I am a newly single man. While the relationship was generally fine, I’d like to let you in on a few interesting observations I made at the end of our time together.  And no, this isn’t going to be some gossip column on any tawdry relationship tidbits, but I would like to share something I noticed that, until that point, I had only ever observed at arm’s length.

Do you happen to remember when a writer once observed during President Trump’s presidency that:

Donald Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally while

Donald Trump’s detractors take him literally but not seriously.

Do you remember that?

When I first read this I thought it was one of the most insightful observations I had ever seen about President Trump and the new world he created. Well, in my most recent relationship, I experienced this disconnect firsthand. And I can tell you from personal experience that this observation extends beyond hatred for our President.

As background, you should know that my ex-girlfriend was a bit, how should I put this? Lefty.  Now, I didn’t necessarily hold this against her.  Sure, it’s easy to dislike, despise or otherwise avoid people who don’t think like we do, but as I initially got to know her she was smart, nice and attractive.  Later, she revealed to me that she came from a fairly conservative and religious family but (and I’m sure you saw this coming), after she went to college, she fell away from the Faith and embraced a more ‘progressive’ outlook. Hardly surprising. Still, at her core she was a nice and intelligent woman. I thought perhaps by merely spending time with a stand-up guy like me might bring her back to the norms that built western civilization? Surely it couldn’t be so difficult to simply expose her to ideas and values she had forgotten at college. A man can hope, right?

Yeah, well, let me tell you a story:

This year, on St. Patrick’s Day, my ex and I went to a St. Patrick’s Day fair at the county fairgrounds. There was Irish music, arts, crafts, food, and Irish sporting competitions such as caber tossing and the like.  The sun was shining, bees were buzzing, it wasn’t too hot.  You get the picture.  It was a good day.

As we wandered around the fair enjoying the event, we both noticed that there was no end of people expressing their true or adopted ‘Irishness.’ Kilts as far as the eye could see!

As we marveled at so many who celebrated Irish heritage, a funny thought struck me: Wouldn’t it be hilarious if a small contingent of actors dressed as British soldiers marched around the fair in formation to playfully hassle the attendees?

If you know me or my sense of humor at all, this idea was just absolutely hilarious to me. The irony butting up against history was just too much. It would be (generally) historically accurate, done all in good fun and have the benefit of never been done before.  It would add an air of fun authenticity to the fair and give people a ‘boogeyman’ to heckle. I thought that having actors dressed as Redcoats would ‘balance the equation’ and the irony of it all was just hilarious to me.

I immediately turned to my ex to share my idea with her.

“Hey! I’ve just had a hilarious idea!  Wouldn’t it be hysterical to have actors dressed as British soldiers marching around the fairgrounds and hassle people?”

As I explored the idea more and more with her, laughing the whole time, she got more and more defensive. And the more I tried to explain why the idea was funny, she got even more defensive. What I thought was just a fun and ironic idea, she took seriously. She even explained why it was such a bad an idea:

“Don’t you realize that the Irish were subjugated by the British?” she said.  “These people have suffered so much at the hands of the British and you want to make fun of it?”

Ehem…”These people?”

“you do realize,” I responded, “that literally none of ‘these people’ have suffered at all by British Tyranny in the 17^th century, right?”

So much for avoiding political conversations with my Lefty girlfriend…

At that point, I wondered if she was about to also tell me that the fair attendees deserved reparations for the historical evils the British never did to them.

Didn’t she realize that I was merely riffing on an idea that I thought was simply ironic and funny? I mean, my God, I wasn’t seriously considering placing an ‘actors wanted’ ad on Craigslist, didn’t she realize this?

Her mistake was the same mistake that the writer observed as a difference between Trump lovers and Trump haters: She took seriously what was meant as a joke. She took it so seriously, in fact, as to render my funny idea offensive.

It was in this moment that I realized that the detox job I had ahead of me to rid this poor woman of the Leftist brainwashing she had suffered was a much larger job than I was willing to undertake. I just wasn’t up to it. I’m sure many of you who have already been down this road know that trying to talk sense to cult members is exhausting.

And then I had my second insight: Even though it may happen automatically and unconsciously, those on the Left take our jokes seriously as a technique to FIND a reason to dislike us. So mindless and programmed to hate us and our values that they must create false outrage to give them the emotional cover to back up their irrational (programmed) hatred. Their outrage gives them purpose. Anger is a drug, my friends. And we are surrounded by addicts.

Leftists are so steeped in their controlled and contrived patterns of thought that many simply can’t help their anger. They are automatons reacting, but never creating.

This woman, as nice, intelligent and agreeable as she may have been, was so engrained in her patterns of thought that she couldn’t accept that someone close to her for whom she cared might NOT be an insensitive, offensive monster; her programming was stronger than her favorable emotions towards me.

Are her and others like her so in their programming as to constitute a hopeless problem?  I don’t know. But I do know that we are heading towards a short, sharp shock to the national senses and time will tell how we collectively handle it. Some will be broken from their dreamlike state while others may burrow deeper into it.  All in all, the writer who first observed the mirror image of how we consider Donald Trump and our values, extend beyond there mere dislike for a single man; it is a manifestation of their very evil programming and nothing more.

Sincerely,

R. Altomare

Founder, BreathEasy

The free app that is the patriot’s tool to fight back against woke businesses!