As a disclaimer, I should note if you wish to understand what I will be responding to, please check out Isaac Young's article called Here Was Tolkien, When Shall We Expect Another? I was humbly tagged in the post and asked to give my thoughts.
So let's jump right in, I hate literary foreplay.
I'm not going to gaslight you into thinking there is solely one reason as to why the right wing in America seem to be culturephobes and artistphobes, especially to their own kind. Though if we wanted to keep things simple, I would put my finger on their belief system, which is a massive overarching umbrella for what I'm about to unpack.
To start, art and culture can only thrive if it has proper funding from willing and generous (key word) patrons. Marketing matters little compared to the local impact art can have; think of how people in far east Asia or the Americas didn't know about the Italian Renaissance; does that bring low the prestige of the Sistine Chapel? Hell no. More on that later. . .
In my eyes, I see right wingers unwilling to support the arts because at their core, they are mammon worshipers. There is a reason why I post this picture in regards to "right wing content creators".
If you know who this is, then you might understand what persona I'm prescribing to the RW and their "creative" types. For those who are out of the loop - this is Know-It-All from the Polar Express. A complete geek who tries too hard to impress people with his intellect, getting into intellectual bouts with just about anyone who he thinks warrants it. For him, it's all about owning the stupids. He's annoying and provides no real value with his IQ.
The RW's creatives only do podcasts or write books and what are they about? Usually one of two things: owning the libs or making money. A book about giant robots in space fighting off an alien horde which would seek to decimate the human race doesn't even blip their radar (One day, Brian). The Right doesn't want to invest in the Fantasm of Imagination, rather what revolves around money - which owning the libs does. The Left, on the other hand, invests heavily into feelings, emotions, desires, and pleasure, which is more of the realm art resides in. This is why on the financial side, the Right has it wrong. They like to boast about logic and reason, well guess what, it leaves them blind to emotion, passion, and drive, which in turn forfeited the culture and Western identity to Satanistic pedophiles.
Which brings us to our next facet of the Right's belief system. . .
Marketing is not a be all end all like the RW suggests - there, I said it. No amount of marketing is going to convince someone to buy a product they aren't interested in buying (see previous section above). The guys who sell ice to Eskimos are the ones who either get the Eskimo too drunk to know what he's buying or have a gun to his head.
I won't say anything more on this facet because the meme above already has said enough for me.
Isaac points out later in his article that the Right has trouble creating art with their beliefs because they don't know what their beliefs are. I think this is misconstrued. More accurately, I think the Right is in denial about their true beliefs. At the top of the article, I mentioned the RW are really mammon worshipers; they are, masquerading behind a freedom loving, God fearing, for the everyman façade. When the heat gets turned up the fall back is on "What do the numbers say?". Mammon controls the numbers which in turns controls the RW's decisions. The RW are pathological liars because their actions are radically dissonant from their claimed beliefs when challenged.
Most RWers fall in the conservative camp, but what are they conserving? American culture they cry. What is America's culture? Watch them stumble to make it past freedom.
Relevant tangent - I believe America's identity/culture can be summed up as the creative risk taking frontiersman. Each word to stand on its own to describe America's identity but is a part to make a greater whole. America is a modern Rome - we build, we take risks, we take the best ideas and make them better, we conquer the unknown, we pursue glory (or used to).
The RW legacy will forever be economic policy which in the wake of Covid-19, people are waking up to realize that money isn't everything so what power do RWers have when you can't bribe votes with an economic policy? None.
An interesting and accurate point Isaac made is that the Right is too splintered to make any strides artistically/culturally because everyone is too busy going their own way. Each man is their own island warring more against his fellow RWer than their enemy on the Left. My mind thinks of ancient Greece. They didn't unite until the Persians attacked and even then, only a few Greeks, famously the Spartans, were wise enough to make the first stand to buy time for the rest of their countrymen to wake up and rally to repel the existential threat which faced them. I think the same could happen for the RW and their artists. Another scenario is also true. A Phillip of Macedon, a non-Greek (or in this case, a non-RWer), will sweep in and shackle everyone under his rule.
The way I see it, the connections we have now in person or online (like Twitter) matter most. We are forming the tribe the RW only wishes they could have. We support each other far more and far better than anyone out there. Sure, our resources may be meager, but let us not forget Scripture when the old widow offered up her two remaining copper coins - for she offered far more than the wealthy who gave gold and silver. Many blessings upon you who support each other's art when you could easily save it or use it to buy something else.
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