How about pride in America? An expression of the nobility of the country we built, our resilience, the Pax Americana, the fact that we ended WWII, etc.
A good old “America fuck yeah” movie would certainly be cool now that I think about it. The most recent movie that pops into my mind is “Top Gun: Maverick”. Though I haven’t seen it, I imagine it’s largely about American airmen being tough, brave and heroic and taking down the bad guys. I haven’t seen anybody getting into culture-war arguments over that movie though. I’m sure there are some people on Twitter saying it’s too “American exceptionalist” or whatever but it certainly is nowhere near the same level of conflict prompted by, say, She-Hulk or Rings of Power or anything like that.
My guess is that for both the left and the right, there are values they prioritize which are pretty uncontroversial (among normal people) and having pride in America and, say, our role in WW2 is one of those for the right (and being proud of MLK and the civil rights movement would be one for the left)
Then there’s the more controversial stuff each side believes, the kinds of things said by weird and crazy people on the Internet. I don’t have quantitative data on this and I’m just going off vibes, but when it’s between someone talking about “the intersectional oppression of bipoclgbtqiaxy+ folx” and someone talking about “the decline of Western Civilization spurred on by the (((anti-white Hollywood)))”, to a lot of people the first one just seems strange and disconnected from real issues, while the second one throws up serious red flags reminiscent of a certain destructive ideology which America helped defeat in WW2.
You want something that’s not too alienating overall, but which will reliably stir up the same old debate on the Internet.
In summary it seems to me that it’s much easier to signal left-wing politics in a way which starts a big argument which most normies will see as meaningless and will not take a side on. If you try to do the same with right-wing politics, you run more risk of the normies siding with the “wokists” in the ensuing argument because the controversial right-wing culture war positions tend to have worse optics.
A good old “America fuck yeah” movie would certainly be cool now that I think about it. The most recent movie that pops into my mind is “Top Gun: Maverick”. Though I haven’t seen it, I imagine it’s largely about American airmen being tough, brave and heroic and taking down the bad guys. I haven’t seen anybody getting into culture-war arguments over that movie though. I’m sure there are some people on Twitter saying it’s too “American exceptionalist” or whatever but it certainly is nowhere near the same level of conflict prompted by, say, She-Hulk or Rings of Power or anything like that.
My guess is that for both the left and the right, there are values they prioritize which are pretty uncontroversial (among normal people) and having pride in America and, say, our role in WW2 is one of those for the right (and being proud of MLK and the civil rights movement would be one for the left)
Then there’s the more controversial stuff each side believes, the kinds of things said by weird and crazy people on the Internet. I don’t have quantitative data on this and I’m just going off vibes, but when it’s between someone talking about “the intersectional oppression of bipoclgbtqiaxy+ folx” and someone talking about “the decline of Western Civilization spurred on by the (((anti-white Hollywood)))”, to a lot of people the first one just seems strange and disconnected from real issues, while the second one throws up serious red flags reminiscent of a certain destructive ideology which America helped defeat in WW2.
You want something that’s not too alienating overall, but which will reliably stir up the same old debate on the Internet.
In summary it seems to me that it’s much easier to signal left-wing politics in a way which starts a big argument which most normies will see as meaningless and will not take a side on. If you try to do the same with right-wing politics, you run more risk of the normies siding with the “wokists” in the ensuing argument because the controversial right-wing culture war positions tend to have worse optics.