Friends, you may have noticed that lefties love to protest injustice and boycott anything and everything that offends them. President Trump says we conservatives need to get in on all the fun. I'm not so sure. I propose an alternative to the politics of (feigned) outrage... It's all in my latest article, soon to appear at Townhall. Enjoy!
How Conservatives Can Avoid the
“Nice Guys Finish Last” Trap
Left-wingers have
always had a knack for activism. In the 60s and 70s, they were the
ones flooding the streets, protesting civil rights violations and the
Vietnam War. Now, they're conjuring Twitter mobs out of thin air,
organizing boycotts galore, and hectoring politicians, celebrities,
corporate CEOs, and even their family members, friends, and
neighbors, in response to any and all perceived violations of
wokeness. Leftists seem always to be poised on a hair-trigger, ready
to pounce on their enemies, and when they do...God help whomever
bears the brunt of their searing wrath.
Often,
we hear the argument on the right: why can we
be
as organized, as shrill, and as relentless as the Left? Why are
corporate boards and advertisers, for instance, seemingly unafraid of
offending us,
when they blanch in terror at the first sight of a progressive with
an upraised fist?
The answer, as usual, is staring us in the face: no one is afraid of
us because we aren't scary in the least. Conservatives are
mild-mannered (by and large), law-abiding, church-going,
family-oriented, and usually polite and deferential. Heck, most of us
even have jobs, which makes throwing rotten produce, or hurling
digital invective, at those we find disagreeable difficult to
reconcile with our busy schedules.
President
Trump recently encouraged conservatives, and not for the first time,
to follow the Left's playbook and begin boycotting companies that
publicly condemned Georgia's new voting law. Let Coke, Delta, and
Major League Baseball have it! “Don’t
go back to their products until they relent.”
And, in response,
you guessed it: Coke, Delta, and baseball didn't bat an eyelash. In
fact, the MLB Commissioner wasted no time in moving the All-Star game
from Atlanta to Denver. Meanwhile, have Coke, Delta, or Major League
Baseball's profits withered overnight? Hardly. In fact, we have no
reason to suppose even that President Trump has given up his beloved
Diet Coke, which for him is the elixir of life.
The lesson here?
Conservatives will simply never be as ruthless as progressives. We
don't believe in the politicization of every consumer decision. We
don't seethe with rage in our spare time, waiting to be told who and
what to hate next. Besides which, we're not naive enough to believe
that, if Coke, Delta, and Major League Baseball occasionally knuckle
under to leftist intimidation, that makes Pepsi, or United, or the
NFL any better. Give them time: they'll disappoint us with their
cravenness too.
The answer, I
suggest, is to organize conservatives as much as possible not around
protests, boycotts, and upsurges of outrage, as around positive
demonstrations of solidarity with those rare — very rare! —
politicians, celebrities, corporations, organizations, and ordinary
citizens who make themselves conspicuous by their decency, their
rationality, and their patriotism. If the symbol of leftism is the
clenched fist, then why not make the symbol of conservatism the high
five?
The most
successful demonstration of such constructive conservative “activism”
in recent years was the failed leftist boycott of Goya Foods, and the
much more effective right-wing “buycott” that followed it. When
Goya CEO Robert Unanue, a Hispanic, triggered liberals with his
praise of President Trump in July 2020, they vowed to bring his
company to its knees. Conservatives, however, rallied, and many,
including me, bought Goya products for the first time in our lives.
Goya sales soared.
Americans of all
stripes already know that leftists can be powerful, implacable, and
vicious enemies. There's no need for conservatives to demonstrate the
same malice and fanaticism. Instead, let's show that we can be loyal
and generous friends to those who have the courage to stand up to the
Left's incessant tirades and bullying.
After all, as Ben
Franklin once reminded us: you can catch more flies with honey than
you can with vinegar.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at Townhall:
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2021/04/10/how-conservatives-can-avoid-the-nice-guys-finish-last-trap-n2587592
***
In other news, I've spoken on many occasions about how deluded leftists are about race in America. The less prevalent racism is, the more breathless their condemnations of omnipresent white supremacy become. Here's a landmark study that deconstructs the Left's narrative on race and racism...not that a single progressive will ever read it, of course.
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/social-construction-racism-united-states
Tucker is giving United Airlines a rhetorical broadside for its declaration that future pilots will be hired partly on the basis on race and gender. Good for him.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6247341243001#sp=show-clips
The Republican Party is growing! The GOP has a golden opportunity in Nevada, where the Dem party apparatus has been captured by socialist radicals. Let's turn Nevada red!
https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/north-las-vegas-mayor-john-lee-announces-he-is-switching-to-republican-party/
Things keep getting worse at the border, because...Trump! That's the line the Biden administration is taking anyway. Good luck with that. I learned something new from this article: Mexico is unwilling to accept the deportation of "family units" including children under 7. That means it's not just "unaccompanied minors" that we are saddled with nowadays. Any toddler will do as a "Get-Into-America-Free" card for his parent(s), guardian(s), or kidnapper(s).
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-sky-high-border-numbers-blame-trump-administration
Lastly, at least in a political sense, this story is among the most important you will read today, or this week, or this month. Our democracy is largely in the hands of avuncular, folksy Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia. If he and Krysten Sinema from Arizona agree to ditch the filibuster and pass a cornucopia of extremist bills, well, we're boned. Manchin is a bit mercurial, but he's still making noises about how devoted he is to the filibuster, and thus to bipartisanship and respect for his Republican colleagues. As long as that remains the case, most of the "Biden agenda" isn't going anywhere. That's good! Above all, we need to keep Sleepy Joe's approval numbers on the downslope, because if we do Manchin is highly unlikely to cave.
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/manchin/2021/04/07/id/1016756/