Previous: I — The Enemy Within
II — The Battle for Meaning
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” That was Orwell. Who controls language controls the present. That’s us. How did progressivism come to own American education and communication? Easy. Progressives seized control of our language.
Since taking control, they’ve twisted countless words to mean their opposites. That’s let them claim that good is bad and bad is good. That’s deadly — for us — because words are the building blocks of reality. To win — to restore America — we must retake our language. Soon.
Yes, yes. We know. “Retaking language” sounds kind of dull. Highlighting buzzwords. Defining them correctly. Challenging people who seem to misuse them. It’s like a flashback to Junior High. Sometimes you’ve got to slog through a lot of mud before you storm the beach. And make no mistake — we’re doing it all under fire. But storm the beach we shall! Retake our language, and we can retake our culture. Retake our culture, we can retake our law and our politics. Retake our law and our politics and we’ve retaken our country.
Retaking — or perhaps we should say restoring — American language is one of the central themes of these essays. In what is almost certainly another unwelcome flashback, the American Restoration Glossary is also central to the series. It’s where we catalog the difference between what Americans mean when they use certain keywords and what progressivism has done to those words. Think of that glossary as our weapons depot. Ignore it at your peril.
One critical element of our battle plan stems from the timeless adage “know your enemy.” Take progressivism seriously. As tempting as it may be to mock an ideology incapable of recognizing that “the gender binary” is the definition of “settled science,” avoid the urge.
Our combat training begins by identifying the three deadliest weapons in the progressive arsenal: Deconstruction, Fabrication, and Projection. That’s three different ways of saying that progressivism rests upon lies, but they’re very specific and very different types of lies. When used together — particularly when amplified through a progressive culture and media — their effect can be devastating.
That brings us back to language (in case you were beginning to think we’d lost the thread). Deconstruction got its start as an academic theory of language. The first deconstructionists — great thinkers of the 1960s New Left — put forward the idea that words have no fixed meaning. Everything depends upon context. Given that the context surrounding a speaker differs from the context surrounding a listener, effective communication can become quite challenging. The situation is even worse with written language; writers and their readers often live in contexts so different that the quest for common meaning seems ludicrous.
Deconstruction quickly flowered into an academic movement intent upon stripping meaning from life. Facts, truth, and reality all became subjective. Notoriety and celebrity replaced virtue and achievement. Judgmentalism and moralizing replaced judgment and morality. Nothing was known, nothing was settled, nothing was real. Every object, every concept, every relationship came untethered. A new world beckoned. A better world. A world of justice. A progressive world.
Progressivism seized control of language with deconstructionist tools like political correctness, microagressions, and dog whistles. The words a speaker utters, the intent behind the utterance, the context in which it is uttered, no longer matter. What matters is the most negative way that a listener — often a distant third-party listener spoon fed a shred of text shorn of context — might perceive the utterance. For good measure, progressive pundits are always eager to tell their readers how to read invidious intent — most commonly racism or misogyny — into any seemingly innocuous statement from anyone they’ve chosen to attack.
Progressivism weaponized deconstruction. Progressives need never define the words they use, their beliefs, or the standards they propose, because progressive definitions are never fixed. That’s particularly true of definitions attached to weighted or controversial attack terms. To progressives, today’s racism need not have anything to do with racism of the past. Stances on LGBTQ rights that were moral yesterday may be immoral today. Sexual overtures that may have been socially acceptable — even welcome — when made decades in the past become harassment and abuse in the rear-view mirror.
Confused? If not, you’re not paying attention. Because progressives control culture, they get to deconstruct and redefine words. If you’re a progressive, you can be forgiven for failing to keep up with every change because your intentions are pure. If you’re a more traditional American, on the other hand, you have no leg to stand on: you’re a transgressor with ill intent. In fact, you’re deplorable. As far as progressive Hollywood is concerned, you might as well be hunted for sport.
Weaponized deconstruction handed progressives control of the language. They leveraged that control to deconstruct reality with their second great weapon, fabrication. To state the matter simply, progressives lie. Constantly. About everything. They don’t even care if their story is plausible. Because progressives dominate print, broadcast, and social media, they turn whatever story they want to tell into conventional wisdom. Every committed progressive understands that a lie told often enough becomes the truth, so they repeat their lies. Often. Then they report on the previous day’s reported lies, repeatedly raising concerns that if true, would be serious. Of course, they’re not true — but if they were, wouldn’t the public have a right to know? And when many people relate variants of the same potentially concerning story, isn’t that alone cause for concern?
Progressive fabrication reached stratospheric proportions with a conspiracy theory called “Russia Collusion.” That deeply delusional and implausible tale rested upon zero hard evidence, zero circumstantial evidence, and a handful of reports that never passed the smell test. But to progressives, it was gospel. The tale went something like this:
Russia’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, was contemplating the end of the Obama era. He’d done well for his country with Obama in the White House. He’d reestablished Russian power in the Middle East, annexed Crimea, destabilized eastern Ukraine, taken possession of much of North America’s uranium, built up his military capabilities, deepened his ties to Iran and Turkey, and positioned himself to dominate Western Europe’s energy supply. He was right to wonder what might come next.
Surveying the American political terrain, he saw that Hillary Clinton, who’d helped create the openings Russia had exploited, was favored to win the election. Over the years, Putin had channeled loads of money through the Clinton Global Initiative, and he could probably guess that as President, Hillary would bring back large parts of her State Department team that had been so accommodating to Russia. He also knew that Democrats had a history of towing soft lines on both Russia and U.S. Defense, and that no matter how soft a line Hillary chose, elements of her own party would push her to be even softer. Putin, like everyone else, would have expected a new Democrat President to build upon the Obama legacy in Iran and Syria that had already proved so favorable to Russia. He would have doubted that Clinton would block any of the deals he’d cut with her Davos pals running Germany and the EU.
Panicking (for whatever reason) at the thought of the Obama policies continuing under Clinton, Putin decided to activate a political novice with a background in real estate and entertainment that he’d been cultivating since his days in the old Soviet KGB. He pushed his puppet through the Republican Party to ensure that the Americans most antagonistic towards Russia gained seats in the new Administration. Deploying an understanding of the American electorate so savvy that it put every American political professional to shame, Putin sent a few hundred thousand dollars to Eastern European hackers to wage an election-altering social media campaign. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign engaged in a clumsy pattern of dispatching low-level volunteers with zero relevant training to meet Russian spies — just to call attention to the relationship.
It all worked brilliantly. The evil genius Putin and his incompetent Trump puppet cleverly worked against Russia’s national interests to pull an electoral upset so stunning that a majority of America’s political and media professionals still can’t believe it happened.
Because, you know, misogyny.
Right.
Millions of Americans believed — and still believe — this obvious fabrication. Leading Congressional progressives will go to their graves swearing it’s true. And like all conspiracy theories, the total absence of both motive and evidence only proves its truth.
Want a more plausible story that actually fits the facts? Putin knows that the greater any country’s internal problems, the lesser its ability to project power abroad. Surveying the American terrain, he concluded that political polarization was the most likely source of internal tension in the U.S. He invested in a run-of-the-mill propaganda operation to stoke that polarization. He spent most of his time bashing the favorite because stoking resentment against the next President makes far more sense than turning the winners against a quixotic losing candidate.
Turns out, Putin got that last part wrong — just like almost everyone else on the planet. The favorite lost. But, boy! Did Putin reap a return on his investment! Polarization is through the roof, and a progressive “resistance” movement arose to hamstring the new President’s ability to govern — with a particular constraint placed on his freedom of movement vis-à-vis Russia. Putin’s got to be pinching himself. He spent pocket change on a losing ticket and still won the lottery.
While there were indeed a few brave, isolated souls reporting a “Russia story” that made sense, the progressive fabrication drowned them out. By sheer repetition, the progressive fable became enshrined as conventional wisdom. Those who questioned it sounded like a kooks.
All of which leads logically to the next question. Why this particular fable? Why Russia? The answers are rooted in the third great progressive weapon: Projection. Ideological progressives have long had plans to protect their dominance. As soon as the Tea Party was born as a potential threat in 2010, the progressive media and the progressive Deep State conspired to strangle it in its cradle. The Obama Administration weaponized the Internal Revenue Service to throttle and terrorize grassroots organizations promoting small government, lower taxes, free-market alternatives to Obamacare, pro-life advocacy, the freedom of religion, or support for Israel. Though it’s hard to be certain, those efforts likely tipped the balance in the 2012 election.
Empowered, the progressive juggernaut rolled on. During Obama’s second term (if not earlier), the political weaponization extended to the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Education, and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice — to name only the most obviously compromised agencies. Progressives challenged every measure intended to promote voter integrity, bizarrely insisting that only racists oppose voter fraud.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign employed foreign intelligence sources — notoriously Christopher Steele — to fabricate tales about her opponent. She and her operatives warned ominously of Trump’s launching an anti-government resistance following her election, promoting street riots, violence, and tremendous loss to property.
With the Deep State, state-by-state election operatives, and the Clinton campaign all playing their roles in ensuring that the United States would never again experience a free and fair election, the progressive media took the lead role on projection: Progressive leadership had turned America’s premiere intelligence and enforcement agencies into political weapons? Accuse Trump of authoritarianism. Progressive election officials and judges corrupted the voter rolls? Accuse Republicans of trying to rig the elections. Clinton had been selling influence to foreign powers for decades? Accuse Trump of selling influence to foreign powers. Progressives planned to riot and resist if Trump won? Accuse Trump supporters of planning to riot and resist if Trump lost.
Facts? Evidence? Meh. Those sorts of things are purely optional in progressive circles. Nice when you have them, but hardly critical. Progressivism embraces an ends-justify-the-means morality. Why master fabrication if you’re going to get hung up on a lack of evidence? Besides, there’s always something: bad ballot integrity proposals, stray comments, Trump’s global business connections, a handful of aggressive Trump supporters, political neophytes exercising poor judgment. More than enough for the progressive professionals running contemporary American culture.
All of which leads to the final, obvious question. It’s a question so obvious that Hillary Clinton wrote a whole book fabricating answers: What Happened? In the real world, the answer is clear. Progressives got overconfident. America got lucky — or blessed.
Luck and blessings are wonderful things. But they’re not enough. The linguistic weapons of progressivism are potent. Deconstruction, fabrication, projection. Lies, lies, lies. Progressivism will keep it up as long as it keeps working. And work, it does. Even when the progressive web of lies fails to win elections, it keeps minorities terrified — and in line. Without their blind submission, progressivism would turn into the fringe movement it deserves to be. Like the millions of seduced, decent, social progressives, frightened minorities have drunk the Kool Aid. They’re afraid of the America eager to embrace them, and attracted to the progressivism that abuses them.
Deconstruction lets progressives pitch themselves as reformers in the grandest American tradition, when — at best — they’re running a protection racket. “Nice little Constitution you’ve got there,” you can hear them say. “Too bad if anything happened to it. And that Bill of Rights? Adorable. Just adorable. Let’s take a look, shall we? Free speech? Delightful! As long as it doesn’t offend progressive sensitivities (which, by the way, change by the minute). Free press? Absolutely! It would be a crime to shout down the fake news industry spreading progressive propaganda; it’s only the folks telling inconvenient truths who deserve to be shuttered. Freedom of religion? By all means! Pray to whatever silly deity you want in whatever dead language you like. Just remember to check their oppressive moral codes at the door of your houses of worship, because they have no place in decent society. Right to bear arms? Hey — if you like your musket, you can keep your musket. But let’s not push it much beyond muskets — unless you like mass shootings, that is.” Make no mistake. Progressivism is out to strip away everything that makes America American.
So, yes. If you’re a proud American restorationist, get angry. Get bold. Stand up for yourself. Stand up for America. Learn to fight back. On multiple fronts. The political battles may get the headlines, but when you’ve lost control of culture and society — as we have — political victories ring hollow. The day-to-day cultural and social battles are crucial. These are the true fronts on which we’ll determine whether progressivism transforms America into something distasteful or we effect the American restoration we, our children, our future, the world, and the very cause of human decency requires. It’s on those crucial fronts that we’ve mustered all the fierceness of a deer in the headlights.
That has to change. It has to change NOW! Within the progressive culture of the twenty-first we’re fighting a rearguard action. We’re not “conservatives.” Only a fool would set out to conserve traditions America has already lost. Our fight today is counterrevolutionary. We are, in every sense, restorationist.
American restorationism must mature into a social, cultural, and political movement capable of countering the progressive threat. The scope of the challenge is enormous. But we have to start somewhere. And since we can’t fight until we’re armed, the best place to begin is with the weapons we’ll need to reclaim our language from deconstruction, to defeat progressive fabrications with truth, and to reject defensive projections that tar our good names.
To defeat their deconstructions, fabrications, and projections, we must master the techniques of definition, examination, and reflection. Insist that progressives define the weighted terms they toss around to reveal their deconstructions and inversions for all to see. Demand and examine any evidence they cite to unveil their fabrications. Reflect their harshest accusations upon them to highlight the projections of their own plans.
Easy, right? Probably not. That’s why there are more essays to follow. It’s also why we intend to model all three defensive weapons in action. (Remember the American Restoration Glossary?) So if you want to learn how to fight for an American restoration, keep reading.
Game on!
