Everything on the internet rules by decree of capturing attention, and as it so happens, pursuing it nefariously can be most-lucrative. This is the playbook Andrew Sullivan has typically run–since his earliest days of writing on the internet, he’s amassed an audience for whom critical inquiry plays second fiddle to the allure of contrarianism. He’s like Glenn Greenwald in that way, but perhaps more intentional and less naive about the role he’s been playing in the blogosphere for the longest.
Some might find Sullivan’s embrace of conservative ideas puzzling in light of his non-adherence to heterosexuality, but to him, conservatism and queerness aren’t so hard to reconcile when you consider the furthest term goals at play. For Sullivan, uplifting those who’ve been traditionally alienated from the project of conservatism can be most-crucial to its success–he argued as much all the way back in 1989. He correctly calls out the overly-simplistic framework of identiarian struggle that the liberal left tend to typically indulge, but his counter-thesis barely holds water when the extent of the modern right’s assault on gay and trans rights is fully considered.
