Late 80’s. I watched the governors race through all the news channels. It became very obvious that those in power aligned with the media to select the governor.

The Ruby Ridge standoff in August 1992 followed by the Davidian raid in Feb.1993. My husband and I both decided there was something terribly wrong with our government after those two events unfolded.

The awakening for me came in fits and starts. I always felt American foreign policy was corrupt and meddling. Living in New York City during 9/11 was big but it was the duplicity of the democrats when pelosi took over 07 that was the eye opener for me. The Dems fully supported the wars in Aghanistan and Iraq then pretended they did no such thing starting in 04. Pelosi purged the blue dogs and that started pushing the Dems further left toward open communism. The final straw was the 2008 democrat primary and how they rigged it for Obama. At that time I didn’t know much about the Clintons criminality or what the Clinton Foundation was really. The hype of Obama was what pushed me out of the democrat party but I soon realized the GOP was full of it. Trump was a national version of what Rudy Guiliani was in New York and it felt comfortable to me and supporting him from day one was the best decision I ever made with my vote.

My moment came at a very young age when the democrats murdered JFK because he was not going to fund their intervention into the Vietnam civil war. I realized then the statement Eisenhower had made on his exit from office about the dangers of the military industrial complex was prophetic. My dad was a staunch republican but he respected JFK and actually complimented his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He said the democrats had ‘finally found someone with a backbone’.
I got my ‘booster moment’ one sunny day in mid 1989 when I heard this wonderful booming alpha male voice coming from my car’s AM radio describing the true agenda of the feminist movement. I was hooked on Rush for the duration after that.

I started really paying attention when two things occurred.

First, Hillary Clinton sided with Chavez as our secretary of state over a situation in Honduras where the president was being ousted by the Honduran legislature and Supreme Court. I’m not sure what year that was. I thought it odd that our secretary of state would side with Chavez on whether the sun was up. She described the Honduran situation as a coup and every US media report I read parroted that. It took me about 15 minutes to 1/2 hour to call BS on that. What I was able to discover in that short time unlike the journalists with journalism 4 year degrees was this: in Honduras the president may only have 2 terms, full stop [understandable in a country with a region with a history of dictatorships]; the Honduran president may not even sniff at refusing to abdicate his position after 2 terms; if he or she does then they are subject to removal by the legislature and Supreme Court; the president at the time (name escapes me) not only sniffed at it, once removed the government found voting machines preprogrammed with his votes. So this president’s removal was hardly a “coup” by any stretch but rather actually an exercise in self-government perfectly legal under Honduran law and more importantly to me an example of the rule of law exercised by a sovereign nation. It occurred to me that our elected government was supporting an actual coup and the media either was too stupid or lazy to figure that out or there was some other reason for their facilitation of the official government narrative.

Then second, when McCain ran I saw his complete capitulation to the media by throwing Sarah Palin under the bus and his failure to aggressively confront the evil of Obama’s policies. I was told that because he was a POW that I was not permitted to criticize him. That’s when I realized the concerted propaganda machine that also exists in the GOP establishment side of things.

Although I didn’t term it America last at the time it was these two situations that began my seeing what cannot be unseen: the absolute corruption of our government’s politicians and bureaucrats that puts wealth generation via power accumulation and influence over me, my children, our futures and our very way of life as free people. It was when I began to see what Sundance calls “the great pretending”.

Everything I have seen since confirms this for me. Everything from Covid to J6, simply everything. And it runs downhill to state government and then on down…..can you say school boards? Because I can.

I almost waited too long to respond to this post. First of all, I want to let Sundance and all associated with this site know how dear CTH is to me. I visit
CTH repeatedly throughout the day in order to catch the very latest in news. I’m having trouble expressing all of my feelings here. Suffice it to say, that I have developed a serious mistrust in everything emanating from government, anger at those politicians and perverts who are tearing down the very fabric on my America, and a sense of despair because I can’t stop it. Please, please don’t let the vile forces that have attacked and shut down so many others do the same with CTH. I stumbled on this site long ago when I was searching for news from a trusted conservative news site. Rush Limbaugh and CTH.

1997 Red River Flood. Absolute media hysteria, non-stop. Helicopter views of miles and miles of floodwaters. I was traveling through the area at the time and, yes, there was flooding but reality looked a bit different than the media coverage. I noticed that the farm homes, which appeared to be in water from the helicopter shots, were actually sitting above the water levels. People were driving to and from places on gravel roads and driveways slightly above the water level. I stopped at a local restaurant and asked about that and she informed me that the Red River always floods in spring and that is why the local roads are built up. It’s no big deal. So, yes, there was flooding. Yes, it did impact some communities more than normal and there was some damage, but it was nothing like what was portrayed by the media. That was the first crack, the first blow.

My moment of “WHAT? Are you kidding ME?” Was when I realized that Obama lied during his presidential campaign and was just another smooth-talkin’ political liar, cheat and fraudster. I was raised in a Christian, republican home and up until I voted for Obama, I always voted for republicans but I very humbly admit to being taken in by the smooth-talking Obama. I despised McCain, respected his military service but considered him spineless and about as appetizing as pablum. I did not vote again until I happily supported and voted for President Trump.

Generally speaking, I began to pay more attention when Donald Trump decided to run for President. Slowly, I began to become aware of more and more things that didn’t make sense, or add up. Antifa riots, Pandemic, and 2020 election were the three that most impacted my understanding that there is much more going on behind the scenes than I once thought.

There isn’t a singular event that I can identify that completely changed my perception on the political environment of the USA, and the world in general.

My father was a hunter, and so it was him that piqued my interest in firearms, which led me to get into the shooting sports at an early age.

My first “lightbulb moment” came when I was a teenager, reading an article in “Field & Stream” magazine. It made the case for opposing a ban on “Saturday Night Specials”. Before reading that article, I had completely bought in to the line that had been fed to me by the evening news, the “handguns bad, longguns good” load of tripe. Upon having my eyes opened, I was furious that I had been conned, that I had never been presented an opposing viewpoint by the “impartial and objective” mainstream media. In the time after that, I subscribed to other shooting publications (Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, The American Hunter) that often had commentary on firearms legislation. I also became a life member of the National Rifle Association, and began receiving “The Rifleman” magazine (which I still receive to this day).

Even before Waco and Ruby Ridge, there was the Kenyon Ballew incident. ATF agents conducted a raid on Mr. Ballew’s home, and severely wounded him when he confronted the agents, thinking that it was a home invasion. It was that incident that changed the conversation concerning the enforcement of gun laws.

It was in that time that there were congressional investigations into the activities of the ATF, and the director at the time, Rex Davis. It was in those times that I began to get the impression that the feral government was/is not my friend, that it wasn’t the just and noble government that I had been led to believe it was. (What can I say? I was a dumb kid.)

I also began to notice that our mainstream media outlets were a pack of lying bass-turds. I did not need the NRA to point out how they would twist, distort, and outright lie when they reported on firearms legislation, that they were promoting an agenda. I could see that for myself.

Of course, the incidents at Ruby Ridge and Waco only served to reinforce that perception.

My next “lightbulb moment” came when James Comey let Hillery Clinton off the hook for the many felonies that she committed with setting up her email server, calling it “extremely careless” (what is the difference between that and gross negligence?), and saying that no prosecutor would pursue the case because HRC lacked intent to break the law.

After being assured by some that Comey was a “straight shooter”, I was led to believe that justice would catch up to HRC. I had a nagging doubt in the back of my mind, given that HRC did not seem overly concerned about it during the presidential campaign. I always knew that there was a lot of corruption within our feral government, but, once that nagging doubt had been confirmed, it was at that point that I began to realize the extent and pervasiveness of the corruption. I also thought it to be very odd that Republicans did not seem to have much of a reaction to the news, and it made me question their integrity as well.

In years past, I used to roll my eyes whenever someone told me that there was no point in voting because the elections are rigged. I also did not take seriously the claim that there was only one political party, that the Republican Party and the Democrat Party were just two sides of the same coin … the Uniparty. I’ve had to eat a lot of crow over the past six or seven years. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, after all of the witnesses coming forward, the investigations, the audits (in the few counties that actually were audited), all of the sworn affidavits attesting to the fraud, all of the evidence presented, all of the analysis performed upon the verifiable data, I began to see that I had been living in a delusional bubble.

My next “lightbulb moment” came when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Texas v Pennsylvania. I was fairly confident that, when Texas sued Pennsylvania, and several other States started piling on to the lawsuit, that the Supreme Count would have to hear a case of that magnitude, the biggest case in the history of the nation. I felt a sense of relief that the Supreme Court had been presented with the opportunity to step in and save the republic. I was absolutely shocked and astonished when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. I was further dismayed when the Republican Party just accepted the fraud, and condemned those who tried to bring it to light.

It was at that point that I realized that the republic had been lost, that there are only three options going forward:

1: Just meekly accept that the constitutional republic of the United States of America is dead, and hope that the regime in power would not eventually kill me.

2: Join a group that is preparing for civil war (which is not a good option personally as I would sukk as a soldier).

3: Join a group seeking to break away from the United States to form a new republic.

The first option is unacceptable, and the second option involves a great deal of risk (as well as blood shed), so the most viable option is to break the nation apart.

In the time since, everything that I have become aware of has only served to reinforce that assessment.

A few of our mainstream media outlets have admitted that Hunter Biden’s laptop is legitimate. The claim that it was “Russian disinformation” has been a lie. Now that it has been acknowledged that is contains a mountain of evidence of the Biden family’s corruption, there is the question as to why hasn’t the Biden family been hauled out of the White House in handcuffs. The only plausible answer to that question is that the rest of our feral government is just as corrupt as the Biden family.

It is evident that every major policy decision that has been made by the regime in power is intended to damage the United States.

The war on domestic petroleum production is laying waste to the economy.

The risk of nuclear war is greater than it has ever been, and taking that risk over a corrupt nation like Ukraine is madness.

That the military has not acted to save the Republic is evidence that the military cannot be depended upon. The military has been lost.

With the introduction of the COVID bio-weapon, and our own governments’ attempts to kill us with another bio-weapon that is being called a “vaccine”, the only conclusion to be reached is that our government is our enemy, as it has treated us like an enemy occupying force.

Opening the southern border to an invasion is nothing less than treason. That alone should be grounds for impeachment and removal from office.

The Jan6 political prisoners being held captive, US citizens being denied their constitutional rights, should be grounds for impeachment and removal from office.

There have been rumors to the effect that Ashli Babbitt was not killed, that it was all staged, as performed by crisis actors.

I followed a link left by someone in the comments section of an article a few months ago, and crawled down some rabbit holes related to that incident. It seems that there are several productions (primarily on BitChute) that make the argument that the whole thing was staged. The first of those links makes the claim that everyone involved (including Babbitt) were all crisis actors.

Wooz News

EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THE CAPITOL SHOOTING IN 21 MINUTES OR LESS

https://www.bitchute.com/video/DYlb92zMkj41/

=============================================
The simulated riots in DC was a powder-keg long in the making. The evidence for pre-planning and setting up a situation for disaster is overwhelming. In this episode, we’re going to show you how a little stage direction and fake blood became an instrumental role in furthering the division of the nation. Strap yourselves in- it’s going to be a bumpy ride… down the Babbitt hole.
=============================================

Within the video, there are three things to make note of:

1: Even though I have never been shot, I would tend to think that it would be very painful. If you watch the video closely, Babbitt does not appear to be in very much pain.

2: If Babbitt was shot in the neck, the bullet would’ve very likely severed either the jugular, or the carotid artery (or both), and there would be blood spurting all over the place. As a matter of fact, if Babbitt had been shot ANYWHERE, there should be A LOT more blood than the little patch that was shown once she was moved. There should also be blood splattered on the wall behind Babbitt from the exit wound.

3: The video was recorded by someone calling them-self “Jalen X”, who is, as it turns out, is none other than John Sullivan. Anyone who has done their homework would know that Sullivan is an activist/agitator for BLM and AntiFa, DEFINITELY NOT a Trump supporter. What are the chances that Sullivan, someone who hates Trump, would be at a rally in support of Trump, would be in the right place, at the right time, with a camera, to record the events surrounding the “shooting” of Ashli Babbitt? (Probably less than that of winning the lotto jackpot.)

Over the past several decades, the trend line has been on a downward trajectory, with every indication that the nation is starting a “death spiral”. The corruption within this nation is too pervasive and extensive to have any realistic hope that it can be mitigated to any significant extent. It should be apparent that, due mainly to our own apathy and complacency, to a general degradation of our own national ethic (there were literally thousands involved in the fraudulent election of 2020), the constitutional republic has been lost, that there is no realistic hope that it can be salvaged.

It is my own fervent hope that everyone will come to terms with this basic reality.

First time: I was one month shy of 7, home sick from school when “Bozo the Clown Show” was interrupted to announce that Kennedy had been shot. We have a “president” and what does that mean?

Second time: about 9 months later when the evening news followed the end of afternoon cartoons opened with a story about Viet Nam, complete with black and white film, still vivid in my memory, of injured soldiers on stretchers being rushed through the jungle to the waiting helicopter as shots were fired behind them. We live in a world larger than I know? My newly realized country is at war? Am I safe? When will the bad guys get here?

I paid a lot of attention to presidential elections beginning with Johnson/Goldwater. I was 8 years old.

What a great question! I admire this site for its constant call for critical thinking. For me, “the moment” occurred in 1965 when the powers that be deceived us into believing that the new quarters and dimes containing no silver were worth the same as those minted in and before 1964. Then on August 15, 1971 when Nixon removed the last link between US dollars and gold.
The key to understanding history lies in following the money. Looking at 9/11, the 2008 bailout, and the NIH virus through that lens helps to clarify the truth. Everything else seems to be theater and orchestrated distractions.
We went from being represented by elected citizens to being ruled by psychopaths.

Hurricane Katrina
Evacuated to Florida and watching the news get everything wrong made me wonder what else did they get wrong.

Then along comes Obama- yikes- the strings were showing more, then Benghazi, then Trump. Reading his speeches and then seeing how the media distorted what he said.

Then my husband told me about Sundance and need I say more.

Because of all of this I knew not to get vaxxed and knew not to trust the media or the government

Watergate!

I was a huge news junkie and consumer of all things political and media-related. Then Michael Brown attacked and strong-armed a convenience store clerk in my hometown of Ferguson, MO. Then, he attacked Darren Wilson and tried to kill him and was repaid in kind. I watched people lie in real time. I watched my beautiful city (though not perfect–it housed many good people) crumble into a nightmare of helicopters, crazy political activists, and opportunistic news media. I stopped the car one night thinking I could reason with one of the reports who had camped out near my home. I said, “Why don’t you tell the real story of Ferguson? There are a lot of good people here doing a lot of good things.” And the reporter said, “That’s not THE story.” And I was stunned. It was like cold water over my head. You mean, the media doesn’t tell the truth? They are spinning the story they want to tell to fit a certain narrative? Then, I saw a youtube video of a police captain explaining what domestic terrorism is and how a man (I had never heard of )named George Soros was orchestrating activists around the US to destroy America. It made sense to me. Then I watched Bill O’Reilly lie on Fox news about Ferguson and it was like a veil was lifted from my eyes. But only part way. I was still not fully awake.

Then Covid happened. And I trusted Donald Trump about the virus. And I watched all those news briefings while holding my breath. I believed ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’. Then my friends started sharing videos on facebook of people without masks being harassed. Then my church closed its doors and did all services online. And I was starting to get skeptical about masks because I didn’t believe they worked and my pastor told me to remove content questioning masks on Facebook. Then I read an article on substack about PCR tests and how they weren’t designed to test for viruses. And then I learned about the gain of function research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Then I saw Judy Mikovits and Robert F. Kennedy talk about Fauci and saw the charade for what it was. And then my church told me I wasn’t welcome any more without a mask. And somewhere in there a friend introduced me to the Conservative Treehouse and now I honestly don’t read anything else. I’m still mad at Trump for fast tracking vaccines. Shame on him. Especially now that Naomi Wolf and Amy Kelly released the Pfizer Documents Analysis.

It all started with Ferguson and the lie that made me lose my home. (We had to move because it was no longer safe–and it still isn’t).

I thought I had been paying attention a long time, since at least my teens.
I was wrong.
I thought it was a joke when Trump came down the elevator.
I was wrong.
I thought we still had good people all through government.
I was wrong.
On January 6th, 2021, the last scales fell from my eyes and I became able to finally PAY ATTENTION.

1. OBowa is going to fundamentally transform America.

2. Trump about whom I had never heard anything bad other than being a successful business man.

Make America Great Again

Ross Perot and the election of 1992.

I believe my patriotic upbringing actually slowed my awaking. My parents taught my brothers and me to love our country through annual vacations including a bi-centennial trip to DC. We drove across the US first in a VW van then a station wagon, camper then finally a motor home. We visited almost every state and state capital and many national parks. Dad wanted us kids to see the greatness of our country. They taught us basic biblical principles. I believed there were some bad actors out there but most people are good. As I aged I noticed that no matter what party was in office, there was always something or someone who stopped conservative success. I continued to believe the republican leadership was really trying hard and fighting for America. In 2016 Trump started my awakening and exposing the lies. Many that I had respected turned out to be never Trumpers and snakes. Then the corruption of the FBI, CIA, DOJ was exposed. The final awakening was 2020 and the government response to Covid. My husband and I left CA for TX that year. We started to research medical and Pharma and all vax. That lead us to the realization that the food pyramid was leading our nation to be sick (pharma has a drug to treat that but not to cure it). My biggest disappointment was realization of corruption of FBI. Power and money. The heart of man is desperately wicked. My hope is in the Lord.

1st time I knew our country was being attacked from within, was after 9/11. Pres W. Bush flew to. Europe and Dingy Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader was on national news speaking to a classroom of grade school students. Dingy Harry declared President Bush is a Looser.

Meant to respond earlier and just saw reference back to this post on American Thinker. For me, it was 1996, the TWA flight 800 missile strike. I was an aerospace engineering student at the time. I was watching footage of the disaster and it did t make sense. The news showed a “CIA animation” – why is the CIA making an animation, not NTSB? – that showed a 747 front of fuselage being blown off and then climbing thousands of feet. I knew immediately it was a complete lie, it was laughable in how stupid it was, I couldn’t believe they put it on television. Living not far from the crash site, everyone knew someone who had been a witness or knew a witness, they all saw the exact same thing – a red steak rising up and impacting the plane. That’s when I knew my world view was very, very inaccurate.

I could see this in later events, especially of course 9/11, where I knew immediately that the buildings could not have come down according to the narrative. No way a steel frame composite structure could have collapsed without a controlled demolition. Also, cell phones didn’t even work on planes once they were moving at any speed in 2001. I knew this firsthand. I was younger, and just accepted that things weren’t as they seem, what could I really do about it?

When they conspired to destroy a duly elected President, based on obvious lies, and every person who contributed got away without any accountability, I finally got angry. I started to pay close attention. I got involved. Then they stole elections, possibly for good. Now they continue to systematically destroy our country, our economy, and everything that was passed down to us. They may even start a truly devastating war. I don’t feel a lot of hope right now, but I haven’t given up and won’t give up on our country.

In 1994 or 1995, I watched the Congressional budget debates on C-SPAN (relatively new at the time). It was the first time that I had ever seen Congress – in this case, the House of Representatives – actually debating. The next day, my copy of the New Jersey Star Ledger (NJ’s largest newspaper) had a front page article on the debate I had watched the day before.

The disparity between what I had watched and heard, versus what was published in that paper, was my “aha” moment. The bias, the misrepresentation of what was said by various representatives, was so egregious that I cancelled my subscription that same day. From that moment on, I paid much closer attention to what was going on, and sought out alternative sources for information – as many as I could find, so that I could take it all in and at least try to form an opinion based on as much information as I could find.

In the nearly 30 years since, I have been appalled and depressed as I have only seen things getting worse and worse. The propaganda, the corruption, the endless lies and misrepresentations. Donald Trump revealed the degree to which we are actually ruled by a single party of professional politicians, who will say and do anything to keep their power, and to continue enriching themselves. I cannot help but to reflexively snicker every time I hear politicians referred to as “public servants”.

COVID-1984 was the “aha” moment for the new level of corruption and tyranny which has been growing for decades. It made me painfully aware of just how far gone we are as a nation, filled with gullible, ignorant fools, and led by corrupt, self-serving, loathsome parasites. Media running cover for corrupt politicians and profiteers, business and government colluding in what can only be called fascism, judges and courts unwilling to stand up for basic rights, or party to the corruption themselves.

I was in the US Navy in the 1970’s. On 11/22/75, I was on USS Belknap when we were in collision/shipwreck with USS John F. Kennedy. In the spring of 1976, I reported to psychiatric sick call at the Little Creek, VA Navy base. I knew something was wrong (later knew it was called PTSD). I said to the shrink, what’s wrong with me doc? “Shut up!” he explained. That was when I knew the government did not give a shit about those of us who served.

Late 80s, after Reagan.

For me it was Glenn Beck of all people clanging the alarm about the Kenyan in Chief and the entourage surrounding him. And his highlighting the national debt nightly.

I think I got put in the spam moderation queue. 😔

Awoke around 13 years old bia the pollution matters in the 60’s. Have applied a concrete set of principles to government since. Never waivered from staunch conservative principles. The purpose of government is to relieve people from every necessity to survive; a remedy to anarchy’s ways of hard, brutal and short. So it’s natural to pay little attention where faith replaces vigilance. We went through history’s lessons about government like every nation does because we are human. That’s why Jefferson’s maxim on the restoration of the tree of liberty is true and unavoidable.

When I first started really paying attention:

1. I first started paying serious attention when they removed President Nixon. I was too young to understand, but knew something was very wrong.
2. Around that same time there was an incident in my neighborhood that got reported in the newspaper. The news story was so much different than what actually happened, I asked myself, “if they are lying about this, why would they not lie about everything else?”
3. The final full-awakening as to the depth of the corruption was the installation of the community disorganizer imposter. I told people a communist coupe had just occurred, and was either ignored or scoffed at.

I don’t belong to any political party but have always voted for Republican candidates. When Obama came on the scene I found his speeches to be inspiring. Then my husband came home one day with a book for me– “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg. It gave me a better understanding of the left–origins, motivations, aims. I don’t think I will ever consider for voting Dem ever again. I said to my husband yesterday, remember when we used to listen to NPR during dinner? It got to be so slanted, we couldn’t stand it anymore, and have not listened to it for probably ten years. We actually used to be donors, even. While I have not made my mind up about Q really was–I did read the stuff regularly. I think it may have opened a lot of eyes to the “mockingbird” concept- all those talking heads saying the exact same thing across so many news channels, like “it’s a manufactured crisis” in reference to the border crisis under Trump. I never knew that level of coordination/propaganda was happening until then. Then again, we stopped watching mainstream media in 2008 when our antenna blew down in a storm. At that time only 2 channels came in anyway, I did not want another bill, so we started to get most of our news from the internet. (Like freerepublic.com) I think Trump with his term, “fake news” opened a lot of eyes, too. In terms of Critical Theory, I got a good education from Andrew Breitbart (Righteous Indignation) and James O’Keefe (American Pravda.)

My father was a political news junky, we were made to pay attention. I was a bit of a rebel, my father a die hard Republican, he would vote GOP no matter how bad the candidate! I always questioned the establishment of all sides. In 1988 I really started paying attention, I have always loathed the Bush Family! I was a travel agent and was visiting the Panama Canal at the time time Noriega was being hunted down. I visited Colombia during his hypocritical war on drugs and there were books there that were not allowed to be sold in the USA about Bush, the cartels and Fidel Castro. I have always been anti-establishment of both sides, anti-war, a nationalist, anti-NAFTA, I didn’t even like Reaganomics and I was 18 at the time.

I need to establish that I am 71 years old and I had never voted in any election until I voted for that smooth talkin Obama even though I was a registered Republican. I felt I hadn’t done my homework on any candidate as my life was too busy being a wife and a mom while working a full time job. I didn’t feel it was my right to vote for or against a candidate without knowing fully for whom to vote. I still wasn’t paying attention during Obama’s second election but something in me said not to vote for him again and so he didn’t get my vote. I supported President Trump solely because so many in our country were crazy about him. Then I began to see the positive results he was bringing to our nation at the same time the left was doing everything in their power to destroy him. During his first visit to Brussels his speech before NATO leaders made me want to stand up and scream HURRAY. He hit hard and made them squirm as he admonished some of the NATO members for not paying 2% of their GDP while the US paid our share and then some. Would any leader say as Trump did, “This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States.” His four successful years as our president has turned me into a political news junkie. My awakening has driven my husband crazy as I spend so much of my time reading conservative websites. Now the question remains, who in 2024? I live in the Free State of Florida so I’m a recipient of all of Governor DeSantis’s excellent leadership. I’m impressed with Vivek Ramaswamy. And, President Trump must feel strongly that he needs to finish the job he started. It all translates to the fact that we have an impressive group of candidates from which to choose while the Dems got nuttin. That is unless we can’t keep them from cheating again.

My awakening came while watching the country decline during Jimmy Carters presidency, though I started to see it during the Johnson administration. Buckley and Limbaugh and Hansen clarified everything I thought I was seeing and sharpened my vision. Regan, Gingrich and Trump restored my faith in some politicians, but I have a deep and abiding mistrust of
Government and almost every politician of both parties. Without term limits and reduced size of federal government and
balanced budget legislation, I fear the fools in control may well permantely cripple America!

Watergate, 1973. I was a teenager. Followed the daily developments, later shown to be a drip-drip-drip feed of one little fact after another by Deep Throat (Mark Felt) to Woodward and Bernstein to keep them hooked and keep the story on the front page. I inhaled their book All The President’s Men when it came out. Did a term paper on Nixon’s resignation and who pushed him into it (Haig and Kissinger).
I have always had a distrust of the federal government, just because it is so big and is always necessarily covering it’s butt about something or another.
Donald Trump came along and spoke truth. Downright shouted it into the faces of media, government, and America. What a delicious breath of fresh air that man is!

Growing up as a first generation Cuban-American, son of Cuban exiles my father warned me at an early age about communists and their ilk. He accurately described them as malcontents, lazy and vindictive “I’ll show you” bullies. A high school friend’s dad went to HS with Fidel in Cuba and said he was a petulant, whiney kid. Spoiled and rich kid attending a prestigious Catholic school. Total media phony.

I knew the news media were lying about Cuban and therefore everything else when I was 6. They kept telling the world how great Fidel was etc. meanwhile my uncle was rotting as a political prisoner on the island.

Then Watergate, which torpedoed my summer vacation TV schedule with those preposterous hearings. What a joke.

Then we had Carter, nice buy but totally inept. Iranian hostage fiasco summed it all up.

Clinton definitely sealed the deal with Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City and finally Elian Gonzalez. Never before had I witnessed such government thuggery. I’d voted for Janet Reno as Miami-Dade State Attorney for years and then she does the unthinkable to a Cuban kid!!!!!

9/11 stunk up terribly. Whole thing jumped the shark on a grandiose scale. So many lives lost for something we’re not sure about anymore.

Then came Obama and the whole hope and change trope. Now we have Obama’s 3rd term with Bident and his clown car full of globalist idiots.

In-between sprinkle COVID and the associated lunacy and control and here’s where we find ourselves.

Simple, I’ve lived on the ocean for over 30 years, my family has been on the ocean since the late 1800’s. I watch the tide come and go nearly every day for all that time. Many years ago when we were told the oceans were rising I said to myself I can see that’s not true. When things don’t add up I ask questions. The red pill, blue pill moment was nearly 30 years ago. One question led to another leading to a conclusion. We’re being lied to. Hat tip to Rush for letting me know I wasn’t alone.

When I first saw the movie The Matrix.

In high school, learning about the assassination of JFK and the magic bullet. My brain was screaming.
However, I didnt really pay attention until the 80’s.
Just seemed to be a lot of scandals involving deputy secretaries in the military, secretaries in cabinet posts, etc.
Then Iran Contra.
That was where the real distrust started, but I stopped trusting govt AND media completely in the 90’s, watching the Clintons

My father, the late Lt. Col James Keeffe Jr, at the age of 20 was a B-24 bomber pilot during WWII. He was shot down over the Netherlands on the 8th of March 1944. For the next five months, brave young men and women of the Dutch Resistance risked their lives helping him evade the Germans. Eventually, on an escape route into Belgium, he was betrayed, captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW in Stalag Luft III.

Ratchet forward to 1991 when I started reading my father’s library, which contained numerous volumes on WWII, American and world history, Churchill’s memoirs, as well as biographies and stories of our founding fathers, our constitution, and various aspects of our constitutional republic. That is also when I turned my previously ignorant and blind eyes to country and world affairs, and to the realization of my father’s war-time experiences.

My unease at the state of affairs in America began during Bill Clinton’s presidency and became inflamed when Obama proclaimed his pledge to “fundamentally transform America.” By that time I was savvy enough to understand what that truly meant. One can not love his county if one is hell-bent on ‘fundamentally transforming’ it.

The rest of my blinders fell off as I watched Obama begin the weaponization of our federal institutions; IRS, DOJ, FBI, etc. I had always cringed at the seeping-in of political correctness, but became truly alarmed when it morphed, seemingly overnight, into the destructive world of wokeness with all the sewage and misery which that ideology has wrought. What has finally spurred me to action, I’m almost 70 now, is the disgust and rage I have toward those running our government/public schools, where our young students are being destroyed of all sense of self, security, and hope. No more do I sit on the side lines. No longer to I tolerate BS, hateful comments about our country such as the lie of systemic racism. Forever gone is me trying to speak to irrational, illogical, unreasoning, and vengeful people who are hell-bent on tearing everything sacred and endearing about America. For me, trying to rationalize with the indoctrinated is a fruitless endeavor. One can not give medicine to the dead and hope for any improvement. So now I act. I maintain a rock wall full of American flags ourside our small town, I state my mind at worthless school board meetings, I facilitate Hillsdale College free online courses on the US Constitution for groups of folks who are interested, and anything else that will push back the darkness gathering overhead.

I know what my father would have done, and did!!, when he was a young man full of vim and vigor – when patriotism spurned him into action along with millions of other fine strong Americans – if he were witness to the ever-accelerating dismantlement of the nation he fought to protect. Sometimes I thank God that he isn’t alive today to see the purposeful destruction of the most free nation in history. But I drawn strength from his memory and from the honor and spirit he had all his long life. He never shirked from standing up for the down-trodden. He always went to bat for anyone who didn’t have the power to fight against unfair tactics by authorities who were drunk with power. He stood for rightness, truth, and above all freedom. His experience in occupied Holland under the Nazis boot forged his character for the rest of his life. May I hope to emulate him if even just a little.

Somewhere between age 5-7 I was aware that this world was ruled by a powerful and evil force, and that people were too divided in their beliefs and concerned with their personal affairs to unite against it.
I saw the Pope on TV and knew the pope was against birth control and that he was very bejeweled and dressed in regal clerical garb and he looked down on the pathetic, sprawling masses and told them to keep having children when perhaps less children would create less misery for the poor. Somehow there must be a wealth transfer going on that’s part of how things work around here. Then I noticed that the movie companies would make horror films. That was strange, why would they make films to try to scare us, then have us buy tickets to watch them, and people do it. Why do people like to see their own kind brutalized and tortured on screen. Strange. Then serial killers started showing up in society. Where did these weirdos come from? Such things were always repeatedly televised to make people more and more afraid of each other.

Like many I read here, there were multiple events which gradually changed my views.

1. I started to understand economics. I had always been socially conservative but I was more of a fiscal moderate. I studied currency and social security and other topics for several years without understanding. It took a long time because basically I could not believe that Ponzi scheme of social security and the concept of money created out of nothing. I kept looking for what I was missing and then finally realized I was not missing anything.
2. Many books. Pat Buchanan’s “Church, Hitler and The Unnecessary War” had a big effect on my view of America’s military involvement in the world. Amity Shlae’s “The Forgotten Man” effected my view of the New Deal and reversed everything I had been taught about the Great Depression. Both books challenged the general narrative of modern US history I had been taught all my life and introduced me to different thought processes. “The Zimmerman Telegram” by Barbara Tuchman was another good one. There are many others.
3. One night I was stuck on travel in a hotel in Louisville bored and turned on the TV. There was a History Channel show on the JFK assassination on. I had heard of the various conspiracies around the assassination but never been particularly interested. As stated I was bored so I watched it. To my surprise, as best I could tell from the geometries presented, Oswald could not have fired the kill shot, because the back of Kennedy’s head (which was blown out and likely the exit wound) was facing Oswald. Put aside all theories about the who and why, this was (and still is to me) stunning. Over the years I have read books about Lincoln, Garfield and Reagan (a little) regarding their shooters. Have not studied McKinley. But I realized we have had at least five presidedential assassination attempts in our history (four successful) and the official narrative is that none of them were conducted by any powerful political opponents. All just crazy, mostly lone people. There was supposedly a conspiracy of “nobodies” surrounding Lincoln’s assassination but somehow in American history no president was ever taken out by powerful political enemies. And four were Republicans. And all were post Civil War. I find that incredulous.
4. There are others, but COVID has really made me question almost everything. Vaccines. Healthcare in general. Doctors. (Not typically nurses though.) Diet. Government in general. In the beginning I followed the numbers by various state health authorities and their own published numbers completely contradicted all the official narrative on COVID. I need to repeat that. The official numbers, even if you do not question them, contradicted completely the official narrative.

There is more, but this is enough to make the point. I currently am working through how to take action personally to compensate for living in a world of lies. Some of this is taking control of my health through more exercise, less alcohol, better eating (going largely by what Old School Body Builders believed). Some involves preps like food, fuel, etc. Some financial item. Since we live in a world of lies, I feel it essential to ACT on the things we can identify as likely true since there is little we can do about the rest.

My “a-ha!” moment, or “red pilling” if you will, came at the end of the ’90’s while employed in finance & administration at an early adapter internet magazine. 

There I got to witness first hand what most (not all) of the offspring of those fortunate enough to afford to send their kiddies to top tier “J” Schools were really like: sanctimonious, money grubbing, limousine liberal hypocrites jumping at the chance to do PR work for increasingly authoritarian, intolerant, race guilt obsessed & and censorship happy globalist oligarchs.

It was an invaluable “peek under the hood” that provided the nudge to seek out common sense alternatives, and for that I will be eternally grateful. 

1994 Comprehensive Sex Education Curriculum for kindergarten through high school. My brain snapped! Oh no you don’t! I ran for my local school board and lost by a toenail.
That’s when the gauntlet was thrown (in my face) down. The rest is history.

Not sure anyone will read this after almost 3000 comments, but I’ve been a conservative for over four decades, so always never trusted the liberal establishment. When Trump came down the escalator in June 2015 something changed, although I didn’t even think anything of it because obviously he didn’t have a chance in hell of winning the nomination let alone the presidency. Seeing the Uniparty deep state go after him was eye opening, but it wasn’t until Covid that I really began to question everything. Then the stolen election and the J6 setup, and that was the final break. I’m even questioning the globe earth model! Which I wouldn’t have done before Trump and all that’s come since. There is a Great Awakening happening, and God is doing a great thing to reveal lies and truth.

When I was first introduced to Ron Paul in 1990’s

where to start…. sometime in the late 1980’s with having worked for then NY House of Rep Thomas Downey (D), and Suffolk County Legislature Steve Levy (D) … I started to see the problems and what the politicians themselves were causing these issues with their “policy” fixes.

I was in High School and we started to read more about free markets, US Constitution and early American History and politics and the 2 things conflicted working for Democrats and learning US History. I then started hearing about Ron Paul and libertarianism, Mises, Spooner, Frederick Douglas, etc.

When was that moment for me? My trail of tears is similar to others’ answers to this question. The journey has been one of “I must be crazy. They wouldn’t do that.” to “This tinfoil hat story has more than a single grain of truth to it.” finally to “Yes, they are this debauched, I am not crazy, and the best interests of this country as founded are NOT even a consideration.”. Oh, and they hate me. At least until they need me (design something, build/inspect something).

My interest / “the moment” was first piqued when I was a junior in high school. My civics teacher told us back in the early 80’s that he expected the civics course to be cut from the curriculum. What? Why would ‘they’ do that?? Only ignorance of how our government was supposed to work could result! Oh wait… that was the plan. Ask any younger person about this Constitutional republic, and if they even glance up from the mind-destroying drug that is their dumb-phone, they have no idea.

The other stages to “the moment”, probably not in order, to my full awakening came about because of:

• the dilution of our currency in the mid-1960s. The Roman emperors did the same when they removed precious metals from coinage.
• Reading the media report concerning an industrial accident for which I was on-site and saw with my own eyes what really went on. As others have said: if the media lies about this, they lie about many other things.
• Glenn Beck’s chalkboard talks on FOX. I kept having to peel off sections of the tinfoil hat as things came true.
• Slick WIllie Clinton’s upon-exit presidental pardons AND the release of technologies to China to MAKE THEIR SUBMARINES QUIETER. Why oh why would one do THAT? I think it involves money…
• The feral government attack on Ruby Ridge in the early 90’s. What?
• The follow-up feral government attack on the Branch Davidian (I almost wrote “Covidian”…) complex in the early 1990’s.
• James Comey’s accurate accounting of Hitlery Clinton’s crimes, and his statement NOT to prosecute when he had NO such authority AND he’d just made a great case against her. ANYONE else doing the same as Clinton would have been crucified by the “legal system”. That’s because apparently there are two such systems…
• An honest reading of FDR and FDR’s “New Deal”.

This latest Uni-party circus is simply the acceleration of the commie takeover attempt that has been slumping forward in history since Woodrow Wilson thought he was smarter than everyone else. It’s taken about a hundred years to get here. I pray we can get back to the founders’ form of government without bloodshed and it doesn’t take another hundred years. I don’t know – the left-wing-nuts are too feral, to emotional, to illogical so they may all just have to die out. Possibly via multiple boosters of the COVID-1984 “vaccine”. Well, okay – that works I guess. Man is not basically good – our Founders knew that.

Some key moments. 1) having been assaulted by political locals. I’ve always been INDEPENDENT-minded, and politically disgusted, but when I saw that people were willing to fake friendship (bad enough) and then commit crimes against someone they viewed as a political opponent, that changed my view on life and people. I am now cynical to the point of self-harm, (there are physiological responses to constant fear) but that’s how things are now. Then we saw newly-elected Pres. Trump’s vilification by media as racist in response to one of the hurricanes. Something seemed wrong. My husband read Trump’s actual twitter response – which was so supportive and human – that’s about when we started to realize things were ~very~ screwed up in mass media. That’s a turning point I never thought I’d see in America / Manipulation of the free press to that degree. Obviously we’ve had a lot more events since then, but those were the big ones. Oh, also the Obidens scandals, covid, I guess so many things that I’ve reached critical exhaustion levels. And, sick of having ‘Ukraine’ as a place and people be the scapegoat for Obidens crimes among otherwise rationally-minded conservatives. I can’t understand this twist, unless it’s cold war bs or has some ulterior purpose. That’s why I’m still not politically declared (beyond the ineffectual ‘independent’), and probably will never be. If partisan politics require the truth to be obscured ‘Just because the “left” “supports” Ukraine’, what’s the point?
And, I will always vote Trump, even if I don’t understand everything he’s doing. He’s an angel / hero / natural diplomat / and more.

During Bush 2 things were troubling, starting with giving illegals citizenship talk, taking out Saddam as Iraq was a counter balance to Iran, stabilizing the middle east and after reading a book called the ‘Land of Bones’ how Afghanicrapistan has really never been conquered why it was a fools errand. Even wrote a letter to Cheney asking him why Bushie was not very Repub like.
Next step was how Obama started the take over of the administrative levers of State He just did it with no push back. It was like ‘whoa’ to some of us at the office. Then a second term for the Kenyan. That opened the door to thoughts on how stupid the American voter had become. An Englishmen wrote at the time..it’s not so much Obama he was worried about but that the American electorate was foolish enough to do it.
Final step was seeing the absolute corruption President Trump exposed in both political parties and the whole of Western Countries with the ‘in your face’, stolen election.
50 million Eastern foreigners have invaded and squat in the US over the last 20 years or so. Mostly here for what they can get, not what they can contribute to Western culture and traditions. Final nail in America’s future.

It often takes several events to invoke that Ah-ha moment in your life. I was only 6 years old when Kennedy was shot. I knew it was a big deal. We sat for days watching the funeral and TV coverage. One of the moments that stuck with me was my Nana saying to my mother, “I bet Hoover had something to do with this.” All I could think was, “how did our vacuum cleaner have anything to do with it? (I became afraid of that vacuum for months)

Fast forward to the Clinton election. I was teaching 6th grade CCD at our parish. (The Catholic equivalent to Sunday School). As I was walking out of church to go to the school one of the Nuns was handing out Clinton election buttons, bumper stickers etc. She was campaigning for him! I reminded her that he was ‘pro-choice’ and she told me that didn’t matter. I woke up that day.

The Catholic vote didn’t matter anymore. The Christian vote didn’t matter anymore. They would vote for any pretty face. If the voters were so easily swayed …then we were doomed. If the parish priest didn’t stop her… Then we were doomed. That was my moment. That was when I really started to question the reality I thought existed to the one that actually does. It was the moment I realized that my grandmother had thought the FBI could have had something to do with killing Kennedy!

when I came home from Vietnam and saw more VietCong flags being waved by Democrats than I saw in Vietnam