The Challenge of Conservative Stories
John Fraim
“Both Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are obliged by the nature of their dramatic structures to consider the fundamental questions of politics, and both invite deeply conservative interpretations. Conservatives are acutely aware of our pop-cultural deficit, and sometimes argue that we need more conservative stories on film, on television, on stage, in books, etc. But we do not need more stories that are conservative — we need more stories that are true.”
The National Review
April 2019
Why Zombie Politics Resonate (?)
In all the battles of Conservatives against Liberals and Progressives, one of the main weaknesses in these battles is that conservatives (Including Republicans and Libertarians) need a better way to tell their story. They need to wrap their ideas, deals, heroes and heroines within a dramatic story context. Placing sole ideas in some document or proclamation – rather than as a character in a story – seems to me to be a trait that conservatives excel out.
This makes sense to me from the point of symbols and symbolism. In effect, conservatives represent the Masculine symbol standing for freedom and individualism against the Feminine symbol standing for equality and community.
These two symbols are not the exclusive property of a good story. Rather, they battle it out in all good stories, the great archetypes of the Masculine and Feminine symbols. Consciousness and Unconsciousness. Light versus darkness.
Pre-Birth. Birth. Growth.
All three represent important and relevant symbols in the spectrum of a person’s life.
Pre-birth is governed by the symbol of water and a surrounding context. The community and equality of birth is originally in the inclusive water of the mother’s womb when the fetus is developing. A fetus grows inside the fluid of the mother much like a fish exists in a surrounding water. This initial feeling is one of grand equality inside the embryonic fluid of the mother.
Birth is governed by the symbol of earth and a point in the original surrounding context inside a mother’s womb. Whether an easy birth for the mother or not, birth for the new life form changing from fetus to baby is a pretty traumatic event. There is an abrupt change in one’s entire environment from something inside to now something outside.
Youth is a time dominated by the equality symbol. The world is still seen in terms of connections in life and little use for the one-way forward of linear thought that would later dominate.
* * *
Yet life always moves from the symbol of equality to freedom. Politics usually is related to the two grand symbols. In many ways, one can view the founding of America at the paradoxical intersection of the opposition, the masculine and feminine symbols of freedom and equality.
Within this general movement, though, there are times in the grand cycle that beg to stay around the historical spotlight for a little longer period of time.
It is really against this growth symbol of freedom or individualism and the original pre-birth and youth of the equality symbol of community and connections.
This matters less what one’s politics are today than their story-telling abilities. What is the story market out there today for this so-called masculine symbol of Conservative politics? Leader of the Republican/Conservative Party a 70 year-old-man. How long does the current masculine symbol dominate politics in America? While, at the same time, the feminine symbol dominates in popular culture and media of the nation.
The conservative viewpoint today wonders whether they have become propagandists for causes they don’t really believe in. So much better to become a member of a cause today that one truly believes in.
A great battle in American culture is currently happening between the grand (founding) symbols of America in Freedom and Equality. Masculine and Feminine. Many write about the historic founding of America, but few write about its founding at the intersection of the symbols of freedom and equality. The one nation, perhaps unique in the history of nation formations, that had such a juxtaposition of symbols at its founding. No one symbol dominated the founding of the nation. It was always a battle between the ideas of equality and freedom.
As all life is … a battle between the original equality and the freedom of growth away from equality.
Fascinating article from National Reviewthat carries forth the above topic we’re on.
* * *
Still pondering all this. Meant to be cool media or unfinished ideas and rather hints of things rather than definitions of things. In the end, a writer should never feel that his/her perspective is right or wrong. It is right at a certain period in one’s life and wrong at another period of one’s life.
Perhaps stories should be about these great mood swings? But I for one was thinking that a writer is most successful when he/she stirs the ideas inside another head. Or heads.
At this time, this seems the greatest honor for me and my words. To write with a flow from equality to freedom, the two grand symbols of our world today. The grand, controlling symbols in opposition as everyone would have us ignore and look away from.
But such freedom it seems for me at this point in my life. Married to a wonderful woman who has always allowed me to express myself.
The FBI Building Directly Above The Washington Swamp – John Fraim Diorama
Yet life always moves from the symbol of equality to freedom. Politics usually is related to the two grand symbols. In many ways, one can view the founding of America at the paradoxical intersection of the opposition, the masculine and feminine symbols of freedom and equality.
Within this general movement, though, there are times in the grand cycle that beg to stay around the historical spotlight for a little longer period of time.
It is really against this growth symbol of freedom or individualism and the original pre-birth and youth of the equality symbol of community and connections.
This matters less what one’s politics are today than their story-telling abilities. What is the story market out there today for this so-called masculine symbol of Conservative politics? Leader of the Republican/Conservative Party a 70 year-old-man. How long does the current masculine symbol dominate politics in America? While, at the same time, the feminine symbol dominates in popular culture and media of the nation.
The conservative viewpoint today wonders whether they have become propagandists for causes they don’t really believe in. So much better to become a member of a cause they believe in. Isn’t this always the ends of that spectrum, a spectrum of sorts.
* * *
A great battle in American culture is currently happening between the grand (founding) symbols of America in Freedom and Equality. Masculine and Feminine. Many write about the historic founding of America, but few write about its founding at the intersection of the symbols of freedom and equality. The one nation, perhaps unique in the history of nation formations, that had such a juxtaposition of symbols at its founding. No one symbol dominated the founding of the nation. It was always a battle between the ideas of equality and freedom.
As all life is … a battle between the original equality and the freedom of growth away from equality.
Fascinating article from the National Review that carries forth our above topic and symbols.
Still pondering all this. Meant to be cool media or unfinished ideas and rather hints of things rather than definitions of things. In the end, a writer should never feel that their perspective is right or wrong. It is right at a certain period in one’s life and wrong in another period of this life. But I for one think that a writer is most successful when he/she stirs the ideas inside another head. Or heads.
The greatest honor for me and my words.
Read the fascinating article “Why Zombie Politics Resonate ” below.