Amerika

Although the Right turned things around with a landslide election, it should probably concern us that we lost for so long. During the postwar period, we basically lost most elections and achieved very little in the way of stemming the decline, mainly because Leftism was so popular.

We should ask how it got that way. It seems clear that it dominated intellectual life, and through that academia and eventually government, through relentless publishing of manuscripts and fiction devoted to proving its point of view. The Right, which dominates classical literature, had no response especially in the wake of Hitler.

If we look at it critically, what the Left did (ironically) was to set up a market for Leftist ideas.

Young intellectuals realized that there were people out there who wanted to buy books justifying Leftism. The Right offered little space in the world of theory and literature, hating most things modern, so all of the financial rewards moved over to the Left.

Although most of it was gibberish as usual, the Leftist intellectuals churned out a steady march of materials explaining Leftism as the only logical, moral, or socially-responsible option. Anyone who wrote one of these books, movies, or plays found themselves acquiring an audience who was uncritical about quality.

This meant that not just the standouts but the mediocre could earn a decent living by repeating the Leftist paradigm. It became a career of sorts, to be a public Leftist, whether through producing writings or being a public figure. This rapidly made it trendy because people keyed into dissatisfaction with modernity.

As usual, however, whatever a group of humans think is the solution to its problems is usually the cause of those problems. Leftism makes more misery, so like heroin, the more you take, the more you need, and the worse your life-outcomes tend to be.

This remained unseen by the audience who were caught up in the early days of addiction, seeking out more books, movies, and music that rationalized decay as progress. This made it easier to live in the midst of the decay without feeling bad about themselves.

Whether they intended it or not, the Left won by rewarding people for thinking and producing, and made themselves feel smart in the process. This caused lots of people to become involved simply because the Left seemed to be offering something new and exciting.

The Right, on the other hand, correctly sees Leftism as just one form of the decay gripping the West, and felt themselves powerless against this decay, therefore aimed to dumb things down instead. They believed — being in the grips of the egalitarian delusion themselves — that people simply did not understand conservatism, so it needed to be simplified and made more emotional because people love drama more than thinking quietly.

Consequently, the Right has made itself into a destruction derby wherever whoever offers the most simplified solution wins big. This not only drives away intellectuals, but also offers ordinary people little reason to take notice, and also, drives Right-wing theory into the moronic.

We now have an audience of people dependent on YouTube videos for their daily coping strategy and simplistic answers. These usually involve “I just want to be left alone,” Jesus, or military fantasies. These are not future ideals; these are ways of feeling better about losing, because if we simplify everything, we have even less hope.

Conservatives could get ahead of this political era by encouraging more cerebral material and leaving aside the dumb rah-rah of modern politics. Take the lead by assuming positions at the head of the intellectual, social, and academic hierarchy, and everything else will follow you.

This would be new for us, since we have made our careers by rejecting the current thing and pointing to older things as relevant. But those are forgotten, and need to be rediscovered, and the way to do it is to have brainier discourse, not a competition for the most simplistic reduction of what we mistakenly view as a hopeless situation.

Tags: conservatism, intellectuals, propaganda