The ''True Roman'' vs The Modern Conservative Doomer
There is a fundamental problem in today's conservative circles: mindset. Education isn't lacking. The ''very online'' conservartive commentariat has enough expertise to discuss everything from the true ethnicity of some random Central Asian tribe to the toilet schedule of the Grand Armee during Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
An interesting topic is that due to the variety of groups now belonging to the great malcontent generated by wokedom, conservatives are unable to define what would victory look like. A ''retvrn'' to 1990? 1950? 1914? 1789? The disagreement over what constitutes victory is countered by begrudging acceptance that victory isn't going to happen anyway. The mood is pretty consistently the one they imagine was among Western Romans between 453 and 476: impending doom and civilizational collapse, often sarcastically summarized with the sentence ''it's over''.
That's what constitutes the problem: if you don't believe you can win to begin with, then you aren't likely to make it through.
What is particularly astonishing about this mindset is that Western conservatives go from expressing marvel for the conquests and successes of their ancestors, to navigating in a sea of tears, decrying defeat after defeat as the veneration of pansexual polygenderism replaces their values. Their ancestors however suffered in most cases significantly much more catastrophic defeats, especially in terms of human losses, but didn't give up. That lesson seems to have been completely forgotten.
The fear and doubt that the panegyrist of liberal oligarchs, Francis Fukuyama, may be right, seems to paralyze conservative minds more than the beauty of the art from the Renaissance can excite them.
Liberals, by contrast, shrug any humiliation, pretend it never happened or make up elaborate lies to justify it. They are true believers and happy to accept anything their elite says, even if it's the complete opposite of what was said the day before.
One of the latest examples of this defeatist attitudes comes from the reaction to NATO's capture of Izyum and Lyman, a couple of strategically important locations that Russia was unable to defend due to numerical disadvantage. Conservatives outdid the British charlatans in catastrophizing a situation that, although saw a strategic success for NATO, resulted in very limited material losses for Russia. Troops were mostly withdrawn in good order and the main loss was probably that of Russian civilians who were likely exterminated by NATO's death squads (Aidar, Kraken etc.). Situation has since stabilized, the Kherson offensive has failed and Fukuyama has crawled back hiding into his hole after once again prematurely claiming victory.
Another recent example is an article by Richard Hanania, (whose writings I generally enjoy), personally writing a letter of surrender to the above mentioned panegyrist, after witnessing ''Iranian women rioting against the hijab, symbol of the regime of the Ayatollah''. Hanania argued that the revolt proves the ''inevitability'' of liberalism. It's a good example because it may hint the cause of the defeatist conservative mindset: modern education is an emotional battering made of liberal narratives. Natural contrarians are able to resist it and reject it in its entirety. Everyone else succumbs to it, even when they do not agree with it.
This case is particularly frustrating, because any conservative commentator should see how this is a replay of the attempt in Belarus, mixing one of the favorite woke Trojan horses, feminism, with Neocon goals. The US intelligence is also openly bragging on US media that the leader of the protests, ''Masih Alinejad'', a ''journalist'' (of course!) is coordinating the protests from an apartment in NYC, under FBI protection. Yet Hanania fails to grasp the broader geopolitical causes, notably Iran providing Russia with drones, that so far have managed to stop NATO's offensive and the Iranian intervention in the Azeri-Armenian diatribe, where Russia's role as peacekeeper was threatened by the Azeri offensive, with NATO hoping to distract the Russians by opening a second front. In short, it has nothing to do with hijabs. Zero.
Also, somehow protests in Iran prove the inevitability of liberalism, but anti-NATO protests all over Europe do not prove the opposite. That's how liberal logic works anyway. Make a superficial claim and ignore all contrary evidence.
Just like Coronavirus and Ukraine, conservatives fail to reject the liberal narrative and fall for it, losing yet another power struggle.
''We are back''
This expression is used in contrast to the -blackpilled- ''it's over'' previously mentioned, whenever conservatives manage to score a rare (often meaningless) victory.
It's nonetheless a good hint of what should be the defining quality of every conservative: we must be unyielding. This is the lesson of every single successful forefather. Sometimes I see people posting the map of the Kingdom of Asturias, a strip of land in Northern Spain at the peak of the Ummayad Caliphate. This Kingdom would later morph into the Kingdom of Leon after recapturing some territory and later spawn the Kingdom of Castille, the most successful in the Iberian reconquista. A good example of what it means to never give up, no matter how bad it gets.
Similar lessons can be learned from the history of other successful empires. Let's take the Ottoman one. In 1389, its Sultan, Murad I, fell in the Battle of Kosovo against the Serbians. 13 years later, in 1402, Bayazid was captured after a colossal defeat at Ankara against Timur the Lame and died in captivity. The loss of two leaders in such a short time would have crippled almost any empire in history. Ottomans managed to survive, and, unsurprisingly, went on to creative a massive empire in the East of the Mediterranean.
Hardship bred success, which leads to my second my point. Ditch the defeatist attitude, embrace the struggle as necessary condition for a brighter future. Become a ''True Roman''. Fortunately, Roman historiography isn't as plagued by liberal ideological interpretations as others in the Western world, and larping as a Roman, after the fall of Rome, has been popular since to the very least Charlemagne.
When it comes to learning from defeats, there's hardly a better example than Rome.
When Samnites forced Romans to a humiliating surrender at the Caudine Forks, Rome ditched the the Greek style hoplite in favor of the maniple. When Carthage dominated sea battles, Roman found a way to turn sea battles into land ones with the corvus. Romans didn't give up when storms sunk their fleets (twice) with massive (100k) losses. Hannibal spent almost 2 decades in Roman territory, outwitting and outclassing them in every possible way, destroying entire armies both in ambush and pitched battle, exploiting any weakness arising from problems in the chain of command, troop experience, psychology, weather and terrain. And he still lost the war.
(Bayazid's alleged humiliation, being held in a cage while his wife served semi-naked)
I picked Alexios Komnenos as nickname because the (Eastern) Roman Emperor was, indisputably, a shining example of unyelding ''True Roman''.
By the time he took the throne, Byzantium was being overrun on 3 fronts: Normans were invading Greece, Pechenegs were raiding Thrace and Turkomans were overtaking Anatolia. Its currency was being hit by hyperinflation caused by excessive coin minting, itself caused by the lack of tax revenue from territorial loss. Separatist states were popping up in Trebizond (Theodore Gavras), Cilicia (Philaretos Brachamios) and Bulgaria. The army had been depleted by years of civil wars. Refugees were evacuating Anatolia under the pressure of Turkish raiders His throne was contested by at least two other pretenders, both named Nikephoros, Basilakes and Melissenos. During his reign, Alexios would face at least 15 recorded coups, more than any other Roman Emperor in History. The Empire was falling apart institutionally, militarily, financially and demographically.
By the end of his reign, he had defeated all three invasions, the was currency stabilized, the army reorganized, territory had been recaptured, separatists and pretenders reabsorbed. It was not an easy ride. Normans defeated Alexios in battle three times before he figured out that he could hire Seljuks against them. The first time he faced the Pechenegs, he barely escaped with an arrow in the bottom. It took him almost 20 years before he could turn his attention to the disaster unfolding in East. He successfully managed the crossing of a large, potentially hostile military expedition through his territory, the First Crusade and used it to recapture Western Anatolia. Despite suffering multiple defeats and betrayals, he came out on top of every challenge he faced. A ''True Roman'', who never gave up.
Back to the present day, conservatives, whose adversities aren't even remotely as dangerous as those faced by men in the past, will shed a tear the next time a Church is converted to ''gender affirming healthcare'' clinic, for the mutilation of the children's genitalia and hormone treatment, then do nothing about it except wondering why they are on the losing side of history.