The Climate of Opinion

by Carl Nelson

Throughout my college years the two political crises played out were Vietnam and Watergate.  Though Conservative Light at the time, I still generally held the views prominent in what then were what we now call the Legacy Media. Vietnam seemed an interminable quagmire, one which was costing thousands of American lives and millions of American dollars, and couldn’t be won.  This was because Vietnam was essentially a “civil war” in which we were unwelcome, and because it was a guerrilla war whose enemy troops could “keep fighting underground for another 20 years” (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.).  And Watergate seemed a simple case of an Administration breaking the law in burglarizing the offices of its opposition, and impeachment was a reasonable course.

Fifty years later, and three years past the 2020 election fraud, I now view the events of my college years and current events as portrayed by these same legacy media in a rearview light entirely different.

As we now know, North Vietnamese Communist leaders in Hanoi had virtually the same military evaluation of the Tet Offensive as American leaders in Washington – namely, that it was an overwhelming defeat for the Communist guerillas.  The Communists’ political success consisted precisely in the fact that media outlets like the New York Times  declared their military offensive successful.  The Wall Street Journal likewise rejected the Johnson administration’s contention that the Tet  offensive was a “last gasp” of the Communist Vietcong movement in South Vietnam.”  – Thomas Sowell, Pg.  344, “Intellectuals and Society”

In fact, the Tet offensive, which marked a huge political win for the Viet Cong in the Legacy Media’s misrepresentation, was actually a huge Viet Cong defeat, with the loss of “at least a million troops killed” and the loss of recruitment.  However, “In a democracy, believe that a war is unwinnable, that can make it unwinnable” (Thomas Sowell).  The political climate in the U S made it impossible both to continue the military exercises and supply needed to cement the victory. South Vietnam surrendered in 1975.

Likewise, the Watergate burglary has since appeared to involve very little burglary and very much a deep state coup.  A President pushed out of office over a burglary he had no knowledge of and during which nothing of note was taken but in regards to which the President defended his office ‘improperly’, it appeared, to what was essentially a fishing expedition.  In my present rearview mindset it more represented Joseph Stalin’s NKVD Leader Laverntiy Beria’s famous boast, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  In this case, the man was an American President.  As Trump would later say, “They’re not after me.  They’re after you.  I’m just in the way.”

The heavy, censorious hand of the Progressive Left has only gotten more visible of late.  The tide of concealment is out so far that it appears all is a vast plain of muckish corruption and Democratic fraud.  But neither party is trustworthy.  Vote Republican but vet your candidate for RINO skin.  Our institutions crumple as if made of paper blown asunder by a snowflake’s puff.  Arguing your position with the other side doesn’t appear to work. It only angers relatives, friends, etc.  We end up causing more schisms among ourselves than converts from the opposition.

One thing however is plain.

Our opponent conducts faux ‘debate’.   The Left instead concentrates upon creating a climate of opinion which will not allow alternate arguments.  5th generational warfare, as it is termed.

Probably the most effective thing we can do as individuals (according to Robert Malone) is to casually drop pieces of (cancelled) information and insights into conversation at the supermarket, gas station, post office, school meetings, local gatherings, etc.  We must begin our offensive at ground level in the local community in which our strengths lie.

For example, as per an excellent bit of advice from a Quora writer, Matthew Bates, I now begin my debate rejoinders with the caveat, “In my experience…”  And in my poems and essays, I no longer begin my work as framed by the ‘intellectual climate’, but as framed by my personal and local experience.  References in the expert literature are as references to these.  As my sister’s first husband once remarked, “Once they’ve fired off and used up all their fancy weaponry, war always comes down to one soldier beating on the head of the other with a rock.”  It is so true of politics likewise.  And with this ‘homespun’ technology (experience is at least plentiful as rocks) we can personally begin the war to get our nation back  –  in the neighborhood near you at a time like now.  (Does that sound scary?  Then you are on target.)

So, I recently, sent off for two bright red MAGA caps.  One for myself, I figured, and perhaps one for the wife.  But the wife demurred.  And they sent me four.  All for the best, I figured, as I placed the first one squarely on my head and left to do the grocery shopping today.

This is just showing the flag, a bit of climate adjustment, nothing confrontational – though I am open to conversation. “Conversation and discussing matters with my neighbors can improve matters… in my experience.”  And if it doesn’t?  Well, that may be an improvement.

MAGA caps are just a bit less common in these parts than the Confederate flag. Not that the sentiments don’t bend Conservative in Southeast Ohio, but politics is generally something not touted here nor discussed flagrantly.  Nevertheless, things went better than I’d have feared.  I passed unremarked.  Shop girls seemed a bit more attending. (Perhaps the feminine impulse is to head off controversy with a smile.)  And the only eyeball I got was from the most successful appearing older man in the store who passed wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt.  But with an older person, you can never be sure what the frown means.  Our aspects tend that way.

So, the takeaways:

The Left does not debate genuinely nor operate frankly.  They silence argument by controlling the climate of opinion.  Debate will not change the climate of opinion.  Op-eds that are controlled by the climate of opinion cannot change it.  And leadership necessarily follows the climate of opinion, rather than leading it.  So, it is up to us.  What will ‘change’ the climate of opinion is a frank demonstration that the climate of opinion actually favors yourself.  Nothing causes rats to leave like sinking their ship.  Americans love traditional American values.  What else makes us who we are?  That is, and always will be, the true climate of opinion.

We are in a war.  And the war is being fought in the very places our lives are being led.  How do you know who the enemy is?  Just try speaking up for traditional values, and they’ll come out of the bushes to try and stop you.  Freedom of speech is how you know an American.  All others are collaborators and quislings.  Call them on it.  There are far more of us, than them.  And we’re far tougher.