By Brett Rogers
A friend of mine who went to China twenty years ago was struck by how traditional villages had detailed craftsmanship on the most ordinary of things – such as a gate. When she asked about it, she was told that some of these works were hundreds or even thousands of years old. It was a way of improving life and culture. A gift given by some artisan and cherished by generations to follow.
In the movie LA Story, Steve Martin, when giving a tour of LA to a foreigner, says, “Some of these buildings are actually twenty years old!”
China, a nation that works against the interests of the US, plays the long game. And by long game, I mean generations. They’re okay with simply working slowly and incrementally, advancing with patience and persistence, to gain advantage over us. If it takes 100 years, so be it.
The US can’t keep a consistent foreign policy for five years. Its people get bored 10 seconds into a TV show. Each generation seems to compete with another for which one is most virtuous.
Unfortunately, Republican voters have no political long game beyond one election cycle. It’s part of why we lose our fight. We focus narrowly on each legislative session, and when it doesn’t deliver on a conservative agenda with so-called Republicans in the majority at the statehouse, we then focus our attention on a primary election that is only months away. Our challengers begin their campaigns to unseat a bunch of phonies with little money, little time, and little support. Unsurprisingly, this short-attention span process produces few victories.
What it does produce in vast quantities is vast cynicism. “Elections… yeah right. That’ll change things.” The framers gave us a peaceful means of revolution through the ballot box, which the left gleefully uses to advance their agenda. The left plays the communist long game quite well, knowing that their unpopular policies will remain in place after they next temporarily lose power because the right has no long game at all and will never organize to elect enough actual conservatives who will advance a conservative agenda.
Many in the Tea Party said that they were in it for their children – to save them from monumental debt. Is that true? Because that would require a long game, and patience, and strategy, and long term organization.
If Republican voters want Republican victory, then they have to figure out how to play a long game – a generationally long game – or they will never undo a couple hundred years of sliding away from the liberty we were gifted.
Brett Rogers is a well-known political activist throughout Texas and resides in Marion County by Lake O The Pines. He publishes NETX.News and believes that smaller government is better government. His opinions are his own and do not reflect those of the Jimplecute.