re: rank and file - that's why I kind of hedged with "coalescing". There are a lot of self-identified leftists who don't read theory, but they've browsed enough Hexbear or instagram posts or whatever to have some reasonable socialist principles. If we let them off the hook, we have to do the same for heavy consumers of right-wing media. Wasn't doing class analysis really. Of course the Christopher Rufo types at the ideological head have much clearer ideas than the middle of the pack, but I think folks who just post hate speech on Facebook or whatever also have an outline of the world they're trying to defend.

Of course you're right that the consistent overarching goal results in what we can point to as hypocrisy, e.g. states' rights to do what I want. But you know like, what good does that do us? When they say that CoD isn't political what they mean is it doesn't challenge the status quo. Challenging that hypocrisy doesn't make an impact on them because it's not what they're saying. The right will make similar attacks based on incorrect interpretation, e.g. "so much for the tolerant left", and they're never gonna change anybody's mind. Maybe we can agitate leftists by calling conservatives NPCs but is that gonna lead to increased working class consciousness? I think we have to identify and oppose their real intent (which liberals, without class analysis, can't do).

Their political positions are not based on any kind of analysis or fundamental principles, but instead shift along with the status quo, which does change over time due to things like technology, even if the overarching deference to the owning class never changes in a capitalist society.

side note - isn't this the same for us? working class is pretty different than it was in 1800s, subdivided and connected in different ways. It's true that in general the world shifts, but if the real goal of conservatives is to keep just the owning class in control then that stacks up pretty well against our goal of working-class control. Personally I think the biggest theoretical deficiency of the right is just that it isn't coherent beyond this basic point. Conservatives aren't telling each other to read theory (Friedman? there's no conservative Marx), 4chan and youtube is all they have. Ironically kinda postmodern