First, I’m disappointed that many of the folks on this list are just like most other humans — they only learn through pain, not through listening to other’s experiences. They wouldn’t listen to me when I told them that I learned in 1964 that America would never elect a “true conservative,” that what we needed to do was pick “the most conservative ELECTABLE candidate.”

I’m disappointed that most of neo’s readers don’t know that we live in the McLuhan Age, that the medium is the message, and that Trump is a master of the media.

I’m disappointed that many of neo’s readers still think we don’t know Trump is an assh*le. We do. As Kyndyll G said, we’re holding our nose while voting for him.

I’m disappointed that many people on this list don’t look at other countries with multiple, ideologically-driven parties and thank God we don’t have them. If Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t win on a third-party ticket, no one living today could.

I’m disappointed that many people on this list don’t really give a damn about small businesses, about coal miners, about the unemployed. Yes, they are “Mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it any more!” Is there something wrong with that? Oh, they don’t want a “true conservative,” so therefore their concerns are not valid? How is that different from Barry O or Hillary’s attitude?

I’m disappointed that anyone could possibly believe that the Evil Empress could be better than the Assh*le. On the Supreme Court alone, there’s already one vacancy, if Hillary is elected Ginsberg and maybe others will resign — and that will mean a leftist court for the next 30 years. Do you actually believe the Donald would nominate lefties of RBG’s ilk, even if only for the reason that they’re anti-business? Do you really conceive that in some area, any area, she would be better? After the Reset Button? After Libya? After the Iran deal? After Benghazi? After the server? After the Clinton Foundation? After the government-provided child care? (They’re called “cré¨ches” in Communist countries.)

I’m disappointed that many people don’t see that Donald’s ego is actually a positive factor in having at least some of our ideas adopted — he will build a wall, he will build up the military, he will take care of veterans. If it’s only because his ego is now wrapped up in those promises, I’ll take it! Remember that Churchill, when asked why, as an old anti-Communist, he could speak positively about Stalin, said “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least rise in the House of Commons and make a few complimentary remarks about the Devil.” Anyone who’s running against Hillary will get at least a few complimentary remarks from me. Anybody who’s running against Hillary on the Republican ticket will at least get my vote.

I don’t have any illusions about the Donald’s character. But I don’t have any illusions about Hillary’s, either.

I won’t mind if you withdraw the bet — I think it was made before the West Virginia votes and exit polls came in.

BTW — I never bet, except on sure things. Last time I bet on anything was in 1981, when some fool bet me $5 that the Beatles never recorded anything but their own songs.

See my comment at May 10th, 2016 at 4:20 pm, especially the suggested Powell article (h/t G6loq). Excerpt:

The article by Scott S. Powell offers an incisive overview of the Left strategy with their Gramscian march, which is equally useful to understand the Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right strategy for establishing their own Gramscian long march.

Comments here by Neo stalwarts exemplify that even now, when the alt-Right’s Left-mimicking activist game is readily apparent, many conservatives can still only bring themselves to interpret the Trump phenomenon through a traditional electoral frame of reference. I take it that highlighting that critical flaw of perspective on the Right is one of Neo’s purposes for this post.

I agree that alt-Right activists are not subordinate to Trump. His presidency is not their end game. They’ll invest in their alliance with the Trump campaign as long as it serves the purpose of furthering their Gramscian long march. In that regard, they’ve already met their proximate objectives. The general election is a bonus round. They’ll travel with Trump as long as the association is profitable … and Trump understands that.

Right now, conservatives and Republicans are furiously speculating, What does a Trump presidency portend, while rationalizing themselves into supporting Trump versus #NeverHillary. As both salesmen like Trump and activists like VoxDay understand, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

The answer to their furious speculation is, a Trump presidency portends the rise of the alt-Right in the cultural, political zeitgeist.

With all the mystery about the Trump agenda, what’s clear is Trump’s alliance and, more significantly, his reliance on the alt-Right creative engine of the Trump phenomenon.

If the alt-Right social activist movement elevates Trump to the Presidency, which assumes a concurrent accelerated alt-Right encroachment of the GOP, he will continue to rely on the alt-Right to advance the Trump agenda like the Obama presidency has relied on the Left social activist movement that took over the Democrats and was responsible for Obama’s rise. So, while the agenda for a Trump presidency is murky yet, what’s clear is that it will be negotiated with the alt-Right.

Neo has posted about the Trump-alt-Right eventuality, too.

Participatory politics subsume electoral politics, and the 2016 GOP nomination race has been a setting for the alt-Right’s activist game. The alt-Right is establishing – has established – a social activist movement, a Gramscian long march, whose first act in this election cycle has been to displace politically-evolutionarily compromised conservatives and take over their social space in the American political landscape, following the model of the Left’s displacement of liberals.

Like the Left took over the Democrats within their greater Gramscian march, the alt-Right is following the Left model to take over the GOP within their greater Gramscian long march. A Trump presidency will accelerate that process, but a Trump defeat in the general election will not curtail that process.

Based on the merit of ideas and principles alone, the conservative ethic is better for America than the Left and alt-Right (who are moving to drop the ‘alt-‘ and take over the Right from displaced conservatives like leftists appropriated the ‘liberal’ identity label from displaced liberals).

But in the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game, narrative is elective truth while the actual truth is just a narrative that must be competed for like any other in the arena.

Instead, conservatives, including in this election cycle, have a bad habit of approaching the activist game as though they’re entitled to social dominance based solely on the superior merit of their ideas and principles. But the activist game is not HS debate club based on merit, though the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist looks like it. The activist game is maneuver contest based on mass.

Conservatives have to earn the power to reify their preferred social condition just like every other team in the activist arena.

For the conservative ethic to become the dominant ethic for American social culture and politics, conservatives must compete for the necessary social dominance to reify their preferred social condition, just like any other team in the arena.

No doubt, conservatives are the good guys. But so were liberals. Being good guys didn’t protect liberals from their displacement for the sake of the Left social activist movement’s Gramscian march. Being good guys won’t protect conservatives from being displaced via the same process by the Left-mimicking alt-Right.

Yet despite the decades-long warning provided by Left versus liberals and Left versus Right, despite even the ready lessons from their own tentative foray into competitive activism with the Tea Party, in the 2016 GOP nomination race, conservatives proved utterly unable to counter the Left-mimicking alt-Right insurgency.

The Trump phenomenon that usurped the GOP nomination race has been nothing less than a fitness test for conservatives, which they failed.

“Necessitates being reduced to a minor insurgency everyone craps on for some odd years” involves retiring the conservatives who are irredeemably averse to activism, and even now only seem capable of (mis)evaluating the Trump phenomenon through a traditional electoral frame of reference. They’re the political-evolutionary liabilities that long rendered the Right vulnerable to the Left and now to the Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right insurgency.

Whether conservatives “can survive that” as a viable social cultural/political entity so that “victory might be feasible” someday depends on whether there exists a kernel of conservatives who are naturally activist or will adopt the activist mindset necessary to compete for real. And if there is such a kernel, whether they will coalesce as a critical mass to form a new politically-evolutionarily sound center of gravity for a social activist movement that will compete for real in the only social cultural/political game there is.

The opportunity is available right now with the 2016 general election for conservatives to steal a march towards establishing their own Gramscian march.

Like the alt-Right insurgency has used the Trump phenomenon to catalyze their social activist movement for their Gramscian long march, conservatives could use a 3rd party insurgent campaign in the 2016 general election to jumpstart their social activist movement. But conservative activists will need to join together and organize quickly and move with a purpose, aggressively, intelligently, and opportunistically, ASAP.

It’s not about DJT’s success or not in power. It’s about America’s ability to survive evil in the Long War. And a Long War sometimes necessitates being reduced to a minor insurgency everyone craps on for some odd years, but if you can survive that, victory might be feasible. A sort of reverse Vietnam.

VoxDay wasn’t political though. He was a Leftist nerd geek on the Science Fiction Writers of America with Scalzi and the other child molestor trash. They kicked him out, and then he started figuring out what the Red Pill was about.

Before that, VoxDay’s background is game developer or coder. So that environment is kind of… light progressive.

Of course VD would pick it up, he is smart enough to deconstruct attacks used against him once his neck is on the line. Like most people, being hanged tomorrow concentrates their minds.

conservatives one thon the Right continued to limit their relationship with activism to denouncement, rejection, and willful ignorance.

DC Republicans had successfully knee capped the Tea Party, so that was not unexpected. They thought it would be back to the Status quo as usual.

Oh yea, to be fair to VoxDay, he also trains in athletics and plays soccer with the young generation. Not quite as good as internal martial arts, but it gets him closer to the Greek philosopher/warrior ethos than most modern Westerners.

Which is, perhaps what people are missing. The Alternative Right are the new generation raised online. People who have evolved into their niches, away from social conformity. And there’s some very weird individuals online as a result of that. That 3% mutation factor even.

Of course, but people who need a Divine King to do it for them, are weaklings. Not courageous independent Americans in the home of the brave. If people want freedom, perhaps they should stop selling themselves as slaves first.

An indicator for me was VoxDay’s foci on countering Left activism and employment of Left activist techniques.

At the same time that the alt-Right was gearing up for the activist game, conservatives one th Right continued to limit their relationship with activism to denouncement, rejection, and willful ignorance. That self-induced, critical competitive gap rendered the GOP nomination race vulnerable to the Trump-front alt-Right insurgency.