Real Dissident Roll Call

In the immortal words of revered philosopher Ronald Dean Coleman:

 “Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder until it's time to lift heavy-ass weights.”

Let me reword the quote: everybody wants to be a dissident until it's time to do dissident shit. This is in response to a common idea we hear from the American conservative movement shown in this tweet.

The argument is that if Christians/Conservatives provoke the regime with certain ideas, they will destroy us. In this frame, bigotry, or anything the regime reads as bigotry, is grounds for destruction. We do not want to be destroyed, so we must avoid “bigotry.” But this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about how power and power works.

Let us examine the first premise. Some ideas will not provoke the regime. This is technically true. There is a prescribed list of opinions and topics. However, all of these are complimentary to the power. Conservative thought is, at best, on the outer edge of acceptability, and since 2020 even this is doubtful.

The second part of the argument assumes that a deal can be struck. That if certain topics are avoided, you can avoid censure. There are certainly degrees to this. It is more socially acceptable to oppose trans-kids than gay marriage or BLM. But as conservatives are apt to say, this is not a static line. The range of acceptable opinions is ever-shrinking. You cannot make a once-and-done compromise. You are just as canceled if you support the Civil Rights Act and not butt-marriage as if you supported neither.

There are two choices presented to us by the regime.

1. You can comply

2. They will attempt to destroy you

The hypothetical third position, where you pick and choose is a false option. The things that were only just acceptable, will be treated as ‘bigotry’ tomorrow. This is self-evident, and I will not provide an example.

Our current regime is made up of what Pareto would call Foxes. These are men who prefer indirect action over physical confrontation. For this reason, the mechanism of destruction is less obvious. Instead of goons breaking your legs, the regime will cripple you economically. Instead of banishing you, power will attempt to make dissidents social outcasts.

The question for us, as dissidents becomes, why should conservatives want to make a compromise with the regime?

The explanation is simple: most people are driven by status and the regime controls what is high status. Normal people like to do things that make them look good and make their friends envy them, and normally this is a positive trait. If you were living generations ago, the things that are generally high status are pro-social. If you give back to your community, you may be rewarded with a statue. In exchange for your service, society at large rewards you with social currency. In a healthy society, your peers will look to you as a pillar of the community, because you did something genuinely good. When the regime that assigns status is tenacious and evil, it's a much worse situation.

The regime controls all of the institutions that confer status. Media, the business world, and the military are under the sway of the current thing. Any traditional path to status or respectability is gated behind ideological barriers.

There is no reason for the regime to reward its enemies. Stop expecting them to do so.

Right now opposition to current thing is coded as low status and people notice this. There is a carrot-and-stick nature to social hierarchy. There is both positive and negative reinforcement at work.

Especially in the in the middle class, or as it’s known the striver class, these types of behaviors and these types of beliefs are “gross.” They're for poor people to put it bluntly. Being seen as low-status or poor is especially terrifying for the middle class which makes up the majority of the conservative movement.

People may say “ I'm willing to die for my beliefs.” When it comes to something very small, like believing something that ‘gross poor people’ believe very few are willing to make any sacrifice at all.

My exhortation to conservatives, if any of them are reading this, is this: don't listen to them. To be truly dissident, to oppose the regime, you need to inure yourself to social shame. True opposition will never be fashionable or respectable.

To be explicit: you will be called racist, bigoted, and backward if you oppose them. This is a given and there’s no way out of it.

Don't let them decide what's good and evil, what's high status and what's low status, because they will use that as a weapon against you. You have a better system of values. Act like it.