Tag: God’s Creation

Support My Right-Wing Culture

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Yesterday I encouraged readers to “Support Right-Wing Culture“; the thesis of my argument was that there are conservatives who create amazing art, but who languish in obscurity.  Meanwhile, we’ll complain that don’t have any cultural products compared to the Left while also paying for a DailyWire+ subscription so Ben Shapiro can buy another ivory kippah. (but, by all means, have a DW+ subscription, just also be willing to spend five or ten bucks a month on smaller creators).

Ben Shapiro doesn’t need your money or your emotional support (although his plummeting viewership may suggest otherwise).  His wife (like mine) is a doctor, after all.  Quite frankly, he doesn’t deserve it, either:  it’s pretty clear he hates the very people he purports to support.  However, conservatives are willing to give him $9 a month, but will balk at the idea of spending $9 a month to support a small creator, for whom that $9 could be extremely impactful.

But I digress.  Plenty of other people can (and have, and should) poke fun at Ben Shapiro.  My point here is to discuss ways we can build each other up—and build a lasting cultural legacy.

To that end, I highlighted a few creators yesterday (note that a lot of the links to come are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of the purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you):

There are several other creators I failed to mention yesterday; to wit:

And that’s just a start!  There are people who are really trying to create new, original, cool stuff.

I’d like to think I am one of them.  All of the folks mentioned above are far more talented and driven than yours portly, but I’d like to think I have created some unique culture in my doughy life.  So, here are some of the ways you can support my contributions to right-wing culture:

  • Buy my stuff in the Based Book Sale short stories sale, starting tomorrow, Wednesday, 18 March 2026 (they’ll be $0.99 each from 18-25 March 2026)
  • Buy my music on Bandcamp using promo code moving to take 90% off your purchase
  • Download my instrumental piece “π” for free (just type in “$0” when “purchasing” and put in your e-mail address)
  • Check out my YouTube channel (and like, subscribe, and comment—all of which are free ways to support the channel)
  • Buy my books (and write a review—it takes only a few minutes and helps a lot)
  • Subscribe to/follow me on Substack (for free or with a paid subscription)
  • Subscribe to my SubscribeStar page (for as little as $1 a month, which is probably too cheap)
  • Share blog posts (including this one) to your friends, family, etc.
  • Stream my music (on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and more)

Almost all of those items can be replicated for the other creators mentioned herein.  None of them take very long.  Many of them are free!

It doesn’t take much.  I know money is tight and we’re probably staring down the start of the Third World War (or everything fine will be in another week—no need to panic), but everyone can afford five bucks a month to support a creator.  Sacrifice one meal out and you’ve saved enough buy a couple of books or Substack subscriptions.

We conservatives need to step up and actually support—financially, morally, and culturally—our own people.  The Left has built entire institutions to propagate their worldview, such as it is.

We don’t have to let them have a stranglehold on creating cool stuff.  There is more to life than grilling and Kid Rock concerts and Ben Shapiro’s nasally commentary.

So dig deep and do the bare minimum to support the creators in your life (and, if you see fit, me, even though I just lectured you).

God Bless!

—TPP

Support Right-Wing Culture

The Portly Politico10 Comments

From time to time, I’ll read essays that argue, essentially, that the Right is terrible at creating culture.  If anything, we simply mimic what the mainstream culture is doing, but like most copies, our versions are poorly-executed and lame.  The prime example of this phenomenon is contemporary Christian worship music, which takes the aesthetics of the blandest power pop and changes “baby” to “Jesus,” all set against a synth-string pad and a bunch of sus2 chords.

The thesis is correct—to a point.  We are pretty bad on the Right at supporting good cultural output.  I think there are a few reasons for this failure to support our own creators:

  • We view all secular institutions with skepticism (as we probably should), so we dismiss high culture and academic output as inherently tainted (as we probably shouldn’t)
  • We are excessively focused on dollars-and-cents practicality and, therefore, fail to see the benefits of the arts, which are often not realized in ROI (thus, megachurches that look like Dollar Generals instead of real churches)
  • We are too focused on the political and the minutiae of policy (“what should the marginal tax rate be for people earning $200,000 a year?”) instead of focusing on broader cultural movements
  • We like everything dosed out in digestible soundbites and spicy memes, not long-form works that require time, patience, and attention

There are likely more, and I think some of the above are more relevant than others.  For example, the fourth point paints with too broad a brush, perhaps.

But these points are generalizations, and we can derive a good bit of Truth from generalized observations, even if “Not All Conservatives Are Like That.”

The ultimate problem is that we’re not looking in the right places for culture that is pure, good, beautiful, virtuous, and true.  That kind of cultural output is not getting the attention it deserves, even though it is creating work that is timeless.

There are artists, writers, poets, painters, etc., creating work that is great.  There are creators on the Right who are not staging WWE-style funerals or hawking Kid Rock as the alternative to the Left.

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SubscribeStarSaturday: Hiking the Florence Nature Preserve

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

On Saturday, 3 August 2024 my friend Ashley and I went hiking in the Florence Nature Preserve, accessible via the Upper Hickory Nut Gorge Trailhead, just outside of Gerton, North Carolina and down the road from Chimney Rock.

Ashley had proposed the trip a couple of months earlier, with the inviting question “do you like hiking?”  I couldn’t respond to that query quickly enough, and within minutes we had planned the broad outline of our excursion to the trailhead.

We left right around 6 AM that morning in Ashley’s sweet 2021 Ford Bronco, which she was eager to road test on winding mountain roads, and after a couple of missed GPS turns due to the distraction of conversation, we made it to the trailhead around 10:15 AM.  By 10:30 AM we were lathered up in sunscreen and on the trail.

By noon we were drinking in this beautiful view at Tom & Glenna Rock over some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches:

Panoramic View of Lookout - FNP

The entire trail is roughly five miles up and back, but there are various side trails and alternative routes available that can reduce the trek depending on experience level and time constraints.  We opted for a modified version of the “blue” trail rather than the whole loop, which would have taken us pretty much the entire day to complete.

Here’s a map of our route (I’ve used the map from the Conserving Carolina website and added our route in pink):

Florence-Nature-Preserve-Map - Route with Ashley in Pink

According to some rough math based on the interactive map for the trail, Ashley and I hiked around 3.82 miles in total.  Naturally, roughly half of that was uphill, so coming back down the trail was a bit quicker.  We also paced ourselves heading up, as Ashley was documenting our hike via video for her mother.  That deliberate pace was smart, because we did not wear ourselves out on the hike.

The trail is rated as “challenging” and/or “strenuous,” and after my “Summer of George” I was a tad concerned about my ability to huff and puff up a mountain, but yours portly performed admirably.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.