The first thing I thought of when I saw today's freewrite prompt not so progressive now was the Democratic Party in the US, my party of fifty years.
There was a time when I could not imagine not being a Democrat, like my parents and grandparents before me. I knew very few Republicans throughout my life, choosing to befriend Democrats only. I was led to believe, as we are relentlessly being led to believe by MSM today, that conservatives of all kinds did not care about the well-being of anyone but conservatives, did not care about lending helping hands to those who were struggling. I thought conservatives were uncaring, bigoted, racist, homophobes, and that all of their politicians were buffoons.
My children got the same ideas somehow. I didn't discuss politics with them that I can recall, but they got the messages just the same. Then one of those children, as an adult, became bed bound, and he had little to do but peruse all types of content online. He began listening, really listening, to conservatives. When he first told me he had grasped the thought processes of Jordan Peterson, I was shocked. Shocked I tell ya! I felt I had failed as a mother.
Thankfully, I had the open mindedness, and a deep love for my son, to really listen to what Peterson was saying. The first video I watched, provided by my son, was about the need for conservative thought, the need for balance of thought between left and right, the need for openmindedness. Without all threads of thought we cannot advance. At that time, Peterson was still calling himself a liberal (idk what he is calling himself today), and he opened my mind to the validity of conservative thought.
In short, very short, conservatives are not racist, xenophobic homophobes. Instead, they believe Democratic Party policies are racist, xenophobic and homophobic. I now agree with that sentiment.
To try to keep this post to a reasonable length, not one that sucks up my entire day to write, and a good chunk of yours to read, I'm going to stick to racism.
This next bit is what Democrats believe, not what I believe, before some of you jump down my throat for saying them:
Democratic Party policies insist that people of color need help, in general, because of the lack of access to services that white people can easily receive. POC are not receiving education comparable to a white person's education. POC live in ghettos where medical services are not available , and so they do not get the healthcare, especially vaccines, that we are being told to get. POC need help from the taxpayer-funded governments in order to get that leg up in life that white people have always had,
To encapsulate Democrat thought into one shocking, short statement:
POC cannot make good choices for themselves because they have not had enough education, and so perpetuate their supposedly lower life styles themselves. They are dumb, unhealthy, cannot make a living on their own, and don't know any better.
If that isn't racist, I do not know what is.
I used to believe all this, and fervently. Until I listened to my son. After a little time with Peterson, I branched out to listen, really listen, to other conservatives. Why not start with one whose name was being smeared all over the leftist news media at that time? Milo Yiannopolis had recently been banned as a speaker at some liberal college in California, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
He told demeaning jokes about liberals, jokes that liberals found offensive (what isn't offensive to a Democrat these days?). I saw his audiences, who looked a lot like me, enjoying themselves. I began to chuckle at some of his jokes myself. Then I realized he was talking about ME. Let me tell ya, when a good joke about oneself lands well, it can cause a sea change, and his jokes caused a sea change in me.
I began to listen, really listen, to conservatives. I had to stop filtering their statements through everything I had been taught by my parents, schools, and media in order to understand what they were saying, which took some time. Eventually, I came to realize that conservatives want exactly the same things so-called liberals purport to want: love, safety, and peace for everyone. The only difference between the two poles is the methods they believe are required to achieve those ideals.
So let me try to translate the above offset paragraph about what Democrats think about people of color to my views of that demographic today, after years of not rejecting conservative thought on the issues:
Many people of color are living a lifestyle that is considered undesirable because of RACIST policies wrought on them by taxpayer-funded governments, right and left. These policies are based on the false and racist notion that shoddy educations have rendered POC incapable of knowing what is best for themselves. POC have a lower uptake of vaccines because they have had a higher incidence of vaccine injuries, and they do not want their children to be harmed by medical procedures, which is very smart in my book. It is NOT because there are fewer medical services in their neighborhoods; take a walk down 125th street in Harlem to see this. SOME of them live in drug and violence infested ghettos because they have become dependent on taxpayer-funded government handouts. They will only receive this money if they remain poor, so they have essentially been trapped in poverty. Throwing more money at them will not remediate this; free money is very hard to give up.
Please read the definitions of liberal and progressive below, and tell me if that sounds like the Democratic Party to you. They sure do not to me. In my opinion, the Democratic Party (again, my party of fifty years) is as far from liberal and progressive as you can get. It now exhorts us to look as different as we can, to have sex in as many ways and with as many beings as we can, but to all think exactly alike.
Have you noticed that elections worldwide are now split nearly 50-50 between two poles? How can this be if elections are not manipulated?
I now think ALL politicians are buffoons, and we have got to fix the mess we are in ourselves. That will only happen if we ignore the divide between us that has been deliberately and systematically manufactured between two artificial poles of thought. Divide and conquer is an age old strategy, employed by psychopathic rulers over the ages.
Unite. Your neighbor with a Don't Tread On Me sign is not your enemy.
This started out as my entry to 's daily freewrite challenge, but I got carried away. Today's prompt is not so progressive now.