Technological and cultural power

It's an ongoing source of frustration that, due to the Electoral College and the way states are represented in the Senate, the religious-fundamentalist and generally right-wing and reactionary element of the US population controls far more political power than its numbers warrant.  But political power is not the only kind of power within a society, as events are now illustrating.

There is also technological power.  Amazon is kicking Parler off its hosting service and Apple is dropping its app, which apparently will pretty much shut Parler down.  There are no right-wing high-tech companies on which any liberal sites are similarly dependent -- in fact, there are no major right-wing high-tech companies, period.  Twitter has even kicked Trump off now, and there's nothing he can do about it.  Despite all his money and (until January 20) power, he himself won't be able to set up a viable rival system because it would be dependent on technology which is controlled by people no longer willing to support what he's doing.  Even before November, YouTube was removing extremist videos, though somewhat sporadically.  They could do the same with evangelical and right-wing rabble-rousers more generally, if they chose to play hardball.  The fundie/wingnut subculture will never produce its own Amazon, Google, YouTube, etc.  The necessary skills, knowledge, and tech culture don't exist in a population which has made disdain for expertise and education part of its very identity.

(The wingnuts are, of course, complaining bitterly about these moves, but think of it this way.  Their blogs and sites since the election have been wallowing in a morass of violent fantasies about shooting and hanging liberals, assassinating leaders, and armed revolt against the government.  Essentially, they consider this a war.  OK, so it's a war -- and our side is destroying the enemy's communications infrastructure.  That's the kind of thing people do in wars.  They can't declare a war and talk about killing us and destroying our culture and then expect us to play nice and not use every weapon in our arsenal to defeat them.)

Many people, even on the left, are alarmed at the power of the tech giants to control modern communication, and perhaps eventually there will be government regulations to force them to operate in a more content-neutral way, which would give the wingnuts a reprieve.  But they'd still be dependent, then, on the very government they consider illegitimate and want to overthrow.

Then there's cultural power.  An ongoing theme on this blog has been the power of mass entertainment to guide and shape the culture and values of society (if you're not familiar with what I mean, read this, this, and this).  Liberals tend to downplay this effect, while right-wingers are actually more aware of its importance, since it works against their values.

But there's more to cultural power than that.  Notice that most employers these days have explicitly gay-friendly, anti-racist workplace policies.  Only a few companies like Chick-fil-A have explicitly right-wing policies, and even they won't endorse the more crazy Trumpist delusions or acts like the Capitol attack.  All over the country, people who participated in the attack are being fired from their jobs when they're identified.  45% of Republicans, which translates to 21% of Americans generally, approve of the storming of the Capitol -- but aside from perhaps a few tiny businesses in the remote red hinterlands, there's no corresponding sector of the economy in which having been part of the attack or supporting it is good for one's job security.

(This isn't because all the people who run big companies are liberals.  It's because they've crunched the numbers and figured out that failure to endorse the liberal world-view is bad for business, and that the fundie/racist/anti-gay element of the population isn't a market worth catering to.  Their goal is to make money, and that means adapting to the culture the way it actually is.)

We have an advantage because our world-view is based on reality, and reality is consistent and objectively knowable.  The wingnut world-view is crazy, and the practical problem with that is that there's no logical or objective way of agreeing exactly how crazy to go or in what directions.  I read right-wing sites and blogs regularly, and right now, in the comment sections of some of them, they are bitterly divided, quarreling with each other and denouncing each other.  They all believe that Trump actually won the election and Biden stole it through fraud, but some are still fervent QAnonists who expect Trump to somehow vanquish all his enemies and emerge triumphant before January 20, while others are starting to realize that nothing else QAnon predicted ever actually happened, and that the whole thing is a scam.  Some are saying the Capitol attack mob were patriots "taking back" the seat of government, others say they were antifa disguised as Trumpists to make Trumpists look bad.  Some want Trump to run again in 2024, some think voting is useless because of "vote fraud" and the only option now is violent revolution, some think all is lost and they're doomed to live under liberal rule forever, some are saying wait for Jesus to come back and straighten everything out, etc.  Having abandoned evidence-based and reality-based thinking, they have no objective way of deciding between these conflicting delusions.  They can't agree on a common fantasy world-view to put up against our reality-based world-view, and given how paranoid they tend to be, they easily start seeing those on their own side who have different views as enemies and traitors to the cause.

Our side dominates culture, which is "upstream" from politics -- that is, culture ultimately shapes politics, but there's very little politics can do to affect culture.  This is why the wingnuts have almost always felt angry and frustrated and besieged even when their side is in power in the government.  Political power can hurt people they hate, and Trump has been very good at that, but it can't stop the wingnuts from being culturally marginalized.  We're going to win out in the long run, and deep down they know it