Tuesday, December 16, 2014

How the faux-conservative marketplace works

 At the risk of inducing Dreher Fatigue™, my little mini-series on TAC's year-end fundraising would be incomplete without this little gem courtesy of one of the rubes herself. A commenter calling herself grumpy realist tells us:

Rod, even though I’m totally on the other side from you I just donated as well. If I had more available would donate more. Mainly because I’m a cranky old bitch that appreciates great writing and thinks that we need to have good thinkers on all sides.

 I’m skeptical about conservatism because I see it used far too often as justification used by privileged people to keep themselves on top and not share the goodies. But if I argue with conservatives, I’d rather argue with conservatives who use reason and logic, rather than some screaming talk-show host who flails around and calls me a “feminazi”.

How iconoclastic! A dedicated liberal donates to a "conservative" blog! And what does she get for her donation?

Why, the faux-conservative Dreher immediately sells the watch she has just paid him to take right back to her again:

Best motivation for a TAC donor ever! From a reader of this here blog:

Rod, even though I’m totally on the other side from you I just donated as well. If I had more available would donate more. Mainly because I’m a cranky old bitch that appreciates great writing and thinks that we need to have good thinkers on all sides.

I’m skeptical about conservatism because I see it used far too often as justification used by privileged people to keep themselves on top and not share the goodies. But if I argue with conservatives, I’d rather argue with conservatives who use reason and logic, rather than some screaming talk-show host who flails around and calls me a “feminazi”.

Bless you, COB. You complete me. I know this was Beatrice Arthur from beyond the grave.

Oh - she does get an additional gift: he characterizes her as the dead Bea Arthur.

So let's break down the mechanics of the ideological daisy chain we've just witnessed:
  • A liberal - here grumpy realist - wants to feel she is being diverse by engaging with conservatives.
  • But the porridge served at true conservative sites is too hot and burns her lips.
  • So she searches until she finds a site with the word "conservative" in it that conforms perfectly to her liberal needs and sensibilities - TAC, "The" "American" "Conservative".
  • And gives them money, thus validating her perceptions with meaningful action. Certainly grumpy realist wouldn't donate money to a counterfeit conservative site, now would she. Of course not. As a critically discerning liberal she's just too smart for that.
  • And as if her own donation were not proof enough for her, her "conservative" host further legitimizes her decision by selling her comment right back to her. Diversity and reason in action, head to tail!
So, here's how to make money online as a faux-conservative:
  • Find out what your liberal and fellow faux-conservative marks want to hear - maybe something about "the arrogance of Seth Rogen" in not being sensitive enough to Sony Corp.'s potential bullying by Kim Jong-un. All good liberals and faux-conservatives always appreciate a bullying narrative anyway.
  • Give them some resistance to overcome: in addition to making their commenting a hard-won privilege, frequently say stupid things deliberately so they will feel compelled to correct you. Let them comment, but shoot a Jew behind them in the field from your balcony every now and then both to keep them on their toes and to further validate their experience.
  • Regularly sell their comments back to them as posts they or someone else has to pay for. As we've already noted, this has the mutually useful effect of making them feel their time has been well spent and validating your faux-conservative credentials as genuine - because you made them feel their time had been well spent, and only a fool would feel that way if the site were not genuinely conservative to begin with.
  • Finally, urinate on their heads a little bit when you're finished - compare them to Bea Arthur - to keep them in their place. Because their whole underlying impulse to begin with is actually to serve you, they will never fell properly satisfied if they themselves are the finally or completely victorious parties in the engagement.
That's the way you do it: money for nothing and your clicks for free.

This Way to the Egress! =>

16 comments:

  1. why do you assume the commenter is a "her"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kathleen, I'm only assuming grumpy realist is female because she has referred to herself as female in numerous previous comments.

      But you're right. She could really be a monkey like me just trying to pass.

      Delete
    2. So you keep a running tally of Dreher's commenters and the status of their lady parts? they let you get up that close?

      Delete
    3. I'm afraid I'm not following your sentence fragments, Kathleen. Care to elaborate?

      And what brings you around these parts after such a long, self-imposed absence?

      If you bought a Christmas gift for me, you really shouldn't have. I'm ashamed to say I'd assumed you'd died and haven't gotten you anything.

      Delete
    4. To what "sentence fragments" do you refer? All of my sentences in this thread have a subject and predicate. In the meantime, I have some questions. How long is your running list of Dreher commenters and their respective genders? What other information do you compile about them? Finally, do you have a life?

      Delete
    5. Oh, I see now, Kathleen, you're here begging for my repeated attention. Well, I really have been rather generous already, haven't I?

      Take care, now.

      Delete
    6. Upon further reading (its just that so many of your posts are tl:dr, Keith), I see the commenter refers to (her)self as a "feminazi", so I'll buy into your assumption. But it escapes me why you think someone who refers to (her)self a "cranky old bitch" would blink at being called Bea Arthur. Personally, I thought cranky old bitch sounded like a cranky old queen, and anyway, I'm certain both (she) and Bea Arthur would insist gender is fluid.

      Delete
  2. This is why you're a lousy Dreher critic, Keith. You're far too naive.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The American Conservative: Written by assholes, for assholes, especially if those assholes are too clever by half.

    Come to think of it, doesn't Patheos serve the same function?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Shea is hosted by Patheos, no?

      --

      Pretty much. I think it's wrong to see the alt-right as a political tendency. They're more a psychological one.

      Delete
  4. Given Dreher's recent binge of outrage posts I'm wondering if perhaps he is simply off his meds again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When was Dreher ever on his meds -- or Shea, for that matter?

      Delete
    2. Looks to me that he is on the same meds, but just a different dose. He's still propping up Putin, but with a pathetically watered-down rationale (emphasis added):

      I can’t think of another country that is as culturally great as Russia, and that has suffered more from bad government. Putin has made his own bed, and now he’s lying in it. Whether or not he survives this crisis, the most worrying thing is who comes after Putin. I don’t think we in the West are going to like him.

      P.S. Just scanning over the front page of TAC these days, it's hard to find a tyrant that they don't love. The Castro Bros get much love over this week's Obama cave-in, there's sympathy for Kim Jung-Un over the movie, the Senate "torture" report is critiqued not for failing to interview the CIA directors but for failing to interview the "victims"(!), and even our lamely weak intervention in Syria is slammed.
      On the domestic front, Rubio gets the two-minute hate, next to a piece entitled "How far can Elizabeth Warren go?"

      Mix in some planned society talk over on the New Urbanism page, and "The" "American" "Conservative" reads more like "The American Fascist".

      Delete
    3. Well, Pikumatti, just remember who founded that august magazine: Pat Buchanan, whose sympathies for Fascists (such as the Waffen-SS troops buried at Bitburg and Fr. Coughlin, no mean anti-Semite, he) are discernable if anybody cares to look.

      Let's not fool ourselves over something else: Elements of Traditionalist Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy revere centralized political authority, to put it diplomatically. The Russian Orthodox Church long ago allowed itself to be co-opted by the Tsars. Now, they've allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Putinists, all for the sake of their view that Moscow is the Third Rome that will not fall (The Communists were another matter, of course, but the Orthodox weren't known as the most vigorous opponents of the Soviet state).

      Add to that the kind of snobbish, snotty anti-Americanism I see on a lot of Traditionalist blogs, and nobody should be surprised about TAC's political world view.

      Delete
    4. Interesting points, Joseph. The fascist sympathizing continues, only now the desired ends of the State may differ from what Pat B might have favored (New Urbanism, for example).

      The Trad/EO reference for central authority is interesting, and (fortunately) new to me -- thanks for that insight.

      Delete