I've written at some length about 'progressive liberalism', or rather the weird far left cargo cult that has co-opted the term and now wears it like a skin suit as they have done with and thoroughly polluted the term 'liberalism' before it. This is because the left is the ruling paradigm here in New York and there exists no version of the right here including non-neocon, right of center conservatives, at least not openly.
I do not count the Republican party to be on the right as their detractors allege as really, they are more of a mushy, moderate, "me too, I think what you think" bunch of sophists whose politics today, including neocons, would have been more a comfortable fit with the mainstream liberalism of the 1950's to 1970's. To call the red junior faction of the bi-factional uniparty, whose role it is to play the meanie bad guys who always somehow lose to the blue senior faction Democrats, a real opposition party is an insult to the legitimacy and honor of professional wrestling.
As an aside, neocons were in fact mainstream liberal Democrats until they were either purged from the party for being the warmongering, sophistic punks they were or opportunistically began larping as conservatives in the wake of the Reagan revolution in their classic tradition of me too-ism.
And why even bother talking about Republicans at all. Here in New York City as they are as rare as a bigfoot sighting and when seen, are little more than the walking dead and just as devoid of thoughts and ideas of their own as any zombie. These two sentences sum the New York City Republicans up for all intents and purposes so I needn't write any more about those mealy-mouthed finks.
Now that the palmy preliminaries have been dispensed with we can get on to the subject at hand, American right.
The primary problem with the right is the right itself. From Russel Kirk on rightwards through the libertarians, it is not really a formal ideology as much as a series of positions on issues, postures and critiques of the left and of each other.
This is a fundamental aspect of individualism that there is no formal dogma or canon to describe it beyond "leave me alone". Individuals usually will not gravitate to a single, central ideology as a collectivist leftist would but would be followers of a number of smaller factions and sub-factions such as libertarianism, the alt-right, the dissident right, et al. All these groups have differing philosophical focus, goals, and prescriptions for society including disagreeing whether there should be borders or not. In addition to this, the further rightists are often more often than not attacking each other and conservatives of any sort (their favorite targets in fact) than they will attack the left. In fact, libertarians and alt-righters will typically be openly sympathetic to the left when protesting wars, assorted government policies and any controversy with the police as both loath the very idea of government and all its functions.
Further, for the different groups within the right, each pundit, blogger, commentator, etc. who may use the same title such as alt-right, libertarian, dissident right and assorted conservatives, will each have his own interpretation of what that title is about and have his own courtier of followers. The right is so individualist that it doesn't even have a standard definition of each sect or title. This is what constitutes some of the infighting within the right. Who is who and who is, or is not what.
So how is the right side of the political spectrum going to field an effective opposition to the left if they can't agree with each other on much of anything other than they oppose (or sort of oppose) the left and refuse to outline what program or policy they would implement after the left is defeated? They decry the death of the U.S. Constitution and endlessly criticize it and rip conservatives (boomercons in tricorn hats) who support it for the mess we are in today. But they never offer any fixes or alternatives.
Much of the right either predicts or deeply desires the United States to fragment into smaller countries although, again, they have no idea along what lines they will split, what these countries will be let alone how they will be organized and run. "Let's win first then decide principles later" is all they have to say but unfortunately they have no coherent plan of how to win either.
Much of the further regions of the right have already decided that it is impossible to even try to vote our way out and mocks anyone else who offers plans to try and take the Republican party and turn it into a genuine opposition party. Their view is that the country will eventually suffer financial collapse and fall into civil war and then somehow, the right will come to the fore in the aftermath, clean the mess up and start again. Sort of like being on a runaway train and waiting until the train crashes and wrecks, then jumping out of the wreckage and building a new train from the debris. Let's decide how to rebuild the train, or if it should be a train or some other type of vehicle, after it crashes. What could possibly go wrong?
In summary, as the situation stands at present, the right will not be able to really unite around one leader or group of leaders to oppose the left. Any attempt to do so will be as ineffectual as herding cats. Even if some kind of coalition of the right could be built from its current constituencies, they would agree on little more than they oppose the left and would agree less on how they will do it or what will be done if they win.
Very much reminiscent of the Russian White Army opposing the Bolsheviks, yet spending more time fighting themselves, and at this point, just as likely to succeed. The White Army redux.
Donald Cavaioli
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