One of the ways you tell who is winning and who is losing is to look at which way the advice is flowing. Losers never give advice because no one takes advice from a loser so even if they have something to offer, no one pays much attention. Winners, on the other hand, love talking about how they won and will offer anyone and everyone tips as to how to be a winner.
There’s also something else. Winners are confident. They are willing to offer help to the loser because they are sure they are better than the other guy and have no fear he will use the advice to turn the tables. In other words, it is safe for the winner to be magnanimous as he perceives he has little to lose and will gain much by looking magnanimous. The loser, in contrast, must play close to the vest in the hope of scoring an upset.
That’s why we see in American public debate, a flow of advice and suggestions from Progressives to their alleged opponents. Democrats are always brimming with tips for Republicans. Progressives are always out lecturing extreme right-wing extremists about the folly of their extreme right-wing extremism. Here’s an example from David Brooks the other day.
These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.
I am to the left of the people I have been describing on almost all of these social issues. But I hope they regard me as a friend and admirer. And from that vantage point, I would just ask them to consider a change in course.
Consider putting aside, in the current climate, the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution.
Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.
You get that? David Brooks is generously offering you his sage advice , which is you need to give up and join the winning team. He wastes a lot of time tarting it up, while casting himself as something other than a conventional Progressive. That’s just part of the act. William Safire perfected this a half century ago and now it has become a feature of Progressive agit-prop.
Of course, this is not advice offered in the spirit of fellowship. David Brooks thinks social conservatives are sub-human and he would gladly sign up to slam the oven door on them. This is mostly gloating. Brooks is taking a victory lap. He also hopes that social conservatives will keep fighting. His cult is reactionary and they need bogeymen. When the day comes that the Left clears the field of enemies, it is the day it collapses.
It’s why the Left is so good at inventing monsters. Its identity is based on struggle, something they inherited from Continental communists. Despite the fact Brooks has never known a time when he and his coreligionists have not been in control of the culture, they still believe they are struggling to set things right and break the spine of the WASP oppressors.
After every battle, the Left celebrates, but then says there is much left to be done. This Brooks column always turns up in the transition phase, They partied and now they are sobering up, being reminded that “those evil social conservatives are still out there, plotting and scheming to take back our victory. If only they would just give up!”
In one of life’s great ironies, America is being cleared of Christians by a religious cult that habitually nails itself to the cross and then blames the Christians.
The other advantage of the victor is the ability to frame their victory as inevitable, natural and right. Once this is assumed, all opposition–even when it is mere defense of the status quo–can be framed as aggression against the natural order. Thus, the right is perpetually portrayed as the aggressors in the culture wars even though, most of the time, they’re just fighting to maintain the status quo or be left alone. E.g., when the Catholic Church resists the novel attempt by Obamacare to force it to pay for birth control, it’s accused of trying “take away” your rights or… Read more »
A while ago, your theme was cyclical progressive “great awakenings”, wasnt it? I think you meant by this that reality eventually catches up to progressive excess every generation or so, to be followed by another awakening.
But lately you seem worried that the progressive victory is permanent.
If I am correctly representing two views you have, do you see them as compatible? I hope so.
If there is one thing where conservatives of a type kept stepping on their dicks from local elections on up it was (is) abortion, which is not even entirely a religious issue. Roe vs, Wade was the worst emanation and penumbra ever to make it out of a slippery mind until Obamacare and all it’s aftershocks, but abortion was always going to be the way of the land in time due to federalism. Traveling across state lines for an abortion is not the challenge that flying to Puerto Rico was back in the day. What I see is that so… Read more »
The insanity has spread to this side of the Atlantic, too. I have a relative through marriage who is black. Nice woman, but I have to say somewhat lazy; when there is work to be done around the home she somehow finds a paper to read with her sour-faced hero Kanye West featured and somehow misses on the helping out. No matter, she is what she is and accepted for it and is surrounded by people who while they aren’t of her ‘pure’ dark colour they are good people (yes, including me) who have unreservedly welcomed her into their pasty-faced… Read more »
God is not mocked. Or, if you will, the God of nature, or nature is not mocked. America is insane. I mean, really insane. The only place I have been where the feeling of fear and oppression is similar was Qatar. Latin America is violent and poor, and the people are crazy in their own way, but the are not insane. I get off the plane there and I feel a huge weight lifted off my chest. America has peaked. America is not victorious. The insanity of progressive thought control can’t last, won’t last and is ending as America becomes… Read more »