The mob isn’t the same as the tribe. The tribe is loyal to its party or social group. The mob is looking for someone to love and someone to love it back. They would do better to stop being so desperate, but the mob is desperate by definition. It’s been on a search for somebody who gets them. It can’t function without someone telling it what to think or what it should be angry at or approve of. It’s an excitable cohort with the emotional stability of an adolescent. Fortunately for the mob, there is no shortage of people willing to rant and rave, and not any shortage of media or platforms eager to put them in the spotlight. Mob leaders are a dime a dozen, and they know a good gig when they see it. They are also looking for attention and admiration, and when they find their mob, it is a match made in heaven. Even if one crashes and burns, another will rise, propped up like a cardboard cutout, cutting videos in their basement until they catch someone’s eye and become a golden calf.
The tolerance level of what the mob will accept has grown exponentially, so when these hosts put the mob in a compromising position, they will always choose to compromise. The problem is never the new cardboard king or queen; the problem is the inability of the mob to detect a fraud and the high demand for the affirmation of feelings. That inability is enabled by the wishy-washy value system that is inherent with the mob: less concerned with actual principle, more concerned with their self-esteem, and whose values equate to having an imaginary girlfriend. In the meantime, the mob lives a hollow existence and is easily swayed into outwardly defending a variety of issues, moving with the winds of change, and redefining political ideologies to suit themselves. The mob never truly seeks to limit power or empower themselves, but only serves as a tool to place another on the throne. Such is the history of kings and queens, and it is this reason mobs have value to politics across the political spectrum. Mobs have movement, whereas as most political factions are stagnant. Political parties seek to take advantage of the mob, but that, of course, has consequences. Since the mob’s requirements for admission are low, bottom tier repulsive political groups also use the mob for movement. Trying to sift them out is difficult, if not impossible. The larger the mob, the larger the risk. Getting the electorate to follow or congregate with the mob requires a stirring of identity politics and sowing extreme negative or positive sentiment toward American values. It's a Venn Diagram of prejudice and emotion, but it is not shared principle. The truth is, the electorate may find the mob both admirable and revolting, but ultimately it is a useful vent for their frustrations. The mob translates frustration over the stagnancy of politics into energy. It says and does things the electorate cannot, or will not, either because such things are vile or such things aren't permitted without societal recourse. That doesn't mean that such things are disagreed or agreed upon by all, only that at least they are willing to be accepted in hopes for a greater cause. The mob looks bigger than it is because it's the loudest and because an electorate forms around it. The extensions around the mob are misleading for ideologies. The Obama years, for instance, created the mirage of a conservative movement out in the desert of liberalism, fueled by angry “conservative” media. The movement, however, wasn't conservative, it was anti-leftist, anti-Obama, and in the election year, it was anti-Clinton. It was the political mob rising against the powers that be, but mobs aren't limited to the right or left. Obama dipped into a mob resource in 2008. John McCain and Mitt Romney were generally unwilling to use the mob for their presidential election runs (2008 and 2012, respectively). Sarah Palin however conjured up the mob mentality twice, in two different elections with two different value systems (2008 and 2016). In 2016 Hillary Clinton's mob, primed by Democrats for eight years, ran wild and bore some responsibility for her loss. Mob use, of course, was peak for the Republican side in 2016 as was the propaganda that fed it. It's not that the mob didn't have a reason to be angry, it's that it didn't stop to ask if their anger had to do with freedom, core conservative ideals, or any sense of principle. Anti-leftists are hardly an ally in a battle for a limited government, nor are the scum fringe movements seeking publicity. They are, however, an obstacle, because they permit for less than conservative ideals to tarnish the perception of Conservatism and the political party. As ideas begin to take hold and are increasingly tolerated, the principled hardline conservatives, and not the overreaching power of the government, become the enemy of the mob. The reactions to the mob were polarized: from moving to the left to fight the mob to joining the mob to fight the left. In the middle, conservatives were squeezed, and still are. A similar occurrence on the left pushed moderates out of the Democratic Party. Heavy reliance on the mob is not without casualties, even if it wins an election. Yet, how does one win elections without appealing to the mob? That’s a question conservatives will have to answer, and quickly.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
January 2024
|