Karyn Davidson

Mom of 3 boys. Dog mom. Gymnastics mom. Sooner. Music lover.

[Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling]

(Warning: long rant)

My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.

I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.

Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious.

And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.

Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.

I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.

Here are the facts:

Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.

Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.

Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.

These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.

Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:

These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.

These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.

When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.

They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.

And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety.

When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.”

They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.

And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.

When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.

And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.

For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.

In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.

In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.

> “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.)

> “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)

> “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)

> “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)

In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.

> “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)

> “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.)

All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells.

You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it.

Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do.

If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

This happened 80 years ago today.

[Nick Adams @NickAdamsinUSA]

"This election is something of an indictment on the political information complex. The story that was portrayed was not true. We were just ignoring the fundamentals."

Scott Jennings does a flawless job taking down an entire panel of woke CNN hosts.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr]

They didn't pass the First Amendment to protect speech that everybody likes. They passed it to protect the speech that's inconvenient, that's abhorrent, that nobody wants to hear, that's dangerous. That is the price of democracy.

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

@iAnonPatriot This is great!!

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

Kamala Harris is TOTALLY incapable of speaking without a script.

This is pathetic 🤣

Every “speech” she gives is just a rerun of the first.

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

This…100%

[The Real Mike Rowe @mikeroweworks]

America's Lab Rats

Here I am on Meet the Press, shortly after the election back in 2015, explaining to the panel why skilled labor needs a national PR campaign. Aside from the alarming emergence of my bald spot, (which I believe NBC intentionally highlighted), and my complete disregard for NBC’s dress code, (which I intentionally ignored), I thought the appearance went rather well. But along with my follicular and sartorial struggles, I was also struck by some additional similarities between now and then.

Back in 2015, I had predicted on this page that Donald Trump would win the election, which is why Meet the Press invited me on in the first place. (“What does Mike Rowe know that we don’t???”) Not much, really, but on Dirty Jobs, I did have the opportunity to highlight a lot of hardworking men and women all over the country, and I was struck by how many of them told me they felt “forgotten” by elected officials on both sides of the aisle. I remember a factory worker in Michigan saying, “I’m not sure how I feel about voting for a billionaire, but at least Trump sees me. At least he knows I’m here. Nobody else gives a damn.”

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’d heard the same thing from so many other dirty jobbers. Not about Trump, necessarily, but about the feeling of being “invisible” to their elected officials and “ignored” by the media in general. In fact, I knew that somebody like Trump was going to become president back in 2004, shortly after Dirty Jobs crept on the air and shocked my many bosses at the Discovery Channel by finding a large and very enthusiastic audience. None of them could believe it. I remember the CEO calling me into his office and saying, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mike, but we’re struggling to understand why so many people are watching a middle-aged smart aleck crawl through sewers and septic tanks.”

At the time, I chalked the show’s popularity up to my own endearing charms, but of course, that was not the case at all. Dirty Jobs – and the countless other work-related shows that evolved from it - worked precisely because they spoke to an audience that had been largely underserved by programmers and producers in my industry. It was a classic case of the kind of cognitive dissonance that occurs when a big brand realizes its customers want something they don’t want them to want. Twenty years ago, Discovery didn’t want its viewers to want Dirty Jobs. It was rough around the edges, totally unscripted, slightly puerile, and totally inconsistent with their brand at the time. A lot people way up the food chain wanted to cancel it, but the viewers, God bless ‘em, made that impossible.

I was reminded of all that ten years later, in 2015, when it became clear that the GOP didn’t want its customers to want Donald Trump. But they did, and I’ve been interested ever since in the tension that occurs when big brands, (or big countries) realize that their customers, (or their citizens), feel ignored, underserved, or invisible. And it occurs to me that it’s happening again, in a different way, and on a much larger scale.

Check out the first few paragraphs of this amazing essay by the great Victor Davis Hanson, just published a few days ago. The piece is called “America’s Lab Rats,” and it’s a far more eloquent version of what I tried to articulate on Meet the Press eight years ago. Victor writes…

“Half the country thinks something has gone drastically wrong in America, to the point that it is rapidly becoming unrecognizable. Millions feel they are virtual lab rats in some grand research project conducted by entitled elites who couldn’t care less when the experiment blows up. Consider:

Our military turns over $60 billion in state-of-the-art weapons to terrorists in Kabul and then flees in disgrace?

Terrorist flags fly in place of incinerated Old Glory at the iconic Union Station in Washington as radical students and green card-holding guests deface statues with threats that “Hamas is coming” while spewing hatred toward Jews—and all with impunity?

A wide-open border with 10 million unaudited illegal immigrants?

Once beautiful downtowns now resembling Nairobi or Cairo, as paralyzed mayors spend billions without a clue how to remedy their self-created disaster?

Fast food drive-ins, priced as if they were near-gourmet restaurants?

In truth, this apparent rapid cultural, economic, and political upheaval is well into its third decade. The disruptions are the results of the long-term effects of globalization and the high-tech revolution that brought enormous wealth into the hands of a tiny utopian elite.”

Victor goes on to explain precisely how and why half the country feels like lab rats and sums up the unprecedented gaslighting that so many Americans are claiming to experience today. You can read the whole thing here, https://t.co/b06NMsWrH9, and I recommend you do, not just because it’s insightful, but because later today, I’m going to interview the author for my podcast, the results of which I’ll share here tomorrow. I’ll be curious to know what you all think.

In the meantime, for those of you still keeping track, I’m headed to DC today, West Virginia on Wednesday, North Carolina on Thursday, Baltimore on Friday, and Atlanta on Monday. Unless Meet the Press calls again, in which case I’ll buy a suit and stick around Maryland.

Mike Rowe: 'Dirty Jobs' Reached Same People as Trump's Campaign https://t.co/EplvovK541 via @nbcnews

[USA Gymnastics @USAGym]

👏👏👏

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

It’s 1 am and my two golden retrievers are running around the house with an abundance of energy. What is happening? I thought when they turned 1 they were supposed to calm down…😂

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

😂

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

Wow!

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

If you don’t like the weather in Minnesota, use the other door.
https://t.co/dT9chm0rJk

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

Yes!

[QuikTrip @QuikTrip]

@tspearstv We'll consider it if Notre Dame fans admit Play Like A Champion Today belongs to the University of Oklahoma

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

Nope! What a nightmare…

[Volcaholic 🌋 @volcaholic1]

OMG.....😱🫣

Yesterday at Vancouver International Airport in Canada, a box containing snakes broke open and scattered onto the tarmac......

🎥 Lyle Chausse

[🎸 Rock History 🎸 @historyrock_]

A rock band is performing and the singer sees a kid with a banner asking to play guitar with them. The singer asks him:

- Do you really know how to play guitar?
- Yeah!
- What's your favorite band?
- Guns N' Roses

What happens next is incredible.

[Oklahoma Mesonet @okmesonet]

Level 4 out of 5: “Several strong to violent tornadoes, extreme hail, and corridors of widespread wind damage are forecast…from late Saturday afternoon into the night.” ANY storm that forms in ANY risk above will have a chance for large, long-track tornadoes. #okwx #okmesonet

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

My 17 year old son just tried to explain to me who Big Bird is as if I had no idea…

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

Tonight’s sunset in Ormond Beach, FL

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

An amazing example of an Iridescent cloud

[Kristin Baker @Kristin34Baker]

Social media can move mountains! @KendraScott Team or brand followers, can we help these incredible women out?! #kendrascott #mom #Cancer #takesavillage #grownandflown

[Karyn Davidson @karynd79]

This was a surprise…not complaining though