Guest Post by The Zman
One of the weird things about this age is how certain groups of people remain locked in a form of psychological stasis. Their views of the world remain the same as they were at some point in the past. For some it is always 1985 and the biggest fear is the commies will get control. Some are locked in 1968 where they are trying to keep corporate interests from crushing the working man. These people live like modern people, but their worldview remains in the world of the past.
From the perspective of dissidents, the most obvious of these groups are the civic nationalist types. Long time users of Gab have suddenly been made aware of these folks after Trump and Trump fans were dumped from Twitter. The J21’er is a person who signed up for Gab in January of 2021. They decorate their profile with patriotic symbols and far too much information about themselves. Politics for them is right out of a civics textbook from the late 1980’s.
These people are not just lost in the past. They have plenty of examples in the media who are right there with them. This post in the American Conservative is a good example of the type. It is a long piece about the future of conservatism that reads like it was written in 1992. No mention of immigration, the most important issue facing the world at this time. No mention of race and racial politics, which has convulsed the country since the end of the Obama administration.
The writer is a regular at the site so it is safe to assume his views reflect those of the editorial staff. It links to many other sites that wave the conservative flag, so it is in tune with the sensibilities of that old tribe. This is the right world to use as they exist like an isolated tribe in the Amazon, unaware of the world that exists outside their remote villages. This is one of the links in the post. It is a debate about conservatism by people who should be in a museum exhibit about the 1990’s.
It is not just a phenomenon of the legacy Right. The BreadTube phenomenon is an example from the Left that parallels the one on the Right. These are people promoting things like socialism, communism and anarchism, but from the perspective of the 1970’s when such topics were actually discussed by adults. They want to steer young people away from identity politics, but they also want to combat what they call “far-right extremism” that appears on YouTube and other places.
This is where you see the time warp. The people they consider to be far-right are people like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson. Not only that, they stick to an old 1970’s liberal view of politics when the Left was sure their ideas were so convincing, they could engage with their opponents and win every time. Like their analogs on the other side, they seem to have missed the last couple of decades. They are unaware of the fact that people get fired from their job for holding the wrong opinions.
Of course, the establishment Left itself is trapped in a time warp. The people banging on about structural racism and white supremacy also bang on about the dangers of corporate media and corporate power. They do so on global corporate platforms, often from the corporate offices. If people actually wore the labels of their supporters, the street protestors would look like NASCAR drivers. Their little outfits would be festooned with corporate sponsors. “This riot brought to you by Amazon!”
Listen to the people behind the Critical Race Theory stuff and they carry on as if it is 1955 and the imaginary Jim Crow stuff is real. They claim to be fighting the racism of whites and the oppression of the white power structure. They are weirdly unaware of the fact that none of this ever existed or exists today. Everyone with the least bit of power is on their side. Their people they are attacking are without any representation in the halls of power. For the antiwhites, time stopped in 1968.
Some of this is just human nature. People stubbornly cling to old ways of thinking about things out of habit. There were still supporters of the Whigs long after they had disappeared into the past. Ideology provides structure and a way to understand the world, so abandoning it is difficult for some. Until they find a suitable replacement, they stick with the old views. We see this with the Trump phenomenon. Many jumped on it simply as a way out of conservatism.
Then we have demographics. White people are the oldest tribe in tribal America now, so whites are going to be slower to adapt to the new reality. The fans of Ben Shapiro are old people mostly. He is what they hoped the future would be like and what they imagine it was like in their past. For someone who is 70 years old, it is tough to accept that all they fought to preserve will be washed away. The dream of returning to the civic nationalist paradise is better than facing present reality.
Reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing it. The people locked in these time warps will eventually return to this part of the timeline. Again, you can see this on Gab. Many of those J21’er have quickly adapted to their new home. Every time a bell rings a new dissident is born and every day the bells are ringing, thanks mostly to the behavior of the ruling class. The behavior of the government the last year has collapsed many of these time bubbles.
Something similar is happening on the Left. Jimmy Dore, for example, is a man who considers himself on the Left. Yet, he is every bit as skeptical about the radicals as the typical dissident. Glenn Greenwald is another good example. Matt Taibbi is another guy who is having an awakening. These are people looking around and coming to the realization that their old views on things no longer track with reality. The old Left is starting to have their own red pill moment.
Political transformation is like the old line about bankruptcy. It is slow at first, often glacial, then it happens all of a sudden. The individual begins to break free from their time bubble and then all off a sudden they have their awakening. As is always true about the behavior of people, some are too timid to look up. They fiercely cling to their ole ideas like a dog with a bone. Their fight to remain trapped in the past is a weird sort of conformation. Some people will just be lost to time.
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Don’t fall in to that useless argument of left vs. right. There’s no difference. Both sides are the same damn thing.
Another day of left/right, liberal/conservative blather? What’s the point? division, that’s what. Time is warped by constantly chasing your tail in a circular motion creating a vortex.
I just want to be left the fuck alone to party like it’s 1999.
Melty
Me too Melty. Create your own reality and live the life you want.
Yup BL. My threshold of BS is going down by each decade I go through. My only regret is that it took so many of those decades for my eyes to be opened. Those sick fuckers running the shit now are destroying any innocence even for the very young. What used to be considered depravity is now considered the norm.
“Create your own reality and live the life you want.”
How true, just be a Renaissance Man and don’t be drug down by the actions of others.
Good essay.
Agreed. I don’t really like or agree with Zman too often; but this one is good.
He says:
and
This has been the JOB of FoxNews (and Rush, Hannity, Levin, etc) for the last two decades: i.e., keeping sheeple within the confines of a narrow range of views held over from long ago. To be the rightward edge of a leftward-shifting Overton window. The programming is complete, and probably irrevocable, for most “Republicans”, “conservatives”, or whatever they wish to think of themselves as.
I was right there with them in the 1990’s, but I’ve spent a day-mare-ish two decades watching the country dissolve, and the world change utterly, while these sheeple seem oblivious to reality or, more particularly, the trend of that reality.
Awakening was jarring enough. More jarring was realizing how few others had become awake and aware. Worse still is knowing it’s next to impossible to wake up those who are still like zombie sheep (or sheep-zombies … whichever), especially when the are (or were) family and friends.
It’s ok to be a Whig. Millard Fillmore will rise again!
Jimmy Dore has not left the left.
The left has left him.
Free speech was the foundation of the liberals.
Still is.
And Auntie thought this was going to be a TBP LBGTQUPIBN+ friendly sentimental excursion:
When fags were just fine.
But you did not define the new paradigm. It is multicultural globalism/corporatism/Marxism vs. ethnic nationalism. Liberalism has failed as it was destined to do.