Another changer worth reading about
Another in a long long line of change stories.
The title? “Coming Out As A Republican To My Democrat Family Went Worse Than Coming Out Gay.”
No surprise to anyone who knows a lot about what happens to political changers, but it was probably a surprise to him. Here’s a quote:
I am not a sex offender. But a number of my friends no longer have time to see me. Lifelong acquaintances now regard me with fear and distrust. I have been unfriended en masse on social media and excoriated by friends who deign to remain. And I have been singly excluded from social gatherings when the rest of my family was invited.
No, I am not a sex offender. I am something even worse than that. I am a Donald Trump supporter…
When, in my adulthood, the liberal policy agenda became problematic for me, I found myself at a loss. I began to raise questions with my family and friends, and met resistance. It was not because my concerns were particularly inappropriate; I was just not supposed to be questioning at all…
For the first time in my progressive life, standing up for the values that I most strongly espouse””truth, morality, self-reliance, boundaries, tolerance, and a healthy dose of Jewish skepticism””was damaging my reputation and character. When I publicly opposed my dad’s support of the Iran deal, I was admonished. I had few friends with whom I could have a civil political conversation: one stopped all communication with me for two weeks because Trump won the presidency.
If Republicans are bad, Trump is nothing less than Satan embodied. Post-election family gatherings devolved into group Trump-bashing, which intensified as more rumors of my dubious views wafted across town. I did not even bother going to gay pride because it was fused with a Resist march. If you do not want to impeach our president, you have no place in gay life.
Please read the whole thing.
And if the author, whose name is Adam Levine, happens to come across my blog, I bid him welcome and invite him to read all my posts on the topic of political change, many of which deal with the social ostracism factor. It’s not an easy thing to experience, and it can be a real shock.
Good for him.
Challenging dogma; religious or ideological… has always been fraught with censure. Dogma cannot tolerate serious challenge. History is filled with examples, the most famous of whom are arguably Socrates and an unknown Jewish carpenter.
I suppose he should be grateful that Demos do not treat apostates the way Muslims do. Better a non-person than a dead person, I suppose. 🙂
I read that a few days ago and thought he was a very brave man, or very, very fed-up with the Left.
Gringo: Levine is staking his career and possibly his personal safety on this “outing” – note that he lives in LACA.
“He is founder and CEO of the home restoration business Marc Sid Limited, and resides in Los Angeles, California ”
So far, the Left has exhibited only a few incidents of individually targeted physical violence resulting from their insane “tolerance” policies (see cartoon posted below), but remember the shooting of Congressman Scalise, and the “Chik-fil-A” shooter.
What happens if Antifa decides to put Mr. Levine out of business for being a h8ter in league with President Hitler?
https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2018/01/Google-hiring.jpeg
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Proving once again that there are people who cling to the quaint notion that liberalism is a political predilection. It is not: it is a religion. And leaving the fold makes you an apostate, with all the opprobrium that goes with that status. Another red-pill person has his eyes opened.
Although we are well acquainted with the Leftist propensity to fire both barrels at any apostate, the internet is going to allow a situation which (once again) illustrates that Karma is a history buff (it doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes).
In the book, “Coming Out Under Fire,” about the travails of homosexuals in the military, one of the historical sections details that many gay soldiers first learned they weren’t “the only one in my town” so disposed: they were rounded up and put in the brig together, while the psychiatrists (not the working officers, BTW), determined how to get rid of them.
That, added to the experiences of the undiscovered still in the ranks (because any large group of men will have a certain proportion of gays, and the WW2 army had LARGE numbers of men stationed in places like LA and NYC), taught them that there were many more “like them” which, at the end of the war, eventually led to the overt entertainment establishments catering to them, and then to the Stonewall Riots and its “empowering” of the Gay Movement.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Levine, and others in Hollywood and elsewhere, are discovering via the Webz that there are LOTS of gay conservatives.
Where this will end, who knows, but we may see a cyber version of the Riots in politics.
Proving once again that there are people who cling to the quaint notion that liberalism is a political predilection. It is not: it is a religion.And leaving the fold makes you an apostate, with all the opprobrium that goes with that status.
Indeed. The liberal acquaintances of Adam Levine treated his leaving the flock more severely than my grandmother treated her family members who left- or did not join- her church.
My grandmother and grandfather were members of the Church of Christ, a fundamentalist church. It upset her very much that her children had left her church and her grandchildren refused to join it. She finally accepted that they weren’t going to be church members. But she never cut ties with her family members who didn’t belong to her church.
My fundamentalist grandmother was less fanatic about her religion than Adam Levine’s acquaintances are about their politics.
It’s so ironic since the liberals consider themselves to be so open-minded.
It’s so ironic since the liberals consider themselves to be so open-minded.
Decades ago, William F. Buckley made a trenchant comment.
They are open-minded, but not when it comes to racist..bigoted…deplorable..etc views. Turns out that any view that disagrees with a liberal can be labeled as racist..bigoted…deplorable etc.
I relate to every changer.
My change was in 1991. There might be a whole bunch of us because it was with the advent of talk radio.
There are people who are changing due to YouTube videos, twitter, alternative news broadcasts and news sites. All of these are threatened due to the technology companies that have controlled who sees what. There was an article you can find on Powerline blog about Right Wing News closing shop after having millions of viewers years ago.
They got too big and the tech companies stopped their expanse.
AM radio takes too long to get to the point but it is on in my car when I’m driving to and from work every day. My favorite now is Larry Elder. He just launches one missile after another and bows up the narrative.
I’m back in school again and approaching 50 years of life. I see people in discussions from all perspectives.
I’ve been married to a Mexican and her family is split in their views. Both sides are rabid when they argue and not persuasive.
The lost art of discussion dismays me. In 1991 when I changed I worked to persuade others when I was in the US Navy. While I didn’t succeed the discussions were different than today.
One of my most vivid memories is arguing with an African American gentlemen who believed the minimum wage should just be raised to $90,000. He said back then in 1991 that then everyone could afford a Lexus.
I tried to explain that if everyone earned $90,000 magically and suddenly that Lexus prices would no longer be what they were as demand would spike prices. Would Honda just cease to make cars? No. They would try to capitalize. Every car and every item would cost more and your spending power would soon be the same. He didn’t get it and back then I realized that some people don’t want to get it.
Dave Rubin was changed by Larry Elder – you can find the video on YouTube. He listened. He considered the facts that he heard. Why does it take so long? Does it have to be painful moments that wake people up? For me it was the LA Riots in 1991. I couldn’t understand. Reginald Denny didn’t do anything to anyone and he was brutally beaten. These events such as Baltimore and Ferguson might have the same effect on people these days…. I hope. People have to wake up to personal responsibility and equal opportunity.
This was the article linked by Powerline blog
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2018/01/13/how-conservatives-are-being-destroyed-by-facebook-twitter-and-google-without-even-realizing-it-n2433962
Hawkins makes it clear that the censorship is not just Facebook, but Twitter, Google, YouTube and probably the other popular media providers, which means that there is obviously going to be an exploding niche market in providing uncensored conservative views.
The MPs (media providers) claim to be doing a good deed by censoring “unrespectable people” who purvey fake news and vioence and all the -isms we are so familiar with, and maybe they started out with the intent to just shut out the absolute worst voices (interesting to have that the goal of people who make such a big deal of Library Displays of Banned Books, but, whatever).
However, they keep widening the definition of “unrespectable” until it covers far too many outlets.
If they continue, we will live entirely (instead of partially) in the world foreseen by Mark Steyn in his aphorism, “If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones.”
So long as independents and moderates can see both progressive and conservative news and views, they will listen to the reasonable speakers and (hopefully) reject the unreasonable ones. If they have to choose one silo or the other, they will find it very hard to filter out the genuinely despicable ones.
If that happens, then there will cease to be any cross-talk between conservatives and progressives, with real liberals and libertarians caught with having to choose the viewpoint silo they want to live in (Leftists already don’t talk to anyone else).
Case in point on silos and silencing:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/hack-alert-letterman-interviews-obama.php
“Recently at a social gathering, someone asked me what I was writing about on our blog. I mentioned Fusion GPS. None of the liberals in the room, all of whom follow the news, knew what Fusion GPS is.“
Didn’t know what Fusion GPS was?
Of course ! And what role did Hillary have in it’s use to get FISA warrants? Who knows ??
What do people know? They know what celebrities tell them. I wonder how many people saw James Woods tweet showing homeless encampments in Los Angeles? Probably he was shadowbanned and while I saw the video from GateWayPundit I believe he might’ve had 1% impression on his twitter following.
The funny things is that these things could probably be discoverable in a case against Twitter. 1’s and 0’s are Electronic evidence in court cases.
i truly love demonizing, don’t you? Nuff said.
Aesopfan,
The left has perfected the sudden reversal of thinking when they achieve power. When they are in the minority the majority must respect them but as soon as they reach the majority they flip and crush the minority. Many, many examples but the rhetoric around gays and gay marriage is the most obvious. Live and let live suddenly becomes bake that cake or else.
Deja vu, or it must be in the air or timing or something.
Neo has addressed the matter of the Evergreen State professor how got his ass in a sling for insufficient ideological ardor and a superstitious bourgeois regard for facts and truth.
Now he is online making the following comments …
Bret Weinstein says the Left may have a “bad actor problem”
https://youtu.be/9osjKN5VWfM?t=57
The people that fell for the Left’s siren song of sweet deception were rather too gullible. Believing in humans is where they ended up wrong.