I have to hand it to whoever thought this up. Seriously, this was brilliant. In this, the Era of Trump, this is the smartest bit of opposition activism I think I’ve seen so far. My hat is truly off to you.
For the people who fell for this: shame on you. Educate yourselves. They weren’t passing these flags off to ordinary people on the streets: they were passing them off to what are considered “core conservative activists.” And hey, you waved them with all the red white and blue passion we’d expect from people who only give a fuck about cheering their own team and not a damned thing beyond that.
The stakes are going up folks. If conservatives wants to be taken seriously, it’s time to start acting like that’s the case. Educate yourselves. If you took half the time and resources you spent cheerleading and tried to actually learn something, you might get somewhere.
“Seriously, this was brilliant”.
Until the truth came out, then they just look like the disruptive little Aholes we all know they are. As far as their impeachment fantasies are concerned they couldn’t even describe what triggers an impeachment, safe space violations notwithstanding. And what the heck is “creating a purpose-driven economy”? Oh wait, that’s what Obama’s free shit army wanted.
That was some god tier trolling they did, and, no one thought “gee, that’s a Russian flag”. I’d like to know what percentage of cpac attendees are public school grads. There could be something to be said for the education system.
To be fair, one reason the troll worked was that the Russian flag is red, white and blue horizontal stripes. It wouldn’t have worked out as well had the flag been Germany’s (the colors would have been wrong), or even France’s (Trump’s name going across vertical stripes would have been weird).
I can confidently say that the trick wouldn’t have worked with me, though, not because of the Russian flag (besides the order of the colors being a little weird, I don’t think I would have consciously thought “that’s a Russian flag”), but because I’m still a little wary that Trump will generally do the right thing, and his personality runs me the wrong way, so I have a difficult time being enthusiastic about Trump…
We get it: “Ha ha, conservatives are stupid.”
Sure, they probably should have been paying more attention. That doesn’t change the fact that this is only “newsworthy” because it’s republicans.
If the same thing had happened at the leftist equivalent organization 8 years ago, it would not have made the mainstream news, because the left does pretty much anything it can do to avoid reporting on things that don’t fit their preferred narrative.
The intriguing part of this story is, that we don’t know how many people recognized that it was a Russian flag, and loved that it was.
I don’t know if anyone has done a scientific poll, but some claim that many (certainly not all) self-described conservatives love Putin and Russia all to pieces. The perfect model for a tough-guy regime that doesn’t fuck around.
So, we don’t know whether people making a big deal of this story are trying to show that conservatives are stupid, or, that they are fascist-loving; or both. But there never has been a “movement” that didn’t suffer identity crises, and the conservative tent appears to be a pretty big one.
I think thought would hold more water if there were more conservative opinion pieces describing their love of Putin, or at least hinting at it.
Admittedly, my exposure to conservative media is by no means a random sample…at the same time, if this sentimentality really exists, I would expect it to bubble up in places like Instapundit (where it would as likely as not be criticized), or on various news feeds here and there.
“I think thought would hold more water if there were more conservative opinion pieces describing their love of Putin, or at least hinting at it.”
Check out the media that specializes in Christian Conservatism with a minor (?) in gay-bashing.
Remember my qualifier about the “big tent.” They are people who think they’re better conservatives than you are, and they are more than adequately represented at CPAC.
That is kind of awesome.