Mentioned to a liberal friend that I was running into problems registering for the new Parler social media platform that promises freedom of speech. She hadn't heard of ir but when I explained that conservatives are gravitating to it because of the censorship on the other social media, she said "I'd be worried about hate speech." I was taken by surprise although I shouldn't have been, it's such a standard leftist/liberal way of thinking, but I was and I asked what she meant. Something about misinformation being spread around, and threats against people on the other political side.
Neither of those things is what I understand the term "hate speech" to refer to but we kept it to those ideas anyway. First, of course, the owners and moderators of such websites do not have the expertise to determine what is misinformation, and since they ban discussion of Hydroxychloroquine they prove their incompetence to judge, as well as their tyrannical totalitarian inclinations. Besides, these are conversations mostly between ordinary people, not experts, and banning their opinions is way out of line. But they even ban experts, doctors with all sorts of credentials and fine reputations because they are defending what has become a politically incorrect opinion. You have to trust that people are capable of judging each other as we all have to in everyday life without their nanny intrusion, and that eventually the truth will prevail, censorship is an anti-American form of control As for threats of violence I thought that was always prohibited speech, not some special category of "hate speech" so if people are getting away with such threats things are getting so bad we're beyond return to civility.
Her being worried about hate speech took a few days to settle in to my mind. I don't know why I was so surprised but eventually the surprise turned to a kind of shock. It seemed in the end that it had hit me like a punch in the stomach but I didn't register it as such, and was only now days later able to inhale again. I thought she'd at least understand that conservatives ARE experiencing unfair censorship but instead it seemed like she distrusts conservatives, or people in general perhaps, to deserve the right to free specch the Constitution gives us. I was oddly at sea for a few days while the hate speech remark circled around in my head, finally settling into the simple recognition that's not new but hit me as if it were new, that the divide between right and left is truly irreconcilable.
Then this morning I was listening to Rush Limbaugh who toward the end of his program mentioned that he knows many people who think conservatives should secede from the US. I'd heard this before and I've thought it myself. I still think it. I probably think it more today than usual. Rush said he isn't for it, he thinks that we're in the majority so why should we secede? But we don't want to be in the position of imposing our unwelcome ideology on them any more than we want theirs imposed on us, and winning elections isn't going to keep that from happening. If anything it would probably escalate their violence, the rioting, the attacks by Antifa and so on if Trump won again. I think from the evidence I heard that he did in fact win this election, that the voter fraud does reach to that level, and of course I'd like to see the truth come out, but I don't want a civil war and it could go there whether we win or not.
Another caller to Rush's show was passionate about finding educational or other civil ways to deal with the problem. I think along those lines too. She thought maybe Rush could promote creative ideas about how to go about that, promote organizations dedicated to it and that sort of thing. She mentioned bumper stickers but doesn't she know that would just get cars vandalized? He answered that he thought he'd been doing his best in that direcrtion for all the time he's been on the air, which is true. Well, maybe the caller will try to start something going, she sounds like she has the energy for it.
Me, I daydream about starting conservative opinion newspapers full of the best presentations of the conservative point of view, and giving them away by the millions. Also daydream about establishing meeting places in every town where lectures on the Constitution and the founding principles of America could be taught and discussed, over espresso and pastries or something. Any such enterprise would take millions and way too much time.. and besides the newspapers would be collected by leftists and chucked in dumpsters, and meeting places would be vandalized and burned down.
Secession looks more and more attractive. Maybe we could secede in blocks, maybe one huge block, maybe most of the Midwest and South? Maybe liberals could move to liberal areas and conservatives move into the conservative areas? Maybe it could start with one state declaring itself for either side and attracting like-minded people to it while the others move out. They'd still try to kill us, but if we are all in one place we could probably get some decent defenses organized. Just musing.
My friend says she didn't particularly have conservatives in mind when she mentioned hate speech and maybe she didn't but that means she doesn't really know what hate speech means from her own liberal frame of reference. I wasn't going to say, of course, that it's a Marxist concept designed for character assassination of the opponent, but maybe I could at least have said it demonizes ordinary conservative politics, but as usual I don't think on my feet very well. There are many levels of confusion in all this and sorting them out is beyond most of us. Then we discussed Hydroxychloroquine some, since being able to discuss that is my main reason I'd like to get into a safe form of social media. She's been persuaded by my arguments about that, or so I thought, but then she pretty much said she didn't think I'd accept it if I saw a really good argument against it. And that's another punch in the stomach. I'm persuaded by the evidence, I'm not avoiding evidence. The evidence against it is bad, some of it rotten, even made up, the evidence for it is excellent.
Another punch, which I'm sure she didn't mean as a punch but just a statement of her opinion, was that she thinks Trump is guilty of treason and of course I was off guard or upset enough not to find out what on earth she had in mind. Should just ask and shut up but I didn't, so I don't know. I do know the Left is treasonous to the core and the voter fraud is itself treason. I don't like being punched in the stomach. I want to secede. Better yet, I want the Rapture to come, like tomorrow.
Then she sent me a couple of links, one to a list of things Trump has done that conservatives regard as good things, another a list of things imputed to him that liberals think are bad. I'm sure she disagrees with most of the positive list and i disagree with all of the leftist list. Many of them are lies, many of them are standard conservative politics the left demonizes etc. The radical differences in the two points of view are glaring, good reason for secession in my opinion. Maybe I'll post some of it eventually.
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I'm going to put a link here to a video I think I've posred before, that I wanted to add to my Feed Your Head post but something has happened that prevents adding to it and it's relevant enough here. This is the "walkaway" video by the young woman named Georgia who explains what she used to think about conservatives and how she changed her mind. I Was Wrong About the Democratic Party.
