Further Comments From Ace of Spades on the Importance of Cultural Engagement

from Stand Firm by Sarah

Further to the article I posted earlier today, Ace followed up by posting a specific example of what he means about the importance of culture-making activities and engagement:

I’ve made this point before, but I think I’m going to keep on making it. The right cannot seek credibility only in the political realm. Politics are contentious when they’re not boring. The best way to win on political points is to do what celebrities and the media do—win a certain amount of goodwill or credibility in non-political areas, and then spend that capital of goodwill and credibility on politicking.

I saw in the Daily Beast a pointless, hackish article about Karl Rove’s love of Argentinian fabulist writer Jorge Luis Borges. (One of his stories, “The Library of Babylon,” can be read here. Alas, he’s not on Kindle yet, at least not in English translation.) He’s often called a fantasist, but this may be misleading for Americans whose idea of fantasy is shaped by someone like Tolkein. Tolkein wrote fantasy, whereas Borges explored the idea of fantasy, what it is, why it happens, what purposes it serves. More like Philip K. Dick than Robert E. Howard. One of his best-known stories concerns a man who creates a fictional world so detailed that other writers begin adding to it, until the time comes that the fictional world is so well detailed it is as real as the actual world. (I think maybe he got this idea from Lovecraft.)

At any rate, this nothing of an article contained three points:

1. Jorge Luis Borges is a writer interested in the idea of fantasy.
2. Karl Rove likes him.
3. Karl Rove ergo has learned from Jorge Luis Borges the art of creating fictional realities for dumb Republicans to inhabit.

I have to stress there was absolutely nothing in this “article”—really a blog post—apart from a brief background on a writer, a slim newshook, and a paragraph and a half of the most hackish, tendentious “Republicans Are Dumb and They Lie” bullshit. Seriously, very low level, off-the-cuff blogshit.

Nevertheless, this squeaking fart of a piece was included in their “Books” section, part of their “cultural coverage.” And why did I click on it? Because I like Borges. Why did others click on it? Because they like Borges. But instead of reading anything novel about Borges they got a full-face egg-fart about Lying Liars who Lie.

As I said, I’m going to keep stressing this. Conservatives cannot just keep expecting that politics itself moves people towards political choices. The left has created a virtually seamless full-spectrum messaging machine in which hardly a word can be said about any subject without the commentator putting in a good word for socialism or Marxism (or, far more frequently, attacking those who stand against socialism and Marxism).