Here is my monthly political musing following Conservative Political Action Conference and the National Conservatism Conference, both taking place in March. The gist of both was more or less liberals control everything and are destroying the country through “wokeness.”
Wokeness, of course, is the right's new boogeyman. The end of a line that goes abolition, reconstruction, suffrage, the New Deal, communism, civil rights, socialism, gay rights, wokeism. It's sort of used for a unified “left” that hates America which people use to justify their decision to vote for Donald Trump. The times ahead, for them, are a mix of fear and hope, with opponents who are both malevolent and ignorant, countless yet surpassed by "ordinary" Americans. The Republican party's repeated warnings of doomsday in the event of a Democratic victory can only be uttered so many times before their voters stop listening.
This is all culture-war nonsense. The Tucker Carlson schtick, aka “owning the libs,” requires disregarding the genuine hardships of the world - such as the isolation of a transgender student, the anxiety of the uninsured, or the struggles of a Black man, so forth. It's a manipulative tactic that treats all of life as a ratings game that relies on constant outrage, signaling white identity, and making sweeping generalizations. Conservatives, led by Trump as their culture-war president with limited policy, are fixated on the culture war. However, any conservative worth a shit is contemplating how to move beyond this approach and achieve tangible progress.
Anyway, CPAC and NCC were a lot of projection with CPAC being pro-Trump and NCC being pro-far right with the 2024 hopefuls doing the heavy lifting. The later fancy themselves “Reagan Republicans,” which is more or less the same old shit. Coke Zero to Diet Coke, Carl's Jr. to Hardees, cocaine to crack, so forth. Same means and ends but with different packaging/delivery methods. Trump is pure rage, Reaganites are also full of rage, but smile a little more.
Some examples of the latter group include Rachel Bovard, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio.
Bovard got a lot of attention coming out of the conference. Sort of the breakout star. She's a somewhat intelligent/accomplished/young conservative who has worked for various Republican politicians and conservative organizations. She believes that previous generations of conservatives were too naive in thinking that liberals and conservatives had similar goals for America. In her view, the left is actively working to destroy everything the conservative movement stands for. The left does this by controlling every aspect of American society and culture and that they are using their power to dismantle traditional American values and institutions. She is not alone, of course, in such beliefs:
Cruz: “The left’s attack is on America. The left hates America. It is the left that is trying to use culture as a tool to destroy America.”
Hawley: “Their grand ambition is to deconstruct the United States of America.”
Rubio: “We are confronted now by a systematic effort to dismantle our society, our traditions, our economy, and our way of life.”
And so forth.
All of this is built on bullshit, of course. From Bovard: “Woke elites—increasingly the mainstream left of this country—do not want what we want. What they want is to destroy us... Not only will they use every power at their disposal to achieve their goal,” they’ve been doing it for years “by dominating every cultural, intellectual, and political institution.” Progressives pretend to be the oppressed ones, “but in reality, it’s just an old boys’ club, another frat house for entitled rich kids contrived to perpetuate their unearned privilege. It’s Skull and Bones for gender-studies majors!” So much for toning it down a bit.
The left, according to them, is conspiring to undermine America. Not a lot of details on how this is being done but it seems to involve a combination of academia, Hollywood, the news media, and George Soros.
This is how they justify playing dirty and their attempts at doing at exactly what they are accusing the left of, namely destroying their way of life. Leonard Leo, a prominent figure in the Federalist Society, for example, has set his sights on expanding his influence beyond the judiciary and into various sectors of American culture. The guy was a key player in the effort to dismantle Roe v. Wade. Through that bullshit, Leo was involved in the appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. His aim is to establish a "Federalist Society for everything" to take on such institutions as Wall Street, Silicon Valley, journalism, Hollywood, and academia. Leo believes that the same tactics that worked for the Federalist Society in the legal arena can be applied to other areas, including combating "wokeism" in corporate and educational settings, so-called biased media, and corrupting entertainment.
This is, of course, insane and unlikely to work since wrong to think organized/unified wokeists are taking over all the institutions of American life. Not that they care. It's just their way of justifying what they are doing at the state level.
The argument, they say, is that since the libs control everything, they have to aggressively use state legislatures to pass laws embracing their values, essentially what’s now happening across red America, including my home state of Indiana. An “unapologetically embrace the use of state power,” is what they are calling it. National conservatism taken to its ultimate end, which involves utilizing state authority to dismantle large corporations while simultaneously resisting coastal cultural norms. The conflict between cultural values and economic classes merged, so they hope, and a new right-wing movement arises in which a group of intellectuals lead working-class individuals in opposing the cultural and corporate elites. Blah blah blah. Putting a lot of faith in pushing money upward, but it's worked so far so why not.
So what are they trying to do with state power, you ask. Well, if you are Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for example, a favorite for the Republican presidential nomination by the by, who says that his state “is where woke goes to die,” you use it to obliterate First Amendment Rights.
A bill growing down there in America's wang is an explicit attempt to undo the 1964 Supreme Court decision, The New York Times Company v. Sullivan. This is a bulwark of First Amendment law that requires public figures to prove a news organization engaged in “actual malice” to win a defamation case. The so-called price of being a public figure decision. This case freed news organizations to pursue vigorous reporting about public officials without fear of paying damages.
The new bill would change the definition of actual malice to include any allegation that is “inherently improbable” or that is based on what it calls an “unverified” statement by an anonymous sourceMostucked up is that it says that all anonymous statements are “presumptively false” for the purposes of a defamation case.
If the bill is enacted, it would create enormous damage which other states will copy, likely with its language verbatim, on the way to the high court, where it will ultimately head. Once there, the conservative Justices will likely give it the okay as they would directly benefit from such a landmark case. Citizens who value free speech should really start raising a shit before the state silences them, just saying. The bill obviously represents a dangerous threat to free expression, not just for the news media, but for all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs. But, you know, for Republicans don't really seem to apply.
Then, of course, there is the whole transgender rights thing that the Republican Party is actively making their major platform for their base of unhinged bigots. At CPAC, for example, one Michael Knowles advocated for the complete elimination of transgenderism from public life, a sentiment that captures the essence of the right's collective efforts. Although there are numerous bills with varying objectives and justifications, Indiana signed one yesterday, their overall impact is reflective of fuck you if you're transgender. DeSantis (did I mention his national aspirations?), again, is leveraging the issue to bolster his anti-woke political image. Own those libs!
What does all this mean, exactly? I think it means the Republican Party is on some weak bullshit, and they know it. It remains unclear whether right-wing populism is here to stay, but it is clear that it requires an adversary, and opposition to “woke” ideals is a convenient target, although ultimately a one they can't really define. Look at the Federalist Society, for example. Their objective until recently was simple: replace one group of judges with the most ideologically extreme. Having unfortunately succeeded, now they are largely opposed to this concept of being “woke,” which is more or less taking on the entire culture without knowing what it is or means. However, as they are learning, attempting to reverse social progress across all facets of American society is not a simple or attainable goal, especially when lacking an understanding of the root causes of that progress.
To clarify, to be “woke” originally referred to having an awareness of social issues, particularly pertaining to racism and inequality. It has since evolved to encompass actively seeking education on issues with the goal of taking action to effect positive change. Nowadays, the term is commonly used to describe individuals who are socially conscious, who give a shit about other people, who aren't the raging asshole no one wants to engage with. These are the people that the anti-expression laws are coming for. For now, to the real fucks pushing this stuff, I say, go fuck yourself, you pieces of shit.
★★★-Was one of the movies at the top of my watch list. Didn’t think I was a fan. Drags too much, especially at the end. But I can’t stop thinking about it, and have been listening to the soundtrack non-stop.
Owen’s dad in the movie is a real fucking asshole. Played by none other than Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, Robert Durst’s son (JK). Owen’s mom dies and he checks out. Knows something is going on with his child, but is incapable of parenting.
