Category Archives: Regressive Leftism

Harro! I herd u liek sammich!

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It doesn’t happen consistently, but we now have another instance of someone being caught in the process of doing something incredibly stupid being saved from herself. In this case, we have the picture above, that of Greta Thunberg having lived to see the day that an Israeli soldier handed her a turkey sandwich.

What preceded this: In a publicity stunt, Greta set out on a yacht for the Gaza strip with a negligible aid package, all in an effort to show solidarity with Palestinians.

What nearly happened: Greta wasn’t wearing a burka, so she likely could have lost some blood and became the focal point in another case study in the tragedy of thinking that certain values are universal. Her best hope of surviving or avoiding being held hostage would have come with Hamas having already informed the Palestinians who would have found her that her stunt was way too valuable as propaganda.

What’s currently happening: Israel is to show Greta unedited video footage of the Oct. 7 2023 terror attack on Israel, effectively showing Greta what already happened to other people, and what nearly happened to her.

What’s going to happen: I don’t know. I can’t see the future. The best I could do is guess. If Greta is sufficiently intelligent, she’ll learn a few things about what she’s been defending. There’d probably still be some copycat out for a cynic’s quest.

But as for Greta, the right people aren’t always going to be around to save her from herself, so it’s probably just a matter of time before she ends her career of bullshittery. How it happens is anyone’s guess.

Frieren: From Mortality To Morality

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I’ve been seeing Frieren come up from time to time. A friend recently recommended it to me, so I decided to make some time to watch the anime.

Two days and 22 episodes in, I think I can say I get the general premise, and can comment on the controversy surrounding it.

First thing to point out is that Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a work of fiction. Because I recognize it as such, it doesn’t inform my morality. If a work of fiction were to attempt to teach a moral lesson, it could teach any lesson that the author might want it to, and the scenario could be written to present it in a favorable light, regardless of what the reality of the matter might be if a person were to attempt to put it into practice.

Entertainment is supposed to be entertaining, and that’s all it has to do to justify its existence. The idea that entertainment must have a moral value is generally propagated by busybodies who don’t trust other people to think for themselves. If children are taught that entertainment is merely to entertain and not to inform moral perspectives, they could watch shows like South Park and Family Guy and still become a moral child (though those probably might not be your first entertainment choices for your child). It’s not a bad idea to instill the proper perspective to prepare them for the inevitability that they’ll come across these shows, or shows like them.

Otherwise, if your child comes across a cartoon that extols the virtues of pushing old people into mud instead of helping them across the street, there’s no telling how they’ll take it. There’s no substitute for proper parenting.

As obvious as this is, lazy parenting that failed to instill a proper perspective on entertainment has resulted in a new generation of busybodies that have become everyone else’s problem.

Based on this framing, you might guess that Frieren is Ren and Stimpy on PEDs. Nope. Frieren is about life, mortality, and friendship from the perspective of a person who, being an elf, would be likely to outlive the humans around her by many centuries. While the story takes place after another story has already concluded, it still succeeds in conveying a compelling and beautiful narrative, which is at times exciting.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem is, some people are taking issue with the portrayal of a fantastic race, called “demons”, as being evil.

For clarity, the demons in Frieren are not the mind manipulating spiritual beings that are often featured in religions, they’re more like the tieflings in Dungeons and Dragons in that they are humanoids with horns. But while the tieflings might be capable of morality on an individual by individual basis, the demons in Frieren are irredeemable psychopaths with no understanding of human desire for friendship or family, and have learned human language to the end of using it to manipulate. Which, concerning the abuse of language, makes them sound like the propagandists in the corporate mainstream information media.

I was aware of the controversy before watching Frieren. But what surprised me was just how little screen time was given to the topic of the morality of demons. The impression that I got was that demon morality was a contrivance designed to convey that Frieren’s original journey was strongly justified.

This is in addition to the antagonists being called demons, and the point was labored that they were incorrigibly wicked and that tragedy was the long-term consequence of any attempt to co-exist with them. Could the point have been more strongly conveyed?

However, for the busybodies, this is just the problem. Because as they see it, fantastic racism is still racism, and they can’t bring themselves to trust the rest of us to think for ourselves. But in coming to the defense of these fantastic psychopaths, these same busybodies are showing that they’re just the kind of people who, if they were to live in Frieren’s fantastic setting, would fall for the demon’s honeyed words.

At this point, you might have guessed that it’s primarily leftists who are raising an issue with Frieren. Yep. It’s leftists again.

And, right on brand, they want everything, including every form of entertainment, to bend the knee to their worldview, even anime and manga. Because when it comes to cultists, the usefulness of anything is measured by its utility for propagating the cult’s ideology.

But the problem isn’t just that the left seeks to subvert entertainment and transform it into a vehicle for their worldview. The left is also waging a long war against the traditional morality that derives its principles from natural law. To this end, they seek to undermine basic ethics in favor of a new set of values that is disconnected from reality and ignores the second order consequences of their own unwise behaviors.

It’s part of the reason why the left can’t meme. Memes are shortform communication delivered with an understanding of what’s considered normal, so that humor can be found in a variation from expectations, much like a punchline in a joke. Take the old cat meme, “I can has cheezburger?” For most viewers, the expectation is that a cat can’t employ language, but if it could, its syntax and spelling would likely be poor, as it is in the meme. However, if the meme were to have been presented by a vegan, and thus someone with a left-wing fringe ideology, they might include a disclaimer that they don’t condone the cat’s request, or they might object to even sharing the meme on principle.

Leftist memes tend to be wordy, and there’s a reason for that: the leftist meme is part of a deliberate attempt to redefine normalcy, and to this end, they don’t want there to be any possibility that the meme could be misinterpreted, especially in a way that may defeat their ideology.

The verbosity it would take to redefine expectations does not lend itself to shortform content. But it also reveals something about leftists: that their ideology is more important to them than whether you’re amused or entertained.

When you know this, it’s easy to see why leftists have a problem with Frieren. The rest of us have basic understandings about morality which don’t need continual reiterating. Among the points we consider axiomatic: Immorality is corrosive to families, communities, societies, and nations. Some cultures are incompatible with other cultures. There are people who make it difficult to live peacefully.

If you understand these things, then the way that Frieren handles the demons in its world shouldn’t challenge you. However, leftists feel threatened by Frieren, because the narrative of Frieren supposes a morality that hasn’t imbibed on a toxic dose of outgroup empathy.

Frieren has frequently been accused of saying that coexistence with certain people is impossible. The following panel is often pointed to, which is probably the most controversial in the manga:

It has often been said that Frieren said that you can’t live with certain people. The words she used are different in the panel above, but they carry the same implication.

For clarity, here’s the surrounding context (being manga, panels and word bubbles are ordered from right to left):

While Frieren might not have used the phrase “coexistence with certain people is impossible”, it’s plain to see that this is a sentiment that she would hold, and she illustrated this while addressing a demon who was okay with sacrificing lives in an attempt at coexistence, showing that those lives were less meaningful to him than his endeavor.

However noble the demon’s stated endeavor may have sounded, it’s undermined by his inability to comprehend the value of life. It’s the old “making an omelet by breaking a few eggs” line of reasoning.

But however one might interpret Frieren’s words, it remains that the Frieren manga and anime are works of fiction. Any lesson, moral, or social statement that they make, whether expedient or not, should be viewed in that light.

After all, the main point of entertainment is to be entertaining. If leftists had their way with it, entertainment would be turned into propaganda.

And that’s one of many reasons why they must be resisted.

Verizon leaves the sinking DEI ship of fools.

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It’s yet another bad day for the losing side. Verizon is now ending it’s DEI programs.

From Brendan Carr on X:

When he said “effective immediately”, he wasn’t kidding. Feast your eyes on the dessicated husk of their All of Us page:

I was gonna drink anyway, but now I can call it a celebration.

Human resources, training, everything down to hiring goals. It’s a complete gutting. And with no hesitation.

This is huge because Verizon is a major telecom company. People are more connected today than they’ve ever been, and smartphones are a major reason for this. Because Verizon is a major mobile service provider, they had a lot of potential to propagate the kind of woke ideology that’s permeated the West Coast, where much of the tech world is headquartered. Through the tech giants, much of Coastal Californian culture could be easily exported to the rest of the world, and it seemed to have even reached as far as to poison Europe’s political climate.

However, pushback has been increasing in recent years. And now, even tech giants such as Verizon are starting to see that something is wrong.

It’s obvious that Verizon has changed course due to the potential for pushback from the FCC. It’s a fact of life: people and corporations act based on incentive. It was venture capital and the perceived desires of investors, among other reasons, that motivated companies to embrace DEI, even though it’s not expedient to effectively running a company.

As apparent as it is now that DEI programs are toxic and discriminatory, remember that there are people out there who have incentivized it. And while it’s apparent that they’ve lost much of their ability to incentivize their bad ideas, diligence is needed to ensure that they don’t return to damage society again, especially considering how extensive the damage was that they had already done.

Watch out, here comes “dark woke”.

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Okay guys, we need to get our concerned faces on. The Democrats are up to something that they’ve totally never tried.

Thankfully, we have The New York Times, that bastion of journalistic integrity, to keep us informed.

Democrats are trying out a new attitude. It’s provocative, edgy and perilously toeing the line of not being too offensive.

Uh oh, are they painting their fingernails black and listening to The Cure?

There was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool.

Wrong.

Okay, I broke sarcasm there. But that was dead wrong.

Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the waning days of Bratsummer. She went on the popular podcast ‘Call Her Daddy.’ Tim Walz’s outdoorsy drip led to a Chappell Roan-inspired camo trucker hat. The memes were flowing, and the party’s mood was high.

One thing I’m not letting Democrats live down is that they thought that Kamala Harris was a viable candidate. Auto-complete finished that sentence for me, and I’m not ashamed of that. Even now, Democrats still don’t know why they lost, and they’re looking like they’re going back to the same strategy.

But now, it’s looking like that’s all about to change.

As liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump’s no-holds-barred version of politics.

Remember when Democrats abrasively criticized you and your virtues to a pulp? Well, watch out! Now the Dems are getting serious!

It’s an attempt to step outside the bounds of the political correctness that Republicans have accused Democrats of establishing. And it requires being crass but discerning, rude but only to a point.

Online, it has a name: ‘Dark woke.’

Okay, I’m going to go ahead and bust out the laughing anime girls for this one.

You might remember that the left already attempted a “dark” branding with this confidence-inspiring gentleman:

“Being able to use this strategy of being raw and unapologetic and unabashed about our beliefs is something our base really wants,” Mr. Ossé said. He referred to a quote by one of Mayor Eric Adams’s advisers, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who said, “When they go low, you gotta dig for oil.”

I seem to remember that leftists called people who disagreed with them Nazis, and attempted to get them regarded as such. It’s one of many reasons why you can’t expect a leftist to argue in good faith.

I also remember that a leftist Disney director had called for students to be thrown into wood chippers for smiling while wearing MAGA hats.

I remember that it was leftists who called out “punch a Nazi” and “bash a fash”, while implying that their political opponents are fascists, advocating for violence against them.

And while I can continue with the long list of examples, for brevity, I can point out that if leftists want to try something new, they can start by shutting their mouths.

‘We can be bold, we can be petty, we can be punchy and still have a moral compass. We don’t have to replicate the right’s formula.’

That’s exactly what the right does. And for the right, it comes natural. That’s because the right are the cool kids, not the edgelords who are trying too hard.

It’s not resonating with everyone. For some, the universal truism that it can never be cool to try so hard applies here. Others, too, have criticized Democrats for seeming to place a premium on affect over policy.

To be fair, NYT does seem to have some introspection, here. The problem that they point to, that Democrats favor affect over policy, is intrinsic to the feminized nature of the political left, tending to prefer the subject to the object. Their focus is on optics more than problem-solving, and the nature of this political environment has made it way too easy to maintain positive optics while being intellectually dishonest.

Alex Peter, a lawyer and left-wing commentator who makes content under the handle LOLOverruled, said the Democrats’ new focus on viral ‘dark woke’ posts was just ‘a lot of hot air.’

‘Part of the problem with the mainstream Democratic Party is that it all kind of rings hollow,’ Mr. Peter, 33, said. ‘I don’t care about another clapback. People want concrete deliverables.’

That, and the fact that “dark woke” is really nothing new. I remember that the left were the principle agitators behind the “Summer of Love” and the George Floyd riots. And now they mean to tell us that they intend to start dressing in black and throwing chairs in the ring?

It sounds to me like they’re continuing with the same failed strategy while trying to trick whoever’s listening into thinking that they’re trying something new.

The Leftist Pro-DEI Boycott Results Are In.

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Say what? There was a leftist boycott? Since when? And it concerned DEI? When did that happen?

Oh yeah, I remember now! I made fun of that!

Back in February, the crayon munchers decided to have a one-day boycott over the decisions of companies and retailers to drop DEI programs. The intention was to show these companies “who really holds the power”.

Well now, we finally get to see just what impact their little boycott may have had on the bottom lines of these companies. Let’s check it out (the data was from Not The Bee):

Amazon: 9% growth

Nestlé: 2.8% growth

Target: 1.5% growth

Walmart: 6% growth

General Mills -1% growth

When a boycott is successful, the expected outcome is that a company loses growth.

The boycott rolled a zero. Critical miss.

It seems these businesses generally benefitted a lot more from ditching DEI than they might have lost from the boycott. It also seems as though regular people with real American values have more power in the American marketplace than a bunch of leftists with their stupid boycotts.

The one example of negative growth can easily be attributed to the MAHA movement, which advocates for healthier foods. The left could’ve tried to spite the MAHA movement by buying their processed, seed oil heavy foods. But even where they could’ve screwed up to muster a marginal victory, they still failed. But, to be fair, what happened with General Mills could be attributable to typical fluctuation.

I expected the boycott to fail. I did not expect it to fail so hard. But as companies are starting to align more closely with American values, it does stand to reason that Americans are going to feel more comfortable shopping with them.

That is, unless Americans are secretly okay with retailers pushing pseudo-diverse victimhood narratives on them and their children, in spite of having proven differently with their money. Which is probably one of the fantasies that the left is nurturing at this point.

As for what the left can do to become relevant again, I don’t know. But considering that they sincerely believed that Kamala Harris was a viable candidate, I wouldn’t expect them to understand what resonates with the American public.

They can go right on having fun pretending to be the resistance. They are rebels without a cause. Or an effect.

The Activist-to-Authoritarian Pipeline, Explained

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You might have noticed that many on the activist left tend towards authoritarianism on occasions when they find themselves in positions of power. Not surprisingly, they’ll then advocate for more activism, knowing that it serves them.

But what is a mystery is why activists, when they take hold of power, suddenly tend towards authoritarianism. This is the case whether we’re talking about elected officials or even just low-level government employees. It’s vexing because the public image of the activist is that of a libertarian, one fighting for freedoms, whether or not this image is consistent with the policies that they’re actually advocating for.

To one outside looking in, it can be a conundrum why an activist, when they finally have their hands on the levers of power, go full authoritarian. The reason this happens comes down to a simple failure to instill sincerely-held values.

Activism appeals to a sense of youthful restlessness. To one in their teens and early-twenties, it seems like a pretty sweet deal; they get to blow off some steam, do some naughty stuff, and they get to come away from it saying that they furthered a positive cause, whether or not it was really positive, at all.

And through it all, what’s idealized for them is to “effect change”. What change would that be? Really, just about any change might appeal to a person’s sense of accomplishment, especially when they lack the wisdom to recognize the knock-on consequences of a large-scale implementation of their causes. And, in many cases, they don’t look much into it.

What matters to them is that they “effect change”.

So, what happens when an activist without sincere values effects change so hard that they catch the attention of someone in a position of power who becomes interested in elevating them?

It’s easy to guess: someone who can effect change pulling the levers of power, who feels justified in laying the boot on their opposition, whom they may view as enemies rather than countrymen.

Thus, the activist-to-authoritarian pipeline.

The United States has been living in the consequences of this process, which has been occurring over the course of decades. It’s the reason why you see riots where perpetrators who commit violent crimes get off scot-free, enabled by left-wing politicians and prosecutors, with news anchors turning a blind eye to the crimes. Many such public figures were once violent agitators themselves, and whats more, it doesn’t directly serve their interests to deter someone who is furthering their causes.

This could have been prevented with a proper instilling of real values. Which is the job of the child’s parents, as is the case when it comes to much of their upbringing. It’s not the job of the school system, it’s the job of the parents.

Yet, so many keep failing. Are people afraid to instruct their own children, or something?

When it comes down to it, the individual is not just an elementary building block of society, they are also an elementary agent of a culture. If someone is not taught from a young age to see the value of a culture, it’s no surprise that they would feel nothing as they act to destroy it.

Leftists are planning a one-day “economic blackout” for tomorrow. LOL.

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Hey look, another stupid one-day boycott:

Pictured above is the gameplan for a left-wing one-day boycott of major businesses and services, in the hopes of sending a message. That message being, “we show them who really holds the power”.

The boycott is being pitched as non-partisan, but considering it’s traction among the left, it’s plainly a reaction on their part because they’re upset that they’re losing their grip on culture. The claim of being non-partisan is clearly intended as an attempt to expand leftists’ influence when they know that they are not culturally dominant.

They are not the “silent majority”, and the 2024 Presidential election provided the numbers to prove it.

Here’s a list of their extended gameplan, which makes mention of companies that have ditched DEI, such as Wal-Mart and Amazon:

You might be wondering, “Raizen, what are you doing sharing their gameplan? Doesn’t that help them?” I’ll explain why passing this info along doesn’t help them in the following list of reasons the boycott is almost certain to fail:

  • Boycotters prep for one-day boycotts by making their purchases in advance, or making up for them in the days after, so the companys’ bottom lines are often unaffected. This is especially the case with products such as gasoline.
  • Investors who learn of the boycott in advance can reallocate their investments, and thus profit off the boycott.
  • Imagine consoomers not consooming for a day.
  • Some people may decide to spend an inordinate amount on the day of the boycott, out of spite.
  • People tend to have less money when they don’t understand how the world works. For that reason, if leftist foot soldiers decide not to spend for a day, it’s probably not going to be very impactful.

And a bunch of leftists presume to tell the rest of us about economics.

So no, it’s not necessary for you to make a big ol’ shopping list and go wild on Friday. The left-wing one-day boycott is largely self-defeating.

And with how much better off companies that ditch DEI are likely to be in the long-term, they probably won’t much care.

Absolute Bombshell: DOJ Chief of Public Affairs Reveals That Charges Against Trump Were Motivated by Politics and Alvin Bragg’s Personal Ambition

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For months, you or a friend you know has been saying that the charges against Trump were politically motivated and not legit. Now, you get to say, “I told you so.”

The DOJ Chief of Public Affairs has admitted that the indictments against President Trump were, in fact, politically motivated, and that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, was motivated by personal ambition in bringing charges against the President.

And it was all caught on camera.

This fine act of investigative journalism was made possible by the Steven Crowder team. And if you’re only just now hearing about Steven Crowder, he’s someone who does what investigative journalists used to do.

Crowder’s presentation can be viewed here:

Crowder has also made the complete recording available.

Leftists are some of the most smug and self-righteous pompous assholes that I’ve ever seen, and I’d take great relish in seeing their carefully constructed denial of reality come crashing down. And now, it’s become harder than it ever has for them to deny the blatant corruption that is evident to anyone outside of leftism’s hermetically-sealed echo chamber.

Whether they’ve had fun or not as they’ve enabled the castration of children, the delusions of perverts, the murder of infants before they could breathe a breath outside their own mothers, and numerous wars to make the wealthiest among their own just a bit wealthier, and far more than these, the time has come for them to be knocked off their high horses.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s against a former President or some guy who does not have the means to resist, a DA that brings charges against anyone while motivated by either politics or personal ambition is not a legit DA, and is a disgraceful individual on top of that.

Alvin Bragg is an absolute disgrace.

It’s apparent to me the only permissible course to remedy this injustice. For one thing, Alvin Bragg should be promptly dismissed from his duties, and permanently barred from any office with any connection to the administration of justice. Also, all charges against Donald Trump should be dismissed, an act which is necessary to restore confidence in the legal system.

The next course of action would be more extensive, but also necessary. A commission must be formed to thoroughly examine every case Alvin Bragg has been involved in, in the interest of finding every instance of his mishandling of justice. This is necessary, as people may be in prison on likewise illegitimate charges. In fact, if Bragg is bombastic enough to bring illegitimate changes against a former President, it’s almost certain that he’s brought wrongful condemnation against many others.

I understand that the last course of action suggested would take a substantial expenditure of resources. But it’s called for, as the nature of Alvin Bragg’s failure is catastrophic to the justice system, and to confidence in it.

If you’ve been following the developments involving the illegitimate trial of Donald Trump, either as a Trump supporter or from a position of impartiality, the only thing surprising about this development is that an explicit profession from the DOJ Chief of Public Affairs was added to all the evidence and proof that the trial is not legitimate.

The people that I expect to be surprised would be centrists or the relatively-uninitiated who weren’t following closely, or those left-leaning who weren’t paying attention. But as for the dead-enders, we know that they’re going to divert their attention away, unable to face the reality that they’ve already been laboring diligently to avoid. They wouldn’t be able to spin this as anything other than what it is, and if made to face it, any honest assessment would be to interpret it as an undeniable defeat for their tribe.

I’ll leave this with one more thought: This isn’t football. It’s not soccer, and it’s not even women’s tennis. This is no game. Leftists literally are ruining this country, and the dead-enders among them are deliberately doing it because they hate one man who, among the current choices, stands the best chance of making things any better.

Hold on… Do they actually believe this?

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I know that we’re well beyond the point of taking old media seriously. But I would have imagined that The New Republic would have been one of the publications that would have preferred that we go back to the good old days. You know, the days in which people were less connected and less informed, and willing to take old media seriously with big stupid grins.

It would seem otherwise, unless they were really sincere with their new cover, which depicts the man you’re voting for this November with a toothbrush mustache:

Wow, depicting Trump as Hitler! What a stunning and brave move, especially in the current political climate!

I would have thought that “American fascism” would have involved propagandizing the American people, but it seems like the American Hitler has a Jewish daughter, three Jewish grandchildren, authored a peace treaty between the Jewish state and a handful of formerly antisemitic states, and was the only president in the last few decades to not start a new war.

Intellectual dead-ends have been accusing their political rivals of being fascists for so long that it’s just become background noise, like the old music you hear at grocery stores. And I have little doubt that they believe it, because I know that stupid people actually exist.

What I’m starting to wonder about is whether their intellectual betters who have been propagandizing them are actually intelligent, as disingenuous as they may be, or whether they actually believe what they are saying.

Communism survivors have relayed that the point of struggle sessions was to get them to declare their loyalty to the state, whether they were sincere or not, because the very act of making such a declaration had a psychological effect on the one making it, where they eventually believed what they were made to say.

In the same sense, did the propagandistic arm of the establishment finally succeed in convincing someone with their pure, untreated verbal sewage? That is, did they finally succeed in convincing themselves?

What’s especially worrying is that if people can be convinced that someone has been doing something grossly immoral, it becomes easier to convince them to commit acts of violence against them. In light of this, such blatant defamation and dehumanization is not a harmless crime. Left-wing violence has long been a problem, but with the propaganda arm of the left egging them on, I fear it’s only going to get worse.

If the U.S. is heading toward a civil war, media pundits will have played their part in bringing it about. But trust me when I say that nobody should want it. Because the cost would be way too high, even for the winner.

Considering this, irresponsible journalism should be subjected to the ridicule that it richly merits. And with its new cover, The New Republic has certainly earned it.

The Emperor Has No Clothes.

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I sometimes find myself thinking that I have to explain old fairy tales, because it’s apparent that most of the people around us are yet to glean the subtle lessons behind them.

Such is the case when it comes to the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. To sum it up: A conman went to the emperor and sold him a new set of clothes. He was able to convince the emperor that the clothes were something special, when in reality, they were nothing, and when the emperor wore them, he was completely bare.

The emperor was so enamored with his new clothes, that he decided to parade about while wearing them. At no point did any of the emperor’s servants or advisors correct him, and he set out down the streets wearing his new “clothes”. And, for that matter, none of the assembled crowds questioned what they were seeing, either. They agreed with assent that the emperor’s new clothes were magnificent.

But then, one guy spoke up. “Why is the emperor naked?”, he asked. Though one might think it was the most obvious thing in the world, only one guy either noticed or cared to acknowledge what was really going on.

While we might like to imagine that the guy was praised for his insight, the people around him “corrected” him, saying that the emperor wasn’t naked, he was wearing new clothes. They were either saying this because they were just that ignorant, or because they were just that dead-set against gainsaying the emperor.

And when the emperor heard what the man was saying, the emperor was angry, because if he was right, then this meant that the emperor, who was supposed to be the wisest and most insightful man in all the land, was duped by a con artist.

The specifics of the story will vary depending on who is telling it, possibly blunting the intended moral of the story to various degrees, and diminish it’s commentary on society and human psychology. But the main takeaway is usually either that there isn’t much benefit to being the one person who sees what’s wrong, and speaks up about it, or that if no one else in the room is pointing out what’s wrong, that makes it your duty.

If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, I’ll get right to it: The emperor is bare-ass nude. He has been for a long time, and the corporate establishment and much of the body politick refused to acknowledge it. His peepee is showing, and rather than squint to be sure, they instead turned and said, “Nuh-uh! Stupidhead!”

But then last week’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden had taken place. And Biden failed miserably. Not only did people finally start to notice that the emperor was naked, there was his willy, on full display.

Some people coped. There were those who pointed out that Biden had to have had a cold, because his voice was raspy. But I think we’ve all had the cold at some point, and we know that the cold doesn’t cause us to lose our train of thought in mid-sentence, nor does it cause us to ramble incoherently.

We got this routine for years, especially the few of us left who still trust the corporate press to be something besides the propaganda arm of the establishment uniparty, or its controlled opposition. “Biden is actually spry, I’ve seen it behind closed doors!” they’d tell us (and themselves), but it was hard to tell whether it was legitimate ignorance or cope. I know that the political left tends to be more algorithmically segregated, but imagine ignorance to the degree that a person sees someone like Joe Biden, and thinks “lucid”.

Imagine how terrifying and confusing that the world must be to someone who is that isolated from reality. None of us have to labor our minds to imagine a world where the costs of rent, food, and utilities have been skyrocketing, because that’s been our reality for the last few years. But there’s a difference between those who are so ignorant that they’ll circumvent the part of the brain that’s supposed to be inquisitive, and end up attributing price increases to “rich people being greedy”, and those who know that the cost of energy and taxes on property are going up, resulting in higher overhead costs of running businesses, necessitating increases in prices to the end of survival. The difference being, the latter have been actually paying attention.

A basic understanding of economics also helps. And I maintain that that’s the bare minimum to having a political opinion that’s worth anything.

But now, with last week’s debate between the presidential frontrunners, those who have succeeded in isolating themselves from the reality of the matter are now experiencing the kind of dread that’s comparable to the existential horror that comes with the contemplation of souls disappearing when people die. Joe Biden is not all there, and with only about four months until the presidential election, is replacing him as the nominee something that can be realistically accomplished?

Then there’s the way that Trump handled himself. While his typical poise was there, he was able to rein in his usual bombastic tone, and was surprisingly well-behaved. Whether you agree with him or not, he was able to manage a level of decorum while on stage.

Up until that point, Trump was the left’s Hitler, considering him completely incapable of saying anything that could be construed as reasonable, and whatever he might have said that might have been reasonable certainly wouldn’t have passed through the occluded lens of the left’s algorithmic isolation, and into their hermetically-sealed echo chambers.

But, if they tuned into the debate, then they would have actually heard him speak, and even if they weren’t convinced, anyone who was reasonable among them would have had to admit that there were compelling reasons for the convictions of his following. And when you realize the potential for this happening, the left’s insistence on not listening to the other side speak naturally suggests itself.

However, last week’s debate made his insight difficult to avoid. While that may have been revealing depending on who you are, last week’s debate showed us something even more revealing.

The emperor has no clothes.