Failed War on the Left

Years ago I wrote a couple of posts on countering Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, a pseudo-communist manifesto to exert leftward pressure within the United States (or any Western democracy for that matter).  Later I even wrote a series of Rules for Patriots. What have we done in the intervening decade plus? Not nearly enough.  We've become exceptionally good at ceding ground so quickly, even those on the left have been overrun by even further left-leaning radical non-thinkers. The likes of Elon Musk, Jimmy Dore and even Bill Maher are looking at the lunacy (to which they all contributed) and are wondering what the hell is going on.

Sure we all complain about the lunacy of where we find ourselves today, but that's not really doing anything at all.   I've come up with a few simple things that we must start doing, en masse to affect change towards sanity before it reaches the point of no return.  Never in my lifetime did I expect to be so close to that point.  Even during the abysmal Obama administration did I not think it was near-unfixable.  Turns out the Democrats do more damage with a senile leader than with a pseudo-intellectual leader. With his out-of-touchness in command they seem free to run amok. Now is the time to act, it has to be.

Here are a few concrete counter-offensive items to not just ponder but actively pursue, effective immediately:

Education: We bitch about the woke running the education system, but it's because we have let them.  It is the left who have pulled us to the point of having drag shows for young children.  We allowed it by not being demanding enough. The left sees the classroom as an blank slate where they can insert whatever they want.  Why aren't we doing the same?  Why are we not demanding that American history be taught, and taught correctly?  Why are we not demanding grammar be taught, that any other patriotic idea be taught?  We should be filling up school board agendas with our own versions of topics instead of inclusivity, global warming, etc.

Target Isolation: Straight outta the Rules for Radicals playbook but flipped on its head (after all we are the ones called radicals now).  What is happening with Bud Light right now is the example to follow; pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  We are succeeding in driving down the brand and parent company.  Here's the rub, we cannot boycott and mock everything headed leftward, instead we need to pick a few high profile examples and make examples of what will happen if you continue leftward.  

We should not let up at the moment as we have the left on run on this one.  Be wary as they try to shift the narrative, keep up the pressure, because it's working.  Share your story about Bud Light. Make it funny or exciting or unique.  Keep the headlines going in our direction.

Word Matter: The 'failed war on drugs' is a perversion of the original concept of 'the war on drugs', but it took hold.  Why has no one ever decried the 'failed war on poverty'? Democrats have used the phrase for many decades yet poverty still exists. Why?  Because their ways have failed. One word changes the whole perception of the issue. Why not leverage that?

I encourage you to try these ideas and share them with your fellow patriots. Otherwise we have a failed war on the left.

Motivation to not be afraid

This video serves as a corollary to my final Rules for Patriots installment, Rule #12 Don't be afraid.  I did not include this video because there are a couple of things mentioned in the video with which I do not agree.  But generally speaking the sentiment expressed below is spot on.  The goal of the video is to motivate people to not be afraid to do something tangible to stop the progressive overreach. 

Rules For Patriots - Rule #12: Don't be afraid

This is a continuation of my Rules for Patriots series, designed as a patriot's guide to success in fighting the creeping progressivism infecting America. It's a conservative response to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. This series is a lengthy read, but it is very important to understand.  This one happens to be a video, so it's more digestible. Being able to use this approach, as a team, will simplify, streamline and expedite achieving our patriotic objectives.

Links to previous rules: Rule #11 (Participate But, Don't Participate), Rule #10 (Be prepared), Rule #9 (Screw purity tests), Rule #8 (Size matters), Rule #7 (Be unpredictable), Rule #6 (Set Objectives, Build Momentum, Succeed, Move On), Rule #5 (Improve your arsenal), Rule #4 (Play Offense), Rule #3 (Don't Do It Alone), Rule #2 (Get Involved, Stay Involved) and Rule #1 (Know your facts).

Rule 12.  Don't be afraid

In many respects, Rule #12 is the most important rule because without it, common sense, patriotism and liberty are all doomed. Rule #12: Do not be afraid.  That might sound like a no-brainer for many, but there are layers of not being afraid.  It is one thing to not be afraid of the progressive nightmare that is happening because you have faith in the American people, or any people, to do something about it. It is another thing entirely to not be afraid to get involved (Rule #2) and do something about it yourself while you still can. That point is as much a sermon to myself as it is to anyone else.  Being unafraid to to talk among like-minded people is one thing, but being unafraid to organize with them and do something that makes a difference will, inevitably, invite criticism and negativity from some quarters of society.  This is where being unafraid matters; be don't be afraid to make the effort to make a change in society. Do not be afraid of resistance, do not be afraid of failure.  The only sure way to fail, is to do nothing.  Do something while you still have the freedom and ability to do so.  The alternative is to accept things as they are, or as they are progressing.  If anything, that is what you should fear.  In that light, your own inaction is the greatest danger.

That is not to say do not have faith in God or in the common sense of your fellow man.  Faith is a good thing when it is backed up by action and effort.  Without action, there is only failure.  Be afraid to not take action, do not be afraid to take harsh criticism and face a backlash.  Those things will come when you stand up.  But so too will like minded voices if you seek them.  Do not be afraid to counter the criticism, wherever you might be able to be heard.  What they call you doesn't matter, when they try to intimidate you it doesn't matter. Call for support, sure, but do not back down, even in the face of what appears to be overwhelming odds.  The odds are not as stacked against you as you think.  One of the tricks the left uses is to appear to have overwhelming numbers even when they do not.  Remember the climate change argument of "the science is settled"?  It wasn't it isn't and so too with common sense patriotic causes.  Sure a large portion of the American people are against those things, but a larger portion, for now, are still in favor of them.

If you do not act civically, if you are afraid, just talking amongst yourselves is not going to accomplish anything except make you feel better.  That's what liberals do, virtue signal to feel better.  YOU are better than that.  Know your facts (Rule #1) and then speak them, out loud, to other people who may not know them.  Yes, it's more gratifying to share with someone who believes them than someone who will ridicule you for them.  BUT, the most satisfying outcome is to awaken someone to the truth who had not previously realized it.  There is a payoff to taking that chance.

Be resolute. Do not waiver or second guess yourself.  Of course you must always revisit your facts or information, and re-assess your opinion.  That's something the progressive left refuses to do.  They are doctrinaire in their beliefs.  But common sense demands you absorb and asses/evaluate new information to see if it changes things.  This is how you avoid pretzel logic. But do not falter when you are sure. Do not allow the tactical arena be the place where you feel the need to second guess your understanding. There is a time for reflection but your principles, based on long standing common sense first principles, are most likely sound.

Andrew Breitbart, a crusader for conservative, patriotic common sense said "run towards the fire".  No truer words have been spoken regarding the political landscape of the twenty first century. The fire is there. Talking about it or running away will not stop the spread.

Lastly, I created these rules to provide guidance on how to confront the political left.  But they are not immutable. So don't be afraid to abandon a rule or tactic if it has stopped producing results. If something isn't working change it. 

Just don't be afraid. You'll feel better for it, and you'll do better for it.

A note on Rules for Patriots

This year I have been sharing a list of Rules for Patriots (along with some related examples that are worth noting) which I believe are important for overcoming progressivism, and tyranny whether it be social or institutional.  I have devised a total of 12 rules and 11 have been published here on this blog so far.  The remaining one will be published before year end, since next year is the start of a crucial period in the world, particularly in America.

A failure in 2022 could mean the end of western civilization beyond that.  It could mean the passing of the disastrous tipping point beyond which liberty, capitalism, virtue and Christianity all cannot be recovered.  Unlike reaching a positive tipping point (as illustrated in the picture here), this tipping point would lead us further and further away from a positive, healthy reality and faster and faster towards, absurdity, inequality, tyranny, economic failure and evil. Let's not let that happen.

Stay tuned for Rule #12. It's probably the most important one of the set.

Rules for Patriots - an important corollary

I've posted most of my Rules for Patriots this year, with two more to go before year end.  But in doing so I've neglected to point out a corollary of some of those rules that almost merits its own rule.  Since I don't particularly want to end up with an unlucky 13 rules, and it's just a strange number of rules to have that doesn't roll of the tongue like 10 or 12, I'll add it here as a corollary instead:

Don't get stuck in an echo chamber.

Separate but Equal

It's been a necessary step to set up GETTR, Parler, Rumble and the like to have platforms for free speech because we are being singled out for expulsion or censorship by the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter. I get it, totally necessary (albeit a bit late).  It's a place where we can share our thoughts and ideas freely without that threat hanging over our head.

Here's the problem, we may end up stuck in our own echo chamber, preaching to the choir as it were.  The Democrats have already shown us that living inside your own thought bubble is ultimately ruinous and the fallout for the mainstream media and most Democrats is showing in poll ratings. But the problem for us does not end there.

If I were a progressive leftist I would be thrilled that conservatives have set up their own platforms for a number of reasons.  It's as if we've circled the wagons.  They now have a direct target for their vitriol. There is no need to go search for targets, we have given them the place to direct all of their vile hatred, and all of their attacks.  We've painted a target on our own village so to speak.  It doesn't end there. 

We are at a competitive disadvantage with these platforms. The left has the media, they have the entertainment industry, they have the schools, they have most of the news outlets, they even have the overlords at major league sports industries. They still have a bigger, louder and more prevalent loudspeaker than we do. While we are working to change that, it will remain a major competitive advantage for quite some time.  If it becomes a war of attrition of ideas, we will still lose because our voices will still be drowned out by the bigger loudspeaker from the left.  We preach and ruminate to each other but the facts we have on our side, the evidence, the truth does not escape the walls of our echo chambers.

My best imitation of Jesse Jackson

Separate but equal does not mean we as conservatives and Constitutional originalists, are truly equal. Brown vs. Board of Education proved legally, almost 70 years ago, that separate does not mean equal.  We have been segregated. Isolated. That means we can be intimidated and eventually eradicated.

Beyond the echo chamber

The point is that while we are seeing these new platforms as victories we must be cognizant of the fact that they must not be end states for our freedom of speech or our overall mission. What we see as victory is merely a stepping stone for progressives unless we use it as merely a stepping stone for ourselves. We are still outnumbered in many, many places.  In order to win in the longer term, we need to undo the socialist damage done to our institutions in both the public and private sectors and in the minds.  In order to accomplish that, it is imperative that we 'red pill' liberals to the reality of what is being done to us and equally to them.  There is an urgency in that as the tipping point where it becomes too late is still inching towards us.  We must have our voices: our Parlers and Rumbles.  But our voices must carry beyond those walls to the greater audience.

Rules for Patriots - Rule #11: Participate but don't participate

 This is a continuation of my Rules for Patriots series, designed as a patriot's guide to success in fighting the creeping progressivism infecting America. It's a conservative response to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. This series is a lengthy read, but it is very important to understand.  This one happens to be a video, so it's more digestible. Being able to use this approach, as a team, will simplify, streamline and expedite achieving our patriotic objectives.

Links to previous rules: Rule #10, Rule #9, Rule #8, Rule #7, Rule #6, Rule #5, Rule #4, Rule #3, Rule #2 and Rule #1.

When you take a look at parents taking school boards to task for teaching things like Critical Race Theory, the obvious conclusion is that in order to affect change, you have to participate.  The recent Virginia gubernatorial election reinforces that notion too.  The same parents who were disgusted with what was being taught to their children, and were being told to butt out of the discussion, showed up to vote and made a statement that changed Virginia, at least for the time being.  Participation matters.  But it does not matter everywhere.  In fact, in some places it's better not to participate.  For example the swamp that is Twitter is a cesspool and when you get in there it it acts like quicksand; it wastes time and effort and only drags you further down without improving the political environment one iota.

When society itself has become ill, it might not be fixable, at least not within the structure of that society itself.  It's hard to recognize when that might be the case, but we have seen many signs of it:

The solution is not always to try to change the system from within, but to create a parallel structure and operate within that framework as much as possible.  In the case of the United States, that parallel structure is one that believes in the principles set out by the Founding Fathers.  The way to fix the existing society is to show an alternative that works better.  We all know that the principles in the Constitution would be a better way to govern society; with legislation that goes beyond what the founders understood but yet confined by the principles they proposed; individual liberty being paramount among those. But also important are individual responsibility and a healthy morality.

Parallel Structures

 

If former Czech president and former Soviet era dissident Vaclav Havel was right (and he was), the only way to stop living the lie of a corrupt system is to live the truth.  He did not say believe the truth, he said live it.  That becomes increasingly difficult in an oppressive regime and mono-culture, mono-belief society.  But, there are ways to do it.  Even in small ways, it can make a difference if enough people eventually begin to participate:

Parallel structures become parallel societies in time.  There are many ways to create parallel structures.  Home schooling or private schooling are both alternatives to public education, which has clearly become a problem.  Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are alternatives to regular government currency, not to mention woke big banks.  Gettr and Parler are alternatives to Twitter and Facebook.  These already exist.  Entertainment?  Check out some family friendly options.  Sports? Create your own if you don't like what you see in the NFL or NBA. The GOP representatives for you are establishment RINOs?  Work around them and work to replace them using means outside the party.  It can be done (just ask Edward Durr).

As these parallel societies grow they can converge and experience synergy by doing so.  The snowball effect of combining these parallel structures and societies means that over time, successful parallels will multiply, and faith in the failing and dishonest system, upheld by lies, will dissipate.  The new structures and societies can continue to grow and flourish attracting more and more adherents.  This is how the Soviet bloc collapsed.  We in the west have created an unnecessary decay by allowing socialists and communists to pervert our systems and beliefs to the point that they no longer mean what they meant and do not stand up to real scrutiny because they have been so corrupted.

Do not accept that this version of reality is the only one and it cannot be changed. Change it on  micro level and let that grow.  Help it grow to a macro level.  You can do this by engaging those who are curious and by knowing your facts and your audience (something I have discussed in other rules). Do not wait for someone else to do these things, there are micro things you can do on your own, or with family and/or friends.  The principles that made America a great nation are not lost, only fading badly.  But the time is now to act.  Yes work within the system by voting and supporting valuable candidates, but work outside of it too, because that is from where the momentum will come.

Examples to follow: Fired ESPN reporter hired by Daily Wire

Kudos to Daily Wire for hiring talented people who are putting personal ethics and beliefs ahead of dictatorial vaccination mandates.  Kudos to Allison Williams for sticking to her guns.  ESPN and Disney are either caving to government mandates or are explicitly complicit in the mandate agenda.  Whichever the case is, we know that individual liberty must trump political agenda.

While my Rules for Patriots does not explicitly call for keeping an eye out for fellow defenders of liberty (Patriots), it's a logic extension of Rule #3 (Don't Do It Alone).  Beyond that it's just a good moral position to take.

Rules for Patriots - Rule #10 Be Prepared

This is a continuation of my Rules for Patriots series, designed as a patriot's guide to success in fighting the creeping progressivism infecting America. It's a conservative response to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. This series is a lengthy read, but it is very important to understand.  This one happens to be a video, so it's more digestible. Being able to use this approach, as a team, will simplify, streamline and expedite achieving our patriotic objectives.

Links to previous rules: Rule #9, Rule #8, Rule #7, Rule #6, Rule #5, Rule #4Rule #3, Rule #2 and Rule #1.

Be Prepared

If there is one thing that ensures failure more than all other things, it is being unprepared. Sun Tzu's Art of War stresses many things, but above all, preparedness.  Being prepared means being prepared at many different levels. You must be prepared strategically, tactically, rhetorically, and ready for unexpected events.  The Democratic mantra of "never let a crisis go to waste" is a valuable mantra.  Contrast it with the Republican mantra of "oh no, what do we do now?" and you know who is going to have a significant advantage when the time comes.  Where the Democratic advantage has a weakness is that they do not necessarily anticipate the crises to come, they are merely reacting quickly.  That can be beaten with preparedness.

Strategic Preparedness

Strategically, there are certain goals that need to be identified.  Tactics, crisis management and even debates will all flow from strategic preparedness.  What you say, how you act and react all must flow from what it is you wish to achieve.  As an example, Democrats and the mainstream media seem to always parrot each other, using the same talking points.  Dismissively, we often regard this as Groupthink. And usually it lacks any independent thought from the speaker repeating it, but it comes from a place of discipline; staying on message. While the message most often does not stand up under the scrutiny of critical thinking, the reality is that most people do not use critical thinking in response to everything they hear or read.  Thus the message can slip through that filter and the repetition, very often the lie, becomes the 'fact' that people believe. It becomes the conduit to confirmation bias.

The components to a quality strategic plan have the following:

• A clear, definable and achievable objective AND a realistic, reasonable timeline to accompany it
• The right tools available or attainable to use in pursuit of the objective
• The right people in place (or attainable) to use those tools
• A robust inventory of not just those internal inputs but also external ones (e.g. what are Democrats doing, what else can impact us) 
• Synergy (or at a minimum, no conflicts) with other strategic objectives

Once these are established you can develop a roadmap - a "how do we get there from here?" plan.  It's often easier to reverse engineer that - start at where you want to be and work backwards to where you are now.  The plan must include milestones and metrics to measure progress and success ( a factual feedback loop).  It is important to have a mechanism for a communication plan that explains internally what is happening and what is next.    The plan must also have a plan for external communication - what we want the public to know (the talking points) as well as when to communicate to the public and how to do so effectively, in an uncooperative/unfriendly communication climate.

Once the strategy is place the tactical pieces can begin.  Regular evaluation of the real world situation relative to the plan must occur frequently.  However, do not allow over-analysis to prevent progress. 

Tactical Preparedness

Breaking down a strategic plan into component milestones and execution teams is key.  The idea is to develop ways to prioritize resources to where they can deliver the best advancement towards strategic objectives.  It requires more granular thinking than the strategic preparedness because it's focus is on sub-goals or sub-components of the strategy.  It requires more flexibility than strategic planning because of the typically shorter timelines, the situational specificity and the fluidity of conditions on the ground.  Tactical preparedness requires an understanding of what the other side is thinking and planning.

It's been rumored that in 1972 when chess master Bobby Fischer defeated reigning champion Boris Spassky in the Match of the Century, he had pre-played games as both sides prior to playing his actual opponent. In fact, he had gone so far as to avoid his usual tactics to throw off his opponent's game plan in many of the games.  The unexpected change in tactics helped him defeat Spassky. His tactics were something the Soviet chess brain trust had not prepared to face.  But being unexpected was not enough, Fischer had a game plan to follow these unexpected tactical deviations.  He was more fluid in his planning than his opponent and he won.  If the enemy is prepared for your tactics, they have a much better chance to defeat you.

This is less true when they have overwhelming superiority (in numbers or tools), but even then, you must take every advantage you can find.  If you can't defeat them, you can at least exact a heavy toll in time and resources and perhaps strengthen a tactical or strategic advantage elsewhere.  

Specific tactics will vary from situation to situation and from strategic goal to strategic goal.  However good tactics will share certain commonalities; they must drive towards strategic objectives or defend strategic positions, should be efficient in use of time and resources,  they require accountability from people for their specific tasks, they must work in conjunction with other tasks, they should not be anticipated by political rivals or if they are, they should be flexible/adaptable to the response or situation at hand.  Defensive tactics should dovetail towards a counteroffensive tactic - they should only be strictly defensive where defense is crucial or no offensive opportunities exist.   

Crisis Management

How do you prepare for a crisis? To start with, consider what defines a crisis.  It is an unexpected threat with a short period of time in which to react.  In order to prepare for a crisis, you have to expect the unexpected, or more accurately, know that the unexpected can happen.  Then you need to have a plan to deal with the potential situation. You cannot possibly be prepared for every crisis because so many of them are crises because they could not be anticipated.  But you can mitigate the number of crisis events by categorizing them as best you can, and having broad outlines of how to deal with them. That will prepare you with a roadmap but leave you flexibility when something happens that was outside of the ability to plan.  The roadmap is what matters.  It is possible that crises can be categorized:

1. Economic (e.g. market crash, insolvency with respect to national debt)
2. Malevolent human activity or misdeeds/malfeasance (e.g. war, government deception, decreasing liberty)
3. Technological (e.g. Facebook shutting out conservatives, a national electrical grid failure)
4. Environmental (e.g. an oil spill, 
5. Moral decay (e.g. abortion, increasing violence, an opioid epidemic)  

Notice human suffering is not a crisis.  It is the result of a crisis.  That human suffering exists is a result of ignored or improperly managed crises throughout history, to this day.  Effective crisis management can help to alleviate, mitigate or eradicate a crisis.

In order to effectively manage a crisis you must first anticipate the types of crises you might face so that you can prepare for it. Then create a roadmap of how to deal with it that prescribes steps to counter the crisis but leaves flexibility to deal with unanticipated components.

1. Identify the crisis - know that a crisis exists or is developing.  If you know the situation exists before it is fully formed, you give yourself more window to react. In a crisis situation, time matters.
2. Identify the premeditated plan to address the particular crisis as well as any gaps that may not have been considered.  Remember that the plan should be driving towards the desired outcome.
3. Agree on the plan as a team. Agree on roles and responsibilities.  Think of it as a division of labor and a division of deliverables.  Clearly define those deliverables so that there are no component compatibility issues as pieces are delivered. 
4. Ensure frequent communication to both the internal team, and external message communication to the general public.  The perception of the team by the public is critical.  The perception and understanding and alignment within the team is critical to continued motivation of the team.
5. Identify waypoints on the plan towards success of the plan.  In project planning these are called milestones but in a broader context it can also include subsets of outcomes as a result of inaction or of external events.

If you prepare in advance, fewer things require crisis management because they have been anticipated.  You can react more calmly and effectively when you are dealing with contingencies than with crises.

Rhetorical Preparedness

Rhetorical preparedness requires both offensive and defensive preparedness.  Even though you may not be involved in an actual debate you need to prepare as though that was what was going to happen.  There are many aspects to preparedness, including knowing your subject matter.  This will allow you to point out errors or omissions in your opponent's facts and/or logic.  You must be able to do this in the most simple and understandable way.  Unlike your opponent you may not be intellectually dishonest in your arguments because unlike your opponents, you will be rigorously fact checked and your motivation impugned.  You must possess the intellectual honesty that your opponent will not be held to account because the media is on their side.

You are at a disadvantage, make no mistake.  Your opponent will be allowed to get away with many, many things that you cannot; impugning your motivation, name-calling, side-stepping answering direct questions, stating why you are wrong without explaining where in your argument you are wrong, stereotyping you or your argument, creating a straw man for themselves to defeat instead of your argument, inflating or boasting about their own expertise relative to yours, sloganeering, claiming 'we have to do something' before properly identifying the root problem, invalid analogies, playing on fears or hopes, claiming right to a privacy (especially after making a claim about themselves), scapegoating, redefining words, using invalid credentials of themselves or a so-called expert, using quotes out of context, claiming group membership with the target audience (for sympathy or for a purported position of expertise),  cherry picking, invalid accusations, rejecting facts as opinions, theatrics (rolling eyes) as argument, innuendo and insinuation, peer approval of a subjective opinion, hearsay, finding minor errors in your argument and presenting them as major ones, the fallacy of sunk costs, shouting you down, using anecdotal evidence and the list goes on.

 

While you cannot resort to these rhetorical tactics, you can be prepared to identify them in order to call them out for what they are. "Ridicule sir, is not an argument." 

Conversely there are good rhetorical strategies to understand.  These are all about not only creating acceptance, but creating buy-in.

• Know your message and know how to tie it to your audience in a way they understand.  This requires a simple message and really knowing the motivations and aspirations of your audience. Your points need to be relatable with your audience.  It also requires that you be able to tie the message and the audience motivations together effectively in a way that is not easily countered, if at all.  Craft your message, test it and practice delivering it repeatedly.  When you have it working, deliver it repeatedly, tie other arguments to it and it to other arguments so that you afforded more opportunities to deliver your message.
• Keep each of your talking points short and simple.  Ideally 30 seconds or less.
• Make a debating game plan, and stick to it while trying to knock your opponent off their game plan.
• Ensure all communication is done with positivity in terms of message, tone and body language.  Each must be aligned together towards making things better.
• Contrast your ideas with the holes in your opponent's ideas.  We typically know what Democrats are going to say so it is simpler for us to find glaring holes in their claims.  These must be emphasized. 
• Beyond debates, we must understand how to get the message out while having to work around a media (both mainstream media and social media) that is unwilling to share our side of the debate except in a way where they can characterize it to suit their message (which includes the notion that we are either dumb, or evil, or both).

The diagram above is very instructional.  Any argument has 3 components, logic, empathy and credibility.  Any argument that moves too close towards one point of the triangle is by definition, moving away from the other two corners. Democrats rely too much on empathy, but they often do so successfully.  Ben Shapiro conversely often argues that "facts don't care about your feelings".  He's arguing logic, and it's typically infallible.  The problem is that he's often lost half his audience (not us, but those who need to be persuaded to rethink their positions) by lacking empathy.  Where he gathers credibility with patriots by doing so, he also loses it with those who are driven by emotional arguments.

Don't get me wrong, the man is brilliant and he's right.  But to persuade people you require that balance with empathy.  Ben Shapiro is merely an example of how conservatives argue their points; we need to include more empathy in our arguments. By doing so we gain some credibility. We desperately need to know that part of our audience.  In fact, when dealing with the mainstream media, we can dull the edge of their hostility towards us by pointing out that we agree that poverty is a problem no American should have to face, where we disagree is merely on the solution to the problem.  That gains both pathos  and ethos for our arguments.  It allows us to flow into logic where we are most typically far better prepared than our opponents.  

BLM as useful idiots?

Black Conservative Perspective makes an interesting suggestion about using Black Lives Matter (BLM) over their reaction to a New York City restaurant incident, as useful idiots to show that vaccination passports are causing division in America. I've argued for this approach myself in my Rules For Patriots (Rule #9). But it's tricky because BLM clearly wants to portray this as a racially motivated incident. 

However leftist policies have not just unintended consequences, but seriously dangerous ones; they are promoting racial division at the same time creating ridiculous COVID policies that facilitate further division, creating an amplification effect.  This is setting up a liberal versus liberal altercation wherein it might just be better to stand back and let the left eat itself instead of stepping into the fray. Additionally, you are putting a business that has been squeezed by Democrat COVID regulations and lockdowns, trying to comply with mandates just to stay in business into further jeopardy if you enable BLM in order to point out how asinine liberal policies actually are.  So are they just collateral damage in the bigger picture? Even if Carmine's is run by ultra-leftists (and I don't know that it is), conservatism is about protecting the little guy in the face of an overbearing government.  They shouldn't just be dismissed as collateral damage.

Lastly, I am 99% certain that BLM won't turn this into a vaccine passport issue, because for them it's a race issue.  They will focus on that.

All that said, they can still be useful idiots.  In fact they already are.  You are going to have ultra-liberal NYC prosecuting three black women, and BLM fighting them on it.  Either way, a leftist liberal body is going to lose this fight) and it doesn't matter which one it is because they are spending time and treasure fighting each other.  My biggest hope in this case is that the fight drags on for a long time, costs a lot for all involved (except the restaurant) and derails as much as possible on both sides.

That's it, you're in this world now

Have you ever thought about weaponizing language the way the Left does?  They do it all the time, as if it were a hobby.  Everyone except American patriots have done it.  China does it as evidenced in the first section of the below report:

So why are we not doing it?  This is part of the political battlefield we exist within.  In his Rules For Radicals, Leftist Saul Alinsky suggested the following: RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

Here's one example that I've often wondered about.  When those on the left complain about being  "triggered", they are using a word heavily related to guns.  So "triggered" should be a trigger word for them.  Call them on it.  In fact, why not go one step further and suggest an alternative.  Then suggest the alternative because you are the one controlling what it might be.  How about instead of "triggered" maybe they should say something like "bothered".  If they see your point and start using that, you've effectively marginalized the impact of the trigger event and indeed the whole notion of triggering.  When someone says "that bothers me" it doesn't carry as much weight as "I've been triggered".

In fact the phrase "bother words" instead of "trigger words" sounds ridiculous and minimizes entirely the extent of the concern, putting it on a level it deserves to be. "I said something politically that bothers you?  So what?"

Their immediate acceptance of the idea that the phrase "trigger words" is in itself trigger words, gives us the opportunity to replace it with something belittling of the notion that they may not even immediately realize. But only if we have that alternative suggestion at the ready.

Rules for Patriots - Rule #9: Screw Purity

 This is a continuation of my Rules for Patriots series, designed as a patriot's guide to success in fighting the creeping progressivism infecting America. It's a conservative response to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. This series is a lengthy read, but it is very important to understand.  This one happens to be a video, so it's more digestible. Being able to use this approach, as a team, will simplify, streamline and expedite achieving our patriotic objectives.

Links to previous rules: Rule #8, Rule #7, Rule #6, Rule #5, Rule #4, Rule #3, Rule #2 and Rule #1.

Screw purity. No one is you.  Therefore nobody shares 100% of your beliefs.  Your version of what conservatism means is not universal, nor is anyone else's version.  Conservatism, even what we mean in the West (what could be defined as classical liberalism), can come in many forms.  There are gay conservatives, there are atheist conservatives, there are religious conservatives, social conservatives, Trump (America first) conservatives, fiscal conservatives, many types of libertarians and the list goes on. No one will see eye to eye with you on 100% of conservative issues.

Ronald Reagan remarked "somebody who agrees with you 80% of the time is an 80% friend, not a 20% enemy".

That's important to remember.  So is the idea, attributed to Vladimir Lenin of "useful idiots".  Anybody can help you.  Anybody has the potential to be "red pilled". Anybody can provide synergy in your direction, even if it is not readily evident.

Republicans, unlike Democrats are not designed to march in lockstep.  Conservatives are not meant to not question authority.  So disagreements are inevitable.  But if someone who is "pro-choice" agrees with you on securing the borders and national security (be they Republican or Democrat), it's okay to work together with them on what you agree on.

This is why purity tests make no sense.  The more narrowly you define who constitutes an ally, the fewer allies you have.  The idea of purity should remain fluid from issue to issue - it should change depending on the circumstances and the particular battle being engaged.

Nobody likes RINOs - except those who keep voting them in. Do they cave to Democrats? Yes.  Are they unreliable? Yes.  Are they the enemy? Yes, but less so than an ardent leftist; a socialist or ultra leftist Democrat would be far worse a representative than a RINO would be in say Connecticut.  Even if a Connecticut  Republican only voted with the party 40% of the time, that's still 100% more than a Democrat would do so.

I'm no fan of RINOs, but in states where that is the best option, I'll take it over the alternative. Call them useful idiots if it helps you sleep at night.  The only way to change a far left state from Blue to Red, is slowly.  Elsewhere, in places like Texas, where a 40% dependable Republican would be a disaster, the definition is obviously different.  There you might need at least an 85% dependably conservative vote. Anything less might require a change. But Vermont is not going to get there overnight.  So setting up an unelectable candidate to unseat Bernie Sanders there is a waste of time and resources.  Instead start with a moderate.  Or better still, vote in Democrat primaries to unseat Sanders with a less liberal. 

Being red pilled from so far to the left is not an incident, it is a process; one that will take time.  It's not ideal, but it's the truth. As we like to say to those on the left, facts don't care about your feelings.  We have to work within the realm of possible, not the realm of fantasy.  You don't have to like it, just deal with it. Purity will only lead to more and more isolation, and that is a fact simply because, no one else is purely you.

Viva Frei gets real

I've watched Viva Frei on YouTube for about a year now.  His interpretation of events from a legal perspective has been a great, and healthy watch.  Now he's running for parliament.  It's Rules for Patriots in action, specifically Rule #2, Rule #3, and probably a bit of Rule #1 as well.

While he says he's not conservative, he is indeed what conservatism in large part represents, and the outlier and small, political party he is joining is a reflection of that.

"This is why we will win" is wrong

 I often hear conservatives look at something ridiculous the Left has done or observe how pompous they are being or how much they have overreached and they say "This is why we will win" or "This is why they will lose". It's wrong.  And it's thinking like that that makes me think, "This is why we will lose".

That sort of lackadaisical thinking is a recipe for failure.  Democrats will not lose because of something they have done, or gotten wrong or their hubris.  They will never admit to their base they got something wrong.  Their base doesn't care if they got something wrong either.  They often win because of their overreach.  Republicans lose because of their under-reach. And the same is true for elections: if we under-reach, if we do nothing and hope that obvious, common sense of the population will lead to victory for conservatives, this is why we will lose.

Action matters.  Democrats are willing to cheat, willing to change rules, willing to march, willing to do anything to win.  It's not moral but it often gets the results they seek.  We must, on the right, not expect the rest of the populace to open their eyes in numbers so large it overcomes the Democrats' efforts at subterfuge.  It rarely happens.  RARELY.  And in an era of win-at-all-costs on the left, it will not happen now.

Mobilization matters.  Money matters.  Hours of voluntary efforts at outreach (not protests which are frankly a waste) to moderate voters matter.  Organization matters.  Rules for Patriots matter.

Whenever I hear a conservative say "this is why we will win", I want to blow an air horn at them and yell "Wake up!" (well yell first because they'll be deaf after the air horn).  Smug complacency is not a recipe for success it is a substitute for it.  Effort.  Mobilization.  Money.  Strategy. Hard work in the face of a massive societal disadvantage. Action.  This is how we will win. Not why.  Why implies surety.  There is no surety. The only certainty is failure without effort.

Next time you hear a conservative offer that platitude, challenge them on it.

Rules for Patriots in action - School Boards (part 2)

These parents are taking action following an organized method that aligns with Rules for Patriots.

Rules for Patriots in action - school boards

Kudos to these parents for standing up for proper education for their children.  Their hearts are in the right place, and their words are pretty effective.  Following the video I have a few suggestions based on my Rules For Patriots, that could make them even more effective.

Rule #1: Know Your Facts.  How are local school boards elected?  How can the be censured?  Can they be impeached?

There's a great piece on how to remove school board members here. I've extracted a relevant section:

Request copies of public documents and media, such as television interviews, that may support your assertion that the board member qualifies for removal. The specific documents you may need to request may differ based on the circumstances, but good places to start are the school board meeting minutes and the board member's term contract. Any public document must be provided to you under the Freedom of Information Act.

Make a formal list of complaints against the board member you wish to remove. Be as specific as you can. Cite clauses from the documents and media, as well as information such as dates of violations and the names of any other people involved.

Draw up a formal petition stating your reasons for recalling the board member.

Contact the Board of Elections for your county. Ask them for a list of names and addresses for members of the school district in which the board member serves. Inquire as to the percentage of signatures needed in your specific district to put a recall on a ballot. The percentage is determined by the population of registered voters within the district.

Go in fired up, but go in prepared.

Rule #2: Get Involved, Stay Involved. These parents clear are involved - they are already showing up out of concern for indoctrination of their children.  But after these moving displays of concern and shows of disgust for the school boards, what happened?  Did they stay involved?  Were they able to follow up?  It's unclear but if they followed Rule #1 they would be prepared to take things to the next step - board member removals.  If someone's job is on the line for not listening to their constituents, they are more apt to start listening to parental concerns.

Rule #3: Don't Do It Alone. Show up in numbers.  These impassioned parents need to get more people out to support them and work in partnership with each other.  If one person's "time is up", the next person can continue with the same message.

Rule #4: Play Offense. Complaining is not playing offense. Temper is not offense. Showing up with a list of demands and a threat of impeachment, that's playing offense.  Remover CRT from the curriculum or we are coming for your job.  We have 35,000 signatures on this petition to remove you if you do not agree; that's playing offense.

Rule #5: Improve You Arsenal. Speak in terms that school board members will understand.  I'm not talking vocabulary (although talking intelligently is generally preferable to expletives). I'm talking about knowing the size of the district, the size of the population willing to switch to private schools, home schooling or changing districts.  If the district educational need shrinks, their power shrinks.  There is no reason for a school board to feel untouchable.  As long as children are being taught math instead of critical race theory, the school board should feel safe in their jobs.

Rule #6: Set Objectives, Build Momentum, Succeed, Move On.  Understand that this is not just a school board issue. There's state laws, there are union pressures all lined up to defend each other.  Getting a school board member or members to change their tune or having them removed is a good objective.  But it's a battle, it's not the war.  State pressure on the next school board member could result in no value in your victory.  Similarly union pressures to teach a progressive agenda will be unabated.  However, what teachers teach is not within the purveyance of a union.  Their bailiwick is wages, and working conditions. No more.  Lawsuits against overreach of unions is not a bad idea if they are interfering in educational matters.

Rule #7: Be unpredictable.  Show up to these meetings when it's not expected.  Demand more time when they close off public participation.  Raise objections, even on unrelated topics if they have successfully moved on to another matter.  Disrupt.  Civilly and legally of course, but do not let other business proceed if your issues have not been sufficiently addressed.  Have someone else video the proceedings.  Show up and video them yourself even if it is on unrelated business.  Don't let them try to sneak agenda items in on unrelated meetings.

Rule #8: Size matters.  Money matters as always.  You need volunteers and concerned citizens participating.  But you also need large petitions with thousands of signatures.  The bigger the better.  You need to be able to place local television ads condemning school board policies or decisions.  For that reason you need to be organized and legally able to accept donations.  Then, go in with the force of numbers to demand the changes you seek.

There are other rules to be shared in the coming weeks, and some of them were on display in the video already.  Most importantly, these people are more involved than most of us and that is to be commended, not criticized.  This was not meant to be a criticism, but rather a suggestion to enhance their efforts.

Rules for Patriots - Rule #8: Size matters

 This is a continuation of my Rules for Patriots series, designed as a patriot's guide to success in fighting the creeping progressivism infecting America. It's a conservative response to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. This series is a lengthy read, but it is very important to understand.  This one happens to be a video, so it's more digestible. Being able to use this approach, as a team, will simplify, streamline and expedite achieving our patriotic objectives.

Links to previous rules: Rule #7, Rule #6, Rule #5, Rule #4, Rule #3, Rule #2 and Rule #1.

Size matters. In politics, size matters. Why? Because in order to get things done on a large enough scale you require a critical mass. We on the right are not upset with Small Tech, we are furious with Big Tech. We do not need to worry about combat alternative media because we are faced with a deluge from the mainstream media. We face unions trying to teach Critical Race Theory across the nation. The NSA is apparently spying on Tucker Carlson, and on election night 2020 what looked like a clear Trump win suddenly, and very oddly uniformly evaporated in state after state. These are not small obstacles we face, they are huge. You cannot combat that with blogs and talking to your neighbors who probably already agree with you. To fight big, you need to be even bigger.

If the United States were ever to go to war with China, the technical advantage that the U.S. still holds (though tenuously) could be overcome by sheer volume. The same is true for politics. It does not matter if you know your facts while CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, Google, Facebook and Twitter are streaming misinformation 24/7 to an unsuspecting public. We are spitting into the wind.

We need to grow bigger and stronger. We need to coalesce around the best options and grow them to a dominant size. Take Twitter for example. It's wildly leftist partisan and barely feigns otherwise. It's also the dominant quick communication tool. First Parler and then later Gettr have arisen as alternatives that patriots need not fear being marginalized or silenced. But neither hold the sway of Twitter yet. As a conservative I'm all for competition. Normally the more the better. But not here, not now. In order to compete with Twitter one of these will need to grow exponentially and it will likely, and unfortunately, be at the expense of the other. That's a shame because they are both good. But it is the reality. The same is true for Rumble as an alternative to YouTube.

Bigger and Stronger need to be achieved quickly too, given the state of the nation and the seemingly routed nature of conservative voices. So if size matters, and speed matters, what else matters? Money.

I'm a fan of the underdog by nature. But when it comes to growing really big, really quickly there are only two things that will work - money and synergy. Clearly we need money to grow, so we need to invest not just time in the patriot cause, we need to donate. But we need to donate smartly. Where we see momentum, that's where we need to allocate our time and money to support. We will get bigger faster that way.

The other way to facilitate it is synergy. There is no point in having two anti-Critical-Race-Theory organizations where one larger one will suffice. Either define distinct areas of focus and work together or else join together and grow the voice. I am not suggesting we have our voices and our arsenal of organizations whittle down to one as if we were socialists. That would be dangerous and likely ultimately counter-productive; competition still spurs innovation. But we are at this point, too scattered, too small and to disjointed to be a counterforce to the progressive behemoth we face.

Where you see opportunities to join forces do so. Where you see opportunities to raise funds for organizations do so. When you see momentum for one conservative venue over another, join it, even if it is not your preferred option. Conversely when you see an organization faltering, know when to abandon it versus throwing good money after bad or wasting time and effort on it. That can be tricky both intellectually (knowing when) and emotionally (having connections to an organization makes it hard to let go). But this is a war for the soul of America, which is the soul of freedom in an increasingly unfree world. It's imperative this war be won, so sentimentality as to take a back seat to size unfortunately.

Rules for Patriots continues

 Rules for Patriots continues with part 8; coming soon.

Rules for Patriots - Rule #2 in action

Get involved, in this case locally, and stay involved.  This is how individuals, who care about individuality, make a difference in their community:

Well done!

Rules for Patriots in action: the art of persuasion

 In Rules for Patriots Rule #1 I stated:

But knowing your facts is not limited to political issues.  You need to know your audience, you need to know how to speak to them in a persuasive way, which means you have to talk to them in a way that resonates with them. You can't do that unless you know them and understand what makes them tick.

Charisma on Command explains how to express an unpopular opinion (in a way that works).  This is important because the opinion of a patriot is going to be an unpopular one with many people, and we need to make it work when we try to state our opinion. We need to know the art of persuasion.  This video shows comedian Bill Burr performing the technique to near-perfection.

Rules for Patriots in action

A few days ago as I was trying to finish my Rules for Patriots Rule #7 (be unpredictable), as if on cue, Tim Pool released a video discussing a group targeting CEOs of "woke capitalism" companies.  That was definitely an unpredictable move. Excellent idea.