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NRO Warns Against Taking the Red Pill
Jack Butler at NRO wants everyone to know that “Red-Pilled” is synonymous with “Kook Who Believes in Cuckoo-Nuts Whackadoodle Conspiracy Theories” and Jonah Goldberg nods his chins in eager wholehearted agreement. 0-+Butler takes out his four-lane-wide brush to paint those who question what we are supposed to believe about politics as deluded social outcasts who reside “in digital worlds of their own creation.” He chastises them for rejecting “superior forms of conservatism, ones that appeal to reason and to more reliable forms of knowledge and authority.” Butler goes on to say, “The redpilled also tend to have a contempt for politics as it is practiced in the real world,” to which I reply, “What rational person wouldn’t?”
The “superior forms of conservatism” Butler refers to can only mean, given where he is writing, those that have accomplished no conservative policy in this century other than tax cuts for the donor class. Butler derides Red-Pilled skeptics as conspiracy nuts, without ever addressing their beliefs, or how they arrive at them. Let’s break down some of it, won’t you?
Blue-Pilled Superior Conservative Narrative: The Republicans are the opposition party to the Democrats; representing fiscal conservatism, free markets, and individual liberty.
Red-Pilled Reality: The Republican Party is controlled opposition that rarely rolls back any policies enacted by Democrats, much less advances conservative free-market policies or fiscal responsibility. The Republican Party sent two dozen Obamacare Repeal bills to Obama’s desk when they knew they would be vetoed. They couldn’t even manage to get a single, watered-down, weak tea partial repeal to Trump’s desk when he would have signed it. Paul Ryan was presented as a fiscal hawk, but his budget deals spent even more money than “irresponsible” big spender Barack Obama asked for. When it comes to tax cuts for their donors, Republicans get those done no matter the opposition. On Border Security, on Health Care Reform, or even cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, it’s invariably “Well, gosh, we just couldn’t do it. The Democrats (or the Democrats+a few supposedly rogue Republicans) straight up blocked us. Shucky Darn. Please donate so we can fight harder next time.”
Blue-Pilled Superior Conservative Narrative: Our multiple national security agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD, HLS) are populated by non-partisan professionals of unquestionable caliber and professionalism who are worthy of our esteem because of their important work protecting the nation’s interests.
Red-Pilled Reality: For some, the ultimate red pill is the track record of our national security agencies: The FBI was tipped off that the Boston Marathon bombers were up to no good and chose to ignore it. The FBI interviewed Orlando Pulse shooter Omar Mateen, but decided he wasn’t a threat. It’s been four years since the worst mass shooting in history, and the FBI has… nothing. Jim Comey’s FBI was tipped off that Larry Nassar was molesting little girls, but did nothing for a year and a half. On the other hand, the FBI sent 13 agents to check out a garage pull at a NASCAR site in North Carolina, and busted Aunt Becky for bribing a college official. (Oh, and have you been paying attention to the FBI’s utter clown-show in instigating a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer?)
It’s striking how conservative skepticism of enormous government bureaucracies utterly evaporated while Trump was president and his presidency was undermined daily by longtime bureaucratic operatives. In the words of Jonah Goldberg: “Deep-staters are now those who follow the rules in ways inconvenient to Trump’s personal desires or political ambitions.” When I was in college, the existence of the permanent bureaucracy (i.e., the Deep State) was poli sci 101. When Trump finally exposed it, suddenly the left and the Never Trump conservatives insisted the Deep State was a “conspiracy theory.”
And in the broader Federal Bureaucracy, Republicans failed to hold anyone accountable for the Obama VA Scandal that allowed 300,000 veterans to die waiting for care, or anyone at the EPA accountable for dumping a million gallons of toxic waste into the Animas River, or anyone at the IRS accountable for targeting conservative groups for harassment, or anyone at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms accountable for the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. But only nutty, red-pilled conspiracy theorists believe that our bureaucratic state is corrupt, incompetent, and never held to account.
Blue-Pilled Superior Conservative Narrative: The Justice system, while imperfect, largely succeeds at dispensing justice impartially and equitably.
Red-Pilled Reality: Hundreds of January 6 protesters are being held in jail indefinitely on nonviolent misdemeanor charges while the FBI destroys people simply for being present in Washington DC on January 6th. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters who burned neighborhoods and looted businesses are released the same day with charges eventually dropped entirely. It certainly looks like the level of “Justice” one receives depends on one’s political alignment and social status.
Certainly, there are some people who take the red-pill thing too far and believe in some crazy stuff. (“Yes, that’s exactly what I would expect one of the Bilderberger Lizard People to say.”) But Butler is using those nuts to justify establishment conservatives who consider their skeptics a bunch of “rabble,.”
Being red-pilled just means you’ve been paying attention, thinking critically, and recognizing that a lot of what you have been told to believe just isn’t so.
Published in General
Another great post, Victor.
There’s a lot of fairness out there. Forty years of Republican fairness.
Conspiracy Theorist [kuhn-spir–uh-see thee-er-ist] (Noun): A person who gets his/her news from six months into the future.
It’s a sophomoric analysis. Like Jack Butler, you don’t understand the concept either.
I think Jack (and other NR writers) are motivated by a fear that awareness of institutional corruption (i.e., the “red-pilled” worldview) will erode loyalty to those institutions. They’re right to worry, but it raises an important question: Do we owe loyalty to corrupt institutions? At what point is it fine to declare, “I’m done with you. Good riddance!”?
People on the woke left take a look at the world and say, “This place is riddled with sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and colonialism. Burn it down!” People in the middle — the institutional leaders — adopt the rhetoric of the left in an attempt to protect the legitimacy of their institutions, and we end up with woke capitalism, PR statements, “anti-racism” trainings, and other forms of managerial virtue-signaling. We on the irritated right look at both the genuine revolutionaries and the woke-but-only-to-a-point people and think, “Gee. If this is what America is (or has become), then why should I stand behind it? What is there for me in this topsy-turvy world? What, exactly, does the future promise?”
I sometimes tangle with leftists in the comments sections of other websites, and a sentiment I often encounter is, “Well, you say you’re a conservative, but a conservative would want to protect the universities, not defund them. You people are supposed to like institutions, right?”
Many of these people try to shoehorn wokeness into the American tradition. They think that real Americans are those Americans who place themselves at the cutting edge of evolving morality — the activists who fight “injustice” and “promote change.” A real American would be “inclusive” and “open-minded.”
So, the left infiltrates institutions, guts them, wears them as skinsuits, and when someone complains about this process, the reply is, “Oh, look at you, disloyal bigot. You’re not a real conservative! Real conservatives want to conserve.” Annoying, but that’s what we’re up against.
I’ve never really thought of conservatives as wanting to conserve anything. I’ve always just thought of them as wanting small government that doesn’t interfere with liberty.
Thank you for your gracious response.
I can’t abide slavish devotion to the Establishment.
Let’s also not ignore the more or less built in assumption that Democrats are capable of running candidates that are “reasonable.” This requires a view on what is reasonable that leans left.
I like the analysis of NRO Warns Against Taking the Red Pill by @VictorTangoKilo. It aligns to a lot of what I have been feeling about “never-Trumpers” since the 2016 election. I always thought that the right/conservatives or whatever were united in their opposition to the Left. Every “never-Trumper” has spoken eloquently about the history and dangers coming from the Left, which means Communism, Socialism and Marxism. Hell, Jonah Goldberg wrote about it eloquently in “Liberal Fascism.” After the 2016 election, they all seemed to abandon that commonality and oppose Trump, who was at least bringing up ideas like illegal immigration that are never mentioned in the media. He was the only person standing in the way of a genuine leftist take over of government, started by Barack Obama, that would continue under Hillary Clinton. Yet, “never Trumpers” were against the President and tacitly endorsing the Democrats, if not outright. So now we have Biden, a leftist in practice only, and the country is worse for it. Red pill, blue pill, black pill. I feel I have few allies and only armed resistance is the only answer. Thank God I live in California. *checks notes* Oh wait. Never mind.
This is a great post, and quite an effective takedown of the NRO piece in question.
Yeah, I think the fatal flaw in Gary’s understanding is that Dems run “reasonable people”. That says a lot.
In my ‘objective’ analysis, I could agree that some of the fringy Trump supporters aren’t entirely reasonable, but compared to most Democrats? They are completely sane.
I think the real problem for people like Gary is they are very vulnerable to the guilt-by-association charge. They want to live in a fantasy world where not one person in their party isn’t a paragon of virtue and perfectly ‘reasonable’.
When the lefty thug-mob finally comes for Gary, he will protest that he hated Trump and gave money etc., but they will stone him to death anyway on the grounds he liked Reagan.
Mr. Butler is writing for a medium that largely exists in the digital world, yet seems very disappointed by those who he perceives “live” in the digital world. Have I got that right?
When Jonah Goldberg tweeted this, I just threw up my hands in despair: “But: Whether you think what Biden’s doing is a sincere/legal/noble effort to fight the pandemic or a tyrannical outrage or a cynical media strategy, IT WOULDN’T BE HAPPENING IF EVERYONE WAS VACCINATED. Get vaccinated, ffs.”(9/9/21) “Conservatives” demanding people to do something that may not be for everyone, depending on your medical condition or reasonable opposition, is tyrannical. And now many people in the world agree with this sentiment.
As opposed to the awesome “effectiveness” of the Republican Establishment. (Obamacare, still in force. Borders, still wide open. Regulatory state, still unreformed. Government debt, massive and growing. Federal bureaucracies… out of control and unaccountable for anything.)
Yes. Spare me this whining about ineffective “Red Pill minorities.” We’ve had a completely ineffective establishment GOP for far too long. They make angry speeches very well, because they need sound-bites for fund-raising. But they do jack/squat when they actually have power. And the country lurches leftward.
“I don’t want to remember nothing…” – Cypher
An appropriate metaphor for being red-pilled.
We are all considered wrong or crazy ( or evil) by Democrats. It becomes a question whether we ourselves believe it.
We are all locked up in their virtual insane asylum and some of us, like the author of this article, think that getting approval from the Big Nurse and the Combine, will lead to a good political life.
In 2016, we discovered that our Never Trump erstwhile allies are “voluntary”.
But enough about Trey Gowdy.
VTK for three!
@vthek, I am glad you read my article. I just wish that you, and most of the commenters here, had read me more carefully instead of putting words in my mouth and thoughtlessly lumping me in with someone I used to work with or with the facile caricatures of what some think people at National Review believe. I would say the most egregious misrepresentations of me are: 1) that I wrote this article at someone’s behest; this is a kind of bastardization of false consciousness that prevents rational refutation, but to the extent you are able to take me at my word, which I hope is not zero, I assure you I produced this article of my own volition; and 2) that I am some kind of compliant sheep bleating in unison with everyone else who is purportedly content with the status quo. If you read my work carefully, even the piece in question here, you will not find someone who is exactly happy with the way things are. What you will find is someone distressed at the tendency of people to enfold themselves into digital worlds whose purpose amounts to mutual self-gratification and theatrical posturing instead of seriously considering and reckoning with our political situation. The red pill/blue pill dynamic is, in my view, no longer a helpful way to process the stakes of our political reality.
You’d have been better off had you blamed someone else.
I’m not one to blame others, or to shy away from my own work. Are you?
Or rather, conserve liberty, rather than whatever the status quo happens to be at some point in time.
I appreciate your engagement in the thread. Thanks.
The problem you have, as I see it, is that the entity you are writing for set itself four square against Trump and his voters. This after years of NR cheering the likes of Romney and McCain. It means you start in the basement as it were. I know NR does not have one voice. However, NR was Against Trump. You cannot have that as a cover and then expect people to believe you didn’t mean it. It may not be fair to you, but it is a reality.
No matter what terminology you use there is there is still a perceived divide deep divide between those people who think we are in an existential war for our country and those people think it’s still business as usual. Rightly or wrongly, NR Is is perceived by many people as believing in business As usual. National Review spent years telling me to wait until we had control 1st of the house then the senate then all 3. National review told me to hold my nose and vote for people I found despicable like Mitt Romney and John McCain. I was a good conservative soldier and did what I was told.
You don’t even seem to know what you wrote:
Great. So where’s your call to action? Or are you just engaging in “theatrical posturing”? You blame the “very online” conservatives. Dude, you are a “very online” conservative. You are paid to put your opinion online for an outlet that is literally called “National Review Online.”
This is your conclusion:
So what are these superior forms that appeal to reason and knowledge and . . . authority? Appeals to authority don’t work on me because our “authorities” are proving themselves to be terrible people. “Pursue forms of learning at action,” but . . . what? You casually dismiss a huge swath of conservatives in favor of . . . who? What? How?
There’s nothing persuasive here. There’s no encouragement or admonition towards anything except a few well-placed buzzwords. “Reason!” “Authority!” There’s just kind of a looking down on people — who are on your own side!
Allow me to complete this thought:
And then, when I got someone in office that I liked, did you return the favor? No, you called me a loathsome unthinking cretin, like the president I voted for, and many of you turned tail and in essence ran to the other side.
It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that the place where conservatives are actually making progress is at the local levels, where, for example, groups of concerned parents are rising up against mask mandates and CRT in the classroom. These parents are (to use that term) “red-pilled” in that they have woken up to the destruction around them caused by years of leftist-control, and by God they’re doing something about it!
This grass-roots organizing is what the left has been doing for years. It’s why they have succeeded. The left organizes for pressure and power. The right organizes for . . . pleasure cruises and conventions.
The right needs to learn to use the same tactics the left has used successfully. I’ll throw my support to the people who are doing the work, not the ones tut-tutting about how that kind of action is just too indecorous.
I can’t hide mine. Biden is Beautiful. Reaganesque!