Politics

It was a Friday evening, and I had just finished having dinner with some friends from work. As everyone was heading out, I got a text from a good friend of mine. He invited me to hangout with some buddies of his who lived in the North part of town. I had been to their house before and generally got along and enjoyed talking to them. We didn’t often discuss cultural issues, but when we did, they tended to lean towards the left. Our viewpoints often diverged, but it was interesting to listen to their perspectives while also presenting and defending my own. That all changed on this one Friday evening when, for the first time in my life, I was kicked out of someone’s home.

The Documentary

The two of them were on the couch watching a documentary about an old lady who shot her neighbor, a mother. The old woman alleged the mother was banging on her house door and threatening her. The old lady shot her neighbor through her door. Immediately the documentary framed the incident as being about race, with the old woman being white and the mother banging on her door being black.

I’ve watched several documentaries that expose how news media often misrepresents major hot-button cases, spinning them into narratives about race. The Trayvon Hoax, a 2020 film by Joel Gilbert, brought to light how George Zimmerman’s 911 call was selectively edited for the news and suggests the prosecution had a woman pretend to be Diamond Eugene, their key witness¹. What Killed Michael Brown? was a 2020 film by Eli and Shelby Steele that exposed the false narrative around the death of Michael Brown². Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown, claimed the man attacked him repeatedly and attempted to take his firearm³. Uncle Tom, a 2020 documentary by Justin Malone and Larry Elder, addresses the backlash experienced by black conservatives who stand against victimization narratives they believe are subconsciously implanted into their own people⁴.

I pointed out to my friends how this story had nothing to do with race. Yes, the woman shouldn’t have shot through her door. She lacked basic gun safety skills (the biggest being you should know your target and what’s behind your target). Furthermore, she would have had a better case if she had waited for the woman to physically break into her home before shooting her. These friends couldn’t see any way I could justify her situation. I told them the movie had obvious biases from the producers. They accused me of only seeing it through my own bias. When asked what would make this alright, I said I wanted the perspective of the old lady. Where are her family members? Her character witnesses? Her advocates? The documentary immediately switched to a scene of the deceased mother’s family members outside a courthouse demanding justice.

I didn’t get to watch the rest of this documentary with them. At this point, the wife said, “You need to leave.” She was cordial about her request while still being emotionally upset. The friend who invited me also left. I don’t remember for sure, but I think he was asked to leave as well. I’m not sure if it was because she was generally too upset to deal with people or if she blamed him for not saying very much during this discussion and bringing me into their lives and their home.

I’ve never actually been thrown out of someone’s house before, not even during years of youthful indiscretions, and periods of my life when I drank way too much alcohol. Now well into my 40s, I was asked to leave because I did not accept a narrative presented to people on a TV screen without challenge. At least that’s the way I saw it from my perspective. I’m sure the couple saw me very differently.

When researching this documentary and trying to find videos or blog posts with critical voices, I found very few dissenting views, most likely because it had just been released. The only place I found insightful critiques was in the one-star user reviews for the documentary on IMDB⁵, and they were quite informative.

Guilt and Empathy

White guilt is a luxury belief. It is a belief that is held by the well-off who feel they are moral advocates for those who are lesser-than. Yet, these beliefs ultimately end up hurting the poor they wish to uplift⁶. Building affordable government housing for minorities and giving them welfare funding seems like a good idea, but such programs have removed people’s individual agencies. In the long term, it can be argued welfare programs make people worse off because they prevent individuals from building pride and value in their own agency and choices.

While watching this documentary, these companions spoke of how easy their lives were compared to the underprivileged. They echoed a narrative growing in our culture that seems to value victimization. There’s nothing wrong with feeling empathy for people, but often that empathy turns into the idea that “we must do something!” This can easily lead society into a race to the bottom. Helping a butterfly out of a cocoon prevents the insect from building its own wing strength, condemning it to being unable to fly⁷. In the same way, advocating for someone or a group based on their personal identity can lend itself to those people blaming everything on that label. Rather than learning to have pride in their own individual accomplishments, they can become perpetually held back by their perceived victimhood. Such luxury beliefs are leading the world into an era of suicidal empathy⁸.

Fringe Beliefs

I wouldn’t consider myself a conservative or liberal today. My views are complex. I believe 9/11 was both a false flag operation and a planned demolition^910111213. Even though I think the 2020 elections were fraudulent, I don’t believe Donald Trump had a bullet hit his ear. I think the events of 2020 were a psychological operation designed to fragment people globally, pushed a dangerous and untested drug and represented a dark time we should never return to. I think the case of George Floyd was deeply misrepresented by the media, and more recent evidence indicates the entire incident may have been a carefully planned and staged psychological operation¹⁴. I doubt the official Sandy Hook narrative and am concerned about evidence against that narrative being scrubbed from the Internet. I question if the 2019 Christchurch shooting was entirely fake¹⁵, with the censorship in New Zealand being used to cover up the details of the fraud. I question if Charlie Kirk was really killed. I have a lot of beliefs that would be considered fringe.

I have conservative friends who fully believe in Trump, and yet they don’t kick me out of their homes when I cite my issues with the Orange Pedophile Apologist¹⁶¹⁷. A reasonable person who found me a bit too much would probably just not invite me over in the future. I do think that conservatives generally have a higher degree of real tolerance, if not a willingness to debate, than most modern-day progressive liberals. But I also don’t want to give credit to the false left/right dichotomy. The most radical view to hold in America right now is the one that rejects both major political parties.

The Telescreen is a Two-Way Device

The world is not split into black and white, liberal and conservative, or even religious and agnostic. No, the world is split into people who believe what they see on social media or the TV screen, and those who question everything that is being propagandized into their brains. Those who have embraced the term woke think they have been freed from The Matrix or Plato’s cave, when in reality it is impossible to tell if you are inside or outside the illusion. The real message of such parables is to question the nature of the reality you’ve been presented. After all, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it¹⁸.” Doubt is the foundation of science and understanding.

I grew up in an America that embraced debate and the challenge of ideas. Asking someone to leave your home was reserved for the most heinous offenses. It would be an appropriate response to a guest who says, “That was a lovely dinner; now I’m going to rape your wife,” not someone who said, “The earth is flat¹⁹.” There was a time when if someone truly upset you by words they said, you simply wouldn’t invite them over again. We are moving into a realm where the wrong words can get you ejected from someone’s home and their lives.

The needle on what’s acceptable between people has been moving steadily. For years people have been removing friends and family from gatherings, Thanksgivings and other life events based purely on strict adherence to certain ways of thought. The truth about inclusivity is that it’s very exclusive. I make no apologies for the things I said that Friday evening. I think I saw obvious propaganda and stood my ground in pointing it out. I could always be wrong, but rather than engage in reasonable discussion, some people respond with emotional outrage. Ironically, the documentary we were watching was about a woman who claimed she was unable to have peace and quite in her own home, something these acquaintances were able to restore when kicking me out of theirs.