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.

Duelling Echo Chambers

If you look at the 2016 election you can find pundits, pollsters and the general public who predict everything from a Hillary Clinton blowout to a Donald Trump blow out (and everything in between). 

People on the right, many of them, believe that the polls have oversampled Democrats.  That the turnout of Democrats is going to be depressed among African American voters, Bernie Sanders supporters and even to a certain extent Hispanic voters are unenthusiastic and won't turn out in numbers to get Hillary Clinton elected.  Meanwhile, Trump has surged among men, blue collar workers, and a number of other traditional Democrat demographics.  In addition, they cite things like the pollster misreads of BREXIT, where the Stay vote was expected to beat the Leave vote and it has not happened.

There are polls that support many of their assertions.  There's evidence pollsters were re-working their polls and support was converging between Trump and Clinton prior to the initial Comey news that the FBI were re-opening the Clinton email investigation (before slamming it shut again today).  But here's the thing - you can't say the pollsters were adjusting their polls AND that Trump was surging.  It's one or the other.  Additionally, there were a number of polls that showed Romney leading Obama in 2012 that turned out to be wrong.  The preponderance of the evidence of polls was that Obama was leading and he actually was.

While there is a case to be made that Trump has made up ground and that there is this mythical Trump "monster vote" that will emerge on election day.  Okay, maybe but there's no solid evidence.  As much as I'd like to believe it and I've based a lot of my own analyses on skepticism of the mainstream polls, we might be operating in an echo chamber - we hear people saying things, often anecdotally, that we are predisposed to want to believe and hence exhibit a confirmation bias belief in that 'news'.

The same can be said for Democrats, who want to believe the polling general Clinton lead.  They dismiss the anecdotal evidence of huge Trump rallies and small Clinton rallies as forcefully as Trump supporters embrace them.  The Democrat echo chamber has been around a lot longer (and consequently a lot bigger) but that makes it no more correct.

What matters is a preponderance of polls in the swing states. If there's a hidden Trump monster vote, or true unmeasured momentum for him, I'll be as happy as anyone - Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president. Trump is a coin toss at least. But until that happens, I am dialing myself back on my confidence levels.  I think at this point the ceiling for Hillary Clinton is probably about 280 electoral college votes and the floor is about 225. The same is roughly true for Trump. I think Trump's chances of winning are anywhere from 45% to 53%  That's not terrible odds (unless you are Hillary Clinton and are working to stack the deck in your favor).  As a Trump proponent, I'll take that. A Trump landslide would be wonderful, but it's not necessary.