Once upon a time in America, you could say you loved your country, believed in God, and held your marriage sacred…and not be snickered at as a simple-minded simpleton. You could believe in honesty, hard work, and self-reliance; you could speak of human responsibilities in the same breath as human rights…and not be derided an as an insensitive fool.
You could speak out against profane books, depraved movies, and decadent art; you could express your disapproval of drug-sodden entertainers, America-hating educators, and appeasement-obsessed legislators…and not be branded as an ignorant reactionary. And yes, once upon a time in America, you could actually believe in morality, both public and private, and not be proclaimed a hopeless naïf—more to be pitied than taken seriously. But that was before the “censorship of fashion” took control of contemporary American culture. This insidious form of censorship is not written into our laws or statutes—but it is woven into the very fabric of our culture. It reigns supreme in literature and the arts, on television, and in film, in music and on radio, in our churches, our public schools, and our universities. And above all else, it is dedicated to the propagation of one agenda—the liberal activist agenda for America. The “censorship of fashion” is not only sinister and subtle, it’s also ruthlessly effective. It employs the powerful weapons of ridicule and condescension to stifle the voices of millions of Americans, like you, who still cherish our traditional values.
* I argue that the relationship between religious conservatives and secular liberals is most profoundly conceived as a contemporary recapitulation of the relationship between conquered pagans and conquering Christians endeavoring to uproot these pagans’ idolatry. What liberals call religious neutrality is an intellectualized, sublimated, and secularized iteration of this ancient ambition, which now operates within unacknowledged layers of social meaning rather than through formal creeds. This plausible deniability is why conservative anxieties about the encroachments of an aggressive, evangelizing secular humanism sound paranoid and conspiratorial. But like all conservative claims of cultural oppression, these apprehensions become intelligible once placed in their broader historical and philosophical context, which always reveals the larger truth of what strikes liberals as conservative obtuseness.
* Chronicles treats the “censorship of fashion” as anew phenomenon. But Kirk lamented that late nineteenth-century conservatives became unsettled in their first principles by the march of science and “shrank before the Positivists, the Darwinians, and the astronomers.” The intimidation of conservatives by liberals has a distinguished pedigree, it seems, and is not limited to those now fancying themselves “ordinary Americans.” Nor is the idea that an intellectual elite conspires behind the scenes to maintain a stranglehold on the means of cultural reproduction. Unable to realize their ends by “any direct or immediate act,” the atheists of Burke’s day conspired to pursue them “by a longer process through the medium of opinion,” to which end the “first step is to establish a dominion over those who direct it.” O’Reilly alleges that late-night television comedy paints liberals as smart and conservatives as dense. And in the same spirit, Burke charged that atheists connived “to confine the reputation of sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their followers,” and sought with “an unremitting industry to blacken and discredit in every way, and by every means, all those who did not hold to their faction.” Conservatives have long held that intellectuals are driven by their own self-contained interests, and long warned that centralized planning, unqualified equality, and other utopian dreams are recipes for a leveling and homogenizing tyranny. The language may have changed, but conservative claims of cultural oppression are built atop of these long-held conservative suspicions about liberalism and the Left.
* The claimants understand themselves as speaking truth to a power that conceals itself at every turn, to forces that will never officially announce their goals, their motivations, or even their existence. This does not typically devolve into the crude conspiracism that we usually associate with the extreme right. There is the visceral sense that things are not as they seem, to be sure. But whereas this once meant things like the John Birch Society alleging that President Eisenhower was a knowing agent of communism, the conservative claimant of cultural oppression judges the problem to be largely structural and unconscious or semiconscious, and not the calculated product of human agency. There is indeed a liberal conspiracy, but it consists in hidden layers of meaning rather than secret plots. It transpires, not in smoke-filled backrooms, but in the fabric of our culture, as Chronicles says.
* What strikes liberals as conservatives’ eschewal of rationality is, in its deeper hermeneutic structure, an eschewal of the rationalism that underpins liberals’ claims to moral superiority, and hence the liberal identity.
* Conservatives charge that the “new class” of liberal elites harbors an ingrained hostility to the traditional family. But the indisputable truth is that many of these elites form part of such families themselves. And so the conservative accusation seems rather conspiratorial. The list of counter-arguments available to liberals is quite long. The comic aspect of Bobos in Paradise immunizes it from any direct intellectual confrontation. But is it not in this regard a microcosm for conservative claims of cultural oppression and their penchant for strategically deployed innuendo whose real upshot can never be quite pinned down? Conservatives would characterize liberalism as a surreptitiously parochial creed, the lifestyle preference of a privileged minority.
* Liberals do not construe the conspiracy-mongering of some black nationalists—like Louis Farrakhan for example—as conclusive proof that racism is dead. And this is because the underlying reality of racism can be distinguished from what may be implausible characterizations of its nature—for example, as involving genocidal conspiracies to infest inner city communities with AIDS or cocaine…
And likewise, perhaps conservative claimants of cultural oppression are, just like these black poll respondents, anthropomorphizing what are very real social forces, which are ill-understood by virtue of the distorting yet understandable resentment that is usually the lot of the oppressed. Most of McWhorter’s poll respondents simply lacked the theoretical detachment and sophistication that allows critical race theorists to frame their grievances in more intellectually nuanced terms. And likewise, conservatives may simply lack access to a theoretical framework through which to plausibly articulate their irrepressible intuition that they are culturally oppressed and that the ideals of liberalism can be appropriated to their own cause.
* Conservatives’ often conspiratorial-sounding allegations about the cunning machinations of an all-powerful liberal elite working “behind the scenes” to strip them of their very agency are the anthropomorphization of what is really a metaphysical and existential problem. The ideal of the modern free subject is covertly embedded in a hero-system that liberalism will not acknowledge. And this means that to embrace liberalism is to embrace more than a set of policies. If some African-Americans anthropomorphized structural racism as a government conspiracy to infest inner city neighborhoods with narcotics, so conservative claims of cultural oppression anthropomorphize the spiritual dimension of the modern self as the sundry depredations of the liberal elites.
* Conservatives’ “convoluted stories” may seem unhinged. But this impression is the predictable outcome of the conservatives’ historical predicament, which allows them to sense deceptive and self-deceptive histrionic mimicry without illuminating its essential nature. Like Kafka’s K. in The Trial, they can only access an assortment of partial “leaks” concerning the true nature of their oppression—like the Smithsonian memorandum—without ever receiving a more general accounting. It is this dilemma, itself a feature of their cultural oppression, that yields the conspiratorial flights of fancy. And this is why even these flights of fancy have a social meaning and philosophical significance. Though generally inaccurate as accounts of the actual present-day intentions of identifiable liberals, conservative claims of cultural oppression are meaningful as symbolic references to the “old loves” that liberals will not acknowledge, to the structural forces that may portend as yet greater cultural oppression in the future. These endlessly convoluted stories are at their core distorted articulations of these old loves, and so distortions with a heretofore undiscovered logic.
* Lee Harris concedes that the “populist conservatives” of the Tea Party movement have been susceptible to paranoid conspiracy-mongering, as in their concerns about Obamacare “death panels.” Their appeal to the yeoman virtues of a rugged, republican individualism is moreover an exercise in political nostalgia, as they aren’t truly interested in returning to the harsh conditions of frontier life.75Thisnostalgia is also at odds with their insistence that America keep its place the planet’s sole superpower, which presupposes a far larger government than was ever countenanced in the national past they idealize.76And in bewailing the depredations of overbearing liberal elites, populist conservatives betray their blindness to the workings of “impersonal forces far beyond the control of even the most cunning and ingenious cabal of villains.” Their affinity for doctrinaire libertarianism furthermore blinds them to corrupt corporate executives and amoral financial consortiums, responsibility for which cannot fairly be laid at the feet of big government. It also lands them in the contradiction of taking for granted some government programs, like Medicare, while being reflexively hostile to others. On these and similar points, Harris is in full agreement with liberals. But unlike them, he believes that it “does not matter greatly whether the resentment and resistance makes sense logically or is backed by solid evidence.” The grievances of the populist conservative are rooted, not in any kind of social or economic theory that could be rationally evaluated, but in “a specific character type,” the “natural libertarian” who becomes “ornery” whenever “he feels that his self-image as a free and independent individual is under assault.” “Ornery Americans” are the heirs of the Jacksonian spirit, the egalitarian ethos of independence and self-sufficiency that once defined America. And their populist conservatism is their attempt to keep this ethos alive against the efforts of the liberal elites to uproot it. In resisting the forces that seek to tame and subdue them, populist conservatives try to “hold back, at least for another day, the dusk of decadence that comes whenever the forces of order have triumphed too completely over the anarchic will of free men.”
* Feminists who protest patriarchy are not necessarily alleging any calculated backroom conspiracies to keep women down. They are describing, not a plot but what they understand to be a “complex ecology of domination and subjugation,” as Sommers puts it, which cannot be reduced to some discrete set of enumerable transgressions. Naomi Wolfe writes that“[t]he beauty backlash against feminism is no conspiracy, but a million separate individual reflexes…that coalesce into a national mood weighing women down; the backlash is the more oppressive because the source of the suffocation is so diffuse as to be almost invisible.” Andin a similar vein, conservatives feel weighed down by a national mood of conservaphobia, suffocated by liberalism through the cumulative effect of “a million separate reflex actions” all serving to reinforce the buffered identity, activating certain neural make-ups while devitalizing others.
* Just as critical race theorists warn that we may fail to recognize our own racism, so conservative claims of cultural oppression warn that we may fail to recognize our own secular humanism and anti-religious hostility, which is too pervasive or deep-seated to be recognized as such.
* Religious conservatives’ apprehensions about the connivance of a small coterie of secular humanists whose insidious tentacles now reach into every sphere of life sounds outlandish and conspiratorial. But the conspiracy theories are just distorted anthropomorphizations of these conservatives’ visceral aversion to an alien cosmological orientation. They are culturally oppressed, not by the secular, but by the modern understanding of the relationship between the religious and the secular. Ravi Zacharias observes:
“The California Supreme Court proved it has little problem with the state endorsing a religion, even forcing religious beliefs down its citizen’s throats, provided the religion is secular humanism. On March 1, 2004, the Court ruled that Catholic Charities of Sacramento must comply with the statute requiring California employers to include contraception coverage in their employee healthcare plans. Under the Women’s Contraceptive Equity Act of 2000, only religious employers are excluded. The Court had no problem rationalizing its decision, saying that since the Catholic Charities provides services that are secular in nature, such as counseling, immigration services, and low-income housing, for people of all faiths, it is not a religious employer. One would think that the politically correct California court would applaud the pluralistic attitude of the charity in making its services available to non-Catholics. Instead it used the charity’s tolerance to punish it.”
* …the rhetorical supremacy of the buffered identity, which forces conservatives to articulate cosmological grievances in epistemological terms, at which point they are easily discredited as outlandish, conspiratorial, or authoritarian.
* Conservatives’ visceral conviction that liberalism is an omnipresent force that slyly insinuates itself into all the minutiae of our lives is indeed paranoid and conspiratorial once liberalism is intellectualized as a moral philosophy or personalized as a political movement, reduced to the opinions of a Walter Mondale. However, I have sought to de-intellectualize liberalism by tracing its roots to the disciplines and repressions of the buffered identity, of which the opinions of a Walter Mondale are merely manifestations and symbols. The “liberalism” that besieges conservatives isn’t the conspiratorial machinations of nefarious East Coast elites, but these disciplines and repressions. The elites have simply internalized these to a greater degree than the “ordinary American,” who retains a residue of the pre-modern impulses which modern disciplinary societies seek to extirpate.
* Conservatives may be unscientific in their tacit devotion to some “order of things.” But liberals are unscientific in their eagerness to detach culture from physiology, not explicitly in their official theoretical positions, but implicitly and unofficially in their easy dismissals of conservatives’ “symbolic” grievances. And this dismissiveness simply betrays liberals’ inability to take its naturalism to its logical conclusion, where conservatives’ ostensible paranoia and conspiracism begin to make sense.
Podnotes AI summary: If you read one book on the U.S. Secret Service, make it 2021’s Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.
The book paints a grim picture of an underfunded, outdated Secret Service relying on luck rather than competence. Morale is at rock bottom due to rigid management that fosters resentment and self-serving leaders neglecting necessary reforms despite a $2 billion budget.
From elite protectors post-JFK assassination to now being plagued by infighting and obsolescence, the service has faced three years as the least favored federal workplace. The narrative suggests leadership failures have compromised security at Trump events; requests for additional resources were often denied, leading up to an attempted shooting.
The author criticizes structural flaws like compartmentalized responsibilities within protective details and inadequate advance work in security planning. He also discusses gender dynamics within the force, arguing all-male teams might offer more cohesion without distractions or tension from mixed-gender interactions.
Trump himself strained resources during his presidency—his extensive travel increased costs significantly while he neglected systemic issues within the Secret Service. His administration provided minimal funding increases and failed to prioritize long-term health over immediate personal benefits.
Why weren’t Secret Service agents defending a woman’s First Amendment rights during Trump’s speech? Their duty isn’t to protect speech but the president. They’re trained to carry out this task efficiently, and it’s not about discrimination—it’s about adhering to their roles.
In recent years, though, there’s been confusion over minority rights versus majority rule in democracy. Some argue that discrimination can be necessary when hiring for specific job requirements—excluding factors like race or sexual orientation—but based on what the job demands.
During an analysis of a Trump rally incident, several points were discussed: lack of coordination between local police and Secret Service due to manpower issues; the shooter learning about the rally days before; and media critiques of social media disinformation following the assassination attempt.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump led to national unity calls clashing with finger-pointing over inflammatory rhetoric. In his recovery from a near-fatal wound, Trump displayed resilience by continuing his campaign despite challenges within his party and criticisms from Democrats seeking Biden’s presidency.
Security details are crucial in protecting high-profile figures like former presidents. Protective intelligence involves assessing potential threats well ahead of scheduled events. However, cultural shifts toward diversity hiring may impact effectiveness if they don’t prioritize excellence above all else.
At one event where Trump was speaking, breakdowns in communication and insufficient training resulted in slow evacuation procedures after shots were fired. It highlighted systemic issues within law enforcement culture—a descent into mediocrity rather than striving for excellence through rigorous standards and adequate funding.
In a video, smoke appears after a bullet grazes Donald Trump. Crooks fires two rounds that miss Trump but hit David Dutch, who falls to the ground. A second volley from Crooks misses its mark, striking Corey Comperatore in the head and James Copenhagen H., both reacting with shock.
The footage also disproves the theory of a shooter on the water tower and shows no one was there during the incident. Analysis reveals shots at Trump were consistent with Crook’s known location; counter-sniper shots ended his second attack, preventing further harm.
A detailed trajectory analysis matches the bullets’ paths to their targets based on stage heights and distances. Audio analysis is dismissed as flawed due to moving microphones. Conspiracy theories about secondary shooters are debunked by impact locations near Trump.
Whistleblowers allege President Trump received inadequate protection at a Pennsylvania rally due to inexperienced personnel assigned by DHS instead of Secret Service agents. Senator Josh Hawley has been informed of security lapses such as lack of canine units and improper access control around podiums.
Commentary suggests Director Jill Biden may have influenced hiring decisions within Secret Service based on diversity rather than competence—a point criticized for potentially lowering standards within critical roles like law enforcement or military operations.
An interview with an off-screen Secret Service sniper questions whether leadership prioritizes political activism over merit-based appointments following an embarrassing failure in presidential protection detail execution.
My sleep is affected. I’m a bit jittery and upset.
Luke: I reject all the conspiracy theories about the shooting of Donald Trump except that I am open to the Biden administration deliberately providing inadequate and incompetent security to Trump to maximize his chance of getting assassinated. Perhaps it wasn’t just incompetence by the Biden administration, perhaps somebody was malicious.
The Secret Service was warned days before they couldn’t secure the building—a known potential threat. Local PD claims their warning email went unanswered. With limited manpower, we couldn’t cover all areas, including the AGR building’s exterior and roof, says Butler Township manager Tom Knight.
Leadership matters in law enforcement to foster excellence—an extraordinary culture of accountability and punctuality. However, if we shift towards a more inclusive approach that may seem less masculine or traditional, some fear it could compromise this level of excellence.
An hour before Trump’s speech, Crooks was spotted by Secret Service as suspicious; he had a range finder gauging the distance to Trump’s podium. Despite clear signs of danger—like on 9/11 when New York agencies couldn’t communicate due to different radio frequencies—the response was flawed.
The Secret Service has low morale and job satisfaction under leaders appointed by several presidents—not just Trump or Biden—who haven’t upheld standards of excellence.
Trump’s demands strained resources; his family members even dated agents without repercussions. His administration denied Biden full security after the election win—raising fears within Biden’s camp about the Secret Service’s loyalty.
A shooter got into position despite being noticed earlier with suspicious items like a duffel bag and range finder—and even while climbing onto roofs at the event site where thousands were present. This failure highlights systemic issues within an already stretched-thin agency resistant to taking responsibility for its shortcomings.
Questions arise: How did Crooks know about this vantage point? Was there inside information? The situation suggests deeper problems requiring congressional attention perhaps influenced by political biases against Trump—even from elected officials who should be impartial.
Diversity efforts are scrutinized—height disparities among agents protecting taller individuals like Trump raise operational concerns about physical capabilities versus inclusivity goals.
Ultimately, reform seems unlikely unless driven by tragedy—a sad reflection on our readiness to address glaring security flaws head-on only after disaster strikes.
Reports indicate that police were inside the building during a shooting incident but not on the roof, raising questions about their response. A sniper team may have faced difficulties positioning themselves due to the angle of the roof and possibly couldn’t see the shooter initially. Conversations with former law enforcement officials suggest that counter-snipers don’t need permission to engage a threat like this.
Contrary to some circulating rumors, there was no hesitation based on needing authority; if an opportunity presented itself, they would act. However, it seems another team, not previously thought responsible in media reports, neutralized the gunman.
Conservative values place higher importance on concepts such as honor, especially within military and law enforcement.
The case of Sergeant Bergdahl and Barack Obama’s controversial exchange for prisoners highlighted these differences in perspective—the administration’s actions seen by some as dismissive of military virtue and honor.
Ronnie Goldman’s book on conservative cultural oppression references elites in higher education as opposition to traditional values. Alvin Gardner’s seminal work from 1979 claims universities are battlegrounds for class struggles. Education today focuses not just on learning but fitting into its system with diversity and inclusion statements serving as filters for conformity.
Admission to elite universities signals intellectual merit and aligns with their liberal image. Academic excellence is partly subjective; it’s shaped by liberal elites who use institutions to exclude conservatives and secure their dominance, starting in academia then spreading through social ostracism.
Elite universities have replaced old WASP virtues of utility and honor with intellectual prowess. Critics argue this masks new forms of social virtue that ignore individual perspectives under the guise of equality while marginalizing conservative views.
Our nation is filled with educated yet ignorant individuals groomed to uphold liberal ideals. The media delayed calling an incident an assassination attempt due to protocol instead of common sense which would’ve identified it immediately like recognizing Joe Biden’s cognitive issues during debates.
Elite university culture requires detachment from tradition fostering a hierarchy between those who adopt this disengaged stance versus those rooted in conventional beliefs or emotions—creating a divide over moral standards like attitudes towards homosexuality or single motherhood.
Conservatives believe liberals’ push for equality threatens their existence since they feel oppressed by these dominant ideologies that prioritize intellectualism over traditional values which often go unrecognized or dismissed by academic elites despite being obvious issues such as Biden’s public cognitive decline.
Security failures at events highlight resource limitations within organizations like the Secret Service, prompting discussions about departmental restructuring for effectiveness amidst crises beyond immigration concerns—highlighting leadership responsibilities at Homeland Security levels.
Books on Biden’s administration often overlook his evident cognitive decline focusing instead on policy impacts ignoring significant governance aspects leading academics also disregard any negative assessments favoring positive portrayals aligned against Trump-centric narratives reinforcing establishment biases against factual inconsistencies or differing opinions seen as threats needing censorship rather than open discussion points—all stemming from a deep-seated need to maintain power structures even if it involves creating false realities around political figures like Biden whose public appearances cause unease yet are minimized within constructed narratives aimed at preserving authority regardless of truth distortions necessary for defeating political adversaries like Trump signifying ultimate loyalty lies not in objective analysis but strategic preservation tactics guided by partisan objectives above all else.
Truth had become the enemy, something to avoid. People thought they could protect their world by creating a real Joe Biden. The debate on June 27 was more important than it seemed. While Biden spoke, those listening closely heard a sound like fabric tearing as fantasies crumbled and Americans saw the struggles of a man with declining health.
The shock lingered not because it was surprising but predictable. We watched the collapse of a grand deception and possibly the end of Biden’s political life. He might need outside help to accept this reality.
The media that once supported him now seeks to reveal his weaknesses while maintaining its main goal: opposing Donald Trump. As Biden falls behind Trump, he loses crucial support from outlets like The New York Times—a blow no Democrat can withstand.
What happens next is unclear; if the establishment doesn’t survive this revelation, personal ambitions may tear apart what unity remains in the Democratic Party.
I don’t pity Joe Biden; he deceived America and got caught. If forced out of politics, that will define his legacy—if Trump wins again in 2024, elites will despise Biden for failing them so completely.
In terms of security concerns at events—there are discrepancies reported about where threats are located and how they’re handled. Some suggest police hesitation due to anti-force sentiment may be influencing response times during critical moments.
Elliott Blatt joins the show: “So this [Trump shooting] story has really captivated you. Why does Luke just walk into the fire? I realized why Luke is Luke, what the essence of Luke Ford is. Luke is comfortable with the uncomfortable. And that’s why he streams. He’s willing to discuss uncomfortable topics. What has Luke talked about? Everything we like to bury, racism, sexism, pornography, sex. So have you always been this way?”
Luke: “Probably. There are times when I have tamped down my desire to discuss uncomfortable topics to preserve my social standing.”
Elliott: “But you keep being drawn back into the fire. So you suppress this urge to be socially connected. You have to disguise who you are.”
Luke: “Or it doesn’t have to come out. There are times where it’s inappropriate to bring out the uncomfortable. And there are times that I don’t wan to talk about the uncomfortable. So it’s not so much disguise, it’s more about knowing the time and place. It’s much more appropriate for me to do it on a live stream than to introduce it into a conversation where it’s not wanted.”
Elliott: “And that’s why you stream because you need that outlet because it’s just so much a part of your identity. This is the your art form, and you need to express it.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been with the group of women. Right? And then some controversial topic shows up in the conversation. And what they immediately do is they start looking around the room and monitoring the facial expressions of other women before they know whether or not to agree or disagree. Right? And then if the answer is yes, everyone’s enthusiastically, yes. If the answer is no, everyone’s enthusiastically no.”
Qualifications should trump all else when hiring for protective services or any job—not gender quotas or other criteria that overlook more capable candidates for diversity’s sake.
People often exaggerate their involvement in significant events as part of human nature—to feel connected or important—even when it leads to conspiracy theories or false witness accounts.
Those who acknowledge their lackluster lives often console themselves by believing they see through society’s lies better than others who seem successful yet naive.
It’s rare to find someone whose awakening leads to wealth rather than social isolation—often accompanied by extreme views disconnected from societal norms.
Finally, people sometimes misrepresent themselves trying to impress others—an offhand comment can destroy potential connections when one party takes offense at perceived shared values gone awry.
In 2016, Trump wanted to keep his private security led by Keith Schiller, but the Secret Service disliked this. Articles criticized Trump’s decision as risky. Now, it seems he should have kept that team for loyalty and effectiveness.
Trump’s use of Secret Service was controversial; he even denied proper security to Biden when in power. This could lead to a “turnabout is fair play” situation with Biden’s team.
People often try to apply Dennis Prager’s advice on communication and relationships, but it can backfire. It did for me.
One agent lost control of her gun during an incident involving Trump – a stark example of operational challenges.
Stephen J. James joins the show: “This line that people are taking, which is, I’m not saying that women can’t do the job. This frustrates me. I think that this just feeds feeds the problem even more. Yes, you can have some ladies doing regular Secret Service jobs but not the close protection team. I just don’t buy it.
“There’s no boxing regulator in in the world who would sanction a fight between a man and a woman of the same weight. So who are we kidding with this close protection that walks with Trump, wherever he goes, who are responsible for him on the podium, who responsible for him as his walking him amongst crowds. This team who has to disarm people.
In most circumstances, it’s probably going to be physical disarm and grabbing them by by the throat or taking them to the ground. This should be big, strong men.
Luke: “Yes. Without a doubt, but the reason that we are so free to state this obvious truth is that we have nothing to lose. We’re not going to give up our prestigious positions. We’re not gonna give up wealth and honor. We’re not gonna give up beautiful, sexual relationships by stating the obvious truth. Everyone that I played on the show who has a more convoluted approach, they have more to lose than we do. One virtue of our lack of success in life is that we can be free to say the plain truth.
Stephen: “I get the point. It just really frustrate strikes me as I hear them attempting to give this truth that it has to be somebody competent and but yet they’re still walking the fence line.
“The other thing I wanted to mention, Luke, I didn’t tell you actually the whole truth when I spoke to you before in the immediate aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt because I told you I was watching it live. I had it paused in a tab. My instinct was to lie and say that I had been watching it live. I don’t know why. I wanted to to be a part of it.
“This is where many conspiracy theories develop from – these false witness accounts of people who are just want to be part of the moment.”
Luke: “It’s a giveaway when you encounter someone who exaggerates their own significance. You’re dealing with a fragile person who finds the reality of his own significance unbearable and therefore is trying to create a scaffold of significance where there is no viable foundation for that significance. Somebody earning a million dollars a year has no need to make up a story of his own significance. Someone who is a professional athlete, someone who’s having sex regularly with a gorgeous woman, someone who has an esteemed position in his community has much less need to create a false sense of significance because they have a real significance. But those of us who don’t have that real significance that comes with being a star, we much more keenly feel that need to create a significance because the unbearable nature of our own lack of significance is just so painful.”
Stephen: “Whilst being part of the story and I had to pull myself back at the last mode. And you can claim people have now been reporting on it in the aftermath, and each of them are wanting to give, like their own, like like, it’s super insightful thing on it. And so this is even now breeding. Many of these commenting on the shooting are just very excited about it and wanted to get the next angle and we live in the age of, like, engagement and impressions on Twitter and on social media. And so I don’t think that there’s this thing about whether these are really bad lies? Do these people believe them or not?”
Luke: “From age 14 to 22. I exaggerated my sexual prowess. I wasn’t having any sex. Finally at age 22, I started having regular sex. A few weeks in, my girlfriend said, I feel so insecure because you’ve been with so many girls before me. And I said, I was lying. You you’re my first.”
Stephen: “And how did she take that?”
Luke: “She found it adorable. In eighth grade, I had a classmate who was already having sexual interactions with high school goals. He didn’t need to exaggerate his sexual prowess because he was having the real thing. So people who have the real thing, they just have much less of a need to exaggerate their own accomplishments.”
“A few years ago, I interviewed Andy Nowicki about his Covid novel. The interview didn’t go so well. Afterwards, I was struck that for people who are losing at life, they have to comfort themselves and one way they do that is say to themselves, well, at least I see through the bullshit.
“They’re failing at life, but at least they see through the bullshit while their peers who may be less intelligent than them, but who have marriages, children, mortgages, careers, these guys are just careerists. They don’t have the strength that I have to see through the bullshit.
“I jnoticed in myself this constant need to manufacture an angle by which I am an awesome man.
Stephen: “When you get into dissident politics and you start getting red pilled, you do pat yourself on the back as a truth discover, and you spend all of your spare time doing it, but you’re not building the most successful life. We come up with derogatory terms such as normie for people who build a life and follow the rules. We say we’re not like them because they are closed minded. We figured it all out.”
Luke: “My friends with PhDs want to convince the world that their specialty is the key to life. They want to manufacture jobs and prestige for themselves. They’re eager to promote an expansive definition of mental illness so that they can have more clients and power and prestige.
“Even Joe Biden, president of the United States, he is burning with anger that Barack Obama told him to not run for president in 2016 and to allow Hillary Clinton to run instead. So he’s burning with anger and resentment about that. So he’s not gonna listen to the Biden team about how he should drop out now.”
“Donald Trump to a ludicrous extent takes things personally.”
Kip called in discussing performance anxiety with women and how our subconscious might sabotage connections that don’t fit our internal standards. He also shared his discomfort speaking to large groups despite being skilled at persuasion.
Kip believes America is nearing its end due to financial instability rather than conflict with Russia. He worries about the devaluation of currency and suggests billionaires are preparing for crisis scenarios.
Despite Kip’s isolation, he values truth and engages in discussions like these for intellectual fulfillment rather than socializing locally where people may not understand or appreciate deeper conversations about society’s issues.
Finally, I predicted July 2 that Joe Biden would step down based on situational analysis overruling legal precedent – showing how context can overpower established rules or expectations in politics.
Following the law can sometimes feel like a suicidal choice, as some view President Joe Biden’s leadership. Critics argue that his cognitive abilities are declining and speculate he may resign. America prides itself on individualism, which means there’s often more negotiation in daily life than elsewhere.
We all seek validation for our personal narratives; without it, we’re lost. For example, if I couldn’t find support from other Orthodox Jews, maintaining my identity would be difficult. Similarly, political figures like Joe Biden rely on widespread backing to sustain their positions.
The recent shift in political support indicates that President Biden might not run for re-election due to dwindling donations and party support post-debate performance. Some colleagues who have worked with him for years now oppose him—a harsh reality check.
Discussions about whether Biden is fit to finish his term arise alongside debates about potential Democratic nominees if he steps down. There’s speculation of an open convention if Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t seen as a strong candidate against Donald Trump.
On the Republican side, calls for resignation are emerging based on fitness concerns. Meanwhile, Democrats worry about protecting seats in both houses of Congress amid these changes and potentially facing a return of Trump to power.
In this turbulent time in politics, strategies revolve around being a check against opposing parties while navigating vulnerable areas such as border issues attributed to Harris’s management—or lack thereof—as borders czar.
As the political landscape shifts rapidly with these developments unfolding live on news broadcasts across the nation—Fox News included—the focus sharpens not just on presidential races but also on how they influence congressional balances of power and vice-presidential selections going forward.
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