You Say You Want a Revolution: What It Could Actually Take, a Series

 

A waiter comes over to a table of Jewish women. He asks, “Is anything all right?”

It’s okay; I can tell that joke! My wife is Jewish, and she thinks it’s funny. Remember when we could tell harmless jokes to each other? How about you, Ricochet reader? When you look at today’s culture, today’s mass media, see the movies, the TV shows, look at major media in general, ‘Is anything all right?’ This is aimed, but not exclusively, at social conservatives. I often spar with you but you deserve the cultural tools to defend yourselves. When it comes to subject matter, we’ll keep slugging that out the Ricochet way, on the Member Feed. This is about dealing with the media world outside Ricochet.

GMcV alleged “expert advice” has to be taken with this caveat: I made my living in the ways it’s been done before. I don’t, and can’t, know for sure what’s going to work in the future. I’m usually pretty good about why something hasn’t worked in the past. Previous posts on Hollywood Communists and Hollywood Conservatives can always be elaborated on later, but they basically bring the story up to the present. I’ve participated in how long-term change is done in the media and the details of what it costs to actually do it. My one rule: Human nature hasn’t changed over the years. My hunches, and I strongly suspect yours, are largely based on it.

Yes, of course, there are multiple ways that the culture of 60 years from now could be as unimaginably different from today’s as that of 60 years ago. A change of that magnitude takes the moral authority of the decades-long struggle to untangle the effects of legal racial segregation, the institutional tactical cleverness that it once took to divide the cultural “turf” and smartly hand off its sections, 1968-2018 to the very segments of the Left most motivated to explore its boundaries. Doing its equivalent in cultural heft and lasting deep influence would be a big deal that would have to last a long time, decades. It didn’t happen spontaneously for the Left, and it wouldn’t for the Right. Still, there comes a tipping point where that kind of change is so popular it more than pays for itself, more than pays for everything that went into creating it, plus interest, plus opportunity costs, plus the hard to price but genuine satisfaction of making things popular that ought to be popular.

Step back. Much of the daily social change thought of as “liberal” has happened since WWII, and is widely accepted, sometimes led by today’s conservatives. Let’s get this out of the way fast. There are no 1940s-style racists among us; at Ricochet, anyway. Anti-Semitism on the right isn’t a fiftieth of what it was as late as the ’50s, when I was a kid. Even the least feminist of our readers—which is really saying something—doesn’t yearn for a “Handmaid’s Tale” world. This post is largely neutral about the issues. It’s about tactics of expression that some of you might find useful when thinking about remolding public opinion. The point is for the overall, all-enveloping culture outside our website, there is no permissible debate anymore. Apparently too many outsiders react to all of us like they were the line of vengeful, torch-bearing villagers coming up the hill in a Frankenstein movie.

Despite the caricatures of pop culture, most of us—not all of us, of course—made our peace quite some time ago with truck stops stocking copies of Playboy magazine, Raquel Welch going topless for the big kiss scene, and the chances that people may arrive at the altar with at least some sexual experience. By the ’70s, those were no longer the hottest of cultural arguments, not because San Francisco and Greenwich Villlage said so, but because Nashville and Jacksonville came to agree. If an unmarried couple wanted to live together, that was between them and a consenting landlord. That compromise held up pretty well in the Reagan ’80s: if you’re an adult, read what you want, buy any videotape you want. Almost no limits. But keep it out of the broad public arena.

That truce had its friction for both sides in the ’90s. Gays didn’t get anything better than “Don’t ask, don’t tell”.”Forget about marriage; back then, nobody would even give them civil unions. Radical Blacks got Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment and the back of his hand once in office. Feminists were angry and unhappy with the man-obsessed, “do-me” feminism of HBO’s “Sex in the City.” On the other hand, SoCons never got ABC to drop “Ellen” or the occasional bare backside on “NYPD Blue.” SoCons never got Disney to condemn the informal “gay days” at the theme parks, or to sell Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax. Believe it or not, nobody got everything they wanted.

When in the 21st century and how did this unofficial, un-agreed-to national cultural truce unravel? It wasn’t an equal fight; the Left invaded. Taking over the staff of, say, New York’s Whitney Museum was one thing; muscling the NCAA, the NFL, and NASCAR into compliance was another. The right lost specific fights because they’d basically already lost the war a long time ago. Sure, government put a heavy thumb on the scale, but public opinion on a lot of social matters really has shifted, though not nearly as much as pollsters and Hollywood suggest.

There are always valid reasons to be doubtful about the prospects for long-term change and outright cynical about the short term. Let’s not kid ourselves. You and I and other Ricochet readers are a varied bunch who won’t agree on everything. We are cultural allies only up to a point. That expression of the old Left’s, “Fellow Traveler,” says it well. Be realistic. Conservatives ought to know that some policies are not going to be popular without a profound public shift that would have to take decades. In 2019’s world, LGBT-themed marketing by Disney is not going to discourage many grandmas from buying merchandise, from “Frozen” or Kylo Ren masks. To me, that’s okay. I like it. If you don’t agree, you should think about your options. They include transformation.

OK, an analogy. Please bear with me if you will. In 1939, all of the biggest world powers knew that atomic fission could be weaponized. Germany, the UK, Japan, the US and the USSR all had research programs that suggested that an atomic bomb was possible, but the scale of industrial production it would need was so gigantic, so expensive, that not only couldn’t they do it, but each grimly reassured themselves that nobody else was going to be able to either. Scientists and chemical engineers estimated that America would have to spend a breathtaking fortune to isolate even a few grams of fissionable Uranium 235, and at that stage, nobody knew what a bomb’s critical mass was—a kilogram? Ten? A hundred thousand grams? The cost of an entire war to produce just one single bomb? By 1940, that seemed to settle the question for FDR’s advisers.

Then in 1941, the British changed everything. They’d been in the war for a year and a half. America was still standing on the sidelines when UK scientists and military men sent a report to their counterparts in the US. It said, fairly bluntly, that a practical bomb was possible after all, and we’d better start working on it fast, because if we know it, the Nazis know it too. The report said how it could be done, technically and organizationally, with practical, if ultimately optimistic estimates of time and cost. They estimated $100 million but said frankly that it could be ten times that cost.

In the end, it was closer to 20 times that, but the bomb ended the Pacific War and transformed America’s role in the world. The 1941 UK report was what engineers and marketers might call a detailed product definition and packaging specification. It couldn’t anticipate every detail and breakthrough. It was a crucial preliminary blueprint for action. That’s what we’re suggesting that we all take a shot at here; designing a future cultural architecture and guessing at the outside dimensions of a large, generations-long movement with the focus of a Manhattan Project or a Moonshot that could actually make a difference. I’ll suggest ways it could be done. In the comments, you’ll most likely suggest many other ones, almost certainly better ones. After all, if nobody can even so much as imagine it could happen, let alone playing a part in making it happen, then we can all confidently guarantee it won’t.

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  1. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    I dunno what kind of talent it would take to persuade conservatives that if they keep hearing what they heard before each of the previous defeats or deceptions, they should learn to not listen to that comforting voice again

    I’m thinking we address the problem with mutual education via connectivity. That’s poor phrasing, but I think you get it. We don’t need one or two centralized superstar talents, we need a network with bidirectional communication. We have to enlist the talents of every participating adult, not disseminate some encapsulated wisdom.

    I’m thinking out loud and you probably shouldn’t listen, but every undamaged intellect will tend to travel (thru some phase space or other) towards the best local truth. We (think we) have a better idea of that truth than the current regime, but we need better distribution because they blanket the field.

    Of course, power law networks work to enshrine the first-good-enough-mover. That’s the situation we’re in now, with the current crop of LOTUs. I doubt there’s a vulnerability in the math. Need to think about this one. I’ll check in later.

    So the advantage we now have is, the people who created the new Silicon Valley are very weak on tech’s relation to America. They’re far less digital than TV-obsessed, as McLuhan would have said. Facebook & all other social media does almost nothing digital–it’s just TV celebrity, but universalized. Everyone can try, therefore destroying the few celebrities left, including by digging up dead celebrities to reveal they were monsters all along. That leaves the future open for people who take digital seriously enough to bet, five years down the line, facebook will be where TV is now. Another advantage is, we can think about America, whereas Zuckerberg was stupidly obsessed with globalization (again, power law…), which backfired massively.

    • #61
  2. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    The progressives have been very successful. 

    How did they do it? Did they have a permanent organizational and operational strategy for their protracted revolution?  Would the same strategy work for us, their enemies?

    Their movement was always wracked by factionalism. (Even Obama was an example of this, when he split off from the Community Organizer strategy of the Cooper Union Communists while working with Ayers and Dohrn in Hyde Park, and joined the group that believed in seizing power through elected office.)

    How did they overcome that factionalism, and not give up the long term struggle?

    • #62
  3. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Drew just misunderstood that thing about me proposing some separate & equal system. The man’s angry, it’s understandable. But Hank’s right, we have absolutely nothing to worry about an excess of kindness just now.

    I’m not talking about forcing the rich through the federal government or what have you. I’m talking about doing it through the institutions by which non-Progs associate. However much shame is needed to get the money elites to think straight.–Unless of course you think the money in non-Prog America has been doing the Lord’s work in public affairs & with a view to a better future for all. In which case, God bless!

    Here’s one unorthodox suggestion of a possible center of cultural resistance: Orthodoxy. Many of the film and TV artists of eastern and southern Europe still act like they’re part of a valid, powerful way of seeing the world. Naturally, I’m more familiar with my own guys in places like Ireland, Poland and Lithuania, and they too bring topics into serious films that you’d never see in American ones. But Catholic culture is crippled; I wish I could say otherwise.

    So we’re looking at Poland especially at the ACF as the center of a new European cinema, that’s about nations & memory, not about individualistic eccentrics fighting oppression. Here’s our playlist–the names are Pawel Pawlikowski, among the middle-aged, then Agniezska Holland among the old, & our spiritual patron, the late Andrzej Wajda, in his late work. But the only master in Europe now, the cosmopolitan German Florian Henckel von Donnersmark (the last aristocrat in show biz) is also very good on this. He’s more of a model for America, too, since the others rely on nationalism in a sense in which America doesn’t have it, whereas he realizes what great power there is in the connection of Christian faith & politics, when it comes to affirming human dignity & the dignity of art. In Europe, of course, national memory has to face the catastrophes of world wars & horrifying tyranny. This is not an American concern, since American politics was moderate & American power won. But the same question obtains, can we retain our humanity by coming together in face of technological & political changes that make us feel interchangeable?

     

    • #63
  4. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):

    The problem I see with trying to build an equal social media system is how to get people to start using it. Let’s say another Facebook is invented. How will you get people using it who are already using Facebook? What’s their incentive to switch? And while “Facebook censors conservatives” is a good incentive for politically active people, most people aren’t that politically active and aren’t going to care. The inertia of remaining with Facebook will override anything else.

    Then, to remain connected with all your family and friends on this new system, you’re going to have to get them all to move over to the new system with you. Until you can get a critical mass to do it, you’ll probably find yourself using both systems. The one that wins will be the one with inertia behind it. And the inertia of not changing, I’m afraid, will win out.

    Then, those who just don’t care and don’t switch will only be exposed to a highly censored version of reality. Which is exactly what the tech companies want.

    So that’s probably why it’s important to try to change or break the current system rather than try to build an equivalent system that will have no users. Consider how much power and scope Google+ had, and it still couldn’t survive against Facebook. And that’s Google — already a malignant influence.

    Break the system is not a bad idea. I’m willing to listen to practical proposals.

    But if you don’t assume the system itself is rapidly being obsolesced, then you have nothing to offer in exchange anyway. Best case becomes a desert.

    I ask myself, supposing facebook is actually dying (my analysis of the purchases, from instagram through oculus to whatsapp), what did it get wrong? What is it people don’t even know they want already, but makes them really frustrated? How would those dissatisfactions be better dealt with in terms of real digital tech, not just celebrity-for-everyone, be-your-own-TV thinking?

    Facebook seems to be getting one thing right: Money is the future–social media as payments overlaying the real world. There’s quite some ambition there. An American version of the Chinese social credit system. This should alarm conservatives-

    • #64
  5. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Ya’ll have my attention for about 2 more comments.  Would someone please stop being cryptic and just tell me what you’re talking about?  I have no idea what the post is about, I don’t understand the comments.  I understand Drew, that’s about it.  And he’s getting yelled at.

    Look, for a variety of reasons which you may assume are surely bad, I normally don’t pay much attention to either Gary or Titus -who I am somehow gathering are in on this together.  You have managed to break through the massive shroud of indifference long enough for me to read this, gather that you think it is important I (as one of the SoCons) do so.

    You have my attention.  Please do something with it.  Explain your ideas as if I have no idea what you’re getting at -because I don’t -or ask a question, or something.  But all this cryptic beating around the bush is merely frustrating me.

    • #65
  6. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Sabrdance (View Comment):

    Ya’ll have my attention for about 2 more comments. Would someone please stop being cryptic and just tell me what you’re talking about? I have no idea what the post is about, I don’t understand the comments. I understand Drew, that’s about it. And he’s getting yelled at.

    Look, for a variety of reasons which you may assume are surely bad, I normally don’t pay much attention to either Gary or Titus -who I am somehow gathering are in on this together. You have managed to break through the massive shroud of indifference long enough for me to read this, gather that you think it is important I (as one of the SoCons) do so.

    You have my attention. Please do something with it. Explain your ideas as if I have no idea what you’re getting at -because I don’t -or ask a question, or something. But all this cryptic beating around the bush is merely frustrating me.

    Titus and I are acting independently; I didn’t tell him I was posting this. But our thinking runs along the same lines, which is why I sought him out to take over the ACF. Here’s what the post is about: the cultural changes Ricochet readers don’t like didn’t happen by pure accident. It took decades. We propose to push culture in another direction. Drew, Titus, and Barfly among others are chewing over how to create or capture a big chunk of tomorrow’s media and the arts. We need a path to get there, something believable. 

    • #66
  7. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Well, I’m not talking just about social media and mind-control by tech companies.

    Here’s an example: let’s say that Drag Queen Storytime comes to our local library. I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t already. The people in our arts community seem to think Drag Queens are proper entertainment. We even had a fundraiser for our children’s theater — our children’s theater — featuring Drag Queens. So I fully expect to see Drag Queen Storytime make an appearance sooner rather than later.

    Are we organized enough to raise a proper stink about it?

    Nope. I’m not. I don’t even know where to begin.

    There’s an on-ramp there, but nobody here is taking it as far as I know.

    • #67
  8. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):

    The problem I see with trying to build an equal social media system is how to get people to start using it. Let’s say another Facebook is invented. How will you get people using it who are already using Facebook? What’s their incentive to switch? And while “Facebook censors conservatives” is a good incentive for politically active people, most people aren’t that politically active and aren’t going to care. The inertia of remaining with Facebook will override anything else.

    Then, to remain connected with all your family and friends on this new system, you’re going to have to get them all to move over to the new system with you. Until you can get a critical mass to do it, you’ll probably find yourself using both systems. The one that wins will be the one with inertia behind it. And the inertia of not changing, I’m afraid, will win out.

    Then, those who just don’t care and don’t switch will only be exposed to a highly censored version of reality. Which is exactly what the tech companies want.

    So that’s probably why it’s important to try to change or break the current system rather than try to build an equivalent system that will have no users. Consider how much power and scope Google+ had, and it still couldn’t survive against Facebook. And that’s Google — already a malignant influence.

    Great comment. But the system is too powerful to break with our bare hands. You need a standing army in the field. You make a good case that simply building a platform won’t have a “Field of Dreams” effect, so that’s not the likely way to go about it. 

    • #68
  9. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Sabrdance (View Comment):

    Ya’ll have my attention for about 2 more comments. Would someone please stop being cryptic and just tell me what you’re talking about? I have no idea what the post is about, I don’t understand the comments. I understand Drew, that’s about it. And he’s getting yelled at.

    Look, for a variety of reasons which you may assume are surely bad, I normally don’t pay much attention to either Gary or Titus -who I am somehow gathering are in on this together. You have managed to break through the massive shroud of indifference long enough for me to read this, gather that you think it is important I (as one of the SoCons) do so.

    You have my attention. Please do something with it. Explain your ideas as if I have no idea what you’re getting at -because I don’t -or ask a question, or something. But all this cryptic beating around the bush is merely frustrating me.

    Titus and I are acting independently; I didn’t tell him I was posting this. But our thinking runs along the same lines, which is why I sought him out to take over the ACF. Here’s what the post is about: the cultural changes Ricochet readers don’t like didn’t happen by pure accident. It took decades. We propose to push culture in another direction. Drew, Titus, and Barfly among others are chewing over how to create or capture a big chunk of tomorrow’s media and the arts. We need a path to get there, something believable.

    First, thank you.

    Second, I imagine “what do you have in mind” is answered by “see the next part of the series.”

    Third, “ACF?”

    Fourth, what do we mean by a believable path to get there?  I have some ideas of my own I’ll get at in a separate comment.

    • #69
  10. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Evening Gary, evening Titus,

    I can not imagine the social network arena which will emerge, but the battle field is a moral battle field.  In the past many of the great changes in American history came through a religious revival.  Hiram Hazony in the American Mind https://americanmind.org/essays/conservative-rationalism-has-failed/ wrote an article arguing that this country was founded with a religious framework and that after WWII that understanding of America was replaced.  We went into the war to defend “God-fearing democracies”, Hazony notes that we now teach the the war was fought to defend to “liberal democracies”.  It is an interesting thought to suggest that our self understanding about our religious roots changed after WWII.  Whether the change became abruptly more visible after WWII, I am not sure, but as the society has become more secular it seems that the elites and the left have developed a confused and hysterical moral understanding.  Americans’ love of fair play and sympathy for the underdog shows our heart’s are, at their core, still influenced by our religious roots, maybe we could build on those roots to regain our footing and displace the current secular dominance.

    • #70
  11. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    I say go after schools, in the name of modernization.  While everything else has seen revolutionary changes, schools are operating under the same model as they did 150 years ago.  Put schooling online, allow parents to choose ala carte curricula.  Parents will tend to choose programs that teach the subjects, rather than indoctrination programs.

    The attack on the basis of modernization would make the left the old guard reactionaries, and all of their rhetoric against tradition will work against them.

    • #71
  12. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Here’s a Typical Conservative Moment (c): Twenty years ago I attended one of David Horowitz’s really fancy weekend retreats at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. At lunch I sat next to an elderly gentleman who’d been one of the owners of JCrew.  When he found out what I did for a living he started complaining about TV, how there was nothing decent on. We’d just done a tribute to “JAG”, and I explained that many of the people working on that show were conservatives. He should check it out. 

    He frowned. “I won’t watch that! It’s on CBS!”

    Okay, there’s a little joke there about self-defeating strategies. But here’s the real kicker: CBS stock was deeply depressed at the time. My luncheon companion’s net worth was then north of $650 million. He could have picked up the phone and literally bought all of CBS. But, of course, he preferred to whine about how weak and powerless we all are. 

    • #72
  13. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    In the old Community Power literature, there’s this idea of “Power over” and “power to.”  Power over means you have the ability to force someone else to do something, or prevent someone else from doing something.  Power to means that you have the ability to act, and you require neither the support of anyone else, nor can anyone else stop you.

    It seems to me that at the present time, the right lacks Power Over pretty much everywhere, and largely lacks the power to.  We have a very few organizations that can act without any outside control.  I’m not even sure churches have much power to anymore.

    While I appreciate the desire to create power-to institutions, I’m not sure it can be done.  The necessary resources are already tied up in other institutions -usually hostile ones.  Even the friendly ones (see the Court, right this moment) either lack power to, or are unwilling to use it.

    So we’re in a bit of a guerilla mode -which means attacking the left’s Power To and Power Over.  Are their resources we can at least conflict over -make it so that the resources cannot just be used, but must first be secured by the Left.  For this reason I am at least Big-Tech-Regulating curious, for example.  Make it so that, while maybe FB can kick conservatives off, they at least can’t do it at will, and will require a political fight, either internally or with other interest groups, before they can do it.

    Drew is getting at this to -making Drag Queen Story Hour a fight is at least a first step.  Doing so requires organizing, but the obvious track of organizing in this case (churches) doesn’t have the power to make it a fight.  Their objections will simply be ignored as religiously motivated.  I’m not sure what other levers there are, then, that don’t -for example -require taking over a library board.  If we’re OK with that, I’m OK with it.

    • #73
  14. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Here’s a Typical Conservative Moment (c): Twenty years ago I attended one of David Horowitz’s really fancy weekend retreats at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. At lunch I sat next to an elderly gentleman who’d been one of the owners of JCrew. When he found out what I did for a living he started complaining about TV, how there was nothing decent on. We’d just done a tribute to “JAG”, and I explained that many of the people working on that show were conservatives. He should check it out.

    He frowned. “I won’t watch that! It’s on CBS!”

    Okay, there’s a little joke there about self-defeating strategies. But here’s the real kicker: CBS stock was deeply depressed at the time. My luncheon companion’s net worth was then north of $650 million. He could have picked up the phone and literally bought all of CBS. But, of course, he preferred to whine about how weak and powerless we all are.

    You will get zero disagreement out of me that the strategies from about 1960 to, well, now, have been utterly wasted.  Even the Court strategy is looking pretty pale right now.

    • #74
  15. jonb60173 Member
    jonb60173
    @jonb60173

    The media is directing everything.  I’m retired and do Uber (Chicago northern suburbs, blue state but conservative area) and I love to talk and I kinda like to prod my riders to see which side of the aisle their on.  The eye opener is the “Trump is an idiot” crowd based on something I just saw in the Chicago Trib.   Conversely (about 2/3’s) are more than happy to unload all of their pent up angst on what the hell is going on here.  But at no time, any more, do I feel I could just crack a joke.  Speech is regulated now, and only going to get worse.

    • #75
  16. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Sabrdance (View Comment):

    First, thank you.

    Second, I imagine “what do you have in mind” is answered by “see the next part of the series.”

    Third, “ACF?”

    Fourth, what do we mean by a believable path to get there? I have some ideas of my own I’ll get at in a separate comment.

    First, thanks for reading it;

    Second, yep; I could have done the whole series in one post but people don’t tend to read really long posts. I’m eager to post the next one. I didn’t expect this one to take off so quickly. But I should wait a few days. 

    Third, American Cinema Foundation. (Scroll down, it’s in there)

    Fourth, believable in real world terms. Gee, it would be great if a Jonathan Edwards-style Great Awakening made all of this tactical maneuvering moot. Let’s assume that won’t happen and we have to do this ourselves. 

    • #76
  17. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    I say go after schools, in the name of modernization. While everything else has seen revolutionary changes, schools are operating under the same model as they did 150 years ago. Put schooling online, allow parents to choose ala carte curricula. Parents will tend to choose programs that teach the subjects, rather than indoctrination programs.

    The attack on the basis of modernization would make the left the old guard reactionaries, and all of their rhetoric against tradition will work against them.

    Good point. And, this (the outdated model) applies to college as well as K-12 education

    • #77
  18. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    tigerlily (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    I say go after schools, in the name of modernization. While everything else has seen revolutionary changes, schools are operating under the same model as they did 150 years ago. Put schooling online, allow parents to choose ala carte curricula. Parents will tend to choose programs that teach the subjects, rather than indoctrination programs.

    The attack on the basis of modernization would make the left the old guard reactionaries, and all of their rhetoric against tradition will work against them.

    Good point. And, this (the outdated model) applies to college as well as K-12 education

    Agreed. The Judge is on to something.

    • #78
  19. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    tigerlily (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    I say go after schools, in the name of modernization. While everything else has seen revolutionary changes, schools are operating under the same model as they did 150 years ago. Put schooling online, allow parents to choose ala carte curricula. Parents will tend to choose programs that teach the subjects, rather than indoctrination programs.

    The attack on the basis of modernization would make the left the old guard reactionaries, and all of their rhetoric against tradition will work against them.

    Good point. And, this (the outdated model) applies to college as well as K-12 education

    For college, I would separate education from credentialling.  Require an open exam process to get a degree, available to anyone.  Go to State U., then take the Harvard test and get a Harvard diploma.  Require that students who go to Harvard pass the same exam as everyone else to get the Harvard degree.  This prevents Harvard from creating exams that are impossible to pass.  Pass the test without going to school anywhere and you still get the degree.

    Those two ideas together would kneecap the entire education industry as a bastion of the left.

    • #79
  20. Buckpasser Member
    Buckpasser
    @Buckpasser

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):
    DrewInWisconsin

    The problem I see with trying to build an equal social media system is how to get people to start using it. Let’s say another Facebook is invented. How will you get people using it who are already using Facebook? What’s their incentive to switch? And while “Facebook censors conservatives” is a good incentive for politically active people, most people aren’t that politically active and aren’t going to care. The inertia of remaining with Facebook will override anything else.

     

    Sorry, just got back from looking up 100 rifles.

     

    I don’t have the answer, but wasn’t there something called MySpace that was reasonably popular.  People left and went to Facebook.  I just don’t know why.

    • #80
  21. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Buckpasser (View Comment):

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):
    DrewInWisconsin

    The problem I see with trying to build an equal social media system is how to get people to start using it. Let’s say another Facebook is invented. How will you get people using it who are already using Facebook? What’s their incentive to switch? And while “Facebook censors conservatives” is a good incentive for politically active people, most people aren’t that politically active and aren’t going to care. The inertia of remaining with Facebook will override anything else.

    Sorry, just got back from looking up 100 rifles.

    I don’t have the answer, but wasn’t there something called MySpace that was reasonably popular. People left and went to Facebook. I just don’t know why.

    MySpace at its peak (2008?) had 75 million users.

    Facebook, as of March 2019, has 2.38 billion.

    • #81
  22. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Judge Mental (View Comment):
    For college, I would separate education from credentialling. Require an open exam process to get a degree, available to anyone. Go to State U., then take the Harvard test and get a Harvard diploma. Require that students who go to Harvard pass the same exam as everyone else to get the Harvard degree. This prevents Harvard from creating exams that are impossible to pass. Pass the test without going to school anywhere and you still get the degree.

    Isn’t that what Abraham Lincoln did to pass the bar?  Interesting, we’re talking about this as modernizing our schools, but wasn’t it the case, years ago, that people didn’t go to law school; they’d “read” law until they could pass the bar.

    • #82
  23. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Sabrdance (View Comment):
    Power over means you have the ability to force someone else to do something, or prevent someone else from doing something. Power to means that you have the ability to act, and you require neither the support of anyone else, nor can anyone else stop you.

    With Republican and formal Conservative leadership where it’s at right now, I’m more concerned with “will to” than “power to.”  But you make a good point.

    • #83
  24. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Has anyone taken a stab at an objective characterization of the goal state? Not how we got here today, but where you’d have us be. Say, next year or in five.

    • #84
  25. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Here’s something concrete that could actually be done if we take the House: fix 47 USC 230, the law that shields them [the LOTUs] from lawsuits for their misbehavior. Objections?

    • #85
  26. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Here’s something concrete that could actually be done if we take the House: fix 47 USC 230, the law that shields them [the LOTUs] from lawsuits for their misbehavior. Objections?

    What does LOTU mean?

    • #86
  27. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Has anyone taken a stab at an objective characterization of the goal state? Not how we got here today, but where you’d have us be. Say, next year or in five.

    Sure, I’ll take a stab at it.

    First, Form some embryonic institutions that will staff and guide the project. We already have a few; support and enhance them. 

    Second, Make an early (but affordable) splash to announce you’ve arrived on the scene. One suggestion: we constantly see efforts to honor women in history/herstory. Fine; great idea. Do our version, because nobody thinks we’d be interested in this. Elevate forgotten women like Clare Booth Luce, Dixie Lee Ray, Liz Trotta and make an inexpensive bio series for streaming, to inspire girls and give them different role models than today’s stale lineup. You want to make heads explode? Let either the First Lady or Ivanka take a leadership role. Hire young women to make the programs and announce a continuing scholarship and apprenticeship program, ours. 

    Third, announce the next project, also invading their supposed cultural turf. ACF once gave $10,000 to a screenwriter for “Black Knight of the Hudson”, about the first successful Black graduate at West Point. Or the life story of Ben Carson. 

    Fourth, permanent awards and honors to praise the good and shame the bad. Hollywood is particularly susceptible to this. 

    Fifth, create something like the Sundance Institute and make it the arbiter of what’s new and valuable. 

    Sixth, sprinkle our “graduates” and allies widely through the industry, like raisins in raisin bread. 

    • #87
  28. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Here’s something concrete that could actually be done if we take the House: fix 47 USC 230, the law that shields them [the LOTUs] from lawsuits for their misbehavior. Objections?

    What does LOTU mean?

    Sorry. Lords of the Universe: Gargle, Farcebook, Twits, those guys.

    • #88
  29. Buckpasser Member
    Buckpasser
    @Buckpasser

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):

    Buckpasser (View Comment):

    DrewInWisconsin (View Comment):
    DrewInWisconsin

    The problem I see with trying to build an equal social media system is how to get people to start using it. Let’s say another Facebook is invented. How will you get people using it who are already using Facebook? What’s their incentive to switch? And while “Facebook censors conservatives” is a good incentive for politically active people, most people aren’t that politically active and aren’t going to care. The inertia of remaining with Facebook will override anything else.

    Sorry, just got back from looking up 100 rifles.

    I don’t have the answer, but wasn’t there something called MySpace that was reasonably popular. People left and went to Facebook. I just don’t know why.

    MySpace at its peak (2008?) had 75 million users.

    Facebook, as of March 2019, has 2.38 billion.

    I understand, but MySpace was more popular at its peak.  I just wonder if there are any lessons to be learned from Facebook overtaking it.  Could there be lessons in there?  I honestly don’t know.

    • #89
  30. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Has anyone taken a stab at an objective characterization of the goal state? Not how we got here today, but where you’d have us be. Say, next year or in five.

    Sure, I’ll take a stab at it.

    First, Form some [snip]

    Second, Make an [snip]

    Third, announce [snip]

    Fourth, permanent awards and honors to praise the good and shame the bad. Hollywood is particularly susceptible to this.

    Fifth, create something [snip]

    Sixth, sprinkle [snip]

    You soft skill guys are an analyst’s nightmare. I ask for the goal state, you instead tell me how you want to get there. 

    Don’t take my snips as disagreement; I needed to show the skeleton. I left the fourth one alone because it’s funny. Hollywood’s not alone, of course, many groups spend time admiring themselves.

    Srsly, I’m looking for a characterization the state we’re aiming for. Society is trying to digest a major transformational technology, the educational system has been broken by affluence and tolerance, of all things, and the barbarians are at the gates armed with all of the above. We can’t expect any of these things to work out in our favor unless we know where we want to go.

    You must have some vision of where those six or sixty things lead – is that coming in the next installment?

    • #90
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