Conservative whining, conservative solutions
Some of the responses to my post yesterday on activism had interesting suggestions, but others featured what I’ve come to think of as conservative whining (sorry folks). For example, one common complaint is that demonstrations don’t work because the MSM won’t cover them.
No, the MSM doesn’t cover and won’t cover them unless they are massive and continual, and even then probably not. At any rate, demonstrations are hardly the best solution, they are just (as I wrote in the post) the first suggestion that popped into my head. But whether it be demonstrations or something else, the idea is to make the MSM cover you; to get creative, like the Yippies were (remember Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin?), or like Breitbart.
I know, much easier said than done.
I sometimes fall prey to this whining too, but I think it needs to be resisted. I often think that people on the right believe in their hearts of hearts that other people should see that their ideas are obviously superior, and so all they should have to do is to state them clearly and they’ll win converts. But obviously that’s not the way the world is going to work, is it?
There were some good suggestions in the comments section in that thread. Please take a look, particularly at this, this, this, this, this, and this.
And if it’s not time for a march on Washington, then it’s certainly time for a Gramscian march. Way past time, actually.
In the comments section of a similar post I wrote yesterday at Legal Insurrection, one commenter responded this way:
Sorry, but until we get “activists” in the Congress, White House, and Supreme Court, daily million man marches won’t do anything but make the marchers feel better.
A President can only ignore the will of the people for eight years, and Obama’s eight years are about up. Then it will be time to put an activist in his place, and enough activists in Congress to reverse the course of this country.
Here was my reply:
One of the points I was trying to make in the post (and in the quotation towards the end of the post) is that expecting electoral politics to somehow do the trick first is probably an error. The left didn’t suddenly win more elections because the population spontaneously decided to go left. It won more elections because of activism and what is known as the Gramscian march through many institutions in American society. The right may keep losing elections unless it can counter that activism and that march.
The war of manoeuvre was the Stalinist model. One simply used political violence to achieve one’s ends. But Gramsci thought this would not work in the more highly developed Western countries. For these countries, he recommended a war of position. A war of position is one in which one first identifies “switch-points of social power” and then one seeks to peacefully take control of those switch-points. The switch-points all relate to the field of cultural values ”“ in particular, the arts and education. The most important switch-points of power are positions like school principal, university professor, government policy maker, education department bureaucrat and journalist.
In 1967, Rudi Dutschke, a German student leader, reformulated Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy of cultural hegemony with the phrase, “The long march through the institutions.” Instead of a long military march, such as the one undertaken by the Chinese Marxist Maoist Tse-Tung, in the highly developed western countries the long march would be through the most culturally significant of our social institutions ”“ that is, through schools, universities, courts, parliaments and through the media, through newspapers and television.
I’m better at describing the problem than in finding the solution. But I don’t see how throwing up our hands in despair and declaring ourselves victims—of the MSM, or of the politicians—is going to solve it.
We need some wins or at least make an effort.
One simple thing would be for McConnell to change that 60 vote rule in the Senate. Forget tradition. Obama has shafted the Congress in every way possible.
It would force Obama to actually veto bills.
Procedurally I don’t know if this could be done in mid-session, but just TRY.
Cornhead:
It could be done, I believe. But why bother, when they don’t have the votes to override?
Forcing Obama to veto is not something the vast majority of voters would even notice. And if Republicans lose the Senate in 2016 and a Democrat also becomes president, they would rue the day they did it, because they would have already given up their power to block things, and for what?
Of course, if those two things happen—if Democrats control the Senate and a Democrat becomes president—Democrats would jettison the 60-vote rule in a heartbeat if they thought it was worth their while. It wouldn’t be worth their while unless they also control the House, however.
So the Republicans would be stupid to do it now. It would gain them very little and they could be losing a lot.
It’s my understanding that the 60 vote rule doesn’t apply to budgets – so what’s McConnell’s excuse for ignoring that? Remember how Obamacare was passed? What really irks me is how stupid these RINOS think we all are – they seem to think the party is full of LIV’s. Since incumbents keep getting elected, maybe they are right.
fiona:
If I recall correctly, the budget problem is not about the 60-vote rule. It’s about the fact that Obama can veto any bill, and it has to be overridden. An override will not be successful.
Now, it may be that (as some people think) sending Obama bill after bill that he will veto successfully is a good tactical move. I don’t happen to think it will make a particle of difference to most voters.
“We need some wins or at least make an effort.” (Cornhead)
The problem as I see it is a lack of long-term vision. Sure, short term results help, but don’t be the cultural equivalent of a day-trader. Buy and hold has always been the way to go.
That said, the lack of short term results is not the same as a lack of results. Glenn Reynolds has spent much time discussing the concept of a preference cascade; that is, where people who unknowingly agree, hide their agreement and think the are alone, and then suddenly they come to the awareness that many other people feel the way they do.
That’s how revolutions begin. That’s one of the important aspects of Trump’s candidacy, he’s leading in the polls because people are becoming aware that many more people feel they way he does/they do. In that respect, he’s acting as a catalyst.
This is a good thing as it portends the possibility of an onslaught against the leftist, narcissistic condescension of the ruling class. That’s why Trump is the target of the slings and arrows of the establishment—and the great thing is he doesn’t care, which makes him relatively immune to their tried and true weaponry.
I think perhaps the biggest problem conservatives have in trying to push back against, let alone change, the leftist-inspired dominant culture is that so many issues are decided at an emotional level — compassion for the poor, the downtrodden, the weak, etc . So much so that thoughtful arguments usually can’t even get a foot in the door.
With that in mind, we need to identify areas where we can maybe even open the door all the way. Like school choice. On that, conservative thought is perfectly aligned with the emotional, and the left, if thoroughly exposed, comes off as the bad guy.
Ann:
Illegal immigration is certainly an emotional issue.
Here in as small a nutshell in which it can all be stuffed (with some redundancy).
1. Withdraw support and excuse yourself from all institutions, organizations, associations, (as much as personal situations allow) from on high — churches — to the non-essential, for example, The Boy and Girl Scouts of America.
2. Commence building institutions, organizations, associations that will first serve the traditional constituency and respect religious/moral conscience.
3. Build a local network, homeschooling, services/products exchange of which other likeminded networks in different localities might avail themselves. That is, network the networks.
4. Make it known, with the aid of just such a network hub or central clearing house of data/information to all corporations that you (the collective corporate you) object to their acceptance and/or politicization of cultural deviancy or faddish fetishism and that you belong to a more powerful economic strata and spend more money than ‘they’ do. It could not be lost on the corporations that those presently in their fifties spend more money on more stuff than the youth culture that is catered to even though they are greatly outnumbered.
5. F**k the MSM. There is already extant throughout the WWW a rather sizable, intelligent, and potentially muscular media conglomerate of blogs small and large, providing samizdat publishing, podcasts, editorials, cartoons. It may not seem much because they exist on their own – discreet Munchian screams in the wilderness. Does a Munchian scream in the wilderness (or on canvas) make a sound? It does if it’s arrayed (networked) properly. Make it known that the MSM routinely lies or disregards important stories — to their advertisers (see # 4).
6. In keeping with #5, stop varnishing. Here is the final paragraph from a post on today’s American Thinker
blog section:
Obama Unbound
By Richard Butrick
”The disconnect between his policy objectives and his policy initiatives is not simply astounding; it is troubling. Taking actions that patently defeat one’s objectives? It is beginning to seem to be almost a derangement of some sort. Either that or, as the conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer maintains, it is deliberate.”
I understand civility, I understand eschewing hyperbole, I don’t understand pulling punches. “It is troubling”? “Derangement”? “Either that or…”? If after seven years of Obama you are still equivocal, you’ve missed entirely the direness of our situation. Every mention of Obama that does not state or allude to his being an inveterate liar, an inveterate hater, an inveterate demolisher is a missed opportunity and there’s no excuse for it. If you have a hammer, then hammer — ‘they’ would (and do).
We have somebody fighting the good fight for us. His name is Donald Trump. He gets plenty of media attention and most of it for his immaturity, never the less he is the front runner and has the backing of many conservative voters. Guess where that puts us? Go ahead, march away. Put out yet another planned parenthood video, see what that gets us.
GP,
One should never pull punches. The gope are masters of pulling punches. Use your purchasing power to punch, no matter how feeble your economic punch. And, let those you are punching know exactly why you are punching.
About 10 years ago I had a Chase credit card. When I realized how Chase supported left wing causes I returned my cut up card with a letter explaining why I could no longer do business with Chase. I received a new card and called immediately. I explained, again, why I could not do business with Chase. The person I was speaking with asked if I would speak with her supervisor. I said okay.
The supervisor came on line and I explained, once again, why I wanted nothing to do with Chase. He responded that my credit record at Chase was excellent in terms of previous credit card and car loan transactions, and what could Chase do to keep me as a client. I responded it was easy to keep me as a client. All that was required was to have the CEO of Chase come to my house and wash my feet on his or her knees on my front porch. Last time I ever received an offer to apply for a Chase credit card.
T at 3:20 pm:
Your mention of the “preference cascade” phenomenon caught my attention; something about that concept is quite appealing and I wonder if that’s not exactly what we’re seeing with so many people being attracted to/ inspired by Trump. I believe the big Tea Party rallies in 2009 were another example of a preference cascade in operation; too bad is was successfully countered by the Left’s propaganda campaign. One has to believe that there are many, many other people who are seeing things in the same way one sees them, and have been drawing similar conclusions. How does one tap into that? Andrew Breitbart certainly did it, and maybe Donald Trump is doing it as well, though he does make a very strange messenger indeed. “Preference cascade”? Hmmm….
Trump tweeted last night: “Jeb Bush is crazy, who cares that he speaks Mexican, this is America, English !!”
Seriously, folks…speaks “Mexican”?
Get rid of the Dept. of Education. In one stroke you’d break the back of the University-Government complex. It would be a huge fight but probably could be done. The Dept. of Edu. is hated by a lot of people. And while you’re doing it get rid of student loans that allow the colleges to jack up their prices to unconscionable levels. Force all these functions back down to the state and community level where they belong.
A single target that is difficult but achievable is an easier goal than a vague “march through the institutions” which requires both an ideology and a committed cadre of professional conservatives, which don’t exist, to match the professional left.
The Congress led by Newt Gingrich was on the verge of doing this but let Monica get in the way, and Gringrich had a very big head too. Instead of going for impeachment, they had Clinton by the nuts and could have forced him to do almost amything.
Argh, iPad…
…forced him to do almost anything because Clinton’s first loyalty was(is) to himself and his own survival.
It might help to have a really good reaction to an issue (eg, PP harvesting: have someone say that they can remember their own pregnancy at that stage, how the baby started to kick and move and they can’t imagine anyone cutting through his or her face while the heart was beating). Find things that people might relate to on a personal level, make videos of the comments, and then post them everywhere on the web, in liberal comment sections, etc. You may not totally change a person’s position, but you might make a crack. Find personal experiences that counter the standard thinking, and then share them widely without preaching.
Money, money, money. We can diminish the advertising dollars that flow to the msm by letting their sponsors know we will not buy their products nor their stocks. Shun them. If 10 million consumers shun the enablers it will have an impact. Its better to buy local and keep your money circling in your community than continue to feed the beast.
Hi Neo…just responding to suggestions about conservatives doing more protesting…I’ve been to the March for Life in DC a couple of times…they regularly get about 500,000 people turning out. There’s usually only one news truck(a local Fox affiliate) and that’s it. Never see it mentioned in mainstream media.
They don’t understand it, or, if they do and don’t agree, don’t want to give it airtime and newsprint.
First, you have to be willing to identify your enemy. You can’t fight what you won’t admit is your opponent.
Second, fight. Play hardball.
The MSM is an enemy. Universities are enemies. Teacher unions are enemies. Hollywood and Silicon Valley are enemies.
These enemies continually kick conservatives and the GOP below the belt. We complain, in private, but no prominent politician except perhaps Scott Walker has been willing to even identify the enemy, much less fight.
We have to make them pay for choosing sides. Fight us and when we win, we take your money. Cut the SJW positions in state universities. Make the schools account for their budgets honestly. Slice everything that advances the cause of the Left.
But first and foremost, tell the American people that they, especially the MSM, are enemies. Take the crap that they will rain down and make the case. As long as Republican politicians pretend that the MSM is honest and fair, they increase the effectiveness of the MSM in hurting the cause.
The MPAA is fighting internet freedom fighters against copyright. Normally it’s just lawfare right now.
The MSM is an enemy. Universities are enemies. Teacher unions are enemies. Hollywood and Silicon Valley are enemies.
Teacher unions suffer from a significant amount of cover ups of their corruption, sex scandals, and various other rigged setups. If the Catholic Church infiltrated by a bunch of Leftist affiliated and coddled homosexuals could have their reputation be damaged by a cadre of lawyers litigating against them for cash, the same can be done to the teacher unions. Although it’s not always a good idea to make more lawyers rich over the long term.
Universities can be hit using the reverse sexual discrimination kangaroo courts, flooding the system with fake or real charges in order to freeze and clog it up.
Hollywood makes a lot of money overseas with their movies, because they aren’t taxed. Tax them. Find a way, everybody likes some goodies for free. Hollywood has a lot of cash that we can make “free”.
Silicon Valley has a lot of tech geeks in league with Leftists, like Google or Facebook. They work well together, not because they are forced to but because they are natural allies. They are also part of the crony fascist capitalist ring of plutocrats, like Buffet or Microsoft.
Carl in Atlanta,
You may enjoy Glenn Reynolds original 2002 article on preference cascades:
http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2002/03/patriotism-and-preferences.html
Paul R, why not march on the headquarters of the Wasington Post and surround them so that they are trapped in their building? Get in their face and force them to recognize you and report on your rally. Do the same with the networks. Bring your own tv crews and interview the MSM and post the video on the internet. Turn the tables on them and make them the target for a change. Treat them the same way they treat conservatives.
And as to “whining” and the preference cascade (www.ace.mu.nu @4:28)
Amen!
Let them burn, if they aren’t useful in this war then they will be useful as trash to heat up the furnaces.
Even my mostly apolitical husband has shunned ESPN! He’s a diehard sports junkie! But they’ve gone too far, their ratings and subscriptions are in the toilet, and they still keep on with their leftist BS. Maybe they’ll get a clue about their audience? I hope so, but not really. His main thing was firing cowherd. Then the Bruce Jenner thing. Today the Curt Schilling thing. He now listens to Fox on satellite. Keep going, ESPN. Soon you’ll have nobody. Beta males don’t like sports.
Excessive immigration generally, but illegal immigration in particular, is an emotional issue because people understand intuitively that it is an exchange. An exchange of human lives, their children’s lives. A cover for aborted lives, and other pro-choice policies. A violation of their civil and possibly human rights.
In no particular order:
1) Try to elect conservatives over RINOs in as many primaries as possible, at all levels of elected government.
2) If you live in a municipality/district/state that is going to elect a Democrat until the rapture, register as a Democrat and vote for the least bad Democrat in their primary elections.
3) Many folks who vote Democrat process the world emotionally rather than rationally. I am not talking about the hard core of the party, who are all about power and control, I am talking about the masses of useful idiots. The Dems have managed to frame almost every issue to appeal to these emotion based voters. For example, whenever abortion comes up, the Republicans get hit with the rape and incest scenario. Rape and incest are likely less than 1% of all abortions, but the Dems have used these cases to frame the abortion debate for decades. Ditto for immigration, minimum wage, you name it. I suggest that we try to turn the emotional battle to our advantage by asking liberals (colleagues, friends, family, media figures, politicians, etc.) questions like: how do you feel about 75% of all African American pregnancies being aborted? How do you feel about gender selective abortion? If a genetic basis for homosexuality is discovered, how would you feel about sexual orientation based abortion? On immigration: Why shouldn’t we throw our borders wide open? Why not? What limits would you put on immigration? If they propose a limit, push them to justify it. What should the minimum wage be? When they answer, ask them why it shouldn’t be $5 higher than their answer? Would they put any limits on government workers retirement benefits? Why? Why shouldn’t these valuable workers get 2X their current retirement benefits?
The goal here in to push them to confront the contradictions of their positions and the limits of reality.
I think even the most hard core proponent of unrestricted immigration will have a limit. Encourage them to make the intellectual leap of discovering this limit and defending it.
I guess what I am trying to say is we need to stop letting the debates be framed in a way that puts us on the defensive and in a way where we lose the support of all of the emotion based citizens of our country. I think if we switch the focus as I have described, we can start winning over some of these emotion based voters.
Another quick example. Whenever the Republicans try to cut anything from the budget, at any level of government, they are castigated for their efforts. Ask liberals if they are o.k. with our deficits and exploding debt. Ask them why shouldn’t we borrow 100% of our annual spending. We are borrowing $426 billion to meet our federal spending needs this year, if that is o.k., why shouldn’t we borrow more of the 3.7 trillion that we are spending this year? Is it ever o.k. to cut government spending? Do they worry what will happen if we continue on the path that we are on?
Lord Acton,
This is why I liked Newt Gingrich; he had the ability to reframe debates to his advantage and refused to play within the confines of the leftist arena.
IMO Carly Fiorina has shown this ability with even more aplomb.
Lord Acton , others have recommended similar strategic overhauls here before, concerning taking the offensive.
Trying to convince, via reason, a bunch of Leftists that are merely zombies of their necromancer lords, isn’t particularly useful, especially if all anyone ever does for this is to go into a turtleshell and “defend” their positions and policies.
Cornhead,
As to your request for “some wins” see Tyler O’Neill’s current essay at PJMedia:
http://pjmedia.com/blog/thanks-obama-how-a-divisive-presidency-invigorated-the-gop/?singlepage=true
Trump is not fighting anything, any more than a politician or CEO fights anybody directly.
He’s merely what happens when an earthquake causes a tsunami. You get wet and think the ocean is fighting now. No, something else happened beneath the waves that you never saw or heard.
You mentioned Gramsci. You didn’t mention his American counterpart, Saul Alinsky. The Obama folk, and rest of the Democrat elite are all acolytes of Alinsky. Everything Obama has done has come straight out of Alinsky’s playbook. The aim is to destroy capitalism from within and replace it with socialism.
So far, Obama is doing a great job. Unsustainable debt? Check. Destroy the middle class? Check. Increase welfare dependency? Check. Create racial division? Check. Destroy jobs? Check. Create an educated generation of young people who are mired in debt and can’t get jobs? Check. You get the idea.
How do conservatives fight back? Support the GOP? That has achieved nothing, despite massive victories in 2010 and 2014. Support the Tea Party? That has achieved nothing. Support conservative Democrats? There aren’t any left.
So, in walks Trump, hauling all his baggage, and the first thing he targets is illegal immigration. He started a debate the political elites did not want. He talked about a wall, he talked about making Mexico pay for it, he talked about how Mexico was shipping its criminals across the border, he talked about how Mexico was taking advantage of us, and he did not waver or back down. The media and the other GOP candidates came after him, and he stuck to his guns. Guess what. He struck a chord and rose in the polls. He insulted people, he was rude, and he offended the elite, and they all predicted his demise.
George Will’s latest column is typical of the elite hysteria. I have news for George. Poor Hispanics will never vote for the GOP and stopping the flow of more poor Hispanics across the border is essential if the GOP wants to survive, let alone the America we grew up in. Just read VDH on life in rural California and you will understand what is happening as illegals flood into the country side.
But, despite Will’s and Krauthammer’s brilliant columns, Trump keeps rising in the polls.
These seem to the latest numbers. Trump at 40%, Jeb at 10%. This must be giving Reince Priebus nightmares.
I really wanted a regular politician, say Walker or Cruz, to stand up to the GOP elites, to speak the truth about illegal immigration, and a host of other issues, but they stuck to their talking points, their poll-tested responses, and have gotten no traction. Cruz lost a lot of respect when he dodged Megyn Kelly’s question about whether or not he would deport an illegal immigrant family with two kids born in the US. Trump answered that question. They had to go home, and come back legally (good luck with that, BTW. Getting into the US legally is really hard). Cruz danced and dodged and looked like a politician in the worst possible way.
The biggest obstacle conservatives face is the GOP establishment. Trump is the only weapon on hand to defeat it. I hope this changes, but I doubt it. Everyone else is a politician, and, by definition, they are bought by interests that have no interest in conservative principles.
“We need some wins or at least make an effort.”
From Daniel Henninger, no less:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hey-conservatives-you-won-1440628311
Getting into the US legally is a breeze compared to virtually every other nation on this planet.
The magic keys remain blood relatives.
Because of the 1986 Immigration Act staggering numbers of Mexican Americans are entirely justified — under the law and by custom — with sponsoring the rest of their extended family.
And then there are the anchor babies. Upon maturity, they can come across the border — without any aculturalization at all — and use their birth documents to establish citizenship.
This latter gambit is now a specialty of various Chinese travel agents. They have retained birthing ‘motels’ — ie perverted up scale homes — into habitation for swollen mothers, ready to pop.
One outfit was finally busted by ICE. They’d already established at least 500 Chinese American babies — who would grow up without ever having known California — the state of their birth.