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I want to share a "view from the inside" as I think that I'm unusual here -- theist, practicing Catholic, married, a gaggle of young children, wife is SAHM, went to an unremarkable college, went to an unremarkable flyover state college, household income in the U.S. middle 50% band, work a middle management job at a mid sized corporation. Though I work in tech, I don't have any connections to Ivy League people, I've never worked at a startup or lived in NYC or SFO, and there is little to no wokeness in my workplace . In other words, a profile of what people would probably reflexively imagine as a "normal" traditional American family (although I suppose being an Evangelical would be still more stereotypical).
At least in my circles, the biggest problems are fear and demoralization. Fear of "having your grill taken away," of no longer being allowed to live a normal life because you've become a target of elite outrage, is very real. I feel like a broken record saying this again on the Motte, but it's so, so different when you have children. I think I would make a decent small-time politician (I'm probably to agreeable to make it big time), but I have small children and a sensitive wife, and I wouldn't want them to be subjected to the kind of insane harassment that would result from some Twitter rando or news outlet signal boosting something I say or believe in. My ideal senatorial or presidential candidate would hold beliefs that would be considered so anathema by the elite that he would have to be independently wealthy and have an iron stomach and brass balls to even stand a chance.
As for demoralization, there's a sense that I share with some of my peers that American institutions are just thoroughly rotten, that we've become dhimmis without realizing it, and that trying to organize politically to build institutional power as unabashed practicing Catholics would go over now about as well as it would under a Caliphate.
To get to the point, I don't think that the Right is starved for intellectuals because it can't produce any. Rather, the foolish ones who stick their neck out get sidelined or destroyed, while the wise ones hide and bide their time. If Michael Anton's Red Caesar suddenly landed on the Atlantic coast, captured Washington D.C., and declared a new republic, I have no doubt at all that these people would come out of the woodwork and that Caesar would be able to quickly assemble a mighty cabinet. But until then, what sense is there in outing yourself as a counterrevolutionary?
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