I jumped back in when the Q&A started and some things became clearer.

When I rejoined she was talking about her doctor saying her diet had made her vitamin D to low and she needed to lose weight and exercise, which she thought was overly harsh

The presenter said she was a Shaman, and that the earth and plants talk to her in her dreams.

The woman participant who was scowling and silently screaming at her camera during one of yesterdays session said today she was a Wiccan feminist.

The two women that couldn't understand what a monster was; well, one was Wiccan, and the other was pagan.

She still didn't look at the camera for more than a split second. She didn't sound autistic, so I'm left with the impression she was insanely nervous, or scared. The entire time she spoke, she sounded on the verge of a blotchy cheeked, snot bubble filled fit of tears that would make Patrick Swayze proud.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Ted talk worthy presenter either, but on the whole I felt the presentation was unprofessional.

Been through 5 sessions so far and this one was the only one I've been disappointed with.

Glad that one is out of the way, got another one in a bit on world building and how not to affect your pacing which I have high hopes for.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/314246315085762

Yeah it's facebook, but it's such truth.

@Rugerlvr
Don't sweat the surliness and trolling too hard. You're always going to be dealing with humans.

Being just a few steps out in front of your friend, you can help direct him towards "they didn't leave you, they were never with you and never right in the first place, and that's a big part of why this happened to you" and help him avoid the siren call of the neocons, david frenches, and our other assorted loonies and troublemakers.

You probably don't need to have it mentioned but the things said are usually not everything that's going on, we tend to leave the critical bits out.

"All men are mortal

....

socrates is mortal"

And we would just presume and never say the other part ("socrates is a man"). Often those things are there and unexamined. I can almost gaurantee your friend has some borked up things like that which you can help him see and assess - simply because he hasn't thought of these things before. Or taken them seriously as possibly being true.

One of the big ones is the idea that things are always progressing from whatever we have right now to something that is better - that underlies progressivism.

Or that human nature is changeable by humans.

This one seems to always ride along with "human nature isn't really corrupted."

There also seems to be a real problem with being blind to just how hard it is to have a free society and government that works and makes (mere life and daily living) possible, and how easily that can get destroyed - related to these thing above.

Simply ask him if he's better off now than he was 4 years ago.

I've asked a number of people that and a couple of times seen lights turn on.

Well, apply the " trust, but verify" rule to him and let him prove himself

100% right.

I had a long-time liberal friend, back to our childhood. We would occasionally debate political issues in emails (he lived out of state) and his arguments were basically emotional. And his knowledge of American and world history was limited.

Well, one day out of the blue in 2007 he called me to tell me that, in his words, the "scales" had fallen from his eyes, and he was now conservative. He even became a practicing Catholic in a semi-conservative parish.

Then I noticed about five years ago he would call and ask me the conservative position (and its reasoning) on a few subjects. I thought to myself that, he should KNOW his position simply from his own readings, his conscience, thinking for himself, etc. - NOT from asking me.

Then he went through an acrimonious divorce and was next dating a woman 15 years his junior (he was 65 at the time) who he really liked but from what he told me of her (she had never been married and wanted very badly to have a baby and SOON - whether it was fathered by an anonymous sperm donor or him, didn't seem to matter to her...just SOON. The biological clock.). I politely suggested that for me, this would be a big red flag. Unsurprisingly he also told me she was liberal.

Anyway, he started sounded increasingly liberal, became somewhat more drama - oriented. Then called me one day ostensibly to ask me an "ethical question". After I answered something that was extremely simple, he went on to tell me about someone who he called racist based on one rather nebulous incident. And I disagreed with his opinion of the person in question. The rest of our talk was friendly. When I hung up, I blocked him on phone and email. A month after I got a letter from him apologizing for "offending" me.

I wasn't offended. I was tired. I had no interest, after trying to patiently educate him since our college days, in responding. Apparently he had forgotten his conservative "principles". Had also become too much of a drama queen (his ex wife, girlfriend, his kids,  - lots of drama).

Nope... trust but verify. Life is too short.  

Fuck him. I was a conservative as a zygote

Funny thing about John Brown, he was not a left wing anarchist:

Its Wiki but…

OP - The late author and Libertarian: L. Neil Smith wrote a Sci-Fi book called Pallas it's about a Vietnamese descended boy who is living in a communist commune on the asteroid Pallas and about his life inside and outside of that commune.
And it describes gun control and totalitarianism within the commune and life outside of the commune where people are living life as libertarians.
Might be a good book to recommend to your friend, ditto with 1984 (I'm sure he's read it) or the Gulag Archipelago

On becoming Red Pilled - my late sister was a divorce attorney living in Berkeley, she was pretty far left. She started to become redpilled after she noticed that the Democratic Party kept getting more extreme and progressive. She started to get scared for her law practice being "canceled" if word got out among her network of lawyers and judges that she wasn't entirely on board with the whole leftwing ideology.
Towards the end of her life was was seriously considering retiring at age 60, selling her house and moving to Mexico just to get away from her "friends" and associates.
Sadly she never made it - she passed away in Mexico, suddenly from a form of Lupus called Catastrophic Anti-Phospholipid Syndrome

I've known a lot of people who lived and escaped from communist countries and listened to their horror stories of their family members being punished for something their grandparents did.
I worked with 2 people whose families were punished because these two people escaped (one from East Germany the other from Maoist China).
The left eats its own and that is something that your long time friend is seeing and experiencing first hand.

Once upon a time Democrats enjoyed hearing different views, sadly those old Democrats have passed away, and the younger Democrats have become Totalitarian and have their "Thought Police"

Yep, just look at the responses where I posted about two very pro gun candidates trying to get on the ballot for NRA board.

Yeah it has sucked for years but Wayne is gone and now is a chance to take what is still the largest, most influential, well funded pro gun organization and remake it in a way that fights the way we want it, but no "NRA bad, me no like, me support this organization 1/20th the size and nothing else" there was even a pro gun mod acting like reforming the NRA is pointless, like once it gets on our bad side that's it forever no matter how much that is shooting ourselves in the foot.

We need all the allies we can get, isolating ourselves just means we hang separately.

The fence sitters still don't realize that their beliefs that government does good stuff is not true and that constantly strangling it is the only thing that will stop this train.

I'm glad Tulsi and RFK are coming around but they probably think government just needs reforms and the right people in charge. Even Trump won't be a slash and burn president but he is almost infinitely better than the whore and her commie entourage.

And I am so looking forward to Trump winning if only because I will get to see Washington DC burn to the ground by left wing mobs destroying their favorite place

Yeah. Maybe they'll burn the St. Floyd of Fentanyl statue down by mistake.

I'm glad that guy is changing his view.

What you said here is something that really bothers me: the incessant attacks on white people for just being white. In college (lit studies) there was a big push to "diversify the canon" just for the sake of it; the phrase "dead white guys" was very popular at that time. Good lit is good lit as far as I'm concerned. I don't look at the author's skin color to decide if they might have something valuable to say.

My politics aren't driven by my skin color, either, and I don't have any ethnicity test for ideas, but many others do.


I've never been a racist. It's a petty and narrow way to look at the world. I have seen more racism aimed at whites in recent years than I've ever observed going the other direction.

This

Exactly, his party left him behind, he’d go back in a minute. He’s an old guy and just got the drift that his side is commie, it took him that long.

In other words.........................Sorry, not sorry