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Getting named to Salon’s list of The 25 Conservatives Actually Worth Following On Twitter is either a grievous insult or a certification that you suck. Salon is saying that you’re not a carrier of a hardcore conservative contagion, and that the liberal establishment doesn’t need to worry. At best, Salon thinks you’re no threat. At worst, it considers you a fellow traveler. And some of these selectees really are straight-up Fredocons.

You see the same thing with the True Conservative line-up at the New York Times. That’s where you find the king of creased-slacks lib-licking, David Brooks, in a perpetual tizzy about normal Americans wanting to be left alone by the finger-wagging likes of him and his cocktail comrades. There’s also Bret Stephens, who recently told his NYT readers that the Second Amendment needs to be repealed because that’s totally a right wing thing. Apparently, the Times had trouble finding a conservative who supports gun rights; maybe they should have left Manhattan and asked around.

You know what you won’t find in the major papers or on the mainstream networks, besides timely exposés of Democrat megadonors who are also megaperverts? Conservative columnists who don’t foam at the mouth over Donald Trump and who actually support conservative policies. Instead, you’ll find a bunch of journalistic Jeb!s, because the liberals hiring them know that squishes gonna squish.

Look, far be it from me to tell my enemy when it’s making a mistake, but because the media only hires nominal conservatives who already agree with liberals, liberals have no idea what real conservatives think or why. This is the reason they end up baffled when they lose and lose and lose again – sure, Felonia von Pantsuit was also stupid and drunk, but you get the point. As Sun Tzu observed, and I believe this is a verbatim translation from the original Chinese text, a wise general must seek to know and understand the true nature and schemes of his enemy lest he end up as forlorn and humiliated as a foxy fern in the Miramax head office.

Now, it was unfair for some of these selectees to get stuck on the Salon list; you don’t just live a thing like that down. I know and like some of them, and others I know. Some got listed solely because of their Never Trump bona fides, and Salon’s wuss-skewing audience won’t like much of what they say besides “IMPEACH!” Rick Wilson is super conservative – he just detests Trump. Same with Ben Howe. By the way, always include the hashtag #MAGA in tweets to Tom Nichols because he just loves that.

Others on the list are real conservatives too, just with a Trump-contempt rating from “very” to “hyper,” like Noah Rothman, S.E. Cupp, and Allahpundit. Kat Timpf’s skewed-glasses, quirky conservagal vibe is less political than cultural. The grumbling curmudgeon of the First Amendment Popehat isn’t a conservative at all; I guess liking free speech makes you one these days. Now, I don’t always agree with them, but these and several others don’t deserve this dishonorable honor. They ought to demand their removal because getting validated by Salon is a lot like being photographed hi-fiving Harvey Weinstein.

It’s probably good for liberals to be exposed to these people, even if reading only them would give the average bubble-dwelling Prius-driving prog nerd the false impression that most conservatives are sad that Trump won. In one week, Trump crushed the cultural left in the Battle of the NFL, decertified Iran, pulled us out of the PLO-hugging fiasco that is UNESCO, gutted Obamacare, and dissed that simpering weasel Bob Corker. Sad? We’re freaking thrilled.

You’d just never know it only following Salon-approved pundits. Salon thinks liberals should follow these folks because of diversity, but to liberals, “diversity” means a diverse group of people who all agree with liberals.

Other Salon superstars are ciphers – who is this Tim Carlson guy again? I tried to look him up and found I had blocked him, probably for boring me. Somebody named “Brandt” apparently exists too – here’s a tweet Salon found so powerful and insightful that it used it to show why both its readers should follow him: “The President is a fascist.” I guess whoever Brandt is provides the thoughtful conservative counterpoint to the liberal position that Trump is the anti-Christ.

But much of the Salon list is composed of quintessential Fredocons, the formerly respected conservatives who woke up one morning and found that actual conservative voters were tired of waiting and waiting and waiting for them to actually fight the culture war these guys were always fundraising off of promising to wage. Naturally, Kristol and Podhoretz are there, representing the cutting edge of conservatism circa 2008. They get called “neo-cons” a lot but that’s a dumb and meaningless term. These unworthy inheritors of conservative cred really ought to known as nepo-cons.

Hey, why do I hear the Love Boat theme in my head every time I see these Captains of Conservative, Inc.?

Then there’s John Weaver, whose bio begins, “John Weaver was a strategist for John McCain and John Kasich before becoming a CNN contributor.” For us actual conservatives, that’s also where his bio ends.

David Frum is listed to reassure liberals that maybe someday we’ll return to the status quo ante where the Republicans understood that their proper role is to be the Democrats’ principled punching bag. Ana Navarro is on the list too, because it’s a list of Salon-approved conservatives and of course she’s on the list.

What’s missing are, of course, actual conservatives who generally support the president we elected. There are a few of us. Instead, we get Salon-selectees like Jennifer Rubin, the WaPo’s shrill, naggy voice of every liberal’s favorite kind of conservatism – the limp, ineffectual kind. If you listen to her, and why would you ever listen to her, conservatism means being against the Iran deal when Obama struck it and for it when Trump struck it down for the sole reason that it was Trump doing the striking. What’s risking a nuke over Tel Aviv when Trump is so, so…oh well I never!

The conservatism the mainstream media pushes is really conservatisn’t; the rest of us have moved on from the old conservatives as submissive, bow-tied weenies model. For example, when Trump tweeted something about broadcast licensing in the wake of yet another media lie, the wusscons freaked, because they always freak. But us conservative conservatives yawned, because we’ve learned that Trump vents and we know there is exactly 0% chance Trump would ever actually do it. “BUT BUT BUT IF WARREN SAID IT YOU’D GO NUTS!” the conserva-fussbudgets sputtered, and that’s true, because we know Elizabeth Warren would totally do it, the Democrats having already voted to repeal the First Amendment. Us unSalon-sanctioned conservatives don’t serve the liberal media’s purposes because we refuse to come running when liberals call another false alarm group pearl clutch.

But when the lib media claps its hands, there’s always some pseudo-con eager to please. Really, the please-hire-me cons’ capering and clowning for liberal approval is getting embarrassing. If these fake conservatives conserve nothing else, at least they should try and conserve some of their dignity.

No wonder the left has such a skewed version of modern conservatism. Liberals never hear from a conservative conservative who can string a sentence together. Too often, if there’s any dissent at all it comes from some bizarre one-off novelty act the media sometimes adds to panels already groaning under the weight of a half-dozen anti-Trump meat puppets.

“And we are also joined by Homer Gumbo, winner of WKHJ’s ‘I’ll Tattoo Anything On My Forehead For $10’ contest and a potential Trump supporter once he completes his probation and regains his voting privileges. Now Ana, first question to you. How much worse than Hitler is Donald Trump for tweeting that the GOP Congress should keep its promise to repeal Obamacare?”

If you want a list of who to follow for real insights into the conservative movement as it exists in 2017 and not as it existed in 2007, go see who I follow and who I RT a lot on Twitter and follow them (and follow the cute dog pics accounts because nothing beats corgi puppies pouncing on balloons). The simple fact is that Salon’s list, the mainstream media panels, and the editorial pages don’t want straight-up conservatives. They want liberals, or at least anti-Trumpers, to reaffirm their customers’ pre-existing prejudices. After all, liberals are not well-known for enjoying being challenged with new ideas.

Basically, it’s all part of a campaign to construct a safe space for triggered libs, but their ostrich strategy won’t help them – it just makes them less and less able to respond effectively to what we’re offering since they have no clue about what we are offering. About half of America likes what Trump is doing, and if you only read Salon or the NYT or WaPo, or watch only MSNBC or CNN, you have absolutely no clue why.

That’s okay with us. We’re always pointing out how, “That’s why you got Trump,” but they never listen. And they never listen because they don’t want to hear us, and thanks to the mainstream media they don’t have to. So when Trump is re-elected in 2020, their shock and dismay will be that much sweeter.