Comments

Tech and tiffs — 45 Comments

1. My wife and sister are even angrier than I am. I suspect single and divorced women are the audience for the left’s smears. I use facebook only for family and a few friends. I have blocked the worst commenters so I don’t see them on the few political posts I see.
   I do have a family member married to a leftist professor of Psychology in the Bay Area. I would not be surprised if she knows her. needless to say, I don’t talk about politics with either of them. The family dynamics are interesting, though. He does everything in the house, which is a hoarder’s paradise. She does almost nothing. Her children are feral children with no manners and rage reactions to any frustration. Maybe a BF Skinner devotee.

2. Depends on the relationship and how much you value it.

   My daughters are in college and so am I. While driving to places lately when they were in the car, I have been keenly interested in their backseat discussions which have included climate change and glancingly feminism. One daughter seems conservative and the other seems to be radical leftist due to the information and people she is hearing. I can tell because she mentioned a person who she didn’t know the name and I didn’t volunteer it but she said a blond conservative woman (I thought Ann Coulter) and said the brief video she saw (that discounted her views) showed that the only people in the audience were old and white. I almost spoke up at that moment and said that seems racist to judge someone on the color of the audience but I squeezed my lips shut I remember.

   On the Kavanaugh hearing, I had two opportunities with my daughters this week to discuss or bring up the topic but would have never and did not.

   I see people posting on facebook and I see both sides posting. The are basically the tired old meme’s on each side with no new information. One side is saying believe the woman and #metoo and the other side is saying 36 year old uncooberated blah blah blah. Neither has an emotional connection to me because we are so far beyond that fact and the people who are paying attention can see the bully tactics of the left.

   As with each big current event (like Anita Hill which moved people like Andrew Breitbart) and the LA Riots in 1991 which moved a small number of people…. people wake up and see the writing on the wall. So…. people die and therefore can’t vote. People come into this country and immediately get convinced to vote Democrat. People learn with each new big current event and that does not bode well for Democrats. The shifts are constant and in 5 months it will be something else moving people, helping people learn. I get concerned with the 70-80 year old on my FB page that acts like she has wisdom and there is no way anybody should be voting Republican.

   I can’t WAIT to retire so that I don’t have to be so “quiet” on FB or other social media platforms. 🙂

3. McCaskill loses ground because of her stance against Kavanaugh?

   http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/30/new-poll-shows-missouri-voters-rejecting-sen-mccaskill-opposing-kavanaugh/

4. I had an old friend from the Seattle area staying with us this last week. He generally leans left, though he’s quite eclectic, to the point of seeming incoherence. He became a widower some months ago and spent a great deal of time on his cell phone, including calls with a couple newer lady friends, one of whom is a lawyer and followed the Kavanaugh hearings in detail.

   We were distracted with other things, and I don’t think he would paid attention to the hearings anyway, but his Seattle lady friend gave him her low-down. He summarized her feelings and it sounded just like a summary of Neo’s commentary. Imagine my surprise.

5. My Facebook “friends” of the lib/progtard persuasion are all floating in a cess pit deeper than anything I have ever seen them do. And they seem to think they are swimming in a clear stream rather than bobbing in filth. Sad/

6. ” . . . since I’m not on social media I am spared that particular cesspool of what passes for human thought.”

   That’s exactly why I am not on social media either; I’m beginning to think it should be called antisocial media.

7. OT: When I scroll down to the comment entry field, the name and email of the previous commenter are showing. I’m on the latest version of firefox in private browsing mode.

8. I am not on social media, thank goodness. But I am afraid to discuss this with friends and siblings. I have a neighbor who gets all her information from CNN. My husband saw her while out walking the dog. She doesn’t want Kavanaugh, having been convinced that he will somehow wave his hand and reverse Roe, but she is not supportive of this smear campaign. That’s something, anyhow.

9. Thank goodness you’re back! I’m one of those who got error messages since Friday.
   My experience with liberal friends (that means ALL my friends except one) has been just like yours. I haven’t brought up the Kavanaugh thing with any of them, nor have they mentioned it to me. This feels like a Rubicon to me, a true deal breaker. I’ve never felt this way about any of the many other cultural or political contretemps over the past forty years. It’s as if people have forgotten how to think, how to reason.
   Even if I were to control my temper, I’m afraid I’d lose all respect for these friends. It’s just too gross; the intellectual dishonesty and hysteria are too extreme. And the malice.
   My husband (we’re very much on the same page) and I have actually been losing sleep over this.
   I’m grateful for your blog, Neo. I’m going to try to make a donation now, bigger than my usual. That is, if I can get Pay Pal to work.

10. Got on quick today. Thanks.
    As to social media, there is a dif between Facebook and Twitter.
    I quit twitter.
    As to Facebook, I get and give a lot of support, analysis of events, frewsh insight and humor.
    I’ve announced my opinion of democrat voters and have not suffered.

    Oops. Name Autofill was not mine. who is PA Cat?

11. Hi Ed–

    I’m PA Cat. Apologies– I don’t know why my username remained in autofill for other users– it may be another Bing bot issue. FWIW, I don’t see your name or anyone else’s in the username box on my screen.

12. 🙂

13. With the exception of a life-long liberal friend with whom I discuss all such issues, I avoid the subject except for fellow conservatives. I do have a sense of foreboding. I recall the campus riots in the late 60s (my HS commute took me by SF State, where there were hundreds of TAC squaders replete with helmets and billy clubs taking on the rioters — not pretty). Imagine this scenario: Kavanaugh makes it to the Supreme Court, Trump picks up a few more Republican senators, and RBG is incapacitated or passes away. The ugliness and nonsense we are seeing now will pale in comparison to the Left’s reaction in such a case.

14. Every one of my friends on Facebook is a liberal or a leftist except for our former farmhand, who probably doesn’t know that I agree with him because I never ever ever post a single word about politics there. The irrational partisan vitriol is bad enough that I am thinking not only of leaving Facebook — which I would have done long ago except that it’s the only way I stay in touch with my far-flung and beloved extended family — but of cutting off some of the friendships. What good is friendship without respect?

15. For me, the site loaded fine today, all day. Yesterday I couldn’t reach it at all for most of the day, then I got access briefly, enough to read that there were technical glitches, then the technical glitches kicked back in.

    We met friends for breakfast, one of whom I usually disagree with politically, and nobody brought up anything political. It was just obvious that no good could come of that. I’ll be in California seeing friends in a few weeks, and it will be the same way there. Except for the person who is also a changer; that will be interesting.

16. not discussing with your liberal friends about the Kavanaugh travesty is a good idea, greater even for your health.

    I made the mistake of mentioning Ford lying about being afraid of flying to someone liberal, these are some of their replies back..

    “Doesn’t that make her more credible when she had to overcome her fear of flying to fly into DC exposing him as the rapist that he was?”

    “She flies a lot doesn’t mean she wasn’t afraid of flying, that was the season why she had to take a few days to muster up the courage needed and be mentally prepared for the flight. Now she faces more fear now that Trump supporters everywhere wants to do her harm for standing up to her rapist”

    Yep, liberals are great at lying to themselves, making up preposterous runaround to reason backward to make sense of their biased opinions that makes no sense in reality.

17. The only thing that comes close to this behavior is organized Communist smears, although usually only in other countries.

18. “Yep, liberals are great at lying to themselves, making up preposterous runaround to reason backward to make sense of their biased opinions that make no sense in reality” Dave

    Everyone on the Left, to some degree has rejected as true demonstrably basic aspects of human nature and rejected factual operative principles of the external reality within which we all exist.

    The extent of their mental dysfunction is revealed by the degree to which they do so. Rationalization and justification are the means by which they maintain their denial of reality. So they’re mentally unbalanced and cannot be reasoned with… this is what the Left has wrought and as Art so often has belabored, it’s entirely intentional.

19. I wonder what the position of the current lefties was during the Duke lacrosse fiasco. The woman lied and the faculty beat up the boys.

20. I have one freind who is a rabid liberal. He has been writing “foaming at the mouth” excoriations of Kavanaugh. See link…

    https://yaoutsidethelines.blogspot.com/2018/09/national-embarrassment-by-dean-gloster.html?m=1

    I have not spoken to him about this. There does not seem like much room for rational discourse.

21. Time for Scripture: The KIng James Version from Psalm 146: “the way of the wicked he turneth upside down”

22. Not much help here. I abandoned social media almost two years ago. No one I know has brought this up, and most of them are liberals (I live and work in MA after all). As I mentioned in another post, I haven’t heard the Kavanaugh / Post issue discussed in public, even when I’ve been eavesdropping. I do check in to FB occasionally to see photos of my kids and grandkids, I’ve seen no posts or mentions of this whole affair.

    Based on that I think most ordinary folks are pretty much annoyed and disgusted by the whole thing.

23. This afternoon on a different computer and different provider I was getting error messages with every attempt. Just now I got in with no problem.

    Hope they get it fixed for you soon, Neo.

    PS – I was about to post and noticed that the auto fill had Richard Aubrey listed. I guess the next poster may find my name.

24. Last thursday I was in a local barbershop and they had a TV on with CNN broadcasting the Kavenaugh hearing. After a bit a customer said something derogatory about Ford and the democrats and suddenly lots of agreement erupted. Social media is not the only place people gather and those barbers knew BS when they saw and heard it.

25. I was at a wedding this weekend — very liberal daughter of very liberal friends. I was probably the only (closeted) conservative there. Four of the speakers, besides saying nice things about the happy couple, made political statements (dark times for women, important to fight climate change, etc.) I wasn’t surprised, but I still find it jarring.

26. Geoff,
    Christians in the Roman Empire would draw a fish in the dust with their toe or use a bit of scripture as a proverb to determine if the person they were talking to was a fellow believer. We cast hints now.
    I find many other conservatives in the circles I work in in automotive mfg.
    I am involved with a Big Band. I know the band leader and was afraid to broach politics.
    I did a blurb for the band on my show and sent him a link to the audio.
    Next time I saw him he told me he listened to and liked the whole show and what a hard conservative he was.
    I never would have guessed.

27. Neo, sorry about the problems you have been having with the site. Missed you the past couple of days.

    This evening I sent an email to my contact list in which I stated I would no longer distribute political matter for several reasons. Among those is my own disgust with the current despicable political climate.

    Instead, I provided a compendium of the sites where I attain my own insights, along with the reasons I trust them; and invited folks to visit them if the they were interested. You were featured in the list. I stated that I valued the diligent research that you do before you express an opinion.

    As far as the Kavanaugh debacle, I cannot discuss it without resorting to profanity of the most base sort.

    On a positive note, my wife and I are now attending a church service that is the extension of the old Hour of Power TV ministry, continued by the grand son of the Old Man. It is an uplifting experience. Some may find it interesting that he uses the Old Testament rather liberally in his sermons to illustrate the path to the good life. Guess what? The Old Testament–Proverbs specifically– as he presents it, advocates that for a life well lived, discipline in the pursuit of knowledge on the path to wisdom is the key. Who knew?
    A young minister who presents his message with grace and humor.

28. I’m on Facebook, no other social media, with a relatively small circle of friends (in the Fb sense) among whom there is a reasonable assortment of views on politics. I am seeing some ranting and vituperation, more from the left than the right, but some from the latter as well. It’s *nothing* like as bad as it was in the six months or so before and after the 2016 election. I felt then as if people reached some sort of peak of anger and then backed off. The amount of political commenting went way down across the spectrum. My impression is that people just got sick of fighting.

    An anecdote that seems telling: a left-wing friend announced with manifest pleasure that he had just spent some time un-friending any “misogynist” who voiced support for Kavanaugh. A right-wing friend announced that he supports Kavanaugh and that anyone who wants to un-friend him for that reason should feel free to do so. (The two don’t know each other.) That strikes me as representative of the general tendencies of the two sides–active and passionate rejection vs. a sort of “take it or leave it” shrug.

    My wife, btw, is on Twitter, mainly for job-related interests, and happened across a stream of leftist hate (not directed at her) which left her appalled.

29. That autofill problem, where another commenter’s name and email address show up on autofill, was a problem on this blog at one point a couple of years ago. It seems that right now it’s only happening once in a blue moon and just to one or two people, whereas a couple of years ago it was happening consistently. It is some sort of cache problem at the server, which means that it’s a problem that originates with the host. As I said earlier, I plan to be changing hosts quite soon and I assume the new host will fix it, if in fact it’s still happening at that point.

    If you are worried about your email showing to someone else, just put up a bogus email address while the problem is still occurring. You’ll still be able to comment here.

30. Ed Bonderenka on September 30, 2018 at 10:12 pm at 10:12 pm said:
    …
    Next time I saw him he told me he listened to and liked the whole show and what a hard conservative he was.
    I never would have guessed.
    * * *
    Because the Left has so intimidated and harassed conservatives (to the point of violence), none of them speak up – because of the reasons you all know so well: we value friends and family for themselves, not for their politics, and we need to keep our jobs. (Got some of our own unhinged ones on FB, which we do not respond to, although we had to block several on the outer edges of the friendship circles.)

    However, the point is, the breadth and depth of the conservative believers, including the disgusted Democrats, is therefore unknown to both sides, who very much underestimate it. Which is what led to the jarring 2016 election results.

    http://archive.is/Kp3ot
    “of course, there’s the backchannel”

31. http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/07/to-have-a-prayer-in-november-republican-voters-need-to-start-talking-to-their-neighbors/

    “The ultimate purpose of political correctness is to control our one-on-one conversations. Here’s how it works. After the dominant media and influencers in a society smear an opinion in the public square, people start self-censoring. By shutting up about what we believe, we create a spiral of silence around any expression of that belief by anybody else.

    The irony is that an opinion can actually be held by a majority of the public, albeit in secret, at the same time it’s being smeared in the media — about anything from politics to what bathroom to use to whether mustard goes with hot dogs. Shame over holding any particular opinion can be manufactured by those who control communications. Cult leaders do it all the time. Gas-lighting wife beaters do it all the time. And political operatives increasingly promote conformity and group think. So it pays to understand how this process works.

    When you self-censor for fear of being isolated, you take part in building a spiral of silence around the view you hold. When those views go out of circulation, it creates the illusion of a public opinion cascade in the opposite direction. Public opinion, of course, drives public policy. So in the end, all you’ve done by self-censoring is usher in public policies that contradict your views.

    Perception is everything. As an idea loses currency in public discourse, people tend to perceive that the majority believes the opposite. Have you ever experienced a stranger coming up to you assuming you share his views? This has happened to me a lot, and it’s annoying, not to mention disrespectful of a stranger’s capacity to think for himself.

    It’s easy to publicly express a media-manufactured opinion, but people naturally fear being socially tainted, so they’re less likely to risk exposing an unpopular viewpoint or affiliation. Lots of people even falsify what they believe in order to be part of the perceived “in group,” or closer to the center of perceived power and status. This grows the spiral of silence even further.”

32. There is a shift in sentiment on the right I am detecting that could have an effect on the election. A week or so ago a lot of people were worried that congressional Republicans were not strong enough to stand up to the Democrats and threatened to sit out the election if Kavanaugh was not confirmed. But now I believe there is a white-hot anger against the Democrats and a feeling that confirmation or not they must be smacked down hard, and *then* we’ll worry about “RINOs”, “GOPe”, “squishes” etc.

33. http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/28/senates-ritual-defamation-brett-kavanaugh-threatens-every-american/

    “But the power of ritual defamation “lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize.” Wilcox writes “it is not used to persuade, but to punish,” as well as to avoid the conversations and debates that a free society needs if it is to survive. So if we want to remain free, we must all learn to recognize the patterns of ritual defamation and summarily reject them.

    Wilcox also offers this final analysis: “The weakness of ritual defamation lies in its tendency toward overkill and in its obvious maliciousness. Occasionally a ritual defamation will fail because of poor planning and failure to correctly judge the vulnerability of the victim or because its viciousness inadvertently generates sympathy.”

    Any person who values freedom and our Constitution would hope that the attempt to ritually defame Kavanaugh would fail, but not only for those reasons. It should fail primarily because our nation is well overdue for a restoration of the rule of law.”

34. http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/28/im-latino-democrat-thanks-kavanaugh-circus-im-voting-republican-midterms/

    “I am a college-educated, suburban, first-generation Latino immigrant. I voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. I find President Trump to lack the basic moral character that we should expect in our political leaders and did not consider, even for a moment, voting for him in 2016. After watching how Senate Democrats and the media handled the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, however, I will be voting Republican in 2018 and for Trump in 2020.

    When I came to the United States, I left a country that had recently undergone a military coup. My family experienced first-hand what happens when those in power abandon the rule of law. We saw the devastation that comes to a society when men of power believe their political objectives so justified that they are willing to pursue them by any means necessary. In the eyes of those men of power, we could see the deadening of souls that occurs when a man’s perceived benevolence blinds him to his own tyranny.

    During the Kavanaugh hearings I saw that same look in the eyes of Senate Democrats. The hearings made clear that the Democrats on the committee were not interested in pursuing the truth or respecting Christine Blasey Ford’s desire for anonymity. Instead, they simply sought to delay the vote in the hopes of winning the next election.”

    Tomas Mendoza is a pen name for a man who works at a company endorsed by gay activists and where CEOs openly complain about having too many white, male leaders. To protect his job, therefore, he requested anonymity for writing in support of due process for a Republican appointee.

35. Lying bullies are mean — and they like being mean.

    How Germans treated Jews, first by dehumanizing them.

    How US Democrats treated blacks, by dehumanizing them, and making Jim Crow laws against them, so that it was illegal to treat them as equals.

    The mean PC-bully Democrats are trying to dehumanize Republicans. Had HR Clinton won, this anti-Rep treatment would have been put into small laws, and some big laws. It’s already the unwritten practice in Universities (at many where no Reps are hired), and in most TV media. With Fox moving away from being Rep friendly to merely Rep tolerant, which is far better than the Rep-hostile of the others.

    Few are calling it Kavanaugh Derangement Syndrome, because of Trump DS, and Bush DS … but actually it is Democrat Derangement Syndrome.

    We need a name for it in order to fight it. The Left is correct about the importance of naming things, and while I thought Bush Derangement Syndrome was good at the time, now I realize it’s a PC-Dem Derangement Syndrome.

    The Dems who have it are Deranged. I’m going to be using this phrase more now, and urge all to use it.
    Democrat Derangement Syndrome – DDS – Dems are deranged about … x y z or somesuch.

    (I’m not Mollie Brown tho that’s the Name offered)
    —
    Oldflyr – Dr. Schuller was great: “When faced with a Mountain, I will not quit…”

36. Glad you are back, Neo. When I had trouble on Friday I assumed it was the Instalanche and figured that was a bittersweet problem. There’s nothing sweet about bots.

    Imagine the state of discourse if Trump gets another appointment. Or wins the mid-terms in a big way.

37. [Very peculiar. Your site saved my name as ‘Ron’ with a bellsouth e-mail address. No clue who that is]

    The political culture among the left and the right is dissimilar. Our Republican friends (bar two) make no political posts on social media. The other two make an occasional (fairly light-hearted) comment (e.g. a thumbs up for Melania). They use Facebook to post vacation pictures, pix of their grandchildren. The political posters are 90% gliberals and leftoids, 10% too-cool-for-school libertarians. The liberal posters give you dippy memes and John Oliver clips because that’s the level on which they think.

38. Art Deco

    same thing happened to me, the name I got assigned was Rich from Chicago, any Rich from Chicago here?

    It was probably the Deep state hacking Neo’s site to obtain emails of deplorables

39. “It was probably the Deep state hacking Neo’s site to obtain emails of deplorables”

    Well, they certainly have mine! Things appear to be back to normal on Neo’s post this morning, so far as I can tell.

    No fake names attached to my comments, anyway.

40. I was, up till Friday night, a member of the facebook group “Corvallis People”, a page dedicated for the residents of Corvallis Oregon that wasnt supposed to include politics but often does, mostly instigated by…guess who? Community members on the left. The three moderators are naturally all liberals, this is a blue on blue state and a university town after all.
    Anyway, the page was Kavenaugh free up-till Friday night when some in the community organized an anti-Kavenagh rally at the courthouse which is often a staging point for these things. That got posted to the website as well as another post that drew lots of emotional responses from mostly women as well as super-woke males, this included pictures of someones lawn with signs that read “Believe all women” and similar. Many responses from the female membership expressed an emotional reaction saying they cried after seeing these signs. The person whose lawn held these signs held up as a hero. I simply asked if all women should be believed in all circumstances or only when politically helpful. My god, the crap storm that ensued just from that question! You could practically hear the screaming from the written responses. My question was treated as though it violated some sanctity. many people accused me of bringing politics into the subject as though it wasnt there already. Kavenaugh and the Republicans are just evil and its like denying the holocaust to even think otherwise.
    My commenting privileges were cut until Tuesday (tomorrow). I asked the lead moderator what landmine I stepped on this time ( I got suspended for one day for asking a politically inappropriate question a previous time). Apparently my question precipitated a discussion with all three moderators, two of whom thought I should be banned from that group immediately. The lead moderator said she stuck up for me and said I could stay on if I would “work with her” on what I post. I told her I thought what she wanted was way too narrow. It would be like playing that game “Operation” where you have to be super careful about removing a wrench or what have you from the patient with out touching the sides or a buzzer goes off and you loose. They’d only have another full moderator melt-down sometime in the near future so I just quit the page.

41. If you think the left has gone berserk in the Kavanaugh hearings, just wait and see how they act if President Trump has the pleasure of replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

42. Harry “They’d only have another full moderator melt-down sometime in the near future so I just quit the page.”
    * * *
    The Operation Game is a very good analogy, if you replace the buzzer with land mines.

    Because you quit the page, I suppose they now have NO ONE who will question their leftist bubble (can snowflakes be in a bubble?), but that is how the pollsters and pundits missed Trump’s supporters: they literally did not know any, because they kept unfriending anyone that might be the least bit doubtful of the leftist agenda and ideology.

    I have some good friends who are fairly sane progressives, some who are rabid Democrats but not totally lost to reason, and some on the right ranging from moderate to passionate (not extremists, unless you go to the Goldwater definition), but these people that you and others are talking about are unhinged.

    My position: Trust but verify ALL sides of any question.

    I almost said BOTH, but that is the “horns of the dilemma” that the Unmakers want us to be impaled on. You can see it in the way they frame Kavanaugh v. Ford as having only two possible choices:
    (1) IF you support Kavanaugh – or he is exonerated because he is innocent — then no woman anywhere will ever be believed again (even if her accusations are true); this is a position I have not seen taken by anyone on the right in any way whatsoever, because it is not true.
    (2) IF you support Ford – regardless of the truth-value of her story — then you must believe that all men everywhere are lying predators; this is a position which no one on the right can tolerate having enshrined in law or government, because it is not true.

    They will not even allow a third position that “something happened to Ford but it wasn’t Kavanaugh’s fault” because the only way to gin up enough contention to retain their hold on power is to force everyone into one or the other of their tribes.

43. For completeness, the counter-positions are
    (1) Kavanaugh is not proven guilty – or is proven innocent AND women’s complaints will still be taken seriously and investigated fairly (which is not really what the left wants);
    (2) Kavanaugh is actually guilty (a long-shot IMO) — or is not unequivocably proven innocent (equivalent to the left) AND all other men still have to be investigated individually when accused.

44. Hello AesopFan,
    I forgot to mention my question got a lot of likes, probably more than the moderators like to see but almost no supporting comments.

    They’ve booted “progressives” as well, but most of these were down right way to vulgar and harassing in nature for a family friendly community board, However, any comment directed towards me on a controversial subject like homelessness which is a sizable issue here, are often snidely condescending and personal in nature but apparently well within boundaries . A conservative, however, must always tread lightly….

45. Harry:
    It could be worse, think Eugene or Portland? What do the tolerant progressives do for public shaming now days (cross burning on the lawn is probably out)? My Masters in Geology is from OSU so I have many fond memories of Corvallis and that area (late 70’s early 80’s).

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