Remember when it was given that no conservatives worked in the arts? Remember when it was a given that conservatives were uneducated and conformist? Remember when it was a given conservatives were just dumb? Remember when it was a given that conservatives were CONSERVATIVE instead of utter and complete rebels defying the status quo.
You probably still know a lot of people that think that way. Pat them on the head. They're either old or so conformist that they've never examined their assumptions.
When a commercial a few years ago told the boss who talked of "sticking it to the man" that he was THE MAN I knew that the long con of the left was done with. And it must be now a good five years since I had a knock out drag out fight with someone proclaiming the received wisdom that the reason conservatives are scarce in the arts is because we're less creative, less inventive. Since we're, you know, part of the establishment.
Which would make perfect sense of course, if "conservative" meant, as it was supposed to be, those who defend the establishment.
But during the 20th century, the word ... evolved. There is this perception that the left distorts words on purpose, but that's not actually -- I think -- the truth. The distortion of words only started as their concept of the world and reality deviated to a point that they couldn't use the words in the intended sense and not confront the reality. In fact, some future historians -- if there are any -- will probably identify the rate of distorting word meanings with an ideology in power and still holding on to power, but in deep distress because its vision of the future has been disproven, and it's now just holding on for power's sake. But is unable to confront it.
In fact, this goes with nonsensical things proclaimed by any regime in power. Take the divine right of kings, a thing invented only when the very idea of monarchy was in distress. By the time monarchies started falling like ripe fruit, kings themselves claimed to be revolutionaries and for the radical equality of man, which they, somehow, could preserve. (And only they.) In the earlier times, when the ideology was healthy, the divine right of kings was implied and never questioned. By the time it had to be proclaimed, it was dead as the dodo, so it had to be shouted from the rooftops.
Over the twentieth century "Conservative" came to mean "To the right of Lenin." Because after all, communism was the way of the future and therefore anyone holding on to the old "capitalist" mode of society was someone trying to conserve the past.
This vision got hit with wave after wave of discomfirmation even as it adherents climbed to positions of power and held it through dirty pool.
In this, their ideology being dead gave them a leg up. At some level, they knew they couldn't justify what they were doing, so they abandoned all principles, played for power, and attracted power-hungry horrors. And hired people who served their vision of power at all costs.
They project this, btw, by characterizing anyone who escaped from a leftist regime as someone who was in power there. Or perhaps they believe it. Since their life is now all about power, they view everyone who wants to do something for altruistic and moral reasons as a liar and vaguely stupid. Because proclaiming THEIR ideology is the way to power.
It really is, you know? The right, like idiots, tend to sacrifice less-than-clean members to principle -- see Santos -- while the left will hold on to the Hamass "Squad" and the ridiculously corrupt members (Pelosi) for dear life, because the principles they proclaim are all from the lips out.
There is a lot of power in a dead ideology. For the divine right of kings, see Monsieur L'Etat C'est Moi Louis XIV.
For the left it made the "long march" a thing. Because they hired only those who agreed with them while the right hired whoever was "competent" they were able to grab all the positions of power.
Game it out. You get one leftist in and allow him or her power over hiring, all the next hiring will of leftists. And no one who isn't at least willing to pretend to be left will be denied work, or run off if they manage to get in.
This is how news reporting fell, and the arts, and academia, and and and, culminating with corporate leadership.
There is a price, though. If you hire for any reason other than competence, you're going to lose competence. Maybe not all at once, but slowly, over time.
Admittedly if you're doing that, you're safer hiring for nepotism, if only because certain type of abilities and talents run in families. Having grown up where all my ancestors had for a long while, I can tell you that. Everyone expected me to be academically gifted, physically awkward and blunt as wooden sword. Which, by and large, I was. My family, too, unless it's going through one of its "poor as Job" phases is good for administrative jobs. If in a poor phase, we tend to climb through being gifted and industrious craftsmen (My path really.)
But if you're hiring people who mostly know their "principles" are bullshit to be proclaimed from the mouth-out while playing for power, your entire structure is going to devolve -- instead of the structure designed to do "the thing" whatever that thing is -- into a structure devoted to fuck-fuck games.
Also, as the final waves of discomfirmation hit, with the fall of the USSR and the at least somewhat open propagation of what a horror life was there and how many people communism killed, the people willing to pay lip service to leftism were both dumber and more venal than usual. Those with a brain were even more focused on power and usually psychopaths of the first order.
Which leads us to the state of the arts, the media, most of the corporate leadership and academia.
The revelation of the plagiarism infesting academia surprised you? Oooooh boy, do I have bad news for you. It's been like that for 50 years at least. They can't create and they can't think. Part of it is the few of them who can are afraid to, because the ideology has gone crazy-irrational and turns around and beats you down for thoughts that were acceptable last week. See for instance, how many movies from the eighties and nineties couldn't be made today. (I have one series of books published 15 years ago that couldn't be published today. (Yes, I'll be bringing it back out, because you know what? I'm done giving a f*ck.)) So the ones who can think have decided not to. Or are too scared to. And might not even be aware of it. All they have is a bottomless pit of fear and hunger for power and that is really bad at creating "new contributions to the knowledge base of humanity."
And this why traditional publishing is dying an ugly and flailing death. It's why the arts aren't. It's why if you hooked up electrical cables to Walt Disney's tomb you could power America, he's spinning so hard.
It's not so much that they want to shove the ideology down our throats: it's that it's ALL they have. It's what put them in the position they are in.
Create? They can't create. They are the ultimate establishment men and women, raised to repeat back what they heard, flawlessly, and never to deviate. They always knew that was the path of to success. And it was. They look around, and everything at the top is like them. So they imagine everyone else are subhumans.
And because questioning, denying, creating are completely beyond their reach, they assume it's beyond everyone's reach. They're just clever enough to hide it, see? And mouth the right words. And that's why they're supposed to lead.
This sad state of affairs, with worsening performance for every infested field, persisted as long as it did, under the illusion that the people creating increasingly soggier pieces of cardboard passing itself as novels, or paintings or whatever, because the critics and academia were also infested. So what was praised to the sky was soggy, moldy cardboard. What people trained on was soggy, moldy cardboard. Even the occasional still-creative soul was thus destroyed and made into a copy of those hollowed out by the poisonous ideology and craving for power.
But it's been many years since I had to argue that yes, there are as creative people on our side of the isle as the other, and that what was happening was pre-and-quiet-cancellation of anyone who wouldn't sing in the choir.
Pre, if you were identified as "to the right of Lenin" before you broke in. and quiet, after. In writing as in the arts, as in industry, they invented some crime, some reason you were cancelled. it was never "because his/her thoughts threatened us." You had insulted someone. You were secretly a horrible person who tortured animals. Whatever. In writing it didn't need to be anything specific. The entire industry worked by hearsay because there were so many people trying to break in and so few slots for them.
All you needed was a whisper campaign: "Well, she" intent look "you know." And if the other person had no clue at all, they pretended they did, because not to know, and to associate with someone who'd been cancelled meant you were also cancelled, also "you know?"
In the heights of industry, where people were likely to fight more, they usually found some reason or created it. I wonder how many people were drugged and photographed with live girls, dead boys, horses and parrots? Probably a lot. Probably a lot more were implicated in embezzling and financial crimes. Even if the crime had to be invented.
I laugh -- but not with any joy -- when people complain of cancel culture.
Cancel culture? What, you noticed when? Ten years ago?
Ah, but that's when their power started falling apart. And then cancellation had com out in the open. Which means it's done. It's already done.
Why? Can't I see all the cancelled people?
Yes, I can. I can also see the mechanism failing and sputtering, and the cancelled coming back.
Look, it used to work because the establishment was unified. No one could come to the attention of the people who had been cancelled. This means the establishment could make up whatever it very well wanted about the cancelled person, and more importantly, people were FORGOTTEN.
What killed that regime was the ability for the cancelled to say in the public eye. Indie publishing, and mass-broadcasting. This blog, sure, but also podcasts, indie music, etc. etc. etc.
The cancelled don't go away and disappear, allowing the lies about them to proliferate. Or their fans to imagine they are dead.
Eventually this means that cancelling is just a sign you displeased the left who, as our own boycotts are starting to show, are a minuscule part of the buying public.
I fully expect the time to come when people put "cancelled by the left" on the cover of their normal, no politics, books. (They already put it in the cover of political books.)
For now? For now it means very little, outside a very limited circle. Which means of course that the left has gotten more vicious, trying to make it stick with stuff like debanking, and trying to equate challenging them with being evil.
But it's not sticking. People are using this brave new world to get around, get over, get under.
Not saying it doesn't hurt -- both emotionally and financially. -- In fact I made the point when explaining why even Glenn Reynolds fundraises. No matter how well some of us manage to do, you can take it to the bank that if you're may age or older, started out under the ancien regime and are to the right of Lenin, you've taken major financial body blows. Most of them, of course, before tech opened things up. But not all of them. Not nearly. We're still throttled to a great extent. (Explain to me how MHI doesn't have movies yet? one of the most visual and successful series. Even more so, explain why Honor Harrington doesn't? When mediocre series on the other side were filmed and pushed at people?)
But it's changing. And cancellation? Utter cancellation? It no longer works. Which is why the old argument is only trotted out by the old and the terminally out of touch.
Cancelling doesn't work while it's in the open. It's a thing of darkness and quiet social maneuvering.
Once it's visible, once people stare at it with open eyes, it starts to lose power. Like "the divine right of kings" if you have to say it and defend it to the masses in general, you're going to lose.
So don't look away. Don't let them maneuver in the dark. Keep your eyes wide open and ask questions.
Yes, what you see might be horrible, but watch it. don't flinch.
You kill it by not looking away.
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