Darryl Cooper explains what the right has been thinking for the last few years
I highlighted Darryl Cooper’s explanatory Twitter thread in this post last Friday. I knew the minute I read the thread that it was something special, because it accomplished a task that had seemed extraordinarily difficult: explaining the genesis of the last five or so years of step-by-step deepening alarm and disillusionment on the right in a way that almost anyone could understand it.
Later, Tucker Carlson read the thread on his show and it went viral. Trump even cited it in a speech. The author probably didn’t know quite what hit him, but now he’s written an essay appearing on Substack that explains the whole thing further.
Here’s one of many highlights:
For two years, Trump supporters had been called traitors and Russian bots for casting ballots for “Vladimir Putin’s c*ck holster.” They’d been subjected to a two-year gaslighting campaign by politicians, government agencies, and elite media. It took real fortitude to stand up to the unanimous mockery and scorn of these powerful institutions. But those institutions had gambled their power and credibility, and they’d lost, and now Trump supporters expected a reckoning. When no reckoning was forthcoming – when the Greenwalds, and Taibbis, and Matés of the world were not handed the New York Times’ revoked Pulitzers for correctly and courageously standing against the tsunami on the biggest political story in years – these people shed many illusions about how power really operates in their country.
Trump supporters know – I think everyone knows – that Donald Trump would have been impeached and probably indicted if Robert Mueller had proven that he’d paid a foreign spy to gather damaging information on Hillary Clinton from sources connected to Russian intelligence and disseminate that information in the press. Many of Trump’s own supporters wouldn’t have objected to his removal if that had happened. Of course that is exactly what the Clinton campaign actually did, yet there were no consequences for it. Indeed, there has been almost no criticism of it.
Trump supporters had gone from worrying the collusion might be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to seeing proof that it was all a scam. Then they watched as every institution – government agencies, the press, Congressional committees, academia – blew right past it and gaslit them for another year. To this day, something like half the country still believes that Trump was caught red-handed engaging in treason with Russia, and only escaped a public hanging because of a DOJ technicality regarding the indictment of sitting presidents. Most galling, conservatives suspect that within a few decades liberals will use their command over the culture to ensure that virtually everyone believes it. This is where people whose political identities have for decades been largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed not only partisan, but all institutional boundaries. They’d been taught that America didn’t have Regimes, but what else was this thing they’d seen step out from the shadows to unite against their interloper president?
Much of Cooper’s essay repeats his Twitter thread, but in less chopped-up form. I think it’s masterful. But again, there are some things with which I disagree. For example, Cooper still makes a point with which I took issue in my initial post when I wrote:
I don’t agree with everything [Cooper writes]; in particular, I don’t think that “the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election.” No; Gabbard may be an unusual Democrat with a few conservative values, but she’s a Democrat and the press would have supported her win if it was her vs. Jeb.
There’s something else Cooper writes with which I disagree: “Some Trump supporters, unfortunately, thought the license for political violence applied to everyone; the hundreds of them now sitting in federal jails learned the hard way that it wasn’t true.” That’s true of some who actually did engage in violence, but it wasn’t true of the “hundreds” sitting in federal jails. Most of the people locked up right now for January 6th offenses engaged in no violence at all.
[NOTE: I also recommend this essay by Roger Kimball on the topic of Cooper’s Twitter thread.]
He touches on a small part of the story. See also Victor Davis Hanson. https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/11/trump-winds-and-biden-whirlwinds/
Hanson describes the “venomous hatred” and “madness” that has overtaken the Democrats. [note — not just the Left. The hatred and madness encompasses the entire party and its voters including all the “nice” liberals.]
Anyone witnessing all the hatred and madness would be crazy not to think that the insane haters would do everything possible to steal the election. Russia collusion was just a small part of it.
Does anyone have any information on Cooper? Who is he? Ex-military? Where is he from? Education?
I came up blank.
Cooper’s thread was such a resource. So much has gone down since Trump got off that escalator that I’m struck dumb even to explain it to myself.
I don’t know if conservative fans of Cooper’s material noticed, but Cooper’s intended audience is the left:
_________________________________________
I’m pretty conservative by temperament, but most of my political friends are on the Left. I spend a good deal of our conversations simply trying to convince them that these people [Trump supporters] are not demons, and that this political moment is pregnant with opportunity [to find common ground].
_________________________________________
Unfortunately, those on my left have almost no patience to hear the other side. I wonder how successful Cooper has been with his friends.
Does anyone have any information on Cooper? Who is he? Ex-military? Where is he from? Education?
Cornhead:
I didn’t get far, but Cooper co-hosts a podcast with ex-Navy Seal, now leadership consultant, Jocko Willink:
______________________________________________
DARRYL is a researcher, writer, and the creator of The MartyrMade Podcast. MartyrMade draws on dramatic stories from the human past in order to examine questions about conflict, ideology, religion, and identity.
https://www.theunravelingpodcast.com (scroll down)
______________________________________________
Cooper’s got big arms and looks like an intense guy.
There is a pretty good series of discussions within the Comments section of the essay. For example, do a word search on ‘labels’. It’s an interesting idea, that our labels have become too shop-worn to be of any meaning these days. Best to re-assess and see things for what they actually are. Trump has been very successful at creating his own brand. Will he continue? Forging brand-recognition is a way of creating new labels, and new labels have their own meaning, without legacy encumbrances.
I would say the comment stream is a pretty even proportion of Liberal, Libertarian, and Conservative viewpoints, with a few chili-pepper Leftists thrown in for heartburn.
Cooper definitely outlined pretty well the reactions and feelings of the right over the past few years. For myself (and I’m sure pretty much everyone around here) none of what he said is really news, it was just nice to have it laid out in a very clear and concise way.
It’s often difficult to understand other people’s perspectives on events. You don’t know what they may know, what they believe to be true, and what they aren’t aware of. I’m certainly guilty of assuming too much about other people’s knowledge. And even if someone is aware of something, they might not believe it, they might dismiss it as a right wing conspiracy theory, or disinformation from Russians or something.
For example, take the Hunter Biden laptop story and all the events surrounding it. I wish I had a better understanding of what people really know about it and what they believe. I’d like to know if
1) How many people are even aware of Hunter Biden laptop story. What percentage?
2) If they’re aware of it, what do they believe about it? Do they believe that it was Russian disinformation, that it was completely fabricated? And if they know that it was in fact legitmate, are they aware of what was actually found on it?
3) Are they aware of big tech’s suppression of the story in the week before the election? If so, do they care? Do they believe that it’s OK for powerful big tech companies to suppress real news stories if it could badly hurt their preferred candate/political party? Are they able to comprehend the dangers of politically motivated high tech speech suppression?
There was I time were I (apparently naively) thought that the overwhelming majority of Americans wouldn’t stand for suppression of free speech by powerful entities. I thought that most Americans truly cared about free speech. I now know that this isn’t necessarily the case. Most liberals seem to think that preventing the spreading of what they deem to be “misinformation” justifies big tech censorship.
@Nonapod, referencing your last paragraph: Me too, but like you, not any more. Yesterday I read a story about the Biden Administration’s plan to begin censoring SMS and text messages that they deem are ‘misleading’.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-slammed-plans-monitor-text-messages-vaccine-misinformation
I don’t believe this story – I think it’s just Fox’s phony alarmism like the Gateway Republic blog, because it smells fishy and its premise isn’t supported at all by its linked references.
But what is surprising to me, is that there is seemingly very little response to the airing of such an idea. I guess some would say it’s a small step from censoring tweets or Facebook posts to intercepting SMS messages or direct text messages on one’s phone. Funny, I see both as giant steps, and really bad ones.
“the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election.” No; Gabbard may be an unusual Democrat with a few conservative values, but she’s a Democrat and the press would have supported her win if it was her vs. Jeb.
Neo could be correct about that, but I don’t have any feeling of certainty. I don’t know who Tulsi is very well, but I think she is an anti-corporatist. Whereas I believe Jeb is 100% behind a corporatist government and is GOPe all the way.
So where does the non governmental power in our country lie? What split do we assign to the media, corporations, and independent billionaires? It’s all mixed together of course, but what happens when there are antagonisms or conflicts between those groups?
I could see the Cooper scenario playing out, but it isn’t clear either way to me.
The most important point to all this is that the disillusioned people Cooper describes are the people who are supposed to function as a backstop in civil/political life. They’re the good government/pocket Constitution people who are supposed to believe in the system, even when that system doesn’t work to their advantage. They’re the people who are supposed to balk at the demagogue who demands we cut down all the trees in the land in order to get at the devil.
For all the whining from the Left, the truth is that America hasn’t seen reactionary politics from the Right for a very, very long time but that’s what the Left is summoning up.
Mike
I think what Cooper has captured very effectively is the sense that so many of us on the right have that we can no longer trust any of the institutions in which we used to have an implicit confidence. When I was (much) younger, I realized that the media, academia, the entertainment industry etc. were biased to the left, but they would acknowledge reality if pressed to do so. Now, the left as a whole has walked away from any concern with objective truth, often explicitly. So much of what we’ve been told over the last five years turned out to be lies, with no recognition from our supposed elect, even as they pour contempt on those who were right from the beginning that we can no longer have any confidence in almost all of our cultural and political institutions. It has reached the point where it is not paranoia, but mere common sense to presume that the things we are told are lies until proven otherwise. The Soviet dissidents described this kind of situation, albeit a more advanced form. I believed at one time that we would never see it here. I was wrong.
@Aggie, I’m uncertain what to believe. A Peter Thiel backed group had a study that suggested that a clear majority of people still claim to hate censorship.
Majority of Americans censor themselves with 59% saying it’s ‘out of control’: study
I agree with Neo that the left would support Tulsi Gabbard over Jeb! Bush, because the “D” next to the name counts the most. However–in the real world, the Democrats would see to it that Tulsi Gabbard never made it to the nomination, just as they sabotaged Bernie Sanders.
MBunge wrote: “For all the whining from the Left, the truth is that America hasn’t seen reactionary politics from the Right for a very, very long time but that’s what the Left is summoning up.”
Soros and whoever else are the puppet masters working Obama, Biden and the deep state Dems have basically declared war. They are pushing for a socialist oligarchy to replace our Constitutional republic. They keep pushing and pushing with ever more outrageous moves eliminating the foundations of our constitution and political traditions. Just daring Republicans and moderates to grow spines and fight back.
I am reminded somewhat of Germany pushing around Britain and France in the late 1930s. Until finally they had to fight. I think Soros et al are itching for a fight, but are happy to keep accepting the surrenders. The fight will be the excuse to impose martial law. [we got a glimpse with the reaction to a mild protest Jan 6] Until then, they are happy to keep winning incrementally.
Cooper’s Twitter thread in thread reader is actually better, tho a bit less complete, than his substack longer article.
Neo should do an itemized list of issue, perhaps with links to her own posts on that issue, with a very brief (Tweet sized!) highlight of that issue.
There are a few more than Cooper notes – maybe too many to note. He doesn’t call his the “Top 10”, but there’s a market niche (available?) for something like that.
It is no longer tenable to imagine that the Federal government is not fully in the hands of a corrupt left. The democrat party is willing to use any and all means to attain a permanent one party state.
Every public institution and the majority of private institutions has aligned with the left. Nearly every major corporation is now aligned with the left. Those on the left who are most radicalized are no longer our countrymen for we can no longer unsee what they have wrought.
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.” Abraham Lincoln
The divide is too wide and deep to cross because it’s fundamental. Even more so than the division over slavery and states rights. As those pushing the left’s agenda are unwilling to accept anything less than utter submission to that agenda. They won’t let us live and let live. “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual,…”
Stan is right when he perceives the democrats as wanting rebellion and will keep pushing till they get it. Biden revealed their anticipation when he let slip them having nukes and fighter jets.
They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop pushing. They’re going to keep “moving the goal posts”. They’re “all in” because “fundamental transformation” requires the death of America. This isn’t about getting their way, it’s about forcing people to accept other people telling us what to do and how to think.
the hundreds of them now sitting in federal jails learned the hard way that it wasn’t true.”
It’s not true at all. The license for political violence is exclusively held – at least in the big Democrat-ruled urban centers – by those left-fascists who are called ‘progressives’ in their supporting media. There are still towns in flyover country who’d smartly put a stop to such thuggery, and have the thugs on trial in short order, while MSNBC and CNN made up stories about white-supremacist lynch mobs, and quoted like Scripture the quibblings of their Soros-financed defense lawyers.
Much of the power of Cooper’s thread, I believe, came from his position of talking to the Left about how it felt to be on the Right — as opposed to an A,B,C…X,Y,Z recitation of how the Left is wrong and the Right is right, valuable as those can be.
This approach gives those on the Left an opportunity to hear the Right’s side without feeling threatened so much and those on the Right to feel like they’ve been heard at the human level.
It’s an idea so crazy, it just might work!
Though I’m not betting on it just yet.
“For example, take the Hunter Biden laptop story and all the events surrounding it.”
That’s a great example.
Another one is the Kavanaugh confirmation. Mollie Hemingway and another author wrote a terrific book listing all the Dem and pro-Dem protestor actions and how outrageous they were.
Cooper’s 15 minutes are nearly up, but he makes a valid and important distinction between what we know and don’t know. We know with close to absolute certainty that the mainstream media are dishonest on almost everything they cover, making them a fairly reliable reverse barometer. That fact overrides and supersedes virtually all others.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/08/no-relief-for-lego-man-or-other-january-6-detainees/
Democrats are nasty and vile. And they celebrate it.
Dire words, Geoffrey, but true. A reckoning is coming. It’s when The Right decides to engage. And Where. And How Much.
This House Divided cannot stand. The Wake Up call is Cooper’s after the Magnificent Trump revealed it to our eyes.
The Denialists and the Left’s Big Lies, sold to the masses by the Corporate and Tech Oligarchs propaganda machine, will be righteously Dispatched.
Full Steam Ahead. The Xi-Den Emporer has no clothes is the Reveal coming from ongoing audits.
Just weeks ago, June 20th, a reluctant GOP activist shared the contents of his group emails:
“From what I’m seeing, nationwide, the Republicans are uncovering evidence of absolutely massive voting fraud, even in places where the Democrats didn’t need to worry about winning. Items like three-bedroom houses in middle-class neighborhoods recording 16 people voting from that address. Nursing homes that had 100% absentee ballot participation with all the ballots mailed the same day. Irregularities with the voting machines, and not just the Dominion ones.”
Apparently, even in single party California, there was obvious cheating. For example, while U of C system was shut down because of Covid, UC-Santa Barbara dormitories were a residential locus for thousands of voters on election day!
Despite the fact that lying about residence for voting is a felony in California.
The greedy need to lie for power lust by Democrats was stupid strong.
If they prove shameless over this much, then we must rid ourselves of these evil pestulants. They pollute and poison Our Great Nation!
Tyrannical Evil must be met by the Judgement of the Good.
Onward Patriot Soldiers as if to War. These rabid dogs must be put down.
I have a lot more inconvenient truths, conspiracies, and regimes to knock into people s heads.
Just wait or struggle, either way is fine.
TJ :
You forgot
“Kill them all and let God sort them out.”
Which alphabet agency do you work for again?
Would seem that the truly bizarre aspect of all this is why should the following be considered “obsessions” or “concerns” ONLY of the (so-called) Right?
– fraudulent elections
– trying to reduce/eliminate election fraud
– accountability of elected officials and government agencies (i.e., reducing/eliminating out-of-control, rogue/illegal behavior by government agencies and elected officials)
– securing the border
– trying to reduce crime
– protecting children (and others) from race hatred
– protecting children (and others) from predators
– trying to control out-of-control spending
– trying to uphold the law and the Constitution
– etc.
Barry Meisllin:
All those things are manifestations of systemic injustice and oppression according to Critical Theory? Or some people like to see it burn? A truly sad state of affairs.
Or, I suppose, Do all of the people truly, deeply, madly wish to be fooled all of the time…?
Barry, what happened to your qanon conspiracy beliefs?
Neo you are spot-on regarding Tulsi Gabbard. She has shown courage in standing up to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris but at heart she is Progressive Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 as well as the Drooling Idiot in 2020. She also has said that Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a war with Iran which shows she can at times be an idiot herself. Yes the Establishment will always back a Democrat against a Republican even a ‘moderate’ one such as John Kasich and Jeb Bush.
@neobut she’s a Democrat and the press would have supported her win if it was her vs. Jeb.
It never would have been her vs Jeb, any more than it would have been Sanders vs Jeb or Sanders vs Trump. Democrats have set up their primaries to see to it that only people acceptable to the establishment can win it by awarding superdelegates a large share of the vote (15%, enough to swing the primary to any establishment candidate). They will find the most progressive one they can who is, but Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders are not. Bernie Sanders is fake opposition to keep the radicals from voting Green and Tulsi Gabbard was running on her own initiative.
Republicans don’t have that feature in their national primary, yet.
Frederick:
I agree that Tulsi didn’t stand a chance of getting the nomination. But that wasn’t Cooper’s point. He was just using it as a hypothetical. But I reject his conclusions even given the hypothetical.
Liberal journalist Greenwald:
“ The reality is liberals want a domestic War on Terror. They want the CIA, NSA and FBI to surveil their political adversaries, arrest them, treat them like terrorists, etc. They want them censored. It’s an authoritarian faction that craves that repression. 1/6 is the key to it.”