The BFD’s Cam Slater often says, “Between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, it’s the stuff-up every time”. This is almost certainly true of the Covid pandemic, at every level.
Xi Xinping didn’t have to deliberately seed a bio-weapon to weaken the West: all it took was what was most likely an accidental lab-leak, and Western leaders and their pet experts, in their stupidity and hubris, did the rest for Beijing. The mania for vax mandates didn’t need Bill Gates cackling and rubbing his hands, it just needed the stupidity of Chicken-Little megalomaniacs. Denial of vaccine injuries doesn’t need an army of little Mengeles, it just needs stubborn and arrogant bureaucrats who refuse to admit they fucked up.
And so on.
But there is also another possibility that neatly and plausibly explains what so many people otherwise feel compelled to appeal to ludicrous conspiracy theories: some people are simply smart enough to notice how other people behave and use that to their advantage.
From “pickup artists” to “nudge theorists”, there are always going to be those with the basic rat-cunning to observe the behavioural traits of their marks and manipulate them as needed.
A lot of people don’t want to admit that (feminists would rather die than admit that the likes of Andrew Tate, like any successful pimps, have enough of a grasp of feminine psychology to manipulate more than a few women into doing just what they want).
But if your enemy scores victories not by using physical force or advanced weaponry but simply by figuring you out and anticipating your move, that means the foe is smarter. Goliath can out-think you. And since most hidden handers are pathologically narcissistic, it never crosses their mind that they can be out-thought.
The Democrats held off the full force of the 2022 Red Wave, not because of any deep conspiracy, but because they figured out what makes MAGA Republicans tick – and manipulated them accordingly. It was well-known that the Dems were pouring money into their biggest enemies’ pockets. Why on Earth would they do that?
The greatest strategic op of 2022 was the Democrat plan to boost MAGA GOPs in primaries in districts where a less Trumpy Republican might’ve won the general. It was an exceptional op, because it worked every single place it was employed. Few “actions” have a 100 per cent success rate. This one did, and not because of killer robot Venezuelan voting machines or FBI spooks at Twitter or Mossad agents altering Kari Lake ballots. This op involved nothing more than anticipating the behavior of MAGAs and crafting campaign spots that would play to the MAGA mindset and make MAGAs forget about winnability in the general […]
Dems studied the minds of MAGAs and led them right into a trap. No thought-control rays needed; just simple observation.
Consider some of the candidates backed by Trump: Herschel Walker, George Santos, Dr Oz… these were insanely bad candidates. Yet, because they were annointed by God Emperor Trump, the MAGA Republicans stood by them, no matter what. And that’s why a slovenly potato like John Fetterman is drooling and mumbling for the Dems in the Senate.
Notice how little mention is made in conservative media of the 2022 primary op, even though it’s the reason the GOP House margin is so slim even a serial fabulist like George Santos can’t be jettisoned. Rightists are uninterested in understanding how they were so easily anticipated; better to fantasize about Kari Lake losing due to a powerful conspiracy and not because she said, “I don’t want votes from McCain fans” and McCain fans granted her wish.
You can blame whatever you like for recent GOP defeats. But the fact is, as long as rightists remain predictable, the left has an advantage.
Much is made of the Time article bragging about how the 2020 election was “safeguarded”. It might have been an immoral grand collusion between Big Tech, Big Media and Big Money, but none of it was actually illegal. Just very dirty, very, very effective political strategies.
Every one of them is something conservatives could copy and do. No hoodoo-voodoo, just studying and engaging the system.
But [Hillsdale’s Director of American Studies Dr Kevin Portteus] declares that the right must never do the perfectly legal things outlined in the Time article. Republicans must not “learn to beat the Democrats at their own game”, because it will “undermine norms”.
This from the same people who celebrated Trump rightly busting the “norms” of Washington politics-as-usual.
If Lee Atwater, the guy who gave Republicans victory after victory, the guy who invented new norms when the old ones were failing, the guy who saw the term “norm” as his to define, knew that conservatives today are being counseled that “it’s better to lose than violate a norm”, he’d return from the dead and kick Kevin Portteus in the nads.
And it gets worse. After telling rightists to abandon all attempts to use post-Covid voting rules and regs to their advantage, Portteus goes on to counsel, “[And] abandon using the courts, too.”
Whatever else you may say about them, the left aren’t so defeatist as to simply give up like that. Instead, with grimly admirable perseverance, they set out in the late ’60s on a decades-long Long March through the Institutions. Sure, they lost battle after battle through the ’70s to the ’90s… yet, here they are, almost totally victorious.
While leftist educators tell their students, “Go into the world and disrupt! Explore every avenue! Don’t let temporary setbacks get you down,” rightist “educators” like Portteus tell their students, “Aw shucks, your victories might theoretically be reversed in 30 years, so just give up now” […]
Leftists totally wrestle against flesh and blood, and boy are they good at it. While rightists fight heroic battles in their mind against Baron Rothschild, leftists fight real-world fleshy foes, destroying young girls by carving them up in the name of trannyism, and destroying whites via laws, the courts, HR departments, academia, or just bashing them over the head as they walk to the store […]
Leftists want you to check out.
They’re counting on it.
Takimag
So, don’t get angry. Don’t get conspiratorial. Get smart, get observational and get manipulative. It’s not “polite”, but it wins.
