The basic format of US politics for the last 100 years has been the elite, the Gentry, advocating on behalf of the Subordinates: workers, women, minorities. The basic game has been to guilt-trip the ordinary middle class into funding various government programs to deliver loot and plunder to the said workers, women, and minorities.
With the middle class getting a cut of the action in accordance with Irving Kristol's rule that if you want to help the poor you have to deal in the middle class.
Notice that there was a cunning indirect approach in this. The Gentry did not tell the Commoners: you are scum, now give us more money. No, they set up their Clients -- workers, women, minorities -- as helpless victims, liable to enternal oppression and marginalization unless we act now. And then they handed out some of the loot to the middle class.
But I think in the last 10 years or so that the Gentry has changed its front. Now it is not so much doing a guilt trip as saying: You Commoners are dirt, and we will run over you.
An obvious example is the newly Democratic state legislature of Virginia passing a bunch of gun-control measures. These measures are not exactly a response to a crisis in the streets; they are not an effort to come to a compromise that lets all parties go home and feel that they got something out of the deal. It seems to me that the purpose of these measures is not to make Virginia safe but to stick it to the rubes.
It all makes sense when you call the opposition, as a matter of routine, racist, sexist homophobes: in a word, deplorables. You are good; they are evil. They deserve everything you shovel at them.
Suppose we presume that, all along, the strategy of the Gentry was to stick it to the Commoner rubes. In that case the strategy to say that, hey, we have no beef with you middle-class folks; we just want justice for the helpless victims: that is brilliant. It is, as they say, an indirect strategy that deceives the targets into believing that they are not targets.
OK, maybe after half a century of this, the people on the receiving end are going to be wondering about the shells landing all around them all the time.
But when you actually start saying that all white people are white supremacists, and all white men are toxic masculinists, and all ordinary middle-class people are a basket of deplorables, then you have switched to a direct strategy. And you shouldn't be surprised that people on the receiving end start to take notice and start to organize against you.
Only you are surprised. More than surprised, you offended and outraged! Why, we are the good guys, the educated, evolved, ethical guys! How dare, how dare the rubes, the ignorant and bigoted rubes, dare to answer back!
And in Virginia, a day after 22,000 people demonstrated against more gun control, the Democratic state legislature went ahead and passed more gun control measures.
To say that this is worse than a crime, it is a blunder misses the point. It is a deliberate attempt to humiliate and marginalize the other party. It is not an attempt to find some sort of a compromise that everyone can live with; it is a statement of "our way or the highway."
OK, OK. I get it. For a generation and more all the Good Little Boys and Good Little Girls of the Gentry have gone to college-as-lefty-seminary. They have not been exposed to "the best that has been thought and said." They have instead been rehearsed in lefty apologetics. So all they know, like AOC, are the memes of the lefty Gentry culture.
And that means that they "literally know nothing" about the larger world. It means that they don't know how to deal with other world views, except to shut them down.
The point is that when your politics is reduced to sticking it to the other guys, because they are scum, then you are prodding the other guys into forming a head of rebellion against your regime of injustice. That is why people form a head of rebellion: they feel that they have been ignored, humiliated, and robbed, and they decide that they have nothing left to lose so they might as well burn it all down.
But, if my understanding is correct, our Gentry friends have no idea what they have been doing to average Commoner Americans for the last 50 years. They have no idea that people are angry, and why. They have no idea that their diversity and inclusion philosophy is a monstrous injustice. They have no idea that their identity politics is dividing the country like you wouldn't believe. They have no idea that President Trump, far from being a bumbling oaf, seems to be a man with an extraordinary ear for the voice of maligned Commoner.
The best we can hope for is for the impeachment trial to go down pronto. For Trump to win decisively in 2020, for the Republicans to win the House and for Democrats high and low to ask: What Went Wrong? And then come up with a New Bill Clinton in 2024 that declares himself a New Democrat just as the original Clinton did in 1992.
But I doubt if things will be as simple as that. They seldom are.
With the middle class getting a cut of the action in accordance with Irving Kristol's rule that if you want to help the poor you have to deal in the middle class.
Notice that there was a cunning indirect approach in this. The Gentry did not tell the Commoners: you are scum, now give us more money. No, they set up their Clients -- workers, women, minorities -- as helpless victims, liable to enternal oppression and marginalization unless we act now. And then they handed out some of the loot to the middle class.
But I think in the last 10 years or so that the Gentry has changed its front. Now it is not so much doing a guilt trip as saying: You Commoners are dirt, and we will run over you.
An obvious example is the newly Democratic state legislature of Virginia passing a bunch of gun-control measures. These measures are not exactly a response to a crisis in the streets; they are not an effort to come to a compromise that lets all parties go home and feel that they got something out of the deal. It seems to me that the purpose of these measures is not to make Virginia safe but to stick it to the rubes.
It all makes sense when you call the opposition, as a matter of routine, racist, sexist homophobes: in a word, deplorables. You are good; they are evil. They deserve everything you shovel at them.
Suppose we presume that, all along, the strategy of the Gentry was to stick it to the Commoner rubes. In that case the strategy to say that, hey, we have no beef with you middle-class folks; we just want justice for the helpless victims: that is brilliant. It is, as they say, an indirect strategy that deceives the targets into believing that they are not targets.
OK, maybe after half a century of this, the people on the receiving end are going to be wondering about the shells landing all around them all the time.
But when you actually start saying that all white people are white supremacists, and all white men are toxic masculinists, and all ordinary middle-class people are a basket of deplorables, then you have switched to a direct strategy. And you shouldn't be surprised that people on the receiving end start to take notice and start to organize against you.
Only you are surprised. More than surprised, you offended and outraged! Why, we are the good guys, the educated, evolved, ethical guys! How dare, how dare the rubes, the ignorant and bigoted rubes, dare to answer back!
And in Virginia, a day after 22,000 people demonstrated against more gun control, the Democratic state legislature went ahead and passed more gun control measures.
To say that this is worse than a crime, it is a blunder misses the point. It is a deliberate attempt to humiliate and marginalize the other party. It is not an attempt to find some sort of a compromise that everyone can live with; it is a statement of "our way or the highway."
OK, OK. I get it. For a generation and more all the Good Little Boys and Good Little Girls of the Gentry have gone to college-as-lefty-seminary. They have not been exposed to "the best that has been thought and said." They have instead been rehearsed in lefty apologetics. So all they know, like AOC, are the memes of the lefty Gentry culture.
And that means that they "literally know nothing" about the larger world. It means that they don't know how to deal with other world views, except to shut them down.
The point is that when your politics is reduced to sticking it to the other guys, because they are scum, then you are prodding the other guys into forming a head of rebellion against your regime of injustice. That is why people form a head of rebellion: they feel that they have been ignored, humiliated, and robbed, and they decide that they have nothing left to lose so they might as well burn it all down.
But, if my understanding is correct, our Gentry friends have no idea what they have been doing to average Commoner Americans for the last 50 years. They have no idea that people are angry, and why. They have no idea that their diversity and inclusion philosophy is a monstrous injustice. They have no idea that their identity politics is dividing the country like you wouldn't believe. They have no idea that President Trump, far from being a bumbling oaf, seems to be a man with an extraordinary ear for the voice of maligned Commoner.
The best we can hope for is for the impeachment trial to go down pronto. For Trump to win decisively in 2020, for the Republicans to win the House and for Democrats high and low to ask: What Went Wrong? And then come up with a New Bill Clinton in 2024 that declares himself a New Democrat just as the original Clinton did in 1992.
But I doubt if things will be as simple as that. They seldom are.
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