” Wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes, But presently prevent the ways to wail.”
– Shakespeare, “Richard II”
Why do I start this post with a Shakespeare quote (Okay I admit I quote The Bard like a priest quotes the bible)? It’s appropriate when referring to a lot of conservative pundits whom I just can’t follow any more.
I watched an episode of Glenn Beck recently where the title graphic was “Conservatives can win in the end.” All I heard in that episode was rage and pessimism, exactly the opposite of that title graphic. Same with Mark Levin, another person I was once a fan of. Listening to them, all I hear is pessimism and rage. I’ve had it up to here with conservative commentators who go on the air and say, “The Democrats are horrible, life is going to be hell, and now a word from our sponsor” without having a plan forward.
Look, I don’t know what the eventual outcome of this election is going to be, but what’s frustrating is that we NEVER think long term. From now on, I have a very simple rule if I’m going to listen to anyone talk about the election. They must address the following very simple question: What are we going to DO about it? This includes BOTH Trump’s path to victory AND a contingency plan for if he doesn’t.
Kudos to Bill Whittle for making several videos regarding this. The rocket capsule I thought was brilliant. But this attitude I find gravely missing from most conservative commentary.
The truth is, our side of the aisle seems like it’s ALWAYS on defense, and that even when we control things, we’re losing. The most basic reason is that we never have a plan, and on the rare occasion that we do have one, we don’t have the stomach or spine to execute it. Most conservative setbacks over the past twenty years are actually self-inflicted wounds. Be it control of not only academia and most media, but apparently now control over elections, how is it that the left can have a 100 year plan including a “march through the institutions” and we can’t seem to plan past lunchtime?!
I simply will not accept that it’s the end of America as we know it if Biden wins. The rest of us have to talk about SOLUTIONS and decide that we will put our foot down and not LET them succeed. If that means the end of the Republican Party and replacing it with a party that actually possesses a spine and is able to think more than 1 move ahead, then so be it. Personally I want to see both parties burned to the ground, but that’s not happening any time soon. So to finish off, lest I be accused of not having solutions of my own, here are some things we must do. Some are more realistic than others, but once we throw off Bill’s first stage rocket and fly our own capsule, we’re going to have to decide what’s in it:
1. Go Galt. Likely this will not happen in the same way as Atlas Shrugged, but it doesn’t have to. I’m referring to Going Galt in a figurative sort of way. Start massive support networks, such as for small business and hiring, businesses that declare themselves “woke free zones.” We have collectively more money and power than they have, despite the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates. Get our own foundations going that will give support to each other, whether someone’s fighting an uphill battle regarding their gun permit to those who lose jobs out of political correctness.
2. Beat them at their own game. If Dems want to have sanctuary cities, have cities and states declare themselves as “gun sanctuaries.” War on coal? Texas is now a “fracking sanctuary.” The 10th Amendment is there for a reason, let’s start using it. Let them challenge it in court. We’ve got 10A on our side. Make THEM go on defense for a change.
3. Take back culture and education. One silver lining of Covid is the renewed interest in home schooling. We don’t need them. Stop sending our children to universities that preach anti-American values. This connects also to the national support system above. I used to be a teacher and would gladly donate time to a local home-school co-op, so that an individual family doesn’t have to bear all the time burden for their kids. Education is the lynch pin that everything else revolves around. If I had to choose just ONE MAGA policy for a second term, it would be school choice. That is absolutely Ground Zero.
4. Get voting laws under control. There has to be massive pressure on Republican legislatures to reform voting laws. Get back to Election Day, require in-person voting ON Election Day except in extreme circumstances. To the extent possible, issue mandatory national voter ID. It’ll be near impossible if Trump’s not in, but this can be done on a state level too.
I started this whole thought process as simply a contingency plan for a Trump loss. But the more I think about it, Trump is one man. We will have him for four more years at most. Who will pick up the mantle then? The Democrat Party may be fracturing and cleaving off the moderate wing, but regardless we won’t keep them out of power forever. Do we want to go through this “most important election of our lifetime” business every two years from now to forever? I certainly don’t. We need permanent answers, even if it take a while to come up with them. But either way it’s time to draw a line in the sand. We have the moral high ground. We have the doers. We have the creators, the makers. We have the wealth and power even if the left does have the wealthiest individuals. We’re made up of can-do people. So let’s start taking Bill’s advice and showing the left that the time for unity is past. That we don’t need them any more. The sooner, the better.
I also want to add that this post is not mere rhetoric. It’s deadly serious. We need to get our best minds together and figure out a way to keep America great no matter who sits in that Oval Office. I am willing to play my part and I’d really like to get a discussion going for a grassroots movement. And since I started this post with a quote, it’s fitting to finish with a different one.
“The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” -John Galt
10 replies on “Time to Prevent the Ways to Wail”
“If that means the end of the Republican Party and replacing it with a party that actually possesses a spine and is able to think more than 1 move ahead, then so be it.”
Personally I think that’s the only *possible* answer. The reason Trump got elected in the first place was because he was the first person to even attempt to *actually represent the views of the American people* since Reagan.
Mitch McTurtle, Miss Lindsey, most of that bunch have proven time and again that they’ll sell us out in a heartbeat.
POSSIBLY Ted Cruz will fight like the 3rd monkey on the ramp to Noah’s Ark, but the rest of them? Maybe 1 or 2 here and there, but I bet I’d run out of Republican fighters before I’d have to take off my shoes to count them up.
I just want to add on here the following question: Where is OUR version of George Soros? Where’s OUR version of Antifa, where’s the good conservative mirror image versions of these people? We’re certainly capable of it, and we can beat the mainstream media and loosen the left’s grip on education but we either seem disinterested in doing so, or we can’t come up with a plan. If we lose this country (which I’m determined not to do no matter how the election eventually shakes out), the bulk of it will be on us.
I enjoyed your post. I find I am the same way – from dismissing Rhinos to feeling abject disgust at their “get along to go along” limp wristed response to our liberties being abridged daily. I’m not one to “smoke the Hopium” but the pessimism is destructive and leads to dead-ends.
I sometimes have thought that if I had a deadly illness that would kill me in a year but produce no symptoms, and was neither curable or treatable, would I rather not know about it? I guess what I’m saying, along the lines of what you’re writing is, if you’re going to have bad news at least we’d better have something we can do. Otherwise maybe it is best not knowing. I tended before the election to shy away from Fox News and similar channels because when they had members of the Trump team as guests, it was not an interview, it was just two people finishing each other’s sentences, “You’re exactly right” and just telling us what we want to hear. That’s the opposite side of the coin – over-optimism with nothing to base it on. So I tried to tune in to people who I know would give it to me straight. Say what you want about Chris Wallace, I’ve always admired him as an interviewer since he throws fast balls to both sides. But now that the election (or at least the voting stage of it) is over, I’m finding an opposite attitude. I want to hear good stuff because what’s the alternative? To just be depressed and thinking our nation is over? Not having that either.
I love this post, and I am right there with you regarding the mindset we need to adopt and where we need to be focusing our efforts. Progressivism has advanced this far by playing a long game of a hundred years’ incrementalism, but is only effective against a stationary target. It can be defeated (“circumvented” I think is a better term) by switching to an active rather than reactive stance. Playing a defensive, “hold the line” game is a dead end and the road to failure we’ve been on. It’s time to abandon it. My attitude is that we will begin again, and do so cheerfully. Progressives advocate for “radical” change of a culture they deem wholly unworthy. Perhaps it’s time to show them decentralized “radical change” that they are completely unprepared for and cannot possibly hope to control.
“Going Galt” and building parallel institutions are good ideas with big questions/unknowns about the practical mechanics that are worth working together to solve. We certainly have capability, rational good sense, and a passion for building a free and happy culture of competence on our side. There are also many phenomena in motion that could potentially work in our favor if leveraged effectively: school failures pushing parents across the spectrum to find or build better options, censorious social media and a biased press pushing people to seek alternative news sources and self-publishing platforms, growing desire to increase our manufacturing self-reliance and reduce our dangerous dependency on China, cryptocurrency and similar network-of-trust technologies poised to offer decentralized alternatives for trade and commerce, the bustling private space industry poised to open new frontiers we’ve dreamed of for ages. All of these developments remind us that we lead lives of enormous possibility. They await our ability to leverage them intelligently, if we can muster the necessary coordination and choose to put the required effort in. Let us make new friends here, build alliances and a network of mutual trust, pool our skills, help one another succeed, and in so doing create the free future we desire. The authentic, beneficial progress we create will be what happens while “Progressives” are busy making other plans. And to put the cherry on top, we will do it all cheerfully and with a song in our hearts.
I posted similar thoughts on “Becoming ungovernable”, and in an earlier self-intro post (currently misattributed) but hopefully the above gives enough of the gist of it. My fearlessdream.us posts on “The Way Out” a few years back are also still representative of a lot of my current thinking. We can work on alternative structures here and plan and build toward new futures elsewhere at the same time.
Let’s get ourselves moving on kicking ideas around, self-organizing, and making plans. I see you and I are both software developers, so there might be particular possibilities to discuss in that arena, but also plenty of interesting stuff beyond it too. Please feel invited to reach out to me via DM or at troy_stephens@mac.com, and I extend the same invitation to all the clan of great peoplel here at BW. We’ve got things that need doing, and it’s time to get moving. I hold tremendous optimism and excitement for the prospect of the future we can build together.
I think #2, making them play defense, is why they hate Trump so much. I agree that he is just one man, and I am concerned about the next generation, who will replace him, who can fight, not like him, but as effectively as he has. We need more new blood from outside the system.
I think the destruction of the parties or the emergence of a third party can’t be made to work, unless Trump himself does it, and I’m not sure even then. Ross Perot inspired many of the same people, and all he got us was Bill Clinton for president. I think a multi-party system that forces coalitions is a bad idea. The big-tent idea is better. And I note that the actual white supremecists that the Democrats scream about, i.e., the Richard Spencers of this world, endorsed Biden, not Trump. I don’t ever want my party to be in a position where it has to caucus with the literal Nazi Party to achieve a majority. This actually happens today in some European parliamentary systems.
I couldn’t agree more. Your “going Galt” idea, implemented like the other steps you describe, looks to me like forming a sort of nation-within-a-nation. That’s remarkably close to ideas I’ve had in other areas, for example what I would say to blacks and other minorities if I were to run for president. (I won’t, but it helps my thinking to occasionally imagine things that way.)
I would ask them if they actually believed themselves to be helpless victims who cannot improve their lives without government, specifically white officials, doing everything for them. Clearly they would answer that they are not. (If they say they are, well, who is going to claim that level of incompetence? If they do then there’s nothing that can help them, not others and not themselves.)
Next I would advise them to, as a group, tell the government and their “white oppressors” to fuck off.* Including me. Create their own businesses, banks, etc. Stick to the western values known to be superior to all others, but deal only with each other. Do as immigrants such as the Italians, Irish, Jewish, and others did in the late 1800s and early 1900s – form self-directed and self-protective cultural enclaves and work with each other to better their lives.
Yes, they’d be starting with serious disadvantages, but so did those immigrants. They struggled, even living through serious mutual hatred and inter-group fighting that even cost lives, but they ended up thriving. And the more they flourished, the more they (and everyone else) would see that there is no real cause for any prejudice and division like what now exists and we would all end up together as Americans because we won’t need to be separate any more. Because of course they’re capable of achieving their own success.
So yes, we can and should start on a path along the lines of what you describe. In the long run it can only help us survive with our values intact.
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*I would put it exactly that way, “fuck off,” even in a national speech. Sometimes profanity, well placed and expressed, is the best way to demonstrate the seriousness and passion of one’s ideas. Hell yeah!
Booker T. Washington?
Lots of ideas in my head, but too tired to try to marshall them into something coherent and consistent.
This.
I don’t wish to go around offending those on the right, but from over this side of the pond, so many so-called conservatives over in the US act childishly online; as if the only response we have to leftist ideas is to call them schoolyard names.
It’s time to grow up, get a plan and act like the steely-eyed missile men, with the fast cars, big guns and hot women, that we used to be.
Are you from the U.K.? I do tend to agree with you somewhat on that. I don’t think it’s necessarily acting childish. Some of them resort to name-calling, like Trump. Honestly I wish he/they wouldn’t do that. But I think the far bigger problem with the conservatives is what I outlined in the post, that they don’t seem to have the stomach for the fight. They’re too passive and just assume the other side will play fair.
Our 2012 Presidential election was an example of this. Barack Obama was suffering the lowest approval ratings of his Presidency, the economy was down, the stimulus wasn’t working, the unemployment numbers grew, in other words he was ripe for defeat. But his opponent Mitt Romney had many opportunities to really go after Obama, his record and his background but was too, I don’t know “gentlemanly” to do so. Many Republicans are like that, which is why no matter what the Democrats always seem to be in charge even when they’re in the minority
Ultimately the issue and why some of them resort to name-calling, they have better ideas, but they are terrible at expressing them. We know that our solutions to education, healthcare and coronavirus are the right ones, that deep down American voters will agree, but we do a terrible job of articulating.