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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
The problem is that they don’t kill each other; they get us to kill each other.
Possibly but the collateral civilian deaths during the War of the Roses were limited because the combatants viewed each other’s party as only the Nobility and retainers.
The trick is to convince each side that their opponent doesn’t have any popular support then sit back and enjoy the show but make sure there is no Welsh interloper hanging around.
Come for the center right discussion. Stay for the Tudor hostility.
I like the direction this thread is going.
I await the processing of steaks for my grilling reality.
I had a completely different take on Butler’s article. To me he was cautioning against spending too much time in an online bubble and not enough time in the real world working for conservative policies.
Given that the only way to get conservative policies is to put like minded people in office that ought to be the focus.
And it is possible to do that. Most state legislatures are red and red laws and policies are being enacted. It is possible to convince people that conservatism is the right idea, as we are seeing in the Texas Rio Grand Valley, of all places, where Tejano counties are turning red. Appealing to Tejanos with immigration enforcement, 2nd Amendment rights, and a conservative social agenda works.
What will not work is telling people that the election is rigged and they might as well not even vote.
It’s true tho.
I would say, if that was his intent, he did a poor job of expressing it.
Not everyone’s as clever as we are.
And yet they end up writing for National Review…
Welsh interlope > Irish deer.
@jackbutler – Thank you for engaging with this thread. I wanted to take a look at this, since the Matrix was one of my favorite movies. I graduated high school in 1999, so the Matrix hit me like a lot of folks around the same age. (eighties kids) I went in unspoiled, and drew parallels to my faith. There were a fair number of Christian groups doing Matrix themed events in college, and the lines became fairly iconic: “There is no spoon.” for one. I’ve tried to limit my excerpts to avoid trampling your copyright.
Did you watch the movie? At no point is the knowledge of the fake world treated as a precious item for an elite few. The very last lines are Neo taunting the rulers of the Matrix and boasting that he will set people free. In all of the discussions I have heard featuring the Red Pill / Blue Pill dichotomy, there is an evangelistic element. “Break free of the lies and join us!” Gnostic mysteries almost always were selective in who they brought aboard.
I first heard it politically in the men’s rights / anti-feminist movement. I’m not sure how advocating fair treatment of men in family court and in society generally is misogynist, but that attitude is why the phrase “red pilled” got associated with the manosphere. Reading something like “The War on Boys” or “Men on Strike” rejects the conventional narrative of women being the victim.
Well, “redpilled” more broadly means “rejecting the comfortable and conventional lies for the harsh truth.” Redpilled conservatives would mean rejecting a conventional understanding of politics and conservatism. For example, recognizing that we cannot make the Left happy and that people on the Left want to destroy our culture. It’s not really about the level of triumph, it’s about the consequences of defeat. Think of Michael Anton’s Flight 93 Election – we need to win, because the stakes are very high. If we win, we need to take action and make use of our time in power. Conservatives have always complained about not enough conservative policy being enacted and squishy moderates – seriously, I recall many articles on this in NRO. The difference is the redpilled want someone who recognizes the threat of the Left. Lindsay Graham’s defense of Justice Kavanaugh is a moderate’s version of this.
I think you are missing something big here. It’s less “you people are beneath me.” more like “Why can’t you see the danger?” or “Please wake up!” People tend to be overjoyed when someone new gets redpilled.
This is very far off base, and I do not know how you got this. Perhaps this kind of redpilled movement could only form with the Internet, allowing distant groups to collaborate, but I have never, ever seen a preference for digital interaction over in-person conversation. (outside of people who want anonymity) With the fear of “Big Tech” so common among the redpilled people I interact with, people would rather talk in person. Consider the lockdowns: if the redpilled people preferred digital interaction to physical interaction, they would have not minded the lack of personal contact.
This is a very good point, but seems wholly out of place in an article of people being redpilled / redpilled conservatives. There are lots of keyboard warriors who need to be reminded that Twitter is not real life, the vast majority of whom are on the Left. I’ve never heard the term red pill or redpilled be used to refer to online-only activism. Online anti-woke / anti-SJW activism is more associate with dank memes, Pepe the frog, and “owning the libs”
You have described a Twitter Social Justice Warrior to a tee. Most of the redpilled people I know think 95% of Twitter is a Leftist dumpster fire, especially since Trump is off the platform. You find more of them on other social media, especially independent sites. Remember, part of the red pill is recognizing Big Tech is not your friend.
Now you are starting to get at the red pill. The idea that we need to fight by the same set of rules is a big part of it, along with the idea that business as usual politics will not work. However, it really is not fueled by Twitter interactions. It’s fueled by events in the news, personal interactions with Leftists, and responses from the Left and Right. Someone speaks out for conservative values, and gets cancelled. Democrats lie and commit crimes, and skate away without consequence. Sexual deviance and mental illness are celebrated and promoted to children. The red pill says this is not normal.
Here is the reason your article fails to explain redpilling and has so many people in the thread frustrated: Being redpilled and being extremely online are different things. From the start, the red pill meant embracing the uncomfortable truth, whether you see it via the Internet, a book, TV, or a friend. Owning the libs on Twitter or Facebook does not require dealing with any uncomfortable truths – in fact, it is often a way to hide from being irrelevant.
I’ve heard that argument. However, characters who jack in to the Matrix appear as their mental self image. Neo in the “Real World” appears as a bald skinny gun in rough clothing, while in the Matrix, he’s a smooth dangerous warrior in a trenchcoat and shades. The Matrix represents what you want to be, while the outside represents what you really are. So the Wachowskis would look like gorgeous women in the Matrix, as opposed to what they actually are. If anything, it is anti-trans. Just Some Guy did an excellent video that covers this in depth. (CoC warning for language)
Again, you have either deliberately or inadvertently conflated being redpilled with being an online troll. Your conclusion falls flat as a result – you seem to be turning up your nose at other conservatives instead of condemning Gnostic elitism. A lot of the people who are redpilled draw on decidedly offline sources of information – I can’t believe you did not mention Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. That book is regular cited as how turn the Left’s tactics against them. People also turn to historical precedents and more conventional intellectuals. Twitter is for amusement at best.
I think you have good points on people treating social media like real life and ignoring real world actions that they could take, and people can argue on whether the rejection of business as usual politics is justified. As it it stands, you dropped the pill box on the floor.
MGTOW gets a lot of derision from traditional conservatives. I think some of it is warranted for some people. However, that is totally unfair over all. It would be interesting if every time a conservative were to challenge the men’s rights groups, if they could address their complaints instead of dismissing them because they can find a small portion they don’t like, and tag that minority as the whole group.
These facts are true:
When someone on the right dismisses Men Going Their Own Way, I always wonder if they have actually looked at the clear pain these men are in. My guess is, they don’t. They don’t because they still buy into a traditional storyline about how things are that predates the 1960’s. That is quite conservative, but that storyline is no longer valid.
I wait no longer. My long period of waiting, and personal suffering, has finally passed.
Check out the forearms on that guy! He should be able to process reality steaks like a champion!
Yeah, I don’t think I need anyone telling me that, any more than I need someone telling me I’ll have to pay for parking downtown.
It’s these cutting-edge insights that, if we just provided them to our colleagues across the aisle, we’d convince them that spending trillions we don’t have is a bad thing for them, and they’d get re-elected every time if they started cutting benefits and paybacks that we can’t afford.
It’s just good science. Ask a guy who wrote a book about cliches that one time.
Comedy aside, I do think this is correct. To me that boils down to candidate recruitment, and lots of money.
Not my intention here to pile on Roderic – not at all. But it’s a jumping off point for a few other thoughts:
1. The answer to everything does not consist of “just elect politicians who think like us”, whatever ‘us’ may look like, and pick the pill color variant of your choice here. Which is not what I think what Roderic was saying, at all, but it speaks to the desire for easy solutions, which leads to some of the below.
2. What’s ignored in that “just” piece in #1 is the near-insurmountable inertia of federal spending and the government’s organizational construct that’s been getting bigger for a century, and the inevitable incentives that exist for politicians to want to get back into office again.
How do they get back into office again? By going along with said spending and inertia, else you’ll get left out of the more influential committee assignments, you’ll get less help from the party organization, and you’ll essentially be marginalized.
3. Similar to regulatory capture, or just a simpler idea around being co-opted, politicians (at least at the federal level, and I would assume it’s still there but to lesser degrees at state and local levels) inevitably work to support the overall machine as it exists today, else they will no longer be part of the machine. See “marginalization”, now on sale at a Dollar Store near you.
4. If any politician is red-pilled, meaning they’re aligned with the thinking that the whole enterprise has gone wrong, the incentives are there for them to eventually, and quickly, spit the pill out. All the incentives are on the side of maintaining the status quo. All of them.
5. Finally, it’s the longer-term consequences that are the easiest to ignore, today, tomorrow, for 3 years. That’s why it’s easy to go along, and get along, and pass a budget (even if it’s a catastrophe for us and future generations). A budget, or spending, that only ratchets in one direction, to insolvency, as debt services chews up discretionary spending first, then starts gnawing at the monsters in the room, the completely underfunded liabilities of Medicaid, Medicare, and all the other promised outlays that we literally cannot afford, but keep promising ourselves we deserve and somehow someone else will pay for it.
Yeah. :(
Government is a (necessary) parasite. Our government is large enough that even removing tiny pieces
causecauses pain to parts of the body and that pain will engender such yelling and threats of lawsuits that even the most dedicated surgeons will quit working.Omega, I agree with what you’ve written. But I don’t understand all these questions about the meaning of “red pill”. It’s a metaphor from a movie. And in the movie, it was just a metaphor. And it’s a popular metaphor; not the best, but popular. We don’t have to go back millennia and ask in what way does The Matrix promote one sect or religion or heresy or another. It’s merely a turn of phrase used to refer to the scales falling from one’s eyes, or having one’s eyes opened. Or having your world shaken. Or realizing that beliefs that you’ve based your life on is wrong. And we don’t have to — in fact it is improper to — equate the metaphor with certain groups that use it, or to their views.
And The Matrix was not gnostic. It was a fairly straight-up Christ analogy. The computer program is what the Bible refers to as the world, the world of sin and deception that we are naturally born into. And the red pill represents coming to a recognition of God and accepting Him and His reality. If there’s a dualism, it’s the conflict between the natural man, the man born dead in his sins, and the spiritual man, or the new man, given new life and meaning by the seed of the Word of God.
When I first read there was an argument about its hidden meaning, I thought: That’s silly, it just means that experience has changed your world view. It also implies that some people reject letting experience change their world view because they prefer the lie.
Now there is provocative symbolism in writing that no one should ever take the red pill.
Whatcha got cookin in the cast iron Drew? You know I’m just a hop, skip, and a jump from Wisconsin. I can stop for some Spotted Cow at the border before I get there…
I’m not even sure. The pic was from a couple years ago. Probably chunks of zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, . . . mushrooms? The meat must not have hit the grill yet.
Two years ago. My neighbor’s trailer is still on the street.
However, I’m prepping some steaks for my supper reality right now.
Not too long ago, “what will not work” is exactly what we found out (and always believed) does work: “convince people that conservatism is the right idea, as we are seeing in the Texas Rio Grand Valley, of all places, where Tejano counties are turning red. Appealing to Tejanos with immigration enforcement, 2nd Amendment rights, and a conservative social agenda works.” Truth. Clarity. Fundamentals.
Now election integrity needs to be added to the list no matter how often the same people tell us that it will scare the moderates or independents, no matter how much scorn and derision it brings. Truth. Clarity. The rest is empty manipulation.
I have a neighbor that became fascinated with a couple of old-time pickup trucks which he purchased. Unfortunately he didn’t have room for both of them in his driveway, so he parked one of them on the street, my side, two houses down, for two years. The snowplow had to go around the truck in the winter and couldn’t get back on its path until it got just about halfway by my driveway boot. I just kept my mouth shut. But then one day I woke up to find the pickup moved to directly in front of my house. That was it. The window was cracked open on the truck and I slipped a note in. I HOPE YOU PLAN ON MOVING YOUR TRUCK VERY SOON! I know…perhaps a bit too subtle. But it worked! The truck was gone the next morning. He found a way to fit in in his driveway.
It goes back further, before Anno Domini, to Plato’s Analogy of the Cave. There is wisdom inherent in the world, truth engraved upon creation. That’s why you can find people advocating Christian ethics like the Golden Rule in areas where the Gospel never reached.
Having a messiah figure in Neo is just the Christianity in our heritage poking its nose into the story.
Okay. But Christianity and the promise of a hero to save humanity goes back to the Garden in Genesis, and the suffering Hero goes back at least as far as King David.
The article just confirms that Mr. Butler, like Pauline Kael, doesn’t know anybody who voted for X.
This looks like an internet phenomenon to him because that’s the only place he sees it. This is like saying that people only starve on televison because nobody he knows is starving.
I stopped subscribing to or reading NRO years ago. ACM was the last man standing over there — hope he’s doing well. By the time of the AGAINST TRUMP or whatever magazine cover, I was vapor trails.
Yes, and the world is digital now. Magazines? Mail? Network Television? None of those are were people live anymore. A while back it was a big adjustment for small organizations (like Boy Scout troops, Knights of Columbus, etc) to switch from mail, paper, and kitchen-wall-telephone to email. Now people get angry if you send things via email instead of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram; they get angry if you’re not on those things and organizers are forced to work around your technology deficiencies and cause them additional work. However, using the modern tools does not restrict our thoughts anymore than a restricted media stream with curated gatekeeprs did.
There’s good to these things too, though. Our reach and who can reach us has been expanded. So many of us have popped the bubbles that once surrounded us. I remember being primed as late as 2012 for new takes even before any of them started penetrating by theretofore Establishment Bubble. When I finally discovered these new takes, people who were articulating my unarticulated and jumbled thoughts, I rejoiced. The Alt-Right before the smears started sticking more universally; also non-right voices making sense on things I cared about: Ace of Spades, Milo, Sargon, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Breitbart, Rebel, Candace Owens, Hitchens, Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Klavan, Schlichter, Jimmy Dore, etc. After a while the meta-message started popping my meta-bubble too: the common thread is that all of these people noticed the Establishment (Uniparty, The Machine, The Combine, Deep State) had become more active, more authoritarian, and more directly oppositional to things that I care about.
Make no mistake: these people and sources didn’t fill me up with things that weren’t already there. These people helped me organize and make sense of what was already there. Also, I had no intention of abandoning outlets like NR or The Weekly Standard, but their irrational reactions and ineffectiveness pushed me away. As they say, I didn’t leave NR, NR left me.