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Yosemite under Orion's gaze

Friday, August 25, 2023

The chocolate ration has been raised

“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

 George Orwell, 1984

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I had lunch yesterday with a dear friend who happens to be an ardent MAGA Trump supporter.

He kept looking at his phone during lunch and looked very unhappy and triggered. I thought that perhaps he was attuned to the events in Georgia.

I asked him if everything was okay and he told me that the country was going to shit and that he felt we were being pushed into a civil war. The election had clearly been stolen, there were three thousand dead people on the voter rolls in Arizona, etc. Donald Trump was our true current president. This is the second time in a week I have heard about the coming civil war.

When I pointed out that in every state where voter fraud accusations had been made they had been thoroughly debunked by multiple judges and trials, and that no credible evidence had been found to support his assertions anywhere, he said that they were all in on the game, the same evil deep state apparatus.

It was really frustrating for me to try to bridge our ideological gap and I quickly stopped trying. It is impossible to win these sorts of arguments. But it quickly became evident who the real villains were in his eyes, LGBQT followers who were in the schools actively grooming our children. In my friend's eyes our culture stands at the tipping point of destruction. Morality is at its nadir.

I pointed out to him that morality has been going downhill for a very long time. I recounted being at an automat in Times Square with my family in the late sixties. I was like an eleven year old kid and my eyes were wide. A very pretty scantily clad hooker sat at the table next to us and was a source of wonder for my young mind. Girl doing her job. Shorted my circuits.

But he said that was different. She was straight and not a threat to society.

Call me crazy but I don't think there is a push to "gayify" our kids at school. A percentage of humans has always been gay and I think people are embracing their orientation at a younger age without much prodding. But gay people are the most prominent target in today's culture war along with minorities and migrants.

I brought up the poor lady in the mountains that was killed at her store for flying a Pride flag and he had little if any sympathy. "Christians are killed flying their flags all the time," he said. "And we are not going to take it anymore." In his mind the diversity crowd had it coming. It was time for MAGA to take the country back, by force if necessary.

I was very unsettled by the whole conversation but happy that I could listen and trying not to judge. Everybody is feeling victimized and the dueling media silos have reduced every act into a culture war salvo. Small random local actions are purposely magnified and exploited to cause maximum national aggravation. We two Americas are dealing with two entirely different sets of facts. 

We finished our lunch and agreed to not let our political differences affect our friendship but there was not really a lot left to say. The twain will be awfully hard to bridge.

8 comments:

Lena said...

Sounds like a terrible lunch…indigestible

Blue Heron said...

Robert
I admire your accepting what your friend believes in but, he probably hates you (and me for sure) for not agreeing with him. You are everything he hates in life, your only redeeming feature being that you are white. How many of the MAGA force have LGBQT in their immediate families and love them 20%? There must be some incredible feeling that you get for joining Trump and becoming a part of Maga, similar to the feeling I had when I discovered marijuana in 1962 I felt that I knew something that my peers did not.

Blue Heron said...

Hi Robert,
Hope your LAST treatment went well. Thanks for trying to help Civil War reincarnated
followers see some sense. I’m afraid it will fall on deaf ears. I’m just guessing, but I suspect this person was over the age of seventy. Possibly the only way this thinking will be wiped out is with their natural demise. Not all people of advanced age think like this, but I have noticed it tends to run in males of a certain age.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LESLIE !
Laughed to see the mug shot of djt. No way is he 215 pounds! Need a poster similar to Obama’s. Instead of HOPE, it should say DOPE, or JOKE maybe BROKE .
Aways glad when you share your photos with us…makes me feel like I was able to get away…..
L

Blue Heron said...

I just hate fucking Trumpers who love him because he is a TV star and they know he hates any and all people of color

Blue Heron said...

I try to write as few people in my life off as possible, especially over politics. But I hate the threats of violence. It is the last refuge for weak minded people who have run out of ideas. It is way too easy to drink the koolaid today.

Jon Harwood said...

Apparently the human brain will adopt beliefs in response to fear that are near impossible to budge. There has been immense fear mongering taking place for quite a long time and we seem to have millions of people who drank the kool aid. Apparently about the only thing that can lead people to change these beliefs is a big significant defeat such as losing a war. Germany in the WWII era is a good example of this process in which good people bought a really nasty ideology and stuck to it. If Trump is worn down to the point of ineffectiveness that could help but I don't know if it addresses the source of the fear (elites taking care of themselves and screwing everyone else). If the roots of the fear aren't addressed effectively another demagog will eventually turn up to restart the process. I think it is very unlikely that we will get it together.

Ai stands as another grand source of alienation if it is used to eliminate workers in the way globalization did. A repeat of the globalization fiasco may be more than the nation can handle.

I think the various sexual nonconformists are merely the target of the week. A handy straw man for increasing the fear level, since there is at least some resistance to making Jews the target here. There are many others available (see the portrayal of Hillary as satan incarnate and the history of racism in the US).

Not certain, but I am quite pessimistic about the future of the US.

Blue Heron said...

Farmers market boots vender who offered ‘Gas the Jews’ discount code
Justin Bale, who runs what he calls a “Christian family business,” doubled down on his antisemitism after the Kansas farmers market kicked him out.

https://www.jns.org/antisemitism/kansas/23/8/25/313378/

Jon Harwood said...

Right. I don't mean to minimize US antisemitism, but I might have done just that. Apologies.