Thank you Savodnik for informing us of Arizona senate race. On Trump and “half the country bows and the other half reviles”; majority of voters are not Democrat, nor Republican- and vote for or against a major presidential candidate based on a personal analysis of “Which candidate will do less harm.” Some of us who are Democrat or Republican also do that. On the guy dressing “inappropriately” in a suit to an event - I like it when people err on the side of caution. Better to over-dress than under-dress. And if he is a “suit person” doing business, which he was - then I don’t see a problem. I wore a suit and carried a briefcase to my first event in graduate school because I thought you were supposed to do that. Everyone else was in shorts.
Thank you. I vote in AZ. I appreciated the article. Living in IL during the summer months my husband and I don't have enough information about those running in AZ. Blake Masters impresses me as the kind of man who can keep AZ Republican.
I actually agree with what I believe the central thrust of your argument to be. I never said “the election was stolen”, in the sense that you set up there. I simply stated what I saw and the suspicion that it brought to mind. I could go on much more as to why I might have come to that suspicion. I could site other personal anecdotes, things that I have witnessed, that make it clear to me that the DNC (or at least local factions thereof) have been working pretty hard to recruit and get organized, in a grassroots way. Nothing wrong with that. I’ve just noticed it, and the contrast to having never seen any of it among Republicans. It shows an “activism” element that happens to coincide with a pervasive activism (much of which has been illegal eg Russia-gate) on the national scale.
As far as whether election tampering reached levels that could creat a different result, I seriously doubt that.
But I will add that they are diligently working toward that end with legislation, one central thrust of which is to make it ultimately impossible to validate the integrity of votes.
Giggling at the opprobium and "outrage" taken by a column that comes off as mildly skeptical of some right wing figures, given the regular diet here of broad based assumptions and groupings of "the left" and of Democrats in general, where every single "outraged" respondent will self congratulate in those "left critical" articles for their "moderate" and "open mindedness" common sense.
Can anyone tell me what a legit crtique of the Right would look like? Because so far, not a single post in Common Sense that even subtly leans in that direction has fit the bill based on the commentary reaction, so I'm just curous about what some of these posters would engage in as "good faith" criticism of the Right, and whether or not some of the same critiques being applied to this article applies, at all, to some of the massive group formed "conclusions" about the "left" and "Democrats".
And before you leap, know I am a center-left still registered Democrat (for the time being) that is concerned about the directions of "woke" and finds legitimacy with the critques provided here, which, is basically why I'm here. I just wonder if the "common sense" (and clearly conservative/Republican leaning majority) is capable of a critique of "your side"? Would you stick around if Common Sense offered a 50/50 balance of left/right critique or is it only "anti-woke" porn all the time that drives this blog?
I don't think scepticism (never mind sarcasm) is too appreciated here with many of the conservative posters on Common Sense (which is pretty much everyone) - especially when it veers close to their sacred cows.
It does appear that many of the readers here, many of them quite intelligent, want nothing more than an echo chamber as they self congratulate among like minds. Many of their points are valid,
and I tell them so - but when there's criticism, well, that doesn't go down so well.
Thanks :) I agree - I think the overall quality of the commentors, particularly for a majority right leaning audience, is way above the sort you get elsewhere, and I do get that the majority here are sincere in their beliefs and concerns, but yeah, there's a massive blindness to the faults of the Right, and why even though libs like myself are skeptical of the "woke overreach" (particulalry when it is seeping into institutions like medicine and law and not just a campus preoccupation or the less serious stuff like the "woke" coffee shop getting pwned by its employees) but why I cannot at this juncture of the GOP ever consider voting for a MAGA or even regular Republican because the center of gravity in the GOP is around the MAGA portion.
I would love to have an option to vote for a center-left economic party with a more or less "live and let live" approach to the social/cultural wars and that had its focus more on the broad center of the electorate and not handfuls of hyper-progressive academics and media elites (and I do realize that is actually the makeup of the "real" Democratic Party's voters versus the leadership and most vocally and easily caricatured online presence), but the GOP has become deeply concerning with its steps towards cruel state authoritarianism as the response to woke trends and specifically with its approach to democratic elections these days, while still being the vehicle for conservative rich billionaire styled economics - they have not, at all, reconciled this contradiction with this "working class populism" and the proof is freaking Peter Theil as a recent power mover in the GOP that won't be changing anytime soon, regardless how much "crunchy cons" want it to be true that the "real" legacy of Trump is going to be some revamp of GOP economic policy into family centric economics, nope not currently. The REAL legacy of Trump is the emboldened capabililty to legalize electoral coup attempts on baseless grounds of fraud and the exponential increase in belligerance as politics as well as tolerance for corruption and state power as legit means to some supposed virtuous end. It won't also be.
The whole 'working class populism' construct was bogus the minute a philistine, boorish Manhattan real estate narcissist took control of the Republican reins and pretended to be the fan of the everyman...who bought it hook, line, and sinker.
A contradiction that certainly, in my mind, rivals your worthy one of Theil's.
I'd say it even goes back a bit farther - have you read Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter with Kansas?"
And his more recent "Listen, Liberal!" is a good punch at what was then the emerging "wokeness" of the party that began killing it with the working class..
So what!! Are we going to hear anything from this acerbic polemical writer about AOC, Elizabeth Warren or any of the Dems side of the elite libs pols striving to be Biden 2.0????? Please!!! He’s a Maureen Dowd wanna be
I dislike it when journalists call people who voted for Trump as “bowing down” to him. I don’t bow down to any politician, and the celebrity worship of political figures in the US is pathetic to me.
I have voted for Bush Sr, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama and… Trump! Big Orange! A friend of mine recently told me to never tell people that I voted for Kerry, because I would embarrass myself. I never paid attention to politics much, and I live in deep blue, Hillary Land, so that’s how I voted. Mainly by default.
But then I woke up, or maybe I grew up. Living life’s journey as we all are. I would love to see people being nicer to other who have political differences. I have to say that my Conservative, Republican husband never put me down for my voting record, or my beliefs, nor my family, and they were very kind and tolerant, looking back now. I want to pay it forward. I’m trying.
I'm sure the phrasing is largely drawn from the obsequious behavior of current and wannabe Republican politicians and the RNC. Mike Pence is a great example: Trump continues to attack and denigrate Pence for basically performing his Constitutionally restricted duties, despite a mob hungering to "hang Pence" based off of Trump's words (and then there's that mob behavior too - which was hanging on Trump's rally speech and Tweets to further their action with), yet Pence can't find it in his vocabulary or whatever serves as his spine and/or testicles to clap back at Trump. Pence, pathetically, thinks he has a shot at the Republican primary so long as he doesn't cross that bold line of *actually criticizing Trump* (he doesn't have a shot anyway). And this was after Pence's rather embarrasing displays of "Trump piety devotion" before Jan 6, all the weird gazes and behavior mimicry and equally as weird comments about Trump's "broad shoulders" and physique (pretty much as if Pence never saw Trump absent makeup, shoe lifts and oversized boxy suits and padding in his thin (cheap? dare I say?) materialed golf attire to get to the truth of that).
The gist of the article is that Masters is yet another contender in a field where "Trump piety" is basically the key to access, but exceeding it on some scale is what makes the difference. FWIW, I would be fairly skeptical of any Peter Theil backed former finance and investment types as "working class populists" to begin with, if you research Theil and his rather "odd" set of beliefs you'll see what I mean, and I just think this new wave of Theil backed candidates have their fingers in the wind and are LARPing to the best of their abilities what they have come to believe what is required to win a Republican primary these days.
The RNC is still paying Trump's legal bills, despite Trump actively competing against the RNC for fundraising and being very, very stingy with his money. The 180s so many Republicans and wannabes have taken just to get an endorsement and not find a Trump backed primary challenger waiting for them. Etc. It is a "thing" - and yes, sadly, there is a core of his support base that is living in a mass reality distortion field when it comes to Trump, The Man, as well as of his supposed record of achievements, as well as his record of blemishes. And therefore, there is some basis that this "Trump piety" of the politicians is driven off their belief of the Republican bases's "Trump piety" - are they wrong?
Last paragraph, RNC: it ultimately boils down to playing politics. As far as people go, they should not be underestimated using sweeping generalities. Underestimating people on any level is a mistake and is unwise.
I voted for Obama the first time and then had voter's remorse. I completely agree that this "bowing down" to Trump language is distasteful. I sure as heck voted for Trump against Biden who went to Town Halls and celebrated the "transing" of an 8 year old girl as the "Civil Rights movement of our time". We should not be celebrating harming children and we should not be celebrating mental illness in adults instead of helping them. Biden is an even worse president than I expected which is pretty bad. Shouldn't we have been talking about his failed 1988 campaign (loads of lies) and shouldn't we now be talking about the failures of his administration which are legion? Instead we are still hearing about people "bowing down" to "orange". Lunacy.
I was so disgusted by this commentary I was very close to cancelling my subscription with a short obscenity. I often read the left, but I take pains to avoid funding them. Reading the comments restored my faith in substack, if not Barri's choice of commentators.
The slant of this piece really turned me off. Rather than saying here is where we disagree with this guy, it becomes a very obvious smear job.
One of the qualities of this substack is that it is supposed to look at the issues and players and apply sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts (aka: the definition of common sense). Smear jobs like this, albeit against someone maybe a common sense look would also say is an extremist that shouldn't win, does the opposite effect. It makes people wonder what is the "real story", as if there is something being hidden.
Leave it out. Focus on the last line then you have something really telling.
"If we don’t take the Senate back, the Democrats might be able to get their agenda through, and then the country’s over."
This tells me that he doesn't believe in compromise and working together to solve problems and deal with our real enemies: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The more divisive we are, the better they are and they love it.
In spite of all the evil we think we have here, I would much rather deal with our evil than the secret police, corrupt power-hungry politicians (they aren't corrupt btw, that is their 'normal'), extremism against the other, and complete lack of morals and ethics in those four countries.
So, when someone here completely vilifies an entire group that represents maybe 50% of our country, I wonder if they understand what WE are up against.
But you're cool if about 90% of the pieces here vilify the other 50% or so of the country? Or at least as extrapolated by the commentariat that every anecodote of "woke gone amock" within a socially "aware" coffee shop run by perhaps, naive owners, gets pwned by some cynical "workers on the grounds of failing to uphold a moving target of standards is somehow representative of the entire Democratic Party political apparatus, and its millions of voters spread across the country, some of whom subscribe and comment here about their concerns of this "wokeness" viral phenomenon but who are also not going to just fall in line with GOP/Trumpist alternatives - and nor pretend that the "flaws" on the Right, as we're allowed to claim them, are simply failure to perform to standards rather than some much more cogent "problems" with where a lot of this "Demonrat" ideology and rhetoric is leading.
I mean, it does go both ways. You can't come here for the anti-woke porn, extrapolate that against every single Democrat in the country and theorize to an audience of eager upvotes about the planned "evils" of the Democratic Left, and claim open mindedness in this "critique" if you can't absorb even the most tepid of skepticism about some figures and movements of the Right.
This is the first candidate I heard who spoke to ESG Scores, woke capital, and Chinese social credit system. I wish more candidates would make that a major issue to run on, but not a word on it.
I had not heard of Masters before this article but I think he is right that if we don't take the Senate back the Democrats might be able to get all of their reality defying Gender Ideological agenda through and then the country really is over. "Women" will just be whatever anyone feels.
And I must take issue with this complaint regarding his Trump endorsement "he whom half the nation bows down to and the other half burns in effigy" I think it is very silly to repeat this "bowing down" meme. We are Americans. We do not bow down to people.
As for, "he called Democrats ”psychopaths”". Your Democrat neighbor likely is not a psychopath, however, this is the party that is losing minorities and the working class in favor of being the party of the country club set which endorses the fashionable DSM5 portion of LGBTQ-DSM5 and all of the psychopaths who are along for the ride with that.
THIS!!!!! Well fucking done!
Thank you Savodnik for informing us of Arizona senate race. On Trump and “half the country bows and the other half reviles”; majority of voters are not Democrat, nor Republican- and vote for or against a major presidential candidate based on a personal analysis of “Which candidate will do less harm.” Some of us who are Democrat or Republican also do that. On the guy dressing “inappropriately” in a suit to an event - I like it when people err on the side of caution. Better to over-dress than under-dress. And if he is a “suit person” doing business, which he was - then I don’t see a problem. I wore a suit and carried a briefcase to my first event in graduate school because I thought you were supposed to do that. Everyone else was in shorts.
Fail. I, and I suspect most, subscribers to this outlet are looking for more transparent, more illuminating discussions than this one.
More on the Democrats being the party that does give cover to psychopaths. Masters didn't make it up:
"Biden Admin Sued for Holding School Lunch Money Hostage Over Transgender Policies"
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/07/27/biden-admin-sued-for-holding-school-lunch-money-hostage-over-transgender-policies-n1616191
"California Democrats Move to Make State a 'Sanctuary' for Child Sex Change Surgery"
https://neonnettle.com/news/19709-california-democrats-move-to-make-state-a-sanctuary-for-child-sex-change-surgery
"California Democrats Pass Bill Protecting 'Gay Sex' with Minors
CA legislature passes law claiming current child abuse laws 'discriminate against LGBTQ'"
https://neonnettle.com/news/12521-california-democrats-pass-bill-protecting-gay-sex-with-minors
Thank you. I vote in AZ. I appreciated the article. Living in IL during the summer months my husband and I don't have enough information about those running in AZ. Blake Masters impresses me as the kind of man who can keep AZ Republican.
I wonder if Blake Masters, as he grabs the mantle of being the post Trump Trump - believes in the peaceful transfer of power.
I actually agree with what I believe the central thrust of your argument to be. I never said “the election was stolen”, in the sense that you set up there. I simply stated what I saw and the suspicion that it brought to mind. I could go on much more as to why I might have come to that suspicion. I could site other personal anecdotes, things that I have witnessed, that make it clear to me that the DNC (or at least local factions thereof) have been working pretty hard to recruit and get organized, in a grassroots way. Nothing wrong with that. I’ve just noticed it, and the contrast to having never seen any of it among Republicans. It shows an “activism” element that happens to coincide with a pervasive activism (much of which has been illegal eg Russia-gate) on the national scale.
As far as whether election tampering reached levels that could creat a different result, I seriously doubt that.
But I will add that they are diligently working toward that end with legislation, one central thrust of which is to make it ultimately impossible to validate the integrity of votes.
“Let’s acknowledge that they’re a small minority, and that they’re not the norm.”
Redundant. Factual, but redundant.
Giggling at the opprobium and "outrage" taken by a column that comes off as mildly skeptical of some right wing figures, given the regular diet here of broad based assumptions and groupings of "the left" and of Democrats in general, where every single "outraged" respondent will self congratulate in those "left critical" articles for their "moderate" and "open mindedness" common sense.
Can anyone tell me what a legit crtique of the Right would look like? Because so far, not a single post in Common Sense that even subtly leans in that direction has fit the bill based on the commentary reaction, so I'm just curous about what some of these posters would engage in as "good faith" criticism of the Right, and whether or not some of the same critiques being applied to this article applies, at all, to some of the massive group formed "conclusions" about the "left" and "Democrats".
And before you leap, know I am a center-left still registered Democrat (for the time being) that is concerned about the directions of "woke" and finds legitimacy with the critques provided here, which, is basically why I'm here. I just wonder if the "common sense" (and clearly conservative/Republican leaning majority) is capable of a critique of "your side"? Would you stick around if Common Sense offered a 50/50 balance of left/right critique or is it only "anti-woke" porn all the time that drives this blog?
Good post.
I don't think scepticism (never mind sarcasm) is too appreciated here with many of the conservative posters on Common Sense (which is pretty much everyone) - especially when it veers close to their sacred cows.
It does appear that many of the readers here, many of them quite intelligent, want nothing more than an echo chamber as they self congratulate among like minds. Many of their points are valid,
and I tell them so - but when there's criticism, well, that doesn't go down so well.
Thanks :) I agree - I think the overall quality of the commentors, particularly for a majority right leaning audience, is way above the sort you get elsewhere, and I do get that the majority here are sincere in their beliefs and concerns, but yeah, there's a massive blindness to the faults of the Right, and why even though libs like myself are skeptical of the "woke overreach" (particulalry when it is seeping into institutions like medicine and law and not just a campus preoccupation or the less serious stuff like the "woke" coffee shop getting pwned by its employees) but why I cannot at this juncture of the GOP ever consider voting for a MAGA or even regular Republican because the center of gravity in the GOP is around the MAGA portion.
I would love to have an option to vote for a center-left economic party with a more or less "live and let live" approach to the social/cultural wars and that had its focus more on the broad center of the electorate and not handfuls of hyper-progressive academics and media elites (and I do realize that is actually the makeup of the "real" Democratic Party's voters versus the leadership and most vocally and easily caricatured online presence), but the GOP has become deeply concerning with its steps towards cruel state authoritarianism as the response to woke trends and specifically with its approach to democratic elections these days, while still being the vehicle for conservative rich billionaire styled economics - they have not, at all, reconciled this contradiction with this "working class populism" and the proof is freaking Peter Theil as a recent power mover in the GOP that won't be changing anytime soon, regardless how much "crunchy cons" want it to be true that the "real" legacy of Trump is going to be some revamp of GOP economic policy into family centric economics, nope not currently. The REAL legacy of Trump is the emboldened capabililty to legalize electoral coup attempts on baseless grounds of fraud and the exponential increase in belligerance as politics as well as tolerance for corruption and state power as legit means to some supposed virtuous end. It won't also be.
Well, Wednesday cheers on that happy note ;P
The whole 'working class populism' construct was bogus the minute a philistine, boorish Manhattan real estate narcissist took control of the Republican reins and pretended to be the fan of the everyman...who bought it hook, line, and sinker.
A contradiction that certainly, in my mind, rivals your worthy one of Theil's.
Cheers..from Thursday.
LOL exactly ; P
I'd say it even goes back a bit farther - have you read Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter with Kansas?"
And his more recent "Listen, Liberal!" is a good punch at what was then the emerging "wokeness" of the party that began killing it with the working class..
Proving once again, I suppose, that the Republican's only saving grace is they aren't the Democrats.
So what!! Are we going to hear anything from this acerbic polemical writer about AOC, Elizabeth Warren or any of the Dems side of the elite libs pols striving to be Biden 2.0????? Please!!! He’s a Maureen Dowd wanna be
I dislike it when journalists call people who voted for Trump as “bowing down” to him. I don’t bow down to any politician, and the celebrity worship of political figures in the US is pathetic to me.
I have voted for Bush Sr, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama and… Trump! Big Orange! A friend of mine recently told me to never tell people that I voted for Kerry, because I would embarrass myself. I never paid attention to politics much, and I live in deep blue, Hillary Land, so that’s how I voted. Mainly by default.
But then I woke up, or maybe I grew up. Living life’s journey as we all are. I would love to see people being nicer to other who have political differences. I have to say that my Conservative, Republican husband never put me down for my voting record, or my beliefs, nor my family, and they were very kind and tolerant, looking back now. I want to pay it forward. I’m trying.
I'm sure the phrasing is largely drawn from the obsequious behavior of current and wannabe Republican politicians and the RNC. Mike Pence is a great example: Trump continues to attack and denigrate Pence for basically performing his Constitutionally restricted duties, despite a mob hungering to "hang Pence" based off of Trump's words (and then there's that mob behavior too - which was hanging on Trump's rally speech and Tweets to further their action with), yet Pence can't find it in his vocabulary or whatever serves as his spine and/or testicles to clap back at Trump. Pence, pathetically, thinks he has a shot at the Republican primary so long as he doesn't cross that bold line of *actually criticizing Trump* (he doesn't have a shot anyway). And this was after Pence's rather embarrasing displays of "Trump piety devotion" before Jan 6, all the weird gazes and behavior mimicry and equally as weird comments about Trump's "broad shoulders" and physique (pretty much as if Pence never saw Trump absent makeup, shoe lifts and oversized boxy suits and padding in his thin (cheap? dare I say?) materialed golf attire to get to the truth of that).
The gist of the article is that Masters is yet another contender in a field where "Trump piety" is basically the key to access, but exceeding it on some scale is what makes the difference. FWIW, I would be fairly skeptical of any Peter Theil backed former finance and investment types as "working class populists" to begin with, if you research Theil and his rather "odd" set of beliefs you'll see what I mean, and I just think this new wave of Theil backed candidates have their fingers in the wind and are LARPing to the best of their abilities what they have come to believe what is required to win a Republican primary these days.
The RNC is still paying Trump's legal bills, despite Trump actively competing against the RNC for fundraising and being very, very stingy with his money. The 180s so many Republicans and wannabes have taken just to get an endorsement and not find a Trump backed primary challenger waiting for them. Etc. It is a "thing" - and yes, sadly, there is a core of his support base that is living in a mass reality distortion field when it comes to Trump, The Man, as well as of his supposed record of achievements, as well as his record of blemishes. And therefore, there is some basis that this "Trump piety" of the politicians is driven off their belief of the Republican bases's "Trump piety" - are they wrong?
Last paragraph, RNC: it ultimately boils down to playing politics. As far as people go, they should not be underestimated using sweeping generalities. Underestimating people on any level is a mistake and is unwise.
I voted for Obama the first time and then had voter's remorse. I completely agree that this "bowing down" to Trump language is distasteful. I sure as heck voted for Trump against Biden who went to Town Halls and celebrated the "transing" of an 8 year old girl as the "Civil Rights movement of our time". We should not be celebrating harming children and we should not be celebrating mental illness in adults instead of helping them. Biden is an even worse president than I expected which is pretty bad. Shouldn't we have been talking about his failed 1988 campaign (loads of lies) and shouldn't we now be talking about the failures of his administration which are legion? Instead we are still hearing about people "bowing down" to "orange". Lunacy.
I was so disgusted by this commentary I was very close to cancelling my subscription with a short obscenity. I often read the left, but I take pains to avoid funding them. Reading the comments restored my faith in substack, if not Barri's choice of commentators.
The slant of this piece really turned me off. Rather than saying here is where we disagree with this guy, it becomes a very obvious smear job.
One of the qualities of this substack is that it is supposed to look at the issues and players and apply sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts (aka: the definition of common sense). Smear jobs like this, albeit against someone maybe a common sense look would also say is an extremist that shouldn't win, does the opposite effect. It makes people wonder what is the "real story", as if there is something being hidden.
Leave it out. Focus on the last line then you have something really telling.
"If we don’t take the Senate back, the Democrats might be able to get their agenda through, and then the country’s over."
This tells me that he doesn't believe in compromise and working together to solve problems and deal with our real enemies: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The more divisive we are, the better they are and they love it.
In spite of all the evil we think we have here, I would much rather deal with our evil than the secret police, corrupt power-hungry politicians (they aren't corrupt btw, that is their 'normal'), extremism against the other, and complete lack of morals and ethics in those four countries.
So, when someone here completely vilifies an entire group that represents maybe 50% of our country, I wonder if they understand what WE are up against.
But you're cool if about 90% of the pieces here vilify the other 50% or so of the country? Or at least as extrapolated by the commentariat that every anecodote of "woke gone amock" within a socially "aware" coffee shop run by perhaps, naive owners, gets pwned by some cynical "workers on the grounds of failing to uphold a moving target of standards is somehow representative of the entire Democratic Party political apparatus, and its millions of voters spread across the country, some of whom subscribe and comment here about their concerns of this "wokeness" viral phenomenon but who are also not going to just fall in line with GOP/Trumpist alternatives - and nor pretend that the "flaws" on the Right, as we're allowed to claim them, are simply failure to perform to standards rather than some much more cogent "problems" with where a lot of this "Demonrat" ideology and rhetoric is leading.
I mean, it does go both ways. You can't come here for the anti-woke porn, extrapolate that against every single Democrat in the country and theorize to an audience of eager upvotes about the planned "evils" of the Democratic Left, and claim open mindedness in this "critique" if you can't absorb even the most tepid of skepticism about some figures and movements of the Right.
This is the first candidate I heard who spoke to ESG Scores, woke capital, and Chinese social credit system. I wish more candidates would make that a major issue to run on, but not a word on it.
Yes, I'd never heard of Masters before but he sounds pretty good.
I had not heard of Masters before this article but I think he is right that if we don't take the Senate back the Democrats might be able to get all of their reality defying Gender Ideological agenda through and then the country really is over. "Women" will just be whatever anyone feels.
And I must take issue with this complaint regarding his Trump endorsement "he whom half the nation bows down to and the other half burns in effigy" I think it is very silly to repeat this "bowing down" meme. We are Americans. We do not bow down to people.
As for, "he called Democrats ”psychopaths”". Your Democrat neighbor likely is not a psychopath, however, this is the party that is losing minorities and the working class in favor of being the party of the country club set which endorses the fashionable DSM5 portion of LGBTQ-DSM5 and all of the psychopaths who are along for the ride with that.
See: https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-does-trans-have-no-boundaries and
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/desantis-gender-affirming-care-is-a-euphemism-for-castration-mastectomy-sterilization/ and
"Child sex abuse center hires professor who faced backlash over pedophile comments"
https://nypost.com/2022/05/13/johns-hopkins-center-hires-professor-who-faced-pedophile-comment-backlash/
"And he wore a jacket and tie, which made him look like he wanted the job too much" Gosh that clothing choice is enough to be against him (g)?
"“My pledge to you is to play offense,” Masters said" This is what we need!
Masters is right about Big Tech and controlling what we hear.
And, I am a former Independent.