The Problem with Conservatives and Culture

Posted by in Blog, Featured, Politics on January 4, 2013 3:42 pm / 7 comments

I’ve seen the previews for the new Matt Damon and John Krasinski film “Promised Land” all over the TV for at least a week now. You can tell the entire plot from just those previews: evil guy comes to take the land and make a profit (and employ people, but I’m sure that won’t ever be mentioned) but a nice guy comes to rally the locals to save the land and make the world greener and happier (and unemployed). In the end, evil guy will realize the error of his ways and recognize that nice guy is right and fight against his bosses. If the two leads were of opposite gender they’d probably become a couple in the end too.

While “Promised Land” is predictable liberal bile, the film and its premise will no doubt be filled with lies and deception – it’s what the left does. And naturally, the right tries to call them out on it. In this case, the director of a pro-fracking documentary is waging a “one man war” against Promised Land:

“Promised Land,” the new Gus Van Sant film about the controversial technique that acquires natural gas through drilling and pressurized fluid, stars and was written by Damon and costar John Krasinski, opens nationally Friday.

Phelim McAleer is launching a one-man campaign to call Damon out about the film. McAleer directed the documentary FrackNation, along with his wife Ann McElhinney, and the film paints a more sympathetic portrayal of fracking and aims to dispel some of the misinformation that McAleer and McElhinney believe have dominated the debate over the procedure’s environmental and health impact.

“This is classic propaganda,” McAleer told POLITICO. “It’s political from the beginning to the very end.” And that, according to McAleer, represents a large part of his problem with “Promised Land.”

Since the Republican loss last November, a lot of the blame has been placed on the right’s loss in the culture and rightly so. This is a classic example. The left makes movies (an integral part of the culture) while the right makes documentaries and reacts on cable news. There’s nothing wrong with documentaries, in fact for people who are seeking to persuaded one way or another on an issue documentaries might be the way to go.

However,  films like “Promised Land” seep into the subconscious of people who go to the movies to see Matt Damon and that guy from The Office in a movie. They go to see the film and the plot and come out believing fracking is a satanic plot to catch the world on fire. They will never know that “FrackNation” exists or that it uses facts and the truth rather than plots and millionaire actors.

Documentaries are fine, but conservatism has to find a way to compete with the left in the culture from movies and music and everything else if it wants to survive. “Promised Land” is just one glaring example why.

 
 

7 Comments

  1. vanguarg says:
    January 4, 2013 at 10:37 pm

    Oliver Stone could make a movie suggesting Republicans sank the Titanic, and 51% of Americans would believe it!

  2. madnessofjack says:
    January 5, 2013 at 6:21 pm

    I think there is broad agreement among the conservative base about the conclusions of this article. I agree that “we” have abandoned the “cultural” medium long ago and “we” are reaping the consequences of that decision.
    “We” conservatives have always held a belief that in the “war of ideas” that this “battle” would be waged on a level playing field……clearly it is not.

    Breitbart, Beck and a number of others have “suggested” that we develop “our” own culture, economic interests and social mediums….THEY ARE RIGHT.

    We need to support “our” own companies, media, cultural interests at the expense of the “progressive” culture, companies and social “economic” interests.
    Case and point….Progressive Insurance or various “Hollywood” outlets…..we pay these people our hard earned cash who then turn around and use this money to foster their own agendas and marginalize us.
    This has to stop…….and we are the only ones who can stop it.

  3. Nic says:
    January 5, 2013 at 6:53 pm

    It’s because the rest of the humanity you conservatives cut yourself off from in the 80s now sees you for what you really are… a bunch of backwards, 50s value having, hatred-spewing, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic drones who think whatever Limbaugh or Fox News tells you to and think it’s all okay because you go to church on Sunday. You might’ve had a shot if you’d have pushed your economic policies instead of pandering to the teabaggers who now control your party…. you made your bed, now lay in it!

  4. Monica says:
    January 6, 2013 at 12:09 am

    I agree wholeheartedly. The only problem; it’s going to take time. The question is do we have it?

  5. Peter Rayfield says:
    January 6, 2013 at 12:36 am

    The sad thing about this war of ideas is in the alluded fact that there are “only 2 sides” to the story – and in the very broadest sense that is correct as there are only two sides to a coin and they are both united and working together – whereas any democracy will ultimately have to destroy itself in the fight over opposite ends.

    While in our present time my logic directs me to sympathize with the conserbative position – I would like to emphasize that there is no glory in knowing that ‘we’ are ‘relatively’ speaking more right than the other side. After all, we have been unable to convey a gripping enough truth that would capture the imagination of the larger public – and in fact we will never be able to succeed in such undertaking while the other side promises to give away the store and the barn to an uneducated majority – who can vote itself any measure of taxation and spending that it pleases.

    Of course, inevitably and ultimately it will lead to the collapse of the republic – so that a new phoenix may rise again from the ashes. All of us have become so indoctrinated with the concept of democracy that we have never analyzed what such a system would require to sustain itself. Plato already dismissed the concept as lacking in psychological veracity – and here we go (both Dems and Reps) preaching to other countries in the world the virtues of democracy.

    Under such circumstances we deserve nothing better than to be eliminated from the world – until we realize that only a 3rd party with the will and philosohy to ultimately to away with itself after winning an election and then processing the introduction of a ‘guild government’ (for the lack of a better word at this moment) which will in the long run do away with popularly elected congressmen and senators in favour of one-term guildsmen with no pension benefits (sort of an improvement of what they do in Switzerland and Singapore).

    But we don’t have to hold our breath that this is going to happen in the near future – not very likely; first will come our demise and thereafter we shall see – depending on how kindly the gods will consider the chanses of success for our inept and untrustworthy political leaders.

  6. Alex says:
    January 6, 2013 at 12:53 am

    What, was “2016″ not popular enough?

  7. Ron says:
    January 6, 2013 at 9:37 am

    When the left took over the media in the mid to late 60′s, the public did not seem to mind at all. If the public was so casual when the old John Wayne Loretta Young media was replaced with the Easy Rider The Graduate media, what does this say about the public in general? If the public are fools and degenerates, will they accept anything non-leftist and non-degenerate? The fact that most movies are either for small children or are decadent indicates a society that is rotten to the core.

Post a Comment