Amerika

When they do the postmortem on the Age of Symbolism, they will record that symbolic thinking allows people to interact with symbols and confuse it with influencing reality.

Sometimes, someone rare writes a great book that recontextualizes or redefines a symbol, and the herd moves a different way. The other 99.999% of people are just recombining symbols looking for some attention.

This becomes a problem in politics, since now on the Right we have an audience that specializes in blowing off steam on social media or reading rage- and fatalism-soaked articles on big conservative websites.

Mournful dirges to what was lost and outrage at the hypocrisy of Leftists find no shortage of audience and applause; insightful action items get ignored as if there were a conspiracy to do it.

As always, the herd runs away from big important realistic questions and races toward symbols that make them feel good for just a few moments. It is as predictable as heroin, gambling, overeating, alcoholism, and casual sex.

You can tell that we are living in an inverted society because healthy/sane behaviors are viewed with suspicion and ostracized by the herd, but destructive behaviors are accepted so long as they are pledged in allegiance to the right symbols.

If you wonder why conservatives have trouble getting anything done, it is because their audience is watching Fox News, reading influencers, watching videos, and posting insubstantial memes in lieu of figuring out what needs to be done and doing it.

Tags: conservatism, conservatives, social media, symbolism