Hell hath no fury like a conservative scorned.
Case in point, Anheuser-Busch is currently watching as its very foundations are crumbling around it after it gave validation to the transgender activist movement, the same movement that has made it its business to make regular, God-fearing American patriots its number one enemy. These are the same God-fearing American patriots that Anheuser-Busch had hitherto been focusing on as their customer base.
But the boycott of Anheuser-Busch was more than personal for conservatives. It was an endorsement of something so destructive to the moral fabric of society, and moreover, it threatens their children the most. Some might say that about alcohol in general, but consuming alcohol responsibly and in moderation hurts next to no one. The embrace of gender fluidity and the transgender movement hurts not only the person who embraced it, but their friends and family as well.
Conservatives, joined by a good number of ideologically diverse Americans, went scorched Earth on Anheuser-Busch as both a statement and a corrective action. We should continue this bombardment of bad PR and refusal to buy their products until they apologize for what they did.
But sometimes, the scorched Earth approach isn’t the right approach at all. Sadly, it’s one that Conservatives take all too often.
The right can often suffer from a “pick up my toys and go home” mentality when it comes to many things. Entertainment is a very good example of this. Up until recently, conservatives would oftentimes give up anything that involved escapism as lost, proclaiming that it’s all made by leftists and no one should ever pay for a movie ticket or pay for a streaming service ever.
That’s bad tactics. While there certainly is a lot of garbage out there, the occasional piece of work will come out that truly deserves praise, attention, and most importantly, your money. Studios and corporations learn nothing if you’re not willing to show them when they actually did something right.
When training a dog, you don’t just punish them when they do something wrong. You have to also praise and reward them when they do something right. Without that praise, the dog has no idea what’s good, only what’s bad. You leave it up to the animal to live a life of playing a daily guessing game that will be more frustrating for you and highly uncomfortable for it. It needs direction.
Imagine if no one showed up for Top Gun: Maverick or no one watched The Terminal List. Studios would assume there’s no market for this kind of programming and never touch it again. The only ones communicating with them are the woke internet mobs and the coastal elitists, and so that’s the direction they go.
But this brings us to the crux of my reason for this post; Fox News. The question in the air is whether or not we go scorched Earth on them after what happened with Tucker Carlson.
When I woke up this morning, my answer was “yes.” In fact, I almost wrote a post about how Fox News’s collapse could ultimately pave the way for a collapse of the mainstream news media overall. But after thinking about it more, I think I’ve now landed on a more nuanced position.
For Fox News, we should criticize and lambast them where they do wrong, however, as of this writing, the channel is still a very valuable resource for the casual American. In a world where basic alphabet networks and cable news channels like CNN, and MSNBC lie through their teeth in an intentional attempt to mislead and brainwash, Fox News is still one of the few entities willing to tell the truth, at least for the most part.
That’s because there are still a lot of people working under the Fox News banner that are really great people and deserve none of the ire being thrown at the Fox News corporation at this time. Some shows and hosts are still worth watching. For instance, I’d hardly say “Gutfeld!” is worth abandoning.
Some might say that these good people need to quit Fox News if they have principles, but let’s face the facts. It’s not that easy. Some people have roofs to keep over the heads of the mouths they have to feed. Abandoning their paycheck in protest of something the network did that many a conservative doesn’t like sounds great, but that’s not realistic. Your anger about Tucker Carlson means nothing to a parent who needs to put clothes on their child and food in their bellies.
And before I’m accused of being a Fox News shill or a paid actor, I want to make it clear that I’m not saying we need to make it our responsibility to watch Fox News at some point, or even at all. By all means, hit Fox where it deserves it. I know I am.
But don’t burn the people who don’t deserve it. A nuanced approach is the best approach here.
We are not the left. We don’t let our anger rid us of our senses and lash out at innocents who don’t deserve it.
