You can learn a lot from the remnants of the Buckley Right–not about effective policy or the true state of the world, but about how the neo-feudal uniparty manipulates Conservatives into thinking and acting against their own interests.
Our elites’ fingerprints are all over attempts to create a new controlled opposition to replace the old Washington Generals right, who are dropping like flies. A reliable rule of thumb when discerning people’s motives is to look past their words to their actions. The Buckleyites talked a good game, but their only accomplishments were banishing guys like Pat Buchanan from polite society and failing to conserve the little girls’ room at Target. An enterprise with Conservative Inc’s resources doesn’t fail that spectacularly by accident. They bilked tens of thousands of subscribers, who paid to have their own throats slit.
Enter the New Buckleyites, including lil’ Matt Walsh. To the extent that he’s known, it’s primarily for being marketed as a conservative Catholic who nonetheless promulgates market worship like Gordon Gecko in hipster glasses.
That’s nothing new. Ideological incoherence is a requirement of membership in the controlled opposition. But a cursory glance at the new Buckleyites shows that each of them has been selected to fill a specialized niche, like a clown car A-Team. Lil’ Matt has had the basic neocon training and indoctrination, but he has a specific role on the Beta Team. See if you can figure it out from this howler of a recent tweet thread:
Taken at face value, these tweets display civilization-wrecking levels of sociopathy, as the Z-Man points out in his most recent post. But the literal message isn’t the point. No Millennial shackled with six-figure college debt is going to read those tweets and say, “Golly, I’m working full-time at ten bucks an hour and can’t afford my minimum loan payments. But Matt Walsh is right! Uninformed consent is the sole criterion of justice, so I’ll take a second job cleaning Boomers’ toilets to service the interest. I may not like this life of perpetual indentured servitude, but gee whiz, I unwittingly signed up for it, so the Christian thing to do is suck it up and work myself like a mule for my slave masters!”
Since Lil’ Matt’s agitprop clearly isn’t meant for Millennials, asking who his intended audience is will uncover the real game he’s running. Hint: the dead giveaway is in his second tweet.
Picture if you will a fleshy, graying Boomer resplendent in his Gilligan cap and Jimmy Buffett t-shirt, sipping a Corona on the deck of his 2001 Century 2901 fishing boat off Key West. A sudden pang moves him to think of his Millennial son Jimmy.
Here I am grooving to “Margaritaville” in 72 degree paradise while Jimmy shivers in his Detroit basement flophouse. Oh, wait. It’s 6 AM there. He’s probably coming off his shift at the call center. Or starting his shift at the male strip club. Or starting his shift at the other call center. What a slacker! He should’ve gone into consulting like me. So what if he lost his lips in Afghanistan? He could do it all online instead of working those dead-end jobs I told him to get. How’s he gonna pay for student loans, child support, and prosthetic lips? Maybe I shouldn’t have badgered him into getting a liberal arts degree, wifing up that ex-hooker from church, and joining the Army.
Then our Boomer’s iPhone–the newest model with a 2x higher price tag and half the features of last month’s version–chirps, alerting him to a new tweet from one of his favorite accounts: that clean-cut young go-getter Matt Walsh. The momentary pang of conscience is smothered by Lil’ Matt’s reminder that easing his son’s crushing debt burden might make the Boomer’s taxes go up. Besides, Jimmy was a grown man when he signed up for those loans–well, he was technically a seventeen year-old high school senior, and Dad cosigned the loan; then sued to get out of it, but close enough–signed his marriage license, and signed his enlistment papers. Letting him live with the consequences of his poor choices is tough love.
Our Boomer puts his iPhone back in the dock and cranks up the volume, secure in the knowledge that he is the model of Christian fatherhood.
NB: Yes, it’s gobsmackingly hypocritical of Lil’ Matt to tell suffering Millennials to stop whining and meet their obligations, then try to garner credibility by pointing out he’s paying his wife’s student loans. The mindfuck is purposeful. Remember that Mattr’s tweets are precision engineered by his paymasters to make sure Conservatives never actually accomplish anything.
You gotta love how the fact that all these loans are usurious is not in any way an issue for this "Catholic."
I’m not even Catholic myself but even i know that there is not enough room im the entirety of the wild black yonder of outer space needed to accomodate the number of quotation marks necessary to surround the word ‘Catholic’ when used in relation to Matt Walsh
Whatever Matt's professed faith, in practice he's a Mammon worshiper.
Actions > words.
A what
Mammon. Shorthand for 'god of wealth/money'.
Forgive me, I’m still rather new to this whole follower of Christ thing
Absolvo te.
Glad to have you.
Glad to be here
I have to admit that I am unironically grateful for my Boomer parents.
They raised my sister and me well, taught us to think, to excel beyond what we thought we could do. They have a solid marriage (48 years this year) that showed me what things are supposed to be like (15 years in a couple of months).
And they also have ideas that are wrong, that showed me that I can respect and love them without forcing myself to agree with everything they think and say.
So am I, because my parents are good people, gave me a good childhood, and have always been very supportive. I hope I am able to get married and have kids while both my parents are still around.
But I've also come to realize their advice is almost completely worthless with respect to building a successful life in the 21st century. My life has been so wildly different from anything they experienced, and things have changed so much since they retired, that they cannot relate to the challenges I face at all.
I pray for the success of your vocation.
Thank you.
Boomers.
Always giving advice where they always steal everyone else's money and dreams. And never ever face any reckoning.
Never feel any twinge of guilt.
xavier
“Did you know Matt Walsh has tattoos? That is so cool! Stay hip kids. “ – The useless boomer
"Being hip is getting middle class. Let's you and I be square!" -Allan Sherman, The Rebel