Horseshoe Theory - Part 1
Uniting the Tribes Against Our Common Enemy
Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM. We are the news now.
In this series, I aim to propose how we can find common ground with our fellow citizens on the other side of the political spectrum, while understanding that a few of them are simply beyond saving.
Introduction
I know that graphic may be triggering to some of you.
Perhaps you see it, and scoff, thinking it was conceived by some naïve idealist, who refuses to see the world for what it is. What delusion to think such a thing could ever happen?
It is I who made it, and as far as graphics go, I’ll admit that it has the crude craftsmanship of one of those mill-saw-sabers the Swamp Fox had his blacksmiths craft in their makeshift forest forge.
As a father of three young children, it is heartbreaking for me to read the older heads in the Badlands chats describe their broken relationships with their adult children, who are likely around my age, all due to politics. The fact that those same anons can find the will to persist and continue to engage in this struggle is a demonstration of their strength and resolve. (Perhaps you did not even realize that you had it? You do.)
I know many who fall into this category— seemingly lost beyond reconciliation— and yet I know that there is still hope for them. It is my ambition to see to it that most, if not all of them are brought back into the fold. It is the purpose of all of my writing.
The way I see it, these minds have been captured by our [Uniparty] enemy; brainwashed into seeing the world a specific way—the altruistic nature of their minds weaponized against itself.
There is a code among veterans, that they don’t leave a man behind, and I can’t help but feel that by withdrawing ourselves from these lost minds, we are forsaking them; relinquishing their fate to our enemy. Leaving them behind.
After all that has transpired, to think that we could make amends with our political rivals? Normies who identify as Democrats? Or support establishment Republicans? Who continue to support them today?
That is exactly what I am proposing.
I know it is possible, because I have already done it once before.
In August 2017, a few months after being the Best Man in my wedding, my older brother was murdered—left for dead— by his “friend.” The details of his death are not relevant for this discussion, except to understand that the subsequent experience—open conflict with a very corrupt government—is what set me on this path. This is something that is very personal and dear to me, because nobody should be left behind, ever; and I’ve seen with my own eyes that when real government corruption permeates the lives of a community, politics are set aside, and people come together to stand against it.
In the Patriot Chronicles, we discuss how this is our heritage, our history, and it needs to be reclaimed. Well these are our people: our friends, our loved ones, our children, and I’ll be damned if we are just going to walk away and let the enemy have them.
Let us be clear about the nature of this campaign. We do not seek to reconcile with the bad-faith actors who knowingly abused our trust with malicious deception. (
and had an excellent discussion about this distinction on their 4th of July episode of Story Hour.)While there may be a small group have who done things that are unforgiveable, most are mere victims of the most sophisticated psychological warfare operation in human history. Any of them who express genuine remorse and seek repentance should absolutely be accepted back with open arms. Because these are our people, and nobody gets left behind.
For those who remain skeptical, understand this: Nothing will terrify our common enemy more than looking across the proverbial battlefield, and seeing their enemies (us) unite in common cause against them— like the Irish and Scots uniting against England in Braveheart.
Time to Reflect
Those who are awake believe that they are seeing the world clearly, and in many ways, they are. However, it is my belief that we are all being deceived on levels deeper than even the most experienced and battle-tested digital soldier may realize—that we actually have very much in common with our perceived political opponents, we are merely viewing the same world through two different lenses. If this is true, then uniting our people into one coalition (NOT one ideology) will be much easier than we have been led to believe.
The political spectrum— as it is presented to normies— is Right vs Left; Conservative vs Liberal; Republican vs Democrat; Traditional vs Progressive. While many of us are fully aware that the Republican vs. Democrat paradigm is a lie, perhaps we are failing to understand that the other framings of this dichotomy are also a deception.
Kyle
has talked about how binary paradigms are conducive to the human mind, as it simplifies our understanding of the world. The problem with these paradigms is that it oversimplifies a rather complex concept into a black and white dynamic, ignoring the nuanced shades of gray in between— where many people end up landing.The binary nature of these paradigms inherently promotes tribalism, as it becomes easier to classify those who do not explicitly agree with us, in full, as enemies. Tribalism is how our enemy consolidates power— ‘divide and conquer.’
This is why it is such an important practice to consume the literature and rhetoric of your enemy. Not only will it challenge your own beliefs, helping to galvanize your convictions— or even replace them— but it will also help you better understand your enemy. Only with this greater understanding will we possess the guidance to defeat said enemy, and avoid becoming them in the process—avoid becoming the monster you seek to destroy.
(As you read this, the enemy stokes tensions in the streets of nations around the world, certain that one side will act, and the other will respond.)
So before we dig too deep into the minds of our hypnotized brethren, we first must look inward, to better understand ourselves— so that we will be enlightened and empowered to save our countrymen from the folly of the false promises of the cabal.
Without a doubt, this audience possesses the greatest mental fortitude of any group I have encountered on the political battlefield. Saving America—our people— will require the strongest minds, the strongest hearts, and the strongest wills, which is why I lay this burden on this group. Be the leader in the room— not the follower— and keep an open mind.
With that said, let us begin.
The ‘Right’ and the Logical Mind
For those in the Truth Movement— whom we would describe as ‘awake’ to the fake reality of our existence— we engage with topical information and the news cycles using logic and reason as the foundation of our understanding. (Patrick Gunnels calls us “heterodox thinkers,” a beautiful moniker.) Objective discernment becomes the vehicle through which we navigate the narratives unfolding around us, trying to determine (often in vain) if there is any truth to what we are told. The closer we look, the more we find ourselves drowning in the ocean of lies constantly barraging our psyche.
It seems that it is only when you learn to swim with the current, but not surrender to it, that we actually get anywhere.
Logic becomes our weapon of choice in this fight, and being that it is a Psywar —a war of the mind— this weapon is a logical choice. We revere those who possess the skillset to hunt down critical information, which has been either lost or hidden, but also those who can analyze the swirling tempest of news events, and extract from it the fragments of truth that we hope will lead to our ultimate salvation.
Research and Reasoning become the two major actions that define our movement, and feed the core functions of the Logical Mind. Proficiency in these two areas has become the measure of a Psy-soldier in the Information War. (There are other very useful skills as well, such as meme-smithing, reporting, articulating, even trolling/ridicule; all of which are critical to our fight, and will be evaluated in future posts.)
If Logic is our weapon of choice, then Discernment is our body armor. Ultimately, this is a war of attrition, and we must outlast the enemy in the finite game described by
.What we can safely conclude is that we on the “right side” of the mainstream political spectrum take pride in our logic and ability to discern, because we understand that the ability to reason objectively— the Logical Mind— is a muscle that requires discipline to develop, and exercise to grow. (Even normies who watch Fox News believe they fall into this category, and to a certain extent, they do.)
The ‘Left’ and the Bleeding Heart
Conversely, the opposite side of the political spectrum engages in topical information and news events primarily using the opposite cognitive function: Emotion.
Ideally, that utilization is constrained to our moral subconscious, remaining consistent and steady in the background so that our logical mind can engage with new information in the foreground and discern truth. (The reality is that sometimes we, too, get triggered by certain news events, and become guilty of the very practice that we ridicule the ‘Left’ for doing in their daily lives.)
The ‘intellectuals’ of the Left engage with information in a similar manner, but the roles are reversed. Their unbridled emotions flood the foreground of their thoughts, so that their Logical Mind becomes a passive background function of the subconscious. This is what I would call the Bleeding Heart.
While we may view this reversal as a weakness, the Left embraces it as a strength. The fact that empathy dominates their reasoning is not viewed by them as a lack of discipline, but rather as an evolution of morality. This is why they view the Right as archaic, and the Logical Mind as cold, calculating and inhumane.
Many on our side perceive their interpretation to be a weakness—that the utilization of emotion in the analysis of our reality is the habit of an undisciplined mind.
Allow me to dispel this myth.
When you watch Jim Caviezel speak into a camera about adrenochrome harvesting, or confessing that he was once suicidal as a teenager, or what motivated him to make The Sound of Freedom film, all while fighting back tears with inflections of genuine pain in his voice, you are not engaging with datapoints that inform your Logical Mind.
The same can be said when you listen to Alfredo Luna (AlphaWarrior)—a decorated Marine and deep undercover law enforcement veteran— describe the midnight raid that the Biden regime conducted on his home, where they pointed weapons at his wife and son, and left his baby girl alone in her crib for hours, screaming for help.
The lump in your throat forming as you listen to Alpha speak, the tears swelling in your eyes, your clenched jaw and furrowed brow are not datapoints that can be processed and duplicated by an artificial intelligence. Your righteous indignation and fleeting desire to see retribution delivered for these transgressions are not driven by your Logical Mind. They are emotions driven by your Bleeding Heart, because you are a human being, not an artificial intelligence.
The undisciplined Bleeding Heart would take to the streets, and burn down cities, demanding justice against the regime for these crimes. But the Logical Mind knows that is not where the real battle is fought.
Without the Bleeding Heart, the Logical Mind may recognize Alpha’s plight, and perhaps even empathize, but its core function—reason— would lead it to conclude that his struggle was beyond its periphery, and therefore, not its concern. Best to keep to yourself, and protect your own interests. That’s what an AI would do.
But we are not machines, are we?
The Left doesn’t disavow reasoning. It operates within their cognition passively, though that doesn’t mean they can’t call upon it to debate. What it means is that when they do engage in debate, their reasoning muscle is weak and limited. When that muscle— the Logical Mind— is stretched to its limit, the more dominant Bleeding Heart swoops in to relieve the stress, like a reflex. (This is also why it is seemingly easy to defeat a Leftist in a debate, because an honest analysis of relevant facts reinforces the arguments of the Logical Mind.)
This reflex manifests itself in the form of emotional outbursts, and it’s worth noting that many people on the Right are also guilty of succumbing to these moments of outrage, as we parse through the news headlines of the day.
We are not as different from the Left as you may think.
Common Ground and Horseshoe Theory
It is time for us on the Right to realize that emotional outrage is not a shameful act. In fact, it is the very thing that defines our humanity, establishes morality, and allows us to decide what is acceptable and what is not. The truth of the matter is that, in this era of outrage mobs and cancel culture, what the world is severely lacking is adequate outrage from the morally righteous Logical Mind. (Not only do they need to become a lot more like us, but we need to become a little more like them.)
The Uniparty has learned to weaponize emotional outrage in the undisciplined mind of the masses.
Outrage only becomes shameful when it is unbridled, manifesting into an expression of uncontrolled rage. It is in that undisciplined mindset that most human beings engage in the worst behaviors imaginable, temporarily blinded by their fury. I say “most” because there exists a small collection of people who willingly engage in such vile behavior even when perfectly calm. Their misconduct is part of a calculus—akin to the Logical Mind— that is based in selfish narcissism, among other things, all of which the rest of us typically categorize as Evil.
Sometimes Evil is highly disciplined and coordinated, such as Machiavellian politicking and 5GW Psyops, and sometimes Evil is undisciplined and solitary, such as a psychotic killer on a rampage. Both forms of Evil seek the same thing: to dominate others. It is a very serious danger to anybody within its reach, and that very real threat is the Common Ground that we on the Right share with the Left, at the most existential level. Because the overwhelming majority of human beings are Good Souls seeking a better world.
(“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”)
This fundamental truth is the essence of Horseshoe Theory.
What I aim to do in this series is prove to the readers that not only is a unified alliance between the Right and Left possible, but that it is our destiny. Like every great work of epic fiction, it is the implausible alliance that will deliver universal salvation. The question that remains is whether we possess the courage, the strength, and the conviction necessary to wrangle that destiny, and seize it for our children, and all those who come after us.
History will judge us on our ability to compartmentalize our pride, our pain, our fear, and our past failures, and discipline our minds to push forward to complete the mission at hand.
It is in this manner that our nonviolent struggle parallels real kinetic warfare.
A Bridge Between Worlds
The task before us— uniting our people to circumvent our doom by overthrowing our conquerors— is an extremely intricate and delicate surgery, rife with seemingly-impossible challenges. It is the world’s most complex puzzle—a riddle without a clean answer. Unequivocally, the single greatest dilemma we may ever face as a species. Because, ultimately, the core objective is the oldest dilemma in human history: Winning the hearts and minds of a factions in conflict, and bringing them together for a greater purpose.
Whether we are talking about conquest, politics, or religion, countless leaders throughout history have attempted to solve this puzzle. Most have failed—some in spectacular fashion, with devastating consequences— though there are a handful who did succeed, delivering some degree of salvation to their people, even if it was short-lived.
I had initially sought to end Part One with an evaluation of our ‘Common Ground,’ and the specific incidents; but what I found was that there was a more meta/macro bridge between the two sides that first needed to be identified. (We will begin to dive into those specific case studies in Part 2.)
What I realized is that we are never going to solve this impossible riddle of uniting warring factions with equations, logic, and facts. It would be naïve to reduce diplomacy to such simplistic concepts. Winning the hearts and minds of our countrymen— particularly those who rely on the Bleeding Heart as their cognitive muscle for reasoning— will require inspiration, not persuasion.
If you stop and think, it actually makes perfect sense. Inspiration is the cognitive bridge between Logic and Emotion.
In antiquity, the goddesses associated with inspiration were called ‘Muses.’ Though, what’s interesting is that they weren’t actually the goddesses of inspiration, itself. Formally, they resided over the fields of literature, science, and the arts. They were also said to be the source knowledge for the legends, myths, and songs that formed the cornerstones of ancient Greek civilization—their mythology of heroes and cultural norms.
Isn’t it interesting that, according to the founders of Western Civilization—the ancient Greeks— the fields of science, literature, history and art were proctored by the same set of Muses, and their divine ‘ability’ was the power of inspiration?
Not only did they preside over mathematics, geography, astronomy, music, poetry, and art, but also history.
Herodotus was a famous Greek who was known for traveling throughout the known world, and compiling a comprehensive history— a narrative— that helped explain the story of humanity from a macro perspective.
Before the Persian crisis, history had been represented among the Greeks only by local or family traditions. The "Wars of Liberation" had given to Herodotus the first genuinely historical inspiration felt by a Greek. These wars showed him that there was a corporate life, higher than that of the city, of which the story might be told; and they offered to him as a subject the drama of the collision between East and West. With him, the spirit of history was born into Greece; and his work, called after the nine Muses, was indeed the first utterance of Clio. (Jebb, Richard C. The Genius of Sophocles . section 7)
What Richard is saying here is that Herodotus, in his renowned book, The Histories, developed a narrative of the common history of the ancient Greeks, intending to inspire them to aspire beyond their tribalistic nature, and become a great civilization. This is why Herodotus is credited as the world’s first historian.
You could even say that Herodotus was the first to deploy narrative seeding— a war of stories. But in this case, it was conducted with benevolent intent, and based in truth, not deception.
The librarians at Alexandria took The Histories and broke it up into nine parts, naming each after one of the nine Greek Muses— because the volume was intended to inspire those who read it.
(If you are noticing a pattern in my writing— parallels between the spirit of the Patriot Chronicles and the spirit of this series— yes.)
It is Inspiration that will serve as the cognitive bridge between the Logical Mind and the Bleeding Heart. Because only when we feel inspired do we develop the appetite for significant change. Change not only in our own lives, but also in the world around us.
We must first inspire our own side to change the way we perceive the world, so we can then work to inspire our hypnotized countrymen to change. We can do this— we just have to commit to the process, remain patient and disciplined, and challenge ourselves to evolve into the next iteration of American Patriots.
Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.
If you enjoyed this contribution to Badlands Media, you can follow Ghost on Twitter and Truth Social.
Great article my friend! I agree with you on the importance of uniting our brothers and sisters regardless of their political beliefs.
We can unite against evil.
That is the endgame for the enemy.
On a personal level, God taught me a lesson a long time ago that the relationship was more important than winning the argument.
Love people right where they are.
Don’t be a hindrance to what God is trying to accomplish.
Sometimes taking a bitter pill of truth for those we love is hard to swallow. We must discipline ourselves to try and give them small doses that are easier to grasp but lead to healing of sorts.
All the best friend.
Excellent work!
I know Ghost very well. There was a time 12-18 months ago where I never thought this would be the guy talking about unity after what the system did to cover up his brother's murder. If Ghost can get to this place, so can you.
Dude I'm so proud of your for putting this out there. This is he best thing I've seen yet about all of us relating to each other based on our commonalities as opposed to our differences. It's easy to either become too analytical and logical just as it is to become too emotional. Every person should seek the middle ground on those concepts as should we as a humanity.
I believe the very public conversation about child trafficking will be the foundation on which we build our unity. After all, we can all agree that child trafficking and pedophilia is a scourge and we should all do more to stop it. Onward...together.