The Silent Majority's Silent Power

If you’re of a certain age, when you hear the phrase “the silent majority” you probably think of Richard Nixon.

He used the phrase in the sense that while the loudest and weirdest voices make up the majority of the news broadcasts, they do not make up the majority of the people, who go quietly about their business, saving their opinions for when they matter.

Whatever his faults, and they were manifold and wicked, Nixon was right about the silent majority. We’re seeing it unfold right now, before our very eyes. Businesses are learning the lesson in the way that George McGovern did in 1972, when the Democrats’ presidential candidate managed to carry Massachusetts and the District of Columbia and nothing more.

Let me digress for a moment: I contend the District of Columbia ought to have no votes at all. No one should live there. Better that everything that isn’t the federal district itself should be given back to Maryland and Virginia. (Ideally, the federal district would then be made into a museum and the seat of government moved to someplace like Topeka.)

In 1972, the silent majority didn’t spend its time shouting, throwing bombs, and waving flags. It remained, well, silent, until November 7, when it turned to McGovern and said “no, thanks,” except for the “thanks” part.

Jump ahead to today and the freakshow that is the news. It used to be that stories of the odd and puzzling were below the fold, on inside pages, or in “specialized” publications. Some of it appears even now in more mainstream news in Europe, England, and the day’s final editions of American newspapers that are heavily British-influenced. My favorite recent example came out over the weekend. It is the story of a nice British couple who adopted an orphaned 6-year-old girl, only to learn that she was a grown-up homicidal Ukrainian dwarf. Don’t believe me? Go to the link and read it yourself. (I appreciate the story: Do you know how seldom one gets to write “grown-up homicidal Ukrainian dwarf”?)

But most of the lunacy has moved above the fold. Responding to what it guesses is the mood of the people (anything beyond guessing would require work and common sense, neither of which are in the current curricula), news reporters utter with straight faces accounts of a guy who decided he was a girl and competed in women’s swimming competitions. They further report with disapproval that some think this is wrong. They are actually on the side of the guy who hangs out in the girls’ locker room. Worse, they believe that the rest of the country is on his side, too, just as they believed McGovern had a real chance in 1972, or Mondale in 1984. We hear of failed comedians who can’t “read the room.” Well, our news people can’t read the country.

Nor, it turns out, can our businesses.

Someone at the once-sane Anheuser-Busch company thought it would be a good idea to re-market the best-selling beer in the country, Bud Light, as aimed at what I guess it thought was the vast majority of people in the U.S.: effeminate boys who pretend to be girls on TikTok or someplace. It turned out that the demographic estimation was in error. The actual majority of people said “no, thanks,” again without the “thanks,” and the company lost billions of dollars in sales. Distributors were trying to unload the stuff at 14 cents per can. The company’s stock plunged. The company fired the marketing moron and disowned the he-shes and ended up losing their (small) custom, too. It would be sad, if Bud Light were more than just mildly polluted water.

It used to be that I would shop at the local Target store from time to time. It seemed to be about half-way between Walmart and J.C. Penney; slightly better products than the former and cheaper than the latter. Then the Target company, for no reason anyone could fathom other than its desire to seem “woke,” announced that guys could use women’s restrooms and vice-versa. Target and I haven’t occupied the same space since.

People militant in their sexual proclivities having declared a month in honor of themselves, Target decided to get in on the fun even more. So earlier this year the company announced . . . well, I’ll let Reuters describe it: “Target Corp (TGT.N) is offering more than 2,000 products, including clothing, books, music and home furnishings as part of its Pride Collection. The items include ‘gender fluid’ mugs, ‘queer all year’ calendars and books for children aged 2-8 titled ‘Bye Bye, Binary,’ ‘Pride 1,2,3’ and ‘I’m not a girl.’”

It’s been reported that the stuff is manufactured by a company that also has a line of Satan-wear. I do not know if this is true (Snopes says it is), but I don’t care. They lost me long before this, back at the bathroom thing.

Target is oppressed by persons, a form of troglodyte I’m sure the company thinks, called “shareholders,” and the shareholders seem not to be happy to see their investments swirl down the any-gender-restroom drain. Something about losing 12 percent of its value in the course of a week would be my guess. You’ve heard of “silent partners”? Well investors interrupted their silence long enough to say “sell.”

Last week Target announced it is dropping some of the items and moving others to the back of the store. As with the girly boy Bud Light marketing strategy, this seems not to have mollified those who were initially angry but instead enraged the proclivities advocates. I’ve seen no reports as to whether anyone actually bought any of the “pride” merchandise. The products seem likely candidates for eBay and blankets spread on the hot parking lot asphalt at flea markets, at least the ones that aren’t readily composted, for shame.

I’m no fashion expert, but I suspect that “14 Best Nonbinary Swimsuits You’ll Feel Good Wearing” was not a winner for Glamour, except perhaps among readers looking for a laugh. Nor do I imagine the suits will do much for the companies involved.

There used to be a game played in this country, called “baseball.” Some elements remain in the game of that name currently played. They were discussed (far too kindly in my view, but he’s a pastor and I’m not) by Tim Butler last week. Baseball attendance is down. People who used to be able to rattle off the starting roster of every team in the major leagues now struggle to give the name of a single player on any team.

The team with the highest attendance so far is the Los Angeles Dodgers. Dodgers management looked at this and apparently decided that something had to be done. So they booked a viciously anti-Catholic (among many other things) outfit, the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” to be honored for something or other at a game. Dodgers players themselves have voiced their opposition. This will not work out well for the Dodgers.

(By the way. I watched a St. Louis — Cleveland game Saturday night. I’d forgotten that the Cleveland team had changed its name to the risible “Guardians.” Perhaps over time other teams will adopt titles of court-appointed positions. In California, the homelessness capital of the country, they seem to have forgotten that “dodger” means “low-level sneak thief.” Maybe the Los Angeles Team could become the “Parolees.”)

In any case, I think they’ve now done much to solve the problem of too many people coming to the ballpark. The majority is unlikely to want to break its silence to cheer.

The market is speaking and the market is not happy. I do not mean specifically the stock market but that, too. People are looking at the panoply of woke causes and are, literally, not buying it.

The government and especially government schools seem to believe they’re exempt from the power of the vast majority group of people who do not holler, demonstrate, make a profession of being offended, or burn down cities when angered. They’re wrong. We saw that in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election. We’re seeing it elsewhere around the country, and will continue to see it. The farther the pendulum swings, the farther it swings back.

When the president of the United Federation of Teachers now proposes to be knowledgeable on, well, when you get right down to it, anything, the people who hadn’t been paying attention become alert. Randi Weingarten, who lobbied to keep her union members home but getting paid during COVID-19 when there was no justification for it, was a teacher for three years during the Clinton administration before becoming a full-time union thumper. She claims to be a mother, when all she can say — not making this up — is that she is “married” to a woman who used to be “married” to another woman who had given birth. We’ve heard of cousins twice removed. Here’s a “mother” twice removed. People are beginning to notice.

The silent majority may soon be ready to speak, and the election is next year.