Facts Do Care About Your Feelings

We need art to make liberalism cool again.

By the time the documentary film called Athlete A came out in 2020, the story of Larry Nassar’s abuse of hundreds of young athletes was well known. There had easily been hundreds if not thousands of journalistic stories written. These stories were everywhere from the Indy Star — the newspaper that broke the story in September 2016 — to The New York Times, 60 Minutes and CNN.

There had been books about the case — Start By Believing and The Girls — and the brave women who brought Nassar down had won many awards and accolades from the likes of ESPN (the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage in 2018) and Glamour (Women of the Year) and Time Magazine (Time 100).

Nassar was accused in 2016, he went on trial in 2017 and he was convicted and sent to prison for life that same year. The story had literally been everywhere. In fact, as a producer of the film Athlete A — which I had initiated in 2017 but wouldn’t come out until 2020 — I was a tad concerned that no one would care anymore. That they’d just say eh I already know about that!

That’s not what happened.

When the film came out it captured the public’s consciousness for a time. And certainly anyone who had ever competed as a gymnast was riveted. Most of the gymnasts who I trained with back in the 1980s did not even have a cursory understanding of the facts of the case by the time the film came out. In fact, young women who were featured in the film Athlete A called me and said: I had no idea about [some such part of the story.]

Journalists brought Nassar down. The case would have never been investigated and brought to trial, let alone achieved a conviction without the Indy Star reporters who blew the case open when they published Rachael Denhollander’s account of abuse. But that alone was not enough to have it become a part of our cultural story. That alone did not come to define what the Left likes to call The Narrative.

It is stories that make us understand, that cause us to remember. It is stories that are passed on, that inspire, that provoke action. Not facts. The facts may have sent Nassar to prison but they did not start a movement to change the coaching culture in the sport of gymnastics.

Athlete A is what drove a movement amongst gymnasts and athletes from around the world to call for change. It was the film that enabled retired athletes — who continued to struggle as adults with the abuse they had suffered at the hands of coaches in the sport decades earlier — to see themselves and their own stories and understand their ongoing emotional suffering as having been caused by abuse.

The film caught fire. Gymnasts used the hashtag #gymnastalliance to post their stories on social media.

Until then, they’d thought themselves the problem. They’d thought themselves weak and deserving of poor treatment. They thought: how sad for those girls who were abused by Nassar or Karolyi or John Geddert. That didn’t happen to me. I was just undisciplined and weak and deserved the angry coaching heaped upon me. If I hadn’t been fat I wouldn’t have been fat-shamed.

But the film reframed it all for them. It struck an emotional chord and gave them insight into their current struggles. And, it gave them the motivation and encouragement to speak up. And that led to real change. Like an investigation into the practices of British Gymnastics that led to its head — Jane Allen — stepping down under a mountain of abuse allegations from British Olympians Amy Tinkler and Beckie Downey.

Because, despite what Ben Shapiro says . . . facts do care about your feelings. Well maybe not the actual facts, which don’t even have feelings. But people remember feelings through stories. Not facts. Feeling seep into the cultural consciousness. Feelings rouse us to stand up and fight. Not facts. Feelings.

The Right — or even the non-extreme Left / normies / Independents and Unaffiliated’s (I put myself in this last category) — cannot win on facts alone.

And feelings are conveyed through stories and art and cultural artifacts that move people. Stories told through art engage our emotions and that is what and how we remember. And — very often — stories told through art are what prompt us to act.

“The story — from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace — is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”

— Ursula Le Guin, American fantasy and science fiction author

When I was at Levi’s, I always told my team: Our job is to tell stories. Stories about the amazing things people do in their Levi’s. That’s how they will come to love this brand.

Sure, we could have told a possible purchaser the facts of a pair of jeans — the length, the stretch content, the durability, thread strength. And those facts may matter (sometimes) at the moment of truth when a buyer is about to make a purchase. (Do I want extra stretchy, not stretchy at all?) But those facts do no matter at all when it comes to engaging, intriguing, connecting, falling in love with a brand (yes, there are brands and products people love . . . not like they love a child or sibling, but love in the loyal commercial sense. Are you giving up your iPhone any time soon? Do you always buy the same brand of running shoes? Leggings? Coffee?)

No one remembers quality metrics. Everyone remembers the amazing roadtrip that they took in college with nothing but a backpack, a pair of 501s and a chance meeting that led to true love. Stories charm and inspire. Facts do no such thing. Facts are simply not enough.

This is true in art. Politics. Life.

“The facts are not enough. They never are.”

— Art Spikol, writer, editor, designer

(and father of my grade school friend, Liz Spikol)

The Right — or even just the “non-far-Left” — doesn’t quite get this. Or they aren’t able to enact it in a meaningful way to drive cultural mores.

The Left has mastered the art of storytelling to influence hearts and minds to their way of thinking. And until the Right or Conservatives or even just Classical Liberals or non-insane Democrats come to embrace this fact, they will lose in the so-called “culture wars.”

The Right used to further ideals through emotion expressed via cultural institutions like the church. But with an increasingly secular, non-church going populace, the Right no longer has any place to further their message in a memorable and meaningful way.

Our cultural artifacts — movies, music, TV shows, food, theater, even brands — are all taken over by the Left. And perhaps have always been the purview of the Left which furthers its messaging through the devices of cultural mimesis.

If you’re old like me, you might ask: Oh who watches movies anyway? Who listens to music? (As a friend who I tested this theory that we need art to influence, said to me.) Isn’t everyone just watching the news? No. Young people consume culture. Compulsively. Constantly. And there is no good high quality culture from the Right or non-Left.

The Right sucks at art. They suck at creating cool. They suck at creating culture. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t value it, or because the institutions that further these things are unwelcoming to anyone espousing any view other than that which hails from the furtherest reaches of the Left. Do you think the Sundance Institute is welcoming to young conservative filmmakers? UCLA film school? Julliard School? The Cooper Union art school? Can you think of one place that teaches how to make art, or furthers art in the culture that isn’t a monoculture institution of far left ideology? No you can’t. So it is probably some combination of what is valued at the family level and then what and who are trained to make stuff, in our educational institutions, that leads to a non-art prioritizing Right/Center/non-extreme Left.

The fact is, there are no cool right wing movies. Or songs. Or artists. Or musicians. There just aren’t. When I googled “cool conservatives” I got: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Henry Kissinger.

Um . . . no. None of these people are cool. I won’t try to define what cool means. It’s ineffable. But I know it when I see it and they ain’t it.

Can you think of a movie with conservative themes that isn’t cheesy? Or over-wrought? With high production values? That isn’t just kind of bad? I can’t. (Fine I’ll give you “Sound of Freedom” which I haven’t seen. That’s one! One!)

Can you think of a musician with conservative themes and values in their music that isn’t lame? Or even one, from right now, that furthers themes of freedom and individual liberties (which I won’t concede as conservative values just yet)? Ok fine, you can have Jason Aldean. Not my style but I’ll grant that people like him. But c’mon — he’s not Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Jay Z, Sza, The Weeknd. I could go on. And on. One piddly Jason Aldean or “Sound of Freedom” does not equal 99.99999% of musicians and movies selling out theaters and stadiums and affecting the public’s consciousness.

And don’t get me started on brands. Brands further and embody culture as much as any movie or song, at this point. Not all brands. Not Swiffer. Not mops. But there are brands that sit head and shoulders above the rest — and they use storytelling and emotion to engage fans and grow sales. Their ads and content are shared, passed along. Brands are memetic devices. Brands like Nike and Levi’s and Coke.

What brands are the purview of the Right? My Pillow. Under no circumstances is Mike Lindell’s My Pillow ad an emotionally engaging act of mimesis. No one wants to be like him. No one likes those ads. If you like the pillow, fine. I dare anyone to say they really love those ads. No one does. They’re cringe. Everyone likes Chick-Fil-A, I guess. Yes, even Lefties like the chicken sandwich. But again, that’s one. And no one loves the content. Just the chicken.

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I have a good friend who used to be the Chief Creative Officer at a major advertising agency, before he was cancelled (all my friends are cancelled now). As a Christian and a Conservative, he had lived in L.A. for many decades making ads for some of the biggest, most well-known and beloved brands. He was ousted from his agency for what was deemed an unforgivable transgression and he moved away from the big blue city life.

I asked him: How did you live there for so long with all of those people who hated your beliefs?

He said: "I like the Left. They’re more creative. I like their art, their food, their creativity. I don’t know. It wasn’t a problem. Until it was.”

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Conservative activist and author Christopher Rufo is celebrating his “win” in having toppled Harvard’s President Claudine Gay. Like him or hate him, he is tackling the challenge of an illiberal left-wing monoculture head on in addressing the DEI/anti-individualism/anti-merit/anti-Enlightenment orthodoxy on college and university campuses.

On January 4, in an essay entitled “The New Right Activism,” he wrote:

“The Right doesn’t need a white paper. What it needs is a spirited new activism with the courage and resolve to win back the language, recapture institutions, and reorient the state towards rightful ends.”

I don’t disagree. But it’s not just universities, public schools, political parties and government that must be addressed. In order to win back the language — indeed the hearts and minds of not just young people but all of the people who want to get back to the principles of liberalism including truth, human reasoning, free speech, open inquiry, debate, the actual scientific method — we need art. Art in the broadest sense — film and music and pop culture and brand messaging. We need messaging that seeps into the culture and is carried forward and championed with passion and fervor by non-activists.

Rufo is right — A white paper won’t do it. No one cares.

And as Rufo says at the end of the article — The fight is here.

I would just add to that — We need art to help us win it. We need art to make liberalism cool again.