General

Communism, an idea so good it has to use force to keep its citizens in.

The fact is that Communism requires that all dissenting voices be silenced. They are silenced with violence. People are sent to re-education camps, they are disappeared in the dead of the night, and they are grabbed off the streets, never to be seen again. All with the authority and violence of the government.

The image of people being disappeared is what the anti-American agitators are using when they say that “masked men are kidnapping people off of the street.” It invokes images of communist countries doing just that.

The difference is that these people are not being disappeared. They are being arrested. They get lawyers, or they had lawyers.

When ICE agents detain a criminal illegal alien outside a courtroom, that criminal has had due process.

Are these arrests violent? Only if the person being arrested makes them that way.

Soft Violence

When the Tea Party came into existence, I wanted to fly the Gadsden flag. I did not for fear of how it might affect my wife and children. I flew an American Flag instead and still worried.

People were silenced by fear of reprisals. This was the time of cancel culture from the left.

Voice a double-bad-think opinion, and you were canceled. Voice a bad-think opinion, and you might only be warned.

You were made to feel alone, but for a few lonely voices in the dark. You were told by every talking head that you were guilty of bad-think and would be punished if found out.

This is also the screaming and in your face, just shy of physical assault.

Physical Violence

This is where you start to see the laying on of hands. Physical beatings, shoving, and punching. Actual battery.

In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous book The Gulag Archipelago, he talks about being stuffed into a cattle car. The violence was being dealt out not only by the guards but also by fellow prisoners.

But they weren’t “fellows” in the classic sense. Most of the prisoners were regular people stuffed in the pipeline leading to the Gulag. These were criminals, and they colluded with the guards for privileges and in exchange kept the rest of the prisoners cowed.

We see that in the criminal attacks in Seattle. Roaming gangs of violent thugs impose their beliefs with truncheons and bats. And if those don’t work, even more.

In Cabaret, the maître d` of the Kit Kat Klub kicked some Brownshirts out of the club. The cowards were not willing to do anything about it at the time. Instead, they waited until the maître d` had left the club, then beat the shit out of him.

They sent the message, “Oppose us, and bad things will happen to you.”

We see this type of thuggish behavior in the cities. We see it when conservatives set up tables to have a conversation and are driven off campus by gangs of feral louts.

And the state defends these thugs. Regular folk who stand up for themselves and others are punished by the state. Look at how the authorities treated prayer groups defending themselves vs. the antifa lice that attacked them. Look at the violence against federal buildings by antifa and then what happened when grandma walked through the Capitol.

This violence is vastly asymmetric, and it is intended to be. At every step of the process, you are told to back down. You are told that you have to restrain yourself. And if you don’t? Ask Kyle what happens.

Murder

Ask Lincoln how Democrats behave when they lose. Ask JFK, killed by a communist. Ask almost any victim of political violence in the last century how Democrats behave.

Unfortunately, you can’t. Most of those people were murdered.

The goal of the left is to create an event to prove the right is the more violent.

The problem is, we are. When we react, we do it with force and with a will to get things done.

Again, ask Kyle. When it was time, he pulled the trigger, and cos-playing degenerates died. That boy showed remarkable trigger discipline.

And this is not new.

In 1977, JoAnne Deborah Byron, AKA Assata Olugbala Shakur, was convicted of murdering a police officer.

This happy little communist worm was a member of the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army and other groups. She was a murderer, a terrorist, and a bank robber. After she was convicted, she was sentenced to life + 26-33 years.

Of course the standard whining leftists blamed it all on racism.

She escaped, stayed on the lam for a while before moving to Cuba to live the life of a privileged Communist.

On September 26th, 2025, she became a good communist. Cuba has reported she died of health complications.

I’m still working on how to write a persuasive essay to open minds that would otherwise be closed.

So you get a Charlie clip.

So I ran into this dude, Kaizen, a few days before Charlie was assassinated. I think he speaks a lot of truth. I wanted to share it with you guys, see what you think of him. This is today’s video:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17ap4aXUbb/

And this is his substack, for those who use it:

Thatskaizen.substack.com

Enjoy…

Charlie made Turning Point USA, and I love it. It flows off the tongue, and it speaks to so many people. But it is religious, and not all of us are. Nor should we be! We are not a hegemony, and I don’t want us to be. It’s antithetical to the founding documents of our country.

So I suggest… “Perspective Forge.” It holds the idea Charlie had, when he asked, “change my mind,” but it also brings to mind the birth of things. A forge is where metal is strengthened, shaped, molded, and made better, and perhaps we can make a place where our country and/or our people can forge their own opinions, shaped and made better and stronger by questioning themselves and others in polite debate.

I am not the person to run this. I have so little time… But if someone wants to work with me, I can throw ideas at your wall. Like this:

A secular version of Turning Point USA, accepting everyone, leaving the choice of religion (or lack thereof) to the members. “Turning Point USA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk. The organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government. (Union University)” Therefore, Perspective Forge’s mission would be to educate and organize people and enable them to debate while promoting the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.

And when I go and look up those three things (freedom, free market, and limited government), I run into some very interesting things. They are considered the hallmark of “classical liberalism.” Our Founding Fathers considered a free market to be one of the main ways to maintain freedom from tyranny (though they differed in how they get there). Safeguarding the right to acquire and own property was considered vitally important, as it shielded individuals from government overreach. James Madison called for the protection of one’s “faculties” (skills, talents, and abilities), which give rise to property rights, “the first object of government.” Whew. What that boils down to is that Madison thought that the government’s main purpose, first purpose, was to protect the skills and abilities of its constituents, so that they could excel in whatever “faculty” they liked. When government does that, he feels it automatically protects We The People from a rogue or tyrannical government. I’m not sure I totally understand that one, but the idea is interesting.

I would love to see this exist. I would love to participate in it. If nothing else, perhaps on Charlie’s Day (Wednesdays), I will ask everyone to “challenge my view” (rather than change my mind). I’ll pick a topic, and state my viewpoint on it, and you can join in the debate. Feel free to toss topics my way, because I’m not always great at thinking of good ones.

I know what I want to do, I am just not able to do it justice currently.

What is Charlie’s Voice?

This is taking up Charlie’s bloody microphone, not in hate, but in love and compassion.

It is being willing to listen to people ask questions and addressing them honestly with the truth and compassion. It is being willing to stand up for what is right but without acting out.

As one person put it, WWCD, What Would Charlie Do?

Since I believe that Charlie lived by WWJD, this is not meant to be a slight to any Christian; it is expanding on those ideals.

His voice is strong and positive.

But how did he convince people?

From what I have seen and read, his strongest point was to give people a smaller concept to grasp and think on. To personalize it. Instead of talking about weaponized lawfare, he talks in terms of a single person. Do you purchase things with credit? How do you pay for those things? How do you record those payments?

It is about getting the person to have something personal to work with.

So many of the big lies are so big that people can’t wrap their heads around them.

One I’ve heard recently is “Trump is a pedophile.”  Now the logic is a bit twisted, but I think it goes something like this: Trump’s DOJ took Epstein to court and got him convicted.  But because the court didn’t release the names of the people involved with Epstein’s crimes, Trump must be one of those people. Now the Biden administration couldn’t release the Epstein files because Trump had the records sealed. Now that Trump is attempting to get the files released, but it hasn’t happened yet, he must be on the list as a pedophile. Q.E.D. Trump is a pedophile.

On the other hand, Biden isn’t a disgusting pedophile, even if his daughter Ashley wrote about her father taking showers with her at inappropriate ages, because Biden is a kind man, while we know that Trump is a criminal.

Trump having material protected and guarded by the Secret Service, which he had the legal right to have, is proof of criminality.  Biden having classified material stored in open boxes in his garage is not proof of criminality. Even though Biden never had the authority to remove those classified documents from their proper locations.

It is hard to follow the logic. But it is there, you just have to tease it out.

Lyrics

“Friends” are falling away like dead leaves. I’m trying to take my cue from the falling autumn leaves… it’s okay to let go of the past, and sometimes it can be beautiful.

One of the rough ones happened this morning. Opening up FaceBook to do some author stuff, and I run into someone I thought was a friend, posting up the entire of the “ciao bella” song that Kirk’s shooter had on one of his bullets. Just that, just the words of the song and nothing more. I realized that’s basically a threat right now. I didn’t hesitate to delete and then block him, but it hurt.

Another wasn’t Charlie specific. A very old friend (r/l tho we don’t get to see each other very often and interact more online) posted about “why can’t they learn that their stupid 2A stuff isn’t as important as the kids that were just killed?!” I admit… I hesitated. I thought long and hard. She didn’t threaten anyone directly. But then again, she IS threatening. When someone is telling me that my protected Constitutional rights are “not as important,” you’re giving someone tacit permission to use weapons to take my rights away. And that’s not directly violence, but it’s definitely the precursor to it. And so I deleted and blocked her, too.

When Charlie got shot, I ran out of fucks to give. There are no more chances. I don’t care if you’re liberal, but if you glorify the death of someone (and that includes schoolkids) then I don’t need you as my friend. If you want to have the government take away my personal rights, then you obviously don’t want to be my friend.

On the other side of that line, though, other things are happening. A friend’s wife, who I’ve known online for a while but never really met, introduced herself at a wedding I attended on Sunday. She took me aside and said she wanted to make sure I was okay, because she knew so many people who were hurting over Charlie. She calls herself a liberal, but said she’s been desperate for a conservative friend who is willing to talk and listen and debate (gently). We’re going to get together and have some chats, and go over some ideas and such. There are some parts of conservatism that I consider myself qualified to speak on (1A and 2A, for instance), and others where I will likely reach out to friends for help. I explained that I’m squeaky brand new… and that I’m also only conservative right now (imo) because the mid-line has moved so far left because of leftist stupidity, and that in any sane world, I’d be considered slightly left of center, a moderate. It was a good conversation.

It was also good to show up at a wedding, escorted by my boyfriend (who was packing), only to find myself surrounded by a handful of people who were also packing, and one who was very much open carrying a beautiful 9mm. I complimented him on both his sidearm and his holster (which was very nice), and he smiled and said in times like these, it doesn’t pay to be unarmed. It felt good.

Starting this Wednesday, there will be a new weekly feature tentatively named “Charlie’s Voice.’

The goal is to produce a persuasive article to carry Charlie Kirk’s voice forward.

The guidelines are something like this:

• Take a left-leaning stance, position, or statement at face value.
• Listen to the statement/argument as if a single person were presenting it to you, face-to-face.
• Extract from the statement/argument the actual points of the person presenting.
• Using persuasive language, present your counterargument in such a way that it brings that person closer to our ideals and goals.
• Maintain neutral language, no gotcha phrases, no barbed zingers.

I do not expect this to be easy, which is why I’m asking for help from you.

Submissions go to info@troglodite.com. We’d prefer a Google Doc, LibreOffice document, or a Word document. Submissions will be edited for grammar and may be sent back with red pen if more than grammar changes are required.

Please include the byline you wish to have your article published under.

Examples

If you want to write on these topics, feel free; I’m putting them out here now because I will be working on something for Wednesday.

President Trump is a felon.

Example response:

You are correct; Donald Trump was convicted in a New York state court of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

If there are 34 counts, does this mean that Trump was convicted of 34 different crimes? The court says yes; maybe you won’t agree with the court.

Over the course of nine months, Trump signed 9 checks to Michael Cohen. The checks were normal checks with a memo line. The prosecution claimed that the text on the memo line was fraudulent, resulting in 9 different counts. Because that memo line was repeated in a ledger, each entry in the ledger became another count.

The prosecution decided that there were 4 counts for each check that Trump wrote, leading to the 34 count number. All of which were for the payment of one bill.

This would be similar to you buying a new set of golf clubs on credit, then writing a check once a month to pay off the bill, but instead of writing “New golf clubs,” you wrote “Entertainment.”

The prosecutor’s argument was that anything apart from “hush payment” was fraudulent.

There will be more, of course; this is just the start.

I look forward to your submissions.

My office chair has been failing for about a year now. The gas tube gave up the fight. The left armrest had cracked. And the entire thing had become one uncomfortable mess.

As somebody who sits in front of his computer for many hours per week, this was unacceptable. Worse, it was painful to sit for more than about an hour. After an hour, the discomfort was making it difficult to program or get other work done.

I bought a new chair. I’ve spent the last couple of hours sitting in it. There are different issues, but mostly it is me getting used to the new chair. It is nice to have my eyes at the correct level for my screens.

Auburn Duck Race

This is an event that Ally has been attending for a few years. She dresses in period garb, does a cooking demo, and sells her cookbooks. Normally I drive her out to the event, drop her and her gear off, head home, and then go and pick her up after the event.

We were both uncomfortable with her being in a crowd after what happened to Charlie, so I went along and stayed. SIG P365, two spare magazines, truck gun briefcase.

Nothing happened; we had fun, plenty of people, some book sales. I got to see one of my clients in person and met his family.

Shit Talk from Leftist

I had mentioned to Ally that the amount of Trump and right bashing on the Reddits had gone down. I spoke too soon. It is still full of hate and evil.

She’s right! Donnie started this!

J6 was the most violent thing in living memory. That’s the problem; MAGA lives in a completely different reality from what is actually going on. They don’t have the mental capacity to apply critical thinking skills, they just ride on hatred and lies.

I think I’m going to have a “speak out” day once a week.

Ally posted about the difficulty in saying no. I read her article and found that it didn’t really hit home with me.

Not because it was written badly. It was well written. But it just didn’t connect. I know I am good at saying no.

In a resource limited situation, hard decisions need to be made. Some of those decisions will be life or death in nature. We need to think about those today. If you can convince yourself that you are capable of saying “no” in those situations, then you are a stronger person than I am.

To help prepare myself, I run different situations to decide what I am willing to do, what I must do, and what I can’t do.

Let’s take a simple one: a couple that knows you but whom you don’t know stops at the red line and places their newborn child there. They yell up to you, “Please save our child!” before turning and walking away, in tears.

They aren’t asking for help for themselves. They know you will say “no.” Instead they have left an innocent at your doorstep.

You have the following choices:

• Do nothing until the baby dies of exposure or is killed by something.
• Take the child into your care, reducing the supplies your people are depending on, adding a drain on your people’s resources.
• You kill the baby outright.

What do you do? Is it an easy choice? It isn’t easy for me to choose. I also have to deal with my family. How will they respond? How will I say “no” to them.

An even simpler example of this is personal. I have been saying “no” to pets since before I got married to my current wife. I have allergies that are not helped by animal fur. So they ask for a dog; I say no. They ask for a cat. I say no. They get a rabbit and have it in the house before I can say “no.”

How do I say “No” now that the animal is in the house? That was 5 rabbits ago. Three of them passed after expensive vet bills. My kid is at college, my wife attempts to care for one of the rabbits, and Ally cares for the other. Regardless, it didn’t matter that I said “no”; they just ignored me.

Will you be able to kill that baby when your spouse is in tears begging you to bring the innocent child into your care?

Here is a different one. You are out on a scavange hunt. You have taken one of your neighbor’s kids with you. You have been working with this family to the joint benefit of both groups.

During the hunt, the kid is badly injured. He is unlikely to survive his injuries. You have limited choices:

• Do you put yourself at risk to drag/carry the kid back to home base, knowing he might die in the process or bring the raiders down upon you?
• Do you leave him there to die?
• Do you leave him there, book it for home base, and hope you get back to him before he dies?
• Do you use your medical gear to make him comfortable, knowing that gear is never going to be replaced?
• Do you kill him to put him out of his misery?

Now compound this with having the neighbor with you. He is begging you to save his kid, to do risky things, to use your resources to save his kid. Can you still say “no”?

How about this one? Your kid is injured. They are dying. There is nothing you can do to save them; the most you can do is extend their life, and in doing so, use irreplaceable supplies, and they will be in pain the entire time.

Are you willing to kill your child? Are you willing to let them suffer? Are you willing to kill your group in six months for another day with your child?

I know that I don’t want to make that decision. I know that my wife would hate me if I didn’t do everything in my power to save my child, damn the costs.

If you think you can say “no,” then I don’t think you have thought about the hard choices. I agree with you; you are good at saying no. You are likely better prepared to say no than most people. Now stretch yourself and find scenarios where it would be difficult to say no. Scenarios where saying no is the right choice, but you will be hated by your loved ones for making that choice.

Then look me in the eye and say, “I can say “no.”” without having that niggling feeling in the back of your head that maybe there will come a time when you wont.