It’s hard to remember, if you are deeply immersed in tracking political, cultural, or social issues that most people don’t have a clue about what is going on.
That may be infuriating, but it is actually a reflection of a good thing. People should be allowed to live their lives without having to keep track of everything going on in the world. Politics shouldn’t impact your life too often except when big things are happening, and cultural trends should be a spectator sport, not life and death issues.
That’s one of my arguments for limited government: the better the government, the less you have to care about what they do. “That government is best that governs least, because its people discipline themselves.”
Unfortunately such luxuries are rarer and rarer in the modern world, where governments are huge, invasive, and influence every aspect of our lives.
I ran across a fascinating video yesterday that captured one young lady’s political awakening, and it was based on her direct experience with how topsy-turvy the world has become and how invasive legal and cultural trends have become.
“I found myself watching Matt Walsh, who’s from The Daily Wire, and he had a documentary called ‘What Is a Woman?’ and it’s basically about my situation where trans men are erasing women and after watching that film, I realized that I was supporting literally satanic stuff.” -… https://t.co/zE35qLc0Gr
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) February 13, 2024
The Daily Wire is thrilled to have been mentioned–and good on them!–but the story here isn’t that Matt Walsh helped convert a liberal into a full-fledged MAGA hat-wearing Republican, but that the Left did it by bullying this young lady into rebellion.
Her story, I suspect, is one of many that will be repeated in the coming years. Lifelong Democrats who are getting bullied by the cultural and political Left, and who are waking up to the fact that this is going on in many aspects of our lives.
We are seeing the Glenn Greenwalds, the Matt Taibbis, and the Bari Weiss’ who are, if not moving Right, abandoning the Left and laying the groundwork for a new coalition to develop.
The America is not so bad, or even really pretty great coalition. People who in the past would likely disagree on the issues they considered most important to them, and who had little idea that they shared fundamental principles because they were so foundational that they never thought about them.
We argued about taxes, levels of welfare spending, foreign policy, or gay rights.
But we all shared a fundamental agreement about how American society and government should work. We didn’t even have to think deeply about it.
Now we do, because we all have the same opponents: people who want to fundamentally change America, for the worse.
This is how coalitions are built, and once they are build a consensus develops on other issues about which we would fight vigorously not too long ago. It takes a while, but generally it happens. And where it doesn’t we get cease-fires until the overriding issue is resolved.
I see this in who I follow–many people with whom I would have had fundamental disagreements just a few years ago I now consider allies, because the issues on which we disagree are now secondary. Still important, but secondary.
The old coalitions are fracturing, and for those of us who grew up in them it is very uncomfortable. I, for one, am an advocate of Pax Americana. I have my frustrations with NATO and other allies, and mixed feelings about Ukraine and regret about recent interventions in the Middle East. But generally speaking I am like that America is the most powerful nation in the world and think on balance we do more good than harm.
Lots of MAGA people are more isolationist than I. I think Trump was an exceptionally good foreign policy president (I was pleasantly surprised!), but I worry that too many MAGA folks are too isolationist. American prosperity is built on American power, which means being more active than a lot of people on that side of the issues want.
But we share the same political enemy: the radical Left and the administrative state. That issue binds the emerging coalition.
That coalition will include a huge working class component–people who feel abandoned for one reason or another by the Democrats in their embrace of the radical Left. It will include Gays Against Groomers. Some Bernie Sanders supporters. Who knows?
People like this young lady. I am proud to stand next to her in the fight to come.
We can unite against the Establishment because the Establishment has embraced the worst of the Left.