For me, it was my sister proudly stating she'd work for any company, and even the IDF, if it meant better money and success in her STEM field as my family nodded along in support as if that was not a heartbreaking thing for someone to say

And I used to be one too. TLDR: I used to support extreme right wing policies in high school after having been semi radicalized by my step dad who vehemently supports Trump to cope with having to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

Me (22) and my stepdad (61) have polar opposite political beliefs but it feels like not so long ago we were at least ideologically similar. Now I listen to behind the bastards and hear about people he idolizes. I see the fight in him, I swear he’s addicted to that adrenaline you can get when you are arguing with someone passionately. That feeling and how to chase that adrenaline is what Fox News and Newsmax actually teach anyone more than anything. How to be uncompromising about a series of incomprehensible beliefs that even you don’t fully understand. He quit drinking when he was 22, used to smoke and drink quite a lot and I actually believe him, not just a pastors story so to speak. People say he used to be violent when he got drunk and that he was scary to be around. His parents abandoned him and his siblings and on the river in Northern California and he had to fend for himself. There are lots of stories wrapped up in that that are unsubstantiated but being homeless for him was really rough. I’ll bet he has more in common with the homeless people on the street than he would care to admit although he hates and/or fears anyone of a lower socioeconomic class and people with less education than him. It’s like as if to cope he made this hard exterior that hates everyone and now he can’t let it go. The inside of his head can find the wonder and beauty of nature, can bond over cooking, appreciates hard work and loves building things. Is intelligent and intuitive, he built a whole large extension on our house by himself more or less in less than a year. He installed solar panels, he planted a huge garden in the backyard, we have bees and an orchard of trees. He would do anything for my mom and our family and when the police wouldn’t come help a family member with a stalker he called them out for the lazy pigs they were being.

I’ve seen him be kind and compassionate and he used to listen to me and maybe he didn’t always say the right things but he always meant well and you could usually see through it to what he really meant. Then the trump years happened. I was onboard when I first started learning about politics. I went all the way right, learning Hoppean to knowing Nazis, talking about Pinochet because although those direct ideas weren’t encouraged, they were part of a broader movement that I’ve learned about in politics that lead to a whole bunch of young right wingers to become way more radical. I remember reading about that and realizing that I was one of the people they were writing about. That was when I was 15 or 16. Then I started taking a fuckload of acid.

Probably all of it wasn’t real. But enough of it was to rip a hole in the reality I had been living in. I do not recommend this, I was a shattered shell of a being but the most radical change I went through was during COVID. At one point I reckon it was pretty obvious I was taking it at school before we closed for covid. Then I started taking it 3 times in one week searching for an illusive answer to life I was sure to stumble on if I just took another tab. It was 42.

Anyway, I left home to live in Yosemite where I lived for 2 years. At first I was just gonna be gone for the summer. I got to the end of the summer and didn’t feel done exploring and living on my own. I became a ski instructor. I fell in love with a girl. We decided to do the Appalachian Trail the next year. All the while I could feel my political views shifting. Climate change wasn’t so easy to deny when I could visit a snowfield that once was a glacier a few hours from me. When I could see the health of plants living in the woods vs next to the road. When I didn’t have air conditioning.

Then the Appalachian trail came and I started listening to Behind the Bastards that my first neighbor had recommended to me in Yosemite. Barefoot Sam, if you’re reading this, know you changed my entire life. I listened to every god damned episode by now. Spotify wrapped thought I was crazy. For hours everyday for 5 months I would listen to behind the bastards while hiking. Needless to say I was totally swung in the other direction. The crazier thing was I am now able to verify facts about my beliefs. I am now going to college for forestry restoration after a gap year that ended up lasting almost 4 years. If I had taken those classes I would have had an MBA right now. Instead I am going to change the world, planting one tree at a time. Nothing would change my mind and make me go back.

Coming back home is hard for the holidays. I probably have it easier than most because I was able to convince at least one of my parents on my side. But everything is about politics now with my stepdad. “Wow gas sure is cheap today” “blah blah blah democrats Joe Biden blah blah blah”. He says the same things over and over again until he gets a reaction. If he doesn’t get one then he just continues until you have to interject. I had mentioned I might invest a small amount in Tesla because my bio-dad had bought a large stock option and I could cash in right away since he didn’t have the full money to buy all the stocks. He told me I was violating my beliefs somehow by profiting off of this. I get how this could seem hypocritical but we know multiple people who have worked for Tesla and even those who got laid off said they enjoyed working there and were compensated well. I don’t feel guilty for making less than a thousand dollars because my dad basically gifted stock to me. But stepdad told me that “people who have beliefs like you should just live in the woods and not participate in society”. I told him that the woods might not exist because people cut them down to make more room for farmland or houses and it happens everywhere all the time. Ridiculous amounts of old growth forest are chopped down all the time. He says (as always about everything) “well you would have to prove that to me”. I open my phone and he claims I’m getting all my information from the biased Google that only gives liberal answers. After a while I was done arguing, so I tried to defuse the situation by bringing up a study I had read about corn to distract us from the conversation and he told me most studies weren’t worth the paper they printed them on. I said, just forget it and we turned on a show. 15 minutes and then he tried to tell me he respected my opinion and I had just had it. I asked him to please tell me whose research he would trust. He wouldn’t trust mine because it came from the liberal Google. Which search engine is preferable? What qualifies good information to you? Is it Newsmax or Fox? Can he show me a study from the NIH, an .org website or even a .gov?

Eventually we came to it, he doesn’t think you can learn anything anymore because you can’t trust anyone to give correct information. Those are his beliefs. I’ve told him about the bleach church, he argued with me about it for a half an hour until we came down to it. Well maybe those people should just drink bleach then. Not “well I guess maybe if people are getting hurt then we shouldn’t allow that message to keep spreading”. They’re uneducated about the dangers of bleach and have been told it’s a medicine by fraudsters so they should die. I’ve recently come to terms with myself that I might be gay but since he believes gay people are unnatural and only exist if they are mentally ill, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to truly accept that. I am constantly trying to affirm my straightness in ways that I don’t even care about.

This is a man you can’t be vulnerable in front of. You can’t slip up and bring the wrong topic up without starting an hour long argument where he will deny everything you say just for the sake of the argument continuing. Even if you agree with him, you hear a 5 minute long lecture. I will never be able to bring a partner home to my mom because if I do, I will be considered mentally ill by her spouse.

Sorry for everyone going through similar things, I know I don’t have it the worst but tonight was just pretty bad. I left about 4/5ths of most of our insane conversations out because somehow we go from corn subsidies to top 10 most evil aspects of our government in like 3 steps and it’s impossible to relay it without sounding crazy. Everytime you make a point and start to back it up with research the topic changes until you are just yelling at each other about what you believe and can think about from the top of your head.

We used to be able to learn together. He taught me and my stepbrothers to use tools, do carpentry, to be honorable, to find a core value system and stick to it. I sometimes wonder when that man totally disappeared and in his place there is this angry callous man whose main political beliefs are that everyone should die for being stupid and that welfare was for sissies. But is also intensely aware that his entire life was filled with sacrifice due to a lack of social safety net for him. He hates his job and has hated it for years but had to keep it to support his family. He could have been a brilliant designer or an architect but instead worked in HVAC, destroyed his body carrying construction materials during his time as a carpenter and now continues to hurt himself as a truck loader. He can’t even stick to his own side because he doesn’t know what he truly believes in other than he should own a lot of guns and trump will save us.

So happy that Woody is this years anti-bastard because he’s been my hero ever since we had to sing “This land is your land” in elementary school chorus but I just wanted to hi light a lesser known but eerily relevant song called “Lindbergh” and it’s final lines:

“And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks They say "America First, " but they mean "America Next!" In Washington, Washington”

It’s pretty obvious that this song was written during WW2 about a nazi party member but sit with that fact a second.

https://youtu.be/BzLOTHciIKI?feature=shared

(Greenland is an autonomous country under Denmark)

I just finished pt 2 of the Woody Guthrie episodes and let me tell you I've never been so excited to see 10 seconds of video. I'm very excited to meet your new Good girl, Truman.

Footnotes include images, video, testimony, investigative reports, etc.

I cannot recommend anyone follow the footnotes in this document too in depth. Again if you, like me occasionally feel a perverse urge to look directly at horrific acts, DON'T. There is just too much here for you to remain well.

That said, more people need to know this exists.

So good! You should check it out. Dead Domain is truly a gem(YT doc maker, gamer, trans person who infiltrated a hate church, CPAC, etc). Watch, like, and follow!

Also - i need to see them as a guest on BTB… COULD YOU IMAGINE??

https://youtu.be/H7DUJbRJIKY?feature=shared0

(From @drewtoothpaste.bsky.social)

The Illuminati episodes got me super interested in topics like phenomenology, guerrilla ontology, Situationism, chaos magic, sigils, Discordianism, the Church of the Subgenius, the Temple ov Psychick Youth, and all that kinda stuff. There's so much of this information that I don't know where to start. I feel like it'd be a full time job to learn about, and even after a lifetime of research I'd probably just scratch the surface (or go insane).

I've read a bit of Prometheus Rising, but where should I go next? Illuminatus trilogy? Principia Discordia? Cosmic Trigger? Help

https://www.wdel.com/news/del-bill-targets-gas-station-heroin/article_1a625692-c223-11ef-8b46-b7e9d0e40c8f.html

A '68 in black on staggered Centerlines is pretty perfect, and I'd keep the history very quiet.

No comment.

My personal favorite is the Bumpin Uglies out of Maryland. They’ve got a bunch of great reggae/folk songs. I’ve included one about big Pharma because well they’re bastards.

Not sure if there is a story here, but Billy Wayne Davis was a regular and the guy that did live shows with Robert. I started listening a couple of years ago and decided to go back to the start. It’s really noticeable that he is around a lot earlier, but I haven’t heard him once in shows since maybe 2022.

Can we get an AI of Luigi vs Senator Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising? For New Years giggles?

That poster learned it’s not black pilled. Then what IS the official pill for BTB? Is it a color?

Burgundypilled? (Like the color of the logo) Orange-pilled? (Like the revolution) Lime-pilled (throwback to the Doritos)

Or is it something else NOT a color?

GasStationPilled? (Or is that too literal?) Machetepilled? Creampilled? Borshtonpilled? MichiganmurdererJamieLoftuspilled? Hitlerrrrrrrpilled? JayStalpilled?