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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
Biden Lives Matter!
There are some relatively reasonable Democrats in Arizona.
My member of Congress is Tom O’Halleran. He was a Republican member of the Arizona Legislature for eight years before he was defeated by a Far-Right candidate in the Primary. He switched to the Democrat Party. He is one of the most moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives.
Dennis DeConcini voted for Clarence Thomas in the U.S. Senate back in 1991 when Thomas squeaked through by a 52-48 vote.
I get much more static from Trump Republicans than Democrats. When Democrats ask about the $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation bill, I point out that I can’t support as a fiscal conservative. Mark Kelly is too liberal for my taste, by Senator Krysten Sinema is fighting along Joe Manchin to stop or cut the Reconciliation Bill. When there is a bill that only 2 or 3 Democrats has voted for, she is usually one of them.
Maybe it’s been long enough that this can be used again:
Could you point out a vote he has taken that was not in line with what Biden/Pelosi want?
What was the vote for Sonia Sotomayor? For Elena Kagan? How about Kavanaugh? Or Amy Coney Barrett? How come leftists justices breeze through, but conservative justices barely make it?
Well, obviously, the problem with Kavanaugh and Barrett was that they were “Trumpy.”
Clarence Thomas wasn’t “Trumpy.”
I don’t know what you mean, but that’s a scurrilous lie. He never killed anybody directly.
We don’t know that.
So, true.
Mr. Butler, thank you for taking the time to read my response your article. Now, can I ask you to take a little more time and think… really think… about the multiple failures and capitulations that have led to so many rejecting your “superior forms of conservatism.” You and all the other conservative pundits who write articles that are read and applauded by other conservative pundits but have zero impact on the body politic need to take a good hard look at the disappointment felt by so many of us. It’s easy to take out that big old brush and dismiss us as inchoate “rabble;” it’s harder to step outside the bubble and try to understand and take some responsibility for how things got this way.
Clarence Thomas was “Trumpy” before Trump was “Trumpy.”
That wasn’t me.
Sorry for the confusion, I was trying to agree with your comment while answering Mr. Butler’s comments and, like the GOP promising to cut funding to PBS, I failed.
Stipulated.
It’s probably your inner squish.
And who lost in general elections anyways.
I don’t know that its better for you that you decided to write the article of [your] own volition.
It does sound like a bad case of Jonah-itis, perhaps a complication of TDS?
Likely, but I was hoping to debase myself sufficiently to get an answer to my question.
If this refers to my little humorous fiction, I promise you it was completely fabricated and condensed for comedy purposes, like the way SNL makes fun of Republicans. I never really thought someone told you, or asked you to write about red pills. Not for a moment. It was comedy about how boomers ( I’m one myself) see young people and often court their perspective and may not have the same references.
I thought you ultimately came off well in the scene.
The only little ‘dig’, which I will stand by, was the implication that the article was filled with irrelevant connections (mysogny) and pedantry (Gnosticism) making it lengthy and tedious for me, especially when it was already somewhat insulting to people who I happen to agree with.
And, truth be told, I have never seen The Matrix myself. However I do readily understand the concepts, probably most attributable to my experiences with various psychedelics in my youth and middle age.
Otherwise I am generally in accord with the author and Drew in Wisconsin. Thanks for replying, and no hard feelings. No one likes to be misrepresented. I know, it happens all the time to me and my political faction.
My God man, it’s just a metaphor. Overused, misused, whatever. But that’s not the problem, is it?
The problem between us – the two factions within the ‘big tent’ GOP, is how we perceive “political reality”. Then we can asses whether we have enough common ground to use the possessive “our”.
I
You ought to do yourself the favor of watching at least the first one. It’s one of the few sci-fi movies where they got almost everything right.
I’ve seen it once, with Spanish subtitles. Seeing it, I thought it was a comedy. But I guess that’s just early Keanu.
That’s probably the only way I could take it too.
Jack and Jonah need a time out from the small circle of jerks they find themselves in.
If Trump had died in 2007 or something, and another candidate had run, Trump never happened, they’d still be saying the exact same thing. Just make good policy arguments, and people will vote for you.
That doesn’t work. It never works. Reagan’s messaging was enormously simple. That worked, because it appealed to rational people who saw what the country had become in the past few decades of liberal policy implementation.
Jack and Jonah are also sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Each other’s egos, which contributes quite nicely to self-aggrandizing egotism.
It’s because he’s supremely clever, you rubes.
I transitioned from a Red or Black pilled conservative to a War of the Roses Monarchist favoring the House of York and opposed to anything Tudor.
I want the incestuous, incompetent, and doltish American Elite to spend more time endlessly slaughtering each other among themselves for a powerless throne than trying to run my life.
Accurate.
And hilarious.
I can’t speak for anybody else here, but I’m really looking forward to my daily enfolding.
Doesn’t Jack have to rush off to create digital media that’s hosted on an online platform? Serious conservatives await the processing of stakes of our political reality.