Conservatives have long discussed the culture wars and why we have been losing them. Many have fought, and are fighting, for a resurgence of sanity in our culture.

Well, it’s happening in the strangest way. Two examples: 1. The sharp Hollywood box office decline. 2. The ESPN/NFL failure. Two abysmal failures of the cultural elite are occurring right before our very eyes.

Hollywood

For the first time in generations, the box office is significantly down. Suddenly America is deciding that it can spend its money elsewhere. As of Labor Day, the receipts have been down anywhere from 12 to 16 percent from last year, depending on which stats you read. Which puts them in the middle of a deep recession.

Their stars, their directors, and their “must see” franchises all flopped. Stephen King, Baywatch, Ridley Scott, The Rock, Tom Cruise. Even previously high scoring ”family” cartoons (Minions, Lightning McQueen) flopped. The list of bombs is quite impressive. I suspect none of these Hollywooders feel poor, but the American reaction to all these must have Hollywood in a state of mental depression, not just a recession.

After all, weren’t they in the driver’s seat of the culture just a year ago? Didn’t everyone listen to them? What happened? Well, trust me, it’s not streaming, or new technologies. If it were that simple, Hollywood’s products would be streamed as they were watched before.

Let me suggest the major reason, the elephant in the living room: Hollywood’s unabashed anti-American leftism. Since November 8, the Hollywood left has not only gone crazy, it has outed itself as totally irrational, over the top, incapable of understanding America, and totally anti-American. A lot of people have known of the Hollywood leftist bias, it’s not a secret. But until this year, never have they appeared so out of touch, and so off the wall as now.

Look at the amount of crazy anti-Trump ads that have been made in the past year. It started with “Save the Day”, a Josh Whedon video sounding like a high-tech PSA. To show us all, according to these recognizable “stars”, just how bad Donald Trump was, and how important voting for Hillary was.

They soldiered on in the infamous campaign for the electors to save America by betraying their duty to represent the voters. Quoting the Federalist Papers, Martin Sheen (et al) beseeched the electors to save America, saying we needed someone “to an eminent degree, endowed with the requisite qualifications”. Yes, Martin (et al), we’ll fold because you say so, and stand by while the oh so honest and trustworthy Hillary is installed. Hillary actually had three electors stand down from voting for her as a result. Schadenfreude at its finest.

So, because the strategy was working so well, they kept making more of these “PSAs”. And in each one Hollywood looked crazier, and more out of touch. They have a new one about war with Russia.

The Oscars were dominated by anti-Trump messaging. Their ratings plummeted along with the year’s box office.  And because this was working so well, they repeated it all again at the Emmys. Their ratings tanked as well, as they congratulated themselves on being so marvelously “woken”, taking anti-Trump rhetoric to new heights.

The only awakening going on is the recognition by a lot of Americans, probably a majority, that Hollywood is crazy, anti-American, and wrong. That is a major turn in the culture wars. For now, the left is alienating more people than they have energized. As Steve Bannon has suggested, let them keep prattling on, and Trump will keep winning. America can live without them.

The ESPN/NFL industrial complex.

The left decided it was a good idea to interject left-wing political ideology into everyday sports. No, actually, every minute of sports needed to be a left-wing triumph, or so they thought.  And, on cue, that worked out even worse than Hollywood’s political ads.

The collapse began in 2016, when their viewership went down almost ten per cent. Enter fall, 2017, and the freefall has continued unabated. Ending for now with the non-firing of Jemel Hill for calling the president a white supremacist. They have had to lay off a huge amount of staff. Their ratings are in the toilet, and they don’t have the corporate sense to fire this woman after they fired Curt Schilling for far less. 

This is all tied to Colin Kaepernick’s kneel down 2016 protests that ESPN and their leftist commentators all lauded. He was “courageous, speaking to the man, bringing up truths about America.” Except it was all so obviously untrue. There are not “bodies in the street and people (police) getting paid leave and getting away with murder”, quoting Kaepernick. There was never any “hands up, don’t shoot” incident. There is no rash of racist white policeman killing blacks indiscriminately.

And enough people know it to tank the NFL and ESPN together.

As the Steeler’s QB Ben Roethlisberger said, he couldn’t sleep realizing how disrespectful they were being to their fans. Egad, the jersey of the lone Steeler standing for the anthem hit record sales overnight. And their coach forced him to apologize. Steeler fans will not forget.

Fans are burning jerseys on YouTube, thousands of dollars worth at a time. This will not end well. Not even Jerry Jones’ stunt, in an attempt to back things down, is going to help. When Tom Brady and Robert Kraft are suckered into taking the anti-American viewpoint against Trump, you know it’s going to be a long, downward spiral.

As Byron York, and even a few astute leftists are saying. This is a battle that Trump cannot lose, despite David French’s preemptive surrender. Every kneeldown assures him of more supporters, and less for the ESPN/NFL industrial complex.

This is a turn in the culture wars, and it is unexpected. Trump is perhaps the least ideological cultural warrior in the Republican party.  He had a gay entrepreneur address the GOP convention. He said he would allow Bruce Jenner to choose any bathroom she wants in Trump Tower.  Frankly, he’s not known for winning the presidency because of his abortion stance.

Yes, he knows what he is doing when he opposes the NFL with the kneeldown against the national anthem. But no, he did not make them all so crazy -- they did that to themselves. Trump drives the leftist cultural machine crazy, just by being himself. The left can’t see how they are outing themselves as intolerant and over the top.