All The Light We Cannot See
How the Left’s Pyrrhic “Victory” Over Trump Just Cost Them Everything
If you’re anything like me, the last four years have been strange, and the last four days have been absolutely brutal.
I guess it would make sense to go back to 2015. While the former half of the 2010’s isn’t yet known for much, a few things do stick out. It was the rise of hipsters to the mainstream. Occupy Wall Street had risen up in the wake of the 2008 market crash. Cold Play hadn’t sold out yet. But there was no… feeling, no vibe, no soul. The 80’s and 90’s had soul. Hell, even the 2000’s gave us the faux hawk and Suburu Outbacks. Jeans weren’t skinny. Leather necklaces were cool. And the world was only a few years removed from Stone Cold Steve Austin’s final match against the Rock at Wrestlemania 19 (in which he kicked out of two [yes, two!!!] rock bottoms). But 2010–2015 basically gave us nothing…
Maybe it’s because that was when the first generation of helicopter children — kids raised by helicopter parents (parents who hovered over their kids, lest they might actually have to solve their own problems for a few hours a day) — started to trickle out of high school and make their way into the unskilled labor workforce and into our universities. Is 2010–2015 what happens when the next generation of trouble-makers fails to show up? Is 2010–2015 what happens when the youth are more concerned about building boundaries then breaking them? They’re certainly responsible for 2016–2020.
The 90’s had a rather nihilistic feeling to it, particularly the late 90s, where you realized the whole of your adult life would likely be spent under the specter of oppressive fluorescent lights, on a Corporatized Bataan Death March toward your social security check. But there was joy in the within the misery. We lived in the last truly great generation of music. We got the Long Gone Summer of McGwire and Sosa. We still had Jordan, and if you grew up in San Diego, you still had Gwynn and Caminiti. And we had house parties with Smirnoff Ice and Mike’s Hard Lemonade… with girls who liked to drink Smirnoff Ice and Mike’s Hard Lemonade.”
But the last 5 years? What’s beyond nihilism? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it really fall? If a man gouges his own eyes out in a bottomless abyss, did he really go blind? Welcome to 2015–2020, where these complete fucking loser that are the helicopter children have even managed to take the joy out of shared-misery.
If you’re anything like me, the last four years have been strange, and the last four days have been absolutely brutal.
I guess it would make sense to go back to 2015. November 8, 2015. My stomach turned as Trump was elected as the next POTUS. The media had told me he was a dictator. A racist. A sexist. That he wanted to start a white ethnostate. And that he was colluding with Russia. I believed it; I believed it all. Not because I thought the media was good. But because I just didn’t think they could be that bad. I knew the media was more about speaking to their audience than actually reporting the news, but I had no idea about the depth of their depravity. Surely, they wouldn’t lie about things like that. Surely, you couldn’t just accuse a future-and-eventual sitting American president of being a dictator and a racist unless he really was.
And as the weeks and the months ticked by, and Trump’s white ethnostate failed to come to fruition, and as the Steele Dossier (the basis for the 2 1/2 year, tens-of-million dollar investigation that turned up jack-shit) got picked apart like a prevent defense trying to hold a late lead against the Patriots in Foxboro — and turning out to be nothing more than a malicious Our Man in Havana situation, What was becoming horrifyingly clear was this:
THE. LEFT. HAD. LOST. THEIR. FUCKING. MINDS.
Anyone else in late-2016/early-2017 find themselves as a man without a political country? Any other Liberals suddenly find themselves as a man without a party?
I joined the military in the wake of 9/11. Well, maybe not the wake, but the shadow. I joined the military in the shadow of 9/11. After failing out of community college for a few years after high school (because I was too lazy to log onto e-reg and simply just drop the classes). I enlisted in the Navy. I went in at 2005, and shipped off in 2006. I graduated from the U.S. Navy 2nd Class Dive School in 2007. And I was considered to be such a raving leftie by my classmates, that at the end of our class video, as every name of the member of the graduating class of 07–50–2C credit-rolled down a black screen with our nick names next to it, my nick name was “Hillary.” I’ll say that again: I was such a raging leftie to my classmates, that my nickname in the class video was “Hillary.” In 2007.
Fast forward to 2017. My first year at Chapman’s Film School, Dodge College. After getting my Biology degree from the University of Southern California, I decided I would abandon my “safe route” of becoming a physical therapist or occupational therapist and pursue my true passion: writing. So I got accepted into Dodge College, the 4th ranked film school in the world, to get my MFA in Screenwriting. After being stationed at a SEAL Team for my 4 years of non-training service for the Navy, I didn’t think I’d ever be in an environment as toxic as that (which isn’t to say I didn’t fucking enjoy the hell out of it… most of the time, but there should only be so much testosterone piled into one place). Holy fucking fuck, was I wrong.
Welcome to the ivory tower and the polished marble echo chamber that is Film School. Welcome to an environment so warped and so deluded, that someone could come to class with a red shirt that says, “I am an avowed communist. Yes I’m being serious” on the front and a picture of Mao’s face on the back, while holding a 4x5 flag that says “FUCK ALL WHITE PEOPLE. THEY ALL DESERVE TO DIE,” and feel safer/more welcomed than someone who would admit that he or she was a *GASP* registered Republican. Note: this is not at all a reflection of the professors or the administrators, it’s because…
THE. LEFT. HAS. LOST. THEIR. FUCKING. MINDS.
If you’re anything like me, the last four years have been strange, and the last four days have been absolutely brutal.
As the cultural left continues to descend further and further into the madness that is their never ending purity spiral… on their never ending inquisition, many of us liberals who voted for Hillary in 2016 — only to find ourselves without a political home in 2017 — for the overall safety of the Republic, and to prevent America from turning into Western Civilization Lite (like the EU countries, with virtually no 2nd Amendment, and a Diet 1st Amendment) thought to ourselves, “Trump must win,” or more accurately rather, “The left cannot be allowed to come to power.” Not while the leftist extremism within the Democratic party is so bold, and not while the too many “Default-factory-setting: Democrats” are still asleep to the fact that the Democratic Party is no longer liberal. Trump must win.
From the raging hypocrisies of the left, to how they selectively treat sexual assault allegations (Biden v. Anyone on the right), from how they spent the past 5 years saying “speech is violence” and “silence is violence”, to then applauding as cities are burnt to the ground and 40+ people have now been killed in the riots, from how they treated the Lockdown Protests vs the BLM Protests (because obviously COVID-19 isn’t going to infect people that agree with leftist causes), to how they thought Trump should get impeached on the basis of nothing but hear-say evidence, but then plug their ears to actual evidence, corroborated by the DHS and the FBI… to and from, to and from… and the list goes on… and on, and on and on and on andonandoneanonandonandonandon… the raging insanity and hypocrisies of the left made lots of us disaffected liberals feel one thing: the left cannot come to power right now.
We’re currently living through the biggest disgrace to The United States of America since the internment of the Japanese in WWII, which is the brazen rigging of this election, helped by a global pandemic that gave states run by Democratic Governors the ability to lax up the rules and their laws and open up their states to becoming rife with fraud. Watching Twitter and Facebook censor the hundreds of videos out there showing voter and election fraud, as the left — who for four years, led by Madam President Clinton, did everything to delegitimize Trump — now has the nerve to shout down at anyone questioning the election that was just held in a third-world banana republic manner, probably has you feeling empty. You might be feeling down-right sick, in fact.
You might be feeling sick as the cultural left — previously those who were the embodiment of anti-establishment — has allied themselves with Big Tech, the Legacy Media, Academia and Multinational Billion Dollar Corporations, still have the nerve to call themselves “#TheResistance.” You might be feeling sick, that one more time you hoped the great nation (far from perfect, but yes, definitely great) that is The United State of America would do what it does best: tell the establishment to “Fuck off!” But no, not this time. For four years, the above-mentioned establishment did everything in their power to sabotage Trump and circle the wagons around Biden, and it was just enough.
So as Biden wins, and the lawsuits head to the supreme court (where the likely outcome is ACB and Roberts slipping daggers into Trump’s back), and as Champagne Socialists like Robert Reich and AOC call for Trump supporters to be put on some “Truth and Reconciliation” list, you might feel the weight of the darkness begin to suffocate you. But I promise you. Take a breath; take a deep breath. In this case, it is always darkest before the light.
There is a political realignment taking place in this country (and in every Western country). The days of Left vs. Right are officially over. We have entered the period of The Moral Authoritarians vs. The Moral Libertarians.
Let’s define these two groups in their simplest terms…
Moral Authoritarians: Those who want control over what they deem acceptable, be it speech, a belief system or even something like cinema. In short, they want to be the Moral Arbiters of society, and they’re willing to let the Government act as their muscle in enforcing it.
Moral Libertarians: Stay off my lawn, don’t hurt people, and believe and say whatever the fuck you want. Also, the BBQ is this Sunday if you want to cruise over.
The old guard Moral Authoritarians were the evangelical wing of the Republican party. But as the whole of society has progressed to the point where gay marriage is legal, and fake-hate crimes have exploded exponentially, so too has the Republican Party progressed with the rest of society. And as much as the Democrats have effectively painted the Republican Party as the party of Racists and Homophobes — its effect has really only been with weak white people, willing to soak themselves with white guilt for social acceptance from the Moral Authoritarian Left.
The “agree with us or else” strategy — with its most obvious zenith being cancel culture — has failed with every other demographic outside of white people. You can try as hard as you want to paint a group of people a certain way (in this case, Republicans as racists and homophobes) but if the Republicans (or Trump voters) you deal with on a daily basis aren’t actually racist and homophobic, it’s just not going to stick: Just ask the highest percentage of the non-white voting electorate ever who cast their votes for Trump.
As the Democratic Party allowed themselves to be infected with the Moral Authoritarian Left — physically embodied most notably by BLM and Antifa, as well as the privileged class of student-loan-indebted socialists — , The Republican Party, in the period of 4 short years, has become the home for The Moral Libertarians. Or to put it in pre-2016 terms, The Republican Party has become the unlikeliest of homes for Liberals.
This realignment won’t give way to a third party that will siphon off members of the Republicans and Democrats, but it will slowly-but-surely shift the members of the electorate from one party to another. And given the coalition of people that were willing to vote for Trump, that shift is going to mostly be a one-way street.
As I mentioned earlier, Donald Trump just received the highest percentage of non-white voters for a Republican since 1960. Let that sink in. For four years, the whole of Legacy media (sans Fox News [who just lost half their viewership, which will result in a loss of billions in annual revenue, because of the premature call of AZ]), the whole of Entertainment, and the whole of Academia came at Trump from every angle to label him a racist, a sexist and a bigot. And the electorate repaid their efforts by giving him the highest percentage of non-white voters in 60 years. Latino: UP. African Americans: UP. Asian/Other: UP. Muslims: UP. LGBTQ+: UP.
UP… UP… UP-UP-UP.
Every single non-white demographic supported Trump at a higher level than they did in 2016. In most cases, it was by a vast margin.
And the Democrats lost five House seats. Four of which were considered “safe blue.”
And yet, perhaps the biggest victory of all (besides the victory that is non-white people refusing to vote as a monolith), is the victories in state chambers across the country. The Republican’s flipped control of several state chambers, giving them even more control in the upcoming redistricting (or Gerrymandering, when the side you don’t support, does it). The TL:DR version is that the house will all but assuredly flip to the Republican Party in 2022.
Take a breath, crack a beer, and let the above sink in.
The efforts of the Moral Authoritarian Left were a total and utter failure. It was an abject catastrophe. It’s an abject defeat on every level, sans getting rid of the Orange Man.
It was laughably embarrassing. And amazingly encouraging.
While an exclamation point on the stunning rebuke of the left would have been a Trump victory, I promise you, I — and everyone — should prefer a Trump loss with the most colorful coalition of Republican voters in 60 years over a pearly white Trump win in the long term.
The Legacy Media is dying. They are now only speaking directly to the people who are watching them to have their beliefs reaffirmed. Twitter and Facebook are about to go on a purge. Dissident voices are going to be scythed away now that the threat of the Trump administration reforming section 230 and managing to break them up is gone. They’re about to do what the Legacy Media has indirectly done, begin catering to a singular audience.
But as the power of information and communication wielded by Big Tech and the Legacy Media is suddenly taken away from the dissident voices to the Moral Authoritarians, just as suddenly, the Moral Libertarians will be forced to find a new city square. The Moral Authoritarian Left is too stupid to realize what an unwise move this is: necessity is the mother of all invention. Fat guys would never lose weight if hot chicks fucked them all the time. If I woke up to some Swedish beach volleyball player wanting to fuck my brains out every morning, I would have never sacrificed a month’s salary to buy a Peloton. The necessity of wanting to get laid forces people to eat unsatisfying food (and unfulfilling amounts of it), and forces people to exercise.
While the slow culling we saw during 2016–2020 left the dissidents fighting to stay on Big Tech’s platforms, a sudden purge, combined with the fact that the election is over, will leave Moral Libertarians willing to regroup and forced to find new city squares. Unable to help themselves, the Moral Authoritarians will undoubtedly give the people they are trying to silence an impetus to mass-exodus from their platforms, and regroup and regather on new city squares — commonly referred to as “Alt-tech.”
The media is dying.
Big Tech won’t be far behind (regarding the monopoly they have on communication and information dissemination, not on profit-turning).
And most importantly, the Moral Authoritarians are losing their grip over every demographic except weak, spineless white people.
While the horns honk, and the chest pounding of the Authoritarian Left will reach peak-cringe in the coming months, they will continue to lose members to the Moral Libertarians for two main reasons.
Persecution is Progress to the Moral Authoritarians. Each person cancelled on social media, or each person successfully fired from their job over some sniveling, cowardly smear campaign is one more person that will be looking for a home. And that purity spiral that the Authoritarian Left is going on is like trying to mathematically get to 0 by dividing a number in 2… no matter how many times you cut something in half, you’ll never get to zero. The Moral Authoritarian Left has no destination, only a journey. A journey of who’s next to cancel, who’s left to get fired. A journey of finding the next arbitrary group of oppressors (batter up gay white dudes and white women) to rally against. Persecution is progress. Find another head for the Guillotine so we can all get that collective dopamine hit of vanquishing another dissident. More blood for the Social Justice blood god. And on and on it goes. It will go on with the never-ending inquisition of trying to divide a number in half to get to zero.
All the while, the disaffected Liberals of all skin colors, and the people within minority demographics who would rather make a life for themselves based off the content of their characters and the merits of their labor will find themselves trickling over to their new home, to The Moral Libertarians… to… (and I still can’t believe I’m about to say this) The Republican Party.
This isn’t to say it will be easy. And it certainly isn’t going to happen by itself.
If your attitude is “the left will eat itself and we’ll win in the long run” you need to shotgun a Budwieser and slap yourself in the face. We arrived at this debacle of letting the left take power (which I accurately referred to earlier as the biggest disgrace to the United States since the internment of the Japanese) because they outworked and out maneuvered us. Period. That’s it. I mean, honestly… could you imagine Antifa letting one 50-year old sheriff keep them out of a polling station, making it unable for them observe ballot counting? That place would have been razed. It would have been a smoldering pile of ash before the first tweet was sent out.
To the Moral Libertarians reading this, it’s time to take politics as seriously as the Moral Authoritarians do. I know it comes natural to them. They get their natural-highs and the serotonin waves from doing things as a collective. And I know… I know, we all have better shit to do on a Sunday then get together and virtue signal on some street corner, but look at what just happened? They spent 2 years organizing how they would squeeze as many votes out of their electorate as possible. And when the Democratic governors and law makers passed rules that would make it significantly easier to commit fraud, they were all activated like a collective of Manchurian candidates, ready to sacrifice every weekend of Beer and girls wearing low cut shirts at a BBQ to go harvest ballots.
And you have to remember, most of the leadership in the Republican Party are still Country Club Warhawks and spineless cowards (though not as bad as the Tory’s in the UK, still really bad). For every Ron DeSantis and Dan Crenshaw, you have 100 Mitch McConnells and Lindsay Grahams. Vote. Them. Out.
More… no Most… Most importantly, just because the cringe-fringe Moral Authoritarians don’t have a single solution, they have identified real problems. Racism does still exist. So does sexism. So does Homophobia. They all still exist. Any “ist” or “ism” word you can think of, it still exists. Are those things as prevalent as the left makes them out to be? No. Of course not. Despite the Moral Authoritarians best efforts to paint America as a racist country, we’re still the number-one-immigrated-to country for like the 120th year in a row. And nobody needed to fake a hate crime back in 1960.
But it’s time to risk having a conversation. Look, if you want to tell black people that the Republican Party is new party of Liberals and Free Speech, then you have to listen to their anecdotal stories. I don’t know the way forward on this. I’ve heard my older gay friends tell me that the biggest thing they did to get mainstream acceptance was just move into normal neighborhoods and invite their neighbors over for dinner. “Guess what? We’re dudes that fuck each other. Want another burger?” Maybe that’s the way forward for the Moral Libertarians. Metaphorically do as the gay people did back in the 80s and 90s. I don’t know. I’m just riffing here.
What I do know is, the time for remaining silent for your job security is over. The time assuming that the rest of the people who love the 1A and 2A will do all the leg work is over.
The price of the freedoms that America gives you was never supposed to be handed to you. It was always worth fighting for; it was always supposed to be fought for.
I know right now we’re all drowning in darkness, and as the staggering hypocrisies will be front and center over the coming months (everyone ready for coverage of COVID to vanish off the face of the Earth, and for COVID related deaths to start being counted for the co-morbidities and not the virus?)
But in the wake of the establishment claiming a victory over the American people, I promise you, the soul-selling win the left paid to see Joe Biden defeat Trump will cost them everything. It has, and will, amount to nothing but pyrrhic victory.
Keep your head up.
Keep your chest out.
And most of all, keep your eyes open, for all the light we cannot see.
