Wednesday Morning Rant

This week, PJ Media published an article about the DSA and its clearly-stated plans for revolutionary overthrow of American institutions. The article is typical of those like it. It highlights some of the more radical attitudes and ambitions that are mainstream in the DSA and calls it out for what it is - that is, mostly old-school communism with some contemporary post-modern progressive flair. It also laments the state of the youth and speculates as to the appetite for this kind of revolutionary communism in American popular politics.

As is normal for these kinds of articles, the author calls out how the new resurgence of revolutionary ideology on the Left is not well-loved by various older/traditional players on the Left. Many of the traditional hatchet-men and current marginalized politicians on the Left are worried, as they well should be:

Give credit to more sensible Democrats like Sen. John Fetterman and old Clinton hand James Carville who see the DSA slipping into the DNC like a skinsuit, and recognize the danger...

How can men like Carville - or even those on the right (pseudo or otherwise) - be surprised by these developments? The PJ Media article touches on it, albeit as a simple lament:

The advantage we hold -- at least for now -- over the DSA, is that they have spokesweasels like Romer going to TV, actually trying to sell a radical agenda wholesale instead of piecemeal. Today's voters won't have it, but what about tomorrow's voters, the ones who were never taught American history or civics?

The core issue - and it's one that has been obvious for at least a decade, even for those only paying casual attention - is that the March has to end eventually. If they spend decades subverting, capturing and refocusing institutions, they must take their gains at some point. The March depends on a stage of final conversion. In that final stage, they collect their winnings and use them to formally do away with the old system and replace it with the new one. Once most means of effective opposition are destroyed, they must formalize what they built. The Long March must be followed by the Rapid Conversion.

The sticking point is the question of when. Not everyone in the coalition will be on board at the same time and universally agree that the time to attempt Conversion has come. The last time it seemed to come up in earnest was under Obama, and the non-Conversionists won that round. The March continued, albeit a bit a faster. The drive to Conversion was accelerated, but Conversion was not attempted. There is a generational issue at play, as well, in that the people to whom they've promised Conversion will eventually demand it. When that time comes, the Marchers have to deliver and become Conversionists or they will be destroyed by the Conversionists they so carefully bred. The conflict over Conversion must occur because first a plurality and then possibly an outright majority will demand it if the March was successful. It will be brutal and violent and filled with infighting, but it will have to happen no matter what. It's the logical end state of the March.

Carville and those like him believe that the Conversion should for now remain where it has always been: in the future. Those in this camp believe that the March is not yet done, there is not yet enough control to pursue Conversion, and that attempting it now is high-risk and may result in defeat and it is reckless for the entitled Party youngsters to conflate their privileged status with actual power when the Marchers are still the rightful shot-callers. The DSA and those like them believe that those like Carville are fuddy-duddy Boomers who don't know what time it is, that Conversion needs to happen now or it will fail because the March is finished and is increasingly subject to outsider threats by regressive sub-human wreckers - and besides, they're owed it. The Marchers promised Conversion, and it's time to deliver - or else.

I don't know which camp is correct, but it was obvious that they had to reach this point. The Marchers spent decades cultivating radical, amoral (at best) monster babies and their efforts brought stupendous success. They got an entire generation of monster babies, and it was a mega-generation at that. The Millennials are a radical generation, lovingly crafted by the Marchers to be aggressively progressive - and it worked. The Marchers developed them and promised them victory. Now that they're middle-aged, the Millennials are moving into positions of real power and as they move up, they want to realize what they were promised - and they have the extra motivation of an aggressive push from below by their even more radical (if numerically smaller and much less monolithic) younger cohorts.

The March is not yet quite in the rearview mirror, but it is in its endgame. Conversion will be attempted, and the only remaining open questions are "when" and "will it work?" I don't know, but I think Carville is whistling past the graveyard and knows it. He and his kind spent decades promising Conversion - and their monster babies are getting tired of waiting.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:10 AM

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