It's not just the Collusion Confusion that has me worried. There's the utter collapse of the education "system" into lefty narrative: that's why it's possible to have a phenomenon like AOC. There's the censorship of conservatives on social media; last weekend Twitter was manipulating the account of the movie "Unplanned" and its followers. There's the whole stumbling bumbling dishonest stupidity -- thank goodness -- of the administrative state that we got to see throughout the collusion drama.
Maybe there's a real silver lining to all this: that the educated, the credentialed, the wise, the advanced are no better than the rest of us. They all, as Jordan B. Peterson says, look at the world through the lens of their values, their model of how the world works. They didn't want to see that the deep state conspired illegally to entrap President Trump, starting during the Obama administration, and because they didn't want to see it, they never did see it.
Maybe that's good news. The ruling class, like all ruling classes that inherit power from their forefathers, is a bunch of idiots. Those guys really aren't that smart.
But here is the thing. What happens next?
We know that everything about the left is a lie, including "and" and "the." That is because the left is a curious movement of reaction, what I have called The Great Reaction. Actually, I am conceited enough to think I understand it. The whole explosion of city living, of humans all over the world leaving the rural life of subsistence -- or near subsistence -- farming for the market economy in the city, is terrifying, unlike what humans have experienced for millennia. So it is natural that leaders of reaction should arise and tempt people back to the old ways.
I sneer that socialism is neo-slavery, that the welfare state is neo-feudalism, that identity politics is neo-tribalism. But there is this: the fact is that slaves usually don't work very hard. Primitive man, according to chaps like C.R. Hallpike, didn't work too hard either. So, pal: whaddya want? Freedom and enslavement to the market, or slavery and a neo-childlike existence where most everything is provided for? Freedom and hard work, or feudal subordination and the implied promise that your feudal lord will protect you when the going gets tough? Individual responsibility and its cares, or the comforts of tribalism within the crowd of a nation or a liberal identity group?
But where do we go now?
The Zman is obviously thinking the same thing, as he states that Left and Right have been arguing about equality and hierarchy, Horizontal and Vertical, for the last 200 or so years to little effect.
But where is the Next Thing? Who is the Next Thing? If we look back to previous cultural upheavals -- the Reformations, the Enlightenments -- we see the Names that excited the young'uns. Calvin, Luther, Voltaire, Goethe. Marx.
But in this stumble-bumble era there seems to be no Big Name. What is going on? Is it, perhaps, that the previous intellectual revolutions were revolutions from above, an internal affair of the intellectual elite, peons need not apply? Is it that now the intellectuals are all bought and paid for by the ruling class and that there is no opportunity for an intellectual rebel to make a name for himself by forming a phoney-baloney "resistance" to the status quo?
Maybe the future will be determined not by Stars in the Intellectual Firmament but by nobodies whose ideas and notions will infuse the culture the way that market innovations take over the market. And so the world will change without anyone even noticing. Could that happen? Is it possible?
Who knows? All I know is that, for me, the current ruling class has lost the Mandate of Heaven so that an idiot like Trump could run for president and win. And that the dumb and stupid deep state couldn't even shoot straight enough to entrap him with its Baldrick's Cunning Plan of surveillance intended for use on terrorists and not on the opposition party.
Exactly. Jolly good fun.
The problem with the emperor losing the Mandate of Heaven is that the next thing is a Time of Troubles. That is a polite way of saying that a lot of people are going to get killed.
But what would a Time of Troubles look like in the digital age? I was reading a piece this morning about how the Chinese government has a cunning plan to rule the world by a combination of "resource warfare" and "legal warfare." Maybe. But I have this curious feeling that the Chinese ruling class is just as dumb as ours, and that it just does not get the modern age -- any more than anyone else. And that the name of the game is adaption, not power.
Maybe there's a real silver lining to all this: that the educated, the credentialed, the wise, the advanced are no better than the rest of us. They all, as Jordan B. Peterson says, look at the world through the lens of their values, their model of how the world works. They didn't want to see that the deep state conspired illegally to entrap President Trump, starting during the Obama administration, and because they didn't want to see it, they never did see it.
Maybe that's good news. The ruling class, like all ruling classes that inherit power from their forefathers, is a bunch of idiots. Those guys really aren't that smart.
But here is the thing. What happens next?
We know that everything about the left is a lie, including "and" and "the." That is because the left is a curious movement of reaction, what I have called The Great Reaction. Actually, I am conceited enough to think I understand it. The whole explosion of city living, of humans all over the world leaving the rural life of subsistence -- or near subsistence -- farming for the market economy in the city, is terrifying, unlike what humans have experienced for millennia. So it is natural that leaders of reaction should arise and tempt people back to the old ways.
I sneer that socialism is neo-slavery, that the welfare state is neo-feudalism, that identity politics is neo-tribalism. But there is this: the fact is that slaves usually don't work very hard. Primitive man, according to chaps like C.R. Hallpike, didn't work too hard either. So, pal: whaddya want? Freedom and enslavement to the market, or slavery and a neo-childlike existence where most everything is provided for? Freedom and hard work, or feudal subordination and the implied promise that your feudal lord will protect you when the going gets tough? Individual responsibility and its cares, or the comforts of tribalism within the crowd of a nation or a liberal identity group?
But where do we go now?
The Zman is obviously thinking the same thing, as he states that Left and Right have been arguing about equality and hierarchy, Horizontal and Vertical, for the last 200 or so years to little effect.
If there is to be a next chapter to the story of European people, it will require a conception of society that acknowledges the hierarchical relationships that are natural to man, but also the interlocking horizontal loyalties and commitments that allows for a strong cultural core.The funny thing, of course, is that the Left, that worships the horizontal ideal of equality, has created the most horrific vertical hierarchies in all history. And they attack the market system as hierarchical, when it treats all alike, and only asks if they have something to contribute, something that other people will be willing to pay for.
But where is the Next Thing? Who is the Next Thing? If we look back to previous cultural upheavals -- the Reformations, the Enlightenments -- we see the Names that excited the young'uns. Calvin, Luther, Voltaire, Goethe. Marx.
But in this stumble-bumble era there seems to be no Big Name. What is going on? Is it, perhaps, that the previous intellectual revolutions were revolutions from above, an internal affair of the intellectual elite, peons need not apply? Is it that now the intellectuals are all bought and paid for by the ruling class and that there is no opportunity for an intellectual rebel to make a name for himself by forming a phoney-baloney "resistance" to the status quo?
Maybe the future will be determined not by Stars in the Intellectual Firmament but by nobodies whose ideas and notions will infuse the culture the way that market innovations take over the market. And so the world will change without anyone even noticing. Could that happen? Is it possible?
Who knows? All I know is that, for me, the current ruling class has lost the Mandate of Heaven so that an idiot like Trump could run for president and win. And that the dumb and stupid deep state couldn't even shoot straight enough to entrap him with its Baldrick's Cunning Plan of surveillance intended for use on terrorists and not on the opposition party.
Exactly. Jolly good fun.
The problem with the emperor losing the Mandate of Heaven is that the next thing is a Time of Troubles. That is a polite way of saying that a lot of people are going to get killed.
But what would a Time of Troubles look like in the digital age? I was reading a piece this morning about how the Chinese government has a cunning plan to rule the world by a combination of "resource warfare" and "legal warfare." Maybe. But I have this curious feeling that the Chinese ruling class is just as dumb as ours, and that it just does not get the modern age -- any more than anyone else. And that the name of the game is adaption, not power.
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