Some days are just for self reflection

I used to like Trump and then I did not and then I did again and...

I have had two extremely busy weeks in my new job and therefore very little time to write. Let’s hope the future brings more balance for me.

It is 8:28pm on a Sunday and I am waiting for my husband to finish his shower, so we can end the weekend together on the couch watching a movie or some show. Not sure what, yet.

I did not really plan on writing, but just accidentally came across an article that made me sad. A young runner wrote about how fatigue made her a slower runner and has done so for years. At first, I thought the article was written by an older runner. But no, she must be somewhat in her late 20s or early 30s. She got hit by a permanently settled fatigue way too soon. It made me sad, because all I read between her lines was a deep sadness about someone with so many athletic goals and plans that were all disappeared by a body that is betraying her and no doctor seems to be able to fix.

I am currently experimenting with my nutrition. I have the suspicion that I have some histamine intolerance; probably driven by the hormonal chaos that is perimenopause. I just had enough of the fatigue, the constant sneezing, the teary eyes, the constantly stuffy nose, and just not feeling like myself. So, I am cutting out alcohol, in particular the wine I typically enjoy in the evening, and some foods like cured meats, kimchi, and other fermented foods. I have been reasonably strict for a couple of days…

… just to wake up with severe brain fog, teary eyes that would not go away, and just an overall feeling of unwellness. Not like I was going to be sick, but more the usual.. fuck this condition, I might as well enjoy wine if nothing I do helps. There was just no real reason for my symptoms to be this bad.

The teary eyes today, really got to me.

And yes, it does not help that the world seems to go more crazy by the minute. The left is in full blown narcissistic rage. Some of my best friends seem to fall into a deeper and deeper abyss of insanity. I have a friend who is calling every government representative in all States she can to explain how she is opposing ICE. And even after I have explained my position on illegal immigration, does not seem to grasp that there is no net positive to mass immigration from Middle Eastern and African countries. Not if there is no willingness to assimilate and if there are no shared values.

And I do not know how there is no common grounds in conversations anymore. Where friends that I went to college with and had so much in common with can now look at the same data points and draw not only opposite conclusions, but also do not see the data the same way. They only see what they want to see. As if they all wore glasses that would obstruct reality from showing through.

I cannot understand this mental rigidness.

I still find myself holding my breath every time I am thinking the Trump administration did something great. I do not dare to celebrate any win, because there is always the creeping thought in the back of my mind “What if I am wrong? What if what I am seeing is not how it actually is?”

This is how strong my leftist brain was positioned before 2016 and how hard it is to recover from the stronghold.

Which is amazing, because when I moved to the US, the first season of “The Apprentice” kicked off and I was an committed watcher. I loved the show. I had just started my MBA and I felt this reality show gave me enough insights into corporate America that could give me an edge during my studies.

I know that I am a decent judge of character. Based on my upbringing having to read the fine nuances and shifts in the mood of my parents I learned to read people like a book. I always claim I can read minds, which clearly is not true, but I definitely can read people much better than most.

I liked the person that was Donald Trump. Brutally honest, direct, and funny.

I did not think he was sexist, because I did not see evidence of that. His right hand was a woman (anyone remember Carolyn Kepcher?) and the women on the show did just as well as the men. So I thought. If at all, it was the women that played on their sex appeal and made it a thing. Not Trump putting them up for it.

Somehow over the next 12 years my perception changed drastically. Like a frog in slowly boiling water, I had my opinion switched. Replaced with a form of TDS.

When Trump won the presidential election for the first time I was devastated. I was living in Europe at the time and could not understand what was going on. To me at the time, he was clearly sexist (we all remember the “grab her by the pussy” comment) and I could not understand why anyone would vote for him when there was such a qualified woman like Hillary Clinton available. To me, the world was crazy.

And all of that after I had already read “No one left to lie to” by Christopher Hitchens. An assessment of Bill Clinton ultimately concluding him to be a corrupt and crooked. Highlighting also Hillary’s role as his accomplice.

I always thought that the series “House of Cards” was based on the Clinton’s and their power hungriness.

But yet… in 2016 I whined about Trump being president along with everyone else. The only reason why I did not walk around with a pink pussy hat was that… I lived in Germany from 2015 to 2017 and they were not available there. Since I suck at knitting and crocheting there was no real way for me to acquire one.

In hindsight, it is amazing how I abandoned my own personal judgment around Trump and pushed a person’s viewpoint aside who I admired and believed to be a truth teller (Hitchens).

All, because I stopped thinking independently and kept the line I had maintained since the 1990s that divided the political landscape into good actors (left) and bad actors (right) without applying any new lessons learned.

I knew that the Clintons were questionable. But did not apply that knowledge to my thinking. It was like new data did not penetrate my ability to form thoughts.

These days equipped with the knowledge of the past ten years including an ugly divorce when I found my former husband cheating on me, makes it even harder to look back and understand the bad judgment on my part.

Any woman who stays behind a man who cheats on her with a subordinate shows a lack of character that makes her not a good choice for public office. It shows lack of boundaries, poor choice in spouse, and … a corruptness. Yes, I believe Hillary Clinton cares about one person only: herself. And she loves power.

I had to go through personal troubles to learn to think independently. A divorce and the ALS death from my mom did that. Covid and the aftermath was just a shocking revelation that the majority of people are just not capable of this growth without a triggering disaster. People need catastrophes to reform their thought process. Without a shake up or without hitting emotional rock bottom, most just stay the course.

Most just lie to themselves and others to avoid confronting their own errors and mistakes.

Most people double down on bad ideas.

That is why you have leftists arguing on X that they would not mind if a foreigner moved into their house without invitation; they would just let them live there. Kind of like we all should and must have illegals live among us; after all they are already here. That is enough for many to grant them citizen-like rights. They can cry over the death of people like George Floyd, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, but ignore the death of anyone who was killed at the hand of illegal aliens. They built a parallel moral-system that avoids looking at established laws and western values.

The same people can go on vacation in Europe and not see the decline of public safety and infrastructure.

They are caught in their own mental bubble hypnotized by their self-admiration of how good and righteous they are.

What they do not know is that when they asked the magical mirror on the wall to show them a modern day Nazi-follower that all they would see is …

… a reflection of themselves.

Because only now more than 80 years after the end of World War II do I understand why so many people were able to let the holocaust and all these atrocities happen. They let it happen, because they believed it was the right thing to do. The behavior we saw in Germany in the 1930s was not an anomaly, but just normal human behavior when humans believe they are following a higher purpose and are pursuing an ideal.

Just like the extreme left.

Just like my peers in Minneapolis.

Let’s hope we are not all becoming Minnesota nice.