The Gavin Newsom Strategy

Are Major Leaders Beginning to Switch Sides in the Inter-Elite War?

Could Gavin Newsom’s podcast represent a major change of sides in the inter-elite cultural battle being waged? And why can’t other privileged people switch sides as well?

You might’ve heard that Gavin Newsom started a podcast. His first three guests were all rightwing cultural stars: Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage, Steve Bannon. LOTS of people are ‘called’ rightwing by the media: Joe Rogan, Coleman Hughes, Tulsi Gabbard. But these three people actually ARE rightwing.

What’s going on? Is this a calculated strategy by Newsom to win ‘centrist voters’, as the media is asking? I doubt it. Steve Bannon isn’t beloved among centrists. I think this is a deliberate gesture, and Newsom is realigning with the insurgent cultural elites, who are currently in an escalating war with the bureaucracy, academia, and the weight of expert opinion.

The media isn’t happy about Newsom’s guests, or his tone, because they see this as another battle lost. It’s a battle for the culture but it’s also, for them, a battle to protect their shrinking privileges and their disappearing status as arbiters of truth. For many people this battle among the elites is a battle of values and worldviews, and modern people are so emotionally immature and ideologically committed that such a battle FEELS urgent for them.

There’s a narrative that people don’t trust experts because of ‘conspiracy theories’, or ‘misinformation,’ but I would argue that trust can only usually be lost by people proving themselves to be untrustworthy-that is, lying or badly mistaken.

Here are the reasons I’ve noted why people seem to trust experts less and less all of the time. Note that none of these have been addressed by the ‘anti-misinformation’ brigade-they’re completely ignored. These days, that’s how you know you’re onto something:

[~] Believing absurdities

[~] Bad science, poorly constructed studies, non-replicable conclusions

[~] Incorrect predictions about the future

[~] Incorrect explanations for the past

[~] Ideological Capture

[~] Flagrant and unaddressed bias

[~] Arrogance, unwillingness to admit the limitations of their own knowledge

[~] Arrogance, unwillingness to debate or defend their conclusions

[~] Lack of accountability, unwillingness to admit mistakes

[~] Lackluster selection, promotion & awards processes (promoting mediocrities)

[~] Unwillingness to acknowledge their own unearned privilege

I urge the left to talk to the people who disagree with them all the time. If they did, I think they’d find that, rather than an increase in brainwashing or some kind of rightwing influence campaign, there are millions of educated, ordinary, heterogenous people who are simply fed up with the mistakes, the arrogance, the unwillingness to debate (instead the elites try to shut down conversations), and the obvious and frantic effort to preserve their privileges. These people obviously don’t care about truth. They care about their own social status and cachet. Ultimately, privilege must be earned, or it disappears.

What does this have to do with Gavin Newsom? I think that we’re seeing an inter-elite schism playing out. The incumbents (defenders) support DEI and gender ideology and the sense-making prerogatives of the media and researchers and lobbyists, and the insurgents (who are, confusingly, more traditional in their orientation) want to pivot the values animating elite roles and careers and institutions to align them better with older Western values, and scientific notions like heredity and sex differences and evolutionary biology. The insurgents are, loosely, connected to the ‘new right.’

The New Right

I’ve already written about all of this, and I’m writing more about the collapse of expert credibility. So why post this?

Let’s leave the abstract and the contemporary for a moment and ask a question: what if Kamala Harris had been authentic? I don’t mean what if she’d acted more real. That is the framing usually used by the media when they ask this question (and questions like it). That is no longer the defining feature of authenticity. Authenticity is having the courage to step away from the lockstep formation of corporations and donors and academic theory and activists, and express your own opinions.

What if Harris had done this? She would have had to do it in a major way, to send the proper message, but what if she’d said “Look: I helped hide Biden’s mental decline from the citizens. We all did. Even the media! We really messed up the border and I will never make that mistake again. I embraced some really crazy stuff a few years ago but I understand the value of law and order in a way that I never did before, and I will use the new knowledge as president.”

What would’ve happened? I think she would’ve had a shot. The left was going to vote for her no matter what, and I think those kinds of gestures might have won enough independents (especially where it really matters) to muddy the polling and win more purple political support (and also possibly allow for more realistic progressive ballot harvesting goals…).

It probably couldn’t have hurt her. Why didn’t she do this, or something like it? Cowardice. That lies at the root of this rearguard media frenzy to protect progressivism in the media and in Hollywood and in academia. These people don’t want to step away from the power structures and the orthodoxies that gave them their privilege and their status because they know that, under a different system, they never could’ve ended up where they are. Deep down they feel like frauds. The childhood education specialists know that education metrics are cratering… and they’re powerless. Therapists and psychologists know that mental health indicators continue to plummet… and all they can do is keep reaching for their insufficient treatments and ideological theories, and make things worse. Politicians know that the old media ecosystem is dying and their schemes are being unearthed. None of these people can step away from their associated blob-appendage because they’re scared. They’ve never done anything bold or real in their life. When it comes time to make command decisions or be authentic or choose among new opportunities, they reach back for the same tired, institutional playbooks because that’s all they have. These people are scared and confused, and that is why many have become angry and vicious (and that is why some will become violent). These people are not brilliant. They’re not leaders.

And they know it.

---

I’ll be honest: I don’t really care what Gavin Newsom is up to. His state is a governing disaster, producing interstate refugees by the millions. Education, cost of living, criminal recidivism, new construction-California is dead last in each of these categories. I’m currently writing about two major themes: soft totalitarianism (the phenomenon of state power-debanking, cancellation-and coercive control of thoughts and expressions leveraged to promote a progressive vision), and despotic-anarchy (the paradox of modern governments closely regulating building and speech and behavior, while permitting vast underclasses of officially sanctioned lawlessness, as in a city which demands building permits for solar panels and hiking paths, while allowing massive illegal immigration and anarchic homeless settlements and shoplifting). California is the prime American example of both of these archetypes. I’m pretty sure that I’ll never vote for Gavin Newsom, and I’m not interested in his podcast.

But perhaps Newsom has enough of a visionary spark (or competent enough pollsters) to radically change course. Perhaps he has effectively picked the insurgent side in the cultural war between elite factions. Look at the politicians who are riding high right now: all of them have stepped away from bureaucracy and expertise and an out-of-touch cultural elite. Perhaps Gavin Newsom has joined them.

It’s a strange time when the most privileged people in our society are called to exercise personal accountability, honestly deal with critics, and express their own deep-seated and independent opinions… and they can’t do it, even to save their careers and reputations. Perhaps it’s not so surprising after all, though. Obvious weakness and mass confusion usually seems to characterize elite factions who are being defeated by insurgents. Politics is a kind of Darwinism, after all. If your ideas are ineffective enough and your leaders unimpressive enough then your group will, eventually, lose.

I think we’ve passed that point.

Thanks for reading! Please like, comment, subscribe, and SHARE.