When you are part of the ruling class -- or even a ruling-class wannabe -- you want to do ruling-class things. And what a ruling class does is politics.
In our age the ruling class is the so-called educated class that first emerged in the Enlightenment and first got its hands dirty in the French Revolution. Then, in the 19th Century we saw the emergence of Educated Youth, the Marxes and the Engels of the time, well-born young men that chose politics as a way to advocate for the lower class.
Thus was born today's over-under politics where the wealthy and the well-connected use the underclass as a tiger-paw to maul the middle class. Marx was the son of the best lawyer in Trier and Engels was the son of a textile baron sent to England to keep an eye on Daddy's business.
The thing is that this sort of politics is fake. Marx and Engels were not advocating for the rights of well-born scions, they were advocating for the workers. Er, what would rich kids like that know about the needs of the workers? Because the telling thing about Educated-Youth activism is that it seems to require All Power to the Scions! In our day we are talking about graduates of selective colleges making their chops as "community organizers" for a year before moving on to a liberal foundation and then a career in electoral politics. Fake politics is great for the well-born scions. And that is the point.
So now we have the fake "caravan of Central American migrants" organized by the usual crew of liberal church groups. Sorry fellahs, but glomming onto a group of Central Americans and using them as camera bait is not "activism;" it is fake politics. It is US liberals looking for an issue on which to perform activism and create meaning for themselves.
And the same goes for the March for our Lives movement that features the teenagers from Parkland as its media bait. Kids don't have the experience and the connections to mount huge rallies in Washington DC. It takes well-connected professional activists and well-connected billionaires. It is fake politics. It is not about "gun violence," which is mainly a problem in black inner cities; it is all about creating meaning in the lives of well-born, well-connected liberals: fake politics.
Next week is going to be Town Hall for our Lives, featuring the same stand-up kids in front of cameras. Sorry liberals; this is fake politics, once again.
If all this stuff is fake politics, what is real politics? I will tell you. It is some whacko guy running for president and discovering a whole demographic that none of the fake activists had ever thought of representing.
The problem with all this educated-class fake politics is what comes later. It is what I call the "little darlings" problem.
Suppose you are Marx and Engels and you want revolution for the working class. Or you are Beatrice Webb and you want legislation mandating labor unions and social services for the working class. Just trust us, they said, and we will change the world for you and protect you.
Only they didn't. Marx and Engels and their adepts Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Castro and Chavez led the workers into a maelstrom of starvation and killing. Beatrice Webb and US liberals led the workers into a box canyon by promising cradle-to-grave jobs and welfare. But now the working class in England and the US is dying of despair because the world they were taught to live in has collapsed. Go watch the Up Series if you want to see this happen in real time. There are no more lifetime jobs in manufacturing; there are no more secure union jobs except in government. The glorious movement to lift up the working class was not about the working class at all; it was all about the power and the glory of the Marxes, the Lenins, the Webbs, and the college-taught "activists" luxuriating in the activism culture of today.
The same thing has been happening with the women's movement, run by well-born women that fancied a life that was more than marriage and children. No problem, girls, except that, for some reason, the women of today are less happy that the women of the Fifties. Why would that be? Could it be that most women -- well-born women educated at selective colleges excepted -- want marriage and children and a part-time job? Has anyone asked them?
Here's what I keep coming back to. It is that, in this age of politics-with-everything we have grasped the wrong end of the stick. The record of the last 200 years is that the day-to-day work of human social cooperation can best be left to the market in goods and labor, with sensible laws to encourage faithful dealings and reward trust. It is not a good idea to marshal people into political tribes and teach them to trust their leaders. Political leaders are like the generals of armies. They get to go home to a well-earned retirement; it is their foot soldiers and caravaner migrants that get to pay the bills of their leaders with their lives.
Instead of teaching gullible teenagers and migrants to trust in their leaders we should be teaching people to understand and master the bourgeois bargain. The bargain is simple: it is your job to figure out how to contribute to society with your mind and your body, and then do something about it. And don't think that the job is over once you have found your first job. The world changes, and we all need to change with it, or else end up on the dust-heap of history. Sure, "society" can help, and government has role to play. But what if the government is wrong? What if government's health care programs make health care impossibly expensive? What if government schools don't prepare our children for the real world? What then?
There's a cute piece today by Christopher DeGroot, who sneers at Kevin D. Williamson for sneering at the white working class for not getting with the program and doing something about it when the good old jobs started to fade away.
The problem is that the white working class made its mistake a generation before the jobs started drying up in the Seventies. Their mistake was the trust the activists of fake politics who "cared about people like you."
No they didn't. All politicians care about is your vote. All the activists care about is your body showing up at their "peaceful protest." And that is all.
In our age the ruling class is the so-called educated class that first emerged in the Enlightenment and first got its hands dirty in the French Revolution. Then, in the 19th Century we saw the emergence of Educated Youth, the Marxes and the Engels of the time, well-born young men that chose politics as a way to advocate for the lower class.
Thus was born today's over-under politics where the wealthy and the well-connected use the underclass as a tiger-paw to maul the middle class. Marx was the son of the best lawyer in Trier and Engels was the son of a textile baron sent to England to keep an eye on Daddy's business.
The thing is that this sort of politics is fake. Marx and Engels were not advocating for the rights of well-born scions, they were advocating for the workers. Er, what would rich kids like that know about the needs of the workers? Because the telling thing about Educated-Youth activism is that it seems to require All Power to the Scions! In our day we are talking about graduates of selective colleges making their chops as "community organizers" for a year before moving on to a liberal foundation and then a career in electoral politics. Fake politics is great for the well-born scions. And that is the point.
So now we have the fake "caravan of Central American migrants" organized by the usual crew of liberal church groups. Sorry fellahs, but glomming onto a group of Central Americans and using them as camera bait is not "activism;" it is fake politics. It is US liberals looking for an issue on which to perform activism and create meaning for themselves.
And the same goes for the March for our Lives movement that features the teenagers from Parkland as its media bait. Kids don't have the experience and the connections to mount huge rallies in Washington DC. It takes well-connected professional activists and well-connected billionaires. It is fake politics. It is not about "gun violence," which is mainly a problem in black inner cities; it is all about creating meaning in the lives of well-born, well-connected liberals: fake politics.
Next week is going to be Town Hall for our Lives, featuring the same stand-up kids in front of cameras. Sorry liberals; this is fake politics, once again.
If all this stuff is fake politics, what is real politics? I will tell you. It is some whacko guy running for president and discovering a whole demographic that none of the fake activists had ever thought of representing.
The problem with all this educated-class fake politics is what comes later. It is what I call the "little darlings" problem.
Suppose you are Marx and Engels and you want revolution for the working class. Or you are Beatrice Webb and you want legislation mandating labor unions and social services for the working class. Just trust us, they said, and we will change the world for you and protect you.
Only they didn't. Marx and Engels and their adepts Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Castro and Chavez led the workers into a maelstrom of starvation and killing. Beatrice Webb and US liberals led the workers into a box canyon by promising cradle-to-grave jobs and welfare. But now the working class in England and the US is dying of despair because the world they were taught to live in has collapsed. Go watch the Up Series if you want to see this happen in real time. There are no more lifetime jobs in manufacturing; there are no more secure union jobs except in government. The glorious movement to lift up the working class was not about the working class at all; it was all about the power and the glory of the Marxes, the Lenins, the Webbs, and the college-taught "activists" luxuriating in the activism culture of today.
The same thing has been happening with the women's movement, run by well-born women that fancied a life that was more than marriage and children. No problem, girls, except that, for some reason, the women of today are less happy that the women of the Fifties. Why would that be? Could it be that most women -- well-born women educated at selective colleges excepted -- want marriage and children and a part-time job? Has anyone asked them?
Here's what I keep coming back to. It is that, in this age of politics-with-everything we have grasped the wrong end of the stick. The record of the last 200 years is that the day-to-day work of human social cooperation can best be left to the market in goods and labor, with sensible laws to encourage faithful dealings and reward trust. It is not a good idea to marshal people into political tribes and teach them to trust their leaders. Political leaders are like the generals of armies. They get to go home to a well-earned retirement; it is their foot soldiers and caravaner migrants that get to pay the bills of their leaders with their lives.
Instead of teaching gullible teenagers and migrants to trust in their leaders we should be teaching people to understand and master the bourgeois bargain. The bargain is simple: it is your job to figure out how to contribute to society with your mind and your body, and then do something about it. And don't think that the job is over once you have found your first job. The world changes, and we all need to change with it, or else end up on the dust-heap of history. Sure, "society" can help, and government has role to play. But what if the government is wrong? What if government's health care programs make health care impossibly expensive? What if government schools don't prepare our children for the real world? What then?
There's a cute piece today by Christopher DeGroot, who sneers at Kevin D. Williamson for sneering at the white working class for not getting with the program and doing something about it when the good old jobs started to fade away.
The problem is that the white working class made its mistake a generation before the jobs started drying up in the Seventies. Their mistake was the trust the activists of fake politics who "cared about people like you."
No they didn't. All politicians care about is your vote. All the activists care about is your body showing up at their "peaceful protest." And that is all.
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