The Auron MacIntyre Show - Why The Right Struggles With Art

00:00:00.680 Hey, everybody. How's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great

00:00:04.760 stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy. Once again, on the

00:00:09.660 internet, we have sparked the biannual We Need Right Wing Art Debate. It comes around

00:00:16.120 every year. It's fantastic. We all love to talk about it. It's what all the people who

00:00:20.680 aren't creative like myself love to say other people need to be doing. However, I do think

00:00:25.840 this is important. Just to give you some context, my colleague, Chris Rufo, was

00:00:31.260 talking about the Super Bowl. This episode will be airing in about a week. I'm

00:00:36.060 traveling, by the way. That means we're not live, so I can't take Super Chat. Sorry.

00:00:39.800 And so if this is a little late to the party, that's why. But he was saying at the

00:00:44.060 time with the Super Bowl that there was an inferior culture product produced by TPUSA

00:00:49.780 when it came to the alternative halftime show. And this sparked a larger debate on

00:00:54.120 whether or not right-wing billionaires will spend money on art. Now, there's a lot of

00:00:59.840 different opinions. His co-host, Lomaz, had something to say about this. But also my good

00:01:04.880 friend, Dave Green, I thought had a lot of great insights. And I certainly want to give

00:01:09.360 him an opportunity to expand on those on the show. So joining me today is the distributist,

00:01:15.360 Dave Green. Thank you so much for joining me, man.

00:01:17.720 Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I'm always happy to participate in this tradition of right-wing

00:01:24.040 why isn't there right-wing art? This time it's Super Bowl edition. I think it's a fascinating

00:01:30.580 topic because there's so many different angles that you can take it from. There's one thing

00:01:39.100 that's very obvious is, you know, first of all, we are kind of in a low point of art

00:01:43.960 and cultural production anyway. So that's kind of the backdrop of the conversation is one

00:01:49.700 thing that is obviously happening is that there's been a genuine decline in content quality from

00:01:56.360 basically the mainstream. I would say left, but it's more or less the same thing.

00:02:02.140 But the problem with right-wing art is that there's a constant sense of insecurity on the

00:02:07.900 part of right-wingers and conservatives when they realize that despite the fact that they are in many

00:02:13.780 ways more functional than the mainstream or their arrivals on the left, they don't have the cultural

00:02:19.640 output or the clout that comes along with that cultural output. So you see things like, I don't

00:02:25.860 know, the Super Bowl was what really kicked this off to begin with, which was ironic enough.

00:02:30.520 And TPUSA did a halftime of its own. I'm sure your viewers know this with Kid Rock and a variety

00:02:37.040 of other acts that were, I mean, they were a little lackluster, I would say that. The kind of

00:02:45.040 big elephant in the room was that the real Super Bowl halftime show was absolute trash as well.

00:02:52.800 It was just a complete, I mean, if you put that, I mean, I don't know, you could say that it was

00:02:56.740 sort of more vibrant or whatever people say about it, but it was the worst, it was the lowest quality,

00:03:02.500 lowest effort, music, Bad Bunny, in my opinion, has no talent. There's no gulf of quality in my mind

00:03:10.140 between Bad Bunny and Kid Rock. But at the same time, that's not what you want, really. You know,

00:03:17.920 the progressives put forward an act that from most of the audience of football, NFL watchers,

00:03:26.040 in their eyes, in most NFL watchers' eyes, Bad Bunny is kind of an obvious step down from

00:03:33.520 halftime acts of the past, which have featured former Beatles, big rock stars, acts that actually

00:03:39.960 felt good and were in languages that the audience spoke. And now you have this huge step down in

00:03:47.000 terms of Bad Bunny, and the response from the conservatives is, hey, here's kind of like this

00:03:53.920 washed up paint by numbers alternative. There was a chance to kind of score a goal on the part of

00:04:01.120 the conservative movement, and they were unable to take it. And this, you know, feeds into the

00:04:04.760 insecurity that a lot of conservatives have, that they're not able to produce art in the way they

00:04:11.740 should. I think this is what kind of is the backdrop for a lot of Rufo's comments. I know he did a podcast

00:04:18.020 with Lomas, where they discussed just what I went over, but there is this weird secondary conversation,

00:04:26.120 and it appeared in a lot of ways that a lot of the conservative crowd, especially Rufo, doesn't

00:04:32.800 understand really the real problem that we're dealing with in terms of the creation of art.

00:04:38.840 They see it in kind of this way, in this very corporatized managerial way, as if getting a piece

00:04:48.880 of art that is something people believe in, is like getting the next Silicon Valley unicorn company.

00:04:56.200 You have a bunch of money, and then you take a lot of chances on a lot of things, and you try to get

00:05:01.940 an idea of what your audience is, and then if you dump enough money on it, eventually somebody will

00:05:09.240 fill the need that your audience has, the conservative half of America. And you'll have,

00:05:15.420 you know, a new thing that you can promote. This is not how art works, or this is not how

00:05:22.920 good pop culture works. Good pop culture works by stepping into a vacancy and

00:05:31.380 showing people what they should want. It's not targeted at a pre-existing demand, and it also

00:05:38.660 has to have enough self-confidence to either seize the idea of prestige or tap into existing

00:05:47.960 modes of prestige. Bad Bunny is a bad artist, but the fact that he's there in the Super Bowl

00:05:55.540 makes him prestigious. The same thing is not true for the alternative halftime show,

00:06:00.880 the TPUSA runs. And so, you know, and headlining acts that are kind of very predictable makes it

00:06:09.700 definitely feel kind of like, well, you're in a ghetto, a low-quality copy of the thing that everyone

00:06:17.260 in the mainstream is enjoying. And I mean, it feels that way because it kind of is that way. The problem

00:06:23.680 is that very few people who are lamenting the state of affairs that are in positions of power in the

00:06:30.040 conservative movement or in other right-wing organizations act like they really know what

00:06:35.760 needs to be done next. So a few things here, because I agree with a lot of that, but I think

00:06:42.740 there is actually a little bit of disconnect, especially around, I think, what Chris was trying

00:06:47.100 to say. So first, I would say my original comment on kind of Chris's reflection on the Super Bowl was

00:06:54.920 actually about why conservative billionaires don't buy NFL teams. You know, we're obviously talking

00:07:01.300 about art in this scenario, but before we even want to get to art, I just want to talk about

00:07:06.140 entertainment. Like, everything doesn't have to be Shakespeare. We should, you know, we should make

00:07:11.160 grand cultural works. But right now, maybe we can walk before we run. Like, when it comes to the NFL,

00:07:17.880 we have a system that already has a wide conservative buy-in, right? Like, this has already

00:07:23.880 got a large conservative audience. It already holds their interests. You don't have to manufacture or

00:07:28.760 educate or elevate their cultural consciousness in order to get them to consume this, to pay attention

00:07:35.520 to it. These are already profitable enterprises, right? Like, NFL teams are very large and profitable

00:07:42.480 endeavors. And they have a high degree of cultural impact with a relatively low amount of kind of

00:07:49.460 cultural maturation or effort. So it feels like if it's just a direct let's slap money on the problem

00:07:56.460 issue, like, how do we get a conservative beachhead in any given large-scale commercial enterprise?

00:08:04.660 It feels like the NFL should be the easiest one, right? Because when it comes to movies or music or,

00:08:11.360 you know, something else, yeah, you might need all the studio infrastructure and everything else

00:08:15.840 that's involved with that. But when it comes to the NFL, like, you just buy the team and then you

00:08:20.580 have the talented players. Like, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of ins and outs to running an NFL

00:08:24.560 team. It's not a simple enterprise, but it's not one that I think is so desperately dependent on the

00:08:30.000 type of, like, leftist creatives that we'd be missing out with if we tried to, like, start a movie

00:08:35.180 studio or something. So I guess my initial, before we move to the high art, we'll get to the high art.

00:08:40.420 No, no, no, no.

00:08:41.480 Why don't conservatives just buy NFL teams and start influencing, you know, who, what shows up at the

00:08:49.240 NFL game and what imagery we get in the stadiums and who ultimately plays the Super Bowl? It feels

00:08:56.200 like those would be relatively easy levers to move.

00:08:59.260 Well, this is, I'm going to kind of put on my Yarvin mask here in a second, if you don't mind,

00:09:06.940 Aaron. I do, I do think it's a, I mean, look, your idea is way better than what the conservative

00:09:11.180 movement has been doing so far. But the problem is, is that what we are essentially doing by buying an

00:09:17.180 NFL team is buying stock in the corporate project that is the NFL. And inside that organization,

00:09:24.860 our enemies don't need to play fair. For instance, maybe you can explain this to me,

00:09:29.220 but apparently Jay-Z decides what goes on the NFL halftime. So like, how did that even happen?

00:09:35.040 Like, did he buy in? Like, what, what, like, was he crowned? Was there a coronation? How does this

00:09:40.900 even occur? These are working, and the only explanation I can think is that Jay-Z, he was

00:09:47.580 kind of connected to politically to the Obama people, right? He was kind of like one of their

00:09:52.320 guys, right? So I imagine what happened is he's a political appointee, right? So when you're buying

00:09:58.800 into the NFL, you're buying into a corporation that you know has leadership that's seated with your

00:10:03.440 political enemies, and then can use that political influence to essentially lock you out and humiliate

00:10:09.960 you and hurt your investment. So your, your, your objections, of course, correct to a degree,

00:10:15.460 like obviously any level of entry ism is open to this critique. And, and I've made these exact

00:10:20.680 critiques in other scenarios. So I'm not saying this is the ultimate winning strategy, but I just want

00:10:25.480 to actually, when I asked the question, sometimes when I ask a question, it's because I actually want

00:10:29.560 to think through it. I don't have an answer ready. Uh, and so for me, you're, you're of course right

00:10:34.580 that like, there's going to be this institutional pushback to any kind of conservative, uh, you know,

00:10:40.960 uh, insurgents inside the NFL. Uh, I doubt that Jay-Z is necessarily a political appointment. It's more

00:10:47.360 likely that he is one of the most culturally, whether we recognize it or not, this guy is the Led Zeppelin

00:10:53.400 or Rolling Stones of rap at this point, right? Like he's, he's an elder statesman of the art form.

00:10:58.820 Uh, the NFL is a heavily African-American, uh, franchise, uh, perhaps that in and of itself

00:11:04.420 makes it difficult to influence, but like, it, it makes sense to me on some level that someone

00:11:09.480 looks at Jay-Z and says, who would have their finger on the pulse of, uh, new music that should

00:11:16.060 be introduced. Now, I don't think that's true. I think at this point, Jay-Z is much like the Rolling

00:11:20.360 Stones, no longer a, uh, actual, you know, standard bearer for what would be cool. But I, I, I can see

00:11:28.000 how a Roger Goodell tells himself, okay, this guy knows what he's talking about, right? It's like 10

00:11:34.680 years ago, it would have been Bono, right? It's yeah. But, but the point is, it doesn't have to

00:11:40.980 necessarily be just because he knows the Obama's. Maybe it is, maybe I'm being naive, but, but my,

00:11:45.780 my, my initial inclination would be, this is more of an elder statesman that, you know,

00:11:51.500 this is what old white men think that young black people want to listen to, even though they have

00:11:56.840 no clue. Right. Uh, and, and so I can see how that gets installed. Um, so I guess if entryism was

00:12:06.340 to work at all, if buying into any institutional framework at all would be worth it. And I agree

00:12:12.080 with you that generally this is not the way you want to climb the ladder or figure the figure this

00:12:16.120 out. But if you were going to try it, like I said, the NFL just seems like the most preexisting

00:12:22.700 right-wing coded bureaucratic infrastructure in which you could ensconce yourself. Again,

00:12:29.720 it's still a hard climb. It may be a losing strategy, but at the very least it's a losing strategy where you

00:12:34.900 own like a billion dollar profitable asset, which seems to be the largest barrier to right-wing

00:12:41.480 billionaire buy-in. They want to see profits in a way the left just doesn't. And that is,

00:12:46.340 well, I'm sure get to why that's a problem. I know that's going to be a core, but, but just in

00:12:50.880 the outset, just to entertain my, my, my cockamamie theory here, if we were to choose a pre-packaged

00:12:57.880 cultural product, right-wing coded, the chuds love it. It's already profitable. You have, you don't need

00:13:04.580 the, the creative infrastructure that's left-wing coded. If there was just a cultural outlet

00:13:09.840 that could be primed for like a right-wing takeover. And in the worst case scenario,

00:13:15.220 you're still stuck owning like the new England Patriots. It, I don't know. It seems like a

00:13:20.640 relatively easy buy. It seems a lot easier than buying Twitter, I guess would be my point.

00:13:26.200 Well, yeah, I mean, it is, it is a better, a better move than Twitter, but I'll say this though.

00:13:30.700 Let's just keep it on football. Uh, I am kind of a football fan. I haven't watched it in a very long

00:13:36.160 time, but I kind of just want to humiliate the NFL because I don't like the NFL for a lot of

00:13:42.360 reasons. It's, it's, it's, it's in many ways, it's everything wrong with football. It's over

00:13:47.180 optimized. It's mercenary. The idea of football, in my opinion, is it's supposed to be a local team

00:13:55.220 that has its own strengths, strengths and weaknesses against another local team that is centered in that

00:14:01.040 area. And originally after people got tired of NFL, they went to college football and then college

00:14:06.320 football got mercenary and over optimized. And, and so I, I guess if I were to, you know,

00:14:13.500 with, from my point of view, if I wanted to invest in football, I would try to find some way that you

00:14:20.260 could show people what football was in America before it became this entertainment franchise that

00:14:28.800 was sort of corporatized. Uh, it's not a very good idea because football teams are always

00:14:33.900 corporations in a sense, but I mean, you know, but how, how it used to be when it, when it was

00:14:40.360 actually something that was organically part of the culture. And again, like I said, the big problem

00:14:46.320 with the TPUSA halftime show was not that it was worse than bad bunny. It was that it failed to

00:14:52.580 humiliate bad bunny when bad bunny seemed to be asking for a humiliation. And, you know, I feel

00:14:59.800 the same way about the NFL's organizational structure. I want to show people what a better

00:15:06.140 thing is. And sure. I look, I'd love to buy into it. Maybe it would be a good proposition,

00:15:10.760 but that would be more or less just a very risk averse way to take on the problem in my opinion.

00:15:16.060 Yeah. And, and again, I agree with that. I, I, I, like I said, I don't know that this is a,

00:15:21.080 some kind of cultural revolution solution. You know, obviously I don't think that's long-term

00:15:25.740 the case. I have all the same problems with the NFL that you do. Uh, but, but ultimately I guess

00:15:31.460 that was just the idea I was floating. And I wanted to clarify that because so much of my comment I made

00:15:36.320 just immediately was like, but why aren't we making Mozart? I was like, dude, I was just talking about

00:15:40.240 buying like the Cleveland Browns, man. Like, I don't think you got it. I don't think you have to

00:15:44.020 compose any symphonies to buy the Cleveland Browns. I think you just need, you know,

00:15:47.040 X number a million dollars. Yeah. I mean, Hey, I mean the, the, the look, I'll say this,

00:15:51.760 right? Like the Packer, like the green Bay Packers is an NFL success story because people

00:15:57.640 feel about the green. I mean, if you hate the team, I don't care, but what I will say about this,

00:16:02.980 the people, people have a relationship with the green Bay Packers. That is more like what people's

00:16:08.980 relationship to football teams used to be, you know, back in the early 20th century,

00:16:14.180 much more organic, much more linked to the, uh, a specific place. And, you know, and maybe, Hey,

00:16:22.120 maybe when conservatives, conservatives were to buy NFL teams, they could show different ways of

00:16:28.320 organizing them inside the league that would, would, would provide a similar kind of model to the way

00:16:35.600 that sort of the green Bay Packers ownership is kind of an alternative model as well. So that

00:16:39.800 might disrupt the problem at that level. And it's a great idea. Yeah. Okay. And I don't know if it's

00:16:45.260 the key to the cultural revolution, but just people are always asking me, well, where can we get

00:16:49.040 practical wins? And I'm like, well, I'm not one. Uh, but, but, but let's transition to the art.

00:16:55.060 Cause that's where the conversation obviously went to now. I'd like to draw the line between pop

00:16:59.760 culture and, and like art art as well, because these are, these are different things, right?

00:17:04.560 Like there, there is, they are not unconnected. Uh, but, but I think a core part of this, and this

00:17:10.880 is really what you were hitting on when you talked about the quality between difference between bad

00:17:16.160 bunny and kid rock. Honestly, I think kid rock is a better musician on every level than bad bunny.

00:17:22.920 Yeah. He's just younger and has, you know, the, the current backing of the mainstream,

00:17:28.440 but when it like, even like, and I don't think kid rock is like some kind of amazing vocalist,

00:17:32.920 but even in the category of just basic singing ability, I think kid rock has an advantage on bad

00:17:39.580 bunny. Uh, now the, the NFL obviously gives you a certain level of prestige just by being at the

00:17:45.260 halftime show. It gives you access to all the production value and everything else. And I think

00:17:49.420 when people said that his performance was better in any way, they just meant like they spent more money

00:17:55.840 on the dancers and the set and that kind of thing. But I don't think the music quality was in any way

00:18:00.640 superior. Uh, I might be biased just because I prefer like a rock music to whatever we're calling

00:18:05.780 bad bunny, but like, ultimately I do think it was just better music. Um, but, uh, there is an important

00:18:12.640 point to stop and be made about the fact that the left is also making just absolute crap. Like their

00:18:18.800 culture, cultural output is as bad as any daily wire or, you know, TP USA thing. And, and, and I

00:18:27.760 don't say that is an insult to either one of those. I think they're doing a lot with what they have and

00:18:32.980 I'm glad they're doing it to be clear. I think doing something at this point and taking risks is

00:18:38.700 better than not doing them. Maybe we want to talk about the best risks you can take, but I, I praise

00:18:43.520 the, both of those organizations for putting out what they did. My point is like from a, from a

00:18:49.080 writing standpoint, from a, you know, uh, what is the quality of the product outside of like money

00:18:54.960 spent and like production quality on that end. But when it comes to the writing, the messages,

00:18:59.680 those kinds of things, the left is not putting out any, any kind of quality. I mean, look at the

00:19:04.320 inability of paramount to, to handle star track or, uh, you know, Disney to handle star Wars.

00:19:09.720 Like they can't even handle their own previous pop, uh, culture successes. Like they're just

00:19:15.520 disasters. No matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars Marvel pours into these movies,

00:19:21.120 they just keep flopping. No matter how many millions of dollars Disney puts on screen,

00:19:25.500 they just keep putting out garbage. And so I think there is a point to be said, as you, as you're,

00:19:31.100 you're kind of saying there, the problem is not that the left is just cranking out this amazing art

00:19:36.720 that we simply cannot compete with. It's that they are putting the bar as low as possible.

00:19:41.640 And we got to figure out how to jump over that bar. And the fact that we can't jump over a bar

00:19:46.040 that's basically on the floor, that's the issue. I mean, that that's the same one with bad bunny too,

00:19:51.120 right? It's at all levels. This is the same problem, right? Bad bunny is one of the worst

00:19:55.640 halftime shows ever. And all you need to do is mog him. Obviously you could make an argument about

00:20:00.800 objective quality. And the same thing is true for modern popular culture, right? Like the Star Wars.

00:20:07.420 And what's weird though, Aaron, is, as someone who's kind of connected a little bit to the sort

00:20:13.700 of more pure progressives that would be in these, you know, in, in locations like Portland or Berkeley

00:20:20.980 or whatever, as far as I can tell, none, there's not like some thriving leftist underground art scene

00:20:26.680 either the way there was in the nineties. It's all, it's all gone. It's all burnt away. There's

00:20:31.020 nothing there. There's just people who are making these kinds of narcissistic self celebrations of,

00:20:36.880 of, of, of, of themselves and their, their identity groups and whatever, you know, there was a,

00:20:43.400 was a granite mountain movie club had this really brutal take. He said, well, look, if you think this

00:20:49.140 is organic, the demand, just think every, every year we have sort of the same sort of Asian woman memoir

00:20:55.620 about growing up in a Stryver family and wanting to be a poet. And I mean, I've, I've seen this a

00:21:01.060 thousand times. We saw this in the joy luck club. We saw this in, you know, in countless young,

00:21:07.100 sorry, not YA stories, but like contemporary lit stories in the nineties. You saw this

00:21:12.260 at the Academy Awards in that science fiction movie, everything, everywhere, all at once.

00:21:16.640 This keeps on getting redone and redone and redone. There's no organic demand for this,

00:21:20.840 but that it's all things like that at all levels for the left. There, there's no kind of

00:21:27.020 breath of fresh air, even that you see in a lot of underground artists on the right. And that's odd,

00:21:34.480 but what, here's what I will say. And this is our, I think what, what got everyone really angry at

00:21:39.800 Rufo. Uh, one thing that is absolutely the case, and I guess I'll just use this example since I'm me,

00:21:46.080 uh, there's a lot more demand to pay money for people who are producing art like things.

00:21:54.760 And the example I want to give is YouTube. Uh, you know, during my heyday in YouTube,

00:22:01.240 you know, before COVID, there were all of these leftist content creators that were making these

00:22:06.140 artistic explainer videos. They were all terrible. I'm thinking here mainly people like Natalie,

00:22:12.320 when ContraPoints, age bomber guy, all these people, uh, they made a really bad videos. They

00:22:19.200 were really terrible arguments and the production qualities were just like cut and paste from other

00:22:24.320 things. Every one of these creators got flooded with money. They got flooded with, they, they would,

00:22:30.460 they would make one video or two videos a year and they would get a million dollars for that.

00:22:34.760 Uh, that is what the leftist funding ecosystem looks like. It is not stingy and, uh, you know,

00:22:41.900 uh, they'll just put money on anything, you know, and, and you don't even have to make videos anymore.

00:22:46.700 There was this guy called, and you want those studios or it's kind of a funny thing that happened

00:22:50.700 an old leftist YouTube creator that made these little cartoon shorts about the alt right. And he

00:22:57.060 didn't make a video for an entire year. And then his fans just gave him $200,000 cause he asked for it

00:23:02.660 just because he asked for it. And, uh, with no promises of content, this is what the leftist

00:23:08.860 funding apparatus looks like. It, it just basically gives money to artists with no questions or strings

00:23:15.560 attached. Now maybe you could say, well, this is why they're so dysfunctional and they're all a bunch

00:23:20.820 of essentially e-beggars and they don't produce anything that's original. There's no, there's no

00:23:25.620 Darwinian pressure on that movement. Yeah. But the H bomber guys, like last few videos were

00:23:31.700 four hour discussions about why he hates fallout games. So yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how much

00:23:37.680 cultural productions he's really putting out. And then like two years ago, it's like, here's

00:23:41.520 a two hour video of me complaining about plagiarism and like the age of generative AI, which is a

00:23:46.600 ridiculous thing to worry about. And, uh, you know, the, these things like, and again, like

00:23:53.860 contrapoints is like the go-to one, because I know people in real life who gush about this person's

00:23:58.860 content. And there, there basically is none. I mean, there basically is like a video every year

00:24:04.020 or two or whatever, and it's all a carbon copy of this or that. And, um, you know, there's a case

00:24:10.840 to be made that the left is kind of drowning in their own generosity towards artists, that artists

00:24:18.200 have no incentive to actually reach for things more challenging. But man, it's a lot of the problem.

00:24:24.060 On the right wing, it's a drought. There's this, there's no water to get anything started. I can't,

00:24:29.920 you know, everybody who produces art in this scene or most people are, are doing it on top of doing a

00:24:35.380 day job. And in the meantime, and this is the essential thing, we'll probably get to this a little

00:24:40.260 bit. There's no apparatus for promotion. There's no way, you know, there's no, everybody, when a leftist

00:24:47.460 creator comes out, they all cross promote and the right wing does not do this. Uh, you know,

00:24:53.000 I haven't seen, I don't want to beat up on your colleague here, but I have never seen Rufo

00:25:00.080 promote a right wing artist in the way that I regularly see leftists promote each other.

00:25:07.400 It's never, Oh, like here's Dan. I mean, Dan Baltic would be never something that, you know,

00:25:11.460 Rufo would promote, but it's, it's never like, uh, they don't slaughter Isaac young, uh, you know,

00:25:19.100 uh, the, the, the theft of fire. I forget what that guy's name is. Um, I'm drawing a blank right

00:25:26.040 now. Uh, there, there's lots of people who've kind of broken into the fiction scene. I never see

00:25:29.940 anybody in the mainstream circles promote these, these creators or even talk about them. And art artists

00:25:37.420 really require this. They require artists produced for a community. And if the community isn't there,

00:25:44.880 then you're not going to develop a kind of prestige economy that Lomas talks about.

00:25:51.360 So I want to say two things. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, agree with you on one thing Chris said,

00:25:57.160 but then push back on one of the other things that you mentioned that he said, uh, when it came to,

00:26:01.920 okay, there's, there's billions of dollars sloshing around and we just don't have anyone to give it to.

00:26:07.420 I was like, I don't know, man, I can name like 30 guys, like off the top of my head who are,

00:26:12.500 are producing art or could be producing great art. And yet, like you said, are, are working,

00:26:17.260 you know, 60 hour wagey cagey jobs, uh, and getting zero promotion. And, uh, yeah, I'm pretty

00:26:23.400 sure if you just throw those guys, like if you should throw any one of them, 10 grand on a project,

00:26:28.720 which is like nothing it's, it's, it's like pocket change to a donor. Yeah. But by the way,

00:26:33.960 that's like, that is, that is one 20th, what people gave in your windows studios because he

00:26:39.360 didn't pay his taxes. Right. And this, this could be like life-changing money for, for right-wing

00:26:46.220 creatives. And there's just no, there's none of that. So I, I, I don't even understand how he said

00:26:51.600 that. However, the one thing that I want to push back on is you said, okay, well, you know, there

00:26:57.860 seems to be an idea from Rufo that if you just apply enough amount of money, like a venture

00:27:02.640 capitalist thing, like you just kind of see what hits the wall and sticks. And that's kind of all,

00:27:07.220 uh, that's kind of the only thing that conservatives understand when it comes to art,

00:27:11.240 just like get a bunch of money and like throw it against the wall and see what happens.

00:27:14.640 Um, first, I don't think that's even happening, but second, that wasn't actually, I believe Rufo's

00:27:19.280 main point. I believe Rufo's main point, uh, whether we agree with it or not, but I think we should

00:27:24.200 answer the actual point here. His main point was that conservatives don't want high art

00:27:29.180 that they haven't cultivated the palette for high art. There's no demand. So if you produce

00:27:34.180 the product, uh, you're, you're simply not going to get it. So no matter how many billions

00:27:38.300 of dollars we throw at like highbrow art installations or museums or movies or these kinds of things,

00:27:46.320 conservatives simply won't go to see it. His, I think his big example was like the Ayn Rand

00:27:52.240 movies that just, you know, they, they drew, uh, you know, a bunch of money behind, uh, now to some

00:27:57.900 extent, like that's just table money. It's like saying, Oh, they spent a hundred thousand dollars

00:28:01.700 on a movie and it didn't work. It's like, well, okay. Major movie studios do that all day, every

00:28:06.040 day. So, I mean, it's some, at some level, like you just have to be non-averse to the risk,

00:28:11.160 but I, I, well, I think there are flaws with that argument. I feel like we should engage

00:28:16.000 with that argument. Cause I think that's the one he's really making is that the cult,

00:28:19.780 the conservative audience simply does not have a cultivated palette to respond to high art. And

00:28:25.360 that is at the core of right-wing art production problem. Yeah. I mean, uh, Scott Greer has entered

00:28:32.000 the arena when I heard that, right? I, you know, he, you know, Scott Greer has made this same point.

00:28:38.440 I believe, I hope I'm not misquoting the wrong person on that, but this is, this is the argument,

00:28:43.260 the, the, it's been paraphrased different ways. Conservatives watch movies, liberals read this

00:28:49.620 obviously pisses off the right-wing intelligentsia, you know, the right-wing content creators because

00:28:55.400 right-wing content creators and people on the more dissident right-wing spirit certainly read books.

00:29:01.400 We read more books than progressives do typically. We're more engaged with high culture than they are,

00:29:07.040 but there is a case to be made though. And this is, this is true that in a world that is in an

00:29:14.640 audience that is kind of dominated by the boomer dynamics, I'm not talking about zoomers. If you're

00:29:19.480 20 years old, this, I don't think this dynamic will continue in that generation, but for older

00:29:24.720 millennials and before, so boomers, gen X, you know, et cetera, et cetera, they don't, there is this

00:29:31.940 cultural divide. There is less demand for artsy type stuff in the conservative demographic. Now, I, I think

00:29:39.740 that this is, you know, this is exactly the whole point of art. The point of art is to feed people

00:29:45.980 what you think they need to hear, not what they want. That is, that is the mistake. But, you know,

00:29:52.280 I tried to produce artsy-fartsy stuff on my YouTube channel. Lots of people did on the right. It never

00:29:57.320 connects as well as does just the straightforward video arguments, the kind of op-ed style stuff.

00:30:05.520 So it's a reality that will definitely hurt your bottom line. But I think that, I don't know,

00:30:11.760 this is sort of where you have to be a loss leader on these kinds of things. I would not expect

00:30:17.520 that conservative audiences would react well to, you know, Mozart or Shakespeare or whatever my example

00:30:24.760 was. But you're conservatives, right? This is what you believe. This is what people should be

00:30:32.320 looking at. This is what people should be appreciating. So you have to show people that

00:30:38.840 you believe in your principles enough to give people the very best of what they should want,

00:30:44.960 not what they actually will, or not what they actually express that they want. And, you know,

00:30:50.320 I don't know, Aaron. I do, I do think it is sort of on the onus of, of, of content creators and of

00:30:57.440 institution owners to kind of find the proper way to put a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go

00:31:04.860 down a little bit. There are ways, I think, that you can take things that are more artsy and then

00:31:11.480 mix them up with some crowd-pleasing elements and then give it to conservative audiences and they'll

00:31:17.080 still accept it. I don't know. I mean, The Passion of the Christ is a good example. Mel Gibson was able

00:31:23.160 to do this. This was a, I'm trying to think of movies that were big hits in sort of conservative

00:31:27.400 American circles. And, you know, the editing choices aside, which I really hate, it's a very

00:31:32.980 2000s era edited movie. That is a very high quality historical, I don't want to call it, it's a historical

00:31:41.160 fiction. That is a high quality historical interpretation movie, right? That is, I don't

00:31:48.020 know exactly what genre you'd call it, but that's as good as anything Hollywood would have produced.

00:31:52.380 And no one ever said that it was, no one ever claimed that it was low quality, that it's claimed

00:31:57.920 it was, you know, racist or whatever. That, that is an example. I mean, Mel Gibson showed there how you

00:32:03.100 can kind of put a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. So I know that's probably the

00:32:07.920 direction I would look in. Yeah. And I, so, you know, obviously what I do is very different and I

00:32:14.100 don't want to, you know, put myself forward as any kind of creative model. I don't think of myself as

00:32:18.640 an artist by, by any means. Uh, but, but to give some kind of, you know, analogy here, uh, you know,

00:32:26.600 most conservative commentary was very straightforward. Like, okay, we don't like this. Look what the libs

00:32:32.260 did. Aren't we angry at this kind of thing. And, you know, I was watching guys like you and many

00:32:38.780 others in the distant, right. Talk about power analysis, uh, you know, guys like Yarvin, you know,

00:32:44.180 you know, and my goal was to bridge that gap was to bring what was otherwise an, uh, kind of

00:32:52.740 undigestible, uh, incredibly, uh, bookish, uh, way of looking at politics and find a way to marry it,

00:33:01.700 to, you know, kind of the conservative audience and current events to translate, which was otherwise

00:33:07.240 like a pretty dense thing that didn't really generate a lot of interest initially into a form

00:33:14.260 that, you know, the average person would consume it. Now, I don't think I'm ever going to have the

00:33:18.820 largest show in the world. And specifically because this is what I do. Like I'm not out there chasing

00:33:24.180 every single headline. I'm not out there looking for every piece of clickbait. I'm not having the

00:33:28.800 blood sports debates and, you know, getting out there and doing the things that would have drive

00:33:32.440 drive an audience to like the highest heights, but that's okay. Cause I think no, nobody was really

00:33:38.180 bridging that gap. And I think it's worth bridging that gap. And if I can carve out a space bridging

00:33:44.040 that gap, well, I feel like I'm doing a good piece of work. And I feel like we, like you said,

00:33:49.840 like we should be able to find a way to take that high art and bring it to people in a way that will

00:33:55.560 make it digestible. And maybe it won't be the biggest movie in the world, but sometimes it

00:34:01.260 might be, you know, I don't think the passion of the Christ did poorly at the box office.

00:34:05.120 Yeah. And even if it did, you know, ultimately it would be a piece of art worth having. And so I

00:34:12.200 think there has to be that mentality. Also, I think, you know, Steve Saylor made a decent point.

00:34:17.520 I'm trying to remember all the movies he named, but he was like, you know, no country for old men

00:34:22.280 and the Batman trilogy, the Nolan's Batman trilogy. Like these are relatively right wing

00:34:28.060 pieces of art inside of a major studio ecosystem. You know, we can quibble about that. We, I'm sure

00:34:34.800 we could do like a whole, you know, 10 hour analysis on, you know, Nolan's Batman series and why it may

00:34:40.380 or may not be perfectly right wing. But his point ultimately is like, there are successfully kind

00:34:46.320 of, uh, you know, reactionary pieces of art that enter into the studio system already and appeal to

00:34:52.860 wide mainstream audiences. And in many cases are considered, you know, we're not just talking about,

00:34:58.080 you know, lady chasers or whatever that the lady ballers. Yeah. We're not talking about that. Like

00:35:04.120 we're, we're talking about truly, you know, no country old men might be one of the best movies ever

00:35:09.280 made. You know, when you're, when you're talking about something like that, uh, the Coen brothers,

00:35:15.240 entire filmography is sort of implicitly conservative, right? I'll be it from it's,

00:35:20.380 it's, it's, it's like a wasp picture. Sorry. It's a Jewish interpretation of a wasp reality that is

00:35:26.140 incredibly conservative at all levels. And every one of their movies expresses just that sentiment.

00:35:31.000 It's, it's kind of an amazing cultural artifact, but I mean, sorry, I didn't interrupt, but yeah,

00:35:35.880 go ahead. No, but yeah, that, that was just my point is like, it does, it, it feels like we have

00:35:41.580 examples of how this can work. And we're just kind of ignoring that because we either

00:35:47.220 have to make like, you know, we, it has to be a night at the Philharmonic or it has to be

00:35:52.540 the lowest level, uh, you know, slapstick gross out comedy we can find. There's just nothing in

00:35:58.340 between, you know, it's, it's either bad bunny or it's Mozart. And we can't, we can't pretend like

00:36:03.100 there's any, uh, play in the joints there. And I think that's, I think that's the problem is that,

00:36:07.740 and as you say, we should be ultimately elevating. I don't think, and again, I don't think Chris

00:36:11.380 would, would disagree necessarily with that, but I just think that that is a more attainable

00:36:16.900 goal that it's being portrayed as. And it doesn't require this monumental effort to drag the chuds

00:36:22.920 into, you know, this, the, the, the artistic, uh, brilliance of, of whatever we're doing.

00:36:27.860 Like I, as somebody who, I guess I'll just put it this way before I hit it back over to you.

00:36:32.440 One of the things I am most allergic to as a red stater who's been sneered down to my whole life

00:36:38.040 is the idea that red state culture is just like irredeemable and the people involved in it

00:36:42.880 simply cannot understand high art. When I look at most of what the left is doing,

00:36:47.240 it's not high art. It's just garbage. It's garbage with a lot of money and a lot of,

00:36:51.200 and a lot of production value that comes with money, but very little substance and very little

00:36:55.540 things do. And I see plenty of people in my very chuddish existence who could put out,

00:37:02.440 and have put out pieces that with that level of shine and polish and production could at the very

00:37:08.780 least compete with whatever trash the left is putting out. And so I just don't, I don't,

00:37:13.440 don't buy this idea that the chuds are like constitutionally incapable of being elevated

00:37:18.680 by art. Like, I think that's, I think that's something that many, and no offense to, to the

00:37:22.960 blue staters in the room. Uh, but I do think that is something that blue staters kind of need to tell

00:37:26.760 themselves sometimes to justify like not engaging with the right wider right-wing culture.

00:37:33.500 Yeah. I mean, I mean, blue staters at this stage are coasting on, what does it say? Past glory or

00:37:40.960 whatever. They're, they're, they're leaning on their laurels. Uh, you have to admit though, like in,

00:37:46.620 in the late, in the last three decades of the 20th century, the, the feelings that progressives

00:37:53.820 project was, there was a reality to that. It stopped being the case about 15, 20 years ago,

00:38:00.320 right? Sure. Sure. And, and so they're, they're coasting on those fumes, right? Uh, but you know,

00:38:05.560 and, and I guess this is sort of my, um, look, I mean, at this point, blue America and red America

00:38:12.600 are, are sort of different people groups and the generations are also different people groups.

00:38:17.540 So, so if you're a right-wing content creator or a people looking to fund right-wing content

00:38:23.240 creation, there's, there's a few ways you could take this. You could, you could go to a red state

00:38:27.940 audience and, and kind of, you know, mix the medicine and sugar to get yourself kind of that

00:38:33.000 perfect Mel Gibson, uh, you know, both educational and uplifting while at the same time appealing to

00:38:39.360 that audience, which I think would be, that would be highly productive and probably profitable.

00:38:42.960 I, I've, I've seen the, the better, the better fare from Angel Studio and Daily Wire sometimes gets

00:38:50.220 to that level, although not nearly as much as I would like it to. Uh, then there is kind of,

00:38:56.340 there, there's other directions you could go in. There is trying to kind of create something wild

00:39:02.800 and crazy and new to try to recapture the zeitgeist, which is that, that definitely has to be the

00:39:09.040 product of the young Zoomers. And I think that in the Zoomer generation in particular, I think that

00:39:14.620 the, the urban rural divide that characterize the division between left and right is going to break

00:39:20.260 down and it's going to fall much more on demographics and much more on ethnic and, and sexual,

00:39:26.400 uh, gender demographics and lifestyle demographics and religious demographics. There'll be a project

00:39:31.960 there for them to undertake, what defines a new non-mainstream culture that is not this

00:39:39.060 slop culture that's coming out of Hollywood. And that is not this absolutely brainless trash that's

00:39:45.940 coming out of the progressive spheres that used to be the very generative new places to, to see

00:39:51.740 counterculture. But then there's also sort of a third thing that I kind of harp on. Don't you just

00:39:58.700 really want to kind of humiliate blue staters and eat their lunch because while they're resting on

00:40:06.360 their laurels, there's all these sort of cultural properties that they used to do really well that

00:40:12.260 they can no longer do and that aren't that expensive. And I, I don't know if, if conservatives

00:40:17.720 are naturally going to be your demo for these sorts of things, but I do know that nobody's producing

00:40:24.100 quality Shakespeare and I'd really like to go see a Shakespeare movie. And I know that people are

00:40:28.600 walking away from classical music these days and I'd really like to do that too. So I don't know.

00:40:35.040 I mean, if you really wanted, like I said, the big failure of the halftime show from TPO say was the

00:40:40.280 failure to humiliate bad bunny, not a failure to produce quality content. If conservative media

00:40:46.560 started doing the sorts of things that progressives walked away from, it would be very humiliating.

00:40:52.200 So, so, so I agree with this so much. And, um, you know, I, I have been to the UK a few times in

00:40:59.960 the last few years and gone by the globe and I want to see Shakespeare at the globe, right? Like

00:41:06.580 that just, yeah, that historically like that, that legacy, I want to sit there and, and every

00:41:13.440 Shakespeare being put on there is just so radically awful and woke that I just can't bring myself to do

00:41:19.600 it. I love Julius Caesar. I have watched the Marlon Brando, Julius Caesar so many times. I can't even

00:41:27.160 tell you, like, I love that play. I love everything about it. It would cost you nickels, nickels to put

00:41:34.360 on just a good Julius Caesar that I could watch. I can't speak to everybody else. I don't know if the

00:41:41.420 entire world would watch it, but I would watch it. I would put the living, you know what, out of it.

00:41:46.000 Like, like, and how, like I get it. Marlon Brando is like a generational talent, but how much money

00:41:51.300 does it really cost you to find an excellent guy to stand in that role and stand and deliver

00:41:59.140 and put on that production? Like it can't cost you more than the pin dragon cycle. It can't cost you

00:42:05.800 more than probably even the TP USA halftime show. Yeah. And I just don't understand. Like, even if

00:42:12.120 let's say it's not going to work, okay, it's going to cost you like 200 grand. It's going to cost you

00:42:18.180 less than like your coffee budget for the year for most of these organizations. Just do it. Just do it

00:42:23.800 to do it because you can, because it's out there because no one else is doing it because it's good

00:42:28.580 and beautiful and true. Just do it. Stop giving me excuses about, oh, it's not going to turn enough

00:42:33.300 profit and the conservatives aren't going to appreciate it. Make them appreciate it. Grow a pair,

00:42:37.960 be a leader in some way. Plus, you know, it is as an influencer and as a dreaded blue stater,

00:42:45.760 there's just a thing that I want to do. I want to be able to talk about a film that can't be

00:42:55.380 dismissed, that comes from a conservative studio or production company that cannot be dismissed as

00:43:01.740 agiprop or low quality slop, even for people who haven't seen it. Like they're forced,

00:43:07.600 kind of channeling that famous Golda Cat line. Like I want something that forces them to acknowledge

00:43:14.440 that there are quality products being produced in a creative environment that is not dominated by

00:43:22.080 progressives. Just one or two, just one or two would help me. I don't know how important this is

00:43:29.040 for conservatives, but I can't be the only one in this position. It would, it would help change the

00:43:34.860 cultural conversation so much if there were prominent pieces of sort of prestigious art that

00:43:43.480 did not come from obviously progressive communities. Because this is, this is the, this is what they're

00:43:51.780 telling themselves. Blue America is telling their audience, look, you know, maybe we're not as good

00:43:57.860 as we used to be. Maybe things aren't as, as, as, as exciting as they were in the 1990s, but that's

00:44:04.440 just your nostalgia. You know, you're, you're just projecting better feelings on past times. It's

00:44:10.980 always been like this. And moreover, there's no other game in town. And there are a lot of people

00:44:17.120 who come from progressive environments that are tired of hearing that. And I don't know, like, again,

00:44:23.600 I'm not an investor. I'm not somebody who has the billions sloshing around, but to me, that sounds

00:44:30.500 like an opportunity. And I think that, you know, I can't imagine not wanting to explore that in some

00:44:36.720 ways. Now, you know, there's lots of ways to explore that possibility that don't involve

00:44:42.360 rehashing 400 year old plays, but the 400 year old plays are by far the cheapest and you could do it

00:44:51.560 an issue, the strength project. So let me ask you this as we're wrapping up, because this is another

00:44:56.160 aspect of this that I think is important. You know, we, we, we both recognize the importance of

00:45:01.480 in real life communities and connections. We're both involved with the old glory club and other efforts to

00:45:06.480 create these in life, you know, in real life communities. But ultimately culture is something

00:45:12.760 that is emergent from you living life together, right? Like this, you, you have to build a culture to

00:45:19.020 produce cultural products. And right now American conservatism is just kind of like this thing

00:45:25.280 that's thrown across the country. Like the left has the upside of having this broad, you know,

00:45:31.040 coastal connection between the elite class and the, you know, the, the creatives and that kind of thing

00:45:37.320 that kind of helps them get stitched together a little bit. But we, we just don't have, like,

00:45:42.220 we don't have that, that Berkeley scene. Like we don't have, you know, that scene that's coming

00:45:46.720 together or you, yeah, you, you, but you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm agreeing with you, but

00:45:51.420 because we, you know, a major problem, which is that this is, yeah, let me get to the, to the,

00:45:56.800 almost to the end of this. So the first place I think of that could, this could coalesce around

00:46:02.000 is a place like Nashville, right? Because it's country music capital, but also Tennessee has gotten a

00:46:09.500 reputation as being like the place that you should move if you're kind of a red state creative, but

00:46:15.880 you don't want to keep staying in whatever blue state you're stuck in. So like daily wire moved

00:46:20.500 there and a bunch of conservatives, uh, commentators and writers and artists have moved there. But if

00:46:26.480 you go to, uh, Nashville, it's all, you know, check out my pride, you know, flag here's the, you know,

00:46:34.420 there there's despite having moved a large number of high dollar investors and, and commentators and

00:46:41.680 writers and critics and, and musicians and everything else, despite the incredible concentration of what

00:46:47.320 should be conservative right-wing energy, left-wing culture still dominates the city. So why is that

00:46:53.740 not turning into the right-wing haven like for, for cultural production? Why is a concentration,

00:47:00.040 a high concentration of creative right-wing people not producing a output there?

00:47:06.820 I mean, this is, you know, you, you've hammered on the first part of your question implies that

00:47:11.180 we've, creativity will always centralize in the cities. Even people who are regional writers like

00:47:17.040 Mark Twain, they get their experiences in the rural areas and then they move to San Francisco and

00:47:21.860 write about them. Right. Uh, you know, so this is just how artists are, you know, you need to have

00:47:26.740 these concert, you need to have these concentrations of, of creatives to get a scene going. And, uh,

00:47:35.480 you know, this is actually an excellent question. I'm a little unprepared for it, but there, there is a

00:47:42.160 problem in the sense that, A, we don't have enough of these epicenters, but, you know, I've only been

00:47:46.980 to Nashville a few times and it's always been for corporate conferences. So I never really got a chance

00:47:51.500 to check out the scene there. But the, the, the, the main problem is that scenes are not, they don't

00:47:59.320 just organically spring up from concentrations of things. They, they're basically created by people,

00:48:06.180 by people who make a decision to, to, to usually by like one or two people that come together and

00:48:12.560 decide that they're going to have a new way of doing things, a new way that we want to get people

00:48:18.240 together to think in this new way. And the big problem right now, at least for the right, and you

00:48:23.400 can see this everywhere, and this is colors, all of our political controversies. The left is one thing.

00:48:29.820 The right is many different little things. So if you look at a place like Nashville and I don't have,

00:48:36.900 I mean, this happened in dime square, right? Like there were a few big people that got together

00:48:41.160 and for two or three years kind of got a scene together of non-progressive people that produced art.

00:48:47.460 And you could argue about how generative that is. You would need something similar to happen

00:48:52.780 inside the Nashville scene, inside, I don't know, I would imagine there's something similar going on

00:48:57.560 in Florida. That would probably be the next logical place to look. Maybe something, probably not Utah,

00:49:03.660 but there, there probably will be these epicenters that are known for being not progressive and

00:49:09.780 magnets for people who are not in those modes. The thing is, is that because conservatism or right-wing

00:49:17.060 ideology is not an ideology, it's just everybody who isn't progressive, the only thing that will

00:49:22.600 characterize, there's no spontaneous organization the way there is on the left. The people who are,

00:49:27.920 I mean, imagine if you were, you went to a city and everybody in that city was your specific

00:49:34.260 denomination of Christianity and your specific political preferences. Like that would be, that would

00:49:40.640 be essentially, that is essentially the environment that progressive content creators function in.

00:49:46.080 They function in an environment where almost everybody in a very tightly dense urban area has

00:49:51.560 their exact religious and political preferences almost to a tee. That's why when you do the little

00:49:56.580 graphs, the progressives are all clumped up and everyone else who's not, all the conservatives are spread

00:50:02.060 out. To create an alternative like that for conservatives, you would need to have actual

00:50:09.740 specific organizations and actual specific people like Charlie Kirk decide, this is what we are doing.

00:50:17.200 We are going to literally create this. We are literally, it's not going to emerge organically

00:50:22.180 like it does for the left because we're not the same thing as left. And this is also the reason why,

00:50:28.220 you know, Charlie Kirk's death is such a blow to the right. He would be exactly the kind of person

00:50:34.880 that I would look to, to in his later years, undertake such a project. I don't think, I think

00:50:42.000 Rufo could do the same thing, but it requires a certain, I'm not trying to put down Rufo. It requires

00:50:48.820 a certain risk, non-averse personality that Charlie Kirk had and that, no offense to Rufo, Rufo kind of is a

00:50:56.880 little bit more of a risk-averse personality, right? And so it requires kind of this idea that we're

00:51:02.880 going to just found something completely different that's going in a new direction and we're going to

00:51:07.700 stick with it. And the idea, there's not going to be an organic flowering of artistic community inside

00:51:16.220 heavily right-wing areas unless people actually lead them. Unless the saturation of a specific

00:51:24.440 religion is just so high that it replicates the experience that progressives have in places like

00:51:31.340 Berkeley or Portland. Yeah. Whether you like it or not, you do just need somebody who's like,

00:51:37.100 we're going to organize these events and we're going to scout this talent and we're going to curate

00:51:41.020 the work and we're going to build hype around it and we're going to write about it and we're going to

00:51:46.580 publicize it. You just have to have that mechanism. And it's difficult because I know that, you know,

00:51:54.380 I always feel bad trying to give any marching orders this because I just, you know, like I said, I guess

00:52:02.700 writing is at some level creative, but I just don't think of myself as a artistic person in that sense.

00:52:08.260 And so I don't know that I, you know, I don't want to tell people to go do things that I won't do.

00:52:14.020 But in this case, it's more like, I just, I don't have that skillset, but I know it's critical and I'd

00:52:19.020 like to support those that do. So I think there's a lot of truth in that, but you're right. It's

00:52:24.560 difficult to know who will be that torchbearer, who has that elder statesman quality of, you know,

00:52:32.620 being able to kind of attract the donors, but also, you know, be plugged into what's popular,

00:52:38.660 what might, you know, hit the zeitgeist properly, you know, build, build that scene, build young

00:52:43.840 talent. It is a very specific skillset that does, does need to, I guess, be elevated. I guess the

00:52:52.140 best we can do is be on a lookout for it and know that ultimately it needs to emerge and hope,

00:52:57.420 you know, maybe perhaps even to cultivate it or support it. If we see, you know, someone who

00:53:02.220 might bring that on the horizon, but it is, it is always difficult. You know, the joke is everyone

00:53:07.760 sits around saying we need more right-wing art and then they go back to not making right-wing art and

00:53:12.040 not promoting right-wing art. And then, you know, so I know we're coming up on time, but this is kind

00:53:17.780 of, I wanted to hit on this last point. Sure. We can see how long it goes, but the real critical

00:53:24.340 piece of the puzzle that's missing from our operations right now is kind of the promotional

00:53:30.880 infrastructure. And this does kind of fall a little bit more on people like me. I don't know,

00:53:37.060 I don't think I'm very artsy, but I am, I am, I definitely lean on more of the cultural side,

00:53:42.860 cultural commentary side. And it's just so important to kind of jump into the scene as it is

00:53:52.880 and take chances on new content creators and kind of, I'm not saying you have to like or read

00:53:58.980 all sorts of things. For instance, I'm not a big genre sci-fi fan, but what's so essential to having

00:54:06.960 to, to developing the possibility of a scene or a prestige economy, as Lomez said, is to have people

00:54:14.200 that are actually talking about the books in question and actually be able to direct audiences

00:54:20.680 into certain things that you know, or you think that they would actually like and to, and to go

00:54:26.780 forward and say, this, this matters. This is something that has really influenced my thought

00:54:32.680 that that's got me to look at things in a different way. And we're going to have a conversation about

00:54:38.300 it. And if you haven't read this or experienced it, you're really missing out. You know, this is

00:54:43.180 something that is, it's, it's not something that requires money. It just something that requires a set of

00:54:48.460 habits on the part of people who are not like, you know, not just any conservative, but people who

00:54:55.580 consider themselves to be a little more, a little more invested in making sure non-progressive culture

00:55:01.620 thrives or that there are non-progressive futures, cultures for people to inhabit. It really does

00:55:09.220 behoove you to become act in a tastemaker ecosystem as much as you can. And this, this involves trying

00:55:17.240 to find artists, try to locate artists that are in the genres that you really appreciate and like to

00:55:23.760 read. And then just being kind of aware of other artists that are in genres that you aren't very

00:55:31.860 attached to for other people. And one of the positive things that came out of the controversy

00:55:38.200 around Rufo and Granite Mountain Movie Club and all that stuff is that a lot of people started swapping

00:55:44.160 their efforts to document smaller content creators. And hopefully what that will facilitate are people

00:55:51.740 getting together and being able to exchange numbers, contacts, and develop a little bit more of an

00:56:00.040 ecosystem for prestige and clout. Well, and also say one more thing before we go. It's also true that

00:56:07.900 conservative funders and conservative, you know, publishers and those that might popularize many of

00:56:16.140 these works and bring that press or prestige to them also tend to be people who are very adverse

00:56:22.080 to controversy or to, to people who are transgressing in some way. And you, you know, you've got to kind

00:56:30.660 of get over that. I mean, the creatives are going to be wacky. They're going to be wild. They have to be

00:56:36.520 at some level to produce what they're producing. They're going to color outside the lines. They might be

00:56:41.580 coded right wing, but ultimately, you know, transgress by certain taboos at the same time.

00:56:48.020 And you have to like build a little bit of spine for that. I remember when a bronze age pervert,

00:56:53.600 you know, came out with his book and it was a huge scandal that the Claremont review of books had

00:56:58.640 reviewed it. Like this was just awfully, you know, how, how could you, this man is a racist and a

00:57:03.900 misogynist and how could, and this was, you know, coming from conservatives, like how, how could you go out

00:57:09.280 there and, and just even review his book favorably, uh, was, was, was quite scandal. And, um, you know,

00:57:16.340 however you feel about, you know, uh, BAP or his book, like you just can't have that mentality when

00:57:23.620 you're trying to cultivate art. Like you have to, that doesn't mean you just allow any behavior.

00:57:27.980 That doesn't mean you just, uh, you know, close your blind eye to everything, but it does mean you

00:57:32.600 need to have a certain amount of like, okay, I'm going to promote good artwork because it's good

00:57:37.360 artwork. And I'm not going to sit there and make sure that every guy is a priest before I recommend

00:57:42.440 his book that, you know, or, or his movie or his, his art project. I think that that's also important

00:57:47.640 thing for conservative donors or those that want to put themselves in the idea of like cultural,

00:57:53.000 uh, content curation. Like they need to have that understanding because if you're going in there,

00:57:57.820 just being like, I want everyone to, I don't know, put out buddy Holly stuff and like, you're just

00:58:03.280 not going to get anywhere. Yeah. I mean, this is an unfortunate reality of human nature that by when

00:58:10.900 you do art, you're dealing with kind of unstable people and you can't run an inquisition on that.

00:58:15.380 I wish people were, were, were saints and good writers, but even then there, there's also this

00:58:22.300 tendency conservatives have of not really understanding when fictionalized representations

00:58:27.800 of debauchery and evil are, are bent to be sort of poetic or, or in, in context, uh, of a larger

00:58:35.680 lesson. A great example is like Flannery O'Connor. This is, if you ever talked to a Catholic

00:58:40.660 conservative, she comes up on the top of their lists. Uh, but when a lot of research stories

00:58:45.720 were published, people were upset because they were so violent, right? And, and seemed to be kind

00:58:51.020 of, they prevented a very grotesque picture of, of, of the South and you know, that, that

00:58:56.820 wasn't ultimately the point of them, but this is, you know, when, when you're doing art, you,

00:59:02.880 you have to give yourself space to, to make sort of large mistakes and to, to kind of experiment

00:59:11.280 with the seedier part of human existence. And a lot of conservative donors really kind of

00:59:16.900 need to become, uh, aware of that and make peace with it.

00:59:21.860 All right, Dave. Well, it's been a fantastic, uh, conversation. I look forward to, uh, seeing

00:59:26.740 you in six months so we can have the same conversation again. Uh, but until then, where should people

00:59:31.560 be looking to find your fantastic work? Uh, sure. Yeah. I, uh, I write at Fiddler's Green,

00:59:37.960 uh, Substack and I have a YouTube channel called The Distributist. Either one of those works and, uh,

00:59:44.320 yeah. And then there's my Twitter account and, uh, you know, a variety of organizations also host

00:59:49.000 my stuff that we both mentioned here. So that's it. All right, guys, go bully Dave into making video

00:59:55.200 essays. Uh, and, uh, when you're done with that, make sure that you subscribe to this YouTube

00:59:59.580 channel. If you aren't already, uh, click the bell notifications, all that stuff. So, you know,

01:00:03.900 when we're going live, if you want to get these broadcast as podcasts, of course, you need to

01:00:08.160 subscribe to the Orr McIntyre show on your favorite podcast network. Again, sorry guys traveling right now.

01:00:13.320 So cannot answer your chats, but thank you so much for watching and thank you for your support.

01:00:17.900 As always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - February 20, 2026

Why The Right Struggles With Art ｜ Guest： Dave Greene 2⧸20⧸26

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