The Conservative Industrial Complex
14th June 2024
Zman’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
One of the many frustrations of people in outsider politics is that the people inside conventional politics, especially in the conservative wing, never respond to what is going on outside of Washington. After every election, regardless of the result, they continue doing what they were doing before the election. We saw this most clearly after 2016 where Conservative Inc rallied against Trump.
The reason for that is conservatism is not just an institution or even a collection of institutions, but rather an ecosystem that provides total care for the people who are allowed to take up a place in it. If you manage to slither inside one of the institutions, you no longer live outside of your political existence. To the contrary, your entire life is now defined by your place in the political ecosystem.
The reason for that is the enormity of institutional conservatism. What it lacks in popular support it more than makes up for in financial support. That money is used to build a network of institutions that are linked together to provide a lifestyle to the people inside them that they could never achieve in the dreaded private sector. As a result, everyone inside is deeply loyal to the system.