All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
I think this may be the most interesting analysis of the media battle for the 2024 election, He says the MSM was the voice of the Deep State and this time America stopped listening to them. Trump is a fascist. Trump is literally Hitler. Trump will personally rape all of America’s cat ladies. It didn’t work.
And even as I get out of the business of being a voice of the great right-wing conspiracy I’ll take my tiny bit of credit for making the MSM a spent force.
Three cheers for us.
As all of the regular readers here probably know from my recent incessant whining, I’ve been horrendously bogged down with work. Even on weekends, there is stuff I have to get done and it will only get worse for the next month or so.
Woe is me; woe is me!
But at the same time, I’ve been wanting to go see Matt Walsh’s movie “Am I Racist.” I asked Camera Girl if she wanted to go with me and she rolled her eyes and shook her head. So that complicated things because just abandoning her on a weekend to trek across state lines and eat up half a day seemed a little selfish to me. So, I was shocked when on Thursday she asked me if I wanted to go see the movie. Apparently, she figured it might cheer me up ahead of my marathon work schedule to go to this movie over the weekend. I guess she really does like me. So, I went on line to see what hours it was playing. Well, it wasn’t. The movie had gone from about a thousand theaters, down to something like four-hundred. And since Dunwich really is in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a single theater within a hundred miles of me.
Woe is me; woe is me!
When I stopped shaking my fist at the sky, I looked up the box office history for the movie. The movie was only banking twenty- or thirty-thousand dollars a day at that point but it had earned over twelve million dollars over the course of its run. And when you consider that the movie only cost a quarter of that to make, I was quite impressed by Walsh’s accomplishment.
Last year Walsh made a documentary called “What is a Woman” that was very effective at highlighting the insane and dangerous transgender movement that has convinced most of the medical establishment that it’s okay to treat children with puberty blockers and sex hormone therapy as a precursor to amputation of their genitalia. And this documentary was watched by many millions of people on-line. But this new movie was different.
This was something that people had to go to a movie theater to watch. They had to plunk down cold hard cash. And for that money they expected to be entertained. And they were! The reviews and rating by the people who actually went to the movie were extremely high. It was a hit with the people who went to see it. But the mainstream media boycotted reviewing it. And this was after it opened in the top four box office spot. And not against other documentaries. This was against all the movies in theaters. It was a financial success, but they refused to review it.
So, I didn’t get to see it. Well, eventually I’ll see it online. So that’s okay. But the bigger story here is that finally, finally, someone is making movies for our side of the street. And I hope the Daily Wire makes a ton of money doing it and I hope that gives ideas to a bunch of other “creative” people who want to make money but can’t seem to get people to go to the stuff Hollywood has been putting out lately. Who knows maybe it’ll inspire Disney to make the imaginative leap and think, “Didn’t we used to make money hand over fist with that traditional stuff back in the stone age? It looks like people still like that racist, sexist stuff. Maybe we could do that again and make money for a change.”
Well, calm down! Small steps, small steps. Okay, now I’ve got a grip again.
But I have to confess I am encouraged. This is the sort of stuff I’ve been waiting years for. With the entry cost for making professional-looking motion pictures at historic lows and good writers, directors, actors and other movie trades unemployed because of DEI it doesn’t seem that it should be that difficult to make a profit if you give people a good story and stick to entertainment instead of hectoring them.
It’s a start.
Millennials aren’t patriots. And they aren’t individualists. They’re mostly sort of like grade-school children. In fact, grade-school children that went to a really artsy-fartsy grade school. There’s no way we are going to turn them into revolutionaries, ready to storm the barricades in search of liberty. They don’t want liberty. They want a latte.
But millennials will someday soon be the majority of voters in this country. So even if they don’t believe in what we believe in we can get them to follow us if we can outcompete the woke option. “What the hell is photog talking about?” you’re probably saying to yourself. Let me explain.
Currently Silicon Valley is almost entirely composed of woke companies that have been telling millennials for twenty years that they are not only smart but also good. Google famously had a motto “Don’t be Evil.” Facebook, Twitter and all the other social sites spend half of their time just banning anyone who won’t acknowledge the need to worship the cult of pronouns. Undoubtedly that sort of mean girl social selection activity has a definite demographic cohort that will relish that environment. We call them Karens. And right now, they seem to be the dominant life-form on planet Earth. But as powerful as they are, I think there is a very large chunk of the millennial population that would like something more interesting to look at and talk about than Karen’s latest battle against accidental misgendering.
So how hard could it be to come up with a site that’s more interesting than that. Look at what Substack has recently done. They provide a platform for (among other things) journalists who are too normal to survive in the woke media environment. Guys as liberal as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi were hurled into the outer darkness by the likes of Rolling Stone and The Intercept because they thought that journalism should be factual. Not unbiased mind you, but just not completely fake. Now they’re making more money than they did previously by committing actual journalism and providing a service to readers who are tired of being lied to.
Other social sites have slowly begun to appear to compete head-to-head with the likes of YouTube and Facebook. Rumble, Gab and BitChute are tiny players but they provide a service that isn’t available from YouTube. The market for their product is growing and will continue to do so. And it is attracting people with deeper pockets like Peter Thiele.
These are the beginnings of competition. They barely register on Big Tech’s radar. But that will change. Better product will draw customers. And honestly the entertainment value of Facebook and Twitter is pretty low. I can easily imagine someone monetizing the audience that exists for reality-based news and entertainment. It will happen and when it does it will attract more than just a right-wing audience. It will attract everyone except for the left-wing ideologues. A good example of that is the recent news that Greg Gutfeld was now the “King of Late-Night Comedy.” Greg Gutfeld isn’t a conservative. But he’s a libertarian who doesn’t alienate the conservatives who enjoy his humor. He is vague enough about his own personal beliefs that Trump fans and normies think of him as their guy. And that’s good enough. I’d like it better if there were an even more right-wing guy who came on after Gutfeld on Fox News. Someone a little more edgy but it’s a beginning. If Fox News were smart, they’d give the Babylon Bee guys their own show too. Of course, they currently have a YouTube channel of their own but I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube eventually shut them down. They’re that funny I assume they’ll be considered a threat.
And that’s my point. The Left has become “all fake all the time.” In the long run that becomes quite boring. It can be outcompeted in a marketplace of ideas. So, all we need to do is create that marketplace and let reality do the rest.
Output’s been slow the last day or so because I’ve been working on some bigger fish. I’m starting an sf&f book that I’ve been kicking around for a while. It’s sort of a combination of sf and fantasy. It always gets blurry when you start adding multiverses and immortals. And that’s fine as far I’m concerned. If you consider the ramifications of things like quantum superposition then it’s hard to say that reality draws a clear line between science and magic. But it’s been fun and I’m making pretty good progress on both the outline and the beginning of the book. But it has cut into my blogging time lately.
Also, I’ve been trying to do a little more analytical thinking about our present political situation. We may have reached the point where yelling at the top of our lungs for people to wake up is no longer a useful task. I think everyone who isn’t stupid or evil has acknowledged that our government is hopelessly compromised against us. We need to switch gears and now focus on concrete plans to change the status quo.
And guess what, that’s not the easiest thing in the world to figure out. It’s not just one thing. It’s a million things. We are up against an almost monolithic structure that is intent on destroying our way of life. Individual defensive and offensive actions against such an opponent are so microscopically weak that they border on futility. It’s obvious that organization is the key to expanding our impact. But what organizations exist and which can you trust?
That is the kind of research I’ve been doing and it takes a lot of time and doesn’t provide instant results. But there is no way of getting around the analysis. So even though I enjoy ranting and raving and even though I think there is value in providing moral support and personal testament on the day-to-day events in the news I’m also looking to find answers to the questions we all have. Is there an organization that is making progress against our enemies? Is there an organization that can help us if we are attacked? Is there a resource for finding allies in the different activities of our lives? Such as religion, education, family activities, entertainment, sports, literature, professional societies, legal help, political organizing. What corporations are on our side, or at least have made a point to remain neutral? What news or social media companies will cater to us? If any of you have done similar searches feel free to leave something in the comments that will provide a lead in my search.
I know this is a very long-term project so I try to keep it from dominating my day. But at the same time, sometimes I have to follow a white rabbit pretty far down a hole to find out if he’s real or not. So that’s what I’ve been busy with lately. And I have the real-life stuff going on like all of you. Christmas is coming up and we have things to take care of, and end of year stuff to attend to. There are the young who need to be taught and the old who need to be remembered. And Camera Girl is there to roll her eyes and shake her head in disapproval and attend to the ordering of her domestic universe, which she believes gives her authority over all of my world. Hah!
This week I’ll finish up reading Larry Correia’s “Monster Hunter Seige” and post a review. The hard cover version came out back in July but I buy the paperback for convenience and that version just got issued. The site has been a little slow because I’m putting together a sort of “best of” post on my southwest landscape trip for a link that Captain Capitalism is providing me and it’s a time-consuming endeavor. It’s like eleven hundred files and I’m still learning how to use Capture One. So bear with me. That post should be pretty interesting for the photo enthusiasts. As I mentioned earlier I’ll get those rental lenses on Friday the 11th and that will spawn some interesting posts on the viability of using Sigma lenses with Canon mount on the Sony A7 cameras. That may be interesting to Canon shooters with Sigma glass who have been interested in switching to Sony and anyone who is still constrained by Sony’s telephoto and macro lens choices.
The other thing I am interested in writing about is the direction of right wing movement. I am trying to formulate my own particular spin on what makes sense going forward. There is a lot of confusion and undirected anger that doesn’t seem to be producing much in the way of results. And there seems to be a certain amount of opportunism and charlatanism that makes it difficult to know what is solid and worthwhile. Sometimes it seems that several people have each latched onto a different piece of the puzzle needed to reform the current situation but like the blind men and the elephant they only “see” a small part of the reality and are missing the big picture. And because of that, they diagnose that small part of the problem and their solution doesn’t address the broader situation. And some of the “wise men” are too extreme. They would throw out the baby with the bath water. The more I think about solutions for the social disintegration the more I think that restoring the common-sense institutions we used to have is the solution. Stopping unlimited immigration is neither impossible nor radical. Restoring respect for the traditions and institutions of our forefathers is important and relatively straight forward. And replacing social justice and reverse discrimination with actual justice is so rational that it shouldn’t even require explanation. I think some of the emphasis on race reality is a response to the absurdity that occurs when racial and sexual protectionism and intersectionality tactics are used to attack the American white middle and working classes. If you eliminate these irritants then the rules of American society should be competent to allow different types of people to function relatively harmoniously. Anyway, that is what I’m starting to think. I’m definitely interested in other opinions. And I read around to hear what other people are coming up with. For instance I’m going to read Gregory Cochran’s “The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” and David Reich’s “Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past” to see if there’s anything in biology that rules out my optimism for a functional multi-ethnic America.
And finally, I’d love to get more feedback from the readers. Even if it’s negative. It’s useful to know what you like and what you don’t. Or even to just say hi. It’s definitely appreciated and part of why I made this site. I am interested in hearing other points of view. And if you find something interesting on-line pass along the link.
The ZMan has a post today ( The Narcotic of Minor Celebrity ), that should be of interest to most of us who are the audience for the right wing blogs and sites. All of these judgements are extremely subjective and it definitely matters whose ox is being gored but there are some good points being raised. It’s the nature of modern web commerce that drama increases web traffic and so we get a lot of drama. But attacking each other turns it into a zero sum game where someone wins and someone loses. That doesn’t build a community. I guess the question comes down to what the right wing web presence will look like in the future. And it’s an important question. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are shutting down conservative content providers and Google has demonstrated its willingness to selectively hide right wing content. Assuming that nothing changes another method for promoting right wing messages and businesses will be needed. With respect to this I have a little bit of interesting data. I tried out Google AdWords for about a year. I determined that the clicks from that source had an almost 100% bounce rate and almost never returned. So chances are they are click-farm zombie hits. And this highlights the necessity for growing our own stuff and supporting an ecosystem on the right. This will require a certain amount of cooperation and also a reasonable amount of tolerance for people with at least slightly different ideologies. I see the bickering and purity tests as counterproductive. I don’t espouse locking hands and singing kumbaya with the SJWs but I don’t think there is any danger of that anyway. I think that attacking people who are more or less on our side is slowing down the coalescing of a consensus that is occurring on the right. What seems to be missing is a framework that allows all these disparate elements to engage and allow for synergy. I imagine the Republican party should be that framework except it’s not. It’s part of the problem instead. It’s more or less occupied territory. I’d say we need a new party except that’s a recipe for disaster. What’s needed is a cultural/commercial enterprise to give the right a space to interact. The closest thing I can think of is a right wing version of Amazon. That’s a tall order. Maybe Peter Thiel could get to work on it. In the meantime we all should do our part to support anything that halfway looks like a step in the right direction. But boy it’s hard to find.
The network tv season has just about reached its conclusion. Summer re-run season is upon us and in a meaningful way it no longer matters at all. I am effectively down to one show (“The Middle”) that I truthfully consider entertaining. It’s been about two years since “The Big Bang Theory” was funny. “Last Man Standing” which used to add a tiny amount of right wing commentary in with the family sit-com formula had a comatose season that telegraphed the news that this season would be its last. “Kevin Can Wait” is a pale shadow of how funny “King of Queens” sometimes was and nothing else on the tube even mildly interests me. So, I’ve finally had to face it. There is no reason to watch network television anymore. Cable is slightly more promising. There are a few series that I hear are entertaining. I’ve been watching earlier seasons of Silicon Valley and it is funny but hardly worth paying for HBO. I can probably stream whatever I want on Amazon or Netflix or Hulu or blah, blah, blah. So, I can probably also join the ranks of those who have cut the cable and use the internet as their data and entertainment umbilicus. But for me that’s weird.
The baby boomers were raised by the boob tube. It seemed like it was always on. It was the background music to our lives. ABC, NBC and CBS were our babysitters, our teachers, our neighbors and in a strange way our friends. We sort of depended on them to tell us what cars were cool, what other kids were wearing and what music we should listen to. Now I guess that has been replaced by the ubiquitous cell phone link to you-tube and facebook and whatever is trending on Twitter. Well, I don’t do cell phone, but I guess the internet on my laptop is the equivalent. So now I amuse myself with that. But it’s not the same. Sure, I’ve replaced the network news with a handful of blogs and news aggregators. And I search for reviews of movies and cable shows and books on the right-wing blogs and for the most part I can find what I want but something is missing.
In the 1990s I went to work and could talk to coworkers and find out about shows like Seinfeld and Home Improvement and it felt like we all shared a similar perspective on the humor or the take on current events. The writers of the shows reflected the common culture and the sensibilities of the country at large. That’s completely gone. We are fractured and alienated from each other to such an extent that it almost isn’t meaningful to talk about one country as existing anymore. I guess we are at least two peoples. And unfortunately, the group I’m in doesn’t have a media. We have the rudiments of one. But it’s much harder to make it work effectively and it doesn’t feel as seamless and comforting as the old one was.
So, this post is just me thinking out loud and reflecting on where we are. I can remember one day during the Iraq War driving home from work and listening to NPR on the car radio. The slanted and dishonest reporting was so unbearable that I vowed never to listen to another show of any kind on Public Radio or television. And just saying it felt good. But it was the beginning of a long process to identify alternate sources and structures to patronize and support. I buy my fiction from sources that do not force a leftist narrative on their authors. I never click on a news article from the NY Times or the Washington Post or Politico or any of the other leftist mouthpieces. I never watch a Colbert or a Jon Stewart routine. I don’t go to or rent a movie with a leftist slant or agenda. I support politicians who vote for the things I want. I sent a substantial check to Donald Trump during his campaign. I only support charities and organizations that reflect my values. I fill in the gaps around the places where the cancer had to be excised.
And I write this blog. I give my opinions and I spread the word on any people or sites that I think are right wing and useful. And I try to entertain and give encouragement.
So where are we? At the beginning. Is it good enough? No, but it’s a beginning.