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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35552 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Ideologically and in other respects, conservatism is broad/diverse and seems to be always evolving whereas liberalism is more like something being stretched, in which the original shape is still the same.

I'll tell you who they are. They are the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Or wherever they are now. I grew up with them, they are my people. I listened to Rush in his final year, and listened to his callers, and the vibe of his following (which was massive) was the same as I remember it.

Rush was a morbidly obese ideologue who had his heyday in the '90s and 2000s, especially during the Obama era, but since 2016 and especially since 2020 during Covid, his type of conservatism has been in decline online , imho, replaced by the likes of Rogan, Peterson, etc. who have more of an emphasis on self-improvement and salubrity (being healthy, working out, intellectual curiosity, etc.) while still opposing the far-left. Since 2021 I have also observed the rise of a sort of civic nationalism conservatism which combines 'Trumpism' with 'Roganism'. In keeping with the civic aspect of it, it's not necessarily opposed to diversity or immigration as long as said diversity holds anti-woke values. I think this is a tad overoptimistic given the tendency of second and third generation immigrants to vote left. I think this new brand of conservativism is very powerful and has considerable online support, and stands good shot at beating Biden.

It's hard to say what Trump is/was. He's not alt-right yet much more nationalistic than the typical conservative. His push for tax cuts early on is consistent with the mainstream GOP platform though.

In one of my blog posts I describe how the GOP has evolved and its likely direction:

'80s up until 2008-2013 Reaganomics, supply side

2008-2013 split or weakening cracks on the foundation of immigration and globalization

2014-2015: rise and fall gamergate, precursor to the IDW and trump-right

2016-2020 Trump and split between 'the base' vs 'the establishment', rise of civic nationalism

2016-2018 rise and fall of alt-right

2018-: rise of the IDW , which is related to the anti-idpol left

2020-: hybridization/amalgamation of civic nationalism ,self-improvement, and anti-woke populism

You're missing the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, which was the polite precursor to Trump support later on. The Tea Party had some accomplishments, but mostly ended up providing further education to the Republican base as to the extent of their problems, both inside and outside the R party. Mitt Romney in 2012 was the R establishment's "we've learned nothing" response to the Tea Party (and Jeb Bush, even more so, in 2016).

yea, tea party fits in perfect

Some of these were a lot more high profile than others, e.g. I suspect that most Republican party members have never heard of gamergate. The IDW and Rogan are more well-known, although I still would try hard not to underestimate how much of the Republican party is made up of Not Very Online people who have at most a passing acquaintance with Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan etc.

possible but I see DeSantis as being someone who taps into online sentiment. Rogan is popular enough that he's drawing in a bigger audience than mainstream media. I think Peterson is getting there. I think the distinction between 'always online' and real life is shrinking or blurring.

Rush was a morbidly obese ideologue

(Fat-shaming? He did slim down majorly from his obese heyday.)

His ideology was anti-progressive, anti-Democrat, and when woke started to be a thing, anti-woke. His personal nemesis was Hillary Rodham Clinton, the exemplar of everything he spoke against. He was against them because he saw them as trying to tear down everything he was for.

He loved the America of the myths: the good giant astride a continent, founded by freedom-lovers who risked everything, always striving to become better. The big picture, the legend of America the Great, was what he poured his heart and soul into keeping alive. He was the great civic nationalist, supporting legal immigration and calling out racists of any color.

His counterpart in Washington was Newt Gingrich, and he fully supported the Contract With America. His death by cancer has left us with the likes of Posobiec, Kirk, D’Souza, Gorka, and Hemingway to hold onto his bombastic America-loving conservatism.

It's not fat shaming. That's literally what he was. All that is true and made him special for that era. I think bombastic conservatism has two things working against it: more competition and change in tastes. It will always have an audience but Rush had way bigger relative audience share in the 90s compared to before he died. There was no YouTube, no podcasts, no twitter or substack back then . He was not just the voice of American conservatism but in some respects the only major voice..this was even before Fox News became as big as it is. .

In many ways, Rush was the proof-of-concept for Fox News, the blogosphere, podcasts, substack, etc. He demonstrated that there was a severely underserved market for broadcast media that wasn't ideologically D. I can't think of anyone who accomplished more for the cause of diversity in news and opinion media than Rush Limbaugh.

Trump isn’t more nationalistic than the typical conservative though, given primary election results (and the fact he, yknow, won a national

Election as well). Conservatives in america are fundamentally nationalist

his rhetoric at least seems more nationalistic than the typical conservative , and also some of his initiatives such as his plan to return manufacturing jobs to America, which at best had mixed results but this seems like a departure from the Bush administration .

George W or George H. W.? The former was pretty protectionist and tried fairly hard to appeal to the American working class:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff

You could plausibly argue that that Trump was more protectionist, but free trade vs. protectionism has rarely been a simple Republican vs. Democrat issues.

Also, the Bush administration also had a lot of anti-elitism in their rhetoric, like Trump. While Bush was obviously from an elite background, he tried (successfully) to be portrayed as "One of the guys", in a way that his father, Bob Dole, or Mitt Romney did not. Quite an achievement for a teetotal, Ivy League educated, son of a wealthy family.

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