The Cons Are Alright
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: We cons will be fine and we’ll win in the end, but it’ll take time and hard fighting (Am I allowed to say “fighting” in the political struggle context anymore, or will stupid people wet themselves? Let’s find out!). Sure, I may be in the minority among conservatives by saying that. There’s a lot of fear out there, a lot of pessimism, and a lot of muttering about how we’re all doomed.
We’re not.
We’ll be fine, and not cartoon dog drinking coffee in a blazing room meme fine either.
Now, all righteous and cool people acknowledge that the best Who song (I finally saw them live thanks to frequent “Unredacted” podcast guest Drew Matich and it was amazing) is “Baba O’Reilly,” but discerning people understand that the second best anthem by this remarkable band is “The Kids Are Alright.” The lyrics describe a guy who’s changing – the old ways don’t fit, what worked before doesn’t work now, and he’s got to grow and move on, and it’s melancholy (despite the power pop glory of the music). Gee, can you think of any American political faction going through that right now?
Hi, nice to meet you.
I used to subscribe to The Weekly Standard and National Review, and I still laugh at Cap’n Kristol running his creaky garbage scow into the iceberg that is Donald Trump. As for NR, it’s sad – you post-internet cons don’t dig it, but back in the day, Buckley’s baby was it. There was no other conservatism. When it came in the snail mail once every two weeks, you got your fix for another fortnight. Hell, in college, I once took a liberal chick to see WFB speak.
Now, if not for a few inhabitants who I could count on the fingers of one Bulwark staffer’s chief erotic partner, I’d happily let NR burn.
Does it matter if they left us or we left them? I tend to think that they were never truly with us. Have we really changed? On the surface, maybe. I used to be a hawk. I even went to a couple of the conflicts that all the smart people on our side said were super good ideas. And then I watched the utter failure of these same geniuses – a kid could nearly go from being a fetus to buying a Dos Equis in the time America’s been chasing jihadi banditos around the Hindu Kush to no avail.
I heard the lectures about free enterprise then realized that I wanted no part of being in the party that enabled mega-corporate pillaging of our middle class for the benefit of the Chinese communists.
And I watched Conservative, Inc., manage decline while filling its cruises, and then I watched the guy I defended from all the “Chimpy McHalibu$Hitler” slurs turn around and cavort with the people calling me worse.
Oh, and there are the pedo enablers…
The hell with these people.
We’re done with them, but not with conservatism. We carry that torch now. The True Conservatives™ sure as hell aren’t even pretending anymore – we just had a whole year of “The Conservative Case For Biden.” They care only about their cheesy little fellowships in DC at the Conservativish Forum for Freedom and Eagles and Taking Dumb Businessmen’s Money and More Eagles, where they scribble unread pap on lame blogs. They eagerly collect the tech titan’s 30 pieces of Bitcoin to join in the cancel chorus of conservatives who actually believe in something besides securing these dorks’ sinecures.
But we know it now. We see it, and there’s no unseeing it.
As the Lincoln Project – if you accept that Abe’s project was trying to score with teen boys – collapses, and we giggle, there’s no hiding the corruption of Conservative, Inc. Well, now there’s a new conservatism, and it’s going to happen without the Fredocon caucus.
Remember George Will? Me neither.
To reprise a cliché of my own making, Donald Trump was the avatar of our dissatisfaction with the garbage Establishment and the refusal of the useless, sclerotic and cruise-oriented losers allegedly on our side to defend our interests. It didn’t help that these credential-fetishizers – if you had never done anything in your life but get handed a degree, you’d think a diploma was the most important measure of a man too – always despised us. Some were born snobs, and some embraced snobbery – there’s no snooty like “I got out of the trailer park and I gotta ensure no one ever makes that connection between me and my déclassé past again” snooty. But they all think we are stupid, borderline evil, and utterly unsuited to have a say in our own governance. In that, they express their class solidarity with the caste status neurotics of the left.
So, why my optimism?
Well, as we’ve seen, our opponents inside our tent are worthless. Moreover, our enemies outside on the left are buffoons. Ted Lieu? Adam Schiff? Toots Swalwell, the guy who actually thought the Chi-Com courtesan liked him because he was cool? These are singularly unimpressive people who project an aura of competence solely by appearing on camera. But they are stupid, and weak, and the idea that our enemies are these brilliant Lex Luthors crafting intricate conspiracies from their secret lairs is ridiculous. All this stuff happening now is not the result of some cunning strategy but of dumb luck, the inevitable cyclic nature of politics, and some mistakes by our own side (Did you ever notice how most of the things that went bad for Trump happened when he listened to Establishment Republicans?). These are not supermen – these sissies would probably cry because I just assumed their gender.
And what we are selling has been tweaked but our basic ideology has not changed. Sure, the Conservafakes huffed and puffed about the Founders, yet it wasn’t that the Founders were wrong. It was that these bow-tied virgin frauds didn’t believe any of it. But it’s all true. Every answer we seek is within the Constitution and the documents that went into creating it. What we sell is freedom, prosperity, and human dignity. What the other side sells is, at best, a soft corporate/political tyranny of the mediocre.
And the most important factor is that we are now conservawoke. Red pilled, if you will. We see the lies. And we see the liars. That ridiculous XX-Jeb! hack Nikki! Haley keeps trying to happen and we keep laughing at her. Again, to quote the Who…
YEAAHHHHHH! We won’t get fooled again.
We’re done with GOP weather vanes who say whatever the Establishment tool in front of her wants to hear. Recently, Nikki! sat down with Tim Alberta of Politico and said… who cares? We had her pegged at “she sat down with Tim Alberta of Politico.” If you can’t tell who the enemy is, it’s you.
Please clap.
But but but…
The corrupt and broken election system…
Tech companies are silencing us….
The girl I liked on that kid’s show about space and ray-guns got fired…
Yeah, it’s bad.
So? And? If freedom was easy, everyone would be doing it, and those of us who have read history from before 1619, and/or have resided outside this country can clarify for you that freedom as the natural state of man is mos def not the case.
No one is going to give us anything but serfdom – you can have as much of that as you want, and gratis. But freedom has to be taken, one GOP state reforming its election laws at a time, one new conservative-friendly social media venue at a time, one action-packed and conservative-oriented series at a time.
My guess is that Donald Trump has played his (crucial) role and will move on after humiliating the Democrats again by scoffing at their latest puny impeachment. He will be a kingmaker and an important asset in bringing forward the new blood we need to re-energize us. Populism had a tough four years. We’ll take a breather for a bit, then charge. Look at our bench! Ric Grenell, Kristi Noem, Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, and many more. Look at our expanding network of media outlets, not least of which is Townhall. Look at the new voices we’re seeing, often from the world of podcasting, and often of people who became at least conservative-curious because they saw the failures of the left (Tim Pool, Michael Malice, Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan).
And look at the doddering, failing enemy, presiding over the collapsing Potemkin village that is the failed Establishment.
Yeah, the cons are alright.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/02/15/the-cons-are-alright-n2584701
