Posted on 10/10/2024 1:40:14 PM PDT by grundle
After Trump came onto the political scene, and especially after he was elected in 2016, the us-vs-them mentality immediately took shape. Anyone who refused to “resist Trump” was seen as a threat to the country, and I was fully on board with that mindset.
It all felt righteous at first. But eventually, the tactics deployed to fight Trump became repetitive, boring and ultimately fruitless. Polling shows that he has increased his support among Black and Latino voters despite wall-to-wall coverage on his unsavory, racist or bigoted remarks. Several years of media raising alarm over Trump’s threat to democracy has only resulted in a tight presidential race between himself and Kamala Harris.
I can’t help but acknowledge that the only thing that was accomplished by resisting Trump was less understanding and more division among Americans. I personally became reluctant to challenge my “side” or engage with voters who disagreed with me. In turn, I became less knowledgeable about the people and world around me. I saw Republican voters as an evil monolith and that was a big mistake.
My evolution started in 2022 when I was sexually assaulted by a homeless man in my neighborhood as I was walking my dog. That horrible experience alone didn’t change me politically, but the treatment I received from the far left and some progressives after sharing the story did.
I was told that by publicly sharing what had happened to me, I was stigmatizing my “unhoused neighbors.” Others accused me of feeding into racist tropes because they assumed that my attacker was black. But I had never even disclosed the man’s race.
He was white.
Not only did I suddenly see the flawed thinking of some on the left, I also witnessed their cruelty and hypocrisy in real time. These terrible traits that I had associated solely with my political opponents were obviously not exclusive to their tribe. I was stupid for ever thinking that was the case.
That doesn’t mean everyone on the left thinks or behaves in the way this small group of lunatics do. Far from it. But it does mean that there are factions and flaws on both sides of the aisle and no one has a monopoly on truth.
Then there was the insane reaction to one of my tweets in March 2023:
All hell broke loose after I posted those words. Most “friends” in left-wing media didn’t bother reaching out privately to discuss their disagreement with my personal preference. Instead, many self-described socialists took it upon themselves to profit from conflict by publicly attacking me with monetized videos.
A smaller leftist YouTube show put out five separate videos skewering me about the tweet, while conveniently erasing the advocacy I had done on behalf of the transgender community throughout my career. They even went as far as drawing a link between my tweet and trans suicides, which sadly wasn’t the most unhinged outcome of the debacle.
TYT’s volunteer YouTube chat moderators quit over the tweet, and someone reported me to Human Resources. An on-air transgender contributor even resigned from the company after being urged by online mobs and leftist shows to do so. Curious that not one of those shows hired her after she took their advice.
I never apologized for the tweet and I never will.
That whole experience forced me to come to terms with the intolerance on the left and it allowed me to publicly reject the ideological shackles that kept my world small and less informed.
Today I’m less certain and more curious than I was four years ago. I’ve made humiliating mistakes while covering political news because I was previously unwilling to consider or understand the perspective of Americans who vote differently from me. What to Expect From Unaligned
I’m hungry for dialogue, a space for in-depth analysis and a judgement free zone. That is what I plan to do here. Every week I will provide subscribers with:
two to three written pieces that dig deeper into the big stories of the week with the intention of finding truth rather than promoting a political side.
video posts sharing details on breaking news and political events.
a weekly podcast beginning in November that will feature long-form discussions and debates with guests from all walks of life.
engagement with me in the comments section for paid subscribers. Join me and be part of the dialogue.
The point of this new project is the pursuit of intellectual freedom and open mindedness. I want to nurture curiosity without fear of offending the sensibilities of loyal partisans. I reject arguments about the evils of platforming people who are considered too naughty to converse with. I want to facilitate dialogue.
I don’t know what my political identity or label is, and I’m not even sure I want to be pigeonholed. This is my effort in pursuing extreme honesty and humility in the quest for common ground and truth without the constraints of a tribal identity.
“After Trump came onto the political scene, and especially after he was elected in 2016, the us-vs-them mentality immediately took shape. Anyone who refused to “resist Trump” was seen as a threat to the country, and I was fully on board with that mindset.”
Nope- happened a long time before that....was quite evident from the day GWB was declared the winner in 2000- we just didn’t have social media back then
Sounds like a classic "liberal", or one of today's conservatives.
The truth is out there.
Get this gal a coat and a seat on the train.
Good for her!
She was a liberal until she was literally mugged.
repetitive, boring and ultimately fruitless.
Not to mention hypocritical, intolerant, fascist and tyrannical.
True that. She reminded me of the old saying that a conservative is a former liberal who got mugged.
She's still got a way to go. Like capitalizing "Black" but lower casing "white" as though one race is supposed to be treated as higher than the other. But I count her as on the right journey.
“She was a liberal until she was literally mugged.”
Until literally raped
Now she’s been red pilled.
Very.
“despite wall-to-wall coverage on his unsavory, racist or bigoted remarks.”
Name one FTard?!
Better late than not at all.
Another mugging or two and she'll come around to understanding that conservatives actually do have a monopoly on the truth.
And we don’t want to hear about the alleged “all Mexicans are rapists” BS or the not racist temporary muslim ban.
She seems to think there is a utopia of sharing out there that might find her way to her subscription site, and there might be a few seekers of a perfect world. But the real world is filled with crazies and lunatics, and many of them are in positions of power. Many of them are college professors and educators. Others are federal cabinet secretaries and lower level managers. Some have even been CIA directors.
Finding a safe cozy place for polite discourse is a worthwhile pursuit, and I wish her well. But she should never step too far away from X or You Tube. What is revealed might be shocking and ugly, but it is what we have to deal with.
She just revealed that she’s a gullible, non-critical-thinker, who is too lazy to investigate what she’s fed daily by the MSM (marxist supporting media).
Ana gets red-pilled by her own stinking, bigoted and hypocritical kind.
There are far more of the vicious creeps on the left than the author seems willing to admit and far less on the right than she seems to imply.
She’s not all the way there yet.
Jimmy Dore came to the same conclusion.
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