A recent article in Newsweek caught my attention. The article, entitled “Why Republicans’ War Against Taylor Swift Could Backfire,” delves into a spat that took place on X (formerly Twitter), between The Federalist’s Sean Davis and leftist activist Victor Shi. Davis responded to a piece by Mark Hemingway that detailed the shallowness and vapidity of Swift’s songs, both technically as well as spiritually. He quipped “Taylor Swift sucks and is dumb.” Shi replied, “Nothing says more about how little Republicans understand Gen Z than them now saying Taylor Swift is “dumb & her music sucks” after she registered more than 35,000 people to vote last week. If you attack Taylor Swift, you also attack Gen Z. Good luck, Republicans. You’re screwed.”
Both of them are wrong.
Taylor Swift’s music is so bad that it is insufferable. Her politics are a confusing mess of tired cliches, contradictions, and jumbled nonsense. She kept her political views to herself until 2018, when, after succumbing to the woke mob’s platitudes, she began expressing them. She owes much of her success to her ability to be smarter than the people who surround her. It’s not much to say, but it’s important.
Victor Shi’s sophomoric Twitters are easy to ignore. He is a 21-year-old privileged brat, whose self-assured acumen never has to be plagued by nuance, reflection, or humility. He is also rich, Asian, and male. If he believes he will get a seat when the intersectional music ends, he is operating on pure delusion. Even when he is wrong, he is always right. Everything. Every day. Shi is not the problem, but his mindset. He represents Gen Z categorically, and Gen Z will be the future.
Victor Shi is right in saying that Taylor Swift’s critics, however valid, pale in comparison to her calamitous influence on Gen Z. She has just registered 35,000 of Taylor Swift’s fans to vote. Most of them will vote for whomever she says they should, without question. How many Republicans registered to vote in the same period? What is our strategy? What’s our strategy?
Taylor Swift’s paint-by-number leftism in pop culture is not new. I grew up in the era when Pearl Jam, Marilyn Manson, and Rage Against the Machine were all popular. Green Day was also a big hit. The bands were all leftists and did not hesitate to force their political views on their listeners. Millions of impressionable, confused teenagers, like myself, ate it up.
By the time we were legal adults, we realized that it was a bit disingenuous of these multimillionaire stars to spit out mediocre songs with three chords against The Man. They laughed until they reached their capitalist, WASP-run banks. These celebrities were The Man. Their product was more indoctrination, mingled with a few trite riffs on guitars and marketed towards the youth that wanted to be against the world.
Gen Z is different in that they do not seem to have matured beyond this stage of their life (except for a few notable exceptions). The likelihood of them being employed is lower than that of their predecessors. The ACT scores are at their lowest level in more than 30 years. They are also more isolated, depressed, and obese. Managers have reported that Gen Z employees often lack the initiative, emotional maturity, and social skills required to do basic work. They are almost as ignorant about American history and economics as they are about patriotism.
They think that you are the problem with America.
Taylor Swift has just gotten 35,000 additional people to vote against America’s experiment.
If she snapped her finger, she would get an additional 35,000.
What we do to combat the leftward shift that is encroaching on every aspect of our lives has not been effective in moving culture in our favor. The Taylor Swift Problem, as I refer to it, is a sign of a long-term cultural decay. This has been exacerbated by the concerted efforts made in our public schools to dumb down students to the extent that “public schools” should be classified as unionized child exploitation.
Only the most talented musicians in every culture other than the modern American one could hope to find an audience among the more educated members of society. Parvenus like Taylor Swift, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish, Eminem, et al. They would have been at best street minstrels. The advent of mass marketing, first made possible by television, and then the internet, brought these hacks – with their anencephalic views – into our living rooms.
No one in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt with a sense of sanity would have thought to ask their jugglers, lutists, and street jugglers for policy suggestions. We are here. Their civilizations survived for thousands of more years than we are slated to.
The Gettysburg Address, perhaps the most important and famous speech in history, was only heard by a few people at the time. Taylor Swift, on the other hand, has 272 million Instagram followers. They literally do not have the ability to think critically. But they are all good little revolutionaries. They are all too willing to vote making their vote worthless.
How do we course correct? How can we make an entire generation realize their ignorance? How about a reverse version of Gramsci’s Long March Through the Institutions? You’re in for a tough time. Taylor Swift is more successful at registering people to vote than the entire Republican Party. Even if we started today, it would take generations of concerted and sustained efforts to wrest control of our schools from the grip of the Left.
Conservative activists should publicly and directly challenge Taylor Swift in our society. Swift’s statement that “rights are being stripped from everyone who isn’t a straight, white, cisgender man” was so ridiculously stupid. Why isn’t Swift being asked to identify the “rights” she is referring to?
When Swift or any of her peers spout virtue signaling on social media to pollute the rhetoric, our conservative heavyweights should challenge them to live-streamed, open, and structured debates. Swift can post some drivel on racism, empowerment, or whatever, and her trained seals will clap and bark. If she were to debate Heather Mac Donald, Ben Shapiro, or Candace Owens on stage, she would be exposed as the dummy she is in just seven nanoseconds. If she doesn’t want to participate in a live-streamed debate, which she will, then our conservative leaders need to call her out on it.
Taylor Swift isn’t a rebel or a heroine. She’s Joe Biden dressed in a romper. Even Gen Z has a natural grasp of social interaction. They may raise their eyebrows if they see Swift or other celebrities embarrassing themselves in a debate, or hiding behind the “Block User” button.
As minds change, so do votes.
