When I was a kid, the Left convinced me that they were for Freedom. Because they offered libidinous teenagers the wild notions of "free love", "drugs", "no hangups" like our parents' generation.
"If it feels good, do it"
Most of us bought it because were wanted the perks...and then moved on from politics, and kept that understanding into our adult lives: that the LEFT were for FREEDOM.
It's wasn't that we paid attention to what they said or did after our initial introduction in the 60's...we just stuck with what we learned when they spoon-fed us what they wanted us to hear in our vulnerable, stupid, impressionable youth.
Eventually, some of us lucky few have an event take place in our lives that shocks us out of that complacency and forces us to re-evaluate. For me it was 9-11, but some of our fellows (most Liberals) have never experienced that Road to Damascus moment.
That MOMENT OF CLARITY...
I think it is my/our job to provide it.
And, at least for "We. Are. Too. Cool" Californians, it's not going to happen with good factual arguments. It's going to happen through art. ART.
Movies, videos, music, performance....
Popular Culture.
Because that's the way California Liberals roll. (sigh)
We need to expose the fact that the Left switched the Labels (see previous post) and help them "get it" by exploring the truth behind the other label...
Oh...and we need to totally stop calling ourselves the disgusting, boring, unexciting: "Conservative".
Would YOU want to hang out with someone who prides himself on being:
conformist
boring
hidebound
unadventurous
modest
plain
stick-in-the-mud
cautious
moderate
conventional
sober
unobtrusive
restrained
square
straight
lame
That, my dears is what CONSERVATIVE means to the rest of the world...
And as much as we might want to change that, in English, those are the many shades of meaning to the word as it appears in the dictionary...and try as we might, that's how it comes across to anyone that does not share our fascination with the idea of "Conserving the Principles of the American Revolution".
Which, honestly, is a stretch anyway.
Time for a new description. Or none at all, so that it can never be used against us.
Just...."we like freedom"...."we're individuals and iconoclasts that want to take out the dehumanizing collective..."
And what healthy human doesn't agree with that?
Sure, there are some totally insane Leftist that actually imagine they prefer the hive/matrix/Borg collective. But most Americans...even those who mistake themselves for Liberals....do not.
They've just got the labels mixed up.
And we need to help them get those labels straightened out.
But we can't do it by the direct approach, they are too wary of us, they've been taught to fear and hate us. So we need to do it sideways... through art, and popular culture.
We need to do the impossible: Influence and change and guide popular culture.
Because we don't need to spend years educating the Liberals...we just need to give them one perfect, single "moment of clarity"...
The Gunslinger
Joebama American citizens 2024 print
1 year ago
"When I was a kid...",indeed.Me,too.I thought the IRA was "cool",and even flirted with Islam as a teen,until I chafed at all the bullshit rules of Islam against Individualism (took about a week)and learned from an Irish aunt-by-marriage (brother in the IRA) how the IRA was just a shakedown Mafia-type operation to most locals. The "liberal" mind-set is stuck in Adolescent Mode no matter what age you are,which is seductive in an ego-stroke way ("me,Me ME!),which is at odds to how they ALWAYS side with Authoritarian agendas,in the end. They thought/still think the murderous Che is cool,and lately I've heard this same breed saying "the Chinese government knows how to get things done".ARRGH! These Americans are as stupid as the French intelligentsia.Will Rogers once said "Liberals will try anything twice",meaning they do not learn lessons from experience,but from "hope"...
ReplyDeleteBTW,yes,I think I know who Mario Savio was (SDS dude?).Most of the folks I've met who had experience with 60's radicalism are privately aghast at what happened to the "cause".But what did they expect?
ReplyDelete"They" are people who think the gov't should do well at controlling the populace,we(?) think the gov't should be controlled by the people. Left and right extremes are two sides of the same totalitarian coin.We're looking for a happy and comfortable point between totalitarian and anarchy.Indeed hard to name a concept.
ReplyDeletekermitt
Good luck on changing the popular culture! The shift from extolling virtue to promoting vice took decades. Vice is not the result of liberalism, liberalism is the result of vice. What liberal doesn't take pride in their intellectual ability to reason beyond the traditional norms of virtuous behavior based on superstitious beliefs? You may screw who or what you please, but don't drive a gas-guzzler! That's the liberal redefinition of the difference between vice and virtue.
ReplyDeleteCan we unsell the vice packaged by popular culture? I understand the first vote ever taken on vice versus virtue was a unainimous 2 to 0, and eating the apple was the "popular culture" of the time.
Don't for a moment believe this post means I give up. I don't, but I do see this as the eternal struggle that cannot be resolved by man. We are however, expected to fight the good fight.