Second, I think we’re in an arms race of telling each other what to do. One of the things that I find difficult about arguing for a more liberal position on many issues, and a more “leave us alone” position, is that people on the more populist right are arguing that if the left doesn’t strengthen school policies and curricula and fill the gap with their values, they’re going to be overtaken. And that’s not wrong.
I think Trump had a desire to fight that trend, to be like, “We’re not going to succumb to this.”
Causton: We’ve now seen the rise of what we might call conservative influencers. They’re not necessarily commentators or writers, but they’re influencers. You talked a little bit about click incentives. How do you think these influencers are trying to influence young people?
ham: Yeah, I think that’s the problem with a lot of politics right now. Even the politicians themselves, are they really trying to influence people to vote, to believe in policies, to act on whatever it is, or are they just influencers in this new influencer economy? I can’t hate on people who want to do that. It can be a lot of fun work. I would say that parts of my career are influencer-ish for sure. I don’t hate on this new economy that we’re creating, because it’s fun to connect with an audience, I enjoy seeing the comments, getting feedback, all that stuff, but I think there’s a real question of what it’s motivating, what it’s trying to influence.
So again, one of the things about the conservatism that I grew up with and how it relates to the Republican Party and today is that when Trump was elected, it took ideological people to recognize — and this is something I’ve always had trouble with — to recognize that the general population is not that ideological. A lot of voters don’t think that way.
But at the end of the day, what does that even mean? If there’s no policy structure, if there’s no demand, I don’t know. It could be as simple as a call to vote. Rock the Vote was, maybe, an influencer campaign before there were influencers. But I think it’s very unclear what everyone is trying to accomplish. For Skincare Girl, the metric becomes, “Am I selling? Am I selling products?” For people on the right, it becomes, “I don’t know. What are I selling? Are I collecting donations?”
