Another political change story
I know little about this guy, and in fact hadn’t heard of him till last night, when YouTube decided this video might be something I’d like. Good old YouTube, always making with the helpful suggestions.
I clicked on it and was immediately taken with his accent. Love it! But I kept listening because he was describing the process of political change and especially how it feels, emotionally, to be on the other side of that Rubicon. So I’m posting it here:
That was wonderful. I liked his comment that his change was like “overnight someone loaded a new operating system and he had to deal with it.” And once he changed, he wished he could relive some parts of his life with this new attitude or viewpoint. I will re-listen to this podcast since I drifted off a few times, listening to the wonderful Scottish accent.
He mentioned that earlier in his life, the whole family would sit and watch television together. Now, everyone has their own screen. A few weeks ago, I was having dinner at the local pub and everyone at the bar was staring at a phone, even couples were scrolling and not talking to each other.
Hi, Neo,
If you haven’t run across Neil before, it makes me think you might not have run across Sundance, either, which I find surprising, if true.
theconservativetreehouse.com
denny:
Oh, I’m all too familiar with Sundance. He spread lies about DeSantis, which is one of the reasons I’m not a Sundance fan. See this,
Neo, you may not like Sundance…I’ve had my concerns at time…but Neil Oliver is a breath of fresh air, a Spring shower, a light in the darkness. He is one of the few bright spots in the UK and you should check out all his videos.
Neil Oliver is an honest man.
I think DJT should ask in his inaugural speech “So many Americans have invested their hopes in me. I wonder, if mine enemies could feel those peoples’ hopes, would they agree to give me a fair chance to meet them? Would you?”
Have seen a few Neil Oliver commentaries over the last couple of years. It was back when the reaction to Everybody’s Favorite Pathogen was in full stride that I started to hear about him, I believe. Yes, his accent is a treasure. Same reason I like Roger Köppel (of the Weltwoche Daily show) in German.
I’ve listened to Neil for a few years now. The Covid response is what really changed him. I have very similar thoughts about feeling like I’m now seeing the world through an entirely different lens. It’s one thing to realize that the world that I thought I knew has changed, but it’s another to wonder if that world ever actually existed in the first place. How much of what I thought I knew for certain is actually not true? It can be very disorienting.
Like Neil, I remember the days when I sat with my family and watched the nightly news (back in the days when there only 3 channels from which to choose) and thinking it was pretty much an accurate portrayal of the day’s events. It’s been years since I’ve watched a network news show or even a network television show for that matter. As Neil said they seem to belong to another era.
My wife is German so we go visit her parents every year or so. Every night when we are staying there we watch the “news’ on television. Their mainstream media is every bit as biased (if not more so) than ours. But her parents still take it as gospel. They are convinced that Trump is the new Hitler. It is actually quite amazing how the White House talking points find their way across the world almost instantaneously now. We sometimes argue about politics but it is pointless. They think we have been brainwashed by crazy internet conspiracy theories.
I admit that I sometimes miss the cohesion of the old world in which everybody watched the same TV shows and everybody knew the latest pop hit. It’s also sad that I’ve drifted apart from some old friends, not specifically over politics but I know that my support of Trump makes me somewhat suspect.
For all his faults I think Trump’s greatest accomplishment has been to expose the corruption of all of our once trusted institutions. I hope we can recover.
Plato’s cave is still an amazing piece of work.
(wink)
Gregory Harper,
Same here. I was mostly a Hanlon’s razor guy, (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”) But now I find it an unavoidable conclusion that many in government are intentionally acting dishonestly and would readily harm others.
.Gregory Harper
Did Hitler accept the results of an election that voted him out of office, and have a peaceful transfer of power?
Re: Neil Olivor
I’m glad for him, but I got 60% through and he still hadn’t been specific about anything beyond he had changed, many people he knew hadn’t changed, he had been shunned and now he likes Donald Trump.
I’m an impatient fellow.
Marvelous accent though.
Ah, but Gringo, that’s precisely why “Biden” has had to totally misrepresent and constantly lie about January 6, and maliciously and dishonestly portray Trump’s role in that affair along with the protesters who were set up by the odious regime, which then proceeded to ignore their rights, persecute them and prosecute with all the illegal tools at their cunning and evil dictatorial command.
In re Oliver’s accent: it sounds perfectly normal in Scotland.
And there are Scots who have been known to lie, or support socialism, or name your poison; liking what someone says because of their accent is as bad as disliking them for tones of voice you don’t like (ahem ** Trump ** ahem).
But it is nice to listen to when they actually do agree with you!
On the other hand….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYvFxs32zvQ
Amazon Alexa Can’t Understand Scottish Accent
Another Neil Oliver interview – with Glenn Beck in October.
Over an hour long — if you are interested in “old news.”
If you don’t remember — “Glenn Beck is founder of Blaze Media. His new book is called, Propaganda Wars”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXhc_LiasY
Glenn’s deep, somewhat harsh, voice is so very different from Neil’s mellifluous tones; he would be nice to listen to even if he spoke with an “American” accent.
More on different accents: not as different as they could be, but it’s a start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgryJTxTU8Y
@ Gregory > “For all his faults I think Trump’s greatest accomplishment has been to expose the corruption of all of our once trusted institutions. I hope we can recover.”
I’ve seen speculation around the internet about that. Some are saying that maybe it’s a good thing overall that Trump was not president for the last 4 years, because the left, believing their own propaganda, thought they had a lock on the government and took off all the masks.
Without that, the many people who left the Democrats, at least for one election, would still be in their closed bubble, and there would still be a sizable contingent of conservatives unwilling to believe the depth and breadth of the leftist corruption. There are still far too many uninformed voters in both parties.
BTW – listening to Beck and Oliver while I read and reply – they are making good sense about many of the problems the Democrats have caused for themselves.
Oliver puts out a question and then just lets Beck talk — does that make him a Scottish Rogan?*
Glenn also mentioned that, when he was appearing at a Trump rally, the security was massive. They parked dump trucks around Trump’s plane, and had armed guards in the venue halls.
At 12 minutes, Glenn talks about how the sudden anointing of Kamala Harris was like living in “1984.”
They discuss the various scenarios of which party wins by how much, with Beck hoping that its a landslide one way or the other, preferably for Trump, which he says is what Trump was thinking would happen from their internal polls.
Oliver remarked that Harris campaigns as if she was opposing a sitting President, (instead of herself being the the VP).
Lots more — interesting to hear how much Beck got right in his warnings over the last four years (according to him, anyway).
*Reference to “America’s Celtic Band,” originally named The Scottish Rogues.
https://therogues.com/about
Oliver is good about breaking up his podcast into chapters, so you can look for the topics you might be most interested in.
I recommend the ones on Food & Health, and State Media, especially the algorithms literally not figuratively) following our presence on-line, and manipulating our search results (which has been discussed here several times).
At 40:45, Beck reads “The Gods of the Copy-book Headings,” with which Oliver was unfamiliar. His introduction for the poem is worth listening to, if you have ever wanted to share that poem with people who don’t know about Kipling or copy-books.
See also Propaganda and Trust (or the current lack thereof).
Finally finished the Oliver – Beck conversation, they spoke about a lot of the topics that we’ve discussed over and over here.
I especially recommend the section beginning at 46 minutes, through to the optimism at the end.
Quick summary, with lots of paraphrasing:
People tell Beck they think we are living in Biblical times, a force of evil orchestrating this stuff, beginning of reawakening just like in Kipling’s copybook headings poem > you can’t be this far removed from reality without society falling apart > God is Truth > people went along with things they knew were not true because they wanted to be nice, then be left alone, “they didn’t see the problem of denying the truth” > very few actually believe what they are saying, doing it to keep from being destroyed, but now many are now standing up > Oliver mentions W. B. Yeats’ “Second Coming, ” the beast slouching toward Bethlehem has been exposed as never before, the fight between good and evil laid bare.
Beck now understands the good-evil, evil-good switch > don’t know why the propaganda didn’t work on me and so many friends, but others don’t see it > Oliver – we’ve been sold on the marketplace stuff, redefined happiness, gave sadness a bad rap, it’s like sobering up rather than waking up >
53:00 Beck: as a recovering alcoholic, maybe the world will be saved by “recovering” political awakeners > First you have to admit you have a problem – it’s not the other party, it’s what we ourselves became.
[AF: sounds like the discussions here about the Democrats who won’t admit why Harris lost.]
We can’t keep repeating insanity > you have to look to something bigger than yourself AND change your ways > doesn’t have to be God, a higher power can be as simple as affirming that 2 + 2 = 4, or realizing that the Gods of the Marketplace are false >
57:00 Darkness before the Dawn > very optimistic that the coming generation (Gen Z) will be the heroes that save the world.
May it be so!
I agree with Neo that Sundance was a putz re DeSantis, and I left Sundance some extremely harsh comments on his site. I do think he gets some things right, and his perspective is novel. He went 110% for Trump, for which I am grateful (after DeSantis dropped out).
Nobody cares, but I hate Oliver’s hair.
Been listening to Oliver off and on for years, he’s been especially cogent on Covid authoritarianism.
Plus I find him verrah verrah attractive.
Without that, the many people who left the Democrats, at least for one election, would still be in their closed bubble, and there would still be a sizable contingent of conservatives unwilling to believe the depth and breadth of the leftist corruption.
AesopFan:
I think the left got greedy after “The Emerging Majority” and Obama’s messianic election. They believed “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” was indeed within their grasp and they started taking shortcuts like the weaponization of the entire government against any opposition.
They dropped the mask that they were reasonable, old-fashioned liberals, revealing the left’s naked will to power.
If they had been more patient and taken a slower, more Fabian approach to their socialism, they might have succeeded — boiled the frog, i.e. the US and us.
They dropped the mask that they were reasonable, old-fashioned liberals, revealing the left’s naked will to power.
Well, yes.
Some of us, I’ll include myself here, I’m a bit proud to say, saw it even before they dropped the masks.