They Die in Irrelevancy

How Conservative and Libertarian Intellectuals Mothballed Themselves

Everyone has some evolution of thought that takes them through territories that they would now like to forget. We do it with people — remember the girlfriend whose tenure still leaves you scratching your head? We do it with culture and fashion —pegged, acid wash jeans? And we most certainly do it with ideas.

The mistakes, way stations, and passions of our past hopefully allow us to continue to evolve throughout our lives. This holds doubly true for our life in ideas. The old adage paraphrased: anyone with a soul is Liberal when Young but anyone with a brain is Conservative when Old, indicates this truth. That Truth is that some intellectual evolution should occur as you gather more life experience and thus more information on how the world works.

The likes of Reason Magazine and National Review (as examples of once decent publications) have become so irrelevant that they are like informational vacuums. (*Side note: I find it unnecessary to comment on the MSM of any flavor as they were always a clown show.) In retrospect these publications succeeded only in opposition to the orgiastic finale of the neo-liberal beast personified by Barack Obama (nee Barry Soetoro) and official government media like the New York Times. Pushing against the excesses of woke-ism and media bias made these publications relevant until events took place that broke the model for both the neo-liberal order, the mainstream media, and the publications who acted as their polite, genteel critics.

First came Donald Trump and Russiagate. The immediately preposterous narrative that New York real estate mogul and reality television star, The Donald, was a Russian spy was taken seriously by all the aforementioned publications. This was the first bifurcation whereby real journalists, like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, yelled into the void that people were beclowning themselves and the entire journalistic endeavor by taking the Steele Dossier — paid for by the Democratic Campaign of Hillary Clinton — seriously. The rest allowed their distaste of this dirty invasion of their quaint DC-centric world, the Beverly Hillbillies-esque spectacle of Donald Trump showing up, to reveal all of their intellectual contrivances as castles made of sand. Their egos could not stand the revelation that reality television was all they had ever been involved in and that Donald Trump was the natural evolution. The inability to accept this truth fractured many (I believe the former writer known as Jonah Goldberg and his little pal David French were the first to break). Their own ossification, not the rise of Populism personified by the Cirque du Trump, led to their fracture.

The sustained 4-year long denialism and subsequent divorce with Conservative Intellectuals from Conservatism writ large was fully executed on the Fed Project known as Jan. 6. The idea that a group of unarmed people, many who were invited inside by onsite police, walking into an unlocked building which their taxes pay for and is ironically know as The People’s House, was a violent attempt to overthrow the largest government in world history is patently preposterous. There was precisely one person killed by direct violence in the “worst tragedy since 9-11” and that person was an unarmed US military veteran (who reportedly gave aid to invader and protector alike) shot by a police officer. This police officer, who was a black man shot an unarmed white woman. Had they switched skin pigmentation, this entire fiasco would have a narrative shift from both sides of the mainstream political spectrum. Conservative, Inc. and their corporate donors finally had the perfect excuse to fully wash their hands of the disgusting, working class Populists who supposedly made up a large part of their constituency —vote and think how we tell you and give your lives for the wars we promote, but please don’t think for yourself or talk to me. Ew. Oh, and neither Libertarians of the Reason variety (nor Liberals of the ACLU variety) are calling out the civil rights abuses of the Jan. 6th perpetrators being kept in the dungeons of DC. Civil rights only for the civilians and causes we find palatable?

The thing that really broke them, here’s looking at you Civil Libertarians and Radical Liberals, was Covid. The entire premise, response, and ultimately the narrative was preposterous from Day1. Yet, for fear of their own fragile existences, all of these institutions pushed that fear into their audience as hard and as fast as they could. Why? To save their own skin. If anyone does not know about inefficacy of masks, hilarity of the 6-foot rule, leaky viruses, mRNA vaccines are not vaccines, the actual infection mortality rate of Covid, the uselessness of PCR to test for infectiousness, etc., etc. then you live in the Reality where I am a kook and the other people are Smart. The Doctors and Scientists have spoken. But once you see the truth, it all becomes such an incredibly dishonest and frankly dumb narrative. Every publication to a one from National Review to Reason fell hook line and sinker for the Psy Op. Only individuals were immune, not institutions. And so few of us individuals were immune to the mind virus, that it was depressing.

The personal ideological and intellectual decisions made at each moment seem to cement for people their precise reaction to the next. Once you choose the Machine Narrative, you are married to it. Conversely, once you look behind the curtain, it is increasingly difficult to not see the propaganda of the Machine Narrative each time an incidence occurs. Choose one path and you believe everything (with some nuance depending on your intellectual affiliations. e.g., Fox v CNN). At each of the moments, continuing along with the 24 hour news cycle, you are “forced” to pick these binary narratives. The nuance is gone. Yes or No. After a short period of time, the people who have made different choices or followed different sources end up in increasingly distant landscapes from one another. Landscapes that are not compatible and very far apart so long as you think in a linear, binary fashion. A populace living completely different realities feels like the intent, though that may give the Powers That Be a bit too much credit. It may just our Cultural Universe reflected back to us.

Now you can continue the game of parsing individuals, institutions, and entire intellectual categories along these decision trees. You will consistently find that the least relevant of all media sources and groups are the ones who chose effete intellectual tastes (Trump and Jan 6th) and personal safety (Covid) over any intellectual curiosity or bravery. Choices matter.