“Why is there so much stuff about novels, art and pop culture in here?” I was used to the question; interviewed about my book The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi. It’s about the 2018 effort by the American left to destroy me and my high school friend Brett Kavanaugh, who was up for a slot on the Supreme Court. The American Stasi had used extortion, witness tampering, death threats and false accusations to destroy us. I got fed into the DNC’s soul-crushing machine.
It’s all in The Devil’s Triangle. There’s also stuff about the books, movies and music that shaped us as teenagers in the 1980s.
Conservatives ask why not just politics but the Pet Shop Boys and Picasso are in my book. The fact they’re even asking reveals a serious defect in modern conservative thought. We talk about how toxic the culture is, then question why someone would recall and celebrate a culture that wasn’t so toxic. We make loud and annoying voices like Ben Shapiro rich and famous, while neglecting artists and writers with genuine talent who could change the culture. That’s why so much of The Devil’s Triangle is about novels, movies, music and art.
The solution? I’ve decided that Peter Thiel needs to write me a check. A big one. The money would be to turn The Devil’s Triangle into a film—not to mention keep my journalism career going. Thiel’s the tech billionaire who has shown some sympathy for conservative ideas, bankrupting Gawker and writing an essay for The New Criterion about “the diversity myth.” The New Criterion just published a short story by Woody Allen, a genius who was canceled by the left. It’s a good start but we need more.
Conservatives love the raw meat served up by outlets like The Daily Wire and Libs of Tik Tok; we’ve gotten so used to this bloody diet that we blanch if something more nourishing is slipped into the mix. When someone like Alec Baldwin writes a memoir, Nevertheless, readers and fans expect talk of his family and upbringing, as well as the artists and actors who shaped him. The personal and the cultural go together. For some reason, conservatives like me aren’t supposed to do the same thing. The pop culture of the 1980s encouraged me to love beauty and America and be excited about the future. No book about me and Brett Kavanaugh as teens would make sense without talking about it. It’s a culture that was viciously attacked in 2018 and deserves defending. It’s dispiriting that so many MAGAs don’t get that. Baldwin supported my work a few years ago when he saw a short film I’d made. Where was Matt Walsh? Giving a lecture to the camera in his studio. His film What is a Woman? is great point-and-laugh stuff. It’s not The Lives of Others.
The right’s refusal to support artists leads many people to abandon conservative politics—or to not join. Last year I came across a very cool film called Exemplum. It was shot in black and white and made for $10,000. The director, producer and lead actor is a young talent named Paul Roland. Roland is a political conservative. He’s working to get his second film going, but finding financial backers is a challenge. Meanwhile, the tranny-obsessed Daily Wire is producing crap like Lady Ballers.
Roland and I became friends after I gave Exemplum a five-star review. We often talk about how if he were a gifted young liberal filmmaker he’d have all kinds of support—support he’s not getting from the right. Roland thinks The Devil’s Triangle would make a great film, and he’s not the only one. In 2018, right after my political nightmare ended, I got a call from a successful Hollywood actor—someone who has shared the screen with Johnny Depp. He was baffled no one on the right had expressed interest in a film about how a non-celebrity had come up against the leftist machine of the media, politicians and opposition researchers and survived.
I told him conservatives don’t like art, much less flawed protagonists like me. They prefer neat and clean come-to-Jesus stories. For The Devil’s Triangle he envisioned a psychological thriller with 1980s flashbacks. “Imagine the soundtrack!” We’re talking kegs, Jesuits, teen ragers, tenderness, love, Irish-Catholic passion, a terrifying enemy in the American Stasi, the Replacements, the Pretenders, Michael Jackson, Van Halen and Talk Talk. “Sydney Sweeney needs to be in this thing.” one old high school buddy told me. “She’s got an amazing rack.” Exactly.
At one point last year I reached out to Kirk Cameron, the former 1980s sitcom star and now active evangelical. Months ago Cameron asked for me contact info but never followed up. Instead, he’s doing a kids show. “We are now diving deeper into children’s entertainment with a children’s television show, combining timeless biblical moral values of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood but with much modernized, high-energy, animated storytelling,” the actor said to the Washington Examiner.
So what to do? Am I proposing that Thiel bankroll my journalism as well as a film based on my book? Yes. Conservatism can’t afford to lose guys like me and Paul Roland.