Victor Davis Hanson
Conservative America has been growing ever angrier. But it still had remained inert and in somnolence about the ongoing woke revolution.
But just lately that comatose dragon is beginning to awake—and with a roar.
Conservatives usually do not boycott or embargo. They are too busy with work, family, church, and community. In sum, most of them have a different work schedule than the architects of Antifa and BLM. But apparently, if pushed, they can organize, and do so in numbers and dollars for greater than the various leftist “communities” or for that matter leftists in general.
As a result of this anti-awakening, we can ask what are the collective losses in diminished stock, subscriber losses, sales slumps, inert attendance, and PR damage to Disney, Anheuser-Busch, Target, or the Los Angeles Dodgers? Why has Fox lost one million viewers plus?
So far in aggregate $10, 15, 20, 40 billion in total for them all? Would corporate American wish to pay that tab to appease whom exactly? The Malibu Elite? The Ivy League professoriate? The network television anchors? The diversity/equity/inclusion mob?
Perhaps, but what cannot go on, does not.
Will an Ivy-League MBA, fresh out of graduate woke indoctrination courses, still so smugly and snarkily steer an Anheuser-Busch CEO to hire another Dylan Mulvaney to gush about his transitioning, as he incidentally signals Bob Smith in Akron that he should therefore buy more Bud Lite?
Here we discover that Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing for Bud Light, and her own boss, Daniel Blake, Budweiser’s group vice president for marketing, either dreamed up or green-lighted the Mulvaney confessionals.
Are they typical corporate toadies who leave woke MBA programs to convince their bosses that they have a finger on the pulse of woke America? What happens to a corporate grandee when he or she almost single-handedly loses the firm billions of dollars?
Will another Los Angeles Dodgers’ thirty-something PR genius convince corporate management that it must highlight gay men in drag, emulating sexual acts with a Christ actor, while dressed as nuns and priests—on Dodger baseball “pride” night?
Will such geniuses continue to point out to the front office that surely some four million of Catholic Jorge Ramoses and baseball addicted Juan Ortegas of the greater LA area will rush out to buy Dodger tickets, memorabilia, and food at Dodger Stadium—once they hear they can get a rare chance to watch transgendered nuns feign sex acts with a gay Jesus or Virgin Mary in drag?
Traditionalists now have shunned the Oscar, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Awards ceremonies that as a result have descended into a little-watched woke echo chamber. Ditto the White House Correspondents Dinner. Ditto network late-night comedy. Ditto most first-run Hollywood movies. What was so wrong in the past with an Ingrid Bergman gracefully accepting a best actress Oscar for Gaslight or a nomination for For Whom the Bells Toll?
The NBA finals brag of a 4-5-million-person-television audience—in other words, about 15 percent of the audiences that watched the 1998 NBA finals, a quarter century ago, when there were 60 million fewer Americans. Does the NBA believe that a woke LeBron James has the star power of Michael Jordan? Do today’s players show the drawing power of an Oscar Robertson or a Larry Bird?
So ratings and sales suggest something has been going on, as the dragon occasionally yawns and spouts a flame or two before falling back into slumber.
Aggrieved Virginia parents stirred up by a woke K-12 curricula changed the gubernatorial race and elected Glenn Youngkin.
If riled, traditionalists can make a huge difference, rather than the current “see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya” attitude of dropping out and shunning the madness of 2023 popular culture.
But they must sustain such efforts and accept that they are living in fifth-century AD Rome, fifteenth-century Byzantium, or Vienna, circa 1683—at the brink of post-civilizational chaos with enemies that hate traditional America at the gates—or rather inside the gates.
Discussion (16)
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excellent point. it's disheartening to say the least. as the good dr. points out traditionalist are too busy with life; families, work, church etc. It's hard to maintain a concerted effort. we're not dedicated cultural marxist who don't have anything better to do. I'm old enough to remember the end of the cold. My thought was communism was proven failure, lesson learned so now we can move forward. But they don't quit and we let our guard down. I look at New York and California and wonder what is it going to take...sigh.
Speak up politely and empathetically in support of fundamentals and in response to Lefty assumptions and assertions. Don’t give a lecture, just a polite dissent based on facts or history. It is OK to politely dissent from a Lefty’s assertions even at at bridge club, golf course, social associations and other casual interactions —- don’t give that space to the authoritarians. Be polite and target the listeners, not the lefty talker. Perhaps, I understand what you are saying, but I think you are mistaken in your understanding, lets have coffee after ((whatever polite event you are at…))
My solution was to divest any Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street ETF's. I have found funds from other aggregators with lower fees than them who just hold the shares and are not activist investors. I only need two ETF's and ARCC to fit my needs. If 200,000 of us $5 million holders move, they take a trillion dollar hit. If a million do, they are done. Like most conservatives, I think boycotts are nasty, but it is that or rivers of blood running in the gutters of the Western World.
Were one to judge by the November 2022 election, one might believe the dragon is actually Rip Van Winkle.
Michael Walsh says something like this of the left, “they never stop, they never rest, they never quit.” The left considers our wins merely speed bumps on their path to utopia. Our side has a pattern of rising up in anger, securing a win, then assuming it is over so we can return to our daily habits. The left knows this and assumes this is just another tantrum they can ride out. VDH is right in his last paragraph.
Thank you, Professor Hanson.
If the sixties and seventies was the turn on, tune in, and drop out era then we might see the 2020's as the turn-off, tune-out, and ignore era. The left thrives on any attention, even negative attention. "As long as we have your attention we own you." Well organized and debated beliefs never scream for attention but poorly defined beliefs, exceptionally emotional appeals all scream for attention yet offer no real thought to the audience. Like the old sexual adage, "If it feels good, do it," the new left adage is, "If it feels good, believe it." When you must spread your emotional appeal so thin it must vaporize into thin air.
Im a native of the West coast of the great State of Florida so I’m sure by Wall Street standards I’m just a dumb hillbilly. But at what point do the “ordinary” shareholders stage a rebellion? ‘
Prof, Hanson, As always, brilliant and well reasoned. Unfortunately it only covers our domestic situation and shows us to be (probably) partially waking up to deal with the idiocies confronting us. It leaves untouched the international dangers that are much more difficult to clearly define, as they are bi-partisan, and we, as citizens, have never been focused externally. Solving the domestic (if it can be done), will be huge. I do not believe however, that we can bring both internal and external in line, in time to avoid a whole bunch of "complications." "Interesting times" are ahead of us, unless I miss my guess.
It’s fitting that the End-Times battle should focus on money. Soros & Zuckerberg and their ilk are multi-billionaire Dem donors betting on the destruction of America (& the West) in light of the rise of great authoritarian slave-states. With a multiplier of 100 million, people’s dollar ‘votes’ against these paracitic Dem organizations can have an impact. With the recent Supreme Court decision affecting state’s control over federal elections and on-going, overwhelming Dem lawfare and the fatally divided Republican Party and the continued use of obviously crooked voting machines, conservative Americans will be unable to vote the Dems out of power. But money talks. Sacrifice some of the costly quest for daily happiness in pursuit of political liberty and a life worth living and we may score a lasting victory, God permitting.
With Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street as the major shareholders this means that Target and others will not be held accountable. After all it is the Board of Directors and the shareholders that hold management accountable. Customers are second in the real hierarchy of power in a widely held corporation. ESG score is more important than profits or share price to the Blackrocks et al.
Keep up the good work !! You did hit quite a coincidence: Robert Holbrook Smith, also known as Dr. Bob, was an American physician and surgeon who founded Alcoholics Anonymous with Bill Wilson. Born: Robert Holbrook Smith, August 8, 1879, St. Johnsbury, Vermont Died: November 16, 1950, Akron, Ohio Nationality: United States of America Wikipedia
Well said Doctor Hansen: I have often wondered exactly when my fellow citizens would awake and say "enough". The puzzling thing is how the left seems to be going through life wearing a blindfolds, oblivious to their failed policies and the destruction they sow. I too have tuned out the woke madness and shall endeavor to spend my coin where I feel welcome
Dear Dr. Hanson: Your imagery is accurate on one level about who the real enemy is and his position in the world. Your narrative is quite accurate on the manifestation of that enemy in today's world. I think the lion awakens at dusk, just before the darkness is total. That is the fear of the leftist and why they have such a sense of urgency on all fronts. When "The Lion" returns, the leftist will be in the throes of their own end, and they know it!