From Behind Enemy Lines

Look, I know people don’t like the Left. I get it, especially now. But hear me out.

For the last 3 years or maybe a bit more, I’ve been watching and learning about how horrid the Left is. And for the most part, Chris and the rest of you have been correct. There are a lot of people over there doing Stupid Things, without winning the stupid prizes that should go along with it. We’ve had riots and protests and shootings, and it’s like … meh.

But the last week? I’m finally seeing some positive, guys. You probably won’t see it for another year or two, because this is going to move very slowly. But I am actually seeing the thinking people remaining on the Left…. well, thinking.

I’ve always been very supportive of everything the Iranian and other Muslim women have done in order to bring about freedom for themselves. That really is the only way they’re going to get it, even though Trump and Israel are helping a bit. They have to grasp it and do it for themselves… and unlike some liberal women, they do understand that. There are women out there today burning their hijabs who were born under this regime and have been fighting it literally their entire lives. All my friends know I’m supportive of all women, but the Iranians in particular.

And when a handful of them started reposting stuff about how awful Trump was, I questioned them. I pointed out that the facts hadn’t changed since last year. That the regime had murdered 20,000 of their own people *for protesting*. And several other inconvenient facts that have LOTS to back them up.

And they stopped. They actually listened.

They began to realize that they can simultaneously dislike Trump (go for it… I still don’t like *everything* he does) and be happy that our military stepped in and helped the Iranian people. They can be concerned about how much it’s going to cost us, as a country, to help the Iranians, and still be glad the Iranians are being given the chance to rule their own G-D selves.

Someone made an offhand comment that I must be rooting for Fetterman to become a Republican, and I said no! I don’t want Fetterman to come over to the Right, because he’s not a Conservative. He’s a Liberal, a Democrat, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The fact that he’s a reasonable, responsible, thinking person is a GOOD thing. I want him to continue being a Liberal and a Democrat, and perhaps be a voice for change and reason. And they … thought about it.

So there are cracks, my friends. People are starting to think. They’re starting to look at the fact that they’ve been supporting the dictators while wanting Trump out, and how wrong that is.

I was at my boyfriend’s place on Saturday when I heard about the Ayatollah. For a long time, I just kind of stood there, in shock.

One of my earliest political memories (though I wouldn’t have called it that at the time) was when I was 8 years old. We had a friend in the neighborhood who came from Iran. She was in the country with her mother and father, and was staying for a year. We were all getting ready to say goodbye in ’79, and she was going back to Iran with her parents. Then the Ayatollah took over. They didn’t go back. They mourned their home, but they refused to take their wife/mother/sister/female child back to a place that was bound to try and erase her/them.

That moment, when my friend came to tell me she wasn’t leaving, came streaming back to me when I heard he’d been killed. And then I saw the videos of women and families, Iranians who’d moved here and to other countries (Canada, Australia, Britain, etc) when the Shah was exiled and the radical muslims took over. They were cheering, dancing, sobbing with joy. Many of them were saying the words out loud: “Now I can go home! Soon I can go HOME!”

This is the definition of how asylum should work. These people came here because they were escaping an oppression that not one of us in this country can understand. They had to walk away from their beloved homeland because evil people took it over. And they’ve done their best to live a good life here. But upon learning that the oppression was gone? Their first statement was that they were ready to leave. Not because America is horrible or treated them badly, but because we’d helped them grow and become better people, and now their home is free again!

I cried. I cried because, if that long ago friend is still alive, I’ll bet she’s ready to go home. And I hope she’s able to, because what an incredible thing, to be able to go home.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Right about how the Left is now stumping for the Ayatollah. Are there some people saying that? Yeah, but that’s always going to happen. What’s filling my feed, my very  much Left tinted feed, are news reports about the celebrations, the joy, the tearing off of the hijabs, the bonfires burning effigies of the Ayatollah and his torture gang. There’s video of Iranians, in Iran and in other parts of the world, dancing and singing, blessing President Trump, thanking the United States and Israel for bringing about their freedom. From within the Middle East, the former Shah’s son (I believe that’s correct, but please don’t quote me on this) is wanting to come home as well. He’s telling his people, the people of Iran, that the US and Israel did the easy part, but now their version of “We the People” must stand up and root out the aggressors, the torturers. That the police must begin to do their jobs again, correctly and not as they were under the Ayatollah. That Iran has gotten their hand up, but they  must not accept hand outs, but need to stand on their own two feet and fight this from within. Because that is the ONLY way for them to win as a nation.

The public news media is presenting this as a win. Their only negative talking point was about the girls’ school in Tehran that exploded… and that’s since been shown to be a mistake of Iran, not the US or Israel. It’s difficult to paint this kind of thing as a loss for the United States. As with Maduro, Trump was in and out before most people had a clue as to what was going on. The win was done before we’d all had our morning coffee. You can complain all you like, but he’s good at this.

A pundit this morning said it right. Trump just proved that you can go in, “get ‘er done”, and get out of dodge without starting a ground war. And you can do it repeatedly. The ground wars, the forever wars? They were a choice, not a necessity, a choice made by shitty politicians who didn’t do their job. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you for having the balls to take it to Iran and make Khomeini pay. Thank you for freeing the women and children from degradation and oppression.

I won’t wish ill on anyone, especially the dead. That’s not my way, and I think it’s tasteless. But I will say that I hope, genuinely, that the Ayatollah Khomeini met his maker, and his maker is currently taking him to task for everything he did. In detail.

JLR posted this:

Trans Democrat Congressman Says Pornography Is ‘Educational’ for Children
https://gellerreport.com/2026/02/trans-democrat-congressman-says-pornography-is-educational-for-children.html/
The Minnesota State Legislature is in session and is considering a bill to age-restrict access to pornography. State Rep. Leigh Finke, a transgender Democrat, argued in committee that restricting access to pornography would limit kids’ ability to get educated about gender issues…Finke introduced a bill that will remove the exclusion of pedophiles from the protected class of “sexual orientation”, making it illegal to discriminate against child rapists.
video – 00:00:42 – https://twitter.com/i/status/2024698759184081347

The Dem says, and I quote: “Prurient interest could be, for many people, the very existence of transgender kids.”

So leaving aside the idiocy of the entire statement in that video, I want to focus for a moment on a single word: prurient. It’s important. Words are important. This one is more important than most, BECAUSE it came out of THIS Dem’s mouth.

Prurient: having or encouraging an excessive or inappropriate interest in sexual matters, especially the sexual activities and intimate affairs of others. (via Google and Oxford Language Dictionary)

I have listened to the video many times now. It’s been on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter (where, I believe, it originated), and other social media. The word “prurient” caught my attention, because of its meaning. It has a very specific meaning, as you can see from the definition above. There is no usage of this word where prurient doesn’t mean something excessive or inappropriate.

There are two ways to take the above congress critter’s statement. First, and the one that knee jerked in my brain, is that trans (and queer, but that’s for later) kids should be allowed to show excessive or inappropriate sexual interest, because it’s important to their person. You can imagine I was a bit upset with that. It’s a terrible thought, that any child should be allowed to and be encouraged to show excessive and/or inappropriate sexual interests. The second way, which later occurred to me, is that it is the adults who have the prurient interest, simply because trans kids exist. This is just about as bad, and my head immediately went to the kind of perverts who groom little girls (or in this case perhaps, little boys forced or coerced or brainwashed into dressing like girls) to “enjoy” sexual attentions.

There is no way I can read or hear the congress critter’s statements (in or out of context, I might add) where these two scenarios don’t come to the front. The congress critter is literally saying one or possibly both of the above things. In public. Demanding it be allowed.

Then the kicker is thrown in. Queer kids (and at least for me, orientation – gay, straight, bi, pan – is different from how one feels in the body one is born in) aren’t getting sexual education in schools that is dedicated to them. There’s no sex ed for queer kids. Oh no!

As a person who is, in today’s parlance, considered queer (I use the term pansexual myself, and as a young adult, I used bisexual)… I can tell you that I did just fine without “queer faced” sex education.

I had this discussion in a conservative group on Facebook the other day. Sex education is not there to teach you how to have fun. Kids are going to do that all on their own, and other than raising them with good morals, there’s not much we can do to stop it. We can only teach them to respect their bodies and the bodies of others, and explain that intercourse can lead to STDs (including babies, which linger for a minimum of 20 to 25 years, no matter what medication you take). THAT is what sex ed should be covering in school. If you put a penis into a vagina, here’s what could happen, and here’s what is likely to happen. If you put either of those things in other places, your mileage may vary, but you’re not likely to get pregnant, and most of the diseases that can be passed along are a lot more minor and relatively treatable. Please don’t have sex, but if you’re going to, please use barriers and whatever meds you have legal and moral access to.

I don’t object to teaching kids about birth control. I’ve seen no studies that indicate it leads to more sex among teens, and a LOT of studies that indicate it stops teen pregnancy or at least slows it down a lot. I believe it should be fully taught, however, and should include such things as the gory details of giving birth. I’ve found, in my wealth of personal experience, that seeing someone give birth pretty much kills prurient interest of teens wanting to have unprotected sex. But that’s my opinion, and it’s probably best kept in the home. But yes, I think schools can and should be permitted to explain what happens to bodies as children mature from elementary to middle to high school students. It can be frightening, and not every parent is aware enough or chill enough to teach their kids. Allow an opt out for parents who either already teach that stuff and don’t feel their kids need another class in it, or who object on religious grounds (I can think it’s stupid and still support their right to do so).

In any case, what I was trying to get to was that when I was in school I had sex ed. We had girls and boys separate, which was supposed to make us more comfortable talking. It didn’t, but they tried. It really requires a special kind of teacher. Sex ed shouldn’t be taught by anyone who uses sarcasm as their main form of communication, or who will shut doors that kids open. If a kid asks a question, they deserve an answer… because if they don’t get it from a trained instructor, they’ll either go try it on their own (almost always a bad idea) or they’ll turn to friends (usually a bad idea) or the internet (NEVER a good idea). I asked questions that were important to me, and I got shot down. It left me traumatized, and yes, I went out and learned things on my own.

Just as an explainer, I was asking in a very couched way about what happens when a boy ejaculates on/over your privates, instead of in them. That was what my rapist did to me, and I was absolutely stark terrified I would get pregnant. The teacher snorted, and said you could only get pregnant if he came inside… which I later found out was not true. His merely being inside me could have released enough sperm to get me pregnant. Had I received that knowledge at the time, I might have sought out help from a hospital or the police, and my life might have been very different. Instead, I went home and took the 20th hot shower, scoured myself until I bled, and cried in my bedroom.

Regardless of all that, I knew I was “different” from the other kids. For a long time I thought I was gay. I liked to look at girls. Not “peeping in the locker room” style, because that would have been inappropriate and gross, but I did find my dad’s dirty magazines and spent countless hours looking through them. And reading (there really are a surprising number of decent articles in those early Playboy magazines). But here’s the thing… I liked boys, too. A lot. And liking boys was a lot easier. For a long time, I had very prurient relationships with first boys my age, and then with older men (who had no idea of my age, btw). But I always liked girls… and eventually had a few experiences, and that opened a number of doors.

Why am I talking about this? Because no matter what they taught or didn’t teach in sex ed, I figured out my orientation all on my own. Sex ed should fit everyone, and include the important things (how not to get pregnant, what happens to bodies as they mature, etc etc), which have nothing to do with who you might be interested in. My interest in girls and boys alike didn’t change the fact that a penis in a vagina could equal an infant. And it’s those basic facts that should be covered in sex ed. And that’s all that should be covered in sex ed.

Older teens and young adults are going to fall in love with who they fall in love with, and there’s no force in nature that can stop it. It’s not a lesson that a teacher or a classroom can convey, nor should we even try. Who you fall in love with and decide to have a relationship with is up to you. The only thing you need to know, going into it, is to be certain everyone is consenting, that ages are similar enough (at least until adulthood), and to be safe in your explorations. None of that is just for straight kids or just for gay kids or whatever. Doesn’t matter if you’re queer, trans, straight as a board.

What I told my kids, as they went out to college and to interact with the world:

Don’t add to the population. Don’t subtract from the population. Don’t do illegal stuff, and if you do, don’t get caught. If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly and you’ll do fine.

I posted this 8 years ago. Deserves being posted again. I may not agree with the current reasons for protests happening, but I absolutely support your right to peaceably assemble, and while it isn’t a “guaranteed in the Constitution” right, your right to protest.

But I also agree that leaving school during school hours is not cool. Having stuff organized by teachers is beyond not cool. When we had to sign 8 forms just to let our kids go to the local library, no teacher should be able to just take kids out of the classroom and off campus without parental consent and all those same forms used for any other outing. There *cannot* be “rules for thee but not for me.”

And to finish… protests are dangerous. Even peaceable ones. A protest can quickly turn into a mob, and mobs are not people, mobs are a monster all on their own, and they are easily moved and abused by people outside the mob. I have both watched that happen from outside, and been trapped inside a mob and experienced it. Before you go to protest (at any age!!), be sure that you know the realities of what protesting can and does mean.

You could get hurt. You could get arrested. You could get shot with “less than lethal” things like rubber bullets, tasers, chemicals, and water. You could get expelled, if you’re in school, or fired if you’re working. You could get caught up in things you do NOT agree with, a lot more easily than you can imagine, even if you agree with the rest of the protest. You could get yelled at, spit on, and even assaulted.

All but the assault (by a non-LEO) are perfectly legal, by the way. If you’re ordered by LEOs to move, and you don’t, they can and will use “less than lethal” weapons on you. Those “less than lethal” things can cause REAL damage, and they can even cause death sometimes. Assaults during a protest (or worse, during a riot and/or mob situation) are very difficult to prove in court.

All of this is offered from NEITHER political side. It doesn’t matter to me what side you’re on; these are the realities of standing up for your rights, real or perceived. Freedom is not free, and it is NOT SAFE. Being free has never been safe. The fact that we are safer in our country than people in most (if not all) other countries is saying something… but it doesn’t mean “we are safe.” SAFER is not SAFE. Standing up for your rights, again perceived or real, is dangerous, and always will be.

I posted the above to Facebook today, because it came up in my memories. I don’t recall the reason I posted it, but I do remember telling my kids about it. At the time, they were 12 or 13, so right at the rebellious “I’m a real teen” stage. I thought it was horrible at the time, but there are days I miss that… At least I was able to do something about it when they were wrong. Today, I have to grit my teeth and let them make their mistakes. Oy. Anyhow…

The image was what was posted 8 years ago, and the text I just posted today. Though I have no comments yet, I’m sure I’ll get a couple, at least, and maybe ferret out a couple more idiots from my friends’ list. I expect that more than one person will claim to not understand how I can support someone without supporting their cause. That’s the usual response to things like this. My friends, at least, don’t seem to get the idea of “hate the sin, love the sinner” (for lack of a better phrase).

One way I use to describe it a lot, lately, is that here in America, we absolutely have the right to be an idiot, to be wrong, and to keep talking long after we should have (morally speaking) shut our traps. That is our RIGHT. Doesn’t mean it *is* right (as in correct).

But yes, I will absolutely go and protect people I love who feel the need to peaceably demonstrate, even if I disagree with what they’re demonstrating about. Why? Because this is America, and PEACEABLE demonstration is allowed. If they stop being peaceable, I will not support them, and they all know that. But if they’re just holding a sign on the sidewalk and talking to people? Absolutely I will. And if they get arrested while demonstrating peaceably, I’ll record it, and I’ll testify on their behalf later. Because it’s the right thing to do. What I won’t do is interfere with LEOs, because even if I think they’re wrong, that’s how riots and mobs start. I’ll ask questions politely, stay out of the way, and take video. The rest can get argued at the courthouse. Peaceably.

So I occasionally watch YouTube videos, and sometimes Facebook reels. I like TikTok. I don’t spend a LOT of time watching them, but once in a while it’s nice to just watch some short clips and call it a night. TikTok in particular has become highly amusing to me, since I managed to FINALLY get it to send me conservative humor (see my post from Feb. 5).

See, my feed is blue. It’s REALLY blue. Some of this is because I still read/listen to/watch Left leaning stuff because I report on it to you guys. Frankly, most of it is because I’m poly, pagan, kinky, and pansexual. There’s this assumption that if you’re any ONE of those, you must be Liberal. To be all four? The algorithm thinks I’m so deep Left it’s impossible to think. So it sends me Leftist crap constantly.

It’s not just one place. I get it in my news, because I actively seek out Left news for education’s sake. I get it in my Facebook because I get it in my news, and because some of my friends and acquaintances are Left. I get it in YouTube because it’s a Leftist hell hole. I get it in TikTok because that seems to be the initial basic setting, and you have to work to get out of it.

The main problem I have is that it isn’t just that “they” think I should be Left; it’s that certain facts about my person, physical things, seem to doom me to be “mistaken” for Left when I am not. As an example, we’ve all mentioned septum ring theory: the idea that if a person has a septum ring, they’re almost invariably likely to be Leftist. The same thing with blue hair. If you have both, you’re definitely a Leftist.

I don’t understand how hair color dictates politics. I’m offended by it. I have very far Right friends with septum rings and green hair. No one on our side cares. Any time someone with wildly colored hair or big tattoos or facial piercings “comes out” as Republican or Right leaning, the Left goes into complete melt down mode. I cannot even begin to tell you the number of times I was told that I couldn’t possibly exist on the Right because y’all would hate me and kick me out for being pan, poly, pagan, or kinky. Instead, I found there’s a vibrant LGB community here on the Right. A lot of poly people are conservative. Pagans are all over the damn place. Kinky is… yeah, well anyhow. LOL… You get what I’m saying. The Right doesn’t care.

The Left wraps up their politics in their entire belief system, their personality, and their reality. Therein lies the biggest problem, really. It’s why you can’t talk logic with a lot of leftists. If you start to dig into any aspect of what they believe, they immediately take it as a personal attack. They believe, 110%, that you are attacking them, the person. They cannot comprehend the concept that one can attack the ideal or the fact (or lack thereof) and not be the least bit upset about the person behind it.

The amount of time it takes to dismantle even one small part of the leftist’s worldview enough to show them that it’s faulty causes them to break. I don’t mean that figuratively, for most of them, either. It may seem stupid to you, but I want you to think about how you’d feel if you found incontrovertible truth, actual facts and photographs, proving Trump diddled little girls. You’d be shocked to your core, because the man you’ve known and loved doesn’t seem anything like that. It would mess with your world view and rock your core, because we’ve just KNOWN he’s not the bad person the Left paints him as. That’s how they feel, that depth of despair, every single time you pick at a bit of the Left’s beliefs. If you do manage to break it down into small enough pieces that they can understand it, and they accept it, it doesn’t break down the other parts of their worldview, because to do so would cause them irreparable harm.

When I watch videos of people on the Left being questioned by good speakers (Charlie, for instance, but also many others who are new journalist types), I see the answers get more and more vague as they go along. If you push too hard, they will actually change the conversation entirely, sometimes attacking in a random direction, just to make the questioning stop.

I don’t believe most of them do this out of spite. I believe it’s the response to the trauma they’re living. Having known people who’ve survived serious trauma, it’s a mental tactic most victims don’t even realize they’re doing. I see people on the Left acting much like the victims of domestic abuse and sexual abuse that I’ve known. They’ve been lied to for so long, and it’s just… it’s a lot more comfortable and less painful if you just acquiesce. Standing your ground hurts. And frankly, the human brain is not meant to endure long-standing pain. We’re built to avoid it.

Yes, there are agitators out there. We all know it. Sometimes we can pick them out, and other times, we have to wait for law enforcement to do it at a later date using videos and written statements from witnesses. There only need to be a tiny number of agitators, though. Two or three seeded through a large crowd can turn it into that mob in seconds. They create a flashpoint.

But “most people” are just that… they’re average, they’re the bulk of the people out there. When you press them, they cannot articulate why they’re protesting, or give you different methods to fix the problem. They just chant their slogans. It’s easier than losing their friends, family, and community. Or jobs. I know; I’ve been there. The big difference is, I’m an abuse survivor, and so I recognized (eventually) what was happening to me and how I was responding. I saw it was unhealthy, and I got out. Most people don’t have that experience (nor would I wish it on them). This is just “normal” to them. And since “everyone” is saying the same thing, it must be true.

And that takes me back to that statement I’ve made several times: Not every news station can be lying to me, all at the same time. From a logical standpoint, that is simply absurd. Except we know it isn’t. We know that they ARE lying to us, all of them. It’s tough.

I don’t have the answers. I wish I did. The only way to fix this stuff is to have people on the Left have an epiphany. That only comes when they’re challenged, and they’re avoiding those challenges because it’s hard. So they have no reason and no impetus to change.

There are too many stupid things going on in this country right now. Finding one of them to write about is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Way too easy, if you ask me. And it’s a shame.

The one that’s sticking out in my mind right now is the person who decided to pick up a flash-bang that was thrown at them, known right now as Luna von Woke. According to a few sources, the video is fake, but it certainly passed my muster. Others have said the video is real, but the GoFundMe for help to get prosthetics is fake (MEAWW). Regardless, it isn’t the first time someone on the Left has picked up a flash bang, so I’m going to assume this is real.

Now, picking it up at all was stupid, and I could leave it at that. If someone tosses a flash-bang my way, I’m going THATAWAY… any way that’s away from where it is, quick as I can. While they don’t explode in the same way a grenade explodes, they do go boom.

This woman, in the video, looks at the flash bang, then goes running with it in her hand. She doesn’t throw it back. She doesn’t drop it. She doesn’t toss it in a safe direction. She just holds it in her hand until it goes bang. At that point, she hits the deck, writhing and screaming as one would assume would happen when one’s fingers went in two different directions at high speed. Frankly, the fact that it WAS a flash bang might have saved the rest of her hand, as the intense heat of the magnesium probably cauterized the wounds. Still, I’m sure it hurt.

I’m finding it difficult to scavenge up any real sympathy for Ms von Woke. Her ability to think critically isn’t likely to get better, so while I feel bad when anyone gets hurt, that’s about the extent of it. The ouch she’s feeling isn’t likely to teach her not to do it again.

This is literally what happens when we don’t let our children play outside, burn themselves in controlled ways on “warm but not terminally hot” stoves, and use knives early in life. They don’t learn that actions have consequences. It’s just… well, stupid.

And as the title suggests, you can’t cure this kind of stupid. Anyone who actually has the power to think this stuff through is already in the process of doing so. They’re already not going to pick up an exploding thing and run with it, anymore than they’re going to run with scissors or not pay their mortgage. They know there are consequences.

The scary part is, there are more and more people every year who simply do not “get” why bad things happen to them. They don’t know why they get sick (after not washing dishes appropriately), don’t know why people don’t want to be around them (after not showering for days on end and/or not washing their clothing effectively), don’t understand why they aren’t getting hired for jobs (when they show up with facial tattoos and piercings, or show up late and act in a disrespectful manner). They truly seem to expect things to just be handed to them on a silver platter. When you try to help them understand, they get barely into it and give up. They just don’t care. They KNOW that if they just keep doing what they’re doing, someone will take care of them. They know that because it’s what has always happened. And they’re right.

When I was on the dole, it was embarrassing.  I was ashamed, and I hated it, but I did it because I needed to feed my kid and that was more important than my pride. No one “made me” feel that way… it was a natural reaction to being on welfare and having to get food at the food bank. Today, we seem to be expected to worry about how a parent is going to feel while getting food for their kid at a food bank or from SNAP. Frankly, I don’t really care. I don’t want them insulted, of course, because there’s no reason to do so and it’s just morally wrong. But I see no reason to go out of my way to make it less embarrassing. Why? Because that feeling of shame was highly motivating. I wanted to get a job (or at one point, a BETTER job) so that I didn’t have to do the embarrassing thing anymore. And I did.

I wasn’t harmed by being ashamed. My child and I had food. We had shelter. We had heat, and water. Our needs were adequately met, and then some. After I got off the dole, a number of years later, I went back and helped out. Even today, some 30 years past that horrible time, I still do volunteer work every year. Why? Because people helped me, and so I help others. Even in the face of the disgraceful unrepentant asses that come thru the door today. There might be one “me” in the mix, and that’s enough to motivate me to keep helping.

But I’m not interested in making it easier. Easier leads to unemployed people taking to the street to protest FOR fascism, rapists, and criminals. I don’t want it to be easier. I want it to be a slap in the face, to wake people up and get them moving.

If we can end the various waste caused by the people who are terminally stupid (be those people in the citizenry or the government), maybe we can start some programs that actually help people who are truly needy to get into a better place. When I read Hillbilly Elegy, I felt inspired. If our VP can lift himself up through hard work and determination, then so can anyone else. It ain’t easy. If it’s easy, you’re doing it wrong.

Yeah, I know, we’re all tired of hearing it. But I want to throw out my two cents, as someone who was only recently liberated from the Left.

When I try to evaluate situations that are politicized (and this situation definitely has been), I attempt to re-set the incident in a non-politicized setting and see if I’m still angry/upset/whatever. So let’s look at this entire situation between ICE and Ms. Good from another angle.

Let’s pretend this was not ICE. Let’s pretend this was a random person walking on the roadway (not illegal, but some might consider it stupid). He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have a method of defending himself. Another person approaches Ms. Good at her car window and orders her out of the vehicle. She doesn’t comply (whether that’s legal when ordered by ICE or not doesn’t matter for this scenario). Instead, she backs up to leave, inadvertently aims her car at the random person walking, and then shifts into drive and hits the gas.

The end result is similar: the person walking or standing is hit. The difference is that, being unarmed, the person who was hit is actually damaged, and possibly killed. How do we know this? Well, cars weigh a lot, and when you gun an engine that way, you move fast (especially when shooting forward off an ice patch as Ms. Good was doing). Even at slow speeds, a car or van can do a ton of damage to a human body, and bumpers are placed right where kneecaps are.

In my pretend scenario, Ms. Good’s intent would only come into play for one reason: to determine the length and breadth of her punishment. The fact that she would be punished (whether it be for manslaughter, murder, or intended murder) does not change. Only the severity of it. There is no excuse on the book that allows someone in a vehicle to hit someone not in a vehicle.

Period.

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So to my understanding, Maduro stole more than one election. There’s information online about elections in 2018 and earlier, and then 2020, and again in 2024. This most recent one was won by the opposition leader, supported by Maria Machado (who couldn’t run, don’t know why, didn’t bother looking it up). Maduro ignored the win and claimed the presidency anyhow.

Sometime in Trump 1.0, we put a $15mil target on Maduro’s head. Biden’s people upped that to $25mil. Both sides of the aisle wanted this guy gone, very obviously. And why shouldn’t they? Venezuela has good oil reserves, and we’re set up to refine them. They have stuff we want, and we have stuff they need. Seems like a good connection. We also want to stop cocaine from coming to America from Venezuela, and since it seems that Maduro and his cronies were in on that, it just feels like a win all over.

Having the crazy Left standing up and protesting the capture (not murder, not assassination, not maiming, but *capture*) of a wanted fugitive that has a price on his head put there by both a Republican AND a Democratic President is just… bizarre. I don’t understand it at all. As several people have pointed out, the Left has been crying “no kings” for some time now, but when we removed an honest to goodness dictator, they get their panties in a wad.

Of course, the anger is all because “orange man bad.” It’s TDS run amok. I hate saying that, but it’s true. Most people have no idea what they’re talking about. And frankly, I’m not the idiot whisperer. I am not interested in educating most of the people who are Left of me. It’s exhausting even to talk to them. I have to prove every point and they get to “feel” I’m wrong. There’s no point.

All of this brings me to talking about socialism. I originally hail from Canada, having moved to the States some 25 years ago. I am American now. I have assimilated (with the possible exception of my continuing love of Tim Horton’s coffee and my occasional mispronunciation of “roof” lol). I now teach American history to people at living history museums. I love my chosen country, and I will defend her to my last breath.

Having grown up in Canada, however, I can tell you that socialism is not a good thing. Canada isn’t entirely socialist, but it’s very democratic (mob rule) and that’s not far from socialism on the political spectrum. The health care system is definitely socialist, and it’s dismal. The insurance is much less complex than America’s, certainly, but the CARE is horrendous. Here, insurance is a shit maze, but the care you get is phenomenal. I’ll pick door #2 every time, thank you.

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I don’t know who Elsa Kurt is, but this showed up yesterday afternoon on my feed, and I agree with it. It speaks better words than I can.

Chris will tell you that, during Trump 1.0 when I was suffering from TDS, I would often talk about the “mean tweets.” At the time, I was befuddled, and I couldn’t explain why they bothered me so much. I think perhaps now I have a better idea of how to put it into words. Elsa here has helped.

I can see and approve of, and indeed love, the THINGS that President Trump is doing while simultaneously decry some (but not all) of the things he says and/or tweets. I see all the good he’s done for our country, and I am very supportive of that. I see our economy recovering, spending going down, tariffs doing what they ought to, criminals being ousted from the country, and a general upswing in mood. But I also see his words. And they are troubling to me.

At one time, I lived in my parents’ home and in a very abusive situation. My mother only ever hit me once. At the time, I was a foul mouthed teen and I probably deserved discipline (though not a backhand with her ginormous wedding rings on). Her abuse was more sinister, though. It was mental. She was (and is, I suppose) an alcoholic who was undiagnosed and who refused to admit it. She drank frequently, and acted poorly when drunk. She was mean in general, but when drinking became a nightmare. I would be severely punished for such offenses as putting forks in the dishwasher wrong, having the wrong look on my face at a given moment, or asking for physical attention (hugs, etc.). Anything other than an “A” grade was also to be punished. Punishments ranged from being sent to my room, to berating and mocking me, humiliating me, and grounding me for months at a time. It was the digs, though, the mental and verbal digs that just kept coming, that destroyed me.

There was a time when I was 15 or so, when I finally broke and I went to the ER local to me, and begged them to lock me up on a 72 hour hold. After hours of talking to a therapist and various doctors, they basically told me I was fine, it was my mother who was sick. I could not get it through their heads that it didn’t matter if she was the sick one, _I_ was the one who had to change, because she wasn’t going to. That wasn’t just an assumption on my part, either. She’d told me that, to my face. I ended up medicated, because dulling my senses was the only way to get through my time living with her. I took up drinking and drugging, and inappropriate sex, because I needed to get love from somewhere.

Why are you talking about all this, you ask? Because when Trump does one thing and then says another, it shoves me right back into my days with my mother. It’s not so much of a match that I feel gut punched, but the discomfort is there. My mother could put on a dazzling display of “loving parenthood” when anyone else was around. Most people thought I was damn lucky to have such an attentive, wonderful mother in my life. They had no idea of the personal hell I lived through, every single day. When I see someone whose words and actions are at a mismatch, it is my natural reaction to look twice and thrice at every word and action they have made and are making.

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I started writing for this blog about a year before I switched to thinking of myself as conservative. Or rather, for Miguel’s blog. I stuck to things I knew well, like prepping and cooking. I rarely touched on political things, because I knew people wouldn’t agree, so what was the point? And then Chris asked me to write “From Behind Enemy Lines.”

At first, I found it offensive. I didn’t think HE meant it to be offensive, but it bothered me. A lot. I was standing “over there” and “over there” was “behind enemy lines” and therefore in his mind I must be “enemy.” That’s the logic that I followed. Since I have known Chris for over 25 years at this point, I know he doesn’t think of me as an enemy (and didn’t when I was on the Left, either), so I knew I must have misunderstood something. Still, it was a burr under my saddle, and it irritated me. I really didn’t want to be writing stuff that I knew no one was going to like.

I used the pseudonym “Hagar” because I was absolutely terrified to out myself in public. No matter how you play the game, this blog is public. I didn’t want anyone on the Left to think I was conservative, and I didn’t really want to be dragged through the mud every time I posted. So “I” didn’t post, Hagar did. As with reenacting, putting on a new face allowed me to write and communicate more effectively. Hagar might get blasted, but Ally was safely tucked away where no one knew her or how to get to her.

Over time, I came to understand that none of you were attacking ME. Some of you might have attacked my positions over the years, but no one attacked ME. And so when we made the big switch to this blog, I used my real name. I opened the door a crack.

As I wrote things for this blog, I had to do research. That’s just the type of person I am. Even though I could just have told everyone “what they were thinking over on the Left,” I didn’t consider that enough. I’ve always been one to be thorough in my writing. So I went down the rabbit hole. I started finding out just how much of what I was told on a daily basis was lies. I had to go look stuff up on a constant basis, because I wanted to prove my stance. I’d get to the research, to the raw numbers, and realize I was wrong. I’ve tried very hard to be open and honest when I’ve been wrong, both on the blog and in my real life.

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