To illustrate my other comment here: During the 2020 Minneapolis BLM riots I was providing some close (far-Left) relatives of mine with ongoing emails containing descriptions of the riots, with the idea that my relatives might be concerned about other relatives of ours who actually live in Minneapolis. I was simply relating the ongoing events as I saw them, both in person and with links to our local news (which was providing pretty good coverage), with no political comments whatsoever. But at one point I did convey the image of our Attorney General Keith Ellison holding up the Antifa Handbook (an image he posted OF HIMSELF on Twitter), probably along with a comment as to why nobody here was lifting a finger to stop the madness. This was too much for one of my relatives; she "snapped", saying that she could not tolerate such biased coverage. After that I removed her from my emails and lowered the frequency of my reports to my remaining audience.
I believe the Ellison photo was just the final straw for my Lefty relative; the thing that was stressing her out was my MERELY RELATING THE ONGOING RIOT, mostly using the ongoing local media coverage. IT WAS THE FACT OF THE RIOT ITSELF that she could not tolerate. It did not fit in with her "mostly peaceful protests" view of the world. She could not stand the dissonance. I firmly believe that if you were to ask her today, she would say that there were no riots. In her mind they simply don't exist and never existed. It would not matter if I showed her my own personal photos of the Minneapolis wreckage; for her this event never happened. So too with the transgender lunacy and porn in our school libraries, abortion being the killing of a human, Biden's open borders, men dominating women's sports, etc. For her, these things simply do not exist.
My attempts of conversation with other Leftists have been equally and totally futile. Their universal MO is to terminate the conversation with an ad hominem attack: either I am a fool, or my sources are not to be trusted. They do this with such regularity that they seem to all have been trained in some sort of boot camp. Their strategies are absolutely universal; I have found no exceptions. In this manner they ALWAYS avoid a conversation of the actual subject entirely. So how did they become so well-trained? I've realized that it's by watching their trusted leaders in their trusted media, all of whom do this very thing. For example there's now a very well-produced documentary called "The Fall Of Minneapolis" which plainly documents, mostly using video footage of police cameras and of our leaders in their own words, how George Floyd's death was attributed by the medical examiner to a heart attack most likely induced by drug overdose, and how our own police authorities lied under oath in order to convince the public that Floyd was murdered by an officer intentionally asphyxiating him. When our Attorney General Keith Ellison was asked about this film he lied again, declaring that he'd never seen it, implying that it's not worth seeing. So too with NPR saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not worth discussing. Leftists watch their leaders doing this every day, and they do the same.
I encounter this sort of thing constantly, literally EVERY TIME I converse with a Leftist. They construct their own world out of pure fantasy, made possible by excluding all evidence to the contrary. Even though we walk the same streets, Leftists truly live in an entirely different world.
Ha! I, too, have a Lib cousin who cut me off last year as the Biden campaign was caving. Send me that photo of Ellison and I might make a Living Behind Enemy Lines article out of your comment.
In Minnesota this photo is very famous, except among the many imbeciles who refuse to acknowledge its existence. Just search for "Ellison Antifa" (without quotes) and select the Images tab. Then for extra fun search "Jeremiah Ellison Antifa" to see that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. To the point of your article here, the Ellisons are among the top leaders brainwashing moronic Democrat voters that A) Antifa doesn't exist, and B) if it does exist, it is peaceful and C) remember to look over your shoulder because there's surely a White Supremacist right there with a pickaxe and a noose, just waiting to getcha. The frightening part is that the majority of Minnesotans believe the Ellisons rather than their own lying eyes. The is no proposition so idiotic that a typical Democrat cannot be made to believe it. We Republicans don't understand that when CNN runs a video of a reporter standing before a burning building claiming that it's a peaceful protest, we see the burning building, but Democrat NPCs hear only the "peaceful protest", and this is seared into their memories to the exclusion of all else. Remember, in the mind of my relative who cut me off, the riots never happened, and nothing we will ever say to her or show her will convince her otherwise. That is how essentially all political street violence in the USA can be perpetrated by the Left, probably under direct control of the Democrat Party, yet Biden can say that White Supremacists are the source of all our domestic terror, and his sheeple thereafter ignore all evidence to the contrary. That is why Dem NPCs are now literally sick with fear; they actually believe that the USA is now governed by a terrorist organization that is hunting them down. WATCH: https://www.amren.com/videos/2023/06/the-desperate-search-for-white-supremacists/
I would guess that Joanne is not a liar; rather she lives in a world of cognitive dissonance that you and I cannot imagine, as illustrated in your earlier article. We "conservatives" keep pointing this stuff out, but in our hearts we don't REALLY believe that we live amidst a herd of sheep constituting 50% of our population, folks who curiously resemble us and who are related to us, but who due to their brain organization and indoctrination might just as well be from another solar system. It is time we started really taking our own observations seriously, lest we become mentally ill ourselves. https://caliberties.org/are-liberals-really-more-prone-to-mental-health-issues-a-data-driven-analysis/
One of our greatest dangers as "conservatives" is that we keep over-estimating the mental capacity of our opposition by projecting ourselves onto them. I spend MUCH time on comment boards arguing with Minnesota Republicans who constantly believe that we can win statewide races here if only we find the Right Candidate to deliver the Right Message. Then, after each catastrophic landslide statewide election loss, MN Republicans rationalize their loss by claiming that we had the Wrong Candidate who somehow delivered the Wrong Message. I spend hours & hours trying to convince them that our only possibility here is to control the legislature by getting out the Republican vote in MN legislative swing districts, mostly to no avail. And so, because they keep living their illusion, we have absolutely nothing, election after election: no statewide offices AND no legislative majority.
Republicans here seem to conceive of Democrat voters as downtrodden, rational beings who somehow suffer under the weight of Democrat misinformation from which they cannot escape. MN Republicans see themselves as saviors, folks who will deliver the oppressed Democrat voters from their overlords, after which the Democrat voters will bask in the joy of our enlightenment. In this way, MN Republicans strike me as almost as crazy as the Democrats.
Your depiction of Joanne here is entertaining, but your surprise at her ignorance is disturbing. Democrat voters have had four years of straight in-your-face Biden-administration insanity to contemplate, and yet they were vehemently adamant in their determination to vote against Trump. They obviously live in some alternate universe that we can't even imagine. Their minds are utterly impervious to information, as you depicted in your article's lead image. It's not a joke. It's real.
Today I had a nice laugh at this article here in PJ Media, wherein senator John Kennedy pokes fun at AOC and her colleagues. "I think she's the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle", he jokes. "Our plan for dealing with her is called Operation Let Her Speak", he jests. Except it's not a joke. Democrat voters have elected & reelected AOC because they like what they're hearing. Yes, AOC is dumb enough to require instructions on a shampoo bottle, but her voters are even dumber, and there is no fixing stupid. Until we start seriously grasping that Democrat voters are quite literally a mindless herd, we are in danger of deluding ourselves into imagining we can get them to vote for us: https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/04/09/senator-kennedy-goes-absolutely-savage-on-aoc-n4938721
By the way, for jollies I just now did a search on "Operation Let Her Speak". Pretty much every "conservative" outlet has by now covered this very entertaining gem, but my search turned up zero coverage in the MSM. Zero. Hint, hint.
The left is the product of their upbringing. How many Democrats do you know who grew up in Republican households? The answer is probably none, and for a good reason. You can't intentionally trade truth for fantasy without realizing it. Just can't be done. So growing up in a Democrat household makes you accept the fantasy, and you will believe any lies you're told. It's environment, plain and simple. We have a friend, exceptionally smart, who grew up Democrat and hates Trump with a passion, even though Trump's policies have made him pretty affluent. He doesn't care for the truth, even when his bank statement tells him he believes a lie.
We're all human, and prone to errors. What's not being done in this conversation is separating policy from human frailty in executing that policy. The Democrats believe in the criminal acts they condone, otherwise ANTIFA and BLM would not exist. MAGA believe in Trump's policies, even though his execution may be less than perfect from time to time.
There's a world of difference there, and it will always be present as long as we're a free people. Part of the cost of a Constitutional Republic. You have the right to be stupid and make dumb decisions...
The Democrats have used BLM and Antifa to spread violence, then use the main stream media to spread misinformation of lies to the American people. The democrats have no message right now. They have people that should not be in congress like Jasmine Crockett and AOC as leaders of the party, which let's you know that the democratic party is going down the toilet. Great article, Diane.
The CBDC is a universe away from voter ID. Voter IDs make use of IDs that are already issued. Voter ID requires only that we produce IDs at voting places; they're also at least theoretically required when registering. I grasp the threat of overreach and the slippery slope, but this is ridiculous.
Universe means "no connection" and "never". Equating any and all IDs used under limited circumstances to CBDCs is just plain off the wall. We cannot return to an ID-free society; that era was over when humans started forming social groups larger than tribes. Extremism in the defense of virtue only reduces our credibility.
Yes they've spent billions on CBDC and yes they constitute an enormous threat that we must resist at all costs. But CBDCs have nothing to do with Trump demanding a ridiculously small effort at election integrity by requiring that voters display already-issued IDs specifically at polling places. By the way, lest you imagine me to be some foolish trusting soul, you may find my article on election absurdity interesting: Minnesota Elections are a Farce: Only a fool could imagine they're not rigged: https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/minnesota-elections-are-a-farce
Neither the time nor interest in building further argument here. Good luck building your case against voter ID and not developing data centers to compete with France’s pursuit of AI singularity and sticking with fiat currency where Joe Biden’s Democrat successor is ready to sleep 24/7 with his/her/they finger planted firmly on the currency printing press for the benefit of the party.
DIANE!! Tsk tsk. I was entertained by your article here, but ... can you have already forgotten your own assessments of our Democrat friends? May I remind you? https://dianelgruber.substack.com/p/scientific-discovery-liberals-are
Ha! I hate liars and I didn't appreciate that she lied to my niece.
To illustrate my other comment here: During the 2020 Minneapolis BLM riots I was providing some close (far-Left) relatives of mine with ongoing emails containing descriptions of the riots, with the idea that my relatives might be concerned about other relatives of ours who actually live in Minneapolis. I was simply relating the ongoing events as I saw them, both in person and with links to our local news (which was providing pretty good coverage), with no political comments whatsoever. But at one point I did convey the image of our Attorney General Keith Ellison holding up the Antifa Handbook (an image he posted OF HIMSELF on Twitter), probably along with a comment as to why nobody here was lifting a finger to stop the madness. This was too much for one of my relatives; she "snapped", saying that she could not tolerate such biased coverage. After that I removed her from my emails and lowered the frequency of my reports to my remaining audience.
I believe the Ellison photo was just the final straw for my Lefty relative; the thing that was stressing her out was my MERELY RELATING THE ONGOING RIOT, mostly using the ongoing local media coverage. IT WAS THE FACT OF THE RIOT ITSELF that she could not tolerate. It did not fit in with her "mostly peaceful protests" view of the world. She could not stand the dissonance. I firmly believe that if you were to ask her today, she would say that there were no riots. In her mind they simply don't exist and never existed. It would not matter if I showed her my own personal photos of the Minneapolis wreckage; for her this event never happened. So too with the transgender lunacy and porn in our school libraries, abortion being the killing of a human, Biden's open borders, men dominating women's sports, etc. For her, these things simply do not exist.
My attempts of conversation with other Leftists have been equally and totally futile. Their universal MO is to terminate the conversation with an ad hominem attack: either I am a fool, or my sources are not to be trusted. They do this with such regularity that they seem to all have been trained in some sort of boot camp. Their strategies are absolutely universal; I have found no exceptions. In this manner they ALWAYS avoid a conversation of the actual subject entirely. So how did they become so well-trained? I've realized that it's by watching their trusted leaders in their trusted media, all of whom do this very thing. For example there's now a very well-produced documentary called "The Fall Of Minneapolis" which plainly documents, mostly using video footage of police cameras and of our leaders in their own words, how George Floyd's death was attributed by the medical examiner to a heart attack most likely induced by drug overdose, and how our own police authorities lied under oath in order to convince the public that Floyd was murdered by an officer intentionally asphyxiating him. When our Attorney General Keith Ellison was asked about this film he lied again, declaring that he'd never seen it, implying that it's not worth seeing. So too with NPR saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not worth discussing. Leftists watch their leaders doing this every day, and they do the same.
I encounter this sort of thing constantly, literally EVERY TIME I converse with a Leftist. They construct their own world out of pure fantasy, made possible by excluding all evidence to the contrary. Even though we walk the same streets, Leftists truly live in an entirely different world.
Ha! I, too, have a Lib cousin who cut me off last year as the Biden campaign was caving. Send me that photo of Ellison and I might make a Living Behind Enemy Lines article out of your comment.
In Minnesota this photo is very famous, except among the many imbeciles who refuse to acknowledge its existence. Just search for "Ellison Antifa" (without quotes) and select the Images tab. Then for extra fun search "Jeremiah Ellison Antifa" to see that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. To the point of your article here, the Ellisons are among the top leaders brainwashing moronic Democrat voters that A) Antifa doesn't exist, and B) if it does exist, it is peaceful and C) remember to look over your shoulder because there's surely a White Supremacist right there with a pickaxe and a noose, just waiting to getcha. The frightening part is that the majority of Minnesotans believe the Ellisons rather than their own lying eyes. The is no proposition so idiotic that a typical Democrat cannot be made to believe it. We Republicans don't understand that when CNN runs a video of a reporter standing before a burning building claiming that it's a peaceful protest, we see the burning building, but Democrat NPCs hear only the "peaceful protest", and this is seared into their memories to the exclusion of all else. Remember, in the mind of my relative who cut me off, the riots never happened, and nothing we will ever say to her or show her will convince her otherwise. That is how essentially all political street violence in the USA can be perpetrated by the Left, probably under direct control of the Democrat Party, yet Biden can say that White Supremacists are the source of all our domestic terror, and his sheeple thereafter ignore all evidence to the contrary. That is why Dem NPCs are now literally sick with fear; they actually believe that the USA is now governed by a terrorist organization that is hunting them down. WATCH: https://www.amren.com/videos/2023/06/the-desperate-search-for-white-supremacists/
I would guess that Joanne is not a liar; rather she lives in a world of cognitive dissonance that you and I cannot imagine, as illustrated in your earlier article. We "conservatives" keep pointing this stuff out, but in our hearts we don't REALLY believe that we live amidst a herd of sheep constituting 50% of our population, folks who curiously resemble us and who are related to us, but who due to their brain organization and indoctrination might just as well be from another solar system. It is time we started really taking our own observations seriously, lest we become mentally ill ourselves. https://caliberties.org/are-liberals-really-more-prone-to-mental-health-issues-a-data-driven-analysis/
One of our greatest dangers as "conservatives" is that we keep over-estimating the mental capacity of our opposition by projecting ourselves onto them. I spend MUCH time on comment boards arguing with Minnesota Republicans who constantly believe that we can win statewide races here if only we find the Right Candidate to deliver the Right Message. Then, after each catastrophic landslide statewide election loss, MN Republicans rationalize their loss by claiming that we had the Wrong Candidate who somehow delivered the Wrong Message. I spend hours & hours trying to convince them that our only possibility here is to control the legislature by getting out the Republican vote in MN legislative swing districts, mostly to no avail. And so, because they keep living their illusion, we have absolutely nothing, election after election: no statewide offices AND no legislative majority.
Republicans here seem to conceive of Democrat voters as downtrodden, rational beings who somehow suffer under the weight of Democrat misinformation from which they cannot escape. MN Republicans see themselves as saviors, folks who will deliver the oppressed Democrat voters from their overlords, after which the Democrat voters will bask in the joy of our enlightenment. In this way, MN Republicans strike me as almost as crazy as the Democrats.
Your depiction of Joanne here is entertaining, but your surprise at her ignorance is disturbing. Democrat voters have had four years of straight in-your-face Biden-administration insanity to contemplate, and yet they were vehemently adamant in their determination to vote against Trump. They obviously live in some alternate universe that we can't even imagine. Their minds are utterly impervious to information, as you depicted in your article's lead image. It's not a joke. It's real.
Today I had a nice laugh at this article here in PJ Media, wherein senator John Kennedy pokes fun at AOC and her colleagues. "I think she's the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle", he jokes. "Our plan for dealing with her is called Operation Let Her Speak", he jests. Except it's not a joke. Democrat voters have elected & reelected AOC because they like what they're hearing. Yes, AOC is dumb enough to require instructions on a shampoo bottle, but her voters are even dumber, and there is no fixing stupid. Until we start seriously grasping that Democrat voters are quite literally a mindless herd, we are in danger of deluding ourselves into imagining we can get them to vote for us: https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/04/09/senator-kennedy-goes-absolutely-savage-on-aoc-n4938721
By the way, for jollies I just now did a search on "Operation Let Her Speak". Pretty much every "conservative" outlet has by now covered this very entertaining gem, but my search turned up zero coverage in the MSM. Zero. Hint, hint.
The left is the product of their upbringing. How many Democrats do you know who grew up in Republican households? The answer is probably none, and for a good reason. You can't intentionally trade truth for fantasy without realizing it. Just can't be done. So growing up in a Democrat household makes you accept the fantasy, and you will believe any lies you're told. It's environment, plain and simple. We have a friend, exceptionally smart, who grew up Democrat and hates Trump with a passion, even though Trump's policies have made him pretty affluent. He doesn't care for the truth, even when his bank statement tells him he believes a lie.
We're all human, and prone to errors. What's not being done in this conversation is separating policy from human frailty in executing that policy. The Democrats believe in the criminal acts they condone, otherwise ANTIFA and BLM would not exist. MAGA believe in Trump's policies, even though his execution may be less than perfect from time to time.
There's a world of difference there, and it will always be present as long as we're a free people. Part of the cost of a Constitutional Republic. You have the right to be stupid and make dumb decisions...
AND the public schools have been indoctrinating kids for three generations now.
The Democrats have used BLM and Antifa to spread violence, then use the main stream media to spread misinformation of lies to the American people. The democrats have no message right now. They have people that should not be in congress like Jasmine Crockett and AOC as leaders of the party, which let's you know that the democratic party is going down the toilet. Great article, Diane.
Thank you, Will. I do think Dems made a mistake would they sent their goons after Tesla owners. Most people who own Teslas are Liberals.
The CBDC is a universe away from voter ID. Voter IDs make use of IDs that are already issued. Voter ID requires only that we produce IDs at voting places; they're also at least theoretically required when registering. I grasp the threat of overreach and the slippery slope, but this is ridiculous.
Universe means "no connection" and "never". Equating any and all IDs used under limited circumstances to CBDCs is just plain off the wall. We cannot return to an ID-free society; that era was over when humans started forming social groups larger than tribes. Extremism in the defense of virtue only reduces our credibility.
Yes they've spent billions on CBDC and yes they constitute an enormous threat that we must resist at all costs. But CBDCs have nothing to do with Trump demanding a ridiculously small effort at election integrity by requiring that voters display already-issued IDs specifically at polling places. By the way, lest you imagine me to be some foolish trusting soul, you may find my article on election absurdity interesting: Minnesota Elections are a Farce: Only a fool could imagine they're not rigged: https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/minnesota-elections-are-a-farce
Versus what?
Neither the time nor interest in building further argument here. Good luck building your case against voter ID and not developing data centers to compete with France’s pursuit of AI singularity and sticking with fiat currency where Joe Biden’s Democrat successor is ready to sleep 24/7 with his/her/they finger planted firmly on the currency printing press for the benefit of the party.