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The Topline

Friday Rant Time

I am not emotionally prepared to talk about the Actual Problems, so instead I got mad at a liberal YouTuber

Farrah Bostic

Farrah Bostic

— 8 min read
Friday Rant Time

Just as I was finishing up writing this, I saw that a second judge has been arrested and charged with two felonies by federal officials for not allowing immigration enforcement to disrupt their courtrooms to seize humans. Pam Bondi says to judges, “we will find you”.

We’re living in dangerous times. The stakes are constantly being raised. We need serious people to help hold the opposition together, and help bushwhack the trail out of this perilous place. But some of the folks who are supposedly helping are just not serious. Today I want to talk about just one. But it’s not all his fault.

Liberal Influencers Are Neither

So I’m out in the garden, doing some spring planting and weeding, listening to podcasts, minding my own business. And I hear top-rated progressive YouTuber David Pakman say this:

Here’s the transcript, with thanks to Podscribe:

“If we think about the issue of abortion, right? The idea that ‘killing is bad, abortion is killing, it should be illegal.’ It took me three seconds to tell you that. There’s no equivalent opposite on the political left. It’s not, ‘we love abortions, the more the better’, right? We’re trying to find a conversation here about bodily autonomy, about medicine and science, about the law. And we’ve already lost. It’s taken me 20 seconds just to give you the framework under which we would have that conversation…”

And because I know you loved that one, he gives another stellar example:

“Tax relief is another one. Like ‘it’s your money, you should get to keep it’ — on the left, we don’t say ‘you should have as little of your money as possible’, right? We’re saying, ‘listen, if we understand sociology and anthropology and political science, we know that when we get beyond Dunbar’s number of groups of 15 people, certain aspects of what we do have to be centralized. And you can use the word coercive for taxes, but it’s a form of necessary coercion’. We’ve lost, right? I mean, it’s a different format, and I don’t say we’ve lost in terms of we have the wrong idea. What I’m saying is it doesn’t lend itself to TikTok.”

I’m not going to lie to you. I have been obsessively angry about this since I heard it on Tuesday.

On the Media co-host Micah Loewinger was smart enough to say this:

“I mean, if we want it to get spicy, I mean it’s not so hard to translate some of these left-wing positions into quick hit emotional messages. On the abortion one, you could say, ‘Republicans don’t respect women and they want to dominate them.’ On tax relief, if you were a certain kind of Democrat, you could say, ‘Government helps people and protects us from, you know, craven criminals and billionaires.’ I don’t know, right?”

Yes, Micah. Right.

And then David says this,

“Listen, I also am trying to work within the system, and so on taxes, one of the things I’ve been saying is we want taxes as low as possible while funding the areas of absolute importance to have a functioning liberal democracy. Right? And I’m even kind of hesitating as I tell you because I’m trying to figure it out but you’re not wrong that the left can do better on this stuff, but it takes a little more thinking to do it.”

Oh. My. God.

Do we still say “delete your account”? No? Okay then, I’ve been told the gamers say this, and I mean it sincerely:

Uninstall.

We Don’t Have to Hand It to You, David

Several problems here:

  1. You seem to be willfully portraying liberal policy positions as bloodless, immoral/amoral, academic and painfully stupid as a way of demonstrating why it’s so inevitable that right wing ideas do better on social media algorithms than left wing ideas. But all you are really saying is “short, morally unambiguous arguments are better than long, meandering explanations” and, yeah. As they say in the law, res judicata.
  2. But seriously - do you believe that the equal and opposite message on abortion would be “Killing is good. More killing”? And that, barring that ‘equal and opposite’ response, the only alternative approach is to pontificate like a philosophy undergrad? If Micah can come up with a pretty good log line on the fly in the interview, then no, David, it doesn’t take a little more thinking. Opposition isn’t “doing the opposite” - it is opposing, which is about moving against something with at least equal persuasive force. You’re not even trying.
  3. Also can we talk about Joe Rogan for a minute? Joe Rogan hangs out and records for three hours. Clips get made and circulated on TikTok et al, but I was literally just listening to Malcolm Gladwell observe that JRE gets good in the third hour, when everyone is loose and they’ve forgotten that they’re being recorded and are just talking to some bloke. Millions of people listen to this regularly. It’s not really about the sound bites, it’s about the vibe. Rogan is, for his audience, a good hang. Someone wants to make a show that’s just a good hang, gets high profile guests, knows how to ask a question, but happens to also be a place where the host isn’t on gear, hawks crypto, and believes vaccines are a hoax? I don’t see why it couldn’t put up numbers.
  4. And finally, “I’m trying to work within the system”. That means what exactly? Because it sounds like old-fashioned triangulation to me. The ‘system’ seems to be one in which we start by granting that conservatives are right about the problem (taxes, I guess), and then we try to find a less crazy solution (don’t cut all taxes). Because when I hear you say “taxes as low as possible while funding the areas of absolute importance to have a functioning liberal democracy” all I have are questions. What do you think a “functioning liberal democracy” is, what are the “areas of absolute importance” that allow you to have one? Should we have gone to the moon, David? Should we have joined WW2? Should we have done Operation Warp Speed? Don’t make me quote Jed Bartlett, David!

When I see these kinds of comments, or hear people who have any level of influence in liberal political circles talking like this, I come to two conclusions:

Conclusion One:

You really think everybody but you is an idiot, don’t you? The line that I sometimes hear from the Crooked Media guys about how the problem liberal pundits have is they’re all straight-A students who sit in the front of the class and raise their hands, blah blah blah proves that they think they’re “problem” is they’re just too smart. But let’s be real. This is gate-keeping. It’s a signal to anybody who might have a better idea that they should step aside and let the experienced folks run things. Which leads me to…

Conclusion Two:

If you really are so damn smart, prove it. Figure out how to explain why abortion is good, actually, and why taxes are good, actually. In fact, borrow these if you want, they’re free:

  • Abortion is both a life-saving medical procedure that saves women’s lives and future fertility, and also provides them with the right to control their own destinies — and anybody who wants to take it away wants to hurt women and their families, all so they can deprive them of their liberty.
  • Taxes are how we look after each other, ensuring the dignity, security, and prosperity of everyone in this country, not just the ultra wealthy and corporations, who would rather spend billions buying elections and bribing politicians and setting up shell companies than just paying their fair share like the rest of us.

Are these perfect messages? Nah.

Are they pretty good? Sure.

Do they require me to hand it to my opponents? F*ck no.

Can I fit them in a TikTok? Yes.

Okay, I needed to get that off my chest. I think it might be time to bring you more ideas and methods from the marketing world, because we do this all. the. time. Our whole world is figuring out how to get people’s attention, and make them want to do something. And we know there’s a universe of possibilities between, say, rolling over for the competition, and a white paper.

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That’s it for this week. Thanks again to Lyn for pulling these links together amidst many other responsibilities.

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