What to do when all The Resistance tactics fail (01-23-2025)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] All right. So I am a giver. And so I would like to offer some advice to Democrats. Stop with the everything's Nazism. Everybody I don't like is Hitler. Just stop with that already. I mean, except, of course, like when you come across people that are, you know, actually Nazis, then OK, yes, tell the say that they're Nazis.

[00:00:52] But this idea that everything is a Nazi, everything is a fascist, everything, everybody are all these terrible things like. You're the boy who cried wolf. Now, I know we don't teach reading, let alone these old stories anymore. So I will tell you that the boy who cried wolf is an old, old story about some village, some place. I kind of feel like it was Germany. Not that it's Nazi. I'm just saying it feels OK, maybe like Bavaria.

[00:01:22] How about that? Does that sound better? It's because this is like old school. This is like this like Beowulf time period where wolves would actually enter villages and eat people. Right. Right. So I'm sure it still happens today. OK, fine. But this was a long time ago. And the story is that this boy in the village. Would would cry wolf and he would see a wolf or so he thought.

[00:01:47] And maybe he first really did think that there was a wolf and everybody would freak out and everybody would race to his aid and they would marshal all the resources, get their pitchforks and stuff. And I mean, they didn't have firearms back then. They weren't invented. So, you know, they all race to his aid. And then. At some point, maybe he realizes, hey, this is kind of cool. I like all the attention. People are listening to me.

[00:02:15] Look at me. I'm on center stage. He was like the original theater kid. And. He would keep doing it. Because he liked the way it made him feel. He liked manipulating people. He liked to have power and control. This is very similar, by the way, to the mindset behind the Salem witch trial girls. All the.

[00:02:41] There's like a band of these girls, two, I think, if I remember correctly, in particular, that were the worst. They made up lies about all of their fellow community members and would perform. They would act out like they'd they'd fall onto the floor and, you know, do these like seizures or something, these fake seizures.

[00:03:07] They would they would act out like, oh, the eyes are rolling in the back of their heads. They had all these little tricks that they would do in order to convict innocent people of being witches and then watch them burn or drown or whatever. The power. I'm important. I'm somebody. Look what I can do to somebody else. It's a pathology. And so the boy who cried wolf cries wolf. He keeps doing it, keeps doing it. Eventually, what?

[00:03:36] The village people are like, this kid's lying. Kid lies all the time. He cries wolf all the time. And there are no wolves. He's just lying. He's doing it for the attention. He's doing it to manipulate us. And so then he cries wolf when there actually is a wolf. And the villagers don't come because they think he's lying again and he's not this time. And then they eat the wolf eats him. The moral of the story is don't live someplace that has wolves nearby. So I would just offer this advice to my friends on the left.

[00:04:06] Stop with everything's race or everything. Well, that too. But but everybody's a Nazi. OK, the latest example of this was the Elon Musk, you know, wave to everybody where he put his hand over his heart. He's thanking the audience at this Trump rally for voting for Trump and for being part of this movement and for helping. And he's overjoyed and he's happy.

[00:04:33] And he does this thing where he puts his hand over his heart and he's like, you know, almost like a fist, like he's grabbing his heart. And then he like and he throws it out. And as he does that, his hand goes out at an incline. Right. In a in a kind of a wave. And his hand is open, palm down. And oh, my gosh, it's sick. Heil Hitler. He's doing the hand sign. And he's not. He obviously. Why are you like? Why do you do this?

[00:05:03] Are you just that neurotic? Like, OK, yes, that's probably the case. But you have to get past this neuroticism. OK. It's stifling your growth. It's making you miserable. These are Elon Musk who literally went to Israel, which I don't think that's something that Hitler would do. I'm just a neo nuts. I don't think they're going on like the the tours of Auschwitz and stuff. I don't think they're doing that. I don't think they're going to a Holocaust from remembrance ceremony.

[00:05:32] I that's not it doesn't seem on brand. Right. Oh, they just did that. So you wouldn't know, Pete. Now, Yasha Monk. He's of the left. He writes a sub stack piece or a blog, and he has some other advice, which you may find a little you may find to be a little bit more helpful if you're of the left, because

[00:06:01] he's like speaking to his people here. And the name of this piece is how not to resist Donald Trump, how not to do it. OK, because at this point, it's been eight years. Right. And we have seen every kind of resistance approach that they could think of. And they just kept doing it and doing it more and more. I heard.

[00:06:31] I heard somebody say this was about something else, but it applies here. Like when the Aztecs first, you know, murdered and sacrifice their the first 25 babies to the on the altar to try to make it rain. And it didn't rain. Right. They didn't turn around and say, hey, maybe we shouldn't sacrifice the babies like, oh, that didn't work. No. What did they do? They're like more babies. Right. Don't do that. OK, don't be like the Aztecs.

[00:06:59] Don't don't think or government for that matter, because this is what GovCo does, too. Like, hey, we threw a million dollars at this problem. And oh, my gosh, the problem got worse rather than saying, hey, maybe what we were doing didn't work. GovCo always says more money at the problem. Right. Don't do that. OK, you have misidentified the problem. And now that I'm thinking about it, actually, this tends to be the common thread is a misidentification of the underlying assumptions.

[00:07:29] Right. Like. It's the same thing with Elon Musk and the Nazi symbol. Like reexamine your underlying assumption. You have misidentified him as some sort of Nazi lover, just like you misidentified every white guy who did the OK sign. That, oh, my gosh, they must be like literally it's been a symbol forever. And literally it was you were trolled by a bunch of four channers.

[00:07:54] They injected that lie into the mainstream media who ran with it. And you have been suckered like you've been tricked. That was a that was a troll job on you and you fell for it. OK. And you fell for it because they know what your underlying assumptions are. They know what you want to be true. You want this thing to be true. And so they just give it to you and then they laugh at you. And the damage that it does to the society, though, is is pretty big.

[00:08:24] So let me get to the Yasha Monk piece. How not to resist Donald Trump.

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[00:09:47] He is of the left and he's talking to his fellow liberals, I guess. I don't know about leftists. I don't know if they're going to follow this, but maybe. Okay. He says if Trump had been elevated to the White House through his series of, this is from 2016. Okay. So you got to go back to when the resistance began, right? And look at the thinking among the leftists as to how could this have happened, right? They were in shock.

[00:10:13] Remember the White House, was it the Rose Garden, I guess, where all of the staffers came out there and they were all weeping, right? Remember that famous video? So if you go back there and you think in the terms that these people were thinking and Sasha Monk or Yasha Monk rather was one of them. Not that he was at the White House, but this was his thinking too.

[00:10:38] And so the thinking is based on this idea that Trump had been elevated to the White House through a series of unfortunate coincidences. Right? I can't believe this happened. How did this happen? Right? They couldn't explain it. And so the best way they thought, because of all these unfortunate coincidences, surely not anything that they did.

[00:11:00] Then the best way to neutralize the danger that he posed to American democracy seemingly then was to oppose him in every possible way. You remember at the time? Well, maybe not. I mean, if you were listening to me when I was on the air in Asheville, this is what I was saying back then, which was Donald Trump is transactional. Right? He's a business guy. He is new to politics. He doesn't know how all of this stuff works.

[00:11:30] Democrats could have basically run the table on him had they just praised him. Had they said, oh, he's fantastic. He's the best Republican governor we've ever or president we've ever worked with. He would have probably given them so much and they just couldn't do it. They just couldn't do it. But the goal back then of the resistance was to stop Trump from taking over the institutions or becoming sufficiently, quote, normalized.

[00:12:00] Remember that? We can't normalize this kind of behavior. Can't let him gain some sort of permanent foothold in American politics. Had that work out. Anyway, Monk says if only his opponents could withstand this unique period of acute danger, it was assumed things would go back to normal. The paradigm of total resistance inspired a wide range of tactics.

[00:12:28] Some were self-defeating. Others, outright delusional. Right? And he runs through some of them, like the serious academics that were calling on the Electoral College to elevate Hillary Clinton to the presidency, even though she lost. Remember that one? Not an insurrection. Totally preserving democracy.

[00:12:51] Cable news hosts on MSNBC spent months and years actually arguing or insinuating that Trump was an actual Russian agent. Some protest movements tried to win over hearts and minds. Plenty of others self-consciously refused to appeal to anybody who might have voted for the president. This was the predominant feeling among many progressives that the people who had voted for Trump, many of my friends and acquaintances told me, were irredeemable racists and bigots.

[00:13:20] Trying to change their minds was futile. Perhaps even morally suspect. The only question should be how to out-mobilize them. Right? People cut off their family and friends. I can't believe half the country is racist. Right? That whole thing. Right? These are part of the, this is the mindset that inspired part of the toolbox of resistance. They're tactics.

[00:13:48] And it didn't work. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing. And then somebody says, hey dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are on dad who says, oh, you know, well, I've been meaning to, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

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[00:14:45] Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Create a Video. Um, breaking news. Donald Trump will be pardoning pro-lifers targeted by the Biden administration. Uh, the pardons would bring immediate relief to those currently imprisoned, including Lauren Handy, serving 57 months in prison.

[00:15:14] John Hinshaw, 21 months. Jonathan Darnell, 34 months. Herb Garrity, 27 months. Gene Marshall, Joan Bell, Paulette Harlow, Bevelin Williams, Heather Adoni, and Calvin Zastrow. And all but Zastrow there at the end, all of those I just read are serving like two years in prison. These were people that were praying in front of abortion clinics.

[00:15:43] And they were sent to prison for two years. They're all getting pardons. So whatever resistance tactics you guys were using, um, they did not work. In fact, they, they, uh, pushed more people into Trump's orbit.

[00:16:02] And now I was watching, uh, I forget what program it was, but they were talking about how, you know, being on the Trump train now is cool. Doing the dance is cool. It's fun. And Democrats did this to themselves. You guys did this to yourselves. Like, you are no longer the party of fun.

[00:16:24] You guys, all growing up, that's what I always, like, you guys were the party, you know, of hip and cool and Hollywood and rock music and all of this. And it was the Republicans that were like fiscal conservatism, you know, anti-gays and all of this. That was always the branding. That is no longer the case. This is what a realignment of the parties looks like.

[00:16:48] And when one party, in this case, the Democrats are intent on becoming the scolds of the society. Very few people want to be a part of that except for the scolds. And I am as surprised as you are that there are that many scolds. But here we are. Back to Yasha Monk's piece at his sub stack. He says getting hundreds of former judges or military.

[00:17:13] This was another tactic that the resistance used to get a whole bunch of people to like write letters to denounce Trump and that that could make a real impact on the on the public opinion. Right. Spoiler alert. It did not. Right. All it did was undermine all of those people's credibility. There were the endless attempts to investigate Trump or impeach Donald Trump. Right. There there were congressional investigations into everything from his tax returns.

[00:17:42] Remember that to his covid-19 response. 2017, there was the first impeachment attempt over his remarks about the unite the right rally in Charlottesville. People forget they were going to they were look Democrats were looking to impeach Donald Trump over the lie that he was referring to the neo-Nazis when he said good people on both sides. Almost half the country still believes that lie.

[00:18:09] And Democrats were trying to use that lie in order to impeach him. That was the first one. Then there was another one about the emoluments clause. Remember that? That was 2018. Then there was the actual first impeachment over the totally perfect phone call with the Ukrainian president. Then there was the second impeachment. Six days before he left office.

[00:18:36] As it turned out, none of these attempts to oppose Trump was particularly effective. Why? Because it was all about the branding. It's all about the messaging. This is why it always is hilarious to me when I hear Democrats say, oh, the reason we didn't win was because our message did just didn't get through. Like you control like every avenue for message dissemination. It's not a matter of it not getting out there. It's a matter of people not believing it, people not adopting it. That's the problem you have.

[00:19:06] It's not that we're not hearing it. It's that we're not listening to it. We're not obeying it. You know? This was the most predictable when it came to the practices and demands that flagrantly broke with the traditions that Democrats claimed to defend. Right? When you say that only you can save the democracy and the way to do it is to install Hillary Clinton after the 2016 election.

[00:19:35] Right? And throw out the electoral college. Right? That's not norm preservation. This was a rejection. Right? The elites, their economic ideas, their ideology. It was so bad. When people saw what you guys wanted to do, they were repulsed.

[00:20:05] And people chose Donald Trump again. I forget. I heard somebody else say this, so I can't claim credit for it. But I apologize. I don't remember who said it. But it's almost like America, like with Donald Trump, America was married to Donald Trump, divorced Donald Trump, and, you know, took the second husband. And the second husband was so bad that they went back and married the first one again.

[00:20:34] That's not a Donald Trump problem. That's a you problem. That's a you problem. But I don't know if they're going to be able to course correct on this. All of these tactics floundered because they were rooted in a mistaken analysis of the situation. For as Trump's resounding reelection has shown, his success was not an aberration, which is what the left thought it was in 2016.

[00:21:03] And what they wanted going into 2020, why all the impeachments and then later all the indictments. Right. What they wanted was the branding. Twice impeached. Twice impeached. Twice impeached. Convicted felon. Forty seven thousand convictions. Whatever. Like, that's all they want. They just want to be able to say it. And it's like there's there's this belief that if they just speak something, it becomes true. And that's not the way this works.

[00:21:33] That's not the way it works. Failure is you and your faulty assumptions running right smack dab into truth, into reality. That's what failure is. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why?

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[00:22:47] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. We're talking about there was a piece by Yasha Monk who is of the left. I don't know where he falls on the political spectrum, but he writes a sub stack. It's pretty well regarded among liberals. And he has this piece called How Not to Resist Donald Trump.

[00:23:15] Sub headline is mistakes we shouldn't make again. And so these are these are warnings to his fellow Democrats. These things that we tried, all of these things, they didn't work. We need to figure out something else. And at the beginning of the piece, he talks about. At the risk of getting banned here off of the podcasting platforms when this thing loads up the great replacement theory, which.

[00:23:40] This was something that liberal demographers wrote about 20 years ago. This is why Democrats were so giddy. They thought they had, you know, demographics is destiny. They had this as their sort of North Star. It's it's the reason why they've been, you know, importing all of the new voters from other countries. There's an idea that if we can get rid of the whites in America, then we will win. Because their coalition.

[00:24:11] Became less and less white. I mean, well, except for the leadership there. I mean, they all stay white. I mean, but the idea here is that if you can get more and more voters onto the roles that are going to vote Democrat because they're coming from, you know, more socialistic countries, shall we say. But they were the ones that came up with this was Rui Teixeira. And this is where that that line demographics is destiny came from.

[00:24:38] And this is why you hear not so much anymore, especially now that Trump won with this diverse coalition. But there was this view that they had adopted that, you know, old white people are dying off. And those are the Fox News viewers. Those are the AM radio listeners. Those are conservatives, Republicans. And so our time is now. Right. And I guess qualifications don't really matter.

[00:25:05] So the DEI stuff works very well with this philosophy because it's just like it's like a handoff. It's like, oh, they have all this power. They didn't earn it. They just got it because of their race and their gender. And so now when they die, we got it. It's all ours because we're not those two things like, well, though, maybe the people that had the power, they got it through something other than just right race and gender. There may be, dare I say the word, meritocracy.

[00:25:33] There may actually have been something like they worked really hard. Right. Maybe they engaged in a whole bunch of illegal activity like the Kennedy's built a fortune, that kind of thing. You know, and then they got power. So that's possible. So that's that was sort of the underpinning. And that has all now collapsed. And they're in trouble because they don't have a leader right now. The Democrat Party, right? They don't have a leader anymore. It's not Harris. No, not Harris.

[00:26:02] Who's the heir apparent for the Democrats right now? Chuck Schumer. It's not Joe Biden anymore. Not Barack Obama. Like, who who who's the figurehead? Most strikingly, he says the narrative according to which Trump's political appeal is restricted to one declining demographic segment of the electorate, widely assumed for the past years to be true. Even among the country's leading political scientists has turned out to be badly wrong.

[00:26:30] Unlike in 2016, Trump's coalition now drew heavily on Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans and even African Americans. The task facing Trump's opponents is much more difficult than it seemed in 2016. The conviction that the diversification of the American electorate will eventually deliver inevitable victories to Trump's opponents now looks hopelessly naive.

[00:26:55] The most obvious ideas about how to oppose him have been tested and found to be wanting. Rather than merely getting through a one time four year emergency for the republic, his opponents need to figure out how to defeat a political movement that has appeal within every major demographic group and now threatens to grow into the dominant force of an entire political era. He sounds scared. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:27:21] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete calendar show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.