Running Scared Edition

     …or “running hard trying to scare you, Mr. and Mrs. America.”

     These days, the principal ammunition of the Left is fear. They fire barrages of it at virtually everything in sight. We’re repeatedly and stridently told to fear:

• Racists;
• Pro-lifers;
• Fossil fuels;
• Sincere Christians;
• Large white families;
• White identity defenders;
• Guns (especially if they’re black);
• Gun owners (except if they’re black);
• Americans opposed to unisex bathrooms;
• Americans opposed to “critical race theory;”
• Every known variant of COVID-19 / The Kung Flu;
• And above all else, that sinister phantasm, the “right wing.”

     I won’t speak for you, but I don’t have the time or energy for all that fear. Therefore, I tend to avoid those who promulgate it. It’s an inclusive solution, as it also spares me the attention of left-wing viragoes, scolds, and harridans. I find such…persons a constant source of vexation. They demand to know why I write about Christianity so much (because I love it), why I won’t accept the reality of “global warming” (because it’s a crock of shit), why I won’t wear a face mask (I like oxygen), why I refuse to accept The Jab (because it’s both ineffective and deleterious), and why I own so many guns (because of the Left and its mascots). Excluding them also excludes the miasma of fear they emit.

     Now, this is not an easy thing to do if you spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web. The Left has gone to great lengths to colonize all the most popular Web discussion fora. Once they’ve established a foothold there, they do their damnedest to make those fora utterly intolerant toward persons of non-Left views. The best known examples, of course, are Facebook and Twitter, but there are others of less notoriety as well. It appears that Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics applies to supposedly open discussion sites just as strongly as it does to other sorts of human associations.

     One consequence has been the emergence of “free speech” social media. There are a number of such sites at this time: Gab, USA.Life, MeWe, Minds, Parler, Our Freedom Book, GETTR, and others. One of the notable features common to all of them is the nearly complete absence of left-wingers from them. They don’t exclude left-liberals, progressives, socialists, communists, and what have you; persons of those views simply don’t go to them. Why?

     My thesis is that the Left can’t abide competition. If conservatives and libertarians are permitted to express themselves in Forum X, despite the Left’s attempts to shout them down, intimidate them away, or get them expelled, the Left feels disarmed – even denuded. That results in an environment in which the Left’s fear messages cannot take root.

     The result is a gaggle of sites that, because they are hospitable to persons of all convictions, virtually lack Leftist participation…whereupon the mouthpieces of the Left call them right-wing sites. Put enough of these together, add a few retailers, a video host, a cloud hub or two, and payment processors who’ll take your money regardless of your politics, and we have, in the words of Axios, a “right-wing echo chamber” or “right-wing ecology:”

     Conservatives are aggressively building their own apps, phones, cryptocurrencies and publishing houses in an attempt to circumvent what they see as an increasingly liberal internet and media ecosystem.
     Why it matters: Many of these efforts couldn’t exist without the backing of major corporate figures and billionaires who are eager to push back against things like “censorship” and “cancel culture.”…
     The bottom line: Conservative media has been a powerhouse for a long time, but this phase of its expansion isn’t just about more or louder conservative voices — it’s about building an entire conservative ecosystem.

     It is to laugh – sincerely, this time.

     The Left doesn’t like it that there are places they can’t expel us from. If we can find one another and converse like calm, civilized Americans instead of doom-shouting apocalyptics, we might stop being afraid. We might start thinking we’re not alone. So they’re trying the other arrow in their quiver: the fear arrow. They’re suggesting, none too subtly, that this emerging “right wing ecology” is in some way a threat. To whom? In what fashion? They leave that part out.

     The fears the Left promote are entirely negative. They conduce to atomization and despair. By contrast, their fear of us and our supposed “right-wing echo chamber” is a good thing. It gives rise to laughter and relaxation…and hope. May it spread wide and grow tall.