Bread, Circuses, and Outrage | The American Spectator

When I was a little kid, The Wizard of Oz came on TV once a year, usually on a Friday night. When you explain this to youngsters today, they can’t comprehend. The broadcast was a cultural event on the kid calendar. If you missed it, you missed it. There were no DVRs, no VCRs, no streaming libraries at your fingertips. The wanting and waiting mattered; it heightened anticipation and excitement. This was genuine novelty, something that seems to have vanished from our culture. What has replaced it is a pastiche of novelty, and that, unfortunately, is never satisfying and invariably disappointing.

Real novelty has been replaced by a flood of pastiche novelties — among them a dumb, reality-TV version of political punditry, consumed almost entirely for entertainment, shock, and outrage.

Conservatives should stop spending time debating, rebutting, or amplifying this drivel. There are plenty of public figures, politicians, and destructive ideas that deserve scrutiny. This is not a call for a conservative monoculture, nor a surrender to common sense. American conservatism is strongest when its internal disagreements are vigorous, but talking and writing about these right-wing kooks and their ridiculous bloviations and conspiracy theories is a monumental waste of time and energy. Their ideas and theories are on par with supermarket tabloids. Engagement only dignifies this nonsense.

To illustrate, consider the recent sickening controversy surrounding Candace Owens and her insinuations about the death of Charlie Kirk. She is not engaging in sober investigative skepticism; she’s a wrecking ball off its chain — untethered, unhinged, and without consideration of journalistic responsibility. Owens dedicated considerable effort to spreading unfounded speculative stories, making baseless accusations and personal attacks against Turning Point USA and its CEO, Erika Kirk. She also exploited the tragedy of Kirk’s death to stoke conspiracy theories and online outrage. The consequence was real and cruel: Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, was forced to defend her late husband’s memory publicly. This is not a heterodox inquiry; it is a fundamental failure of human decency.

Why? Follow the money. Owens reportedly earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per year through podcasts, ads, subscriptions, and speaking engagements. Nick Fuentes, further out on the fringe, has built a lucrative online following through donations and subscriptions. Tucker Carlson, after leaving cable news, now presides over a direct-to-consumer operation that depends heavily on provocation and outrage.

The incentives are obvious. The more extreme the “punditry” the bigger the audience, the bigger the money. It’s a cash cow that encourages the classic “if it bleeds, it leads” style of journalism.

I know that this is nothing new under the sun. What is new is that we now live in a post-literate society, where attention spans are short, context is scarce, and emotional impact seems to matter more than coherence. And as the old adage goes, those who believe in nothing will believe in anything. Conspiracy and sensationalism thrive where habits of careful reading, skepticism, and proportion have rotted away.

Politics as entertainment is unhealthy. Every hour conservatives spend dissecting the latest internet provocation is an hour not spent grappling with debt, the economy, education, national security, or the moral foundations of a free society. Bread and circuses may occupy the crowd, but they do nothing to strengthen the republic.

The solution is not censorship, nor ideological purging. It is discipline. Conservative commentators who care about the future of the movement — and of the country — must ignore what is unserious. Don’t feed these ducks; there is plenty of big game out there.

None of this is easy. The money will always be there for “journalists” who want to sell their souls and feed the beast. But if conservatives cannot distinguish between dissent and degeneracy, between skepticism and nihilism, then we are in for dark times.

For the reader, it’s easy. Ignoring it is your protest vote against a political culture drowning in noise, outrage, and novelty without substance. If the conservative center is to hold, it will do so by readers and outlets refusing to reward the worst impulses of our twisted media age. And if it cannot, the next generation will inherit a yellow brick road littered with distractions and pitfalls, where every step is a detour into the poppy fields.

READ MORE from Pete Connolly:

Beyond the Gridiron: The Army–Navy Honor Code

Walz Can’t Escape the Somali Fraud Scandal

America, Please Put Some Pants On