“Former Assistant State Attorney General announced that all Christians are bigots, fat, stupid, and poor. Still on speaking terms, but suspect he may be a monster. Also, wants a monarchy here. Also didn’t sign up for the Vietnam War. Wants a draft. Claims he would have been a marine. I pointed out he didn’t enlist. His answer “So sad, too bad”. Yeahboy! That is the rallying cry that carried the day at Iwo Jima and Chosin.”

“So sad, too bad”

1. Why would a friend, talk to a friend, that way?

2. Can you put a name to this guy? Seems to be public figure. Any reason to preserve his anonymity at this point?

Highly recommend the revent interview [on Rumble at lesst] with Andy Ngo. It involves a discussion of his infiltration activities and his evaluation based on personal experience of the Antifa membership. I’ll try to find the interview. Interviewer is a 30 something Australian guy [looks exactly like my next door neighbor]

The interview does not start off too promisingly, and Ngo’s extremely laconic manner requires viewer adjustment. But it is well worthwhile.

Ngo’s evaluation of the Antifa membership? An upper level of woke and radicalized academics, lawyers, and public employees, and a lumpenproletariat base of psychologically troubled individuals who believe that their feelings of estrangement and ALIENATION will be cured by refashioning society; i.e. remaking everyone else.

That damned marxist obsession with alienation, again.

Give us their reasons. Or at least insofar as you are able, the reason they don’t feel they need reasons.

You know: “Badge? You wanna see a badge? I don need no stinkin …”

You therefore have the sort of access that allows you to make careful observations and analyses that most of us cannot; not even apparently, those whose own family members have become intensely “woke”. This, since it looks to be a characteristic of the woke in general to simply declare and dismiss rather than to discuss; and to decline further engagement or even association if so much as challenged on what they declare as beyond permissible doubt.

Thus, given that last – and add to it the emotionally involved and conflicted status of a fellow family member trying to objectively analyze a child or sibling’s real state of mind or moral predispositions – it makes your less emotionally fraught yet still involved situation potentially more productive of illumination.

Although these people are unlikely to recite a psycho-social history of their moral development [ a woke parallel to your own mind change political developmental story] you can probably still piece together elements of how their minds work just based on what you know of them, and their manifest attitudes and delivery in saying as much as they might.

One of the real points of contention on your site among commenters has been the degree of personal moral responsibility incumbent upon the [or any] individual to consider public matters with at least some critical distance or skepticism, even if in only doing so pro forma, and as an exercise and check in order to make sure that our courses are not too far off compass.

The question might resolve, in the final analysis, down to whether like you, they had any moral or intellectual compass in the first place which pointed anywhere but toward a self-affirming spot in that circle dance you often mention.

I have a question I will throw out here, the answer to which will help highlight the differences in attitudes among your regular commenters.

Are we as citizens and civic peers, and as moral beings, obligated to try and think logically and critically about the matters that come before us? Are pietism and fideism, religious or secular, ever an excuse for a free man or woman?

And let me remind everyone here that according to our founding documents, it is not. And that in addition, even in the most supposedly hidebound religious faiths of the past, Roman Catholicism among them, every child was introduced to a catechism which was not merely a recitation of articles of faith, but an explication of both first principles and their reasons, along with not only rational ( if largely deductive) defenses, but also outlined criticisms of the tenets being advanced and defended. This intellectual attitude goes right back to the Sic et Non methodology of the Middle Ages, and should be nothing too far beyond the grasp and or responsibility of modern man.

How is it that a child in 1940’s America could be expected to grasp principles that adults are now mostly excused from?

Two friends incommunicado long time. One I grew up with, always on the liberal side and he knew me to be on the conservative side. Radio silence. And I won’t beg for a conversation. The other guy worked alongside me a long time. Rabid Trump hater. I never said much, but never joined in the bonfire festivities. Silence.

Sister had career in nonprofit management. Always radical. Announced after the election, before impeachment she wanted to get rid of the white men. Still on speaking terms.

Former Assistant State Attorney General announced that all Christians are bigots, fat, stupid, and poor. Still on speaking terms, but suspect he may be a monster. Also, wants a monarchy here. Also didn’t sign up for the Vietnam War. Wants a draft. Claims he would have been a marine. I pointed out he didn’t enlist. His answer “So sad, too bad”. Yeahboy! That is the rallying cry that carried the day at Iwo Jima and Chosin.

I think it’s because we don’t politicize every aspect of life.

Actually, the particular people who quizzed me – the ones who don’t usually talk politics with me – are fairly politically active and aware. They don’t usually talk politics with me because they know my politics and don’t want to get into a fight. But now they seem to want me to take a form of loyalty oath – loyalty to the current Democrat narrative, that is.

That said, there are plenty of people like the ones you describe, MBunge. But not these particular people.

That is the key point. While there are some deranged and hateful folks out there on the Left, the real problem is the greater number of people who are only vaguely politically active and aware. If you look at the turnout numbers, there’s probably a good 10 to 15 million people who couldn’t be bothered to vote FOR Barack Obama in 2008 but did turn out to vote AGAINST Donald Trump in 2020 (putting the whole fraud issue to the side).

I’m going to suggest those folks are not the most rational and informed of actors. They basically just accept whatever the mainstream establishment tells them and they’re the reason there’s probably no good way out of this mess. They’re not going to wake up and smell the coffee until the scalding hot liquid is dumped right in their lap.

Mike