I agree that Archie has become a gremlin. However, I'm old enough to have watched the show as a child with my parents every week. I remember Archie before Norman Lear told everyone they were supposed to despise him. My dad at the time was a Democrat, but he loved Archie. Part of that is due to Meathead, who was presented as an enthusiastic idiot. The contrast gave Archie the aura of a cynical yet wiser man. And Edith, a saint, loved him, so he had to be okay.
How did that Archie become the icon of a conservative troll? I don't know. Your argument that our stories are more important than our policies seems strong. How are our stories built, though? There's an alternate future with an Archie story that's different, possibly. Or, every story is a result of truth. In that case, Archie could never be anything but a rightwing monster.
I think your argument has another layer to it. It's been thought-provoking. Thanks.
Totally agree about your view of All In the Family! Our family watched it when I was a kid, thought Archie was funny and Meathead was the dud! Also thought Archie was a generous guy for allowing him to live with him
Liberals in the 70s could at least laugh at themselves which made them more bearable. Now nobody has less of a sense of humor than a Karen HR manger with dyed hair and a nose ring.
This is a difference between modern shitlibs and old school liberals. Norman Lear for all his serious faults did write Archie as a 3 dimensional character, and arguably even gave him the best lines. There was at least some literacy and nuance behind the propaganda. Now shitlibs just literally portray the right as cartoon villains because they are not educated in literature, history, or religion and ethics, and they are intellectually lazy and craven power seekers.
The “Africa Addio” (1966) documentary (now titled “Africa Blood and Guts”) by the Italian film crew that rushed to record first-hand the sudden transfer of power to independent African states was absolutely terrifying to me. It knocked the blue pills right out me. From the violent framework it introduced, I could reexamine many of my assumptions and take a harder look at the actual leaders for who they were. I understand the desire to go for a knockout punch by identifying and tearing down the opponent’s ideals and characters of our side. There’s a feeling that their foundations are Biblical feet of clay that, if disrupted, can bring the whole rotten edifice down.
Youre right to point to the icon of Bunker as it is the pattern of the narrative.. All in the Family gave way to the Jeffersons, Carroll's police chief in The Heat of the Night was replaced by Apollo Creed, all setting the stage for the rise of the Fresh Prince (Mandela).
Forensicly, facts didn't change. Narrative drove the change. While facts don't care about your feelings, the Will to Power doesn't care about the facts.
I think that the idea of removing idols is necessary. How can we move forward if the old and fake heroes persist in the mind? The issue is that simply going on the attack can seriously backfire.
Take, for example, how Muslims are preached to by Christians and Atheists in the west. It can always be heard how "Muhammad married a 6 year old" or how he was a violent conqueror or whathaveyou. These things can be argued for, and perhaps even convincingly, but all it even does is get a person's armour up and knock off a few people who had questionable loyalties to their ideology as is.
I think an easier and more effective tactic is to have heroes superior to their older ones. That way, those people will simply be naturally be drawn to the superior by the inferior. There were heroes like Lord Kitchener and Gordon of Khartoum who were replaced by the likes of Churchill. Why not find a better and more real hero?
It reminds me of The Silver Chair. Poking holes in an opposing narrative, taking down idols, is what the witch does. The protagonists could never have beaten her using the same tactic, she already has the advantage that they are living in her narrative. So Puddleglum instead rightly asserts the inherent superiority of his narrative, his heroes, over hers.
The liberal-progressive worldview cannot really be criticized in the same way they deal out criticism. It's nominalism all the way down, its not built, it's the act of tearing down. All their positive claims are transitory, intended to be discarded at some point. If you push them, that simply becomes the point at which the inconvenient claims are discarded, as they were to be anyway.
However, it is incredibly assailable by any position innately more appealing to human nature. It requires a constant barrage of propoganda upon a base of mal-education to convince someone they prefer electric lights to the sun. It is therefore very easy to convince someone the sun is real, not by arguements, but because, well, even if the sun isn't really, it's a damn sight better than the fake one.
Of course, it wasn't just this appeal that broke the witch's spell, it also took some pain.
I would very much agree. We can and should knock down these modern idols, but we can also simultaneously replace them with new, more deserving figures. A complete historiographic value-realignment, if you will.
Love this comment. I agree we need better heroes. Instead of people looking up to womanizing Tony Stark or feminist Captain America, we need people to look up to Saints. I think investing in the story telling of the lives of the Saints is what we need more than anything
Fantastic post! I think I restack-quoted half of it. And great job using the symbols of Memento to address these themes. We really are like Leonard Shelby, trying to understand ourselves without any memory of, or emotional connection to, a context larger than the present historical moment, and so we are easy marks for the calculated manipulations of folks with various hidden agendas. Connection to a greater context is truly what we need. Thanks for this!
This goes well with Academic Agent's new video. Churchill stands as one of the regime's icon, being overly quoted about "never surrendering" against their fascist boogeyman
This piece was awesome. Absolutely loved it. Also, I pretty much can read these now in your voice.
"Founding myths need to have heroes and villains. So if Churchill and Roosevelt weren’t the good guys then who was? Stalin? And if there weren’t any good guys, how could the great mustache-man himself, Adolf Hitler, be the bad guy?"
I think this is ultimately one reason out of many for the meltdowns. Once the mirrors are up, everyone looking at themselves are going to realize the heroes and villains weren't so simple... policies and repercussions from the Enlightenment may of steered fates way ahead of time. Indeed, one finally has to wrestle with the question, "is Adolf Hitler Satan, or is he a mixture of bad human choices in a toxic soup of post war resentment and rage that fell into power?" A much more human and possible experience that could happen to anyone.
Gosh, I hate to nerd out, but I think my late 90s early 2000s anime/videogame hobbies (somehow I was spared from the worst of the weirdos and filth) set me up to be ready and willing to fight the post-war myths of my public school education. I remember fighting with my folks about demonizing the Japanese in WWII as a teenager, and I think of decent writing from early Final Fantasy games (Tactics especially) where coincidentally enough, some pretty normal guys in unsavory time periods (in this case a carbon copy of the War of the Roses) get supernatural power granted and it twists them. And man! Attack on Titan was a really disappointing ending. Honestly it's 1 of 2 shows I've watched where I think the creators realized what they did in accidentally attacking sacred myths on history and power and then walked it back. One of the key characters in AoT heel turn that seemed to shock many makes complete sense in light of all culminating events, but I think most people can't believe weaker humans, especially ones not guided by faith but vague secular ideas of freedom would instead hit the nihilistic or Hitler button. I mean, look at the war on Ukraine and anyone that tries to explain that narrative. Even racial relations people can't seem to grip outside of a comic book hero depiction.
Another good example was the show 100 (on CW, stop judging me) for that example... teenage drama, awful... some of the sci-fi stuff... stupid. That show was solid based off three adult characters and how society shits bricks when civilization is wrecked. Yes, it's been done before... but I hate zombies. If I could rewrite the show I would put a Curtis Yarvin self-insert with more leather, screaming "They will understand, will make them understand!" as he sucks the air out of the room, literally. I think that show too realized what it was saying, didn't like it and then reverted the themes back to compromise and peace... and it ended kind of meh.
Big apologies for the segway, but I definitely feel the anger and urge to not care anymore. If our myths brought us to where we are now, then to hell with them... even if it means I have to look Hitler in the eye and see something human... because even if Darryl deleted that tweet... I would of kept it up.
Such an excellent essays. Unfortunately, the PMC (or Elite or Cathedral, or whatever we’re calling them now) are also iconoclasts, replacing false gods with worse ones. In the 1990s, I was taught that the Founders were brilliant and courageous, yet flawed, men; and the men of WW2 were the Greatest Generation. Taking my kid to DC for an 8th Grade trip, in each room of Mount Vernon we learned the names of several slaves who cleaned and cooked and suffered. Without exaggerating, there was less content about Washington himself. And the tour guides were history dork dweebs. No need for blue pills, it’s in the air we breathe. The WW2 generation is now the brilliant, courageous and flawed generation. I’m sure my grandkids (God willing they exist), will hear more about conscripts from the British empire more than Patton and MacArthur. Revisionism swings both ways. All that’s to say, you are right. But it is going to get much, much worse before it gets any better.
I'd like to add, that wiki about Amy Biehl is just hard to read. It reminds me of Pedro Gonzales's back and forth with Lutheran Satire over another recent death where the father "forgave" the killer... and it makes Pedro look more and more in the right.
>But at some point in my lifetime liberals stopped looking to convince people of their ideals and just became interested in cornering the avenues of power. Yet they still force us doubters to voice the platitudes of a god that they don’t care about.
Yes, this is precisely the spirit behind torturing someone into saying "2+2 = 5"
We trundle our children off to school by the millions and for decades. Indoctrination centres; Against this you expect what?
Please, the iron grip of human ignorance only knows one antidote, war, lest we forget. Our Alma mater, yes?
I know how to fix it.
Little ole’ me.
This is impossible to do because no such mechanism exists or ever could exist, but what the hell. Switch jobs: have police teach our children, and have teachers police our streets. This would change everything, can you imagine?
We are fallen, which is religion and elegant or as a nonbeliever, I say, we are merely overclocked chimps and our best rationality is no match for our animal instincts. Oh well, we aren’t the first people or generation to figure this out. We’re basically shitty.
Why would the left ever do anything to compromise when they can just import Infinity Haitian Migrants to voodoo machete chop all of us to death while nobody fights back?
I wonder what you would say to someone who agrees with all of the above, but thinks the Darryl Coopers of the world are just not up to the task? My takeaway from the whole controversy was that, while plenty of Con. Inc types took childish potshots ("this guy probably dislikes Zelensky too, the fascist"), many fairly pointed out that Cooper simply got key facts wrong or wildly misrepresented them. This seems to undermine the project: I understand the people we're fighting will always move the goalposts or outright lie themselves (they murder babies after all) but shouldn't we at least have the facts straight for the sake of building our own, better, desacralized view of the war?
It doesn't help that many of those who point out these errors get some pretty childish responses ("what's the weather like in Tel Aviv") and makes me wonder whether they care about anything but raging against the machine. I'm not a "facts and logic, debate me bro" type, but it strikes me as dishonorable and just cowardly to build our new nuanced history around serious mistruths.
May have been redirecting some frustration at (what looked like) lockstep praise for the interview across dissident circles at you! I did not even know about the anti-Christianity stuff.
This is an _outstanding_ essay. I could restack every paragraph.
Thanks
agreed
I agree that Archie has become a gremlin. However, I'm old enough to have watched the show as a child with my parents every week. I remember Archie before Norman Lear told everyone they were supposed to despise him. My dad at the time was a Democrat, but he loved Archie. Part of that is due to Meathead, who was presented as an enthusiastic idiot. The contrast gave Archie the aura of a cynical yet wiser man. And Edith, a saint, loved him, so he had to be okay.
How did that Archie become the icon of a conservative troll? I don't know. Your argument that our stories are more important than our policies seems strong. How are our stories built, though? There's an alternate future with an Archie story that's different, possibly. Or, every story is a result of truth. In that case, Archie could never be anything but a rightwing monster.
I think your argument has another layer to it. It's been thought-provoking. Thanks.
Totally agree about your view of All In the Family! Our family watched it when I was a kid, thought Archie was funny and Meathead was the dud! Also thought Archie was a generous guy for allowing him to live with him
Especially at the time! You didn’t stay home and send your wife to work at that time. People barely would put up with that now.
I thought Archie was hilarious!
Liberals in the 70s could at least laugh at themselves which made them more bearable. Now nobody has less of a sense of humor than a Karen HR manger with dyed hair and a nose ring.
I was older already married when I watched it. I thought it was supposed to poke fun at both Archie and Meathead
This is a difference between modern shitlibs and old school liberals. Norman Lear for all his serious faults did write Archie as a 3 dimensional character, and arguably even gave him the best lines. There was at least some literacy and nuance behind the propaganda. Now shitlibs just literally portray the right as cartoon villains because they are not educated in literature, history, or religion and ethics, and they are intellectually lazy and craven power seekers.
The “Africa Addio” (1966) documentary (now titled “Africa Blood and Guts”) by the Italian film crew that rushed to record first-hand the sudden transfer of power to independent African states was absolutely terrifying to me. It knocked the blue pills right out me. From the violent framework it introduced, I could reexamine many of my assumptions and take a harder look at the actual leaders for who they were. I understand the desire to go for a knockout punch by identifying and tearing down the opponent’s ideals and characters of our side. There’s a feeling that their foundations are Biblical feet of clay that, if disrupted, can bring the whole rotten edifice down.
Youre right to point to the icon of Bunker as it is the pattern of the narrative.. All in the Family gave way to the Jeffersons, Carroll's police chief in The Heat of the Night was replaced by Apollo Creed, all setting the stage for the rise of the Fresh Prince (Mandela).
Forensicly, facts didn't change. Narrative drove the change. While facts don't care about your feelings, the Will to Power doesn't care about the facts.
I think that the idea of removing idols is necessary. How can we move forward if the old and fake heroes persist in the mind? The issue is that simply going on the attack can seriously backfire.
Take, for example, how Muslims are preached to by Christians and Atheists in the west. It can always be heard how "Muhammad married a 6 year old" or how he was a violent conqueror or whathaveyou. These things can be argued for, and perhaps even convincingly, but all it even does is get a person's armour up and knock off a few people who had questionable loyalties to their ideology as is.
I think an easier and more effective tactic is to have heroes superior to their older ones. That way, those people will simply be naturally be drawn to the superior by the inferior. There were heroes like Lord Kitchener and Gordon of Khartoum who were replaced by the likes of Churchill. Why not find a better and more real hero?
Let us become saints, and by the will of God, be those better heroes.
It reminds me of The Silver Chair. Poking holes in an opposing narrative, taking down idols, is what the witch does. The protagonists could never have beaten her using the same tactic, she already has the advantage that they are living in her narrative. So Puddleglum instead rightly asserts the inherent superiority of his narrative, his heroes, over hers.
The liberal-progressive worldview cannot really be criticized in the same way they deal out criticism. It's nominalism all the way down, its not built, it's the act of tearing down. All their positive claims are transitory, intended to be discarded at some point. If you push them, that simply becomes the point at which the inconvenient claims are discarded, as they were to be anyway.
However, it is incredibly assailable by any position innately more appealing to human nature. It requires a constant barrage of propoganda upon a base of mal-education to convince someone they prefer electric lights to the sun. It is therefore very easy to convince someone the sun is real, not by arguements, but because, well, even if the sun isn't really, it's a damn sight better than the fake one.
Of course, it wasn't just this appeal that broke the witch's spell, it also took some pain.
You Hope Too Much.
I would very much agree. We can and should knock down these modern idols, but we can also simultaneously replace them with new, more deserving figures. A complete historiographic value-realignment, if you will.
Love this comment. I agree we need better heroes. Instead of people looking up to womanizing Tony Stark or feminist Captain America, we need people to look up to Saints. I think investing in the story telling of the lives of the Saints is what we need more than anything
Why are you framing Captain America as off the road? Dude rocks
Because Captain America was an obvious reference to the golem. His creators saw him that way (both in-story and in real life).
Fantastic post! I think I restack-quoted half of it. And great job using the symbols of Memento to address these themes. We really are like Leonard Shelby, trying to understand ourselves without any memory of, or emotional connection to, a context larger than the present historical moment, and so we are easy marks for the calculated manipulations of folks with various hidden agendas. Connection to a greater context is truly what we need. Thanks for this!
This goes well with Academic Agent's new video. Churchill stands as one of the regime's icon, being overly quoted about "never surrendering" against their fascist boogeyman
This piece was awesome. Absolutely loved it. Also, I pretty much can read these now in your voice.
"Founding myths need to have heroes and villains. So if Churchill and Roosevelt weren’t the good guys then who was? Stalin? And if there weren’t any good guys, how could the great mustache-man himself, Adolf Hitler, be the bad guy?"
I think this is ultimately one reason out of many for the meltdowns. Once the mirrors are up, everyone looking at themselves are going to realize the heroes and villains weren't so simple... policies and repercussions from the Enlightenment may of steered fates way ahead of time. Indeed, one finally has to wrestle with the question, "is Adolf Hitler Satan, or is he a mixture of bad human choices in a toxic soup of post war resentment and rage that fell into power?" A much more human and possible experience that could happen to anyone.
Gosh, I hate to nerd out, but I think my late 90s early 2000s anime/videogame hobbies (somehow I was spared from the worst of the weirdos and filth) set me up to be ready and willing to fight the post-war myths of my public school education. I remember fighting with my folks about demonizing the Japanese in WWII as a teenager, and I think of decent writing from early Final Fantasy games (Tactics especially) where coincidentally enough, some pretty normal guys in unsavory time periods (in this case a carbon copy of the War of the Roses) get supernatural power granted and it twists them. And man! Attack on Titan was a really disappointing ending. Honestly it's 1 of 2 shows I've watched where I think the creators realized what they did in accidentally attacking sacred myths on history and power and then walked it back. One of the key characters in AoT heel turn that seemed to shock many makes complete sense in light of all culminating events, but I think most people can't believe weaker humans, especially ones not guided by faith but vague secular ideas of freedom would instead hit the nihilistic or Hitler button. I mean, look at the war on Ukraine and anyone that tries to explain that narrative. Even racial relations people can't seem to grip outside of a comic book hero depiction.
Another good example was the show 100 (on CW, stop judging me) for that example... teenage drama, awful... some of the sci-fi stuff... stupid. That show was solid based off three adult characters and how society shits bricks when civilization is wrecked. Yes, it's been done before... but I hate zombies. If I could rewrite the show I would put a Curtis Yarvin self-insert with more leather, screaming "They will understand, will make them understand!" as he sucks the air out of the room, literally. I think that show too realized what it was saying, didn't like it and then reverted the themes back to compromise and peace... and it ended kind of meh.
Big apologies for the segway, but I definitely feel the anger and urge to not care anymore. If our myths brought us to where we are now, then to hell with them... even if it means I have to look Hitler in the eye and see something human... because even if Darryl deleted that tweet... I would of kept it up.
Such an excellent essays. Unfortunately, the PMC (or Elite or Cathedral, or whatever we’re calling them now) are also iconoclasts, replacing false gods with worse ones. In the 1990s, I was taught that the Founders were brilliant and courageous, yet flawed, men; and the men of WW2 were the Greatest Generation. Taking my kid to DC for an 8th Grade trip, in each room of Mount Vernon we learned the names of several slaves who cleaned and cooked and suffered. Without exaggerating, there was less content about Washington himself. And the tour guides were history dork dweebs. No need for blue pills, it’s in the air we breathe. The WW2 generation is now the brilliant, courageous and flawed generation. I’m sure my grandkids (God willing they exist), will hear more about conscripts from the British empire more than Patton and MacArthur. Revisionism swings both ways. All that’s to say, you are right. But it is going to get much, much worse before it gets any better.
Framing doesn't care about your facts.
Past Problems? All half-truths from bitter, angry, ugly, evil losers.
Current known problems? All honest mistakes from good and competent people doing their best.
Reminds me of Yarvin's the Curate's Egg, on prerational assumptions.
I'd like to add, that wiki about Amy Biehl is just hard to read. It reminds me of Pedro Gonzales's back and forth with Lutheran Satire over another recent death where the father "forgave" the killer... and it makes Pedro look more and more in the right.
Archie Bunker and Elmer Fudd are just expressions of hatred for non-Jewish white men by making them look stupid and irrationally angry.
solid piece
>But at some point in my lifetime liberals stopped looking to convince people of their ideals and just became interested in cornering the avenues of power. Yet they still force us doubters to voice the platitudes of a god that they don’t care about.
Yes, this is precisely the spirit behind torturing someone into saying "2+2 = 5"
Love, Archie.
Great article, brilliant argument.
We trundle our children off to school by the millions and for decades. Indoctrination centres; Against this you expect what?
Please, the iron grip of human ignorance only knows one antidote, war, lest we forget. Our Alma mater, yes?
I know how to fix it.
Little ole’ me.
This is impossible to do because no such mechanism exists or ever could exist, but what the hell. Switch jobs: have police teach our children, and have teachers police our streets. This would change everything, can you imagine?
We are fallen, which is religion and elegant or as a nonbeliever, I say, we are merely overclocked chimps and our best rationality is no match for our animal instincts. Oh well, we aren’t the first people or generation to figure this out. We’re basically shitty.
Why would the left ever do anything to compromise when they can just import Infinity Haitian Migrants to voodoo machete chop all of us to death while nobody fights back?
/pol/ is always right.
Why would you want to compromise with evil?
I wonder what you would say to someone who agrees with all of the above, but thinks the Darryl Coopers of the world are just not up to the task? My takeaway from the whole controversy was that, while plenty of Con. Inc types took childish potshots ("this guy probably dislikes Zelensky too, the fascist"), many fairly pointed out that Cooper simply got key facts wrong or wildly misrepresented them. This seems to undermine the project: I understand the people we're fighting will always move the goalposts or outright lie themselves (they murder babies after all) but shouldn't we at least have the facts straight for the sake of building our own, better, desacralized view of the war?
It doesn't help that many of those who point out these errors get some pretty childish responses ("what's the weather like in Tel Aviv") and makes me wonder whether they care about anything but raging against the machine. I'm not a "facts and logic, debate me bro" type, but it strikes me as dishonorable and just cowardly to build our new nuanced history around serious mistruths.
I am not a Darryl Cooper super fan. I was highly critical of his anti-Christianity.
May have been redirecting some frustration at (what looked like) lockstep praise for the interview across dissident circles at you! I did not even know about the anti-Christianity stuff.
His Job take is problematic, worrisome.