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| Home Front: Politix |
| Sarah Hoyt: Don't Fall For It |
| 2025-02-27 |
| One thing I’ll say for our side of the political equation. We seem to have become slightly more immune to psy-ops, or perhaps less willing to go along with anything the left tries to prod us into doing. These days, it looks like when they need a patsy they have to actually recruit and pay them, which they’ve apparently been doing to get people to "talk back" to Republican representatives at townhalls, or use bots. Now the AI bots are getting better, but you can still tell if the person you’re arguing with on FB has an account made yesterday and no followers. (Okay, normally made after the election, but still.) And despite the dire warnings — really? — that the government would "collapse" in six weeks (awfully precise there chum. Kash, are you monitoring these?) that was suddenly everywhere after Carville flapped his lips, and which seemed to imagine that US governments like British can "fall" before elections. (Was this ops run by a Britisher? Did Carville have a senile moment? Was he fed the wrong line? Or does it indicate something far more sinister? Again Kash, are you monitoring this?) even the most squishy of squish blogs on the right has not run with panic. And the whole "people are mad at DOGE" also isn’t taking. The screaming that if the right touches Medicaid it’s done, that this worked before is the left drinking their own ink and/or trying to panic the right. It is important to remember that no, it didn’t work before. What worked in 2018 and 2020 was FRAUD. Massive, industrial quantities of fraud, served from a firehose. I can’t be the only one who remembers polls held open for two weeks after the election in 2018. What, are all of you more ADD than I? How do you remember to dress in the morning? If we solve the fraud — Mr. President, more needs to be done — then curtailing Medicaid is certainly not going to bring the government "down" (even if that were possible.) Frankly, this whole "Medicaid can’t be touched, or people will turn" is nonsense. As with social security, medicare, etc, the vast majority of people my age and younger (and I’m sixty two, rapidly approaching the point at which MOST people are younger than I) never counted on any of the social net programs. Since the eighties, we expected there would be nothing for us when we qualified. AND thinking people are super invested in "government paid health care" ignores how much more cynical we got about health care in general in the last five years. I desperately need to go see a dentist, but have been putting it off, because I remember dentists closing because they couldn’t figure out a way to make us wear masks during procedures. And the other doctors? the last time I got asked to wear a mask was two months ago at my PCP. And the receptionist said the doctor might refuse to see me if I wouldn’t wear it. (I know the doctor. She ALSO wasn’t wearing a mask. Because she’s not crazy.) Then there was the crazy time mid 21 when a doctor tried to convince my husband they could do his physical over the phone as thoroughly as in the office. Look, it’s not happy making, because it’s one of the things we still need, but the medical profession has lost a ton of confidence and prestige over this insanity. And people are way more hesitant to seek "care." (Which might prevent iatrogenic issues, but hey. Better or worse than the fact people are putting off needed care? I don’t know.) So, saying "We’ll take away your free medical care" is not as scary as it used to be. On top of which, frankly, we now know how much medicaid was being used to look after illegal immigrants who just came in and got top of the line care. And if that’s cut, there’s probably still enough for every citizen and legal resident. The fact is that the left is mostly trying to panic our politicians and make them buckle. I urge those cooked-spaghetti kneed idiots to stand firm. Borrow someone else’s spine if you need to. Because you have no idea how bad things will get if you cave now, and therefore Trump can’t clean up the mess y’all have been creating for a century or so. You don’t want to know. Trump is the VERY POLITE REQUEST. Despite my moments of blind, red-veil rage, I do NOT want the tumbrils to roll. Once you start feeding madame Guillotine, you can’t stop for a long time, and you’ll be fed to it yourself. As for the right wing bloggers even the squishy, gooey-center ones, who are for now holding firm. I need you to continue holding firm. Remember they’ve got nothing. The only way they controlled us before was by use of an absolutely coordinated propaganda machine that went from the news to actual fiction books, all publishing the same narrative at the same time. They tried that in 2020 and it failed, even with the panic created by the "pandemic." It failed to the point they needed to fraud openly and in front of G-d and everyone. (And if you refused to see it or talk about it, shame on you. Also sign up for remedial math. Because it really was obvious.) They tried it again in 2024 with everything at their disposal, trying to create "inevitability" for Kamala. They convinced the Europeans and every "reputable" source in the US. And yet they failed, spectacularly. Because people have tuned them out. They’ve seen them in action. They’ve seen the masks off for eight years now, and once the mask if off you can’t put it back on. If you’re scared, if you’re a squishy gooey "right" wing person, if you’re afraid, if you feel like panicking, I want you to stand in front of your mirror every morning and practice saying "I really don’t are, Margaret." Or come here and I’ll give you the needed righteous kicking. I have a lot of aggression to work off, anyway, thank you for volunteering. The truth is that Medicaid, aye, and social security too, are going to go away. They are unsustainable. They could have worked if the left hadn’t forgotten they needed every-larger generations to sustain it. Instead they wanted to plunder the young and at the same time reduce population and at the same time sideline legal workers in favor of illegals who don’t contribute (no, really) to any of these social programs, but do take from them. The left is dying at its own hands, drowning in a pool of incoherence and self hatred. We understand the self hatred. Heck, I even understand the incoherence since they were fed a lot of contradictory bullshit and forbidden to think about any of it. But I really don’t care [Margaret.] As when you’re faced with a pet who is going to die in a few days, in pain, your choice is to give it one clean shot, or let it linger and die ugly. And at that, I don’t think the plan is even to kill these "social net" dinosaurs outright, but to put them on palliative care: saving them just enough for those who desperately need it, until they die a gentle death as those few who counted on them pass. This is the GENTLE option. If we do nothing, if we don’t investigate, if we don’t cut back, it’s going to collapse suddenly and explosively and leave a lot of people in desperate straits. Same for the government, all of it, honestly. Yes, I know a couple of people who were doing needed functions for the government and who are right now in limbo. But the whole thing was so bloated, convoluted, overfed and over-wasteful it was going to collapse anyway. It should never have been created, is the problem, and btw, my friends who are in limbo say the same "it sucks, but it’s needed to save the country. And in the long run my job is less important than saving the country." Yes, it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a lot. Thing is, people are already hurting. Badly hurting. I don’t know the real numbers, but I know what I see around me. My sons’ generation and younger is drowning, particularly the males. They either have no jobs; have jobs in seriously exploitative situations; are being treated as inherently bad for being born with a penis. Girls aren’t much better off, though academia and make-work have absorbed a bunch of them. People are starting to see that what they thought was the economy is a painted floor and they’ve been running midair a long time. There’s a feeling of subdued panic everywhere. None of us are being told the truth, but seriously, do an inventory of the young — 35 and younger — people you know. How many are solidly established as a proportion? Yeah, yeah, they’re young, but by 35 people were firming up, even in my generation, and boy we thought we were late. As for the older... my generation was hit hard by layoffs every few years, which kept people from any real savings for retirement. And the H1B thing has been brutal to those in tech jobs. We’re now hitting retirement age, and most of us know we’re going to have to work until we drop in our traces, if only we can continue finding work. You can’t make it worse by cutting the illusion of security. In a way it’s a relief when the truth is finally told. Which is why all the left’s demands we panic, and their whispers that "the government will fall" are finding no purchase. Yes, what DOGE is finding is horrifying, but we’ve suspected it so long, we’re just relieved someone is talking about it at last. Don’t give the left an opening. What they want is impossible. We can’t go back to sleep. We can’t go back to the pre-2020 world, no matter how much nicer it seemed. That world isn’t there anymore, and we too have changed in ways they forced us to. If we let them propaganda us into destroying the current cutbacks and clean up — chainsaw go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrt — we’ll only be put on the sure path to hell to heads on pikes. Even if most of those heads would be lefty ones, it won’t be all of them. In the end that kind of collapse always claims more lives than you can imagine, and more indiscriminately than you think: it always ends up door to door and intimately personal. The only way to spare us that horror is to stay the course. To hunch one shoulder and say "I really don’t care, Margaret." And forge on. It’s the right thing to do, but more importantly, it’s the only thing to do. Because the alternative is unthinkable. |
| Posted by:Grom the Affective |