Getting to Acceptance

Yeah, I know about the Five Stages of Grief. It starts with Denial and ends with Acceptance.

So I am already coming up with rationalizations for why, maybe, after all, it is OK that Trump is (probably) going to lose. Because reasons:

If Trump wins reelection then probably the Senate will flip in 2022 and the Dems will win it all in 2024 because Time for a Change. No Thanks. 

Chances are there is ugly economic news in the immediate future, as we dig out of COVID. With Trump, it's all his fault; with Biden he's doing his best. 

Chances are there will be a recession before 2024. Blame Trump and elect a Democrat. 

"There is no more money." Because of the COVID stimulus and the Trump tax cuts. So there is really no money for Medicare For All, Free College, and End Fossil Fuels. But a Biden administration would still try. And screw the economy. 

At some point the Commoners are going to have to say: Enough of this race-sex-intersectional virtue-signaling; Enough of all these rent-seeking programs that only benefit the educated Gentry; Go away and leave us alone.

Let's divide the last century or so into three Ages. First there was the Pioneer Age of the frontier and building the railroads; the Republican Party and the Civil War veterans dominated. It ended in 1929. Then there was the Victims Age of the New Deal and the Great Society and Civil Rights; the Democratic Party and the educated Gentry dominated. It ended in 2016. Now we have the Commoner Age. Maybe it will be a Republican Party domination, and maybe the Commoners will teach the Gentry a lesson.

Or maybe not.

The thing that sticks in my mind, since I read it from Matt Taibbi in the summer, is the moral framework of "anti-racism."

It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

So if you are Amazon you virtue signal by posting a BLM message on your home page;  if you are United Airlines you virtue-signal by supporting Proposition 16 in California to re-institute Affirmative Action. That makes you an "ally" and one of the good people.

But, given that the allies and the white oppressors are all white or Brahmins like Google's Sundar Pichai and daughter-of-academics Kamala Harris, who gets to decide which is which? Would that be God? Or would it be the bearded @jack? Thank goodness the allies have the Brahmins on their side; the Brahmins have been successfully divining the will of Brahma for thousands of years.

I have a different moral calculus. I think it is very virtuous because nobody gets to look in the magic mirror and say "mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest in the land?" Virtuously speaking, that is.

Now in my cultural calculus the oppressed peoples are Clients and follow whoever leads them; the allies are the educated Gentry, full of ambition, honor, and vanity; and the white oppressors are the Commoners, that just want to wive and thrive and hand down a little to the kids. In my calculus nobody gets to be the all-conquering virtue-signaler with the Hate Has No Home Here yard-signs. 

Because we all have our virtues, some of the time, and we are all hypocrites, most of the time.

Here's my moral calculus, adapted from Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

We are all virtue-signallers -- and hypocrites!

We are all rent-seekers -- and you better give us our share!

We never quite got to start our own business -- but we always wanted to! 

The problem with all moral calculi and virtue-signaling and Grand Inquisitors is that the people on the receiving end of your virtue get really pissed off. Because they don't like being belittled; they don't like someone else having first crack at the cookie jar. And they don't like some jerk making billions because he was in the right place at the right time.

But go ahead, vote cheaters and allies and all the ships at sea. You may as well make hay while the sun shines.

But maybe in a couple years, or four years, it will be you guys going through the Five Stages of Grief. Last time, in 2016, you chaps didn't seem to do so well; in fact it seems to me you are still in Trump Denial Syndrome from the Trump election.

But I'm sure your grief counselor can help you better than I can.