Case in Point

Case in Point

Pursuant to yesterday’s post on the internal contradictions that have left Conservatives powerless to fight the culture war, I present the following tweets:

Jon Del Arroz - MAGA 2020

That’s author Jon Del Arroz tweeting about National Review Online writer Kevin D. Williamson’s response to MAGA 2020 and Beyond from Superversive Press.

Kevin D. Williamson

If Williamson’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because of the notorious NRO piece he wrote last year wherein he asserted that working-class white people “deserve to die”.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

I used to think that establishment Conservatives were simply conditioned to dismiss pop culture and the arts by an excessively pragmatic, utilitarian ideology. But the more diabolical enmity they show toward they people they claim to serve every election year, the more convinced I am that their retreat from the culture war is deliberate.

Consider Williamson. He made it big in Conservative, Inc. But he’s still ashamed of his blue collar Texas roots. He knows, as does anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past 50 years, that the arts and the media are the levers that steer the culture. He didn’t pass on the chance to promote a work of non-Leftist fiction because he thinks fiction is useless. He and the rest of the Conservative establishment know that novels, movies, and TV shows are incalculably more influential than any think tank white paper.

Establishment Conservatives don’t want real change. They want the game of musical chairs in Washington that passes for our system of representative government to continue as is indefinitely. They want to pretend to oppose the ever-advancing Leftward slide while doing nothing of substance and getting invited to all the right cocktail parties.

In short, they want to lose.

We want to win, and make no mistake–we are winning. And that scares the hell out of people like Kevin D. Williamson.

If the barbarians on the Left win, they’ll write the history books. More likely, there will be no histories because written language, along with all other marks of civilization, will vanish from the earth forever, as if they had never been. That is Williamson’s hope. He wants his name to be forgotten.

But if we win, he and his fellow establishment quislings will go down in history as the wretched betrayers of Western Civilization they are.

Let’s make them famous. Forever.

14 Comments

  1. David

    I could of cared less if he passed on the book or not,but calling Mr. Del Arroz a Peon called for an unfollow. No excuse for bad manners in that case.

    • Brian Niemeier

      Somehow I missed that part.

    • Masha K.

      Actually Jason Rennie, one of the few (as in, "can count on one hand" ) publishers promoting traditional values got called a "peon."
      John del Arroz was called a "simpleton" who would bring "the end of the Republic."
      So yeah, he's got insults to spare. Support for something that might actually help? Nope.
      Sadly I have no screenshots since Mr. Williamson blocked me before I could save his wisdom for posterity.

  2. JD Cowan

    I checked the man's feed when this all went down. It's very vitriolic, nasty, and holier than thou. He's not a pleasant person so it's no surprise he hard passed on an anthology of fun fiction.

    It's tough being bitter all the time. I suggest prayer for him. He certainly needs deliverance from his nasty attitude.

    • Brian Niemeier

      I have prayed for him. Status-seeking is a prison cell with a constantly moving floor.

  3. anonme

    It is a shame this encounter lead to a pissing contest between Jon and Rob Kroese. I like both these guys.

    • Brian Niemeier

      Same here.

    • anonme

      Looks like they already smoothed things over, which is nice.

  4. Patrik

    Picking up from where you left off yesterday, yes conservatives are liberals. Importantly though, neo-cons are Marxist through and through, creeps like Williamson and Kristol crave the destruction of civilization because it is the only way to achieve the 'end of history'. The Marxist utopia isn't a 'workers paradise', rather it is the complete destruction of the created order and the death of all image-bearers.

    • Brian Niemeier

      Spot on. To paraphrase a tweet I saw, "Seizing the means of production" takes on a whole new light when you realize it means "killing people and stealing their stuff."

    • xavier

      killing people and taking their stuff aptly sums up the left since the French revolution. It even appears in all chilistic movements in power. C.f. Cohen's Pursuit of the millenium

  5. Man of the Atom

    Williamson is likely afraid. Afraid that Trump will awaken the electorate to the fact that many problems have simple solutions (though likely not easy ones).

    In the main, Williamson is all about nuanced, complex, hard-to-pass legislation and idealist solutions, and making excuses for the failures of Conservatism. "Isn't awful that we are fighting this terrible war? But we are losing so gallantly!"

    How's a Conservative huckster supposed to make that sweet, sweet cash on speaking fees, cruises, think tank invites, corporate retreats, and lauding from the literati when Trump shows all the rubes that "Conservative, Inc" is Barnum and Bailey in a $5000 suit?

    Pray for Kevin. Betting suicide watch for him soon.

    • Brian Niemeier

      "Pray for Kevin."

      Oh, I have been.

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