Liberal Inc

It hasn't been all that long since liberals were the anti corporates. Remember that? The movie Team America poked fun at them for their sloppy anti-corporate rhetoric, and that was only about a decade and a half ago. The lefty/corporate switcharoo came after that. 9 years ago, if we had to really peg it down. Alex Jones predicted it. Or he came close at least. (I used to listen to a lot of Alex Jones in the Bush era.) He predicted that, despite running as an anti-war candidate, the Obama tenure would be even more dangerously imperial than Bush's, because under Bush at least there was strong resistance, but the anti-war left would give Obama free license. He was, of course, proven correct. We can generalize his prediction: all establishment action the left protested under Bush would be permitted under Obama. Look, for example, at Haliburton. Was there anything that they complained about more bitterly than Bush's government granting no-bid contracts to Cheney's former company? And then Obama went around and granted the same no-bid contracts! Not a peep from the left about it.

The reasonable prediction to make for the next administration would have been: the left will resume its old stances if a Republican is elected. We would expect the left to become, again, anti-war, anti-corporate, anti-establishment. But that hasn't happened. Instead, the left is thoroughly entrenched as pro-estasblishment and pro-corporate. Look at the recent net neutrality battle. On one side we had the left, and all the corporations! It was fantastic. Here the left were telling us the regulation change would empower evil corporations, who were their allies! If you're in the middle of a divisive political struggle, that's where you want your opponent to be. Making a stance that is inherently absurd. If you think back, when is the last time the left energized around an issue that put them in opposition to the corporate interests? The closest recent one I can think of is TPP, which would have empowered global corporations at the expense of state sovereignty, and which Bernie Sanders vehemently opposed. But then again, Trump killed TPP, and the left gave no credit. That is, their opposition to TPP ended when Trump adopted the same opinion, so we can't really count that one, not fully at least. I think you really have to go back to the bailouts, which occurred early in Obama's presidency. That must be the last time the left squared off against the establishment. Since then liberals have been their dutiful puppets.

It amuses me to no end when liberals put on airs that they are highly individualistic, rebellious free thinkers. It must be mere coincidence that their independent thoughts just happen to be exactly the same ones they are hearing from the corporate media. From their college professors. From the teachers unions. From their corporate employers. Is it really so progressive and brave to promote diversity or anti-racism when that is also the stance of every single Fortune 500 company? When it's the the promoted ethos of every television show and Hollywood movie? "Just because my every belief just happens to coincide with the liberal agenda I've been exposed to my entire life doesn't mean I didn't adopt those beliefs independently!" That would be the best argument those free thinkers would be able to come with, if they even bothered making arguments anymore. (Now they just find ways to call you some form of hater.)

There are two major reasons that the left hasn't returned to anti-establishment rhetoric with the new Republican president. The first is that liberal ideology has so captured the establishment. Perhaps media and academia have been infected for a long time, but now the corporate and government spheres are also crawling with lefties. Look at what's happening at Google, or in the FBI or at State. These are what Vox Day would call converged institutions. That is when an institution is so controlled by ideology that it can no longer properly execute its original function. Before, we never saw the left protest the media or academia, because those were leftist-owned. We would expect the left to protest corporations and the government, like normal, but now those are lefty organizations too. So they aren't protested. The only thing left to protest is fictional Nazis.

The second reason is Trump. He is anti-establishement. The left doesn't know what to do. Trump is their enemy. The establishment is their enemy. (How can the left be the left is they aren't anti-establishment?) But Trump isn't just an enemy. He's been branded as Hitler times Satan. So they side with the establishment to oppose Trump. Suddenly the left just loves John McCain and George W. Bush. Isn't that fantastic?

This is an existential crisis for the left. Trump deserves our praise, but I think it was bound to happen. Eventually there had to be an alt-right, a rising of anti-establishment conservatives and reactionaries. We talked about this years ago. How would the left react to an anti-establishment right? We saw that the Ron Paul wing of the Republicans and the Dennis Kucinich types of the left were naturally aligned, and wondered if some type of cross-aisle alliance would rise. Wow, nothing could be further from the truth! Were we naive? Or should we really have expected that the anti-establishment conservative candidate would be effectively branded as Hitler-Satan, that the mainstream left would derail into manic conspiracy theory, and the establishment deep-state would seek to remove an elected President with the Democrats cheering them on the whole way? Surely our hope for an anti-establishment left/right partnership sounds adorable now, but man it still seems more likely than what has happened. The left, practically defined as being anti-establishment, is now the establishment movement. (Does "establishment movement" even makes sense?)

Here's why I'm optimistic. We know the left doesn't engage in debate anymore. They can't. They can't be anti-war after cheerleading Obama. They can't be pro-democracy after supporting a coup against the elected president. They can't be anti-corruption after rallying around Clinton. And so on. They don't have any arguments they can make. Instead, they are entirely fueled by lies and hatred. Those are powerful fuels, don't underestimate them. Still, we have to look to the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu. He who knows himself and his enemy will prevail. Our enemy has boxed himself into a position where he must flee reality at every turn. A lot of things look bad for us. We've lost mightily in the culture wars and in the institutions. Still, when you look at things from the highest strategic level, we are in the ideal position. Our eyes are open, theirs are shut. We must have faith that the inevitable will come to pass.