The Do-Nothing League
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In a story guaranteed to give you a sickening sense of deja vu . . .
I used to disagree with them a bit on this, but people like @RealKiraDavis, @MartinaMarkota, and @robsmithonline are absolutely right when they say we on the Right have to throw ourselves into entertainment more.
I’m amazed how effective it is for the Left.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) July 23, 2020
. . . mainstream conservative heavyweights still don’t get it.
No arguments here.
— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) July 23, 2020
There are tons of conservative and right-wing creatives out there. Maybe the mainstream ConInc. dorks don’t care about them because they’re not making explicitly political art.
But I think it’s more because the conservative grift comes from complaining about stuff rather than doing stuff. ConInc. saves its nastiest vitriol and its most fervent action for its own side, those who actually hit back.
The more stuff sucks, the more ConInc. can complain with “CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT AOC JUST SAID?!” clickbait, and the more the ad revenue keeps rolling in.
This raises the question to people like Jesse Kelly and Kira Davis and Rob Smith: what have you done? I’m leaving Martina Markota out of this because she’s actually out there in the entertainment world. But the others? Jesse Kelly writes some pretty based columns from time to time; Kira Davis works for Red State, which is as boring, lame, middle-of-the-road, stuck-in-1985 warmed-over NRO type conservatism; and Rob Smith is black and gay and a vet and used to be a liberal but now is a Republican.
If you want to talk entertainment, how about sci-fi and fantasy? Have any of these people lamenting the sad state of conservatives in the arts reached out to me, or Brian Niemeier, or Jon Del Arroz, or Adam Lane Smith, or Russell Newquist, or Benjamin Cheah, or Rawle Nyanzi, or Richey, or Jessie White, or Shell DiBaggio, or Josh Howard, or Timothy Lim, Jon Mollison, or John C. Wright, or J.D. Cowan, or any of the rest of us?
No.
I can count exactly two people in the conservative world who have: Christian Toto of Hollywood In Toto and Oregon Muse of Ace of Spades HQ.
That’s it. And while I appreciate them greatly, there needs to be more.
On the filmmaking side, did any of these people get in touch with Mike Cernovich, Jon du Toit, and Scooter Downey about their excellent media documentary Hoaxed?
Of course not. Conservative media ignored them just as hard as liberal media did. It’s pathetic.
Conservatives bemoan the lack of conservatives in academia . . . but don’t go into academia.
Conservatives bemoan the lack of conservatives in government service . . . but don’t go into government service.
Conservatives bemoan the lack of conservative public school teachers . . . but don’t become public school teachers.
And conservatives bemoan the lack of conservatives in entertainment . . . but don’t go into entertainment. Sure, they’ll quote Andrew Breitbart (whom they hated when alive and pretend to love since he died), but won’t create any culture that will flow down to politics.
Maybe because they forget that culture is downstream from religion.
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I’ll grant the left one thing: they’re right when they say “conservatives can’t make art.” I used to wonder if it was a “won’t” versus “can’t” thing, but lately I think it’s the latter.
But right-wingers can make art.
There’s a huge difference.
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Conservatives are, by their name, closed off to any new experience. They don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Conservatism is liberalism-lite, just with more weird focus on protecting and enriching the rich instead of the left’s weird focus on murdering babies and ruining society. But otherwise, they’re slow progressives. Today’s progressive policy is championed by conservatives five years from now.
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Right-wingers, on the other hand, believe in tradition, family, nation, faith, history, virtue, and what is right for the individual and society as a whole, not atomized individualism, not do-what-thou-wilt libertarianism, and not Austrian economics/free-trade globalism that hollows our nations and communities.
In other words, right-wingers believe in the fundamental stuff of good stories.
Look at Star Wars, at least the original movies. They were made by a left-winger, but they are right-wing stories. Yes, even the anti-Vietnam theme in Return of the Jedi. The movies are full of faith (celibate Jedi warrior monks), bravery, selflessness, healthy relationships, and redemption.
Look at Harry Potter. The books were written by a left-winger but feature many trappings of classic literature from much less progressive time, as well as the themes of heroism and sacrifice and the stark difference between good-versus-evil. And no, neither The Empire nor Voldemort really represent “the right.” They represent the type of evil imperialism right-wingers oppose as much as left-wingers do.
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Look at comics like Watchmen, a “deconstruction” of heroes. And yet who resonated the most? Who were we supposed to find farcical but instead found the only likable character because he had an uncompromising moral core? That’s right: Rorschach.
Even when they’re not trying, leftists can’t help but gravitate to the themes they hate and oppose: morality, clarity of vision, and doing the right thing no matter the cost.
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The right should have no trouble competing against gray boring nihilism, endless reboots and remakes, stale superhero fare, and fantasy and sci-fi absent any adventure or wonder but heavy on the women’s studies nonsense.
Another reason conservatives can’t compete is because they seem to think they need, and people want “conservative” art, not good art that upholds their values. There’s a huge difference.
Part of this seems to stem from the strange desire to be “apolitical” and “not make message fiction,” when the fiction they do make is embarrassingly heavy handed.
No. First, all art is political and carries a message. The trick is you need to make your message the truth. Why else do you think Harry Potter resonates, despite its fans’ weird obsession with grafting left-wing politics onto it? Because it upholds timeless values and virtues.
None of this is to say I don’t think left-wingers can’t make good art. That’s patently false and absurd. There’s so much good art made by left-wingers it’d take years to list it all. But today’s left-wing is not the left-wing of yore. Not by a long shot. Conversely, today’s right-wing is, thank God, not the conservatives of yore either.
Ms. Davis and Mr. Kelly could put their money where their mouths are and have Red State and The Federalist actually promotes all the great art made by the right that’s out there. But in keeping with their unwillingness to indulge in new experiences, they’d rather whine about Dead Franchise Number 7 and keep totally owning AOC on Twitter.
Lame. That’s why nobody things they can make any waves in the cultural sphere.
Unlike ConInc., I and many others eagerly jump into the arena. Support my work: there’s lots more to come.
