Back in the 1980s, me and my friends loved Friday night TV shows. They were great.
CBS and ABC would dedicate their Friday night primetime lineup to teens and preteens, albeit without too much originality: for a while, rich white people adopting adorable black kids was inexplicably popular (I was a “Webster” guy more than a “Diff’rent Strokes” guy). After that, stories about cool cars took over. (“Knight Rider” and “Dukes of Hazard” were my favorites.)
I still want a black Trans Am with a little red light that goes back and forth.
But because these shows were geared for kids, the writing got VERY lazy. I think there was an episode of “Dukes” where Bo and Luke Duke were suspected of transporting moonshine: Boss Hogg (the bad guy) was chasing them through hairpin turns, dirt roads, and crazy off-road jumps, and when they finally cornered the Duke boys and opened the trunk… all those moonshine bottles were broken.
“Ain’t no law against transporting broken bottles, Boss Hogg. We gotta let ‘em go.”
“Oooh, dagnabbit! Curse dem Duke boys! They done beat me aga’n!”
But even as a little kid, I was like, “Well. That was kind of sudden.”
Weirdly, that aspect of the show was probably the most realistic: when tipping points happen, they tend to be dramatic. They don’t happen lineally and progressively; instead, they always take root beneath the surface.
Manifesting beyond your field of vision, they accrue in strength and velocity, awaiting the perfect moment to emerge.
And when they strike, they strike hard.
Malcom Gladwell is pretentious and self-serving, but he’s a helluva storyteller. His book, “The Tipping Point,” was a runaway success, selling 1.7 million copies, and was named one of the 100 best books of the 21st century. In it, Gladwell attempted to unravel the origin of tipping points: Why they happen, what causes them, and how we should prepare.
The trouble is, tipping points aren’t quantifiable. It’s a status denoted after the fact, once the “tipping point” has already occurred. All Gladwell can really do is tell us fun stories about past sociopolitical “tipping points” (which is his strength: he’s a spectacular storyteller), and describe a few commonalities between ‘em.
But storytelling isn’t science.
You can’t read Gladwell’s book and make reliable, dependable predictions about when the next “tipping point” will appear. His “theories” don’t have predictive value.
“The Tipping Point” was released in 2000. That was 25 years ago. As far as I know, nobody has used Gladwell’s book to accurately predict ANY future tipping points. Instead, “tipping points” remain mysterious, impossible to track, and (apparently) random. They’re more akin to Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy: “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
And this brings us to the cusp of Trump’s inauguration.
It’s received scant fanfare, but the world is slowly realizing that it’s been sleepwalking through another “tipping point” moment: the ascent of the right and the global collapse of the liberal left.
As my esteemed colleague Matt Margolis wrote yesterday:
Left-leaning parties received a record-low average of 45% in 73 democratic elections worldwide last year, according to a report from The Telegraph. In the United States and Western Europe, the numbers were even worse, with leftist parties securing just 42% of the vote compared to 57% for right-leaning parties. These results highlight a widespread disillusionment with the left’s increasingly radical positions.
The New York Post offered a similar analysis:
In the wake of Harris’ defeat, leftist parties in Canada, Australia, and Germany are already predicted to suffer similar losses in upcoming ballots.
“The trend is up. There is no real reason to expect that it will stop anytime soon,” Prof. Matthijs Rooduijn, a political scientist from the University of Amsterdam, told the outlet.
In Canada, polls are already showing that its firebrand Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is the favorite to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the lefty leader’s abrupt resignation earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Australia’s conservative party has also inched ahead of its ruling progressive government prior to a planned election later this year, polls show.
Just as “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” neither are tipping points. By definition, they’re the purest manifestation of grassroots angst, aspirations, fears, and frustrations.
They’re organic, not manufactured.
The media is hair-trigger sensitive to intensity: stories that evoke a powerful emotional response tend to attract the most attention. Whoever yells the loudest gets the best coverage.
But intensity and popularity are two very different things.
The intensity of opposition to MAGA, Trump, and the right was considerable. (It still is!) The people who hated Trump in 2020 still hate him today. He’s still “practically Hitler” and still a “wannabe dictator hellbent on Armageddon.”
But while the media was fixated on the intensity of the Trump-haters, they neglected to track the pain-points of everyone else.
People were suffering. Inflation was sky-high. The cost of housing had spiraled out of control. The border was a mess; foreign threats were growing; the American dream was dying.
As were the dreams (and dreamers) in Western Europe: their best and brightest had lost hope, too.
PR has its uses, but you shouldn’t confuse “spin” with reality. PR is the icing on the cake, but if the cake consists of mud and dirt, nobody will wanna eat it. Let me channel my inner Antoinette: If the people wanna eat cake, eventually you’ve gotta give ‘em cake!
But the global left kept feeding us mud and insisting it was delicious.
Bidenomics was a huge success! The economy was fantastic! America is back! Biden is the most consequential president in history!
None of it was true.
All the left delivered was broken promises, shattered dreams, and impoverished lives. Not just in America, but worldwide.
And thus, on a cold winter weekend in the middle of January, the people of earth awoke from their slumber, threw open their curtains and exclaimed, “Hey, look! A tipping point!”
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