For decades in our public square the culture war has been one-sided. We’ve thrown out the old and ushered in the new. Hiring writers was easy for editorial boards back when liberalism was the exciting option in the world of ideas.
The rebellion has begun to stall, however, and for an unexpected reason. The march leftward has gotten boring.
This is the context in which Josh Trevino has emerged. Trevino’s talent is obvious to everyone who follows him. He articulates with power many of the principles that built our civilization.
Established liberal publications The Guardian and Texas Monthly recently hired him. In both cases this type of hiring was overdue. Unusual perhaps, but overdue. Under “usual practices” liberal media publications are declining and many are dying.
Sadly for these publications, their desire to conform seems to have overwhelmed their survival instinct. After a smear campaign against Trevino both publications caved. Trevino had to resign shortly after he was hired.
The Trevino situation is an example of a new reality in the culture war. Liberals used to be rebels, but nowadays are much closer to playing the role of teacher’s pet. Liberalism is completely safe now. Conservatism has a distinct excitement advantage.
This is a big reason the old media is dying. New media doesn’t thrive because of the internet per se. The old media has equal access to the internet, and massive name recognition, money, and experience advantages. New media thrives because it isn’t saddled with a post-compelling institutional orthodoxy.
And liberalism is unquestionably in its post-compelling stage. If not, someone please list the compelling next step in the quest for sexual liberation. How much more license can the west possibly provide? Sandra Fluke would like all of us to pay for her birth control pills, but that isn’t exactly the kind of thing people pour into the streets with picket signs to support.
Please name the compelling next step for the civil rights movement. That quest is so exhausted that it today consists of Chris Matthews trying to make words like “Chicago” and “chair” into racist words when Republicans utter them. Sad.
In fact, there is a very compelling civil rights cause today, but it is championed by conservatives. It is the abortion abolitionist movement. Republicans are on a quest to destroy their second monstrous institution kept alive for the convenience of its patrons. Slavery was the first.
In truth, the liberal culture war is down to its dregs. It is for the American left’s zealots to continue to push it. People who entertain common sense are bound to take many conservative positions in today’s politics.
So the left needs an Obama Administration in the White House, people like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann doing news, and people like Sean Penn and Michael Moore carrying the torch in Hollywood. These are not the reasonable factions in their respective spheres who can think for themselves. These are the hard core ideologues, the foot soldiers, the company men.
Nobody should be surprised that these types are running today’s left. Their cause has little to attract fair-minded people today. It consists mostly raw power and inertia.
Editors need something besides a spent liberalism to sell their publications. The people who hired Josh Trevino knew that and were trying to recapture some of the old magic.
The people responsible for Trevino’s early exit should have to own the pathetic circulation of their publications going forward. They’ve successfully warded off a justified survival instinct.
Trevino will be fine and the new media will keep growing. Rupert Murdoch, and people like him, will keep taking boxes of the old media’s inheritance out through the front door. More spots for people like Trevino will be created.
The old media will continue dying a boring, conformist death.