Why I'm Not a Brain-Dead Conservative.

A declaration of independence in a polarized world.

Clifton Duncan as Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (The Shakespeare Theatre Company).

In 2008 the Village Voice published a column by playwright David Mamet called “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” In it, the master dramatist walks the reader through his evolution from a JFK-worshipping 1960’s liberal to a Thomas Sowell-reading embracer of The Tragic Vision of man.

I thought of Mamet’s op-ed during my recent appearance on The Andrew Klavan Show, speaking about conservatism’s failure in valuing the arts. My frustration (expressed harshly here and thoughtfully here) inspired me to borrow Mamet’s title and declare to Mr. Klavan that my refusal to relinquish my pro-arts proselytism is “Why I Am Not a Brain-Dead Conservative.” Many might find this confusing.

I emerged into the public consciousness during the madness of 2020, voicing strident criticisms of pandemic policy and railing against progressive identity politics. Eventually I found myself on shows like Timcast IRL, Triggernometry, Friday Night Tights, and The Dr. Drew Show. I started a podcast where I interviewed guests like Douglas Murray, Gina Carano and The Critical Drinker. Naturally I attracted a substantial conservative audience. But I’ve never assigned myself the label. I never will.

I never pigeonholed myself in my work. I won’t be pigeonholed in life, either.

Every Personality Assessment I’ve taken reveals that I score extremely high in Openness and Neuroticism: I’m drawn to the fresh and new and novel, and prone to intense, often negative emotion. It’s a natural psychological profile for an artist (especially an actor)¹. It’s also a typical profile for one who lands on the liberal side of the political spectrum. But that no longer guarantees professional safety amid the hyper-politicized milieu that permeates modern cultural institutions.

Openness includes the ability to entertain and empathize with multiple points of view. But we live in a world where the personal is now unbearably political, and where the liberalism of the creative class has been usurped (or hijacked) by a more radical vision. Survival for the modern artistic professional now hinges on passing a battery of Progressive purity tests, and the liberals of yesteryear find themselves tiptoeing on eggshells around peers they mistakenly took to be ideological bedfellows, who would ruin them for the smallest heresy.

As someone whose training emphasized the importance of curiosity and empathy, it’s been a genuine shock to witness how little of either is employed among creatives when it comes to politics. Worse, there is nothing fresh or new or novel being said, and nothing brave in declaring one’s hatred for racism, or how disturbed one is by injustice and inequality, or how much one loathes Trump. Nothing is being said in these circles that hasn’t been said for the past ten years (regarding Trump), or the past 60 years (regarding identity politics), or the past 300 years (regarding injustice).

For the artist who is genuinely Open, genuinely aroused by the exploration of ideas, the atmosphere is not only full of potential professional hazards, but insufferably, heinously stale².

And yet, so is life on the “other side.”

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Conservative peers and leftist haters alike have asked me why don’t you just say that you’re a conservative? The more fitting question is why would I?

While the abundance of Openness typifies the liberal, the absence of it typifies the conservative³. Such a profile does not lend itself to bold, creative exploration. The rare conservative who sincerely values the arts tends to confine themselves to reverence of “the classics,” satisfying their instinct to preserve important traditions, but divorcing them from pop culture, thereby crippling their cultural relevance and impact.

Things looked to be turning a corner in the wake of the 2026 Super Bowl, when conservatives found the halftime performance so obscene that it finally prompted some of their biggest voices to openly consider that influencing culture might actually involve creating it. Twitter lit up with debate among rightists about the nature and importance of art. Had the self-proclaimed “Culture Warriors” (who create no culture) finally begun to come round?

Alas, no. The discourse died within days. As did any desire I have to continue preaching to the deaf.

I refuse to attend to any more conservative complaints about how far left art and entertainment have become. I’ve zero use for YouTubers churning out slopcasts about “Woke Hollywood.” It’s gotten old, as old as the bottomless Trump Derangement from the left⁴.

The obvious cure for our stagnant culture is investment in a vibrant, viable and competitive cultural infrastructure; independent-minded creatives must accept they are on their own, and work from there. This is the dilemma for the Open, liberal artist in a polarized world: despised by leftists for refusing to surrender sanity; dismissed by rightists for refusing to surrender their vocation. That is a good thing.

The artist is a rogue figure, at a remove from society while painfully sensitive to it. The most interesting work comes from those who let nothing cramp what actor Michael Chekhov called “creative individuality.”

In a world which continually demands that one “choose a side,” the artist must find the strength to stand tall, shut out the noise, and follow his intuition.

Therein lies liberation.

CD

1. The challenge for many artists is in developing the strength and self-control to wield these traits constructively. Tragically, for many artists the challenge proves insurmountable, leading to damaging and self-destructive behaviors.

2. So too is the art that emerges from such a monoculture, as the public is painfully aware.

3. They make up for it in conscientiousness—that is, getting the things done that need doing, and taking pains to do it well.

4. Even my late uncle, an MSNBC-watching academic, had grown sick of anti-Trumpism by 2019. It’s gotten really, really old for far more people than you know.