32 Comments
Feb 10, 2023Liked by Adam B. Coleman

Spot on

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There are plenty of reasons to see the right as the underdog, the capture of the federal bureaucracy and the colleges were mentioned in the article, but it's absolutely true that excessive fatalism exists on the right where hope and determination ought to be

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Feb 10, 2023Liked by Adam B. Coleman

It’s worse than what you say. The people who lead the party think that only the ‘right people’ should win, not the party. So much in fighting between ‘the right people’ and the rest of us.

It’s so stupid, but that’s why you get jerks like Mitt and Liz who’d rather fight harder against other Republicans than against the Left. They think the victory is running the party, not winning elections.

I got sick of the elitism in the party, so I left. Mostly because it’s not rocket science to try to win over all voters, not just preferred groups. Putting a voter outreach center in Detroit shouldn’t be that controversial, but, alas, it was.

They scream about being a ‘big tent’, but the elites want to pick and choose who gets into the tent and who their voters should be. I just want Republicans to win elections.

There are very few Republicans I can actually vote for these days.

I’m really okay with the idea of just destroying this mess and replacing it with an organization that wants to fight Progressives. At the end of the day, if they think that fighting other Republicans should be a higher priority than defeating the kooky Left, then they aren’t fit for purpose.

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Yes!!! Thank you for saying this.

“The progressive Left has mastered this type of predatory relationship that strips people of their agency.”

BOOM. You nailed it my friend. The toxic duo.

Michael Mohr

‘Sincere American Writing’

https://michaelmohr.substack.com/

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This is a really insightful column. I have been involved on "the right" broadly speaking for most of my adult life. I can tell you that this syndrome is widespread. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. We have so much to offer: why do we keep apologizing for ourselves and/or shooting ourselves in the foot?!?! thx for a great article.

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Feb 15, 2023Liked by Adam B. Coleman

This hit close to home. I had not considered myself wallowing in an underdog mindset, but that sounds 'bout right.

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Feb 10, 2023Liked by Adam B. Coleman

" Winners don’t ask themselves “Why bother?”; they ask themselves “Why not?” " PRECISELY!

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Ali Alexander aka Ali Akbar is a scammer, and worse. I reported on him for years. I am probably the reason he changed his name. Right wing conservatives kept giving Ali money no matter how completely I exposed his fraud, and worse, because they liked his paranoid style.

Everything is an emergency all the time. Everything is a satanic conspiracy. Pay attention to all the things I scream about and not my grift.

Ali got lots of attention for his role in 1/6. Since then, left wing grifters like Seth Abramson have cribbed from my old work to hype him as a threat to democracy -- again, a paranoid style. Ali is no such thing. He is a bottom-dwelling catfish of a man, more a threat to vulnerable conservative boys than democracy.

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As a conservative by shift (meaning I didn't move politically but the center was pulled so far left that I now look like an right-winger by comparison), I don't disagree with your assessment. But most of the conservatives I know aren't moping or hopeless. I and they are confounded by what is obvious absurdities and insanities being foisted on our collective society. But it's difficult to imagine how to persuade when the brightest minds on the right are shut down easily by a handful of loud-mouthed undergraduates or negative tweets by a dozen nobodies. What are some solid strategies for fighting the tsunami of the left coming from almost every government institution, every media outlet, every university, every professional organization and now every ESG-concerned corporation? How do you propose we fight? What words will persuade? As far as I can tell the only way to fight this in the present is in the courts and in the congresses. And the only way to fight it in the future is to purge schools of the activism and indoctrination and return to teaching the basics, civics, unbiased history, respect for our country, moral probity, ethical behaviors. Other than these, what can be done?

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The right is the underdog, but underdogs will win on occasion.

We can win one person at a time, with the use of easily understandable logic, reason, and data. Sensible politicians like DeSantis, rather than mercurial and polarizing leaders like Trump, are the way forward. Very foolish economic policies from the left need to be called out, and clearly explained to the public.

This right's mission will become far easier as the left drifts farther and farther away from sanity. It's crazy to "affirm" sex changes for 15 year olds. It's crazy to defund or abolish the police. It's crazy to endorse socialism over the free market, and it's crazy to endorse censorship and authoritarianism.

Like Sarah Huckabee said, voters have a choice. We just need to make the consequences of those choices easier to understand.

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The reason the right is so disorganized and discouraged is because the left aggressively deplatforms anyone on the right who becomes an effective leader. The only people left are either controlled opposition or are not effective.

Who are the future leaders of the right? You don't have a good answer, because anyone competent would get kicked off the Internet.

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Mass public demonstration: in the seventies, 500,000 people in the streets of DC, legally, against Vietnam. We had organizers, leaders, not influencers. This happened often in those days. It ended the war. Our cause now is exponentially greater, greater than the cause of the founders. We don't need politicians. They can follow us.

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That's interesting, would you say a lot of this behavior arises in online-based forums? I never really got into Twitter since it feels a lot like Orwell's "Two Minutes of Hate", more of a collective ritual than a vehicle for changing what we think is wrong in the world.

On the other hand, looking at what happened since I became politically aware in the 1990s, it's hard to see big policy wins for either the left or right, at least compared to their respective glory days earlier in the 20th century. So maybe both conservatives and progressives are lost in a "nothing changes" mentality. What's the biggest concrete win the left has had in the US since Clinton? Obamacare?

The left might be winning the popularity contest of ideas in some places, it definitely feels like that as a professional, although in the math and computer sciences it's not as bad as elsewhere. But when it comes to actual policy, most people are skeptical of big government, want to pay less taxes and be more free.

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Been teaching colleges liberal (?) since the 80s. Not deeply Right-wing, more Isaiah Berlin-ish. Still, at times, more and more often, rage is the only fit response. There are (a few) like-feeling souls, but their boldest action is . . . staying out of it. Scattered, walking the dog, we hum along with Frank: "very glad to be unhappy." . . . I kind of miss Barry.

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I don't see what you're seeing. Instead, I see people like DeSantis, Rand Paul, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Jordan Peterson and many others stepping up and fighting the good fight. Also, since just regaining some of their power, the GOP-led House has hit the ground running with their investigative hearings on the TwitterFiles, shady Biden family dealings, and several other probes. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/30/house-gop-investigations-biden-mccarthy-00079695

Further, there are plenty of advocacy organizations filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress pushing back against all the woke nonsense. Taken together, all these actions don't seem very "underdoggy" to me.

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I'm really glad to be able to read about myself. So many things that I didn't know. Carry on!

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