Here's what's going to happen, as far as I can tell: "Progressives" are going to complete the dismantling of Western civilization, the neo-Trumpist Right is going to persist in thinking that progressives can be stomped into the dust and that "conservative" values will then prevail, and actual conservatives - sheesh, isn' there a better term for what I mean at this late date? - will have to keeps their heads down and their mouths shut in order to survive.
Progs experienced some setbacks lately, such as Bud Light sales going into and remaining in a slump, and Target making some tweaks to the displays of its sexual-freak merchandise. But they're not down for the count:
Rose Montoya, a transgender content creator who has worked with marketers including Savage X Fenty, said fewer brands are reaching out for Pride partnerships this year. Montoya attributed that drop to fear sparked by the furor surrounding Bud Light and Target, in addition to other factors including greater saturation of the influencer market.
“For us, it’s important for our customers to not only see themselves in our products, but also know that we see and welcome them—many of whom aren’t represented or often overlooked by other brands across a wide range of industries,” said Emma Tully, chief brand officer at Savage X Fenty.
The fashion brand, which recently introduced a new Pride collection, uses its marketing to support the LGBT community, as well as related groups such as the Black Trans Femme Arts Collective, throughout the year, Tully said.
“All of this will hopefully blow over,” Montoya said. “The queer community has huge spending power. Brands can’t afford to not work with us forever.”
Companies at the same time can no longer row back to an era when they were neutral on social and political issues, said Adamson, the Metaforce co-founder. Doing so may run the risk of creating forgettable brands that don’t resonate with anyone, he said.
“No matter what, they have to assume there will be a minority who will strongly object, and they have to be prepared to live with that decision,” Adamson said. “And part of that is moving from marketing to the basics of crisis management.”
A couple of marketing consultants speak plainly about where we are:
“Previously you could send a homogeneous message to the country, but there’s so much divisiveness and polarization on so many issues that that’s become almost impossible,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of brand and marketing consulting firm Metaforce.
And
“The marketplace has become saturated with hostility that seems to break out in any number of places at any time,” said Scott Broetzmann, president and chief executive of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, which conducts the study with the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.
Well, isn't combativeness of the type displayed by the neo-Trumpists just what's needed to champion what's been traditionally considered normal, objectively true and worthy of upholding?
Um, no. For one thing, the movement's namesake has the depth and the understanding of history of a paramecium. The only reason he rants about "leftist radicals" is because someone told him that such a stance would ensure that his drool-besotted leg humpers would glorify him. And he's not going away. Even as the GOP slate of presidential candidates continues to grow, he blows the doors off all of them, and they're too cowardly to do what they'd need to do to rectify that. And the next-most-viable candidate campaigned for Kari Lake last year, characterized Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a territorial dispute, and said he'd consider pardons for some January 6 convicts. And all other neo-Trumpists are performative, cartoonish yay-hoos.
And the closest thing to an institutional effort to assert the presence of the remaining non-neo-Trumpist right has shifted from seeking to ground itself in the principles developed by Montesquieu, Locke, Adam Smith, Burke et al to a position that Democrats may have some good points. The Bulwark and Principles First have narrowed, for the purpose of trying to project a modicum of conservatism, their defenses of anything traditional to a kind of shallow Disney's-just-trying-to-operate-within-the-free-market libertarianism.
So we get Pride garbage crammed down our throats, and the Progs also continue apace in their crusade to abolish material forms of human advancement such as gas water heaters and any kind of dishwashers.
Quite honestly, I don't see any alternative to the scenario I lay out in the first paragraph. As I said over at Precipice the other day, we're knuckleheads who have squandered our birthright.
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