Don’t just take the red pill - pay for it!
We can’t win a culture war if we don’t fund our warriors
I recall reading, many years ago, Paul Weyrich’s “Letter to Conservatives” and finding it persuasive. Weyrich, a co-founder of The Heritage Foundation, declared that the culture war was over and conservatives had lost. He advocated a “turn off, tune out, drop out” strategy for traditional values conservatives who desired to protect themselves and their families from the cultural rot all around them.
And Weyrich wrote this in 1999! It is merciful he is with God now and no longer here to witness the depths of depravity we have reached in 2023.
Weyrich was, of course, writing at a time when the culture was shaped by television, film and music industry executives who had a firm hold on the stories told and values transmitted via popular culture. These were big money businesses that had little competition for control of the dominant cultural narratives from shallow pocketed challengers. But the proliferation of new media channels via the flowering of the internet and social media has presented fresh angles of attack for cultural conservatives — if only they would fully recognize and seize the opportunity.
To get directly to the point, the best way to fight the culture war is to fund cultural content, especially storytelling, that supports traditional conservative American values. If you are complaining about the culture in 2023 and you have a subscription to Disney/Hulu/ESPN but are not a paid subscriber to Red Pilled America, then I’m sorry to say it but you are working for the enemy.
I have more to say about the burgeoning revolution in funding cultural content, but I will save that for another day. The rest of this piece will be a straight-up endorsement explaining why, if you care one whit about the future of this country, you should be a paid subscriber to Red Pilled America. I could give so many reasons, but I’ll focus on three main areas. First, here’s a link to their website.
1. The storytelling
Red Pilled America came onto my radar during the chaos of 2020. Scott Adams had recommended an episode titled “Let There Be Light” which featured the Dilbert cartoonist and asked the question, “Can science fiction bring us closer to God?” Adams tweeted, “I’m biased because it makes me look useful, but the quality of this episode is remarkable on every level. Best thing I have heard in audio-only format. Highly recommended.” He wasn’t exaggerating. I gave it a listen and was blown away.
I checked out their archive and saw that just a few weeks prior they had done a two-episode profile of Phyllis Schlafly. How had I not heard of this podcast? And there were so many interesting stories in the archive to catch up on. I became a subscriber. And Red Pilled America has been the gift that keeps on giving. From the riotous “Capture the Flag” telling the story of an army of Redditors taking down Shia LaBeouf’s avowed 24/7 protest against the Trump presidency to the epic 10-part series “The Fighter” telling the true story of Richard Nixon and Watergate, the stories are amazing.
In some cases, the stories can be life changing. When you subscribe, go into the archive and make a beeline for Episode 92: “Fine Tuned.” It tells the story of Eric Metaxas and how he overcame a crisis of faith by uncovering the biggest untold story of them all — scientific proof of the existence of God. Yes, you can and should read Metaxas’s book, Is Atheism Dead? (2021), but the Red Pilled America episode telling the story of the fine tuned universe theory is, for my money, the best 45 minutes in podcast history.
2. The mantra - “politics is downstream of culture”
Nobody in the conservative movement has a better understanding of Andrew Breitbart’s admonition, “politics is downstream of culture,” than the podcasting duo at Red Pilled America. Many podcasters give lip service to this idea, then proceed to talk politics all day long. Don’t get me wrong — we definitely need to wage war on the political front, but the conservative movement already has an abundance of that. Victories at the ballot box do not translate into policies that reflect working class American values because conservatives have, by and large, failed to enter the storytelling arena. Stories provide lessons and examples by which people can live their lives. Without good stories, we ultimately cannot have a good society.
Why does Red Pilled America understand this better than others in the conservative movement? Well, the husband-wife team of Patrick Courrielche and Adryana Cortez talk about how they grew up in Los Angeles and were in the cultural content game for many years before realizing they could no longer stomach Hollywood values. Like Ronald Reagan who was an FDR Democrat before he became a movement conservative, these two have both the zeal of converts and a working knowledge of how the enemy thinks and operates. They don’t just know that politics is downstream of culture, they have lived and experienced it firsthand.
3. The “Backstage” episodes
One of the true delights of giving financial support to Red Pilled America is that, as good as the regular episodes are, the Backstage episodes are an extraordinary bonus for paying subscribers. They tell the ongoing story of a husband and wife, who are also parents, trying to make sense of the confusing times we are living in and make decisions that are consistent with traditional morals and family values. Their love and support of one another, through good times and bad, shines through. If your faith in the institutions of marriage and the family are not reaffirmed by listening to the Backstage episodes, there is something wrong with you. Here is that link again.