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I guess I don’t understand your point.
Gun rights are clearly better off by a lot because the GOP won enough elections to appoint judges who recognize the individual right to bear arms. It has put super blue places on their back foot. Red states tend to have pretty good gun laws and so keeping the Feds from screwing with that is an ongoing victory.
Blue states trying to impose bans that will probably lose in court is the mirror image of Red states/counties saying they won’t enforce gun laws they consider unconstitutional. It’s par for the course and Red tribe is largely winning here (and in a way that doesn’t backfire, like winning on abortion does).
We’ve never had better gun rights in the modern era, with expanded right to carry and state reciprocity and no real chance anytime soon of a fed ban on sporting rifles and magazines, which we used to have in the glorious 90s.
The present state of gun rights exists because of GOP victories. It seems clear a future where the GOP gives up on winning election will not be good for gun rights.
This seems to clearly contradict the original point that winning doesn’t or won’t matter (the instant the left could it would at least take us back to the 90s). But yes, it was funny that Trump actually did support some gun regulation (which might get overturned!),in the same way it would be if he had a tax increase.
So I’m very confused why you think 2A rights of all things is a good example against winning within the system when we’ve had like 20+ years of mostly victories on that front. And, if you’re a conservative, avoiding a bad change is a victory itself.
I agree fiscal responsibility is one hell of a problem because trying to fix it is a political dead end and so it seems both parties have agreed to drive off the cliff and then the crisis will take the blame off of anyone in particular. I’m just also sad the GOP has largely given up even pretending to care.
I also generally agree with your description of the social and institutional decay we’ve seen and that the large part of it is Blue Tribe Elites overplaying their hand and violating important norms. I just think gun rights are a pretty good counter example. See also: drinking/brewing.
Of course, I would have blamed the progressive left a lot more for their share of the overall problem pre-Trump, when he played right into their narrative and flagrantly ignores norms and laws (for no actual victory, mind you), and now that so many constitutional conservatives dropped the first word (along with fiscal).
If the culture war situation was, on average, where it is specifically on gun rights then I’d be a goddamned optimist, because when push comes to shove Blue loses on that issue and things have trended in the direction I prefer during my lifetime.
Except you're assuming that right-wingers giving up on winning elections means doing nothing at all.
Plus, you ask us to focus on one small, narrow area where the Right is winning — for now, though the long-term demographic trends point toward an almost-certain reversal down the line — and ignore the many, many more issues where we're losing. Again, it's another version of the assertion that we should be happy merely with losing slowly, on the grounds we could be losing faster.
Well, good thing I, for one, am a reactionary, not a conservative. "Not losing" is not winning, winning is winning.
But it's not, and there's no way within the "rules of the game" to get it there.
Let’s be very clear about something:
I am not asking to focus on one narrow area. I was responding to someone who brought that up. It is, I think, illustrative of the fact winning elections is good actually, and that if the GOP could do what it does on guns on other issues the world would be a better place (it helps that guns are more popular than polling tends to suggest, unlike abortion bans).
Long term demographic trends doom everything unless the changing of minds happens. That’s a fully general problem.
So you’re a reactionary and not a conservative. Obviously you would prefer/predict things will get worse before they can get better, presumably under some newfangled system. When the Dems win it’s good news, in the long run, because they will make things worse. When Republicans win they’ll fail to really turn back the tide, at best they’ll just prolong the inevitable (Trump is a fun wildcard because he is an agent of chaos).
You don’t say what other things can be done in the present, and I was going to suggest “why not both” with respect to trying to win elections, but perhaps winning elections is actually bad, for the long run.
Do reactionaries commonly believe it’s actually good to vote for the bad side? The same question goes for lefty revolutionaries.
Because I'm pretty sure I'd eat a ban for doing so. What exactly did you think I meant by "flipping the table"?
In my circles, no, because it's "bad" to vote at all, being against democracy as we are.
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