Capture the Flag

You Don't Need to Change Every Mind

Victory is nearly at hand! The debate is nearly won! You’ve shared solid sources and had punchy comebacks. Your normie friend extends their hand. It hovers over the red pill. It wavers. Then, all at once, the blue pill has been grabbed and swallowed. A CNN article, an argument about how good the Mandalorian really is, or “well, it could have been worse without the vaccine.” Your friend is comfortably back at home in the Matrix.

It can feel downright impossible to convince someone they’ve been lied to or get them to consider that they’ve been tricked. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. So is normalcy bias. People would literally rather die than admit they might be wrong and things might not be okay.

For new radicals, this can make the whole fight feel unwinnable. If you can’t get through to people closest to you, what hope do you have for unplugging society? I have bad news and good news. The bad news is, we won’t directly change enough minds to get to critical mass. The good news is, we don’t need to.

I came to this realization a few years ago while reading the US Military COIN manual (FM 3-24), which contains this chart:

This chart and its source manual were drafted to formalize the experiences of Western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the midst of bitter, violent, sectarian, life-or-death, country-rending situations unlike anything we’ve recently experienced in the West this was how society shook out. The teams were as diametrically opposed as the GAE and the Taliban, and this was how it shook out.

If you’re waiting for things to get bad enough that your normie friends will wake up… you’re going to be waiting a while.

Iraq and Afghanistan had been invaded by a space-age army that vehemently opposed the values of their societies, death squads were in the streets, and bombs were blowing up innocents. It could not have been a more polarizing, dangerous moment, but… there were some folks on one side, some on the other, and whole bunch in the middle just going along to get along.

At first, I interpreted this as more bad news, but increasingly, I think it’s a reason to be optimistic. What it implies is that the cultural whiplash of the last decade isn’t actually a mainstream movement. It’s led by the active minority with a passive majority going along to get along. It can be taken back just as quickly by a focused, competitive active minority.

The culture war game isn’t checkers, or even chess, it’s capture the flag. Concentrated exertions to take and hold key points are more important than broad majority support.

The left has understood this for a long time. Their focus on critical pressure points - Big Tech, the NIH, vote counting, and District Attorneys offices, etc - has borne fruit. They’ve been at it a long time and they’ve gotten good at the game. They’ve taken flag after flag and gloated as their majoritarian opponents fumed helplessly, despite their numbers.

But the right is getting wise to the game. DeSantis’ work on Disney, Rufo’s work at the New College of Florida, and Elon’s purchase of Twitter (pre-Yaccarino?) are all moves in the right direction.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean mass support doesn’t matter. Just that it isn’t the game. It’s still an excellent and useful thing to have. Bud Light’s recent imbroglio is illustrative. The collapse in popular demand put a flag in play: Fortune 500 executive roles. However, the cost exacted by the boycott will be a tactical, not a strategic gain unless that flag is captured. More leftists in the recently-vacated roles will not be an enduring victory.

It does mean that you can take the pressure off of yourself to convert all of your friends. Pick one or two key issues and go after it hard. Chances are there is a small group somewhere going for it already. A donation, some volunteering, or some letters to Congressional reps will be worth more of your time (and take less emotional energy) than trying to start a fire that just isn’t going to light.

Go for the flags.