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I'm not complaining that conservatives are too conservative (at least not in this context); I'm offering a theory for why conservatives are really bad at playing the role of counterculture. Your garden-variety normiecon does not have the mindset to be an effective counterculture member. They're too uncomfortable with disorder and nonconformity. The types that do suffer from being intolerably crankish - the type of person who thinks a pop star dating a football player is a Pentagon (?) op.
Except we've seen what happens when anyone to the right of the establishment does do effective counterculture - deplatforming, shadowbanning, algorithmic throttling, selective giving in to heckler's veto.
I get it, Western societies base their legitimacy on the consent of the governed, so we all have to act like anything that happens is a bottom-up organic event. The illusion looks convincing as long most people trust their elites, but the moment they start doubting them, it turns out the consent of the governed is no more real than the divine right of kings, or any other myth. This is how we go from the establishment fighting for the free speech rights of actual Nazis to them declaring parents who don't want racism taught to their children being declared Nazis.
...arrest and conviction on novel felony charges, disqualification from office. Thanks to January 6 we know what happens when the right protests like the left; the right is punished severely and further suppressed as a result.
He did say "counter culture", so I was thinking more memes than protests.
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