Conservative entertainment

Recently the upstart conservative news service The Daily Wire released its first-ever full-length motion picture, “Run, Hide, Fight,” following a plan to become a player in the usually liberal-dominated world of Hollywood movie entertainment.

It’s a bold idea and one that confronts a problem conservatives have decried for decades – that culturally influential creative content in the film, music and entertainment world is ruled by overlords of liberalism bent on pursuing a generally anti-Christian and always Leftist agenda of social engineering. It’s become one of the givens of the political debate in the U.S. – that by far the lion’s share of the entertainment content that’s produced, or the television, movie and music stars themselves who are churned out by this massive “woke” machine, push themes pursuant to the Left’s political agenda.

So the only antidote is for traditional conservatism to contribute its own consumable content within that existing entertainment culture in hopes of gaining influence. But what we’re seeing is far more than that – what’s notable about The Daily Wireí’ production is that it’s particularly indicative of the cleaving of American culture between Left and Right, and that more and more, politics is defining markets for goods and services.

Just this week in fact, former customers of Kohls and Bed, Bath and Beyond left cart loads of un-purchased merchandise in store aisles with signs decrying the store’s “canceling” of My Pillow products because founder Michael Lindell supported President Trump. In announcing their boycott, those former customers removed themselves from the woke liberalism of those stores and put their dollars into play for other, more right-leaning competitors.

Across multiple spectrums this political and ideological division in the country is becoming more apparent. It’s defining pragmatic selections that affect not just who we vote for but also where we shop, at what restaurants we dine, where we vacation, the friends we associate with both in person and online, and probably where we will work and pursue our professions in the future. Leftist employers are already swearing off conservative applicants, to the joy – amid the stressed market nationwide for qualified workers – of conservative employers.

Much has been said and written about this division among our countrymen. It may not be good for national unity, but it is nonetheless happening and benefiting businesses that lean right.

“Run, Hide, Fight,” the Daily Wire movie, isn’t even an overtly partisan offering, at least to the non-Leftist eye. It’s the story of a high school senior (Isabel May) who tries to thwart a foursome of school shooters at her small Midwest town’s high school. What makes the “Die Hard-esque” theme conservative isn’t what it says, but instead what it doesn’t say. There are no forced themes of homosexuality among the characters, no pressing of racial motives, no guilt trip about the availability of guns, no assigned victim identity groupings except for the presence of past bullying and its possible outcomes as recounted by some of the villains. While conservatives will view it as straightforward entertainment, the Left views such omissions as blatant road signs for systemic homophobia, racism and gender reliance.

Instead the film focuses on subplots – what goes right and what goes wrong with the school staff and law enforcement’s handling of every parent’s nightmare. The script leads toward the young woman’s bridging of her own fears and her sense of duty to act in order to help save the lives of her fellow students.

Courage, honor duty: Not typical Hollywood themes these days.

The movie is aimed at conservatives, or at least non-Leftists, because as they vacate traditional liberal markets they’re creating brand new ones.

The mass exodus of account holders from Facebook and Twitter in recent weeks after the Big Tech blackout of President Trump and other conservative account holders may be the Great Flood of support evidence. Conservatives long ago began to list “Red State Vacations” among travel options to encourage discretionary spending in other than liberal-dominated strongholds. Every time Leftists at the University of Kansas attack the local Christian-owned Chickfil-A in Lawrence, its multilane drive-thru becomes a 15 minute wait. The examples of the emerging conservative market just keep coming.

America’s divisions may not be as geographic as in the last Civil War, but as the political climate continues to heat up they are, and will be, no less distinct.