There’s always a temptation to fight the last war. I didn’t realize it ahead of time, but in hindsight, I think that’s what the Dems have been doing for these last few years, roughly since Obama.
Where we stand
What do I mean by that? Let’s take stock of where the major battles raging from 1970 util 2020 stand.
- Christo-fascism
- Church attendance is in free-fall.
- It dropped from 45% → 30% in the last 20 years, and is headed towards 20% in the next 20 years.
- Christianity has so debased itself through appalling behavior and truly obvious and stupendous lies that there’s really no turning around their recent decline, I would expect it to accelerate.
- In 50 years will people look at a cathedral like they look at a Masonic temple now? Probably not quite.
- The Christo-fascists don’t have nearly enough power to enforce their will on the population any longer. They have effectively lost the war on choice, and they will be reduced to meddling around the edges.
- Anti-Gay bigotry.
- This is still with us, but has largely been beaten. These clowns will wage a guerrilla war for a while, but gay marriage is here to stay. Maybe a few red states will try to repeal it within their states if (when) the SC lets them, but on the national level this fight is largely over.
- The Anti-Trans bigotry has taken its place. This is still an active fight, but involves far fewer people. The anti-gay bigots have had to refine their attacks repeatedly after each defeat in order to harass a smaller group.
- This too shall pass.
- I’m very sorry for all the trans kids (and adults) who have to face this nastiness, but know that in 30 years everyone will be claiming they were never so boorish as to hurl curses at little kids for their choice of clothing.
- Racism
- The mother load of American wedge issues. Racism is still here, but Obama really did break something in the old racist coalition, and it’s harder and harder to put it back together.
- The country is becoming multi-racial, old-school racism is just not tenable anymore. The most important states have strong laws against it generally.
- Many racial minorities no longer feel that racism is a sufficient threat to decide their votes.
- I’m not a minority (though my kids are!), so I can’t really judge, but I’m tempted to accept the judgement of those who really face this every day.
- There is apparently some disagreement here. Latinos are not terribly concerned, but African American still are, from their voting patterns.
- Sexism
- Women are 55% of the voting population. I’m a man, so it’s easy for me to say, but if they don’t care then why should I.
- Like racism, the most important states have a lot of laws trying to fight this off, and it doesn’t have the bite it had in (say) 1970. We’ve come a long way.
- Women clearly feel that this issue isn’t sufficient to drive their votes anymore. They are (well, 45% of them are), after all, fine with a rapist as president.
- It sucks, but this ware is largely (though not completely) won. Within a few cycles we’ll have a female president and then these fights will generally be relegated to guerrilla actions by stray bigots.
- Women are getting the majority of the college degrees. They will have plenty of power now and in the future, this is going to be fine.
So, fighting on any of this terrain is really trying to fight the last war. Those wars are largely over. We can keep fighting them, but I don’t think this can be our dominant message from here on out.
The Next War
So what’s the new danger? The US slipping back into handmaid’s tale, or Christo-fascism, or a segregationist slaveocracy, none of these seem plausible at this point, we’re past that.
What’s the real danger that could undo us as a country? I think it’s the danger of oligarchy, the US essentially becoming Russia. And this is driven largely by the information economy, which is in the middle of some large shifts right now.
What is Driving the Next War
I don’t have to describe what is at stake (just look at Russia or North Korea), so let’s talk about how this will be fought.
Largely this contest is going to be fought on social media. The legacy media has shown themselves to be craven, dishonest, and stupid, they are simply not going to matter very much anymore. As an example of this, how many articles did we read saying “voters think Republicans are great for the economy”? I read tons, and saw tons more in my news feed. How many of those articles mentioned the actual empirical truth, that Democrats are better for the economy? None of them. They are writing these “views differ on shape of the planet” like stories and never attempting to insert any actual factual information.
Legacy media is essentially hopeless, dying anyway, and largely controlled by the oligarchs who are the most direct and immediate threat to American democracy and prosperity.
The social media landscape isn’t much better, but it is better. Twitter is controlled by an oligarch who is a well known Nazi, Meta is controlled by another oligarch whose politics are a lot less clear. A huge number of people are getting their news from Joe Rogan, YouTube streams, other podcasts, and the like.
The bad news is that these groups are amplifying misinformation and largely sympathetic to the “f*** you, I’ve got mine” worldview that isn’t exactly conducive to good governance.
How to Fight This One
Now the good news. Musk probably isn’t actually the critical player here. The more important ones are the independent influencers who are becoming the major source of news for a large fraction of the country.
I’ll use Joe Rogan as an example, though admittedly I’m not super familiar with his stuff. However, his politics are very fluid. You could think of him almost as this sort of Bernie-Trump voter. The good news here is that he’s a lot more interested in presentation than politics. Harris was always going to have a heavy lift with him, unfortunately. It’s not right, but it’s just the way it is.
However, he’s probably an easier get for Gavin Newsom (to pick an example) than Rick Santorum (to pick another). There is no reason why the Democrats couldn’t get most of the manosphere on their side. These people are not natural allies for the christofascists and racists who make up the modern GOP.
Obviously, there are a ton of 4chan meme lords who are probably not reachable, but though very loud they make up a tiny slice of the electorate. For all the people who just generally don’t care about geopolitics, and don’t really care about much other than themselves, they should be relatively easy to recruit by appealing to their identity (largely male, maybe bro’ey, etc...) and offering to make their lives better in some super tangible way.
Now you ask, why should we appeal to the manosphere but not the womanosphere, places like Goop and other female influencers? The reason is simple, women don’t seem to care about the gender of the candidates they vote for, but men obviously do. Until that changes, it’s likely that men or women can appeal to Gwyneth Paltrow, but only men can appeal to Joe Rogan. This is true not just for gender, a lot of presentation works in the same way.
What Sorts of Policies Make Sense Here?
So, what sorts of policies make sense here?
- Power Projection
- Having the best and largest military probably makes this crowd happy on a subconscious level.
- Not getting pushed around on the world stage appeals to them, somewhat at least.
- Tangible Social Programs
- Childcare
- Universal Pre-K would be viewed as more of a “woman’s issue” by this crowd, but I doubt they would actually dislike it. Getting schools in session for more day, for longer, and starting younger would probably appeal to quite a few in this group.
- Healthcare
- A lot of these people skew young, so they don’t have terrible health problems, but they have terrible health insurance. You might be able to go a long way by just offering more and better coverage that is generally easier and with less paperwork.
- Could medicare for all appeal to them? Maybe!
- Protecting environment, food safety, etc…
- Maybe, just maybe.
- These guys tend to be of the “be careful what you put in your body” slightly gym-adjacent crowd.
- The Goop crowd is all about this, on the female side.
- They might go for something that looks like making food safer or the environment cleaner in a way that appeals to them specifically.
- This would be a hard needle to thread, but should be possible.
What sorts of policies probably don’t make sense to this group?
- Protecting rights generally.
- Especially protecting the rights of people who are not them.
- That’s not to say that we can’t do this, but care is needed.
- This crowd will quickly and easily ridicule attempts to protect anyone who is not them.
- It’s hard to say this, but maybe leave most of these (except voting rights) to the states for a while. Those who want to live in safety can come to NY or any number of blue states and have robust protections.
- Complicated questions about the internals of government.
- Court reform, electoral reform, restrictions on presidential power.
- Corruption, justice, etc…
- We can pursue these, I don’t think this crowd cares one way or the other, it just can’t be our pitch to them.
- Gun Safety, Gun control
- I doubt most of these would be amenable.
- This is likely not just a “I don’t care” but rather an “I’m against it” for many of them.
- We might be able to phrase this in such a way as to get them on board.
- For instance “guns have to have liability insurance, the same as a car, and you need to be licensed” might be a doable policy here. As a practical matter, it would be the same effect as powerful gun control. Nobody is going to have a basement full of machine guns unless they’re willing to bay obscene rates on gun insurance.
- Others?
So there we go. I think we should be gearing up to fight the next war, not trying to re-fight the last war. Which we (largely) won already, by the way.
Notice how little trouble this should give the dems? Most of the policies this group might like are polices we also like, and the policies they don’t like are things that are already largely accomplished. With a few exceptions.
