Reminder on why the left wins and conservatives are born and bred to lose
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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The American right have been subjected to a psyop going back to at least the 1960s, where '''''principled leaders''''' like William Buckley Jr. (founder of the National Review) and an infestation of neocons (literal 'ex'-Trotskyists - little wonder these people seem to have so little to say on the culture war in particular) have brainwashed them into thinking that the only real conservative principles are to die for Israel and to choke themselves on corporate boots. Everything else - religion, the preservation of American culture in any meaningful sense, etc. - is at best a secondary concern next to those priorities, and that's if they're allowed to enter the conversation at all.
Oh, and above all, it is critical that they conduct themselves with 'dignity' (ie. being a limp-wristed cuck) and play the role of 'graceful loser' when the libs inevitably kick them in the balls and achieve a victory by hook or by crook. Literally every bit of social progress since the '60s was unpopular at the beginning, the left had to get them done through the courts rather than at the ballot box: abortion, affirmative action, busing, school prayer, etc. And once set in stone, conservatives weren't supposed to do anything but meekly and strictly vocally protest against these things, because they're 'settled law' now - meanwhile of course the progs and their pets were free to riot, intrigue and rig systems in their favor until they got what they wanted.
Groups that actually wanted to fight Communism and take a stand for God, the Stars and Stripes, not allow the American nationality to get buried under a tsunami of immigrants, etc. like the John Birch Society were ruthlessly demonized and driven out of the public sphere by these asshats. The '''''principled stewards of real conservatism''''' rejoice in every defeat, both because they got new ways to grift and because they have nothing but contempt for their purported base, who they deride as ignorant hicks at best. Trump, I believe, is but the beginning of the American right - no, the American people, because leftists have made no secret of how much they hate the concept of Americans and the existence of the United States of America - finally starting to wake up and push against their restraints in a very long time (notably the Dobbs case that killed Roe v. Wade was literally the first right-wing victory in the culture war since the fucking 60s).
And cucks like the man described in Posobiec's tweet up there? They have no place in an angry, militant Right that's woken up to just how badly they've been lied to & betrayed for decades. I would actually be a little more forgiving of them if they were boomers rather than young'uns from the newer generations because those guys were subject to a constant propaganda campaign to neuter & atomize them without having any tools available to even begin to open their eyes until talk radio got going in the 1990s. But regardless, they're too weak to be useful in any regard other than being browbeaten into voting for the furthest-right candidates possible for as long as the fiction of electoral democracy can be maintained & made to serve the Right.
Erickson's presence feels entirely artificial, tbh. He left RedState around the time when Trump was starting to make waves and while he went all-in on NeverTrump, that didn't work out too well for him or his blogs at The Resurgent & The Bulwark - his former coworkers on RedState have been piling shit on him, calling the latter site 'The Bullwank', etc. and theirs definitely seems the more successful site by far. And obviously, influential paleocons like Tucker (at least once he gets whatever he's planning for Twitter off the ground, if he's not immediately crippled by the new WEF CEO) can blow whatever numbers he scrounges up out of the water any day.
Certainly I don't believe Erickson has anything resembling a natural audience, no more than the child rapists at the Lincoln Project do. The Buckleyite 'fusion' consensus is dead and there's precisely zero passion on the right for more of the failed old 'deepthroat corpos, bomb brown people for Raytheon, let immigrants undercut American workers and don't worry about losing cultural ground to degens because Jesus said to love the sinner' bullshit. The base isn't buying that anymore and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Erickson's audience these days are made up of the most cucked of boomers and cheerleaders from the left, same as the Lincoln Project.
go off king
The more you read from the JBS the more you see how shockingly correct they were about most things. The only things they were wrong about were predictions of a Racial Socialist state within the US, but only because it didn't form, not because there weren't Communists actively attempting to do it.
Even Goldwater mentioned that the JBS was aggressively making sure that all of their information was accurate and well cited.
JBS was right about damn near everything.
What did Buckley do?
It'd be easier to ask what didn't Buckley do. Basically all that which ailed American conservatism and neutered its effectiveness at withstanding & rolling back left-wing gains between Eisenhower and Trump can be traced back to him, either as an active proponent or at minimum as a figurehead.
Buckley set himself up as the gatekeeper of American conservatism through his ownership of the National Review & influence on other conservative organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom, a position which he used to lock out & demonize proto-paleocon groups like the John Birch Society as I have said. On the other hand, he got the neocon infestation going by inviting 'ex'-Trotskyists like James Burnham (a man whose Machiavellian idea about the emergence of a dominant managerial elite inspired the character of O'Brien in 1984, all Orwell was missing was Burnham's suggestion that such an elite continue to keep some democratic trappings like a token opposition and a 'controlled circulation of the élites' to better manage dissent...y'know, like what the uniparty has been doing for ages) to work for the National Review.
The creep of lolbertarian thought into the right, resulting in the joint promotion of social atomization, corporate worship and the capitulation of the levers of state power to the left, all with the inevitable consequence of the sixty-year losing streak in the culture war? Again Buckley's work, the 'fusion' he was responsible for in regards to the 'fusionist' trend which defined post-1950s American conservatism refers to him fusing conservatism with libertarianism and onboarding yet more 'ex'-Communists (this time supposedly libertarians) like Frank Meyer onto his platforms.
Israel worship to the detriment of any points of relevance to the American situation, or really anything else? Yet again, blame Buckley. He was a huge, huge philosemite, and the John Birch Society being dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism (even though they accepted sufficiently, consistently hard-right Jews into their ranks) because they dared note the connection between neo-Marxism & the huge number of Jews pushing its various strands (queer theory, the commie infestation of the civil rights movement, etc.) and because they supported a generally non-interventionist position in foreign affairs outside of rolling back Communism (meaning no dying for Israel) was what drove a rift between him & their leader Robert Welch, even before their final split. Buckley would also condemn Pat Buchanan on similar grounds.
Conservatism being liberalism driving the speed limit, essentially the manager of decline for the right's 'managed decline'? Buckley's own career and 'evolving' beliefs is an example of that. He went from opposing the civil rights movement to not only supporting desegregation, not only supporting integration, but also supporting affirmative action - his best friend & brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell meanwhile maintained a more consistent record, opposing him opposing desegregation but not drifting way off to the left (actually, he became a tradcath integralist willing to throw hands to combat abortionists, at which point Buckley thought he had gone the same way as the JBS). He was for wars abroad until they became unpopular, as was the case with Iraq. He quailed before gay critics and promoted the beginning stages of the slippery slope to today's hellscape. And so on, so forth.
Nine months after his death, his own son Christopher not only voted for Obama, but felt the need to publicly announce he did so in the pages of the National Review. Conservatives called him a traitor, of course. But in hindsight, considering all the 'contributions' Buckley had made to American conservatism, I don't believe it can be said that he betrayed his father at all (certainly Buckley himself thought he'd live to see the first black president and believed that was something to welcome) - he was merely carrying out the logical endpoint of his father's life's work.
And good riddance, because they were crazy people.
He diagnosed the managerial revolution and Machiavellianism. It doesn't mean he cheered it on. I've enjoyed Burnham's books very much, and they expose modern 'democracies' for what they are: phony democracies.
How does support for Israel hurt the right?
That is the same everywhere. You blame Buckley for it, but that assumes that things would be better with no Buckley. European countries had no Buckleys, and we may be even bigger shitholes.
It's funny how those same people now say they just hate Trump and would love 'old-style' Republicans like Romney and McCain.
I defy you to show me where JBS was wrong.
JBS more closely aligned with the values of regular Americans post-WW2 than William Buckley and National Review did. I guess don't react too much against subversives to maintain your culture or you're "cRaZy".
Maybe you're not intending to channel elitist politicians when they call half of America bigoted deplorables and wingnuts, but that's what you're saying.