In a recent piece, Matthew Continetti has demonstrated the fundamental truth about our political situation in these United States:
Now, of course, the average American and the average Democrat didn't come up with that on their own. As I keep saying, you have to be carefully taught. The impeachment notion arose out of Hillary Clinton's failure to concede on the night -- OK she was drunk -- or the day after the election in 2016. As we know, there was already a movement in the "intelligence community" to try and compromise Candidate Trump. And what with the mental health issues of Democrats relating to Trump Derangement Syndrome -- what is this notion of making reaction to election results into a mental health question? -- and the activist community always needing to get up in the morning with something to protest, pretty soon the vile Trump presumption had to be erased.
And why not? As Continetti writes:
And really this is nothing new. Back when I came into the US, in 1968, the election of Richard Nixon was an abomination to the New Left that had arisen in the 1960s. It was inconceivable to them that the American people in their right minds would elect a man such as Nixon to the presidency. As I comment elsewhere, my Jewish boss had a Nixon $3 bill coffee mug, as in "fake as a $3 bill." Hey, Richard Nixon was a Red Baiter, besmirching the reputations of Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas, first of all, and then hunting Commies in the McCarthy years. The impeachment of Richard Nixon was exactly the same as the Mueller special prosecutor: an ageing figurehead sitting on top of a crew of Democrat partisans determined to "get" the president.
Back in the 1970s Republicans were good guys that imagined, or felt they ought to, respond to the impeachment of Nixon in good faith. But it really wasn't good faith, and it took the Clinton impeachment for Republicans to wise up.
In the impeachment of Richard Nixon the two GOP wise men of the Senate, Goldwater and Minority Leader Rhodes, went down Pennsylvania Avenue to tell Nixon that he didn't have the votes to survive in the Senate. After the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the House of Representatives Vice President Gore went down Pennsylvania Avenue to lead a pro-Clinton rally of Democratic faithful at the White House.
If you are a Democrat I don't suppose you understand that and what it means to people like me. But I do. And so now and forever I regard impeachments as pure politics, the attempt to kick over the verdict of the voters with inside Washington baseball.
But I understand the position of the liberal left, I really do.
Their religion, their secular religion that sanctified their big-government politics is a monster, and slowly a counter movement -- among ordinary people -- is forming against it. And the liberal left can't believe it. Like any prophetic movement, their prophecy is failing and they can't believe it. They are desperately trying to believe that the glorious Rapture is coming, just as prophesied!
Or you can use the analysis of Crane Brinton in his Analysis of Revolution in which he proposes that all revolutionary movements that obtain political power get to a point where their prophecy of universal justice is not getting there. So a Reign of Terror and Virtue is needed to go the last mile. That's how to understand the demonizing of opposition to the progressives project as "hate" and bigotry -- when it's not racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Now my notion is that the project of the left has been a folly from the first. Its fundamental error is to believe that you can bring on the millennium with political power. Actually, I think, the lesson of the last two centuries is that political power is past its sell-by date. It is not necessary to use political power to secure a safe patch of land on which to grow food and protect it from pirates and plunderers. That's because the only real thing of value in the modern world for wiving and thriving is "intangible capital," the stuff between the ears of humans. You can't steal or plunder intangible capital. You have to let it thrive and grow without political interference.
Moreover, I think, the market and its verdict on all economic decisions removes the urgency of a moral framework in day-to-day life. The market rewards people that produce the products that other people want, and that provide the kind of services that other people want. It rewards trust and honesty, and it rewards people that reward trust and honesty. What more do you want?
Well, the great theme of the modern era is the notion of "creativity." The way to understand this is to realize that, in the old days, it was God that was the creative one. He created Heaven and Earth, and our human job was to be worthy of the world he created for us, follow his Rules and respect his Judgement. But with the explosion of human knowledge and technique we are discovering that, apart from the original Creation or Big Bang, there is a lot that humans can do to "create" ideas and stuff in this world. Not to mention the miracle of the creation of children.
I think that this new Creative Age is a revolution in human life without parallel. I think it is bigger than the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture. And, I believe, you ain't seen nothing yet.
But, the problem is that our educated class has got a hold of the wrong end of the stick. They think that the Creative Age is all about them and their creative ideas for politics and justice and sexual experimentation and saving the planet from climate change.
I think that the creative class is wrong, and will have to go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and unspeakable trials before it gets the point that its ideology is a Great Reaction and its cultural and political achievements thus far amount to the Crime of the Millennium.
But hey, the Hero's Journey is a journey into the underworld of the unconscious, and only after surviving severe trials does the hero return to the ordinary world. So the educated class needs its journey into the underworld.
My indictment of the Great Reaction is that socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism, identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism is neo-knight-errantry; social justice is neo-plunder.
My indictment of the Crime of the Millennium is that the educated class has driven the working class and minorities off the Road to the Middle Class. This is why the white working class is dying of despair, and 70 percent of black babies in the United States are born to a single mother. And the educated class has led western women into a wilderness of sorrows, denying their basic female nature and teaching them to imagine they can live just like men. And then the left, needing something to save the world -- as in Christianity -- has come up with climate change as a doctrine to "save the planet." But actually it is no different than the Crusades to save the Holy Land or the fight against Fascism or the fight against Communism. It is all about the political class's need for a war or the moral equivalent of war.
Our educated ruling class has this crazy notion -- common to ruling classes down the ages -- that God (or history) has ordained it to be the beneficent Oz for our age. And so the ruling class is entitled to take out any commoner that dares to challenge its God-given -- or arc of history driven -- right to rule.
We commoners have a job to do. To gently, but firmly, prise the fingers of the educated ruling class off the levers of political and cultural power.
As for what will come after that? I have no idea.
[T]he impeachment debate is not about what Trump has done, is doing, or might do. It is about whether he and the social forces he represents are entitled to rule.He points out that 40 percent of Americans believe that President Trump should be impeached. And that means 70 percent of Democrats. In other words, 40 percent of Americans don't think that President Trump is entitled to rule.
Now, of course, the average American and the average Democrat didn't come up with that on their own. As I keep saying, you have to be carefully taught. The impeachment notion arose out of Hillary Clinton's failure to concede on the night -- OK she was drunk -- or the day after the election in 2016. As we know, there was already a movement in the "intelligence community" to try and compromise Candidate Trump. And what with the mental health issues of Democrats relating to Trump Derangement Syndrome -- what is this notion of making reaction to election results into a mental health question? -- and the activist community always needing to get up in the morning with something to protest, pretty soon the vile Trump presumption had to be erased.
And why not? As Continetti writes:
Trump is a one-man rebuke of progressivism, of political correctness, of a humanitarianism that does not recognize citizenship or national borders.And, of course, we are not just talking about the program of a political party but the moral agenda of a secular religious movement. Our lefty friends believe in their free health care, their entitlements, race and gender politics, their Green New Deal as morally right, indeed morally incontestable. The idea that a politician and a party should be opposed to their moral agenda is an abomination to them. Inconceivable!
And really this is nothing new. Back when I came into the US, in 1968, the election of Richard Nixon was an abomination to the New Left that had arisen in the 1960s. It was inconceivable to them that the American people in their right minds would elect a man such as Nixon to the presidency. As I comment elsewhere, my Jewish boss had a Nixon $3 bill coffee mug, as in "fake as a $3 bill." Hey, Richard Nixon was a Red Baiter, besmirching the reputations of Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas, first of all, and then hunting Commies in the McCarthy years. The impeachment of Richard Nixon was exactly the same as the Mueller special prosecutor: an ageing figurehead sitting on top of a crew of Democrat partisans determined to "get" the president.
Back in the 1970s Republicans were good guys that imagined, or felt they ought to, respond to the impeachment of Nixon in good faith. But it really wasn't good faith, and it took the Clinton impeachment for Republicans to wise up.
In the impeachment of Richard Nixon the two GOP wise men of the Senate, Goldwater and Minority Leader Rhodes, went down Pennsylvania Avenue to tell Nixon that he didn't have the votes to survive in the Senate. After the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the House of Representatives Vice President Gore went down Pennsylvania Avenue to lead a pro-Clinton rally of Democratic faithful at the White House.
If you are a Democrat I don't suppose you understand that and what it means to people like me. But I do. And so now and forever I regard impeachments as pure politics, the attempt to kick over the verdict of the voters with inside Washington baseball.
But I understand the position of the liberal left, I really do.
Their religion, their secular religion that sanctified their big-government politics is a monster, and slowly a counter movement -- among ordinary people -- is forming against it. And the liberal left can't believe it. Like any prophetic movement, their prophecy is failing and they can't believe it. They are desperately trying to believe that the glorious Rapture is coming, just as prophesied!
Or you can use the analysis of Crane Brinton in his Analysis of Revolution in which he proposes that all revolutionary movements that obtain political power get to a point where their prophecy of universal justice is not getting there. So a Reign of Terror and Virtue is needed to go the last mile. That's how to understand the demonizing of opposition to the progressives project as "hate" and bigotry -- when it's not racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Now my notion is that the project of the left has been a folly from the first. Its fundamental error is to believe that you can bring on the millennium with political power. Actually, I think, the lesson of the last two centuries is that political power is past its sell-by date. It is not necessary to use political power to secure a safe patch of land on which to grow food and protect it from pirates and plunderers. That's because the only real thing of value in the modern world for wiving and thriving is "intangible capital," the stuff between the ears of humans. You can't steal or plunder intangible capital. You have to let it thrive and grow without political interference.
Moreover, I think, the market and its verdict on all economic decisions removes the urgency of a moral framework in day-to-day life. The market rewards people that produce the products that other people want, and that provide the kind of services that other people want. It rewards trust and honesty, and it rewards people that reward trust and honesty. What more do you want?
Well, the great theme of the modern era is the notion of "creativity." The way to understand this is to realize that, in the old days, it was God that was the creative one. He created Heaven and Earth, and our human job was to be worthy of the world he created for us, follow his Rules and respect his Judgement. But with the explosion of human knowledge and technique we are discovering that, apart from the original Creation or Big Bang, there is a lot that humans can do to "create" ideas and stuff in this world. Not to mention the miracle of the creation of children.
I think that this new Creative Age is a revolution in human life without parallel. I think it is bigger than the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture. And, I believe, you ain't seen nothing yet.
But, the problem is that our educated class has got a hold of the wrong end of the stick. They think that the Creative Age is all about them and their creative ideas for politics and justice and sexual experimentation and saving the planet from climate change.
I think that the creative class is wrong, and will have to go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and unspeakable trials before it gets the point that its ideology is a Great Reaction and its cultural and political achievements thus far amount to the Crime of the Millennium.
But hey, the Hero's Journey is a journey into the underworld of the unconscious, and only after surviving severe trials does the hero return to the ordinary world. So the educated class needs its journey into the underworld.
My indictment of the Great Reaction is that socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism, identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism is neo-knight-errantry; social justice is neo-plunder.
My indictment of the Crime of the Millennium is that the educated class has driven the working class and minorities off the Road to the Middle Class. This is why the white working class is dying of despair, and 70 percent of black babies in the United States are born to a single mother. And the educated class has led western women into a wilderness of sorrows, denying their basic female nature and teaching them to imagine they can live just like men. And then the left, needing something to save the world -- as in Christianity -- has come up with climate change as a doctrine to "save the planet." But actually it is no different than the Crusades to save the Holy Land or the fight against Fascism or the fight against Communism. It is all about the political class's need for a war or the moral equivalent of war.
Our educated ruling class has this crazy notion -- common to ruling classes down the ages -- that God (or history) has ordained it to be the beneficent Oz for our age. And so the ruling class is entitled to take out any commoner that dares to challenge its God-given -- or arc of history driven -- right to rule.
We commoners have a job to do. To gently, but firmly, prise the fingers of the educated ruling class off the levers of political and cultural power.
As for what will come after that? I have no idea.
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