So unless you’ve been living under a rock today, you’ve probably heard of the woman who disrupted the play in which a mock Trump is assassinated on stage. There’s been a lot of division on the Right on how to properly respond to this. Kurt Schlicter dismisses it as rather trivial here. Robert Kroese had a different take, which you can read here. My own position was somewhere in between. I thought the whole thing was rather stupid, as the tactic will have no measurable effect. The play won’t be cancelled, nor will it paint Rightists in any better light. It won’t end media corruption or spin. It is, in fact, a rather empty gesture. But, on the other hand, I have no particular desire to expend my effort to put a stop to it either. As far as I’m concerned, there is considerable schadenfreude in the whole affair. Leftists don’t bother stopping their SJWs and Antifa thugs (indeed, they rile them up for greater atrocity), why should I waste my time chasing down Right-wing stupidity? Now Leftists have some idea of the lunacy Rightists deal with on a daily basis. Welcome to the club.
As it so happens, the best position on this mess comes from Iowahawk. He proposes a solution to anti-speech lunacy that handles the tit-for-tat problem rather neatly. See, the problem for me is not that I agree with the woman interrupting somebody’s play, but rather that the other side would be laughing if a Lefty jumped on stage and grabbed the mic at a Right-wing event. Why should I keep faith if I already know the other side is going to betray? Some folks will say “stick to your principles”, which is a nice-sounding argument. But how do you avoid the Game Theory problem that entails?
Read this thread, it addresses the Game Theory issue with this in detail:
Now this might actually work. Though, as some others have pointed out, it won’t do any good if their side tries to get around it via legal wrangling. Honestly, that’s above my pay grade anyway. But all this got me to thinking. Most folks arguing that we needed to do something about the interrupter were doing so based on the notion that we need to occupy the moral high ground, and we can’t do that if we tacitly support raving lunatics. Sounds reasonable.
But here’s the monkey in the wrench. We don’t occupy the moral high ground. We haven’t occupied it since at least the Reagan years, and probably long before that. Why is that? If you’ve been following my series on Marxism and Morality, you may have an inkling of where I’m going with this.
Marxism possesses the moral high ground, at this point in time.
It’s true. They have it. And not recognizing that they occupy it is half of how we got to this juncture in the first place. Let me be clear. I’m not saying Marxists are right. They are most certainly, terribly, wrong. It’s a travesty that an ideology full of lies, which has massacred millions has been ceded the moral high ground. But it’s also true that they hold it, no matter how much we might protest the wrongness of it.
Why do they occupy it? Because we let them have it. We granted them the courage of their convictions. We treated Marxism as a “good theory” that just doesn’t work in practice. We suggested that our enemies (and yes, they are our enemies) were as moral and honest as we were, they were just merely mistaken about the means, that’s all.
Meanwhile, they call us Nazis, fascists, racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, whatever. They never granted us the same conviction we granted them.
So one side was saying: “these people are good people.” And the other side was saying: “these people are the scum of the Earth.” Their side was hitting Betray on endless repeat. Our side Kept Faith on the same endless repeat. They tallied the high score again and again, and we kept losing. Nobody sides with the loser.
And so, after decades of this sort of thing, they are acknowledged as good, moral people who are either correct (if you’re a Leftist) or good, moral people who are merely incorrect (if you’re a Rightist). Meanwhile, we’re accounted as Hitlers by a solid percentage of the population.
Also, we ceded Academia, Media, and Entertainment to them. And they have been using it to browbeat us, and tell everyone how we want old people to die, how we want sick people to die, how we want people to starve, how we hate minorities, etc… And if we ever defended ourselves, it was a losing battle. “Oh, look at how defensive he’s getting, it MUST be true!” The fact is, Marxism was designed to be rhetorically appealing at a superficial level.
Is there a sick person? Just give him care! If you don’t, you must want him to die! It’s such a simplistic, easy-to-meme narrative, that it’s difficult to break. Of course, if you know the facts, you quickly realize that government care is more expensive, stifles advancement, and creates a system where care is rationed anyway, it is merely a bureaucrat doing the rationing. But the second you start to spout these facts, the audience yawns. “Don’t kill granny” is a much more compact message for people with short attention spans, which describes all too many people these days.
The Right needs to be thinking about similar levels of memetic compression. Yes, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises are great citations when discussing economic theory, but to the layman, you need something more concrete. Trump won the nomination (and the Presidency) in large part because he, or at least someone in his campaign, understood this. I’m going to bring jobs back. Let’s Make America Great Again. Love or hate the man, he knew how to compress his narrative. Rightists need to do a lot more of this. When one of them says “Republicans want to push granny off a cliff” the response should be “Democrats want to outsource your job to China.”
But you rarely see Republicans do this anymore, because they are too principled to use rhetoric this way. Jeb would rant about love and compassion, and nobody cared. Everybody yawned. These are the same people who get pissed if their phone takes 3 seconds to download Candy Crush. They aren’t going to tune in for all the nuance and dialectic. But we usually avoid using rhetoric this way because it’s unprincipled.
No, no, it’s only unprincipled if the rhetoric is a lie. And besides, if the enemy is beating you to death with a weapon, it behooves you to get one of your own.
It’s like a solid percentage of my fellow Rightists never understood basic Game Theory. Stop keeping faith, damnit! These people will never like you!
All that being said, I get where Robert Kroese and some others are coming from too. The fact of the matter is, in the main, our side is correct. And even if we were wrong we do genuinely believe what we’re saying. We believe the free market is better for people. We believe in freedom of speech. We believe that the best government is generally small, and distant from the lives of the citizenry. We aren’t using them as cynical cover for some kind of supremacist Nazi-like agenda. They, on the other hand, may very well be using their concern trolling for a globalist Communism-like agenda. Certainly, a good many are. Principled Leftists do exist (see: Dave Rubin, Camille Paglia), but they are becoming increasingly rare and are, in any event, drowned out by the Marxists, who have more or less hijacked the Leftist narrative at this point.
An interesting test I periodically conduct on Twitter is to find admitted and avowed Marxists, and ask them a question. I ask if we could split America today, and give half to them, and half to Rightists, they could have their Communist utopia, today, right now. I even suggest that they could be granted the more valuable half. The better real estate, natural resources, whatever. Would that satisfy them, I ask. They get what they want immediately, we get what we want (which is mainly to be free of them).
I’ve never had one agree with me that this is a good idea. Not one. They always spin it like “we’re doing it for you too” or “we couldn’t let you be unfree and oppressed by Capitalism.” The Hell you say. If Capitalism is oppressing me, screw it. Sign me up for that. Every once in a while, a Marxist will admit the truth: “we hate you, and we want your ideology to be made extinct.” I don’t care if Communists exist somewhere on this planet. I only care if they have power over me and mine. They can go be Commies all they like, so long as it’s not in my life. The same courtesy is, once again, not reciprocated. We must be destroyed.
Which goes right back to where we started on all this. Do we owe it to the other side to police our own crazies? No. We don’t owe them anything. If they want to agitate for our side’s leaders to be assassinated, I say we owe them nothing. But should we do it anyway, for some other reason? Maybe. Certainly the optics on this are bad, and the woman who did it accomplished nothing. So from a tactical level, yeah, this is no good. And as Iowahawk pointed out, maybe there’s another way we can solve the problem, while still avoiding punching the “Keep Faith” button for the umpteenth time. I’m open to all that.
But what I’m not open to is hitting “Keep Faith” again, or pretending we occupy the moral high ground. We don’t. And if we’re going to win this thing, we’re going to need to topple them from that ill-gained position. The positive side is, the more they burn cities down, shoot people, and generally act like assholes, the weaker their hold on that position becomes, even with media interference running on their behalf 24/7. They are starting to lose their grip on it, finally.
So in the end, if you’re considering emulating this woman: don’t. It won’t work. And it’s possible it may be counterproductive. But definitely be considering ways in which we can make a difference in this war (and it is a war, don’t think of it any different, even if it’s mostly a cold war right now), and stop assuming that your enemies have your best interest at heart. They don’t and never did. Don’t Keep Faith with them.
Iowahawk’s description of game theory was slightly off.
Tit for tat is the second most effective prisoner’s dilemma strat. The most effective is forgive exactly once, then tit for tat.
“But what I’m not open to is hitting “Keep Faith” again, or pretending we occupy the moral high ground. We don’t. And if we’re going to win this thing, we’re going to need to topple them from that ill-gained position. The positive side is, the more they burn cities down, shoot people, and generally act like assholes, the weaker their hold on that position becomes, even with media interference running on their behalf 24/7. They are starting to lose their grip on it, finally.”
This is right, they have reached their end and are devouring themselves, but it has to be remembered that there is NO guarantee any of us will see the pay off, that is something that has to be understood. I disagree on the moral high ground bit, I think we do.
We think we hold the moral high ground, because our position is moral, and theirs is not.
But remember, this is a battle in which appearance counts for as much as substance. Their side has long *appeared* to be morally superior, whether or not actually is (which it isn’t). We have a hard time seeing it, because we’re not idiots, and the appearances only fool idiots. There are, however, all too many idiots who are easily fooled by their arguments.
Yeah, the appearance thing. You know the Left has made political hay since the 60’s out of being against the “Man” and of course painting the Right as the “Man”. Now they are the “Man” and they don’t even know it.
“I thought the whole thing was rather stupid, as the tactic will have no measurable effect. The play won’t be cancelled, nor will it paint Rightists in any better light. It won’t end media corruption or spin. It is, in fact, a rather empty gesture.”
This is where I disagree, bro. What this is, is a warning that Leftists will understand in their gut, if not their empty heads.
The message is: The (alt-)Right is now operating at ZFG. We no longer give a damn about being ‘painted in a better light.’ We couldn’t care less what the Mushroom Media says about us. They’ll vilify us and lie about us no matter what we do, so WE. DON’T. CARE. ANY. MORE. Wail about double standards and hypocrisy all you like, it’ll now have as much effect on us as it did on you.
This tactic is putting the Left on notice: The gloves are off, and it’s long overdue.
“The (alt-)Right is now operating at ZFG.”
There it is.
Nobody in Congress is worth a tinker’s damn at fixing what is wrong. Trump is getting roadblocked at every turn, plus! The Gramsci-ites and the other assorted commies hold the field in about every arena. And the media – daily – finds new ways to denigrate anyone not agreeing with them or the commies.
ZFG is, or should be, the operating motto of the alt-Right. We don’t have much a reputation upon which to stand, so it’s time to start firing with both barrels, and let the devil do the body count. The :American Experiment with a constitutional republic is in the grave, not merely on its last legs. Now – the stronger, more persistent side will win.
As Sting put it in Spirits in the Material World:
“There is no political solution.”
jb
What if someone were to replace all the springform collapsible knives with real ones? Think about it. They get to kill their scapetrump, and then the play shuts down! Everyone wins…except the scapetrump.
Something of which we should all take note:
In addition to the Arlington baseball shooter and the Trump ‘assassination’ play in NYC, progressive MSM outlets are now all loudly and aggressively proclaiming that the republicans started this with their ‘constant and frequent’ threats to impeach and murder Obama, and their continuing rhetoric of hate and division is what is ‘truly’ creating an atmosphere of intolerance and violence.
Ignoring the delusions, lies and outrageous brazenness of such a stance, we must look at the deeper and more relevant meaning of such a posture. The progressive left follows the old communist and alinsky playbooks religiously, denouncing their ideological enemies for crimes which their rivals have not committed but which they are about to commit themselves. In this way, they can claim ‘self defense’ AND THE MORAL HIGH GROUND.
So what does this mean?
As best as I can guess, it means that if the democrats fail to win a majority in either the House or Senate in the 2018 midterms, their ‘activist’ groups – BLM, Antifa and so forth – will turn to active insurrection and terrorism. If 2018 is not a successful year for the democrats at least in part, we will see the rebirth of groups that echo The Weather Underground, Black Panthers and SLA.
I’m convinced at this point that some level of civil disruption and violence is inevitable.
If the Democrats win in 2018, we’ll have a deadlock. If the Democrats win in 2020, they will be out for revenge.
If they lose in either election year, they’ll make the meltdowns so far look like a walk in the park.
tsw,
I think you’re right and I think Trump is counting on the unthinking reaction of the left (BLM, Antifa, etc), but they’ll have almost no political support giving Trump the opportunity to move against them and they’re enablers.
Maybe. Sometimes I suspect all of this really stems from how Trump handles the media. He slings their crap right back at them. He insults them, ignores them, and gives them attitude, as it pleases him. The media is basically butthurt, and screaming for violence and rioting because Trump hurt their feelings.
They’re, their, there, damnit!
It happens, lol.
Iowahawk’s theory also requires that the parties be relatively equal in strength. If the disparity is great, the stronger party doesn’t care – it can survive the fight. Imagine if Germany and Japan had approached the Allies in 1944 with the offer: we’ll stop bombing your cities if you stop bombing ours. V1/V2 and balloon bomb attacks were mere pin-pricks compared to what the Allies were capable of. They had no reason to stop – they could survive it, the Axis couldn’t.
Same thing here – the Left controls most of the government and media; they’ll be able to survive the occasional disruption of an event;, plus, they simply put out favorable spin for themselves whenever the Right tries anything.
This may be the case. I’m not sure. Like I said, legal minds greater than mine would have to wrangle that into something workable.
Strength can be fleeting.
In politics, the strength of the democrats in the federal government can be eliminated by a massive layoff – 50% to 90% of total staff. The MSM strength is ephemeral – there’s too many ways for people to either tune out or get their news from an alternate set of sources. Already, certain ‘pillars’ of the MSM are greviously wounded – WaPo, the NYT, CNN, MSNBC and so forth.
If I were on the strategy committee of the democratic party, I wouldn’t be too confident right now.
This is really beside the point, I know, but I am curious. Michael Medved (an almost-Never-Trumper) was discussing this the other day on his radio show. He was making the point that the attack on Caesar by the Roman Senators was portrayed by Shakespeare as a bad thing. So, he seemed to be implying that this Central Park version could be construed in the same way.
I didn’t stay with Medved for very long on the topic as he is almost impossible to listen to these days.
I can’t imagine a New York City troupe doing anything that would bring honor to Trump but was curious if anyone has read anything about the whole play.
After all, we don’t want to base our reactions on a continuous Fox loop that may be out-of-context like the CNN/Rodney King loop that played a million times was.