Republicans Need To Stop Letting Democrats Set The Narrative

It is quite incredible how profoundly in control of the narrative the left is in America. Take a look at any controversial cultural topic, and pay attention to how it is described. Any ostensibly neutral source you find will describe the issue in terms only people on the political left would use.

The topic of abortion is framed as “abortion rights,” not “unborn child rights.” The topic of LGBT, specifically the trans push is framed as “LGBT rights,” as if one side is arguing for equal rights for LGBT people and one side is arguing against it. Discussions on race are framed as “addressing racial inequalities and acknowledging faults” or some variation.

The implicit claim is that the left wants to fix the racial problems in the country and “have an honest discussion on race.” The reality is that the left uses race as a perpetual weapon, and pushes extreme, factually false narratives about racism in America that are not congruent with reality.

This framing is so ubiquitous that anyone who questions the left wing orthodoxy will have their credibility attacked. Any deviation from the left wing narrative is labelled as out of the mainstream.

The American left has been surreptitiously inserting their premises and pretending that those left wing premises are neutral, descriptive axioms, for years. And you can see their effects. Every single Republican and conservative must start a discussion on any controversial issue dispelling the fictitious left wing descriptions of what the argument is about.

As mentioned above, the way that the supposedly neutral media describes what is being debated in the culture war issues, is how the left would describe it. The idea that the left makes claims of racism when it is not there, or that not wanting men who think they are women to compete in women’s sports is bigotry, either doesn’t cross the minds of the leftists in control of America’s institutions, or is purposefully ignored.

But why does it matter? Surely people can think for themselves. Sure they can. But the cultural and political issues in American life are complex. People have their own lives to focus on. The issue of race, abortion, LGBT, economics, and the details of political figures, are not easily understandable to people who don’t focus on politics all the time.

An analogy would be the India-Pakistan conflict. It is a complex issue, with many specific details. Both sides can present compelling arguments for why the other side is in the wrong. It’s not as simple as one side completely oppressing another.

I do not know much, if anything, about the conflict. If I went to look up the conflict, and was given ostensibly reputable, objective sources, I would take the description of the details of the conflict at face value. Obviously, I’d look at multiple sources. But if all of the supposedly objective sources had a pro India slant that I didn’t know about, my impression of the conflict would be more favorable toward India than it should be.

This doesn’t mean that whenever there is a contentious debate between two sides, ipso facto, we cannot know who is more right. What it does mean is that when complex, contentious issues are debated, if the way the facts are presented slant heavily towards one side, we do not get an accurate view about what is being debated.

And this must be separated from the idea of giving equal weight to two opposing views when one is demonstrably false. Of course, many arrogant leftists try to claim that the right wing view of these cultural debates is objectively false. No, it is not false that many of the claims of how racist the US actually is, are extreme exaggerations.

No, conservative states are not preventing you from mentioning homosexuality. The fact that I have to argue just for the conservative view on these issues to be viewed as legitimate, is indicative of the narrative control that the left has in America.

But beyond that, Republicans need to be more proactive. They allow Democrats to call them, what the Democrats themselves are. The left called the right fascist, despite the left controlling the institutions and methods of communication, which they then weaponized to suppress conservative opinions.

They shut down discussion about the Hunter Biden laptop. They claim that the right wing is pedaling conspiracy theories. Yet for years they, using the avenues of the DOJ and FBI, pushed phony claims of Trump Russia collusion. The Steele Dossier turned out to be completely fraudulent. But what did the left do when that happened? They just went on to the next thing.

The left claims that conservatives are banning speech and free thought. In actuality, the left is muzzling debate. They are doing it by defining opinions that they don’t like as “hate speech,” and then suppressing it. Opinions like men and women are distinct, different genders, and if you are a man who thinks you are a woman, you are still a man.

The official description of the riots of 2020 was that they were “protests for racial equality.” They were not. The whole narrative of the riots were disproven. They made claims that there is systemic racism in America. There is no such thing. The only legal racism in America, is against whites and Asians, in the form of affirmative action. Individuals having racial prejudices is not indicative of the systems in a country.

The left claims that conservatives are authoritarians who do not accept losing elections. Yet it was the left that for years did not accept Donald Trump’s victory as legitimate. Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump an illegitimate President and still does to this day. Stacey Abrams did the same when she lost the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race. And yet this has been memory holed, or claimed to be different in kind.

There are so many more examples of this. On any important issue, the negative that the left is accusing the right of, is something that they themselves have done. It is time for Republicans to not only combat left wing narratives, but to stop the left from setting the narrative in the first place.

Republicans need to be shouting this from the hills. Point out in any media appearance how the left controls the narrative and pushes a false picture of what the arguments on these topics are about. Being reactive to what the left says and does will put the GOP on the perpetual back foot.

The left should have to respond to conservative axioms for a change. They should be the ones defending and explaining their insane positions. Conservatives need to learn to be proactive. For the sake of America, Republicans need to stop letting Democrats set the narrative.