"out of date platitudes"
Sez you.
Your argument is very persuasive. There are in fact nuclear battles being waged on both sides. But it's a very small percentage of people who are moved by such things. I know it's difficult to perceive when you spend all your time in this and other echo chambers, but it's true. Most people are not moved by, and do not believe, your type of rhetoric, regardless of whether it's objectively "true" or not.
Sure, you'll get calcowgirl and CarryOkie and NormsRevenge to nod in agreement, but, well, how you doing in the polls? Or in actual California elections? Some victories on initiatives, but lots of losses in the Legislature.
I expect that you and I would like to end up in roughly the same place. I think we will arrive there incrementally, by changing hearts and minds to reject liberalism, like I did (Caveat -- I was never very far to the left. Some people will never be convinced, but as I'm sure you've seen on this board, there are a lot of people who can be.)
You think that it will only be through the political equivalent of nuclear annihilation that we will arrive there. Neither one of us has any proof of which way is going to work better. In my opinion, people are waking up to the ruin of liberal rule, and will move rightward over time. You would prefer to throw bombs. I think that will only harden positions.
I guess we'll see who's right.
About 40 years ago... And especially after the first Apollo spacecraft circled the moon and sent back that picture of Earthrise over the dead moonscape... leftist groups like Greenpeace started creating what they themselves called media "mindbombs!"
I was living in Davis during the first "Earthday" that soon followed and have observed the "mindbombs" that exploded in America and especially CA with highest intensity in the 1964-1968 period. I can still remember sitting in the corner office of the then most prominent insurance company over by El Macero and hearing that militant blacks were marching across the Yolo Causeway the day MLK was assassinated!!!
I then watched the mindbombs explode as Reagan, S.I. Hiakawa and other pioneering CA conservatives did battle with Mario Savio, Country Joe McDonald and other now proven Commies and Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis led a conservative tax revolt in CA that shook the nation!!!
I am NOT pursuaded to except the attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy that we conservatives should all lie back and try to enjoy the incrementalism you insist must take place. That is self-limiting timidity and will achieve nothing, either short-term, or long-term!
What if those pioneering CA conservatives had resigned themselves to your point of view? I expect we wouldn't have even taken the Assembly in 1994 and Willie Brown would STILL be the Speaker to this very day!!!
So get up out of your rut, and dream up some "mindbombs" of your own and cultivate members of MSM AND alternate media. I've been there and done that in 1994. That's why I'm content to sit here and ping the others you mentioned. I don't have anything to prove, but you and the others reading this DO!!!
Engage!!! Organize!!! Strategize!!! Subvert the predominant paridigm!!! (that's a bumpersticker I first saw in Davis on the first Earthday) And don't forget to "Question Authority!!!"