Why I Post Non-Political Stuff (And Why The Right Should Engage the Culture In Non-Explicitly…

from Stand Firm by Sarah

Of all the articles I’ve read this year about American culture and politics, this is one of the more important. It applies not simply to conservatives—but to Christians and the Church as well.
This is a wowzer of an article and I’m hoping you’ll read it and comment below, both in regards to how it applies to conservative politics, as well as the Church and evangelism.  I’m excerpting around a third of the article—but please hie thee over to Ace of Spades and read the entire piece. It’s important.

5. On that point, threads like this are good for the right, politically. In fact, there should be blogs like this—that is, center-right blogs that have little to do with politics.

I know that sounds odd, but that’s how the left wins the culture. They dominate the culture with entertainment/news stuff that, supposedly, is apolitical, and thus attracts people who aren’t interested in politics, but who are interested in LOLcats or Twilight or science fiction or whatever. But they will slip in their political beliefs, and thereby create two extremely useful effects:

First Major Effect: Convincing people that this political culture (liberalism) is ubiquitous and therefore the choice to pick any another culture would be swimming upstream and socially disfavored and create all sorts of problems.

One of the problems with the right’s attempts at media is that it is always—or almost always—expliclity political, and ergo argumentative (argumentative in the “good” meaning, but also often in the bad one). We’re always trying to persuade in conservative media. Thus, conversion can only happen when people tune into us when they’re in the mood to be persuaded that everything they used to think is wrong, and these other people have been right all along.

You know how all often people tune in to discover how wrong they’ve been about everything? Rounding off to the nearest integer, zero. Zero percent of the people tune in zero percent of the time to be told how very wrong they are about everything.

Taking it to three significant digits like Nate Silver, The Model projects that zero point zero zero percent of the populace searches for websites and magazines to tell them they are 100% wrong about everything zero point zero zero percent of the time.

The left doesn’t do it like this. The left infiltrates non-political media and stuffs them full of political assumptions.

We say on the right we have better arguments. We do. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. Because an assumption—something you’ve grown to believe without even realize you’ve been programmed, by dint of repetition, to believe—will beat an argument every time.

Soft liberalism is the default setting for the American mind, generally. Why? Because to make a contrary choice requires three things:

1. A conscious choice.
2. A decision to do some work and do the investigation necessary to make that choice.
3. An admirable bravery regarding the likely social consequences of making a socially-disfavored choice.

Yes, we will still have our arguments. And they will win, assuming the target of persuasion is amenable on those three grounds—he’s willing to make a conscious choice, he’s willing to do some philsophical/political homework, and he’s willing to face the consequences of social disapproval and outright mockery for that choice.

If not, we lose, and John Q. Public goes back to thinking Democrats are awesome because they stand “for the common man.”

Like I said: It would be better to have the assumption than the argument. You cannot reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into in the first place, the saying goes.

Second Major Effect: That liberals are fun guys full of wit and interesting things to say and don’t drone on and on about politics all the damn time.

The reason the right must do this is that 90% of political belief is not rational per se. It’s pre-rational, to coin a term. It’s not irrational per se, but it’s often not examined on strictly rational, faculties-of-higher-thinking-fully-engaged level, either.

It’s who you like.

If you liked and respected your parents, and they were traditionalists and conservative-leaning, I’ll bet real money you’re a traditionalist and conservative too.

If you didn’t like your parents, and they were traditionalists and conservatives, I’ll bet real money you are now a progressive and general “rebel” against society, throwing the finger to the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, who is really your dad.

(This also works the other way—a liberal who loves his liberal parents will be liberal, and one who thinks they’re foolish and lazy, like Adam Carolla, will wind up believing the exact opposite of them.)

Liberals understand this. Or at least they behave in a fashion which suggests they understand this. It is quite possible they are simply attracted to media positions because they just have that skill set and don’t have other skill sets. But either way, it works out nicely for them.

Tell me the truth: You can knock celebrities all you like—Big Dummies, Stupid Liberal Fatcats, etc.—but admit it. When a celebrity you like—writer, actor, director, musician—slams your political beliefs, it hurts.

I wasn’t happy to find out Captain Mal Reynolds of Firefly was a big Obama guy. Didn’t ruin my day or anything, but still. Minor bummer.

Politics, for most, is less about argument and logic and rational underpinnings and grandly conceived ideology than it is a simple human choice: Do I feel more affinity with this group over here, or that one over there? And once you’ve chosen a tribe you’re more comfortable with, you begin adopting their attitudes and mores.

Did you have a group you hung out with in eighth grade? Did you sort of dress like others in the group? Listen to the same music?

Same thing. People are complicated in many ways but in some of the most important they’re brutally simple.

And this is why I do think there is a strong political rationale for my non-political posts. I still get hits, for example, on my Guide to the Best Episodes of Dr. Who. Those are not political junkies coming here; they’re Dr. Who fans.

Now, if they like the guide, if I’ve provided them a service, then they slightly like me (at least to the extent one “likes” a waitress at a restaurant who does a good service for you).

And this tends to make Team Red seem a little more human and accessible and really Not So Strange At All.

We don’t do enough of this. We say we’re the people With Real Lives Apart From Government and Liberals are the ones who are obsessed with politics because They’ve Got Nothing Else In Their Lives, that government for them is their church, their community, even their softball league.
And I think there’s truth in that. But consider this: Whenever someone meets or sees a conservative in the public square, we’re the ones talking about politics, we’re the ones trying to convert them, we’re the ones trying to make an ideological sale.

Liberals explicitly try to make ideological sales, too. Liberal blogs do. But think about BuzzFeed, which attracts people mostly with LOLcats, sideboob, and Funny Gifs but then hits them with subtle political messaging every fifth post. I don’t mean BuzzFeed Politics, either. I mean BuzzFeed LOLcats.

Subtle—just a joke here or there. But it’s enough to make the point who the Popular Kids are and who the hopelessly unfashionable, crazy smelly kids are.

Early last century, a Communist named Gramsci declared that the only way to prepare a populace for revolutionary communist change was the Long March Through the Institutions, a slow but persistent process of infiltration and then complete capture of the most important information- and opinion-transmitting institutions in the nation.