What We Have Here is A Failure to Communicate
I Can't Take the Red Pill for You
In 2015—which was the last year of Barack Obama’s second term in the White House, I reconnected with some old high school friends due to an impending reunion. Although I had always been marginally interested in politics, I perceived myself up to then as being too busy to do more than scratch the surface.
Alas, I watched The Today Show, MSNBC, CNN, and read things like The New York Times, The Houston Chronicle, or The Los Angeles Times (depending on where I was living). The only reason I didn’t watch Morning Joe was because Mika’s petulant schoolgirl slouching and teenage eye rolls were too much for me. It wasn’t because Joe’s dodgy political takes were too stupid for me. I just thought Mika was insufferable.
As we entered 2016, the presidential election captured a lot of attention, and it gave us newly re-acquainted high school reunion people stuff to talk about. The Democrats had selected Hillary Clinton as their candidate and Bernie Sanders could not make inroads despite his considerable appeal. I knew people who liked Hillary. I also knew people who liked Bernie. And I knew people who thought Bernie got railroaded by Hillary, who still wouldn’t speak badly of Hillary. Say what you want about Hillary, back in 2016 she commanded a lot of loyalty.
A whole slew of Republicans ran in the presidential primaries for the 2016 election, ranging from big names like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ben Carson, Jeb Busch, and Chris Christie along with lots of other people who made forays but dropped out before the actual primaries, including Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Perry. But one guy simply took all the air out of the room: Donald J. Trump. I knew people who liked Donald Trump, and I certainly knew people who did not care for him, saying he was the reincarnation of P. T. Barnum.
At the time—around mid-2016—I did not particularly like either candidate. Trump was blustery and did seem like a bit of a huckster, but I knew what he wanted to do. He thought this country was being cheated in international trade deals, and he wanted to even out the balances of trade. He wanted less regulation, more deal-making, and he seemed like he was not opposed to the Bill of Rights.
Hillary was better known but her policies were more of an enigma. When I asked people why they liked Hillary, I always got a resume. She was First Lady of Arkansas. She was First Lady of the United States, she was a Senator from New York. She was Secretary of State under Obama. But nobody could tell me what she actually did besides stuff like set up a dubious Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. I knew about Benghazi. I knew about Vince Foster. I knew about her failed attempt to set up a healthcare program when her husband was President. But when Hillary gave her campaign speeches—I didn’t know what she was going to do or what she was for. She was a candidate who had no policies. Was she going to fix the infrastructure? Improve the public school system? Engage in regime-change wars? Raise taxes? All we heard about Hillary’s presidency is what it was going to do for Hillary. Her campaign slogan should have been, “It’s my turn!”
The First Steps
The presidential election in 2016 was amazing, because the media had changed. Instead of having only cable TV news outlets, by 2016 we had a plethora of online news sources, online papers, social media crackpots, online message boards, online podcasts, satellite radio talk shows, and even online political commentary. My interest in online communications and websites led me to find some interesting sites. The first two I found were The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire.
I remember the first time I heard Ben Shapiro speak; he was on my car radio. I remember he talked really fast. He said that a key to success in America was graduating school, getting and keeping a job, and not having kids out of wedlock. I totally agreed with him, but I had never heard anyone so bravely say it out loud. To some of the more progressive folks I knew, saying that sort of thing was borderline treason. After all, single motherhood was empowering. Jobs were demeaning.
I remember The Daily Caller opposed biological men in women’s sports and I discovered when I posted a similar thought on social media that this was considered heresy. One of the several Democrats who contradicted my opinion said that transwomen were 100% identical and equivalent to biological women because “it’s settled science.” I was totally shocked that so much ignorance could be packed into a single post. Then I found Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit. It didn’t take but these few dominoes to fall and I had dozens upon dozens of new sources. Pretty soon I was playing dominoes.
I looked at Redditt. I discovered Twitter but didn’t dare post anything since it seemed like a meeting of drunken communists. I found the Q boards. I got involved in Signal chats, but mostly as a lurker. I found Drudge and then abandoned him. As I came of age, so did the media: Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, Dan Bongino, Adam Carrolla, and, of course, Charlie Kirk. So much news, so little time.
There were a few things that I noticed. First, these two media worlds wrote or talked about altogether different stories. What was news to CNN was rarely reported on Breitbart and what was on Breitbart never was mentioned on CNN unless it was the opposite. If Breitbart mentioned Trump proposed federal tax cuts to help the middle class, CNN would say Trump was planning to destroy the middle class through disastrous economic policies at a national level. I noticed how these different outlets used charged language and specific images to promote their narratives. Unflattering pictures of Trump. Unflattering pictures of Hillary.
I found myself living with one foot in each of two worlds. There were two different but irreconcilable narratives. At this point, I still liked neither Hillary nor Trump. But I started to realize something. These two news narratives could not both be true. Either one was true and one was false, or both were false. There was no way that both the mainstream media and the alternative news outlets were both telling me the truth.
Somebody was lying to me. Maybe they both were.
Shopping Center
On November 8, 2016, election day, I was in a shopping center parking lot. It was late afternoon and the polls had not yet closed. I had already voted and I was red pilled enough to vote Trump. I remember this moment as if it were some big epiphany, but there was no mystical vision or breathtaking revelation. It was just a sudden, but very specific, thought.
If Trump wins, then Breitbart was right. More importantly, CNN and MSNBC and The Atlantic and The New York Times were wrong. It was that simple. The election would prove who was right and who was wrong.
As you may remember, the mainstream media had all but assured us that Hillary had the election in the bag. I think I saw that very reputable mainstream sources gave her a 95% chance of winning. Most of the Democrats I knew had been busy for weeks planning festivities and celebrations rather than knocking on doors or putting up yard signs. I don’t even think Hillary bothered with yard signs, that’s how confident she was. It was a foregone conclusion we would finally get our “Madame President” because, after all, it was Hillary’s turn.
On the other hand, the alternative media like Breitbart was telling me that the election would be close, perhaps uncomfortably close, but that Trump would win. He wouldn’t win by a landslide, but he would win a clear victory. I did see Trump yard signs and those jaunty red MAGA caps. Republican friends of mine who went to Trump rallies talked about crowds of thousands of people waiting for hours to listen to Trump (Trump never had to use musicians like Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce to draw a crowd.) I didn’t go to any rallies but I knew many who did, and they always came home energized and excited. Talking to a Democrat around that time was a snooze—it was tepid complacency in search of a nap. Talking to a Republican was exciting, interesting, and hopeful. The Trump crowd had energy; Hillary had health problems. There was a whole undercurrent of people who were telling me that Trump not only could win, he would win. For sure.
Standing in that shopping center lot that late afternoon, I thought: both narratives can’t be true. The litmus test would be the election. If Trump won, then I’d know Breitbart and pals were telling me the truth. If Hillary won, then I’d know that the mainstream media was being fair and truthful.
The Red Pill
They call it the red pill, but there are other pills.
Taking the red pill marks the moment where you realize that you’re being lied to and you want to know the truth. In fact, the red pill makes you demand the truth; you’re willing to pay a big price to get the truth
The blue pill is taken by people who never realize they’re being played for fools or who realize it but don’t mind. They just accept what life hands them and get angry if anyone even mentions there might be another idea or another solution
Some people realize they’re being conned but they don’t want to be bothered with the truth because it might interrupt their Netflix movie. I guess that would make them the purple pill people, but there’s not that many of them anyway
There’s also a black pill but that’s a belief that men have no chance fighting the feminist system. That’s another subject for another day
The red pill people are those who realize they’ve been played and want the truth and will pay almost any price to get to the real facts. They don’t want to live a lie, even if finding the truth makes their lives worse. (It often does.)
Like many of us, I sometimes find myself in unwanted situations where I am asked to defend my political beliefs. It’s sort of like apologetics in evangelism where you have to be able to quickly and efficiently refute errant beliefs and heresies in short statements. But the problem is that apologetics rarely convinces anyone, even if you were the greatest explainer in the history of the world. Remember, even Jesus conversed earnestly and face-to-face with people who refused to believe in Him.
The other problem with talking to blue pill people is they want to argue 12,000 things at once. Ask them about foreign policy and they’ll want you to produce receipts on climate change, then they’ll scream about immigration policies, next up it’ll be drag queen story hour and meanwhile they’ll also want you to defend gun rights and demand to know why you hate Palestine. They figure if they can get you to fight a war on many fronts, you’ll lose, and you will—you’ll lose your patience.
And most of the blue pill crowds could use a hearing aid. They don’t talk in a normal voice, they tend to yell. Some bellow. It can get very loud. They often swear and they will call you names. The favorite right now is “nazi” but it changes from time to time.
As a result, I do what a lot of us do. I just avoid the blue pill people. True, we may still hang out with them or have them over for Thanksgiving—we may even be living with them—but we sequester politics. We don’t agree to disagree, we agree to avoid. We avoid all discussions of politics, all topics relating to Republicans and Democrats, even the mention of certain names is verboten.
But then I wonder: shouldn’t we be talking? For all the aggravation a lefty encounter brings to you, is it perhaps not ultimately worth it to bring them truth?
No. I say no, it isn’t.
The True Blue Pill
The world never ceases to change, and blue pill people are changing their approach. They are actively and overtly seeking out opportunities to hear the other side, but their intentions are disingenuous and maybe even nefarious. Most blue pill people ask for your opinion on something—they are very pointed and they ask specific questions. “What do you think about Trump?” or “What do you think about the deportations?” Or “How can you oppose humanitarian aid to Gaza, given the genocide going on over there?” Or even, “How can you say you’re a Christian and still vote for Donald Trump?” They never ask what we think about their side, they want to know what we think about our side. The questions are often loaded.
If you make the mistake of answering such a question, you will be pulled onto the express train heading straight to Stupid-Town. Here are the problems:
Democrats as a rule do not know much. (And as Ronald Reagan once famously said, most of what they do think they know is wrong.) I talked to a blue pill who voted for Kamala and praised her to the skies for being a decent, upright, moral, God-fearing soul. When I asked her what she thought about Willie Brown and the role he played in Kamala’s rise to political power, she didn’t know who Willie Brown was
Democrats want you to prove everything. While it’s nice to have receipts, not all of us carry with us at all times every URL, article, website, book, or proof text for every single thing in politics. If I am eating dinner with friends, you can ask me why I think J6 was not an insurrection, but I don’t necessarily have on my person all of the data and research. (No one does anymore since the J6 Committee trashed most of the evidence right before they got pardons.) True, I can sketch out an outline for you as to what I think about J6. But when I am asked to prove things, I do not have those documents in my hand. I have a fork in my hand. I’m eating dinner, for pity’s sake
Democrats take their statements are the truth and demand they be accepted or refuted; anything you say is assumed to be a lie and must be proven. And when you refute them, you must meet an ever-changing burden of proof that is set solely by them. It is set by them so it can never be met. If you say the Southern Border was open under the Biden, they will demand you prove that and even if you could bring 2,000 websites, 4 million photographs, data from a dozen databases from government agencies and law enforcement, 25 witnesses, a videotaped statement by Joe Biden himself, and a thousand news stories by lefty sites all supporting your claim, they’d still say, “Sorry, that’s misinformation.”
Democrats only accept their sources, and even then, they have to agree with the content. If you try to “prove” something to a Democrat, be aware they will reject all sources that they do not personally approve of. For instance, if Rachel Maddow were to go on the air and announce the J6 Select Committee destroyed evidence, a blue pill person might believe you if you could arrange for that video to be played for them, and even then, they’d challenge that it was real. You’d have to also prove it wasn’t a deep fake or a cheap fake or a remake. Plus they’d want 25 other sources. And even if Rachel Maddow said such a thing, they might suddenly turn on her and say she was wrong or in cahoots with the Republicans. Credibility in Democrat circles is ephemeral. Besides, anything stated in a source like Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, or other non-commie outlet cannot be used. Yet the accuracy record of MSNBC, CNN, and other lefty sources is terrible, and the accuracy of right-wing outlets is phenomenal considering the abuse they take. But we can’t use them. Democrats only believe what their sources tell them they are allowed to believe and it has to align tightly with the current narrative
Democrats struggle even with their own sources. Right now Lindy Li, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Jake Tapper (all formerly Democrats and major Biden supporters who were big shots in the Biden regime) are coming out and saying Biden was not running the country. He was cognitively compromised. These are “reliable sources” for the blue pill crowd and they’re having a hard time swallowing what they’re saying. These guys are being destroyed (Lindy Li reported numerous death threats after having raised millions upon millions for Joe and then Kamala)
Democrats do zero work. I mentioned to a lefty recently that there were free abortions being given at the Democrat National Convention (DNC) in 2024. This Democrat assured me this was not only inaccurate, it was a dirty despicable lie from a right-wing conspiracy source. I was then challenged to “prove it.” But why should I prove it? It’s on Google. You don’t even have to go beyond the first page of Google with its new AI answers. But no Democrat can be bothered doing that much work. So they believe lazy beliefs, which is whatever fits their narrative
Democrats play at being open minded, but they really just want to drive you crazy. They do this by denying even the most obvious things, making up crazy lies, demanding all sorts of proof, and then saying they don’t accept the proof
This led me to wonder: why is that? Why are some people so addicted to being lied to that they will fight with their friends, tear apart their families, and make themselves sound stupid, just to chase the illusion that everything wrong with the world is due to that bad old Orange Man? I used to ponder that question until the other day. The other day I realized I don’t care. Not every problem is mine to solve.
As J.D. Vance once said in a slightly different context, “I don’t really care, Margaret.”
Can We Educate Our Way Out of This?
Democrats are completely resistant to education. I wish I was as resistant to the common cold as they are to educating themselves.
They are often accused of being hypocritical, but what they really are is intellectually lazy. That’s how we get causes like “Queers for Palestine” and “Women for Transwomen in Sports” and “Defund the Police.” They cannot logically hold fast to a line of thought, they jump from whatever they’re told today to whatever they’re told tomorrow. It’s how Greta Thunberg forgot about the most urgent crisis of climate change (remember having only a few more years before the world would end?) and demonstrates now for Palestine.
It’s why climate activists jet to exotic locations to have meetings about climate change. It’s why Barack Obama was positioned as an advocate for African-Americans and the poor, and then bought four mansions, one of which (his favorite on Martha’s Vineyard) is in a part of the country where no Black people live. It’s why Nancy Pelosi can give a speech about being “for the children” and then champion abortion in the ninth month. These guys aren’t logical.
I used to think the burden of educating the blue pill crowd fell to us. It doesn’t. It’s their problem. It’s like trying to rehabilitate a drug addict. Drug addicts don’t get well because somebody explains the perils of addiction to them. They get well when they personally and profoundly realize that they have to stop doing drugs or they’ll die.
In the end, the people who got red pilled are not the smartest or the cleverest or the most logical. Red pill people are just the ones who went out and dug up the truth themselves. We explored online sources, we watched C-SPAN hearings, we read original court transcripts. We bought books. We listened to speeches, even from political opponents. We pondered things. Sometimes we stumbled on bad sources who gave bad information. We didn’t scream and rage at the sky and give up. We red pill people did not demand a government agency to sort through “misinformation” to protect us. We realized that some sources are good, some are not good, and it is up to us to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Tell me Kamala is a God-fearing woman, and I won’t demand you prove it. But I may go back through my sources and prove to myself that Kamala is many things, but a God-fearing woman is not one of them.
That’s how we got red pilled. We admitted we could be wrong. We listened to the other side. We investigated, tested. We tried to verify the things the other side told us. Sometimes we found out we were wrong, and we course-corrected. We listened to people with whom we disagreed, and we listened respectfully and carefully. We gathered data. While red pill people did their homework, blue pill people were calling their friends and family members nazis on social media.
Blue pill people mistake anger and virulence and hostility for intelligence. This July 4th weekend a terrible tragedy occurred in Kerrville and other parts of the Texas Hill Country. A sudden and overwhelming flood took the lives of many people, including school girls at a Christian summer camp. There were online posts blaming Trump for the flood and some even cheering the event saying it was a good thing that such young children died. I saw a post on X (formerly Twitter) that referred to these precious little girls by the c-word and then cheered their demise and rejoiced that their parents were suffering.
Democrat friends, colleagues, family members, and strangers: that’s not intelligence you’re showing there. That’s evil. A side effect of the blue pill appears to be raw evil.
Sadly, I cannot just put a glob of peanut butter on the red pill and trick you into taking it. I can’t hold you still, tip your head back, and force a red pill down your throat. I can’t open up the red pill and sprinkle it on your avocado toast.
The time has come for the nation to go on, with you or without you. It’s your choice, not mine.
Really good!