Democrats only say nice things about Republicans who don’t threaten them, a state only achieved through consistently losing or finally dying. That seems awfully high a price when defeating them is an option we could try.

Johnny Isakson is dying.

That sad fact is something I evaluate separately from his career. I’m sorry that his days are waning. I do not feel such that his political career is, ending December 31st. As a Conservative, he never did much for me. He was too busy chasing the approval of the Left and the Establishment Uni-party. He managed to get it when he lost like he was supposed to, and of course, now that his days are numbered.

Thus far, every Republican that matters has given the obligatory statement of his greatness, stature, and irreplaceability, from Governor Brian Kemp to soon-to-be Senior Senator from Georgia David Perdue to President Trump. No longer a threat, even on paper, to the Left’s ambitions, even Chuck Schumer has nice things to say, though incapable of making nice words for any Republican sound other than a backhanded compliment.

Having lived in Georgia my whole life, as have generations of Chamberses, I can tell you that the only things that, politically, have served Isakson better than his swan song are his accidental achievements obtained at the cost of Republicans losing.

Isakson lost his run for Governor in 1990 as candidate without a rationale, a pro-choice Republican in a reliably Democrat yet socially conservative state, losing to Zell Miller. In 1996, Isakson would never make it out of the primary in the US Senate race, beaten by Miller’s 1994 challenger, Guy Millner. Only in politics can losing by even more lead to a promotion, and so it did when Zell Miller fired the entirety of the State school board to set Isakson up as chairman of a new board. Revived politically, he was a shoo-in for the special election to replace Newt Gingrich in Congress when he resigned for losing seats in the House majority he’d ushered in four years earlier. Isakson decided to upgrade to Senate, after first getting the inside scoop that Zell Miller, himself the beneficiary of Republican Paul Coverdell’s death, would not run for re-election in 2004.

If your political fortunes rise or fall at the pleasure of your supposed adversaries, then you’re not much of an opponent. Isakson earned the rank of the 12th most bipartisan Senator, a label he seems to relish and apply often to his legislation and activities. From bills to barbeques, it’s always “bipartisan” with Isakson. His willingness to “work together” earns praise in statements marking his retirement, although one struggles to think of a Democrat similarly regarded for the simple virtue of adopting the other side’s positions for the sake of “getting things done.”

One almost wonders if some aspiring Dem got advanced word to begin assembling a campaign in the same way Isakson himself did.

Either way, Isakson’s career shows any Republican how they can earn some amount of praise from the same Democrats who viciously destroyed them when needed — die or lose. With nature mostly in control of the former, Republicans shoot for the latter. Gun control? Maybe. Spike nominees, appointees, and personnel over disingenuous Left-wing attacks? A given. Avoid prosecuting crimes with the same zeal Democrats perp-walk and jail people for obscure whoever-heard-of-that-law crimes? Well, there’s institutional integrity to be considered!

I like praise as much as the next guy. (I don’t receive nearly enough. What gives?) But if the way to get it is to take a dirt nap or a dive, I’d really just as soon you cuss my name as a rotten SOB. No one really likes Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. So what? Cross them, especially within the party ranks, and you might wake up with a horse head in your bed. In the GOP, you’re more likely to lose a committee assignment or campaign funds from being perceived as too far right than uselessly, reflexively left.

And that, they say, is how you get Trump. But going on three years in to his first term, where’s the ruthlessness that goes with the accusations of being a Nazi? They say at least Hitler made the trains run on time. Trump can’t even get his own FBI, GOP, or even his personal secretary not to undermine him at every turn. Short of withdrawing from the next election or dying before it, he’s going to continue as President MisogyNazi RacisTransphobe in the eyes of his opponents. That’s a good time to stop trying to be friends and take a flamethrower to this place.

Still, the people who haven’t given advice that won any elections assure us that doing that will lose the next election. If so… so? Obamacare was wildly unpopular and electoral suicide for 2010. But memories are short, and the only things Republicans botch worse than messaging is governing. Now you can’t touch Obamacare, unless you’re one of the Democrats trying to replace it with even more socialism to fix the socialism that didn’t work. Likewise, Dems are content to let their elder statesman Joe Biden embarrass himself, an intentional pawn while the rest of the field that doesn’t yet have the chops to win moves the Overton window further left with each ludicrous, buy-all-the-illegals-free-healthcare proposal.

It’s not that they want to lose battles. They just see it as a reality in building a strategy to win the war. If the post-9/11 world has taught us anything, it’s that Republicans are averse to strategy and winning wars, no matter how easily they start them. Like Iraq, Republicans expected to be greeted as liberators (and for a brief moment were) when proposing to repeal Obamacare, lower spending, and stop the cultural onslaught against everyday Americans. To their surprise, the natives got restless as everyone realized there was no plan to achieve victory in the stated objectives.

Soon, Johnny Isakson will be gone from the Senate, and after a time, the world. In a few years, both the kudos and the criticism will make way for the generic remembrance of just another career politician who did well for himself but made little lasting effect to which his memory may lay claim. The credit he receives today is only partial, and fleeting. It doesn’t matter to anyone but him. History only rewards the winners. I’d rather adopt the Democrats’ implacability for winning rather than accepting their charity in losing or condolences for dying.

Even as the delineations of a two-tiered society grow more stark, our politicians have turned into yuppie parents trying to be both authority figures yet also our pals. They utterly fail at both, which will soon force a reckoning.

Beto placed the unwrapped, individual slice of pasteurized cheese product on the burger patty. (You can’t call it “cheese” by FDA standards, because, well, it isn’t.) He then scraped it off the non-stick pan with a metal spatula, belying the fact he’s not cooked much in the 63 years since DuPont made Teflon available for home cookware. Placing it on the English muffin with two pieces of broccoli on the side, he brings full circle the offense he’s given Wisconsin dairy farmers, vegans, chefs, environmentalists, industrial chemists, carnivores, and the English.

The beneficiary of this PR disaster surely is Elizabeth Warren, who in hindsight looked slightly more authentic fetching a f̶i̶r̶e̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ beer while live-streaming from her kitchen. And the beneficiary of Warren’s day-drinking while pretending she didn’t know her husband was in the room all along was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who invented the genre of doing mundane things in the kitchen. This is just as they imagine the hoi polloi do after coming home from the work-a-day jobs that are still better than the ones they won’t do, requiring illegal aliens to do them in their stead.

Of course, none of these are average people, much to the relief of the average. I’m sure some people still buy AOC’s poor bartender Jenny-from-the-Block story, but unlike the soft bigots of the Elitist Left, I think most poor minorities realize someone arguing that they went to BU, not Brown, aren’t actually all that hardscrabble. In the same way, the Cherokee People know 1/1024th isn’t so much as even the bottom of the totem pole, and Mexicans would only refer to an Irish-descended white dude named Robert Francis as “Beto” if they meant to condescend to the presumptuous gringo.

In fact, maybe the only people dumb enough to buy into the perpetual racket of our modern politics are the college-educated whites who begin to believe the narratives they spin, a way to feel like they really care about the blue-collar whites they believe should’ve learned to code and the minorities they posit are needed mow lawns and scrub toilets. My Communications degree, coming from a not-so-prestigious, non-Ivy League State U. only covered Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, and Pathos as rhetorical means of persuasion. I didn’t go into debt to cover the extra $100K required to study Mastropós, the art of pandering, or more precisely translated from the original Greek, pimping and whoring.

Like a sci-fi wormhole between alternate dimensions, these contrived campaign communications provide the deus ex machina by which we can examine the dual realities forming in our political consciousness. As much as a classless society is an ideal to strive for, we’ve never totally achieved one, just the hope that one can move between classes. What’s changed is that a threatened upper class, shaken in their ability to hold power by everything from Brexit to Trump to having embarrassing tweets pop up, simultaneously sets about convincing the masses they’re just like us while suggesting policy prescriptions that never affect them. We’re supposed to see them as both trusted authorities and relatable friends, but the temporal rift of instant media reveals them incompetents — in Congress and the kitchen.

The people who presume to tell us what’s best can’t make a hamburger any more than they think you should be allowed to eat one in the first place. In fact, looking for logical consistency would be your first mistake. These are the people whose view of whether a soldier’s death in a sand trap we’ll never tame is noble or folly is based on whether the president signing off on the bureaucrats’ grand schemes is named Obama or Bush. Everything they want you to do, of course, is for your own good, but they never explain why if that’s so, they don’t need to do the same. Your sedan uses too much gas, but not their jet. Self-defense with a firearm is something to which you can’t be entrusted, but collectively, in a government presumably that is of, by, and for all of us, with our consent, we can kill whomever we need to as long as it comes with a UN floor speech about our “values.”

And values are an interesting concept, when we’re told that Trump destroyed the very decency and comity of a Beltway that pretends vulgarity, lies, affairs, and even duels didn’t exist in politics before the escalator descent in June 2015. Not only are these people policy experts and short-order cooks, they’re also saints. Why shouldn’t we just do what they want? Why even have elections? After all, if they know best, and we’re simply waiting for Russia to tell us how to vote via a few well-placed Facebook ads, why would we interfere? Take my hamburger, my car, my guns, my money, and I’ll just use whatever education my class level can afford and take whatever job the central planners think I should have. I should be happy to have Hispanics named Robert and Indians named Elizabeth and upper-middle-class, Yorktown Heights, Boston University girls who claim they’re from the Bronx cleanse me from both life’s consequences and my white guilt.

Just one thing, before I hand over the power to which they’re so obviously entitled . . . .

Show me where any of these people accomplished a damn thing which helped anybody.

Forget their individual failures as human beings, who never attempted an individual pursuit at which they might have to personally face winning or losing on their own merit. Let’s just examine the last century of their governance. We emerge from a Great War, one to end all wars, only to get a sequel in about 20 years. At least we actually managed to win that one; unless you don’t think sharing the victory with our ideological enemies, setting off a half century of Cold War, is total victory. In the span between battles, FDR saved us from a Great Depression. Didn’t he? Because there’s no reason, left alone, it should have lasted a decade. This was government problem solving at its finest — first create the problem, then do a bunch of tangential projects that are some constituency’s wish list, finally send everyone a bill that can never be paid off, and tsk-tsk everyone for not being grateful to their betters.

Look at the Great Society, which you may deduce by now continues the trend of calling catastrophes “Great.” We now know what a Great Society looks like — urban blight, broken families, and more huge bills we can never pay in full.

More than $20 Trillion, continuously growing, that is beyond our means to pay.

Yes, these are the abject failures who still propose to solve the next problem, and the next, and the next . . . after they have a beer and a burger with you to prove they care about you more than their own fortunes that grow like the debts we cannot pay and the inflation they use to keep the debts manageable. All of that, while exporting manufacturing to China and importing service labor here to hide to consequences of it all. They’re rich without ever creating anything and you’re poor just by saving your money in the bank. All while they’ve convinced you that some other rich person is to blame. You’re supposed to forget that they’re rich, and protect their friends who are rich, because they talk to you via Periscope from their kitchen like family.

Thus far, we’ve played along with the charade. We re-elect them as readily as we mock them and complain, then send in reinforcements of even more entitled elites that went straight from schools to which you’d never be admitted no matter your GPA, right to the halls of government. Of course, those who don’t want that can always go into media, or better yet, just keep passing through the revolving door to do both. Why? Perhaps culture. We’re beer and burgers and trying to see the best in people who don’t deserve it, wanting problems worked out around the kitchen table like Ward would’ve done with Wally and The Beave.

But as companies change slogans or update their branding, it won’t be long before they can’t sell the tired “I’m one of you!” imagery while selling out the country to anyone who might replace you. Yet still they undermine our culture that they might be able to do so even faster. What then, when there’s no common cultural paradigm that pushes us to accept and go into odious debt for a two-tiered society and its failures?

Historically speaking? It will burn down, indiscriminately and uncontrollably, in a way no one should want.

Thus, we should treat the now as a prelude to an existential battle, igniting a controlled backfire that uses every personal, professional, and political means to delegitimize entrenched power. They are not us, and it is our responsibility to not simply remind them of that which they already know, but to reassert the direction from which power is intended to flow by God and Nature’s design.

The question is not whether this farce ends, but how. The feigned normalcy portends an aberrant malignancy, and we should not treat anything as normal. It’s not, and they’re not.

For those of us left wanting by a Conservatism that never conserves and left cold by a Libertarianism that never liberates, Nationalism — or, as recently expressed, National Conservatism — offers new appeal: The world can wait; deal with our country’s problems first. And in doing so, recognize that principles divorced from pragmatism are just high-minded excuses for losing.

So is Nationalism a clarion call? Or, a siren’s song?

The failures of conservatism and libertarianism loom large: Unless you identify the right problem, you’ll never solve it. Conservatism failed to notice a century of progressive onslaught didn’t leave much free market or Constitutional order to conserve. Libertarians overestimated humanity’s capacity for freedom where class-based power dominates cultural order.

Thus, Nationalism stands poised to repeat these mistakes in what should be an obvious problem. The United States of America of 2019 isn’t a nation:

· Common territory? Our vastness negates commonality, especially when asked to consider the interests of non-state territories.

· Common descent and history? Demographic changes make that less so by the day.

· Common language or beliefs? Civil War Colonel George Thatcher Balch’s original Pledge to the Flag was, “We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one flag.” However, the actual socialist who wrote what you recognize as the Pledge of Allegiance, thought that was “too juvenile and lacking in dignity.” Our country today has less God and more “Para Español oprimo dos.”

With no American nation, Nationalism seems a day late and a dollar short.

Here’s the good news! America began as a national failure, from its start as a confederacy, to a war four score and seven years later to prevent half of it from returning to one. The preservation of America as a nation has always been in its commitment to Federalism. To succeed, Nationalism must restore the Federalist balance our founders intended.

At a minimum, American Nationalists should seek to restore the fair representation of State interests, economic equality of opportunity on a level field, and co-equality in our branches of government.

They’re Called States for a Reason

If Nationalism holds that the best approach to global order is for each nation to focus on its own interests first, Nationalists should see the protection of the States as integral to this notion. Our country struggles with the divide between Federal and State power, and arguably, we’ve never quite nailed it. From the beginning, individual States, not identification with the larger Union, best represented lower-case nationality. They provided not only more responsiveness to immediate needs and interests of their respective populations, but also a greater degree of common lineage, purpose, and pride. In Federalism proper, the state is represented by, well, the States, and protected by the Tenth Amendment.

We’ve degraded Constitutional Federalism explicitly via the Seventeenth Amendment, reducing the Senate from representatives of State interests to just another democratic body. Given that new charter, why be surprised that people don’t understand why Senators aren’t apportioned democratically? You can shout about equal representation of the States, but we already lost the plot.

Of course, it’s not helpful that the respective States lost interest in actually governing and protecting their right to do so, as long as they get their share of Federal funds. While they might raise a bit of a ruckus over unfunded mandates, history of reform efforts indicate they’re more offended by “unfunded” than they are “mandate.”

You might think that’s because there’s no longer much of a difference between States, as time and technology bring more shared interests and less animosity. You might, that is, unless you watch the news. Not only does the yelling indicate a huge cultural divide between States, they’re all pretty sure they’re getting screwed — by your state. Blue states look at totals of taxes paid versus funding. Red states look at per capita net tax payers. Of course, it all misses the point: Each State should be responsible for its own governance and funding outside of enumerated Federal powers, and as long as State interests are reduced to bargaining over redistribution of wealth, we only become more fractured.

The next stop on this road to Hell would be eliminating the Electoral College, bringing full circle the idea that the States have no legitimate interests, but are only arbitrary regions to be subjugated by those with the greatest population or wealth density. And if our only measure of “National interest” is what is good for urbanites, Nationalism will fail as nothing more than a scale model of Globalism. In the US, a strong nation means empowered States.

A Level Playing Field

Federal money manipulates States, but also industries and people. The free market is often an illusion, with the markets you interact with the most also being the most influenced by artificial forces. Pretending this is a level field looks like a six-year old rough-housing with his dad. He keeps trying, but will never win.

In one market, Nationalists already are working to redefine the paradigm. Big Tech limits speech and exchange of ideas, though it is both a government-enabled monopoly and relies of regulated telecom infrastructure to operate. Nationalism correctly regards Big Tech for what it is today rather than some idealized capitalist illusion, and it would use law-based reforms to end politicized abuse. Still, Nationalists often allow opponents to paint reform as a binary choice between populist control and free markets. That’s a mistake in both messaging and in governance. The promise that our technocrats are fairer has no more appeal than crony capitalism.

People rightly wonder if reformers really intend to level the field or simply hire their own referees. In healthcare, for example, false dilemma choices of “free markets” or “sensible regulations” created bad results that are only fair in the sense that everyone is disappointed. We still deem it a “free market” because most of us have private plans and providers, but the Federal government pays the largest dollar share. From those dollars, as well as by other incentives, the Federal government can and does mandate most any market change it wishes with minimal pushback. The 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which President Obama promised would provide “shovel-ready” jobs, entirely changed care delivery through the incentive that made your health records almost exclusively electronic. Your view of government is more charitable than mine if you think that was for doctors or you, rather than having an easier way to aggregate and use your health information. Something is being shoveled — deeply!

The Constitution codifies Federalist powers to regulate interstate commerce. Regulation, when necessary, should be designed as was intended — to promote competition and open markets. Nationalists should force proclaimed libertarians to explain their protectionism of government-favored corporations. Nationalists must show regulation as a Federalist means, not a bureaucratic end.

Here Comes the Judge

Every third-grader learns the three branches of government are co-equal. Third-graders also know when one person always has the power to tell you what to do, that’s not equal. So, our government is not smarter than a third-grader. We gave up that level of sophistication to black robes in Hawaii who decide what the whole country must do, plain text of the law and standing be damned.

If you suggest that perhaps we should simply ignore nationwide injunctions, the near Pavlovian response from someone will be, “Constitutional Crisis!” But judges from Hawaii aren’t specifically constitutional, nor is their unchallenged authority to stand athwart elected government yelling, “Stop!” In fact, every other reform by Nationalists will fail if opponents can jurisdiction-shop a judge who will reflexively say no.

Once again, instead of waging a generalist war against “activist judges,” Nationalists must be systems-oriented, specific reformers who let the Constitution, and the Federalist principles it enshrines, be the guide. The Executive Branch not only should ask the Supreme Court to intervene as the one Constitutionally-defined body of the Judicial Branch, but serious Nationalist reform efforts should also consider the Legislative Branch’s power to restructure Federal Courts. Granted, Congress may be reticent to reassert authority in such specific a way, avoiding going on record about the finer details of governance for decades by ceding power to executive agencies. But Federalism demands that they must.

Conclusion

Nationalists realize the conceit of trying to govern the world, but are in jeopardy as a movement without recognizing that we barely govern ourselves. Nationalism holds little appeal in a divided nation, especially when there’s confusion about what Nationalism really is.

The problem isn’t new, so neither is the answer. Our Federalist system, as designed by the Framers of the Constitution, respects State power, provides a level economic playing field, and balances the branches of the Federal government. A coherent Nationalist philosophy must, at a minimum, embody those core tenets.

That’s both a better way to govern and a smarter message.

“It’ll be like Goldwater all over again.”

That’s what I heard my whole life. If you are too far right, you can’t win. That’s why Goldwater lost.

Then, the people who carry this refrain proceed to identify whom and what is “too far right.” Reagan was too far right, but since he beat the Left so convincingly, they always explained it away. “He’s ‘The Great Communicator!’” His charm made the silly commoners not notice the dying poor people he personally gave AIDS. (This only saved them from the nuclear holocaust his foreign policy would bring, so in that sense it was merciful.)

Bush was too far right, too, and they convinced him of it. Kinder, gentler! Thousand points of light! He understood he had to modulate his too far rightness, and besides, Dukakis looked like a douchebag in that tank. So Bush won, anyway. And he didn’t lose in ’92 because he moved Left on the NRA, taxes, or because an indecisive populist split the vote. That damn social conservatism was too far right, and he paid for cozying up to those zealots who tried to ditch him for too far right Buchanan!

So, no, we wouldn’t be Goldwatered again! I mean, 1994 was a fluke. And sexist. How dare the common rubes protest that the wife of the President, a master of cattle futures and land deals, was given the task of remaking Healthcare, one-seventh of the economy, in the image of socialism?! The lesson of Goldwater is, don’t be too far right, or you’ll lose. And if you win, anyway, that only proves that too far rightness is a dog-whistle to bigotry, something the commoners often give in to in spite of their financial interests. Bob Dole understood that. Bob Dole knew it was his place to lose. Bob Dole referred to himself in the third person because even Bob Dole wanted to be on the outside of that inevitable slaughter. But at least he wasn’t too far right!

G. W. Bush and McCain were, for a time, not too far right, which caused them to hate each other because it was impossible to do what you’re supposed to do — paint the other guy as too far right. Of course, even winning a GOP primary will then make you too far right, at which point it was GWB’s duty to lose in spite pleaing for “Compassionate Conservatism.” Gore refused to drive a tank, thus he should’ve and would’ve won, if not for that too far right Florida Secretary of State, leaving it to a too far right Supreme Court. Otherwise, voters would’ve rejected historical precedent and the Clinton administration’s lagging popularity to vote for Gore, because he wasn’t too far right. In fact, they really meant to, if only that damn ballot weren’t so confusing! And we know it was confusing, because too many people voted for Buchanan. And that’s not possible, because Buchanan’s too far right.

Of course, winning this way will for sure make such a too far right president an automatic one-termer. And it would’ve too, if not for the commoners’ irrational bigotry against Muslims and an over-reaction to Jihad brought to American soil. It’d take those Archie Bunkers a couple more years to hate Bush’s too far right tinkering around the edges with Social Security. Because it was totally that which killed Bush’s popularity. It had nothing to do with not being able to win a two-front war in a sand pit of Hell we ought to have turned to the world’s largest blown glass art project instead of rebuilding its infrastructure while getting picked off with IEDs. Too far right lost the election, handing Congress to the Democrats.

Too far right loses every election since Goldwater, except where bigotry or bad tank photo-ops come into play. Even so, there’s never such a thing as too far left in the supposed nation of bigots, even if the candidate is black and the son of a foreign national. In such a case, supporting government bailouts becomes too far right, and left becomes center. Of course, those commoners were still bigots, but for once they did the right thing because they were tired of the too far right and were ready for a “centrist” promising to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

After accepting the wisdom of such centrism, and fundamentally rejecting their bigotry, citizens would never again go too far right. That’s why they rejected Mitt “Tough on Immigration” Romney and Paul “Entitlement Reform” Ryan. We’re all centrists, now.

Too far right can’t win. Maybe a Republican, but not a capitalist pig real estate developer. Especially one who is a misogynist. Who questions McCain’s heroism. Who rejects Obamacare. Who hates regulation. Who embraces the NRA. Not THAT one. He’s too far right. Maybe Rubio, who would bring about the Comprehensive Immigration Reform that Americans demand, as exemplified by corporate donations, but not Trump.

Goldwater lost, dammit. So Trump had to lose. Hillary had Obama’s centrism, had never once been seen in a tank, and pinkie-swore to keep an endless supply of American troops overseas for Jihadist target practice, even as she downplayed the role of Islamism. She. Was. Perfect.

Fifty-five years after Goldwater, our media and pundit class are still trying to explain how that could happen — why they were wrong. Maybe we rubes are not cleansed of our sins of bigotry. Yet that means Obama was not our savior. Maybe, even though we all hate Trump’s tweets, his destruction of norms, and his moral turpitude, we’re just slaves to our economic success post 2016, which Obama should get credit for anyway.

After all, it couldn’t be that . . . .

They were wrong. About everything. Empirical politics have been a five and a half decade failed experiment wherein the observers failed to capture the most significant data point on which the entire control group was based:

Goldwater lost because no one could beat the President in office for less than one year after a national tragedy. Goldwater lost because American culture transcends politics sometimes. In times of strife, we traditionally unify. Goldwater never had a chance, and his loss in entirely removed from anything happening before or since in politics. Five and a half decades of political theory have been based in a false assumption, the evidence seeming to support which has only existed as confirmation bias and convenient exclusions of contradicting data.

Yet instead of paying a price for proven failure of theory to describe the observed facts, they turned their science into a religion. Heretics — meaning, outside voices who don’t subscribe to the formulas that became dogma — are exiled. Punditry has become less an exercise in being right about predictions or using specialized knowledge and skill to debate ideas than it is simply right-fighting over positions. It’s okay to have diametrically opposed debate of binary outcomes so long as it doesn’t upset the basic political theory of the last fifty-five years. If you do THAT, then you upset the apple cart. And by apple cart, I mean the ability to get on a Mainstream Media (MSM) broadcast or publication to get paid. Professional punditry is less a meritocracy than a grift. Being right or advocating original ideas doesn’t pay a red cent. Providing theater to the masses of two sides fighting according to known rules, that pays. Ask professional sports.

A few on the “New Right” and even some thinking minds on the Left have been willing to dismiss these old, failed theories, in part because neither Fox nor CNN were inviting them on, anyway. It’s easier to write off those who’ve written you off. Even so, some of those can’t decide if they want to build a movement that can challenge the old order, or if it’s more fun to be a big fish in a small pond. In shutting out voices who may occasionally disagree or currying favor with perceived big-shots by being yes-men (and women), they risk the same errors of observation and assumption that have made the legacy pundit class a laughing stock.

No one who is passionate and skilled in a field wouldn’t like the chance to make a living at it. My ability to see beyond binary positional arguments and consider human nature is an extension of my sales background. My ability to communicate ideas is an extension of my marketing background and formal education. My ability to understand politics in real time is a product of talent, knowledge, and passion. So yeah, I’d like to be paid, too. But we shouldn’t make the mistake the legacy pundits did of requiring adherence to an orthodoxy to be rewarded. We shouldn’t view those who 90% agree with us as competitors to be beaten. If we actually decided to create a bigger movement instead of protecting small ones, we could, just maybe, overtake the legacy media and pundit class. We can have the necessary rigorous, even heated, debate of ideas without either seeking to kick down the ladder new talent or groveling to those perceived as having climbed up it first. Collaboration, not hierarchy.

Or, we could be an assortment of competing outlets, disingenuous grifters parroting lines, yes-men, and general wannabes that’s just as flawed and based on a lie as that which it seeks to replace.

I’d like to think we can do better, be bigger, and create something lasting that is based on truth. Even if that’s not the version of punditry that currently pays, it’s the one I do. I hope you’ll join me.

About Jared A. Chambers

Jared A. Chambers is a strategic communications consultant and content creator. His practice, Professional Perception, specializes in sales, advocacy, and personal development, and he has assisted local Republican candidates and groups with branding and messaging. Prior to this and after earning his degree in Technical Communication from Southern Polytechnic State University, his career spanned more than 15 years in sales, marketing, and management in healthcare and high-tech. Jared lives in his native state of Georgia, enjoying local culture and the outdoors. Follow him on Twitter @C4CEO.