Community, Division, Reality

I’m aware of bipartisan support for election integrity. Gemini AI says:

Voter ID and Citizenship Proof: Over 80% of Americans support strict voter ID rules and proof of citizenship to register or vote, drawing heavy bipartisan consensus

… so that is where I focused the discussion. Unsurprisingly, total agreement with my new pal. We both agreed that any state/city waiting days or weeks for a result destroys faith in elections, and that this problem has to be fixed. We both needed to get back to our booths, so we didn’t come up with the all-important how do we fix this. We were about the same age, so we both remembered getting election results relatively early in the evening prior to 2000.

I do have some strong opinions on how we got to where discussions as we had are so rare. From the left, our educational system increasingly has indoctrinated our youth to a troubling worldview. The longer you are in the education system, the more likely you are to be convinced. A large majority of our “elite” are convinced through the following:

Postmodernism. The theory that truth does not exist; rights being self-evident and endowed by a creator (no God, no morality, cannibalism is a matter of taste); mathematics is white, etc. Thus, meaning, reality, and knowledge are entirely subjective and culturally constructed.

The Dunning-Kruger effect. A cognitive bias where people with knowledge or competence in a specific area greatly overestimate their general skills. For example, a woman with a PhD in Education wants to be addressed as “Doctor,” believing that makes her pronouncements in any field (climate, virology, political science, etc.) more credible. The system encourages the idea “higher degree, more general expertise.” Observation and common sense say that the more you specialize (and you have to specialize to be a PhD, increasingly for just a BS). The sad truth of our limited brains is that as you specialize, the more you know about less and less until you know everything about nothing. I’m more on the other side of knowing nothing about everything.

Marxism. Our system knows that “progressivism/democratic socialism …” are better marketing terms, but the basic principle is Marxism. Marxism views everything through the lens of oppressed/oppressor. Jews, victims of the holocaust and prejudice throughout history, are often still financially successful due to strong families, communities and work ethic, and are seen as “oppressors” while Islamic terrorists get the coveted “oppressed” designation. If DEI is really removed from our elite colleges, Jews, Asians and Indians will make up over half the students. Those cultures value hard work, responsibility, education, and honorable living (having good character). Skin color does not matter; culture matters a lot, and our elites hate the Western culture that created their opportunity to hate it.

If those beliefs are your foundation, “reality” is what you believe in this moment. There is no possibility of contradiction for you, since what you feel at a given moment is the “truth” you deny the existence of for everyone that doesn’t agree with you.

You are absolved of consideration of history: Socialism will work this time! Consideration of possible consequences is unnecessary: If Harry Reid abolishes the use of the filibuster for judicial appointments, is it possible Republicans may get control and appoint a judiciary that has read the Constitution and overturn Roe?

From the right, we essentially have an equal and opposite reaction. Those who are educated but iconoclastic rebels by nature immerse ourselves in history, literature, religion and philosophy. (I don’t know anyone like that, but I’ve heard they exist. 😎) Those who do the real work have a better grasp of the real world of farming, trucks and the trades tend to see the leftward drift as insane. Why attack the family and push abortion, transgenderism, queerness and the rest when one of our biggest problems is a low birth rate? Why open the borders and bring in millions of illegals that will lower wages, consume the benefits meant for Americans?

As Emerson said, “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”

I didn’t mention January 6th in the conversation because, even as a decently rational small town Democrat, my interlocutor was likely too primed for that as a “trigger” where his media narrative required it to be seen as “the worst day in American history.”

Given 2024, it seems that the insurrection narrative failed and even Trump’s pardon of the J6ers drew far less interest from the general public than Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Based on the election results in 1980, it seems the Watergate narrative also failed, or at least people were more concerned about Carter’s poor performance than whatever damage Watergate had done to the Republican brand. While some Democrats will try to keep the insurrection myth alive, the electorate has largely moved on as much as they moved on from Clinton staining the Oval Office with semen.

For those of moderate awareness of the centrist “right,” Jordan Peterson is at least somewhat familiar. He is a deep thinker on being human and the fount of the West's success. He has grappled with Elon Musk, JD Vance, Bishop Barron, and many others. The links are worthy and delve into the complexity of the persons and deeper discussion of pressing issues … something our current cartoonish, character-assassinating culture loathes.

This brings me to a discussion Peterson had with Dr. Simone Gold, a licensed emergency physician and attorney. She was prosecuted under Title 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) — a Class A federal misdemeanor. She pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawfully entering and remaining in a restricted area. In June 2022, she was sentenced to 60 days in prison, 12 months of supervised release, and ordered to pay a $9,500 fine.

It is unusual to receive such a sentence under that statute for unarmed entry (leftist protestors do it all the time and are almost never arrested), but we are talking J6 here! There are hundreds of cases of people receiving highly unusual sentences for similar misdemeanor charges and being arrested by FBI agents in combat gear with doors smashed in and property being wrecked and confiscated for even indirect association with the events in Washington that day.

The 2024 election showed that at least a majority of Americans had observed the use of lawfare against Trump (along with those who questioned the response to Covid or pro-life activists) and decided that they didn’t like it — or at least they disliked Biden’s poor performance more than they were worried about the various “charges/convictions” of Trump and others.

The video is interesting and gives more important details. I highly recommend it, especially if you are in the 20% that think we don’t need trustworthy elections!