@SaltWraith @metokurist You're probably just a young one, so time for a history lesson: The right lost the culture war. They didn't lose it in 2020, they lost it in 1996.
At their height, they controlled everything. They controlled the culture, they controlled the government, they controlled the discourse. They were able to cancel their enemies at will and blacklist their enemies.
What happened? The left started selling freedom. They started making the argument "Hey, these nutjobs are going to track you down and fuck you up, we just want everyone to be able to live how they want, don't you want to be with us?"
They were the ones free to make the edgy jokes. They were the ones free to make the interesting art. They were the ones telling the interesting stories. Establishment stories were so caught up in their dogma that they were boring.
Today, the simpsons is establishment as hell, but when it came out it was anti-establishment. In an era when every TV show was about the perfect family, they were showing a dysfunctional family and poking fun at sacred cows.
The strategy for winning hasn't changed, only who the big establishment trying to force everyone to live a certain way has. The left might control everything, but the right is finally learning to sell freedom, and they're going to win that way.
The bigger, the stronger, the more fascistic the left becomes, the more their grasp will slip from the people who drive the culture. People don't want to walk on eggshells. People don't want to feel a boot on their neck, and they won't tolerate it forever.
At their height, they controlled everything. They controlled the culture, they controlled the government, they controlled the discourse. They were able to cancel their enemies at will and blacklist their enemies.
What happened? The left started selling freedom. They started making the argument "Hey, these nutjobs are going to track you down and fuck you up, we just want everyone to be able to live how they want, don't you want to be with us?"
They were the ones free to make the edgy jokes. They were the ones free to make the interesting art. They were the ones telling the interesting stories. Establishment stories were so caught up in their dogma that they were boring.
Today, the simpsons is establishment as hell, but when it came out it was anti-establishment. In an era when every TV show was about the perfect family, they were showing a dysfunctional family and poking fun at sacred cows.
The strategy for winning hasn't changed, only who the big establishment trying to force everyone to live a certain way has. The left might control everything, but the right is finally learning to sell freedom, and they're going to win that way.
The bigger, the stronger, the more fascistic the left becomes, the more their grasp will slip from the people who drive the culture. People don't want to walk on eggshells. People don't want to feel a boot on their neck, and they won't tolerate it forever.
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 0
@SaltWraith @metokurist
The first step is to clean our room. Stop worrying about war, and start worrying about becoming the best us we can become.
Doing small steps, making sure we're doing well for ourselves, making the things we want to have, supporting the things we like, that's how things move slowly forward.
We got to build a big tent, and give people places and things that let them be themselves. A place people can be free, and people will slowly gravitate towards that.
The way you win a culture war against fascists isn't to attack the other side, it's to present a superior option. Just like you looked at the stuffy angry repressed religious right back then and people said "I want to hang out with these guys instead", right now people are looking at the stuffy angry repressed religious left and saying the same thing.
If you're looking at the institutions, stop. Institutions are conservative, not in the "left/right" sense, but in the sense that they're not going to make a change until well after it's clear the paradigm has shifted. They're dominated by the left wing right now because 20 years ago it was clear the left wing had won, so 15 years ago they started getting woke. Thing is, by then culture at a local level was already starting to shift.
The left is still winning, but things that were unthinkable 10 years ago are becoming thinkable for the right. Nobody expected Gen Z to become the first generation in a century to be more conservative than their parents.
Of course, once it does happen that the right starts to look like the victor, expect the fascists to start heading over there, and the whole cycle will start again. It isn't actually about left vs. right, it's about the free vs. the authoritarians, and authoritarians play dirty.
The first step is to clean our room. Stop worrying about war, and start worrying about becoming the best us we can become.
Doing small steps, making sure we're doing well for ourselves, making the things we want to have, supporting the things we like, that's how things move slowly forward.
We got to build a big tent, and give people places and things that let them be themselves. A place people can be free, and people will slowly gravitate towards that.
The way you win a culture war against fascists isn't to attack the other side, it's to present a superior option. Just like you looked at the stuffy angry repressed religious right back then and people said "I want to hang out with these guys instead", right now people are looking at the stuffy angry repressed religious left and saying the same thing.
If you're looking at the institutions, stop. Institutions are conservative, not in the "left/right" sense, but in the sense that they're not going to make a change until well after it's clear the paradigm has shifted. They're dominated by the left wing right now because 20 years ago it was clear the left wing had won, so 15 years ago they started getting woke. Thing is, by then culture at a local level was already starting to shift.
The left is still winning, but things that were unthinkable 10 years ago are becoming thinkable for the right. Nobody expected Gen Z to become the first generation in a century to be more conservative than their parents.
Of course, once it does happen that the right starts to look like the victor, expect the fascists to start heading over there, and the whole cycle will start again. It isn't actually about left vs. right, it's about the free vs. the authoritarians, and authoritarians play dirty.