Opinion: Scorched Earth – The Left’s Final Culture War Tactic
Slade Hale
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Sandwiched within the pages of countless historical tomes detailing military strategy is a particular tactic oft-used by retreating armies in the face of insurmountable odds; an altogether cynical and devious ploy known as the scorched-earth policy.
At its heart, the premise is simple – to obliterate and render useless any resource, commodity or tool that could be used by the advancing enemy army to press their attack.
This strategy was successfully executed as far back as the 6th century, yet rose to special prominence as a tactic leveraged by multiple armies throughout World War II due to the fact that physical wars are economic in nature, requiring a precise balance between resource gathering, deployment and consumption in order to wage an effective campaign.
Similarly, culture wars mimic many of the same philosophical principles, albeit with both sides battling it out to seize ideological ground on which to establish an even larger soapbox than actual physical land.
To this end, the current culture wars were originally ignited by the modern political Left in an attempt to seize all available conversational territory and establish a permanent socio-political hegemony.
And yet, just as the seemingly unstoppable Third Reich and its Axis brethren faced ultimate defeat at the hands of Allied forces, the fascistic political Left has now been forced into a permanent state of retreat by their opponents – and they’re losing more and more ground with each passing day.
Robbed of the prospect of ultimate victory, the Left are now engaged in their final and most destructive tactic – a scorched-earth policy designed to decimate, mock and destroy our cultural institutions and intellectual properties, rather than allow them to be retaken by sane and rational minds.
The venerable H.L. Mencken once said that a cynic is “…a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”
What a fitting entendre for the current, hardline Leftist movement, itself a virtual cavalcade of near-sighted nihilism, persistent antagonism and never-ending struggle, self-inflicted just for the sake of it.
Under the auspices of ‘equality’, the creatively bankrupt minds on the Left not only drank from the poisoned well of radical Marxist theory, but then used the ideology to twist and pervert as many pop cultures as possible with alarming alacrity – all the while engaging in levels of unparalleled racism that would make a pre-Civil War slave owner blush.
The original mission parameters involved hijacking these prolific and iconic properties in order to corrupt and turn them into delivery vehicles for their own dysfunctional messages, all with the intent of warping the minds of new and existing generations.
From there, children became the primary target, the demographic being considered ripe for twisting and turning them against the ‘outdated thinking’ of their own parents.
And unfortunately, this led to many of them being molded into hyper-sexualized automatons, their brains so programmed by extreme-radical gender theory that they’re now able to be convinced to cut off their own breasts and genitalia.
But what the Left didn’t count on was the insurmountable social backlash, itself akin to a tidal wave, that would subsequently arrive to sweep over their defenses, run roughshod over their operational structure, and turn their ultimate dream of social control into a frantic, circle-running panic.
After a year of political and social red-pilling that swept across the West, 2022 arrived with a bang and stopped the Left dead in its tracks with no ground to be gained.
Then came 2023, wherein a barrage of hyperkinetic counterattacks crushed the Left’s singular stranglehold on media and social commentary, forcing them to quickly make an about-face and retreat to higher ground.
Left thrashed by the effectiveness of various boycott campaigns spearheaded by a triangulation of conservative traditionalists, middle-ground centrists and classic liberals – such as those against Bud Light and Target – the radical Left were forced to stare down their own failed crusade in the face.
Finding their regular tactics losing steam, these ideologues were left with the option to either acknowledge the outrageous consistency of their fumbles or quintuple down on past behavior.
(For my part, I have always stated what I believe to be the obvious: that the Left are psychologically incapable of self-realization – and by extension – course correction.)
Now, the dawn of 2024 is upon us, and it’s looking like we might be facing perhaps the most proverbially bloody year of the mainstream culture war era.
For proof, look no further than the few upcoming Hollywood production strategies we have been made privy to since the month turned over.
Despite having spent the last few years watching their box office and streaming revenues absolutely nosediving – all under the not-so-watchful eye of infamous CEO Bob Iger – Disney remains firmly committed to moving further and further away from the center, as seen in their selection of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a radical feminist who has made her Left-wing intentions perfectly clear, as their next Star Wars film director.
Meanwhile, the collective patience of Disney investors continues to wane, with talks of a hostile takeover by billionaire Nelson Peltz gaining steam in the boardroom – not to mention the many fandom circles eager to see Iger and LucasFilm President Kathleen Kennedy get the sack – signaling that the House of Mouse’s noted money troubles are about to get a lot worse.
Crossing the tracks, the DC situation at Warner Bros. is arguably worse.
Last year, the publisher’s entire adaptation schedule of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman sequel, all debuted to catastrophic results – and at current, it looks like there’s no end in sight for their struggles, all the while traditional comic book writers continued to deny paying fans their due with thickened hubris and sociopathic arrogance, further guaranteeing the downfall of the print medium.
Will it ever stop, you may ask?
The answer is ‘no.’ Scorched-earth policy is now in effect.
In their minds, if the Left cannot claim sole ownership over the properties and mediums they have hijacked over the years, then no one gets to claim any part of it at all.
From a strategic standpoint, this tactic may seem appealing, particularly in the fact that it allows some individuals to larp as if they were in a physical army participating in a historical war, but there is so little be gained from this tactic other than cutting off one’s nose to spite their face.
Right now, there are billions of dollars wrapped up in the green-lighting, production, and marketing of many iconic properties – not to mention the immeasurable cultural and emotional value they hold for fans.
To torch all of that for nothing more than an attempt to throw shade at your winning opponent shows that those lighting the match never truly cared about the IPs in the first place, but rather only viewed them as a political tool.
Defiance in the face of certain defeat is sometimes admirable, but only if the cause itself is just.
However, the Left’s doomsday agenda, replete with unfettered nihilism, a toxic hatred of the traditional family model, and vicious spite for the human race as a whole, is anything but.
Their delusional vision of hedonistic dystopia is a gateway through which to view the diseased mind. And yet, no amount of reasoning can turn them away from the brink.
“If I can’t have it, then no one will” is their new mantra for 2024, and they will self-appoint themselves as martyrs in order to celebrate defeat, even as their ideology’s structural pillars give way.
And yet, as society takes back its properties and forces the Left to cede more ground, this is where we are headed in the New Year.
At the end of the day, once these activists and ideologues have abandoned ship, the media properties freed from their grasp them will undoubtedly emerge as broken and irreparable shells of their former glory – and sadly, no amount of restoration will undo the entirety of their injuries.
While some may be salvaged and repurposed, following an appropriate period of dormancy, others, such as Star Wars and Doctor Who, are at this point beyond saving.
But just as it was with post-blitz London, so too will we have to pick up the pieces and build anew, either by doing our part to revive those still-viable classic IPs and set them on the right path, or creating new heroes, villains and fables through which to establish a new foundation of pop culture.
In some ways, the prospect of daring to tap into our own collective imaginations and weave together new ideas to share with each other is exciting and invigorating.
It may not occur in 2024, but the next 12 months could very well offer a tease of the final volley in the culture wars.
And when it’s all said and done, everything that follows will be little more than a mop up exercise – the pop culture equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials.
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