Bill Whittle thinks there’s a new generation rising that can’t stomach the manipulation of cultural icons — like Star Wars, Dr. Who, Ghostbusters — to fit a Progressive narrative that’s detached from the lived experience of actual humans. They don’t believe the avatars of woke politics because the theory doesn’t survive contact with reality. Alfonzo Rachel doubts Bill’s premise that the tide is turning toward conservatism.
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16 replies on “Wishful Thinking, or Is Cultural Tide Turning Toward Conservatism?”
Listening to you two discuss this i got to wondering what impact a left arm tattoo “Biden Jan-Feb 2020 Moderna” would have on those demanding proof of vax.
I will contend that at this Moment in History and specially American History that complaining about the latest whatever and the doing NOTHING but complain More simply “reacting” and NEVER acting toward the whatever is INSANE and that fits perfectly into Albert Einstein’ definition of INSANITY. Engaging in the EXACT same behavior (s) over and over again ad then doing IT again expecting to get a very different result, but ALWAYS getting the exact SAME result . Simply stated, that is INSANE.
The Mid-Terms are less tha a year away. EVERY Conservative, Constitutional Conservative, Libertarian, freethinking real Liberal MUST 1) go to the Polls 2) vote Republican/RHINO, therefore defeating the “Fascistic Socialist”/ AMERICAN MARXISM and do IT again in the 2024 Presidential Election voting for President Trump to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, thereby, defeating the “fundamental transformation of America.”
Get back the Power and Control to make those necessary CHANGES.
I tend to look at things from a global perspective. Yes, we’re seeing a lot of pushback, but we’re not seeing any results from it. So, I’m afraid I’ll have to categorize this as wishful thinking. We’ll have wins here and there, but just like we never got rid of Obamacare, anything the left puts in while they can will stay as well.
I just don’t put my faith in the culture changing. Americans are lazy. Yes, we fuss about entertainment, and evidently like to cheer Let’s Go Brandon at ball games, but overall, nothing’s changing.
I watched a video with Prince Charles the other day. The rest of the world is moving full steam ahead with totalitarianism. We will too. I’ll still fight the good fight where I can, but I’m not holding my breath as I don’t look good in blue.
Bill, 17 years ago Mel Gibson produced a movie that all the geniuses said was impossible, and would of course be a huge critical and financial bomb–yet The Passion of the Christ turned out to be a monster hit on every level. If I heard one Hollywood insider say that now we would see MANY similar religious/traditionalist themed films after Gibson’s precedent, I heard a hundred. And yet, 17 years later, where are those follow-ons to emulate that success, to exploit that niche of “half the country,” as Roger Ailes usedta say? 17 years of crickets! Ohhhhh, and now we’re gonna get a non-binary James Bond, for God’s sake, shoot me now! No, the commanding heights of our popular culture ARE NOT changing, at least not for the better. I wish it weren’t so.
Of course it is wishful thinking.
With the performance Brandon did, he supposed to have approval of 2-5% tops. Instead it’s measured at 39%. That’s not a gap you can just wish or xplain away.
First step of problem solving should be admitting the root cause: country filled with entrenched socialsits and other pocket tyrants.
A year ago that MB2A series started, pointing out both issues and good mitigation. Do you see *any* actual action happened along those?
Didn’t we learn that armchair revolution may switch the color of the current flag or the uniform of the enforcers, shift some preferences in the corruption chain but everything that matters stay essentially the same?
To me the united banana states looks as lost as ever — except a the single state of Florida. Where at least some of the still thinking people started to move to. So maybe that will serve as a new seed for the culture, if it finds a way to protect itself in time.
Bill’s IV staff needs to be a Japanese monk staff. One of those with the rings at the top that chime as the monk walks. That way everyone will know Bill is a true believer in science with every step he takes.
About the (fe)male swimmer: The left believes that men are better at everything; even at being women.
The TurnWhen I saw the left give up everything I believe in, I changed politically. You can, too. BY
LIEL LEIBOVITZ
DECEMBER 07, 2021
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-turn-liel-leibovitz
Yeah, I dunno about this. You want to be careful about confirmation bias. Conservatives are as susceptible to confirmation bias as anyone else.
There are definite indicators that what Bill’s talking about might be happening but the dents they make in the cult of wokeism are fairly shallow, so far.
I think this nonsensical wokeism is going to bottom out eventually because it has to.
The Wokeing Dead (love that phrase, it’s so apt) are addicted to a narrative because it costs them nothing at all to put on the mantle of “I’m a really good person because I care so very much.” It’s a free pseudo-virtuous, self edifying stance and that’s the appeal.
As we’re seeing play out now in real life, that appeal wanes rapidly when it starts to genuinely cost its acolytes something tangible.
People are willing to put up with or ignore a lot as long as it doesn’t affect them personally. When the payment comes due out of their own lives then they tend to put up a fuss. The more forceful and founded the personality of the individual, the sooner that happens.
It happened to nearly all of us, we who are willing to support Bill’s enterprise, quite a while back. But not everyone is like us. It’s not that it’s OK for them to be like they are or not, it’s just reality.
The recent Virginia State elections are a prime example of what I’m talking about here. Virginia isn’t really a Blue State, if you look at a map of Virginia it’s all Red except for Charlottesville, Richmond and the northern counties around Washington DC. The problem is those areas are the highest concentrations of population in an otherwise largely rural state.
Those high density population areas have held the rest of Virginia hostage to their Leftist ideologies.
Yet Virginia went Red for the first time in 17 years during this last election. What changed? What caused that change?
Thanks to some very effective messaging on the part of the Republican Party, people even in those Blue enclaves realized that Leftist ideology was costing them personally and voting for it would cost them even more. They found out that the Left wanted their children and were forced to admit to themselves that was the goal being implemented under their “feel good” virtue signalling smugness.
That’s a pretty steep price to pay for a feel good ideology and Virginians were not willing to pay it. There were other factors too, this factor did not exist in a vacuum but it was the one that tipped the scales.
How do we know that people were galvanized by this situation sufficiently to take action? Conversely, how do we know that there were a lot of people who as I said were “willing to put up with or ignore a lot as long as it doesn’t affect them personally” previously who were willing to act recently? People who previously put up with and ignored a lot but now decided they needed to take action?
Voter turnout is a prime indicator of this. More people felt they needed to do something about a situation that they strongly disapproved of and went to the voting booth. Voter turnout in Virginia during the last round of State Elections was the highest in that State since 1997. The highest in 24 years.
That is very significant. It also indicates that the Republican Party absolutely must migrate its messaging out of the realm of the ideological and into the area of personal concern over the effects of Leftist policy.
Unlike cultural indicators that may or may not be the result of cherry picking confirmation bias, this is solid statistical proof.
It’s not just happening in Virginia either. Virginia is a bellwether and a reliable one.
So I’m not sure what Bill is seeing in the cultural world is proof of a trend, yet. I am sure that real world, real political results are quantifiable and reliable. If as Breitbart said “Politics is downstream from culture” then the culture must be changing too, in order for this to occur. But culture is a lot more fickle and open to interpretation than cold, hard numbers and Virginia gave us those numbers.
Complacency is every bit as big an enemy as Leftist Ideology.
Odd that VA didn’t beat their 2020 turnout when there were record numbers of votes recorded for both candidates.
I think confirmation bias also is a threat when we’re dealing with bubbles. We on the Right often talk about leftists in bubbles in their cozy blue city enclaves but some of what Bill mentioned, about reading comments and posts on forum threads made me think of the various places leftists drove out those that were not conforming to the narrative regarding Pres Trump (really before the pandemic, as knitting groups were being infected by TDS). I would expect there were other refuges of sane people and others that were just not as virulently leftist who might be posting red-pill symptoms but haven’t fully disconnected from the machine just yet. There have been a number of main stream types that have criticized one thing or another and then went on to have Gell-Mann amnesia (I think that’s the right one) as they turned the page and started writing some other, still leftist, tract.
What does give me hope are these left-than-completely-leftist comments that haven’t been wholly denounced with calls for the writer’s head as some truths are at least being recognized in ways they were not over the last few years.
In my opinion it isn’t turning around per say, at least in the mainstream. What it looks like to me is that more and more people are “opting out” (for lack of a better phrase) of the old culture. They are simply turning off the woke garbage and trying to be a part of smaller and more isolated entertainment spheres. I believe that this is a good development (although not quite as good as the entire culture turning around) and we need to help keep these parallel systems alive long enough for them to start thriving.
But their lack of education doesn’t lead them to thrive. They are lost sheep, and they don’t know the voice of their Shepherd well enough to follow Him.
I live in Rural ‘Merica with small towns. I haven’t seen a “woke” person yet. No, we are not all White whatever. We are every race religion color. NOBODY cares about what you look like, but who you are. The one neighbor who had Biden signs before the election, now has “Biden for prison” signs. So, the few who were a bit left leaning are fed up with the mess. I see hope.
yes, the one person in our rural diner who voted for biden says he’s come around, and is being reeducated by the vast majority of his dinermates. it’s a matter of educating some of these people who’ve only had access to the censored material.
bolderdash says i…..pc is worse than ever and gaining mo every day. it won’t be long before even bill’s watered down version of himself will be off limits, let alone the disappearance of his decades of core values already banished to forgotten memories by revisionist history.
I can’t help but be afraid it’s wishful thinking … there have been so many false starts in the last 12 years. And it’s only gotten worse.
But looking around, I AM thinking the same thing … I’m just trying to temper my expectations to avoid the big letdowns I’ve had for years.