” and that I took to mean Biden, she believed, could not beat Trump.
I didn’t say, “Can you believe Donald Trump was shot just 13 days ago?” I couldn’t say that. I could not ding her hope, what little she had. I quickly pivoted again, “I can’t believe Summer is almost over! It’s July!”
We’d reached a door we could not open, a conversation we could not have. I realized it was expected that I was in her tribe. I fit the demographic. I live in this town. It would never occur to her that someone like me might not agree with her that a Kamala Harris presidency represents hope. Quite the opposite.
I smiled, and we tried to continue our conversation, but I left shortly after that, leaving the odd conversation hanging in the air. She would no doubt think about it and wonder why I didn’t go further. Did she not understand what I meant, she might wonder. Would that thought take her further?
She might google me and find out pretty quickly why I said nothing. Then what? Would she still say hello to me? Would she still invite to come and do yoga with her and a group of women once a week? I’d like to think so, but I don’t know.
It just made me think how strange our lives are now, how we are on such opposite sides, and how our votes could instantly end a potential friendship. I could hear her explaining it later to her boyfriend, “Then I found out she was a Trump supporter.”
If I could be honest with her, I would try to tell her that there is nothing to fear with Trump, that it’s a media narrative that got out of hand and inadvertently caused a mass hysteria event that we’re still not all the way through. I’ve tried to have that conversation with so many people over the years, but it has never gone well.
My dog Jack is funny. When I see he’s scared, I always say, “It’s okay, Jack.” But somehow, telling him that always makes him more anxious. To him, his fear is something he won’t give up, certainly not if I try to tell him that he has nothing to fear.
The same would be true if I tried to tell this woman that the truth awaits on the other side of the delusion. She would do what my dog does: Glance back at me before trying to get away as fast as she could.
And so went my Friday morning.
In the other America, Trump is headed back to Butler, PA. What a great thing to do.
“Pilates ... is a type of mind-body exercise developed in the early 20th century by German physical trainer Joseph Pilates, after whom it was named.”
“Pilates uses a combination of around 50 repetitive exercises to spur muscle exertion. Each exercise flows from the “five essentials”: breath, cervical alignment, rib and scapular stabilization, pelvic mobility, and utilization of the transversus abdominis. Each exercise is typically repeated three to five times. As of 2023, over 12 million people practice Pilates.”
“Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates from Mönchengladbach, Germany. His father was a gymnast and his mother a naturopath.
“Pilates said that the inspiration for his method came to him during World War I, while he was being held at the Knockaloe internment camp on the Isle of Man. Pilates spent four years there, working on his fellow internees, developing his method of a system of exercises intended to strengthen the human mind and body, believing that mental and physical health were interrelated.”
“Pilates can be performed on both a mat or on specialized equipment. Pilates often incorporates spring-based resistance machines known as reformers.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilates
“when the SHTF these people will be like animals trapped in a cage”
Yup—these folks are dangerous to themselves and others around them—avoid whenever possible.
They have zero common sense and/or street smarts.
I often play that same “Dogwhistles not received or reciprocated” game where I am, in Marin County, Ca.
I try getting to know the talker before I answer with any honesty, if I ever do. When I find someone with a good sense of humor or irony, I may judge them as not too fragile, and ready to hear a different point of view.
My mother called certain people “dyed-in-the-wool Democrats”.
My immediate neighbors to the west are of that type.
They will be at your house looking for food and protection
That is true. The Left are mostly mentally disturbed people. The Left is about the only place these people can go and feel comfortable...
“I may judge them as not too fragile”
You nailed the issue. Most leftists are emotionally fragile.
Anything can set them off in a rage.
You’re surrounded! But, you’ve “got the enemy just where you want them” (LOL)!
Honestly, you can’t escape them they’re everywhere.
Have you ever watched the movie “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (the 50’s version not the one with Donald Sutherland)?
“I’ve been chatting with a woman who walks her dog around town. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. After I broke my arm, she advised me on how to exercise it back to health. She is a Pilates teacher. We always say hello and have been doing so for a while. “
What I fail to understand is that the vast majority of your suburban liberals like her are quite conservative in their personal lives. But when it comes to voting, they vote for the opposite. They act responsibly in their private affairs, but are quick to tolerate irresponsible behavior especially in those they see as the downtrodden.
The only thing I can attribute that to is that they’re infected with the disease of “pathological compassion” - the type of compassion that destroys the giver and the receiver. They have been “guilt tripped” into supporting the most destructive public policies in the name of “compassion”. And their highest aspiration is to see themsemselves as “nice, compassionate people”.
They are also incapable of connecting dots. To them cause and effect doesn’t exist.
See my tag line.
Yeah, I know. They’ll be welcome, until entitlement overtakes them!
My neighbors on both sides escaped from Mass. to Fla. They are both conservatives.
When you cannot have a polite disagreement over public policy, you are on the verge of a bloody civil war.
We have elections so we don’t have to kill each other. When elections don’t matter anymore because they are rigged, your society is reduced to nonstop violence.
When people cannot talk about their differences, they start shooting.
When the 2020 summer of love riots happened, the Antifa/ BLM barbarians spread to the liberal white suburban enclaves. They were fish in a barrel and towns burned. They still vote for the barbarians. It’s insane.
Ayn Rand used to write about one way humans are different than animals are not just that we are thinking creatures—we get to choose whether to think or not.
The virtue signalers have intentionally chosen not to think so they can “feel good” about themselves.
They have that luxury because they have food on the table and a roof over their head in their Whitopia of virtue signalers.
If times got tough they would have to get street smarts in a hurry.
Regrettably, so!
“They have that luxury because they have food on the table and a roof over their head in their Whitopia of virtue signalers.”
Yes, it’s what I call the disease of “affluenza” - not appreciating how well you have it and who made it possible.
“If times got tough they would have to get street smarts in a hurry.”
And that is the cure for that disease!
We live in a small Bay Area California town that is just like she describes. Now and then you discover a few other conservative people, but most people are wise enough to keep their mouths shut regarding politics.
In 2016, when the ultra-stupid “Resist” movement was at a full-throated roar (pussy hats and all), one of my wife’s good friends went totally berserk. She kept pestering my wife to abandon conservatism and Trump and join her in the “resistance.” My wife kept telling her “No. Stop trying to convert me.” but she wouldn’t listen. Finally, my wife ended the friendship.
“ I don’t mind it too much. It’s beautiful and clean, and I don’t have to worry about my car being stolen. No sirens are blaring, and no helicopters are flying over.
I often see the same people out walking their dogs. Most of them are very friendly.”
96% white.
“They are the most closed-minded, intolerant people on earth.”
No kidding. There is little or no inquisitiveness. There is little or no understanding or knowledge of history. There is little or no understanding of tyranny and how it grows. There is little or no awareness of how great Republics and empires grown and then collapse. There is little or no awareness that we are living through what will probably be the Great Collapse.
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