Bryan

Buddy of mine had PTSD after the GWOT Smart, brave, but just came back to a world where people were disconnected from reality It wasn't really about what he saw or experienced, though plenty of that was horrific, it was that he saw how the world really works Stakes were high, failure meant death, the day to day was existential, everyone understood the realities of violence and power Moving from that to a US which was in the middle of a woke revolution was jarring, hyper-feminine cultures dominated by trans pronouns and safe spaces It wasn't that explosions, blood, or death haunted him, it's that everyone else seemed to be living in this completely delusional childish bubble and they expected a guy who had spent a decade knee-deep in reality to play along He eventually figured out how to keep his mouth shut though he still generally views the people around him as some mixture of childish and insane Obviously he is dealing with something more real than I will in that area, but it's hard not to view mainstream conservatives the same way They have this childish narrative about power, and no matter how clear it's made to them that their narrative is utterly disconnected from reality they insist that their fantasy land is the way power is supposed to work But it doesn't, it never did, and it never will That story was fed to them to make them passive and easy to rule, but they cling to it like it's their birthright, their version of "there are 207 genders" Everyday something like Charlie Kirk's shooting or the storming of a church will snap a few more conservatives out of their fantasy and into reality You can see the moment it happens because like crabs in a bucket mainstream conservates swarm them, demanding that they forget what they have seen and return to talking about small government, military deployments, and tax cuts But the problem was never my friend who saw how the world really worked in the GWOT, it was always the people who demanded that he forget that and return to the bubble of fake performative nonsense The problem is not the people who see where the left is inevitably taking us, the problem is those that demand we close our eyes real tight, grasp our pocket constitutions, and think of MLK Jr. while our churches burn