How To Astroturf a Pivot
The opportunity to win culture for generations as Democrat donors throw more money into a bottomless pit, while Kara Swisher and Prof G humble brag about their fake podcast deal - plus a sad nepo baby
Comrades: The astroturfing will continue until morale improves.
We have reached a pivotal moment in the culture wars. The left is scrambling. Their donors have always understood the need to invest in culture and propaganda, but are frustrated that both their messages and messengers are awful. They can’t buy authenticity, humor, and original creative ideas. Yet they are willing to light ungodly amounts of money on fire to regain their dominance. What makes them foolish also makes them dangerous. They are attempting to upgrade a porta potty into a luxury toilet - it might be nicer, but it’s still full of shit. The human centipede of slop slithers on.
The right has the opposite problem. We have all the talent and energy. What we lack is the will and the funding. With 1% of the left’s war chest, we could achieve 100x more and make art that will inspire generations to come. Patriotic capitalists have a social responsibility to protect our civilization from communists. The short-term vibe shift needs commitment to establish a long-term golden age.
An electoral victory is important, but temporary. Politics is downstream of culture; culture is downstream of economics. We must win the mimetic war so we never face a kinetic war. If we make America beautiful again by funding culture and art, our children and grandchildren will flourish. All it takes is a few sparks to light timeless flames. Do we have the steel to win the counter-cultural revolution?
Coach Herm Edwards has immortal words about this simple concept: “You play to win the game! You don’t play to just play it… When you start telling me it doesn’t matter, then retire. Get out. Because it matters!”
NYT published two articles that show what we are up against. The first mentioned above details how Democrats have launched 20+ projects related to creators after their election loss. They are desperate to find the next Joe Rogan, even though Joe was a Democrat voter until they gave him the struggle session treatment for questioning their lunacy. Most of the copy pasta word salad they generate could be replicated for free with AI.
Billionaire oligarchs like George Soros, Laurene Powell Jobs, the Walmart Waltons, Jeff Lawson, and Mark Gallogly are hosting commissar circle-jerk conferences. Shadowy donor networks like Mind the Gap, American Bridge, Future Forward, and People for the American Way are priming their slush funds. They have already allocated millions of dollars to projects with Orwellian names: Achieve Narrative Dominance (Goebbels would be proud), Project Bullhorn (imagine AWFL protestors yelling in your face forever), Project Echo (as in echo chamber), ChannelZero (Pol Pot year zero approved), Double Tap Democracy (how you get executed in the gulag), and Chorus (of copy pasta).
How much of these funds will get funneled into Trump Derangement Substack?
How To Make Millions from Trump Derangement Substack AND Win the Pulitzer Prize
Comrades: Welcome to the first annual Substack Correspondents’ Dinner!
In "How Kara Swisher Scaled Even Higher", NYT gushes that she and Prof G Scott Galloway have signed a new multimillion dollar contract with Vox Media for their "Pivot" podcast. I threw up in my mouth a little too. Yet there is sleight of hand in the reporting. The deal structure is unique because it has no upfront cash, with 70% of revenues going to the cringe duo and 30% to Vox. She claims they turned down multiple competitive offers at $40 million guaranteed and he claims they could make $100 million in upside based on back of the envelope calculations. The source? "Trust me, bro." NYT “journalists” never verify details like these for the propagandists they like.
What is the audience for CNN TDS on meth? What advertisers want their brands to be associated with insufferable limousine liberals LinkedIn flexing? They want to tax the rich, but have also set up the income stream to avoid taxes. Swisher humble brags: “I’d never made a product or a news thing that people thanked me for. At the end of this long career, it’s like: ‘Oh, wow. I make something people really like.’” Even the NYT commenters don’t like their constant name dropping and wealth flaunting. It’s all so tiresome.
Mark Gallogly is one of the Democrat megadonors backing the astroturfing projects. He is the ultimate institutionalized crony. After making a fortune on the climate grift in private equity and advising Obama/Biden/Kerry, he now serves on the boards of Columbia University. Like Mark Carney, he sacrificed one of his children to the trans cult. His daughter Nell now calls themself Niko and works at NYT as a reporter focused on DEI/ESG. In three generations the family went from Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island, to Wall Street billionaire, to “resistance” journalist. The old elite is castrating itself.
It’s only a matter of time until FBI Director and TDS fan fiction writer Jim Comey starts a stunning and brave Substack:
Tim Dillon put on a master class of new media destroying old media in his CNN interview:
Once you see the astroturfing, you can’t unsee it:
How To Make Stars at the Commissar Astroturfing Agency
Comrades: CAA is the Commissar Astroturfing Agency.
The crazy part is, at least currently, the “right-wing clout” is simply speaking the truth. Men don’t have uteri. A man with his junk out in the ladies’ room is a perv with his junk out, not a pupating womanhood butterfly. No, promoting an incompetent DEI candidate will not magically make that person competent. “The patriarchy” isn’t why I’m not currently the CEO of anything. Big Mike Obama is objectively not beautiful…and so on.
Because these hollow “people” have no actual convictions beyond Staying in Power(TM), they DO NOT UNDERSTAND any of this. They think whatever our side is, is performance, just as theirs is. Hence their lame attempts to trot out Tim Walz as a Regular Guy:“See, he *beep boop* USES-FIREARMS and *rrrzzzz* WAS-A-COACH-OF-SPORTS, now you have to buy whatever we are selling [/end].”
Their clueless and bungling attempts to stay popular and relevant have provided hours and hours of amusement. I kinda hope they keep it going.
I saw an interesting analysis of why Kamala didn't do Rogan. In those long format venues, you talk about a lot of stuff. It is impossible for a Democrat pol to talk about a lot of stuff since something would offend elements of the coalition who would then cancel they/them. Their go to strategy (which those of us in the 2A world figured out long ago) is simply to lie but that doesn't work in long format either since any honest interviewer will expose the contradictions.