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Given the amount of apparent misunderstanding about what's happening around the right today and going forward, I'd like to give a quick explainer on wizardry with examples that can be used to explain everything in life: pro wrestling. https://twitter.com/upstatefederlst/status/1347995120591921155
Let's take one of the most obnoxious guys to ever live, pair him with a quiet badass who could do evil things for his friend, add a few other guys, and turn them into the most evil and best known faction in wrestling history.
Now, you make them lie and cheat their way to the top being sure to stomp mightily on guys who people like. Make it so the good guy can't beat them, even though he gets remarkably close. Use the rules against him, get DQed to keep the title. All sorts of cowardly things.
Then sometimes, you even trick the good guy into thinking you're his buddy.
Only to beat him up and kick him out, reminding everyone that they do, in fact, hate them and they're very evil and need to be booed.
Now, it gets the point where the group is so evil, the viewer hates the group more than he hates the individual members. So, say you have a guy who you paid a lot of money but isn't very good.
You can put him in your very evil group and, by benefit of being attached to the evil group, you can get people to care about him. This is called "transferring heat."
Now, in 2001, we had "terrorists" thrust into the national spotlight. And we did all sorts of thing to that word. We spent many, many years making sure people hated terrorists. We stuck that word right in your head and it had an image, right. You think of someone specific.
Then, a little while goes by and we have this word with this image. But we don't want the word tied to this image so we come up with a new word: "extremist." Seems weird to invent a new word when we had a perfectly good one, but we did.
Why would you do that? We wrote a bunch of laws about terrorists and what happens when someone gets designated as a terrorist. The word slowly gets disappeared from the lexicon and you find yourself using extremist even though you really know what terrorist means, right?
More years go by and a maniac gets elected to office who wants you to start saying "terrorist" again. But we're very very sure that can't use that word anymore. That would be bad. Seems weird, it's sitting right there and it describes what radical Islam does.
We also have to be very very careful about calling something a "terror attack." We have to be very sure we understand motives first. We put great, huge weight and thought before declaring something "terror." The gravity of "terror" is too great to just throw around.
Then, all the sudden, we start hearing "white nationalist" and "white supremacist" replace the word "racist." We don't really know why, but we know that those people are bad. We don't know any but we know what they're like.
Well, it's OK, I don't know anyone like that. We've seen a summer of protests. Protests are good. So I'm going to go the protest in DC. The president's going to speak at this. People have been protesting since Memorial Day Weekend.
Wait, why are they calling this an insurrection? It was a protest, where people went in the Capitol just like people do all the time. Wait, an insurrection by white supremacists, that doesn't make any sense. I'm not like those people.
Meanwhile, we have a bunch of laws we wrote for Islamic terror just sitting there. And we don't have any Islamists handy to apply them to any more. But we did just have an insurrection by white supremacists, which sounds a lot like terrorism. In fact, let's just call it terrorism
And, hey, it's vaguely applicable to this situation since you did sorta use violence to achieve political goals. So, as it turns out, we can just sorta transfer the heat from the word "terrorist" on to a new target. Republicans!
You need to understand that in the eyes of the law you are now these guys:
All those things we decided they could do: No Fly Lists, surveillance, spying... they get to do that to you now. It doesn't matter if it's fair, deserve's got nothing to do with it. You've been heat-transferred, son. We the Muslims now.
Take heart! You've had 20 years to see how the government tries to catch terrorists. Their success rate isn't very good. But the people trying to provoke you to violence online are not your friends. They don't "just want to hook you up with their buddy."
You have to assume online is conquered territory. All your e-mail, all your texts, all your phones. I'd suggest only talking politics in person with people you trust and that new guy trying to provoke you into violence. Get him out.
Build communities. Have kids. Don't start shit. Win local offices. Don't complain about your school having a Muslim prayer room. Make a Christian one. If they sue you, do it anyway.
You will not win by yelling at your friends on Facebook, but there's a pretty good chance you'll lose. Give them Facebook, win town hall.
Addendum: There is no such thing as an "innocuous political take" anymore. Think about how rapidly the trans argument has gone since Obergefell and apply that to literally everything. The 2+2=5 people run Online. Permanent Online Records are not your friend.
