[The waiter brings Honda a glass of Chablis. He sips and scowls. “I don’t know how Chablis ever came back, but everyone’s drinking it so I guess it’s good and I just don’t know it. Where was I? Oh yeah…”]
During the conservative comeback, the conservatives started consciously coming to Hollywood. They used to largely write it off, but technology changed and the old distribution channels changed so suddenly the liberals at the studios couldn’t gate-keep like they used to.
Wait, I need to take this…
[Honda makes no effort to lower his voice as he speaks into his phone about the pioneering conservative comedy series about men under siege by a liberal world that he helped produce. “Cam, my man, here’s my idea. Ready? We reboot Dudes as a movie… Listen, three words. Channing. Tatum. Junior. Hello? You still there? Yeah, well you talk to Jim, then my people will talk to yours. Two words. Ka. Ching! Bye now!”]
Where was I?
Oh right, you’d get conservatives and they’d make movies for video on demand on the cheap and no one could stop them. They got experience, and they got good—especially when they stopped trying to make “conservative” product and instead focused on making a quality product with a secondary conservative message.
So, there was real talent there and… wait. Is that who I think it is? Wait, I gotta talk to him. Can we reschedule this?
Chapter Fifteen: Victory
America is not perfect, but the conservative culture of the ascendant America of 2041 is far superior to the desperate, declining American culture under the progressive rule of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Instead of a presumption that the government will meet its citizen’s needs, the movement has shifted the society back to expecting every American to support himself. Some people choose poorly, but now consequences are seen not as something to be ameliorated through the resources of those who work but, instead, as something people who fail to meet their responsibilities must inevitably experience.
It is not necessarily an America that would thrill conservatives of 2013 in all respects. Monogamous gay couples are accepted as strengthening the family (the reemphasis being on family, as opposed to enabling the extended post-college adolescence phenomenon of the early part of the century, is another huge achievement). Abortion is a peripheral issue, though it bubbles beneath the surface in a country where only a few states allow it and the culture frowns upon it. Marijuana is legal, but still scorned by many.
There is also the challenge of governing for a generation that spent decades fighting and has little practical experience with the norms and customs of the democratic republic that it sought to restore. The “conservative court-packing” maneuver of President Marlowe still rankles many, including some conservatives who saw it as a victory of expedience over principle. That tension remains a challenge for an insurgency-turned-establishment. Someday, the government will no longer be conservative—that is inevitable. The question is whether the insurgency understands and will avoid making the same error the liberals made in running roughshod over the opposition.
But the progress under conservatism is undeniable even in the face of long-term challenges. The federal government is paying off the deficit, shrinking in size and scope, and returning its focus to appropriate areas like national defense. People speak and worship freely. The government no longer acts as the enforcer for big corporations with lobbyists and clout.
Perfect? No, but a hell of a lot better than it was under the progressives.
Ron Patel (President-Elect)
President Patel rubs his hands together to warm them before taking the final few steps up to the platform where the chief justice waits to administer the oath and where he will give his inaugural address.
I never doubted we’d win, not for a minute. I don’t mean the election. I mean the whole struggle to take the country back from the progressives. We changed the culture.
It was long and hard, and sometimes it got really ugly, but I never doubted how it would end. We had an advantage they didn’t. It was a huge advantage, huge. We were selling freedom. Yeah, we couldn’t lose!
Tamara Hayes Smith (Professor/Activist)
The professor is working on a book of her own, a book that speculates about the cultural and political landscape in another 30 years. She shows me a synopsis, and to my surprise she predicts at least a brief flirtation with liberalism down the road within the next few election cycles.
While conservatives have succeeded for now, all political and cultural power is fleeting. We need to understand that. Even though we drove the culture right, it can still move left again if we let it.
There are no permanent victories. We defeated an ideology that placed elite-controlled collectivism above individuality, but the lure of the left will never die. Conservatives need to renew themselves again and again, because history has taught us that even the most dedicated conservative changes when he holds power for too long. He starts getting comfortable with it. And when that happens, it’ll be time for a new insurgency.
Drew Johnson (TV Producer)
The soundstage seems almost empty, with technology having drastically reduced the size of production crews. However, there are more productions going on than ever, and they are spread all over the country—California is only slowly recovering from years of high taxes and high regulation that drove much of the media production out of the Golden State.
Drew and I stand off to the side, watching the cast rehearse for the new show that will tape (of course, it’s all digital, but they still use the word “tape”) later that evening.
If you can’t laugh at yourself—the liberals never could—you are asking to be laughed at.
Television is now a generally conservative media, in the sense that the values it generally adopts tend to support family life, self-reliance, and liberty. That pretty much mirrors the culture at large—I’m still not clear whether we drove the culture back toward traditional values or whether the changed culture drove Hollywood back.
The whole nihilism thing with Hollywood was a dead end. You look at the television and movies of the 1960s through the 2010s, 50 years, and a lot of it was intensely cynical. It was supposed to be edgy not to believe in anything except the kind of vague liberal crap they spoon-fed us in schools and universities.
You would see that the conservatives were always the villains—always. Any kind of positive value was always faked, never sincere. If a religious person showed up, you just knew—there’s the villain. He’d be a hypocrite or worse. I always hated that kind of cheap cynicism. They never had anything better to offer; it was always about cutting down regular people and their traditions and values.
Yeah, I was conservative, but I was an artist first. I still am. And what I saw with this liberal lockstep thinking was boring and stupid product. So I decided I would rise within the system, get my own show, and do what I wanted. And I found that showing up smug liberals and their nonsense got this huge response.
Pretty soon other people were doing it. Now, I wasn’t the first. The real break came a few years before, when Obamacare totally tanked and a few—not all—of the late night comics turned on him. Until then he had been untouchable—no one would dare make a joke about him. But eventually there was enough of a payoff for being brave enough to take him on that at least a few couldn’t resist.