If we today truly are living through The End, well, it’s proven to be quite Odd…
This whole idiot conservative university thing reminds me of a Darkest Timeline version of that old Justin Long (The “I’m A Mac” Guy) movie, “Accepted”.
If human nature does indeed prove to be the determining factor for humanity in The Great Filter, then it begs the question of what kinds of species could survive it. My bet is on eusocial, or hive-minded, species.
Liberals need to maintain a culture of dissent. Otherwise, the right will pioneer it for them, as we’ve seen recently. Dissent is a left value, not a right one, and history shows that whenever the right finds itself dissenting, the left finds itself in crisis.
As a leftist, of course I’d love it to be true for the left to be able to permanently stay in the catbird seat, such as it were, in the same stable, centuries-enduring way that we often find ourselves jealous of the right managing to do.
But I just don’t think it’s in the cards for us. The left is inherently the embodiment of instability. In almost every stable multiparty system, the center-right usually runs the show, and gets to decide which part of the left it finds least disagreeable. When the right mismanages things too badly, left coalitions tend to either fall apart quickly, or find themselves slowly evolving towards the right under the pressures of governance.
With the recent elections and upcoming midterms, it’s definitely important not to understand that thermostatic politics is simply the most dominant trend of our current polarized age; in fact, most eras of polarization find this to be true.
But that said, it’s also important to understand that our current age of thermostatic politics is indeed a relatively recent development, a product of polarization.
One of the things that seems to get lost on the persuasion debate, is that wedge issues can be a gateway to persuasion. Today’s swing voter can be tomorrow’s base progressive — look no further for proof than yours truly!
But you have to plan the persuasion as an actual strategy. You don’t get to just assume that everyone who swung to you in the last election is now permanently on your side; you have to earn their loyalty. You can’t just say whatever the hell you want simply because you won; you have to keep them on board.
And yes, that does run the risk of becoming what you hate by faking it for long enough. Look no further than the long, shameful decline of the once-great Republican Party! But you don’t have to do that. The right move is to just keep swinging, keep finding the next wedge issue that your swing voters and recent converts care about.