The bleak truth I've learned on my red pill journey

Stream of consciousness musings

I took the red pill almost three years ago, but on a red pill journey, you learn new things every day about how much you’ve been lied to and how fucked up the world really is.

Here are some things I’ve learned, in no particular order.

The political left and the political right are equally bad. They are equally tribal. They are equally unhinged. Conservatives are just as bad as progressives, leftists are just as bad as the alt-right. They are two sides of the same coin.

Even though both sides are equally bad, the political left represents a greater danger because they have the most political power. They control all major institutions and the vast majority of the media.

However, it’s important to know the right is equally bad because here’s the problem: If we get the woke left out of power in all the major institutions, who do we replace them with? If you replace one tribalist with another tribalist, you’re just trading one problem for another.

Everything you see in the media is a lie - it’s just propaganda. There are no neutral sources. No, just because you agree with one side or the other doesn’t make it neutral. Sometimes, people on the left will ask me what news I watch, assuming I’m going to say Fox or Newsmax and they can have their gotcha moment. But the reality is that I stopped watching all news a year ago, unless I was doing it for some sort of comedic entertainment value. You have to use primary sources, and a wide variety of them, to have any sense of what’s really going on.

Most of the activism you see on either side is funded by the political machine, and most of it is just to feed the egos and the wallets of the people engaging in it. Most organizations pretending to fight back are only founded to enrich the people running them. Conservatives stupidly give millions of dollars to these organizations while ignoring the work of real activists - conservatives are more interested in APPEARING to do things rather than actually doing things.

People on the left have mostly been brainwashed by their own media. I know what that’s like, because I used to be one of those people. I watched MSNBC every day religiously. I bought everything that came out of Rachel Maddow’s mouth. Today, I watch it for comic relief because I know that they are just mouthpieces for the narrative. Everything they are telling you is (at best) spin and (at worst) lies.

I believe that most people on the left are good people, they are just brainwashed. They’ve been told over and over again “here is what you need to do in order to be a good person.” And so they do it. They’ve victims too. We need to see them as victims if we’re going to wake more of them up. And waking them up has got to be the priority because they are the only hope we have.

Conservatives may have correct ideas in some areas (certainly not all), but it doesn’t matter if some of their ideas are better. They don’t DO anything. They do not have a vision for society that they can sell politically, and they refuse to develop one. They will win in November, but not because anyone is voting FOR their ideas - no one even knows what their ideas are. The reason the right will win in November is that the Democrats have performed so horribly that the Republicans present the only option to lunacy. People are voting AGAINST Democrats, NOT for Republicans.

And they’ll get what they vote for. Republicans who gain power will continue to give speeches but do and accomplish nothing. And in 2024, we’ll be in exactly the same position we’re in now, if not worse off.

Everything that’s going on in our culture is a power game, on both sides. The people who care about the truth are stuck in the middle of a constant game of ping pong, trying to decipher the truth amidst a mountain of bullshit. The first step towards that is accepting that both sides are lying to you, lying to their audiences, lying to anyone that will listen, all for the sake of “winning” a culture war in which there will never truly be a winner.

It all sounds pretty dark, right? That’s because it is.

But at least it’s the truth. Before you take the red pill, you exist in an illusion. The moment you realize that everyone trying to sell you a political position is full of shit, that’s when you can start making decisions for yourself about what you believe and where you belong.

If you end up on the left, fine. If you end up on the right, fine. But just don’t get sucked into the tribe because, even if you agree with them on most things, they will reject you the minute you question any part of their belief system.

Both the left and the right engage in cancel culture, and they are not afraid to use it liberally. Make sure you know WHY you’re there, and what your core values are. If they deviate from those values, be honest about it. If you’re not honest, you’re no better than a brainwashed tribalist who can’t think for themselves.

I don’t regret taking the red pill. I just wish I had woken up to a better reality. It’s better to know than to be a pawn in this neverending game.

If you’ve taken the red pill, leave your thoughts in the comments, good or bad. Share your wisdom with people who are finding their way.