If this is truly a battle for liberty, then the importance of morale cannot be understated.
In right-wing culture, there’s a habit of describing one’s mindset and beliefs according to one of several colored “pills.” There’s the red pill, the blue pill, the white pill, the black pill, and other combinations that people come up with.
All this “pill” business comes from the film The Matrix, in which, during one famous and oft-parodied scene, the main character, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), is offered to ingest either a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill would keep him in the simulated world known as “the Matrix,” which machines that took over the world built to keep humanity ignorantly enslaved. The red pill takes Neo out of the Matrix into the real world, a dystopian future in which he joins the rebellion of human survivors against the machines.
In line with the movie, the red pill refers to a political awakening. The specifics can vary. Someone might be “redpilled” by discovering that the Federal Reserve is a private corporation that hasn’t been audited by Congress, or by learning about the CIA’s unethical experiments on American civilians.
The blue pill, as in the film, refers to someone remaining in a state of ignorance. The white pill, which is used less frequently, involves holding a hopeful perspective when faced with adversity, whether or not the hope eventually pays off. Those who believed President Donald Trump was going to come back to office after Joe Biden’s inauguration can be said to have been white pilled.
Finally, among the most common “pills” talked about in right-wing political circles is the black pill. The black pill is defeatism, fatalism, nihilism. Someone who has “taken the black pill” believes the system is too big to change, the fight is lost, it’s all over, so you might as well stop trying.
The curious thing about the black pill is that those who have taken it have a tendency to not simply tune out of the political debate altogether; instead, they continue to follow the news cycle, regularly feeding themselves with bad news that validates their confirmation bias that defeat is imminent.
And they tend to remain active on social media or forums, repeating their fatalistic lamentations over and over again, trying to get as many people as possible to listen and change their ways. That is, they are offended and incensed at those who still cling to hope, and they scoff at anyone who remains engaged in the fight, ridiculing them as fools. For the black pilled, there is apparently no rest until they have pulled everyone down into the abyss with them.
Alarmingly, the black pill has been creeping into the right-wing movement of late. It’s understandable; between President Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, the GOP’s underperformance during the 2022 midterms, and other seeming losses, it’s easy to fall into the assumption that we’re on a losing streak.
Unfortunately, sometimes even those of us who aren’t black pilled inadvertently reinforce defeatism with the way we emphasize certain information.
For example, one of the biggest factors of widespread black-pilling has been the phenomenon of election fraud. Certainly, there is significant evidence of voter fraud in 2020 and 2022. And it is important to make people aware of this evidence. How can we hope to fix the problem if we don’t expose it and talk about it?
However, one consequence, intended or unintended, has been that now many Republicans and conservatives have subscribed to the line of thought that “we’re never going to win. Whatever we do, they’re always going to steal it.”
Many ask “what’s the use” and say “there’s no point.”
The problem is that this belief, as with any deeply held conviction, positive or negative, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What happens to those who internalize “they’re just going to steal it all anyway”? They don’t vote. They don’t volunteer. They don’t donate. They don’t try to influence those in their personal network. They don’t get involved in their communities. They don’t run for office. They don’t attend city council or school-board meetings. They don’t attend protests.
Why would they, when it’s all for naught?
Of course, what happens is that their lack of involvement inevitably makes it that much easier for the leftists, who are pumped and involved, to get their way. So we keep losing, and the self-fulfilling prophecy goes on and on in a vicious cycle.
It’s important to understand that mindsets are contagious. Positivity, firmly held, breeds positivity in others. If you’re confident, and refuse to waver, then those around you become confident as well.
And the converse is true. The negative, the naysayers, the doom-and-gloom crowd, only propagate more defeatism. It’s a mental virus. And it must be checked or it will continue to spread — and bring the entire conservative movement down with it.
