Thursday, November 21, 2024

Part I

---

No, Conservatives Aren’t Pushing Out Liberals From Social Media: The Left Dislikes the Destabilization of Their Media Establishment

A major shift in social media can represent a major shift in the culture. Then again, the very emergence of social media as a major factor in the electoral process, not to mention in the culture at large, that’s a fairly new thing, and still there are some very interesting developments. The New York Times recently ran a front-page business section story with the headline, “Liberals are left out in the cold as social media veers right.” Now, in cultural analysis, one of the things we need to note is that different sectors of the society marked by say different ideologies or different political polarities tend to be directed towards and influenced by different sectors of the entire society, different sectors of the information economy.

Just to put the matter bluntly, when you had a much smaller media economy, it was much easier for an establishment to take control, and that’s exactly what they did. We had three major television networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC. For the most part, those television networks and their affiliates controlled the political discussion because Americans didn’t have other forms of media to which they could turn. Well, you say, there were newspapers. Well, of course there were newspapers, but when it comes to the newspapers in the major cities, many of them were also very much captive to the Left. There was a media establishment.

There were some standout conservative newspapers back in those days, but for the most part, it was a media establishment in which you could look at a very privileged few who had gone to just a few prep schools and just a few universities, and they were basically part of what was established as a media elite, and they operated just as an elite always operates. That is to say they operated in control of ideas. You could look at something of different flavors when you think of the major networks in that era of their dominance, CBS, NBC, and ABC, but it was a difference of personality, maybe a difference even in tone. It was not a difference in basic political worldview. It was all basically establishment, and the rules were set by the liberal establishment.

As I said, the same thing was basically true in the radio spectrum. It was true at the time in the newspaper spectrum, but the emergence of alternative forms of information and alternative news networks, they really did change everything. The emergence of cable news, that was a big factor, because not only did you have CNN pioneering 24/7 news, before long you had Fox, and the development of Fox was a game changer. As it turns out, it’s a game changer even now.

But looking also beyond that at radio, the emergence of radio and talk radio in particular is a major force in American society. That turned out to be a forum that will be dominated by conservatives, most famously Rush Limbaugh. As you look at this, you recognize Limbaugh and his associates redefined radio at a time when people thought the AM spectrum was basically going out of existence. Not so. Rush turned it into an audience of millions, and frankly, a very potent political force. One of the very interesting facts about Rush Limbaugh is that he had a very well-defined set of political ideas, and they were conservative ideas. You can talk about the conservative movement over the course of the last several decades in America. You can talk about many people who contributed to that. But the late Rush Limbaugh was a major factor, and so was this new model of talk radio.

But the digital revolution provided an entire new avenue. Indeed, multiple new avenues. Just to speak in summary, you had the emergence of streaming video, streaming audio. You had the emergence even before that of blogs, and blogs became a vehicle for publishing, sometimes short articles, sometimes long articles linking to yet other articles in which there was an explosion of information. One of the things we needed to know is that the filtering system that was controlled by the Left, it basically was overcome with a flood of new forms of communication, new forms of media, and then of course came social media, and that’s where we’re going to take a particular look today.

The emergence of social media and the vast platforms such as Facebook and then Twitter. Add to that Instagram, TikTok, you could get on the list. Those have provided, by a quantum development, an increase in the number of persons who are involved in the transmission of information. Now, it might be wrong information, it might be right information, it might be good speech, it might be bad speech, it might be beautiful ideas or horrible ideas, but social media allows just about all of that to be put out in public delivered directly to your feed.

Here’s something really, really interesting. You look at the recent presidential election, you look at the recent cycles of elections. If you talk to mainstream liberals back in the 1950s and the 1960s, they were fairly certain that Conservatism was dead as a major political force in the United States of America. They were pretty certain that conservatism had been killed, murdered sometime in the first half of the 20th century. But then something else began to happen. There was an emergence of a new conservative counterculture and then a burgeoning conservative movement. There were very significant setbacks. There were developments that seemed to indicate that the liberals, the mainstream media, the cultural elite were right. The conservatism was over as a major movement in America. They thought the funeral could have been held in November of 1964.

It was in November of 1964 that the Republican nominee, a very clearly identified political conservative, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, lost in a landslide to the incumbent Democratic president, the very liberal Lyndon Baines Johnson. Obituaries were written not only for Barry Goldwater as the Republican nominee for president, but for the conservative movement. For a time it appeared that that would be so, and yet four years later, Richard Nixon was elected. Now, here’s the thing. Richard Nixon was a Republican. He wasn’t really a conservative in any consistent sense. So even as the political elites didn’t like Richard Nixon, it was not because of his conservatism that they didn’t like him. He just wasn’t that conservative. And so then you had Gerald Ford, considered a moderate, then you had Jimmy Carter, another moderate in one sense, but he was a Democratic president, and frankly, he supported a good number of very liberal ideas. Then you had, however, in 1980, Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California and a clear conservative, he not only won the White House in 1980, he won it in a landslide. He won it again in a landslide in 1984.

Clearly conservatism wasn’t dead. Clearly conservatism isn’t dead, but Ronald Reagan was elected by a massive grassroots effort. Even then, there were alternative forms of media that had emerged. For one thing, a number of periodicals, a number of newspapers, a number of magazines, and a number of books by which conservatives began to communicate with each other, and add to that some significant radio presence. There was also something else about Ronald Reagan. As a former Hollywood actor, the man possessed extraordinary charisma and communication ability. So even when the mainstream media did focus on him, let’s just say that even when the media did not want it to be, the camera was extremely friendly to Ronald Reagan.

But to fast-forward to the future, it turned out that AM radio was far more effective for conservative communication or developing a conservative audience than a liberal audience. It turned out that a number of digital developments were far more powerful for conservatives communicating with one another than for liberals. In one sense, you could say that the liberal establishment had the mainstream forms of media, including the so-called prestige television networks, the biggest newspapers, the editorial boards. They had control of the major networks and they had control of the major mastheads. But it was the development of alternative media that really did begin to change everything.

Now you have this headline in The New York Times, liberals are left out in the cold as social media veers right. You need to ask the question, why does it veer right? I mean, as many liberals could sign up for Twitter as conservatives, why does it lean right? Well, some of them would say, well, it’s because Elon Musk bought Twitter and transformed it, renamed it into X, and it has become a far more conservative platform. Well, that is certainly a factor to some degree, but the fact is nothing limits liberals from gaining followers on Twitter or X, posting their arguments, posting their conversations one to the other, linking to one, commenting on another. Nothing stopping liberals from doing that, but it turns out they’re not so effective at doing it, or at least they don’t like doing it with conservative pushback or conservative blowback.

It turns out that liberals are far more secure in a communications medium in which, evidently, they have total control, or at least they’re not confronted by conservatives, and frankly, some of them can be quite rude on both sides. Let’s face it, social media is a jungle enterprise. People can be very rude, they can be very vicious, but that is not a left-right thing. But the Left is increasingly moving off of X or Twitter and onto other platforms, one of them known as Bluesky.

According to some media reports, more than 150,000 users of X have at least declared they are leaving that platform, and the platform known as Bluesky reports that it has had an unprecedented number of persons join. Indeed, they’ve said more than a million. But it’s not just X or Twitter. Consider this section of the New York Times report. “On Facebook, Mr. Trump’s most popular election day post, asking voters to stay in line and cast their ballot, was liked nearly 160,000 times and shared by more than 15,000 people. Ms. Harris’ most popular Facebook post was liked 18,000 times and shared by 1500 people.” The report continues on Instagram, an image that Mr. Trump posted on November 5 with his Make America Great Again slogan was liked over 2.1 million times. Ms. Harris’ most popular post that day, which celebrated Generation Z’s first-time voters, was liked 569,000 times. Well, the numbers just go on, but the numbers are always lopsided in this sense.

Far more conservatives are active in these social media platforms than liberals, or at least far more conservatives are posting their interest in conservative ideas, and conservative candidates more than liberal users are indicating their solidarity with liberal ideas and liberal candidates. The New York Times again says that the shift in social media has left liberals out in the cold. But the argument of this New York Times piece is that conservatives basically, pushed out liberals, but that can’t work. They can’t be pushed out in terms of canceling their accounts. The reality is that at least in this sense, as in AM radio and as in some other formats, including now, of course, the greatest example is podcasting, those on the Right turn out to be far more effective in using these platforms and technologies than those on the Left.

Now, why would that be so? Well, I’m going to make a suggestion. I think as you asked the question, why would it be so, it points to the fact that there is a populist basis. That is to say, you have a widespread basis in the population regardless of social class, social status, or say occupation, or whether or not you have a college degree. You have an imbalance here of far more people who would define themselves as just ordinary Americans rather than those who see themselves as part of a political or cultural elite. Just to state the obvious, the elite sees itself as a smaller party, superior to and holding an elite status over the mainstream. But these formats, these technologies, these platforms allow just about anybody to establish a social media account and to say whatever he or she wants to say to whomever he or she wants to say it. Period. You don’t have to have a degree from Harvard to post on X.

Now, as a Christian, just thinking biblically, I’m concerned about how much is posted on all of these platforms and how much is stated throughout all the media within our culture that is ungodly, is uncouth, is improper. There’s just a lot that no Christian should want to be associated with. But on the other hand, I have to think it’s a good thing that a massive faucet has been turned on that allows the flow of information that can’t be controlled by a media elite that usually, not by coincidence, happens to be populated by the Left. You ask, how would that happen? Well, it’s because when you’re looking at big business and you’re looking at media monopolies, you are looking at the fact that the same elite that sends their children, and quite successfully so, at least in history, to Ivy League institutions, to all the right schools, even the right prep schools, they have all the right experiences, they graduate as part of a self-defined class. And as leaders of that class were generally bold and unembarrassed to say they saw themselves as a ruling class.

But just to state another obvious fact, the ruling class doesn’t fare too well on X. On X, even the peasants can have their say, and if you look at the medium you understand the peasants do. And just to state a third obvious fact, there are a whole lot more peasants than there are aristocrats. Or to use an adage from times past, it takes a peasant who knows how to use a pitchfork to throw out a tyrant with a pitchfork. The aristocrats, the aristocracies never held a pitchfork. They don’t know what to do with it.

Now, I mentioned the phenomenon in which you had at least a significant number of persons say that they are departing from X or Twitter and moving towards other platforms, most particularly the platform known as Bluesky. The founders of Bluesky say that it is a genuine alternative for a number of reasons. They argue that users can create their own feeds in such a way that they’re less likely to be bombarded by what they don’t want, and furthermore, they also say that no one, hint, hint, Elon Musk, can move in and buy Bluesky because it’s based in open source platforms that simply can’t be owned by anyone.

But it’s also not clear that Bluesky is a permanent fixture, and is so often the case, massive growth on a platform like Bluesky might cause it to have to turn to investors and others who just might, well, you know how the story goes, it gets big. Big means a lot of money, big takes a lot of money, and before you know it isn’t what it began as. And that is true not only potentially for Bluesky, that’s true in actuality for X, which after all started as Twitter.

Now, I think in a Christian worldview perspective, it’s important to understand that we want communication, we want truth. Christians cannot be satisfied with an aristocracy controlling information, and Christians certainly cannot be satisfied with lies, slander and untruth. That raises a very interesting question. Which is more likely to produce the truth, and which is more likely to produce error or misconstrual? This is the conservative argument, and I think there’s something that is resonant here with the Christian worldview.

Democratizing information is going to be messy, but it is also likely to destabilize autocrats who would wish to control people by the restriction of information or by the transmission of falsehoods and the transmission of lies. I think for that reason, even as social media brings many things we regret and many things we should truly as Christians condemn, the reality is that not only the social media platforms, but frankly the entire emergence of digital media, it’s lowered the access to gaining a voice and it has destabilized the liberal media establishment. You understand why the Left doesn’t like it. And frankly, it doesn’t come without risk. Nothing this powerful does.

But there is an enormously powerful upside here, and even as Christians committed to Christian standards of how to communicate, how to speak, loving the truth, hating the lie, expressing respect for one another, that’s all called for as much in social media as it is in any other dimension of life. But the very fact that millions of people can now have a voice, that is a new thing, not only in terms of say, modern American politics, it’s a new thing in terms of human communication. It is destabilizing to the powers that be, and I think we need to understand in itself, that is not a bad thing.

Part II

---

Conservatives Did Not Launch the Culture War: The Left is Politicizing the Sexual Revolution – And Trying to Overcome Common Sense

But next we need to shift to a genuinely big story that’s garnering a lot of headlines. In this case, we’re talking about controversy related to the individual identified as the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress. That person would be the Democrat from Delaware, Sarah McBride. So we’re talking about a man claiming a transgender female identity elected to Congress back on November the 5th. The big story here, the headlines have to do with the fact that the House Republican majority, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Louisiana’s, Mike Johnson, are moving to limit access to women’s bathrooms for members of Congress who are female to persons who are actually biologically female.

It tells you a great deal about the confusion in our world that that is right now a very big story and a very big controversy. It began when Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina started talking about her opposition to having a biological male share a bathroom with female members of Congress. Now, if you just think for a moment, just pause for a moment, in no other epoch of human history would this have made even the slightest amount of sense, and even as Nancy Mace has sometimes seemed to go after the headlines, this is a headline worth going after. It is a point that demands to be made.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, while somewhat ambushed on the question, didn’t answer so well when he talked about having respect for one another, but he quickly did gain his voice and came out with a very clear statement, and he made clear that the House of Representatives, at least the Republican majority in the House, would recognize the difference between a man and a woman. Indeed, he stated the fact that a man cannot become a woman, and this was extended to the logic of which bathroom a biological male could use as a member of Congress. But it’s interesting that the Washington Post immediately jumped on the Speaker of the House, saying that his comments were an attempt to, quote, score political points, end quote.

Well, as I pointed out at the time, he might indeed be trying to score political points. That’s what politicians do by the way, and sometimes that’s actually a demonstration of political leadership. But in this case, the points are quite legitimate, and not only that, a recognition of these points is absolutely mandatory for any kind of moral sanity. But I also want to point out that behind those political points are biological points, and before both the political and the biological, are the theological, the biblical realities that God created us as male and female, and that’s an unchanging matter.

The Associated Press reported “a resolution proposed Monday by GOP Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina would prohibit any lawmakers and house employees from using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” Now, Mace, that is Representative Mace, said that the bill is aimed specifically at the person identified as Sarah McBride “who was elected to the House this month from Delaware.” Now, again, I want to state that this is procedurally right. It is morally right. It is biologically right because behind all of that, it’s biblically right. A society that can’t tell the difference between male and female, it’s a society that is losing its sanity, and that sanity loss is going to come with an enormous price.

But I want to raise a different issue here. We’re talking here about the halls of the House of Representatives. We’re talking about the United States Capitol. And that means that the people speaking to this as elected members of the House have a platform in which they can speak. The story became a national, indeed, an international story because, well, you can just imagine this kind of story is going to go viral. But what about at your local elementary school? What about at your local middle school? What about at a place of work right down the street? The fact is that an incredible number of Americans are now subjected to what the Speaker of the House rightly said, is not acceptable, and they don’t have the platform to voice their own opposition. They don’t have a fulcrum from which they can exert any kind of cultural or political power. They’re simply trapped in a system of sexual activism, that quite frankly is as insidious in the elementary school, perhaps actually a good deal more insidious than what might take place in the United States Capitol.

I’ll go further, and I’ll say it’s a greater disgrace that middle school girls would be invaded by a biological male or high school girls than even elected members of Congress.

Part III

---

Answer this Question: If Congress Cannot Operate by a Truthful Bathroom Policy, How Can It Decide on the Major Policy Issues of Our Nation?

I’m saying here that Nancy Mace and the Speaker of the House are absolutely right, but I’m saying they’re right far beyond the halls of Congress, and that points to the massive confusion in our society, which is coming to us with an even more massive cost.

The newly elected transgender member of Congress responded by saying, “This is a blatant attempt from far right wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.” McBride went on to say, “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, healthcare, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.” Well, let’s just step back for a moment. Conservatives did not manufacture this culture war. It was a culture war launched by moral liberals, moral progressivists who sought to redefine millennia of human experience, the entirety of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and frankly even to defy creation, order, and biology in order to push their extreme agenda.

It is not the right that is politicizing this. It is the Left, right down to the Left being complicit in saying this is a woman, except when they don’t want to say this is a woman. By the way, even as Americans are very confused on so many issues, they are generally not confused on this issue. A vast majority do not want their daughters sharing bathrooms with boys. They see the same thing pertaining to adult context, and quite frankly, they’ll extend this also, as we’ll be talking about in coming days, when it comes to athletic teams. There is common sense among the American people on this issue. The Left is absolutely certain that they can overcome this common sense. But you know what? It seems to me that the controversies they complain about here, the controversies which they themselves sparked by their revolution against ontology creation, order, and morality, it seems to me that they’re more afraid that it’s not going to work.

I want to point finally to a statement made by the individual identified as the number two Democrat in the House. That would be Representative Katherine Clark. She said about Republicans, “What are they talking about there on day one?” Representative Clark went on to say that Republicans are misusing their time and emphasis by dealing on day one with where one out of 435 members of Congress is going to go to the bathroom. With a snide sense, Clark responded, “That is their focus.” Well, my response is I’m glad it’s their focus because quite frankly, it’s hard to know how you’re going to organize legislation and work through a political process and even debate major matters of great legislative importance if you don’t know, even before that, where to go to the bathroom.

It turns out sometimes, and Christians need to understand this, this points to creation order, it points to the Book of Genesis. It points to the fact that you have to get certain things right before you can get anything else right. If you get those first things wrong, everything downstream is going to be wrong, malformed, confused, if not worse. I’ll go back to this principle. If a society doesn’t understand in a sane, righteous, and reasonable way, which by the way is revealed quite clearly in creation order, if you don’t know the difference between male and female, if you’re so confused, you’re making a protest over a common sense rule about a bathroom, then there is really nowhere to go from here.

Well, to conclude this issue is not going to go away, but this is a very interesting issue. We’re going to talk more about this in coming days. This is every day, becoming a more interesting issue, not because the transgender activists are winning, but because they sense they’re losing. I’m not sure that creation order is winning in this sense, in this political context, but I am quite certain that the future is not becoming what the left wants it to be as fast as they were sure it would be. That in itself, even a pause while we clarify matters, is a good thing for which we should be thankful. Meanwhile, keep the signs that identify the bathrooms clearly in mind because we understand they have to be right and they have to matter.