Strategy and Tactics

Strategy and Tactics

In Advice For Unwoke Academic?  Scott Alexander suggests two tactics for dealing with the plague of wokeness that is currently running rampant through society. You can be a Berserker and pick fights with the enemy or you can be a Fabian and by living your life as shining example of righteous behavior, shame the fools into abandoning their headlong plunge into abyss. Okay, I almost certainly grossly distorted his lengthy argument, but I couldn't read the whole thing. What he is talking about is tactics when what we should be talking about is how are we going to win the war.

To fight a war we need a set of beliefs we can agree on, a leader who can voice those beliefs, and a base that is willing fund the fight. Problem is we don't have one coherent set of beliefs. Conservative belief systems are all very similar, but they all have sticking points that others can't agree with. Witness the time the Lutheran church and the Anglican church (or was it the Episcopalians?) were holding talks about joining together and becoming one. They had talked over all the issues and come to a general agreement over all things except for one item. The Anglicans wanted one person in charge but the Lutherans wouldn't have it. They could not resolve this issue, so the merger didn't happen and they continued on their separate ways.

We've been watching Outlander, about a modern day woman's adventures in mid 18th Century Scotland. It's pretty great and pretty entertaining (and since Season 6 is starting, it seems I am not alone in my assessment). But man, oh man, those Scots are some disagreeable people. They're as likely to punch you in face as look at you. Reminds me of the conservatives.

If you are going to fight a war, you need an army that is willing to sign on to your belief system. You need to form a pack. The liberals have done this. The have painted a glorious picture of how they want things to be, and they have sold that image to zillions of people. The conservatives have been painting a picture as well, but they keep squabbling about the details - the ears on the donkey are too long, or too short and the legs on the elephant are too fat or too skinny - details that don't matter when you are trying to portray a scene with a hundred animals.

Problem is that the liberals fabulous painting is not well connected to reality and their house of cards looks like it is on the verge of collapse. It might be time for the conservatives to step up and save us from disaster. I just hope they can stop squabbling about stuff that doesn't matter. Of course, that's the problem with religions and political parties, your beliefs are what matters.