The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

What I Said to Pete

Posted on | March 14, 2011 | 17 Comments

Pete Da Tech Guy took a gander at my recent go-rounds with Little Miss Attila — as I’ve called it, “blogospheric badminton with ‘feminism’ for a shuttlecock” — and expressed his enjoyment of the discourse. So I left this comment at Pete’s post:

Glad you enjoyed the spectacle. Joy is one of my favorite people in the blogosphere, but as a self-described “recovering lefty,” she needs to complete the full 12-step program, which includes rejecting the rhetoric and ideology of the Left.
Conservative women trying to co-opt the “feminist” brand is counter-productive from a strategic standpoint. Women who think of themselves as “feminists” are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats. Most women don’t like the “feminist” label and, therefore, the proper conservative strategy is to make liberals own that term and its pejorative radical connotations. Conservative rhetoric ought to be crafted to appeal to the mainstream (i.e., non-”feminist”) woman — for she constitutes the “swing” vote — rather than pandering to whatever sentimental attachment a relative handful of ex-lefties may have to that term.
This is nothing new, nor is it specific to feminism or conservatism. Successful political movements very often require that intellectual activists bite their tongues about the movement’s public rhetoric — intended to sway the undecided — when that rhetoric conflicts with particularistic ideals that the intellectuals (as they typically do) cherish as totems. In the pre-Internet age, such inevitable tensions were generally resolved behind the scenes. Nowadays, blog wars bring these tensions out into the open, at least for those who pay attention to such squabbles.

That goes a bit deeper into Political Theory than is my habit. The gap between the exoteric language of politics (arguments made to rally public support to one’s cause) and the esoteric rationale of politics (the logic of the movement as understood by insiders) is a subject of study that, among conservative intellectuals in recent times, has been most associated with the so-called Straussians. I’m an anti-Straussian.

There is no need for a full-blown discussion of the esoteric/exoteric distinction here, except so far as it bears on the public nature of intra-conservative dialogue on the blogosphere. What offended me very deeply in Little Miss Attila’s initial post — published before I’d commented on the Barbara Kay column — was that it constituted a direct attack upon my prestige within the movement.

By pre-emptively accusing me of “oversimplified fiddle-faddle,” what Attila was proclaiming was: Stacy is an idiot who can make no useful contribution to the discourse. Do not listen to him.

(Readers will note that Attila worked the title of Donkey Cons into her attack, suggesting that the 2006 book I co-authored with Lynn Vincent was somehow part of Attila’s case against me. Nevertheless, to borrow an expression from Cicero, ”But I pass over this, and choose to let it remain in silence.”)

Stipulate that Attila and I disagree as to the meaning and utility of the term “feminism,” and also disagree quite profoundly about that movement and its ideological aims. Why, however, should she seek to destroy my influence with this attack aimed directly at my prestige as a politcal writer? (For certainly no one whose arguments may be pre-emptively dismissed as “oversimplied fiddle-faddle” could be deserving of influence or admiration.) What could inspire Attila’s desire to publicly humiliate me in this manner?

Have I done nothing helpful to the conservative cause? Or, if my work has previously been helpful, does Attila now judge that I have nothing further to contribute, so that I should be discarded and shunted aside?

(McCain now descends the steps from the podium, exits stage right, emerges before the proscenium, carrying a stool. He lights a cigarette and sits down on the stool.)

OK, Attila only meant that “fiddle-faddle” remark as a joke among friends — a rather sharp-edged joke, but a joke nonetheless. God knows, I’ve offended people with my jokes before, so I shouldn’t be getting my nose out of joint because Attila ruffled my feathers. (And what lovely royal peacock feathers they are!)

Habitual joking, including my self-deprecating humor, has the unfortunately predictable effect of encouraging some people to treat me dismissively, as if I am incapable of serious thought. This is a problem of which I am profoundly aware, having lived with it since childhood. Yet you see that it is relevant to the esoteric/exoteric distinction which is the actual subject of this post.

Welcome to the esoteric logic, my friends. 

More than 90 percent of the readers who saw this post didn’t bother to read down this far in the argument, and so excluded themselves from the ranks of insiders who actually know what’s going on.

Suppose a hypothetical: What if a guy who had been watching Republican insiders fuck things up for years decided to try to un-fuck the party? What if, until about January 2008, that guy had been forced to watch in silence, at close range, as this GOP fuck-up proceeded? What if he were intimately familiar with the architects of the Republican disaster and their modus operandi?

Now, carry this hypothetical further: Put yourself into the position of such a person. You understand that the people who have been fucking up the Republican Party are not stupid — they didn’t ascend to the heights of influence by being stupid — and will do everything within their means to preserve their power within the GOP. Among the things they will do is to fuck over anyone who gets in their way.

Contemplate that hypothetical for a moment.

Question: Is Stacy just joking around? Is he crazy? How can we possibly tell the difference between when he’s being serious and when he’s merely playing the clown?
Answer: You can’t. And neither can the Republican insiders who’ve been fucking things up all these years.

It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with me about feminism. And Attila’s public dismissal of my “oversimplified fiddle-faddle” may, in some sense, serve my own purposes.

What is vitally important, however, is to consider whether my informed analysis of the GOP’s systemic problems has any value to the future prospects of the conservative cause. If you think I’m just another know-it-all blowhard on the Internet, fine: Dismiss me, ignore me, mock me – however it may suit your purposes. But before you do so, understand that you are, by that course of action, passing judgment on the entirety of my knowledge, experience and abilities, placing yourself in the position of arbiter of Who Matters and Who Doesn’t.

Everyone must decide such things for themselves, e.g., I long ago decided that David Brooks was a dangerous menace to conservatism. But this is merely my opinion, and people who disagree are free to be completely wrong.

When I speak of those who place themselves in the position of arbiter, I refer to those arrogant elitists — that is to say, those who wish to rule as Platonic archons — who presume to substitute their judgment for the independent choices of others. You see this, inter alia, among those insider snobs who are constantly attacking Sarah Palin. Their implicit esoteric logic is: “Republican voters are so stupid they might actually be beguiled by this unworthy woman! We must never miss an opportunity to warn them of her unworthiness!”

Anyone can see the contradiction: If Palin is so self-evidently an idiot, shouldn’t the insiders be confident that her idiocy will be apparent to voters? And if, as the insiders so obviously fear, the Republican Party’s organizing principle is to attract the votes of people so stupid they need to be told what to think . . . ??

Follow the argument a step further, and you approach the underlying systemic problem of the GOP: There must be something fundamentally wrong with the structure of a party whose insiders have such seething contempt for the voters who constitute the party’s electoral core.

“Houston, we have a problem,” you see.

The gap between the exoteric language of the Republican Party and the esoteric rationale of the party insiders has become so great that voters are instinctively repelled by the aroma of bovine excrement. Stipulate that the same aroma is much worse in the Democratic Party. But Democratic Party insiders have a basic respect for their party’s constituents that is missing in the GOP. 

The so-called “brand damage” problem for Republicans is clearly a function of a party structure that elevates to the status of influential insiders people who are contemptuous of the party’s grassroots. And it is the votes of the party grassroots that are the ultimate source of the power wielded by the insiders.

This is not a superficial short-term problem. Rather, it is chronic and systemic.

What the success of the Tea Party movement demonstrates is that, with the assistance of sympathetic leadership cadres — including but not limited to organizations like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — the grassroots can resist and counteract the influence of the GOP insiders.

Now, having read this far, let the reader judge whether I am propagating “oversimplified fiddle-faddle.” And permit me to remind you of something I wrote nearly two years ago:

Just because you don’t know what I’m doing,
don’t jump to the conclusion that
I don’t know what I’m doing.

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Category: Conservatism 101, Da Tech Guy, Feminism, Little Miss Attila, Tea Party

Comments

  • Joe

    Joy is generally a joy.

    Even when you are right, it is fun to see Joy beat you up some. It is like enjoying seeing a cat toss a mouse on the front lawn on a summer day. Yeah, I suppose it is cruel, but the cat just enjoys it so much.

    And there is no actual blood being shed on this particular blog battle.

  • Quartermaster

    The end of this post reminds me of an incident with Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. he had marched his Army across the Blue Ridge twice, then finally entraining to cross back to the western valley. After they got off the train and were marching towards Winchester, Jackson was sitting on a fence sucking a lemon and one of his officers asked why he did what they just did and they wanted an explanation as to why they were moving around as they were. His response was “If I can fool my friends….”

    I read the threads where you played badmiton with the faux conservative women and was totally unimpressed with their argument. It really boiled down to “We say you are a fool, therefore, you are a fool.”

    So there you male chauvinist pig, you!

    It was all too typical of feminists.

    I agree with you on the GOP insiders as well. I couldn’t stand Dubya, and there weren’t no way on this green earth I was voting for Juan McCain. If the next one is Romney, I guess I’m staying home again. When there is nothing to vote against, then there is no use in voting. And Juan gave us nothing. Much of Obama’s agenda, alas, had its equivalent in Juan McCain’s. That election also gave us Steele as RNC Chairman. With Mehlman, there wasn’t much of a difference, and I wonder about the guy in there now.

    What concerns me, however, is the staying power of the TEA Party. The main problem with Conservatives is we aren’t layabouts with a lot of people doing nothing but astroturfing. There are things an RNC Chair can do that will not endear him to the opposition besides raise money for the RNC. Speaking out on things the opposition wants that is destructive would be a good thing, and staying away from seeming to support, or sounding an uncertain trumpet, on those things the rank and file detests would be good. Steele and Mehlman, however couldn’t bring themselves to do such things. Supporting immigration “reform” and other trash got them the “Not One Red Cent” campaign. They can’t depend on just the money men. Last time that happened, Lincoln gave us a destructive war that nearly destroyed the country.

    Personally, I’m fed up with the insiders and the faux conservative feminists. If they want to be libs, there is already a party for them. It’s called, in just they don’t know, the Democrat Party. They love that type of nasty nonsense over there. After all, they invented it.

  • TR

    I agree with Joe! and I might add that verbal jousting may be fun for the jousters, but try reading Patterico or Protein Wisdom comments sometime? Those charging Knights tend to lose their helmets and the white knight and dark knight both look like the Tin Man in a mud puddle before too long. But if Joy wants to pretend to be a really bad Cheshire cat, and you the cat nip (cat’s meow is reserved territory) its ok for a go round. (Remember this squabble for your next book , lol)

  • K~Bob

    Okay, I’m gonna bookmark this and get back to it in more depth later.

    Just a thought: Liberalism used to be a good thing, back before the days of co-opting by leftists. Feminism was similarly strangled in the crib by leftists who wanted to use it as a stalking horse for gay rights, abortion politics, and leftist, “Big Labor” concepts.

    “Conservative” philosophy is, in a way, a hijacking of classical Liberalism, but at least the early Cons had the good sense to rebrand it. It’s probably too late to re-coopt Feminism, restoring it to the Susan B. Anthony ideals. But a re-branding is possible at this particular time, thanks to Mesdames Bachmann, Palin, and Haley.

    But such a re-branding will.not.work unless they get on with it, and stop trying to retake “Feminism” from the leftists. They are as possessive of the concept as Al Sharpton is about Dr. King’s philosophy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=705855851 Joy McCann

    Well, there is a philosophical lake beneath the surface here; it lies in a vast subterranean cavern in the realm where tactics and truth converge.

    So I owe you an essay, Stace. But tonight . . . tonight I have to study up for a conference call in the morning, and hem my husband’s slacks.

    Observers are encouraged to note that I apologized to Stacy about the phrase “fiddle faddle” once in writing, and once over the phone. So bear that in mind.

  • Joe

    Mark Twain’s warning about getting in arguments with idiots aside, the difference between what is gong on here and what is going on there is a certain individual argues in bad faith.

    And it is not Jeff G.

  • Joe

    Thanks for the Stonewall Jackson comments QM (I appreciate good history), but Joy is not a faux conservative, she really is mostly conservative. But she is a recovering lefty on the road to welness. She is generally well along on the process, but it can take years to completely cure someone of it.

  • Joe

    I just realized in the Greg post below that QM might just be gg getting her moby on. I should have picked up on the overly harsh attitude to Little Miss Attila.

  • http://thatmrgguy.wordpress.com/ Mike

    So, I see that you found your lost article from yesterday. Really good article…makes one think.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    When someone begins an argument about “feminism” by treating it as some sort of religious doctrine, I can no longer take that person’s arguments seriously.

  • David R. Graham

    “Well, there is a philosophical lake beneath the surface here; it lies in a vast subterranean cavern in the realm where tactics and truth converge.”

    Fiddle faddle. You’re a self-promoter.

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  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    A thing of beauty is a Joy McCann forever.

    LMA suffers from Post Traumatic Left Disorder, as you say Stacy. Here once again we see the destructive power of ideology. What is this ideology we speak of? The OED:

    1 a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
    2 the science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature.

    ‘System’ and ‘science’ are the key words.

    What the former Leftist has some difficulty adapting to is the fact that ‘being conservative’ is a way of life [an approach, if you will], not a system of ideas, not beliefs devised in sterile laboratories, far away from the real, gritty world. This is why there is such a wide divergence of actions a conservative might take and why conservatives manifest their basic beliefs in diverse ways*. The core is the same for all, but we all have different skins.

    The Leftist brain has been programmed to approach everything as a scientist, seeking to take the facts and fit them into a system – an integrated whole, where each part serves the purpose of making the whole function. Life is not like that. Human beings don’t behave according to a rigid set of rules.

    This is why former Leftists have such trouble ‘being’ conservatives. Their brains run on an operating system that doesn’t work in the new model. It’s like the difference between a PC and a Mac. Timothy Leary – believe it or not – understood that the neural paths can be ‘reprogrammed’, but it will take a lot of work and, most importantly, will on the part of the person who wishes to alter his/her thinking.**

    Some will adapt slowly over time, but some will never stop donning their lab coats [see: Krauthammer, Charlie].

    I have hope for Joy. She’s slowly getting there. And she’s being helped greatly by a belief in God [the Father Almighty, by the way] It is our duty as her friends to help her in anyway we can.

    Remember conservatives: Teach your former Bolshes well.

    ____________________
    *I think this is why non-natural conservatives have such a hard time understanding why we can agree with both Disraeli and Peel. Why I, a believer in the Pax Americana and God, can have such warm feelings towards John Derbyshire, who doesn’t – we’re both coming from the same mindset.

    **See his book The Intelligence Agents

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