Tucker Carlson and VDH chatted last night about the possibility the neoliberal revolution (I prefer the term “neoprogressive”) of the left is finished because nobody wants what they are producing. Their policies, philosophies, and ideologies are absurd, bankrupt and frankly, dangerous – and people are realizing they are.
I would like to agree with them – but too many times when I thought the left was down for the count, I turned my back and they got up off the mat. Like the old man in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”, neoliberalism is weakly protesting, “I’m not dead yet!” as it is tossed on the charnel cart – but they have invested way too much time and effort to go that quietly into the good night.
What makes me cautious is that if the revolution is waning, it isn’t because we won, it is because they lost.
Big difference.
I have the same issue here as is do with the way America has waged wars for decades – the philosophy of “proportionality” prevents our military from killing enough people and breaking enough things so the population of the enemy country recognizes the defeat. Unfortunately, when not enough collateral damage is done, the population never gets to the point of turning on the people instigating the conflict and often supports them as “freedom fighters”.
Until the will to fight is gone, there can be no true victory.
That’s my problem with the declaration that the neoliberal revolution is over. The neoliberal left will never accept they lost because they weren’t beaten. Not enough material losses were imparted on their members for them to feel and know defeat. Their response to similar “defeats” in the past has been to assume 1) the people were just too damn stupid to appreciate how great things were going to be and 2) the neoliberal effort failed because it wasn’t implemented correctly or pushed hard enough.
Other than Ron DeSantis’ pushback against the leftist stupidity in Florida, it is hard to name any ongoing unified effort on the right that stopped the Gramscian “long march through the institutions”.
Trump, sandwiched between two of the most radical neoliberal presidents, was able to hold the line for a few years and give America a chance to take a breath, but look at what the institutions did to him (and are still doing to he and his family) and how the Deep State resist his policies to this day.
The truth is the neoliberal left burned itself out.
It would seem they did so because the opposition was so feckless and weak, they figured they could get away with anything and everything – so they gave anything and everything a shot, from transgender kindergarten kids to open borders to Modern Monetary Theory, they completely emptied their bag of tricks.
Under Trump, when a successful effort at a national level would seem unlikely, they used the pandemic as an excuse to vomit their radical neoliberal policies on the states where they already dominated, establishing a bridgehead – and most of those states, like New York and California, a hemorrhage of people voting with their feet began, and those who could packed up and moved to places like Texas and Florida. Given the choke hold the neoliberal left had on places like NY and Cali, the people had no choice but to flee.
Then in 2020, again with the pandemic as a backdrop, their year’s long efforts to engineer an election was rewarded when two of the worst, least competent candidates allegedly “won” the election with a record 81 million votes. One candidate was visibly deteriorating cognitively and campaigned from his basement or in front of tens of people at “events”, the other was rejected by her own party during the primaries – during which she accused her soon to be running mate of being a racist.
An unlikely ticket for sure, and yet somehow, they “won”.
Chastised by the interruption in their transformation plans by the election of the interloper Trump, the cognitively impaired president and his vacuous sidekick (and the puppet masters pulling the strings behind the scenes) wasted no time erasing their predecessor’s policies and pushing forward at a national level the same radical progressive plans and policies that weren’t working in New York and California, creating inflationary pressures, skyrocketing energy prices, food shortages and foreign policy failures not seen since the Carter years.
Sure, people fled the early efforts by transiting across state lines – but where do you go when those policies are nationalized?
Nowhere. There is nowhere to go.
So, left with no place to which to flee, people started to resist.
From parents taking stands at local school board meetings to convoys of truckers protesting fuel prices and unnecessary restrictions, regular people began to push back. While none of these efforts truly had national impact in and of themselves, they served the purpose of revealing to the nation just how absurd and wrong these neoliberal policies are.
People began to see and understand what has been going on behind their backs for decades, that even in the “safe” states, cities and towns, the corruption of children, the authoritarian desires of elected leaders and the willingness of a government to stomp on constitutional rights were present even in small town America. Local school systems in rural Utah, Texas and Montana were embracing the neoliberal diversity, inclusion and equity programs, LGBTQ indoctrination, and radical concepts like Critical Race Theory were already embedded in local school curriculums.
Snuck in silently on little cat’s feet, clandestine and silent.
That’s the downside – but on the upside, the effects of neoliberalism/neoprogressivism are finally out and obvious.
Leftist, activist teachers are proudly and publicly announcing their efforts to convince your children, behind your back, that kids can be any sex they want and that men can have babies. In many cases, teachers have been replaced by social justice activists who want to hide what your kids are being taught. Technocrats have proven they can be simultaneously dead wrong and still shut down a national economy at a whim. Your government has shown its zeal in forcing you to take vaccines you don’t want (and likely don’t need) and force your kids to wear masks in school. Businesses have revealed their complicity by fighting free speech, restricting access to services and products, and in the case of Disney, openly revealing their intent to bombard your kids with LGBTQ messaging.
The good news is that while neoliberalism is not over, or ever truly will be (it keeps mutating and coming back), it is in decline and we do have a chance to crush it – if we are willing to do what it takes, continuing local activism and defeating any elected officials who even remotely support the neoliberal agenda.
In a metaphorical sense, we must be prepared to kill people and break things.
We just need to have the will to win.
The Rio Norte Line 
Would it be that I am able to write my thoughts so clearly, I would have written this essay.