This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The right wing should do patronage of good culture and right wing culture and abandon an ethos of disengagement and libertarian ethos.
Why?
Because if you know artists, they care first and foremost about doing their things and getting money and recognition. The reason the left has been so successful its because it is willing to provide support, and to deprive them for not aligning with them.
Secondly, people who are actually on your side will also act based on incentives.
And thirdly, because the end result is desirable. A culture of just whining, about leftist cultural output is impotent. There is nothing wrong with complaining about what is bad, but you should also promote what is good. We need a society that promotes good art and and good culture. There is more to life than line going up. And if you don't try to fill that vacuum, someone else will.
What this means effectively? A right wing goverment should defund leftist artists and promote rightist artists and allow people to join the side. Soon you will discover that many artists are actually rightists who were afraid to express themselves.
It also means promoting art programs.
Also some kind of art tends to be of a more negative and leftist form like rap and modern art. Not all but more commonly.
Beyond the goverment, right wingers and not leftists should care more about networking to promote art that isn't left wing. It doesn't have to be explicitly political. Lord of the Rings for example qualifies. Just accurate adaptation of great classics of western literature without left wing ideological blinders would also qualify.
Putting regulations in place to make them illegal or underpromote far left racebending art and make them less financially viable, and giving incentives for art that respects the source material for example.
Of course, someone could object to a certain particularly aggressive moves in terms of what you promote and not promote, and in being excessively far to the right and excessively intolerant. And I could even agree with them in some cases.
However, in the current status quo, things are so lopsized in the direction of the left that it is pushing the culture landscape in a more pluralistic phase to have less race bending far left culture being promoted and more right wing.
This means that more right wing patronage of art is good even from a more neutral, pluralistic standpoint. Which is a general pattern of the culture war, even outside art. If someone is fine with leftist domination and escalation then a position in favor of an impotent disengaged right makes sense. We don't have a sufficiently neutral and moderate status quo though for defence of the status quo to be the neutral position.
More focus on this part. I feel like trying to invest in rightist media creation is overlooking the low-hanging fruit of just getting people to consume existing media that more closely aligns to rightist values.
You don't even have to go full trad and RETVRN to the classical Western canon. If the right could get people to watch the original Star Trek and Star Wars instead of their new woke installments, show their children Don Bluth and Studio Ghibli instead of the latest Disney/Pixar movie with a gay couple, or read Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle instead of whatever prog nonsense won the Hugo award last year, that would already be a huge improvement.
For example, the Mormons already ban R-rated movies. Would it be such a stretch for the prophet to say "no movies made after the year 2000"?
https://reasonabletheology.org/cs-lewis-on-reading-old-books/
https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/hQSaMafoizBSa3gFR/eutopia-is-scary
https://blog.reaction.la/economics/fertility-and-corporal-punishment/
To be fair, I don't think the original Star Wars or Star Trek are rightist. More the later fits more with the left.
Yes. The idea of no right wing themes and films/shows even in the more left wing film and tv industries is nonsense. There is a reason that the left has been complaining about past tv shows and films. They changed it by design to the current ideological perspective and things can change again.
It does seem that at certain point in the 2010s films and tv shows made in American industry went into a bigger left wing turn. Implicitly I follow this rule to an extend myself. I avoid watching most recent stuff and prefer older films and shows. There are more of them than someone can see in a lifetime unless they do nothing else than watching movies, so you still got a lot of options than you can choose. Being made prior to 2010s is a positive indication that you are going to get less of the cultural leftism than if you picked from the 2010s and later.
Like why not watch I Claudius instead of black tudor queen stories? Or the Japanese masterpiece Ran?
Or Ikiru which does have some conservative themes too. The protagonist finds no fulfillment in pursuing hedonism in his quest to find the meaning of (his) life.
Still, most people for the same reason that they became fat, that they follow the IseeIeat diet, are not going to do this even if they are doing things more than before due to the fact that there has been a quality in old art including music that isn't found equally today. So it matters we get new content made. It also matters because there are more worthy stories to be said.
Also, with bad remakes and sequels being made that are a net negative in the world and we should be better off without them it becomes harder for people to find the original superior material.
Trek was always openly and notoriously leftist. Original Trilogy Star Wars was non-leftist in a way which makes it an "old book" for the purposes we are talking about here. The snarky way of explaining this is at the level of aesthetics - the Empire was (according to Lucas, explicitly) modelled on the Soviet Union and the scene in A New Hope that is notoriously plagiarised from Triumph of the Will was the final scene where Leia gives Luke a medal while LARPing as the lawful government of the Galactic Republic. The First Order is modelled on Nazi Germany and all the scenes in The Farce Awakens which are redolent of Triumph of the Will are all First Order rallies. Meanwhile the goodies call themselves "The Resistance" and LARP as a real resistance even though they appear to be irregular forces of an actually-extant, non-LARP restored Galactic Republic. The serious way requires a level of expertise in media criticism that I don't possess. The best statement of the argument original trilogy (and prequel) Star Wars is right wing is the one made by David Brin, who thinks this is a bad thing.
OG Stark Trek was explicitly anti-racist, but it was anti-racist in that colorblind, equality-of-opportunity way that is considered thoroughly and unacceptably right-wing today. You don't hear anybody on The Original Series mention microaggressions or privilege or affirmative action. The narrative doesn't hate white people the way so many modern narratives clearly do.
Other forms of leftism are notably absent. The economic leftism of The Next Generation is nowhere to be seen; Kirk talks about Scotty's pay in "The Doomsday Machine" and human merchants like Cyrano Jones exist. There is some feminism in putting women on a warship, but at least Kirk is allowed to act like a fucking man instead of a cuck. When he seduces the 19-year-old Lenore (played by a 21-year-old Barbara Anderson) in "The Conscience of the King", nobody talks about how problematic and creepy it is for a powerful older man like Kirk to hit on a college-aged girl; it's just normal.
(Of course, it would be even better if Karidian told Kirk to back the fuck off unless he was willing to put a ring on Lenore and insisted on chaperoning their dates, but again you don't have to go full trad to improve on the current situation)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where can you easily find/access this older media? I'd imagine the majority of the reason people don't consume it is because it's much harder to seek out. Max has been pruning their selection of old movies, even. And they're seemingly the only streaming service that cares to have a lot of classics.
Yes, this is definitely part of the problem. Media comes out, stays on the shelf for a decade or two, and then vanishes, never to be seen again until its 95 years are up (if any copies even survive that long). Only a few works avoid this fate; super popular movies that are always in demand, like Jaws, or books that capture the attention of teachers and get assigned year after year to unwilling students, like To Kill a Mockingbird.
I have a theory that the REAL reason for perpetual rabid copyright expansion (of which Canada is the latest victim) is because the Cathedral doesn't want new woke media to have competition from older works.
Eh, I'd argue it's more because creating new media better suits the capitalistic endless growth model. The more new things you have, the more products and markets you can sell, the bigger you can make numbers. That makes the alien god we have summoned and call 'market capitalism' happy with us.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem for right-wing art is that as far as I can tell it has no well realized vision of the future that it wants.
Left-wing art has stuff like Star Trek, at least, which in its earlier incarnations makes SJWs a bit uncomfortable because of the hiring hot actresses to wear short skirts and so on but overall still articulates a pretty attractive vision of a post-scarcity future where humans have overcome their differences and enjoy exploring the universe in their pajamas while having minor conflicts with each other that all get resolved in the same episode or maybe one episode later by everyone learning a moral lesson.
What does the right-wing have?
There is Tolkien, but from what I can tell most of his current fans are more into the movie style happy ending than into his actual relatively complex ideas of the long defeat and the inevitable failure of mortals, ideas that might be relatively unappealing as a worldview to the mover and shaker type of personality who shapes political narratives. And the fact that his stuff is set in the past of our world makes it relatively hard to build a future vision from it. And anyway, even the original texts have a clear "diverse group learns how to work together and wins against the bad guys" narrative that is antithetical to many modern right-wingers' desires.
There is also stuff like John Milius and his Apocalypse Now and Conan the Barbarian, but he himself does not self-describe as a right-winger.
And anyway, it would be hard to make Apocalypse Now into a right-wing movie in the modern sense given that it depicts how a war against communists degenerated into insanity and corruption.
As for Conan the Barbarian, the truth is that its beaten-down-guy-beats-his-oppressors narrative, with all its love of muscular masculinity, has nothing particularly right-wing about it unless you think that just getting big muscles and unashamedly being proud of it and fighting your oppressors is somehow right-wing. But to me that seems like a very niche online take. If right-wingers get roped into celebrating muscular masculinity just because a relatively small group of leftists on Twitter get triggered by muscular masculinity, I do not see that as a big win for the right or a sign that they have created their own successful art.
I must object to your reading of Milius' works.
Conan is very much a vitalist positive vision of Nietzschean self actualization, certainly one of the main intellectual factions of the right wing. And Apocalypse Now, despite its setting is explicitly not an anti-war movie but rather an exploration of how we deal with war. If anything the story revolves around how it's a doomed quagmire precisely because of ambiguous restraint, and Kurtz though he is insane, is one man who is taking it seriously.
You could very easily find a reading of both of these that motivates a futurist warlord future where the true an natural will to power is no longer restricted by artificial bureaucracies and free to express itself while still appealing to morality and heroism of the meta-modern knight.
In fact this is where the solution to the problem of the right wing lies in my opinion: a synthesis of Nietzsche and Christ has to happen. Only that can unite its disparate factions into something that can reclaim both the mantle of righteousness and the crown of power.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't accept your premise, but why is this a problem, exactly?
It isn't true that there is no well vision of right wingers and not leftist artists want and created.
It is true that I am calling for something broader and less totalitarian. If you pick a specific smaller rightist sphere you are going to get a more specific ideological perspective.
Well, I don't want that but I am fine with (most) of those ideological perspectives also being made.
If that was left wing, where did it come from and in what society it existed that told what kind of stories? I.E. It had first interracial kiss in television too. Supposedly no right wing stories existed with non progressive themes which kind of contradicts the attitute to label as racist, patriarchical, etc, etc other fiction of the time and before including films like Gone with the Wind.
This idea you are promoting that right wing stories haven't existed is completely irrational nonsense that demonstrates your close mindedness and your totalitarian mentality. Your nitpicking about lord of the rings is especially egregious.
What I find interesting here is the contradictory multiple different gotcha narratives that are all leading in unproductive direction and have an element of prejudiced resentment to them and their unpleasantness.
Lets see:
Its all hopeless so don't even try.
Right wing patronage, it will be going too far and strays from libertarian ethos
What is art anyway
Right wing art doesn't exist and can't have a telos.
This special pleading helps to allow the left to dominate.
A couple of years ago we would also be getting the don't rock the boat, it is just a few kids at college narrative and things are sufficiently balanced.
Now, if the right wing is insufficiently right wing for your standards as a leftist or far leftist, why is that a relevant problem, to you? Genuinely so. Or a problem in general. Because it seems you are throwing shit at the wall to be a naysayer. Lets say what I promote ends up getting also fiction that isn't inherently right wing but also isn't leftist made. Is that a problem, or not? Why? Just so you can be a naysayer now against right wing art being made?
If I get more historical fiction that defies left wing prejudices and is not negative on europeans or other groups targeted by left wing prejudice, doesn't race bend, and promotes good themes including exploring the heart at war with itself, the necessity of heroism, the value of community, etc, etc, I will consider this a win.
Lets just say that there is a fundamental difference even between more left wing industries in the past, and how things have devolved. And there are fundamnetal conservative themes in fiction and art OBVIOUSLY. If you are so inclined to explore them you are welcome to read right wingers defining their ideology. Especially of non neocon variety. Even some of the anon far righter blogers would give you an insight.
The totalitarian vision of where all that is coherent and good can be found in the left is facile on its face and shows a profound lack of appreciation of much of human history and the art that has been produced. it what leads to the "burn the past" mentality, because it doesn't fit into the totalitarian constrain of the good and coherent. The need to change fiction to the left, and change historical material wouldn't be happening if there wasn't an alternative to the left.
More options
Context Copy link
The latter makes them far more uncomfortable than the former. They're progressives, they cannot have a particular goal that they'll be satisfied reaching, or they'll become conservatives. There's a reason why they reintroduced racism and economic inequality in the new iterations of Star Trek, and a reason why a lot of TNG fans aren't SJWs.
I think it can be misleading to conflate the Eternal Struggleists with the leftists, even if at the moment they are a very nearly perfect subset. My understanding is that other times and places have had plenty of space for people who were existentially offended at the idea of an attainable/attained success criterion while having ideas that our modern classification would unambiguously label "right of center". Any setting with religious crusaders comes to mind (in "Environmentalists are the new Christians" arguments, I always like raising the thought experiment of presenting Catholics with a worldly plan to discharge Original Sin once and for all).
More options
Context Copy link
Well I don't often say this and I don't often agree with you, but you have a point! I never saw it like that before.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps we're heading off in the wrong direction with Thomas Kikade and little cottages with docks on the lake to hang in the bathroom. Liberals are meant to be cutting edge individualists, but the telos of Conservative art is Mount Rushmore. There isn't a shortage of good small time traditionalists, making retablos and icons and Native American beadwork and oil paintings of the Grand Canyon and bronze sculptures of elk and so on. That's all fine, it has a thriving market. Now we have better and better image generation programs, and can make more attractive images than we know what to do with.
The big issue is that conservative American artists are all just doing their art alone, in their own small studios, maybe selling it at a local gallery or a craft fair or something, and it's hardly ever brought together to make something grand. Even conservatives themselves are probably too shamed to commission something like Mount Rushmore at present.
If you really want to see a political entity promoting some Conservative Art in Current Year, there's the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces (no, really, if you haven't see it, take a look https://youtube.com/watch?v=zYfdVnGHVEE ) Excellent details, craftsmanship, lighting, chanting -- very beautiful.
What would you be interested in seeing America build? We're unlikely to build a grand cathedral at this point. The Washington National Cathedral is quite nice, and I wouldn't mind more of that; is that what you're looking for? If you get a chance, go visit Saint Anthony's Monastery near Florence, Arizona. It's worth it just for the gardens, which are good conservative art in their own right. I want to work on a giant mosaic of Saint Innocent of Alaska or something. But Americans are too idiosyncratic. We end up with a bunch of eccentric individuals making little versions of House on the Rock instead.
When American conservatives are doing well, they end up with things like the Milwaukee Natural History Museum, the San Juan County Historical Society Mining Heritage Center, parks and plazas with life sized generals on horseback. Utah has good parks, museums, civic buildings, and at least a couple of pretty cool cathedral sorts of things. If I were Head Culture Commissioner of the Right, I would ask for more formal gardens with attractive shrines, and more things to be built from stone and carved from wood, with formal mosaics embedded in them, with spires and domes. I would absolutely not commission more little paintings of dockside cottages and Precious Moments figurines, the market can handle that just fine on its own.
I agree with your idea here. Although I also want more grand neoclassical style paintings as well. It would lead to creation of great art if we had more people around trying to emulate Jacques-Louis David and follow in his footsteps.
What about stories, what stories would you promote?
I agree that this is a serious issue. How would you go around to changing it?
Yes, I wouldn't mind seeing more of those kinds of paintings in public places.
There was an interesting conversation between Jordan Peterson (caveat: I do not endorse some of his recent move toward establishment American conservatives and selling gold... but his old Jungian lectures on The Lion King and Pinocchio are excellent) and Jonathan Pageau. Previously he had been working on carving traditional icons, and has recently started working more on retelling traditional fairy tales. I will be interested to see if anything comes of it. The best conservative storytelling of the last century is that of the Inklings, because it's legible to children, but still rich enough for adults. But I don't get the impression the current system is built to allow professors enough slack to sit around at pubs talking about their imaginary worlds for 20 years.
I'm not sure about grown up stories. I think it's more useful to think of excellent stories than right wing ones. The best American fiction is probably Faulkner, as much for his prosody as because of the stories. Or entirely for that, and his use of specifically American culture, since half the time I couldn't tell what the story was when I was reading him. Dvid Foster Wallace had so much talent, but inanition to being more left than might be ideal, I and those I know have only succeeded in reading his essays, not his stories, because they're even more convoluted than Faulkner, as far as I can tell. It's fine when someone writes nonfiction or Based on True Events pieces well, like Solzhenitsyn. I've heard good things about Tom Wolfe, though I haven't managed to read anything by him, despite trying a couple of times. Same with Flannery O'Connor; I tried, but just don't get it. A lot of intellectual conservatives including in my family think she's great, though.
So that was all the 40s and 50s, mostly. Then things have stagnated for about two generations. People have been reading terribly written self help books like "The Purpose Driven Life" and political dross like "The Democratic Party Hates America." I read Brandon Sanderson novels because at least he writes novels, and doesn't just give up half way through. It seems like the thing to do is lean into our local subcultures and inherited religions more. Unsung is lovely, if insufficiently edited, in a similar trippy way to Charles Williams. I would still recommend it to rightists of taste, regardless of differing politics, because it isn't about narrowly defined politics, but about Heaven and Hell and whether to world is made up of math or not, like all good stories. It would be great if he could find and talk with someone who could write Tom Wolfe style satire about Bay Area tech people and blockchain stuff. I'm unhappy that the current model is to dribble thoughts out on Substack, and would like more compilations and stories. I don't know how one would go about encouraging this, not being oneself able to produce anything much in writing.
I don't know. If I knew I would have learned Byzantine mosaic and be working away at it already, since this is something I've been interested in for a decade. Instead, I watercolor plants in my garden and make felt quail, like everybody else. I've learned the basics of encaustic (the medium used for the Christ Pantocrator of Sinai icon), but have neither training in how to progress past embedded leaves and accretion, nor anything to do with the pieces when they're finished. My mother had a lot of artistic potential, but mostly just painted and scratched some egg art, then gave up because she didn't have anything in particular to do with them. A man came to my school district to do a workshop with the art teachers about retablo once. He was self-taught, since the art form had mostly died out in the early 20th Century, but he was motivated to work on painting cultural connections to his ancestors and religion. It was great, we all loved it, but it took over a year to set up, then we don't actually know what to do with the information afterwards.
There's a church being built in town. I should probably go there and see if there are any iconographers about. They had bells cast, and now have a bell tower set up, and have presumably trained or are training a bell ringer (https://youtube.com/watch?v=faa5TZtnfzc). Perhaps there are things going on that I could participate in? And also because I miss church, but have stopped going on account of life circumstances and changes in my favorite parish. But also, my kids are too little just now, I'll probably have more bandwidth in a few years, and can take them to learn traditional arts too.
Absolutely agree about Peterson. He's at his best when talking about Jungian stories and archetypes, and getting into the idea of perception needing a structure of value that is outside narrow scientific and 'rational' frameworks.
That icon is beautiful, and thanks for calling out the method. My girlfriend really likes to sew and knit, do you know any icons or methods that are made in those ways?
Not iconographic, but just saw this rather impressive thread artist https://www.ceciledavidovici.com/
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know too much about it. I learned sewing and embroidery in, one might say, the British tradition, from a woman who's mother was a seamstress in England. So I hand sewed a Regency era ballgown. I haven't examined it since, because whenever I have enough time to embroider, which is rare, I just do something else instead.
The words that come up, though, are vestments and regalia, though they're more embroidered and beaded than knitted. https://www.monasteryicons.com/product/christ-the-lifegiver-vestment-emblem-559ve/165
I personally love Albanian (and Turkish) wedding dresses, which are vestment looking, and worn on holidays and anniversaries. https://static.themarthablog.com/2018/03/IMG_3432.jpg
Native American regalia is often also beautiful, and people put a lot of effort into it. There's some especially excellent beadwork involved. There was a Christian Alaskan man I met once who had made himself a deer hide jacket, and designed and painted Jesus and Christian symbols all over it in his local style, and it was really neat.
I used to have some Scottish pieces from my great grandfather's clan, featuring a clan tartan and "Dread God" brooch that I would wear sometimes, but couldn't find enough occasions, so eventually I seem to have lost it.
It seems like there's pretty strong demand for wearing special garments, hence the popularity of cosplay and reenactments. But Americans aren't really sure how to wear them seriously or liturgically. Perhaps I should make my daughters folk dresses from where their father is from and have them wear it to Pascha or something. It looks like I would have to order some special trims, but is probably feasible if they don't grow out of them before they're ready.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The pictures attached are identical prompts submitted to DALLE-2 a year ago and DALLE-3 a few days ago.
Visual art is to my great amusement in the midst of the purist communist revolution in history. In just a few short years the haves and have-nots of artistic talent will be equal in a way no living humans have ever been equal; ah, patronage, patronage . . . man, how many art schools will even exist in 20 years?
/images/16966985571948996.webp
/images/16966985575455763.webp
(my politics are whomever brings the future where i can use this software's successor to make animated shows)
You don't have very long to wait, RunwayML already lets you generate videos from stills with okayish results, and given the pace of progress, something usable for practical purposes is maybe a year or two away. Then just a short wait till someone consolidates it with storyboarding, music, voice generation, an LLM to write dialogue and so on.
Most of these exist independently, already.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
First, define "good art" because we've been having this conversation for centuries and nobody's got a working definition universally accepted. What is "good" art - technical merit and ability? subject matter? what the public likes versus what educated taste likes? And is "good art" art in "good taste"? What's good taste, then, precious?
Artists are about being transgressive, challenging social and cultural established values and thought, novelty, and all the rest of it. You can't pay them to produce 'conservative' art, and those who do so will be and are derided as sell-outs. Think Thomas Kinkade, who certainly had some measure of talent, deciding to make himself into a brand and churn out product on carefully selected themes that were repeated ad nauseam. "The Painter of Light" who was wildly successful with the public and made a fortune, but he's never going to get the respect of the art world.
Think of Tracey Emin versus the Stuckists.
They may have started out championing 'traditional' painting, but they've become another sub-set of the performance/protest artists of modern art.
'Good art' is not going to be given that accolade unless it accedes to the values of the liberal and indeed progressive strain of cultural hegemony. "Norman Rockwell type art" is not intended as a compliment. Is Marcel Duchamp's urinal good art? I think Surrealism did produce good art and it did give a shock to the art world, which every new movement needs to do, but as tastes and values evolve, there's no going backwards.
I think for me, most of it would be down to technical skill and the ability to communicate a message to the audience (without having to explain it). What I love about the really good old classic art in various media is that it’s technically good. Old Renaissance paintings are master works that are made by people with a good understanding of how to draw, how to arrange things in the painting, light, shadow etc. old plays are well written and well placed, they show rather than tell, they communicate with their audience and so on. And I’m not against all modern art, I like some of the surrealist stuff personally. The stuff that bugs me are the technically bad, thoughtless, and often requires the artist to make up a meaningful title and backstory for their art because absolutely nothing in the piece communicates any sort of meaning.
More options
Context Copy link
That seems to be implicitly conceding 'art' as a whole to the left and ignoring both contemporary conservative artists and a long history of conservative art because they don't fit into the stereotype of a starving/drug-addled/insert other caricature of left-wing artists here. I will grant that non-religious conservative art (at least in the Anglosphere) seems to be at a low point right now, but I don't think that is some timeless quality rather than a whole-hearted embrace of lowbrow anti-intellectualism (this is also why they're hard up for everything from political philosophers to bureaucratic subject matter experts).
You're unlikely to be celebrated by your adversaries, but that doesn't make much sense as a goal for a conservative art movement. If you can make good art, people will consume it, even people who don't otherwise agree with you. If you build it they will come, etc... Per my remark above, the problem with conservative art right now is that it is overwhelmingly bad, being too preoccupied with being conservative while relegating being art to a very distant second.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think the current Right in America can make good art that will save them. The bottom line is that the old Right in America is dying. Christianity is in terminal decline and old school classical liberalism just isn't that popular anymore either. This doesn't even get into demographic change where white people (the base for the Right in America) are aging and dying while non-whites move closer every day to a majority. What art could they possibly make that inspires young people?
We are in an era of huge amounts of change, and the die has already been cast. The Right is more or less in the position that the old Pagan culture in Rome was with Christianity ascending and the old ways were hated, persecuted, and forgotten. The current Left won't always be in power, but its true challenger isn't going to come from the Republican Party, Christianity, MAGA, or libertarianism. It may not even come from America and possibly not the West
No, it isn’t. The decline of Christianity stopped with the millennials. Now zoomers are a smaller generation, so actual church membership is still declining, but it’s just not true that future generations are continuing to get less religious.
I wouldn't be surprised if Christian belief among Gen Z is 30% or lower. And by that I mean that on top of regularly attending church, they actually believe Jesus was the son of God, rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, virgin birth, etc. I don't think polls where they self identify as Christian are even remotely accurate. My theory is that there is a version of the shy Tory effect going on here in regards to religious affiliation. I think Christianity will be more or less dead in the West in 100 years, possibly much sooner.
More options
Context Copy link
Wait, really?
I would be surprised if the terminally online zoomers were any more drawn to organized religion. If there’s been a sea change, I missed it.
Unless this is a demographic transition powered by increased Hispanic population, maybe…
No, the last data I saw showed millennials and zoomers having virtually identical religious demography(both faith and practice), not a turn towards religion on the part of zoomers. Zoomers are a smaller generation, sure, so there’s fewer of them in pews, but the idea that the percentage of the population which is practicing Christian is in free fall is just not true. It looks like free fall because every generation shrinks due to below-replacement fertility.
Most plausibly, this is caused by apostasy being balanced out by higher religious fertility rates. And in fact the data shows that- every grouping of religious denominations in America has an above replacement tfr that takes a nosedive when you account for apostasy. It’s not implausible(although not certain, either) that future fertility gaps will be wide enough(or alternatively, apostasy low enough) that even with apostasy Christianity will be demographically expanding again. It doesn’t, however, seem like apostasy rates are about to rise again, because they seem to have stabilized after declining.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It'll take some time, but the answer is the same thing as it always is: Things that piss off their parents and teachers.
The greater proportion of parents that are leftist puritans, the more the counter-culture will swing right. No, it won't be Christian right, but it'll be about freedom to offend, same as it always was.
No, it won't. The left has captured the culture and the counter-culture, simultaneously. I don't know how they managed, but they did.
No man, that's progressive sleight. The counter culture is not a movement or a type of clothing or a button you wear, it is the culture that is counter to the mainstream. This place is counter culture (this is a pre-emptive bup-bup to the objection I hear some preparing to type, yes this place is counter culture). You are counter culture. Hell, at this stage of the game, you are a counter culture hero*.
What I think the left have done is develop the controlled opposition model into a multi tiered system, so now below the RINOS is a fake counter culture that is actually mainstream - for people who want to leave progressivism but are still saturated in it. It's a clever move, because it allows them to bridge the gap between their new upper middle class audience and the older money hating hippies, and also maintain control over people who try for the first time to exit the mainstream, like my friend Bill.
Bill is an army guy who never really paid attention to politics until recently when he started to get fed up with how pathetic he thinks the (Australian) army is and how completely unlike anything his dad or uncles or grandfather said it was, how the modern army is like a larp of what it used to be. He started paying attention recently, and when I sent him a barrage of links to read he felt a deep connection to the writing of moldbug and land, but he won't talk about them except when we are in private, and he's thinking of abstaining from the upcoming voice referendum because he knows voting yes is wrong, but doesn't want to vote no and 'embolden racists'.
He hasn't yet become counter culture, he's still just controlled opposition, because thanks to censorship 'to protect the marginalised', he doesn't even know real counter culture groups exist, and so must still reach for the mainstream culture for belonging. But they do, they might only be small and local, or hidden and secretive, but they exist. We exist.
We can't expect to immediately see Woodstock, we lost all the institutions and have to build them up again. That might mean decades even of eking out minor, almost pyrrhic victories, and it certainly means very little mainstream recognition, but so what? You haven't given up have you? And your blackpilled status is a motte meme. But giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, is for losers, and so you're still here reminding everyone to temper our expectations and not expect miracles.
*Sometimes in my idle daydreams I like to imagine you as the motte's Burroughs. Because you're both bitter about being Cassandras, but still capable of finding humour in it.
Yes, but it worked. Counterculture is, and long has been, a product of the same progressive movement that runs the mainstream culture. There isn't any real "counterculture".
No, defeatists cannot be heroes; their own side hates them for their defeatism and the other side hates them for being opposed.
Woodstock was manufactured too.
It didn't work - pol is not controlled opposition, for example. Chan culture is a counter culture. It's more accurate really to say that it worked in the sense that they have redefined counter culture for most people, but it didn't in the sense that counter culture is any culture which is counter to the mainstream. The left might define counter culture as hippies and artists, but we don't have to accept that framing and we shouldn't.
Well, I like you.
True, but it is still a cultural icon of 'the left as counter culture'. Actually it might even be more appropriate now.
Hah, thanks for this little aside about @The_Nybbler. You've redeemed him a bit in my eyes. :)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is the truth. You can see this in shows like The Boys which mocks "wokeness" in theory, but what it's really doing is mocking people who aren't woke enough or just pretend to be to get ahead. It's a criticism of wokeness from the more woke. This would be like if Life of Brian mocked Christians from the Right for not being Christian and conservative enough instead of mocking it for being silly and superstitious.
The closest thing you'll ever actually get to making fun of progressives/wokes in Hollywood would be from old school leftists who argue that it's gotten off the tracks and needs to be reigned in a bit but still mostly agree with it. You will never see a mainstream movie completely rejecting the modern Left's narrative because they all more or less agree with it.
"Life of Brian" was a movie whose actual function could be seen as wrapping up messages like "actually empires are good", "the masses are a bunch of sheep", "look at the idiot leftists and their infighting" and "trying to change things is futile, best just not do it" (the entire crucifixion scene, really) to a mildly transgressive and nominally anti-religious cover, where the Pythons took pains to make it clear that Brian is not supposed to be literal Jesus and they're not trying to mock Jesus. The scenes I linked are some of the most famous and most widely-quoted scenes from the entire movie.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Everything has been debated forever. There is nuance but generally we could say that:
Good art is aesthetically pleasing. Elevates the human spirit rather than denigrates it. Promotes fundamental truths over lies. Promotes virtues. Is respectful of the original source material, and of the people from which it derrives.
And for the right, also has historical significance. Plenty of it would focus on themes that had been successful in the past, including especially in art before the 20th century.
Everything has nuances but there are also fundamental truths. Among films, The Lord of the Rings adaptation would qualify in a manner than most other adaptations we have seen in recent years don't.
Actually Lord of the Rings did have a character who was demoralized and ready to surrender in Denethor. https://youtube.com/watch?v=b7MCVm4XISc That attitude was treated by the protagonists with contempt which spoke of an important truth. Even greater truth is found in the scene were the advisor Wormtongue who has corrupted king Theoden is banished. Truly magnificent. Also wonderful to see Theoden from a sad shell of a leader returning to a noble king of men. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iQExgALv9wI
How many artists these days are transgressive about the dominant established values of thought? Musicians especially. Do you see them to decry it? Well there are a few who do with some success.
Conservative art was produced for much of history. And based on the weirdo definitions of conservatism I see here, maybe they still are if conserving the status quo is conservatism (it isn't).
Thomas Kinkade is an incredible painter and artist. You can create an environment mroe conducive to allowing artists who really care for their quality of their to create good art. Like Cormac McCarthy whose wives claimed they lived in abject poverty who wasn't a leftist either. Which I am led to believe is actually impossible by some of the comments here.
And you can make it easier for rightists or leftist artists too by creating an environment that promotes more the one, or the other in praise, status, positions to create art.
Yes, and? You are arguing with a strawman. I argue that rightists should fund art magazines, and artists themselves. In fact it is the sane reaction to a polarized environment.
Also, it wasn't always that bad.
Says who? Tastes can evolve in various directions. And who says there is no taste for continuous traditions? In actuality old artforms have continuing fans even today.
Actually, there was a film released recently about hunters of pedophiles that was rather popular and was denigrated by most of the media.
Plus, in American television rural tv shows were once all the rage but that ended one day when executives decided to cancel them.
As it happens the public can accept even garbage, although with more dissatisfaction than something better. Where do you gain that great confidence, especially as someone who has claimed to be a conservative that the current dominant strains are the epitome of unchanged sophistication? This faith in the unchallenged and hopeless progressive arc of history is really bewildering.
Does Guernica meet these criteria?
Well, it's not aesthetically pleasing. It looks like a jumble of ugly, mishappen, misproportioned figures. It's supposed to look like that.
Right, because it is meant to invoke the suffering of people in a city that had been bombed. So of course it isn’t aesthetically pleasing. So, perhaps good art does not have to be aesthetically pleasing. Nor does it have to elevate the human spirit.
They could've shown a mother mourning at her dead child and bombed house, they could've shown people laughing, crying and having mental breakdowns in an air raid shelter... There are enormous numbers of options available. That would've invoked the suffering of people being bombed without looking the way Picasso does.
Art can be aesthetically pleasing and still confronting. You can get pathos from paintings, that can elevate the human spirit. If you can't tell, I reject the notion that Picasso produced good art, know that I'm in the minority and don't care.
The point is that, however a work of art depicts human suffering, it is not going to be uplifting and aesthetically pleasing. If it is, it probably is not doing a very good job of evoking the emotions associated with such suffering.
I can often look at a piece of art, be it sculpture, painting, what have you, and immediately know whether the artist hates humanity or not. The purpose of art may be to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, or however it goes, but I don't care for art when it is clear to me that whoever made it hates us all and would consign us all to despair. It is possible to show human ugliness without hating all humans, to reveal pain while acknowledging that it is pain--even to show despair without suggesting that despair is the just lot in life for all of us, or even for the despairing soul who is depicted. I never cared, for example, for Joel Peter Witkin's work, though he was celebrated in some circles. The term "uplifting" suggests a certain saccharine aesthetic that I think may not capture the right idea.
More options
Context Copy link
Where is it written that suffering requires grotesque mishappen faces and inhuman bodies? What about clear human faces or expressions?
Take this: https://old.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/69vilr/north_korean_museum_painting_depicting_torture_of/
It's perfectly clear what's going on, you can actually interpret it in justifiable ways. Korean wearing white for purity, the composition of how they're all staring at her with malign intent, the guy with the cigarette casually contemptuous and approving of his colleague's hard work. Tongs being heated up for more torture.
Or take half of Caravaggio's work, lots of suffering there! But it's also clear, you've got light and darkness, you've got colour, you've got proper human faces and emotions. His work is not a giant mess of disconnected, ill-shaped images.
Or this - clear emotion, realistic imagery.
https://media.timeout.com/images/105652224/750/422/image.jpg
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And that work spawned a genre known as "high fantasy". It's called "fantasy" for a reason. In reality, there's no author ensuring the ultimate victory of the protagonists.
Essentially none. They often claim to be, but usually they're "transgressing" against the right, which hasn't been transgressive in decades. At most they're doing 50-stalins ultraprogressiveness.
Well, the left started from a weaker point and became more dominant because of faith to themselves and their ideology.
So did Christianity. Another word of more negative hue could be fanaticism and there can be a negative side to it. It is still an important truth that conviction matters and can lead to victory. Even in some cases from an underdog position. Especially if you have more conviction than your opponent and want it more.
In reality, faith is no guarantee of success, but without faith you got nothing. The blackpilled path you preach for leads nowhere. Better to strive for what is good both for pragmatic effects, and because it is a more honorable and just way to live.
Also, is it possible you are promoting the easy way out? If things are hopeless then it does justify doing nothing, after all. But this easy way outs eats at one's soul because deep down they know they could have done better.
There are some who align more with conservatism, or are hostile to the establishment even in the current political environment. Those who self censor might be more.
I do think most artists fall in line though in general.
In addition to the left becoming the establishment, doesn't this have something to do with the left's greater zealotry? Its part of what makes the establishment, the establishment and help define the zeltgeist. Essentially its a self fulfilling prophecy to be demoralized, which leads to further loss and more demoralization.
More options
Context Copy link
Psalm 68:1, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and indeed most of the world, to this day and since essentially forever would pretty strongly disagree with this proposition.
More options
Context Copy link
I dislike what the movies did with Denethor (I understand the choices being made and why Jackson made them, but I still dislike them). It changed book Denethor into a caricature; it weakened the character. But there was need for easy villains so Denethor and Wormtongue fit those roles. I also wasn't too happy with how they treated Brad Dourif, who I think is a good enough actor to convey Grima's evil without needing to be made up like "greasy incel creepy guy nobody would ever trust". Part of that character is that he looked and acted the part of the wise, responsible councillor which is how he was able to worm (ha!) his way into Theoden's confidence and why the rest of the court didn't rise up against him.
But that's personal aesthetic and artistic choices.
Yeah, I found that bit very weird too, how was it that all of Rohan wasn't able to see what an utter slimebag this dude looked like and allowed him to rise up the ranks and become the most trusted advisor of the king just like that?
At least the MTG card was better done, which is not something you can say for Theoden or even Galadriel.
More options
Context Copy link
Denethor and Aragorn were in the books similar people. The difference seems to be that Aragorn was rightfully the king and Denethor was not but had the desire (the will to power). Yet both wanted Gondor to succeed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Reminds me of the Tolkien vs Martin rap battle. Isn't one of the reasons art should show unrealistic victory to inspire people in real life to make some similarly hopeless attempts that occasionally do result in victory?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Excellent comment, can't agree more. It's a shame that right-wing and conservative values often disparage art as useless or impractical.
Part of the issue to my mind is that historically conservatives have highly valued oration. Older cultures were entirely oral, and most grand Western stories that conservatives love have classically been told orally and repeated generation after generation. There's something about the format of the spoken word that lends itself to these repetitive stories that slowly change the shallow pieces, but keep the deep structure the same.
I see this tendency cropping up even now. I discussed with @ArjinFerman earlier this week about how the majority of right wing discussion that is shared or held up as quality tends to be videos and podcasts. While I'm sure that many of these pieces and discussions are excellent, the information is far slower to absorb, and harder to spread. When you have simple images or the written word, these forms can be consumed and spread much more quickly than spoken alternatives.
Unfortunately, the right wing 'base' seems to denigrate the written word more than ever. Even one of the leading lights of the intellectual right, Richard Hanania, has outright said books are a waste of time. It's a tragic state of affairs, and I appreciate you putting forth the argument so eloquently.
It feels like you're working your ways backwards from an already conclusion on this, and I'm not sure what am I supposed to say to change your mind on this.
It would be difficult to change my mind, this is an implicit perception I've built up over years of trying to find forums and discussions by that outline right wing or conservative values. You have sent me some good Substacks, but I still haven't found a solid argument against why the vast majority of text driven sites like Reddit, or the majority of political best sellers are all left wing.
Because redddit bans rightwing subreddits, and the publishing industry leans left?
More options
Context Copy link
In a word, censorship. Not always government censorship (but sometimes, as the Twitter Files demonstrated, though because of that same censorship they had all the impact of a fart in the wind), but the fact that the gatekeepers and (in the Internet's case) even the infrastructure is manned by political idealogues.
Fair point, the left is horribly censorious, I don’t deny it. As I’ve said to you many times though - why is that the case? Did the left just magically take over these institutions, or was their political worldview more suited towards art and writing?
They've taken over pretty much every institution, not just art and writing. It's been over a century-long project by now, but it has been quite successful.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The entire art world, root and branch, all the institutions and nearly all the artists, is left wing. There's nothing on the right to subsidize.
The closest to mainstream rightwing art I can think of are artists like Stonetoss and other Twitterati, who have a sizeable following on platforms with less leftist moderation.
More options
Context Copy link
That is an exaggeration. Actually my post was partly inspired by some similar complaints by George Alexopoulos (GPrime850) who is on the right although of more libertarianish bent.
Also, there is enough money in right wing circles to create institutions. And you can change current institutions.
Well, someone could complain that they weren't right wing enough, but the daily wire got some films made. If they aren't good enough to qualify point is that there is enough money among right wingers to fund this.
This attitude of hopelessness stinks and ensures that nothing will change. It is a dishonorable way to engage with the world for any political or cultural movement.
Also, it makes the act of complaining a waste of time. What is the point if you got no positive vision?
They will be laughingstocks. Not just because they're right wing, but because, having to start from zero, they will suck. If you manage to keep one around long enough, it will be suborned.
If you do (e.g. the way DeSantis is trying with New College) , they will be cut out of the art world as a whole. You will not be able to get prestigious or even competent staff or faculty, any students or clients will be shunned until the institution returns to the fold.
That nothing will change is what engenders the attitude of hopelessness.
Fine arts only survive because of subsidy. A lot of it is private subsidy from what I call "Left, Inc.", but a lot is government subsidy. I favor zeroing that out whenever possible; trying to subsidize right-wing art is doomed to fail and will most likely just hand money to the left.
I might be missing something here, but wouldn't that be the point? To create a completely separate status hierarchy?
I mean, yeah, the existing artistic elite isn't going to jump ship. Do you want them to? That sounds like you're asking for your new institution to be marched through all over again. Plus, these aren't the natural members you're looking for in your new institution. This is a high risk/high reward venture and you don't want a bunch of established people with baggage from the old institution. But do you know who totally goes for high risk/high reward strategies with a very high chance of death (social in this case) in exchange for a chance at status?
Young men with no prospects. In every age, in every nation, there are young, low status men looking for a way to take big risks to jump up the status hierarchy. Whether it be a colonial expedition, the rap scene in the Bronx, or a Somalian pirate joint-stock venture, there's always takers. As a bonus, this is a decent chunk of the art world's demographic, this lets you sap your opponent of the natural energy that comes with an influx of youth.
More options
Context Copy link
So on one hand you promote this vision of the omnipotent left and a hopeless situation where any effort will inevitably fail. But on the other hand you say you favor zeroing out goverment subsidy and left inc.
I understand you have a libertarianish ideology. Why isn't that hopeless, too? And who is going to stop the private subsidy from Left inc?
If the left is so powerful, why are they going to let you stop their gravy train?
Actually, it is easier to subsidize right wingers than to stop all subsidies on the left. Plenty of rightists including some rather edgy sources, with more limited reach than if things were completly evenhanded do manage to gain enough donations to keep promoting their political content.
If the people behind platforms like substack, gab, odyssey, rumble shared your perspective, that wouldn't have happened as they wouldn't had bothered to do so. Same with Musk and twitter although not sure about whether censorship has really improved that much there. And if after their first ban, they didn't come back and tried again, or didn't try because others got banned on the right, you wouldn't see some of these people making money even in youtube.
The one dude I mentioned did pretty well. Shadiversity maybe sort of qualifies and his books were decent. Criticaldrinker maybe qualifies as rightist enough, and he also has well reviewed books and these are just internet personalities. Lets just say your perspective of no right wing artists around isn't accurate. Plus, in addition to actual artists who have been there and other talented people who won't suck because they are talented, you could get others who either flip cynically or actually change in a manner that is affected by incentives but doesn't feel to them as a cynical decision.
Of course these people do have some success already, and more having that opportunity would be a good thing.
Those who are determined and try to persevere have a future. The very attitude influences others as well. Have you considered that the attitude you have in the past existed as well and might have influenced things into reaching this point?
Of course, it is also our choice to let your hopelessness infect others. I rather we let it consume you and others who share your perspective alone and the rest wisely reject it. I wouldn't mind if you changed your mind too, but whatever you think, we don't have to follow you.
It is, and nothing. The Left has a crazy web of non-profits and commercial entities, and possibly entirely-phony industries to funnel money from one into the other. For just one example, it's been widely reported that the Wikimedia foundation gets far more money than it needs to keep Wikipedia running. Where's the rest go? Some goes to feather the bed of Wikimedia employees of course, but the largest part of it gets distributed to other non-profits. Wikimedia is basically laundering money intended for what people think is a good cause (funding Wikipedia) into things they probably wouldn't donate to. Multiply that by the number of "front" non-profits, and it's huge. I think it's safe to say that pretty much any donation to a large not-explicitly-right-wing non-profit will end up funding lefty things. And it wouldn't even matter much if individuals stopped contributing, because what they pay for razors and beer and other consumer products would end up being partially donated (as part of a marketing campaign) to various do-gooder organizations which would then do lefty things with them. That's also what would happen if you tried to fund right-wing art without building everything from scratch; you'd end up funding the left.
I would eliminate the tax deduction for gifts to NPOs and I would make the gifts received by NPOs taxable income. Whereas previously a rich person could give 60 dollars and government would effectively match 40 resulting in the NPO getting 100 now if the rich person wants to give the same post tax amount the NPO ends up with 60 of which they need to pay 12 of tax (before deductions for staffing, etc). You cut their resources almost in half.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then you invest in your own artists and train them to be just as good.
The money's there, the people can be found, nothing stops you from going to art school and just faking your politics if the credentials matter that much.
I note that this can be done, because the Mormons have done it. When I was in SLC I attended a taping of Music and the Spoken Word with the Tabernacle Choir, and the modern Mormon sacred music made me think “This is what the culture that produced Bach and Haydn would be putting out if it had drifted since 1900 instead of actively self-destructing.” The Mormon Conference Center is very visibly built with the same desire to glorify God as the great European cathedrals, and is the only modern building I have seen built by people who hoped it would still be standing in 1000 years.
More options
Context Copy link
Most people can't pull off the fake, and will get converted instead. And you've got the additional constraint that you need to start with someone with talent; Hitler and Bush ain't going to cut it.
Then just use the free tutorials online or invite artists to teach your people.
More options
Context Copy link
Are Bush and Hitler the best examples of right wing artists?
Also, while Hitler did commit various warcrimes, his regime committed attrocities and so on and so forth, and he was a bad person, he was actually a good painter. Of course I am not judging here by the standards of the best painters. Without his infamy, if you put in front of most people his paintings they will not think they are the result of someone without talent at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What makes you say this? There are plenty of artists out there that aren't leftist, they just aren't as well known. The show 'The Leftovers' had a very distinct religious/right wing bent, as has been discussed here.
There are excellent right-wing writers on Substack, like N.S. Lyons, among many many others. There are beautiful depictions of angels from a relatively classical stance (although I don't know the particular political views) like the Angelarium.
This sort of blatant and knee-jerk negativity is foolish and defeatist. It's a major reason why your values continue to lose. Conservatives of the past fought evil regimes when their children would be beheaded as a consequence, you can't bother yourself to fight against leftist art?
The entire crux of the matter, and won't be well-known so long as the access and power is in the hands of the current arbiters of what is and is not 'good art'. Some artist becomes major right-wing/conservative favourite? Well those redneck knuckledraggers know nothing, they just like country music and paintings on velvet. Maybe that person is commercially successful, but if they ever want to be added to the pantheon of 'good art', they better drop the wrong views.
Or conversely, a good artist may not be able to become successful on the right, because the art is not familiar or compatible to the formed tastes. I'm told Rothko is a great painter, many have spoken and written of how his works move them deeply and speak to them, but as far as I'm concerned it's "yeah, that's nice but so what?" To me, that is something that can be reduced to the level of the kind of 'art' that is extruded to hang on the walls of businesses or in hotels or public spaces - you need something for the walls and this is something (but I don't think it's art). That's a niche that is very easily replaced by AI art.
As is the Angel Tarot, which grinds my gears on several levels. But that's an argument for another day 😁
More options
Context Copy link
Observation. Art schools are leftist. Art criticism is leftist. Art museums are, by and large, leftist -- only tempered by the inclusion of centuries-old art. Artists get praise and praise each other by producing leftist art. Or often enough art that is meaningless garbage but which the artist ascribes a leftist message to. It's a set of institutions even more throughly captured than the university system.
Then it's time to do the hard work of creating an alternative set of schools, critics, museums, etc that have different values, if those values are what you care about.
Chesterton, on his time attending art school (the Slade) in the 1890s:
Hmm I should read Chesterton. Still working through Lewis at the moment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This won't work, because it plays to the other side's strengths. First, you'll have to somehow create all of that without including any of the people who know how to do such things (or only including the few who were booted for their insufficient leftism -- but even those are probably too left). Second, even if you do, you'll have to avoid them infiltrating and converting it, and they're really good at that. "Build your own art world" isn't quite as far out as "build your own international financial system", but it's pretty far out there.
Well then find some artists and people who are already good at things, and convince them your values are right. They won't magically lose their skills and abilities because they change political views.
Conversion is asymmetric too; it nearly always move left. To no small degree because the institutions which can convince are in the hands of the left. By the time an artist is actually known they've been steeped in leftism for so long you're never going to move them out short of a religious conversion experience.
Then figure out why conversion is asymmetric and figure out strategies to match it. If those don't work, analyze your failures and go back to the drawing board.
Your fatalistic argument of 'no matter what we do we already lost' is tiresome in the extreme.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But lately they are quite incompetent. So there is opening.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I have an idea for a way to secure government funding for right wing art patronage. Most governments have broadcasting corporations like the BBC, CBC and ABC. The USA has one called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB is governed by a nine-member board of directors. Board members are selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
My idea is to split the CPB into two corporations called PBC1 and PBC2 which will be controlled by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party respectively. The boards of directors will be selected by the party leaders in the House of Representatives and confirmed by their party caucuses. Annual funding of PBC1 and PBC2 will be proportional to the number of seats held by each party in the House of Representatives.
Not a bad idea but this will only work if the republican party supports right wing causes. As we have seen in Britain, you can have an ostensibly conservative party in power which promotes a move of the culture to the left. I know that a supposed right wing party supporting the right is a prerequisite of any move to the right politically, coming from more power for said party, but it is something to keep in mind that you can not take it for granted.
The term right wing refers to the seating arrangement within a legislature. Creating a corporation whose board members are appointed by the right half of a legislature is the quintessential example of right wing patronage. This is a pedantic point to make, but I couldn't resist. I know what you really mean.
More options
Context Copy link
I dunno, I don't watch it, or know much about its content. Based on its fame, it probably does.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You haven’t made an argument that the right should discard some of its principles. Perhaps before the right goes that far it should in the first case eliminate left wing subsidies (which are massive).
I did make an argument in favor of patronage. And it isn't an inherent principle of the right not to support right wing art and it isn't going far also.
The funny thing is that you are the one who is not making an argument in favor of eliminating left wing subsidies first as a superior alternative. Why not both eliminate left wing subsidies (or some of them) and promote right wing art? There is no argument there why not doing that other than dogmatism in favor of not doing that and claiming that your dogma is the dogma of the right to force them to do as they want.
You might prefer a right that doesn't do things, but you haven't argued why that is a good idea. Agree with me or not, I did provide arguments in favor of patronage. That good art is a good in itself and more right wing art will be good thing and also there are other important considerations than line goes up. That vacuum is not a realistic alternative and will be filled by those willing to fund and support it as humanity cares about art. And an attitude against patronage also leads to artists aligning with the left which will give them the support they crave. Also it is annoying for right wing figures to just complain and not promote the change we want to see in the world too and not try to bring forth the good and non leftist art we desire.
Anyway, in addition to the arguments I already made, I would say that the same mentality that leads in being a naysayer against doing any of what I advocated will lead to the right not eliminating all the subsidies in favor of the left as well, like they haven't eliminated them so far and been complicit in their funding. Moreover, it isn't my principle that it is good for the level of subsidies towards art to be 0.
Actually, it is my experience that this claim that it is the principle of the right to not do x and go that far is predominantly a promotion of the right being losers that leads into the political landscape where the left dominates we have currently. Over the alternative of it being a sensible call for restraint. It is also annoying how you are trying to control others by telling them what is their dogma and trying to constrain them to dogmatism. Very manipulative.
So I would add another argument. Succeeding in doing things makes it less easy for bad policy and bad dogmas to be promoted as constraints. Since there will already be the experience of doing things, which is better over the alternative that it actually goes far to support right wing art which is a very extreme claim. Libertarian dogmatism is a different ideology to the right. Limiting the goverment to an extend is a part of the right wing toolbox, but when it comes the utmost focus, we have the subversion of one movement and political faction by the agenda of a very different one. One that when it stands on its own two feet and directly seeks power and doesn't use the right as a vehicle goes nowhere and is supported by a very small amount of people. Although your general opposition to supporting right wing art as going too far, goes beyond libertarianism to an even more extreme area. Defying your dogmatism and this loser mentality is another good reason for the right to promote patronage.
You basically said the right should abandon their libertarian ethos.
I’m saying “before you do that, perhaps live up to it by eliminating subsidies.”
This is of course a conservative approach. Incremental change and see if it solves the problem.
I don't consider the libertarian ethos to be the ethos of the right both historically and presently since they have been willing to go along with the funding of academia, organizations of a left wing hue. This also is not the philosophy of the right but a tool to the toolbox. Not the philosophy of right wing voters neither. Which is to say that being opposed to excessive parasitism.
If you want libertarian as an ethos there is the libertarian movement, not conservatism.
Do you have anything that addresses my arguments instead of trying to force your way through by defining falsely your way as the conservative way? I don't appreciate you telling me I didn't make an argument in your prior post neither. As I said, the argument that like a robot the right should do something because the right should do something is a bad and cyclical one and the right should promote patronage also so this kind of bad logic will be taken even less seriously in the future.
Removing all left wing subsidies including parasitism in private organizations that have created large diversity programs that relate to art will not be an incremental change but a large one. So someone could use your logic against doing it because supposedly it isn't the conservative way. Indeed, considering the lack of popularity of hardcore libertarianism, it actually helps promote an image of extremism to the right. You will be able on net to make a bigger change by trying to both promote patronage and reduce left wing art subsidies than focusing only on the later.
Incremental change is also very obviously not necessarily the conservative way. It depends what is your standing point. If you are in a very far left situation, and experience a huge change from a previous more conservative default, trying to change things again would be the conservative way. A large change to a conservative direction is conservatism even though leftists and other non conservatives would like for conservatism to be something different. Funnily enough I am not even very conservative but of more moderate conservative bent. So I am not even willing to always support the more conservative position, just cause that is what a conservative supposed to do.
The attempt to define conservatism as being a pushover, loser who isn't allowed to push too far as a defining aspect of the right is promoting both a falsehood and contributes to political left wing domination. Which rises the question of why you are doing this.
In Eastern Europe when Communism fell they didn't half ass it, but allowed huge change, and even blacklisted political commissars. But actually it is not necessarilly against incremental change.
Your logic here is very fallacious. The "cancel all left wing subsidies" is not an option that is in offer that can be done first. You are offering a false alternative. As the uniparty is not libertarian that aint happening. Like I have said in both my first post, and reply to you and you didn't care and bypassed, vacuum is unrealistic.
Trying to both reduce left wing subsidies and promote right wing art will work more in line with incremental change because there are constraints of how much political change can be done. While not doing right wing patronage at all will result in a lack of change instead of a higher % of artists supporting the right and right wing art.
Importantly, your way of thinking is corrosive in itself and restrains action in the private sphere too. It is bad for right wingers to be so unorganized and impotent. Both for society which does not benefit from their contributions and where left wing extremism is left unchallenged, and for themselves who know deep inside that they are failing their potential. Actually the right wing already does patronage to in terms of political content with podcasts, and shows. Your logic would lead to that being abandoned as well and left dominating even more hard than it does now.
Not that I am in favor of small change here though. I am also not in favor of unlimited change to the right, or even things being as lopsided in a right as they are now to the left. Especially of a right as far right as the current left and callers of right wing restraint in the current circumstances are far left.
If I were to follow the logic of the robot which must always choose the dogma, and in this case actual real conservatism and not what you call as conservatism, there would be no reason for me to oppose any institution, or media from going further conservative to the purest form. Alas, people ought to have more sophisticated preferences than that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link