>Conservatives sniffing it curiously but unsure what to make of it. Liberals freaking out and calling it pseudoscience.
I have seen the same phenomenon on both sides. I don’t know why some Conservatives don’t immediately see it like Liberals do. It is like they don’t see the mechanism. Maybe it is being presented wrong. Or maybe Conservatives, being group animals, need it to have social proof, in the form of fellow Conservatives validating it. Or, being hyper-logical, they need enormous amounts of data and lots of time to think, to render well considered conclusions?
Weirder still because Libs see it immediately, and freak. They wouldn’t freak, if they thought it was bogus. They see something in it which makes them agree, and it poses a threat. Something about their worldview, resonates with the theory.
>Interestingly, when I told him, ‘Look you’re the test subject here, bunny rabbit. I’m curious to see if this Revlon mascara causes irritation and death, not if you like the color, dig?”, that both got a laugh and shut them up.
Interesting. A subtle presentation of violent stimuli, and perfectly done. They are the bunny rabbit, and you are just toying with them to see if they die.
>I’ll continue testing, but my initial impression is that there’s a very steep grade between initial comprehension and acceptance. I think people get the basic idea very quickly, but there needs to be a good intermediate rung to grasp next.
That may have to come from someone else. There is a cost to being in as deep as I am. I have seen this for so long, I no longer remember what it was like to have not seen it, or what it would have taken to convince me, and take me from prone to running.
>Libs wanted to tear it down. Conservatives kind of liked it but weren’t sold.
This is puzzling. Why does it hit people like you so hard? What is different about how you view the world, that it hits you between the eyes. What is different about how other Conservatives, who don’t see it innately, view the world, that they think it may be right, but doesn’t really relate to the debate, or have any utility?
>It’s going to be a new language to most people, so you a good set of layman definitions and talking points will be invaluable.
Excellent point. I will think about that for a day, and then begin putting something together.
Kinda funny you took the name Steel Wolf. Did you by any chance spend time around a real wolf/wolves?
Conservatives are traditionalists. They tend to favor concepts that are common sense and traditionally proven to be true over time without often considering the deeper workings of why they are true. Social proofing from a few trusted sources would probably be the single most important mechanism for allowing this theory to gain widespread acceptance.
There are some good grassroots level blogs like Ace of Spades (and his legendarily ravenous commenter community) that would probably take interest in this topic were you to submit a guest blogger post. I would start around that level. Conservatives need this injected into the bloodstream before they'll absorb it. I think the serum is effective, you just need to find the right gauge of needle to deliver it.
The conservatives who will likely get it first are libertarians, because, to paraphrase Aristotle, we can entertain ideas, even paradigm shifting ones, without accepting them. I got it right away, and with grim clarity I saw everything from LBJ's Great Society to the Roman concept of panem et circenses fall into order. It explains why liberals are pro-abortion. It explains why blacks are 95% Democrat. It explains why highly educated people tend to be liberal. Not just superficially, either, but in a way that might be able to prove predictive and actionable.
Once you really see it, you can't un-see it.
Interestingly, once liberals see it and get it, they hate it. Not dislike or dismiss, but outright anger. The few that took a second to read past the title and review the article understood it immediately and reacted like I was waving a branding iron at them.
It's not terribly relevant whether liberals like the idea or not; only if it works on them. There are plenty of highly effective sales, advertising, social engineering and manipulation techniques that people don't like conceptually. Besides, their intense and negative reaction may have some value as a selling point to conservatives. ;-)
You could say I was raised by them. My family has been in million dollar real estate sales since back when that was still a lot of money. We've also been into many kinds of engineering, from civil to aerospace. I was definitely raised to appreciate the concept of competition, self-improvement and seeking professional excellence.
I took a dozen or so year break to get into intelligence collection and Special Operations support, and spent the last five of those living in Iraq and Afghanistan as a contractor teaching classified tracking systems to ground troops.
I always tend to live among wolves or seek them out.
The name itself derives from what you might call my Indian name, Gray Wolf. As a child, I thought the greatest thing in the world was to be smart and accomplished enough to have wisdom that others would someday need. 'Steel' made more sense than 'gray' at that stage of my life, and it was color compatible.
At this stage, however, I want to put some of that wisdom, such as it is, to use. I'm retired from the overseas fight, but there's a greater cultural fight I feel I could contribute to. I work pretty much every day and don't have enough time to do more than hit and run fights with online liberals, but I have toyed with the idea of writing a book or starting a website for hand to hand online debate tactics. I spend a lot of time at that (waiting on clients and such) and see a lot of room for improvement for conservatives there. This r/K framework may provide the template for our side to devise an entire arsenal of weapons and tactics. It seems like that's where we get pulverized, in the ground war, and that's where reinforcements are needed.