Revolution, Baby

Today Angelo Codevilla is mourning the fact that we are in the middle of a revolution, because the ruling class's "growing sense of its own separate identity, of power and of entitlement to power."

Our country is in a state of revolution, irreversibly, because society’s most influential people have retreated into moral autarchy, have seceded from America’s constitutional order, and because they browbeat their socio-political adversaries instead of trying to persuade them.

The ruling class doesn't care about elections:

Trump notwithstanding, this class will rule henceforth as it has in the past three years. So long as its hold on American institutions continues to grow, and they retain millions of clients, elections won’t really matter.

So we are in a revolution; we need to fight, to "hurt the other side until it loses the capacity and the will to do us harm."

But what kind of peace we may get depends on the extent to which we may compel our enemies to leave us in peace. And for that, we must do unto them more and before they do unto us.

Lilke I say, we are in the era of the Rise of the Commoner. What Trump means and what the response to him means is that there is growing movement of Commoners, ordinary people who are neither elitists or clients, that just want to wive and thrive in peace without having to touch our hats to our Gentry masters every time we want to do anything: take a course, make a comment on social media, or buy a car or a house. And we are rising up.

For a century, the educated Gentry class has defined itself in opposition to the middle class, the bourgeoisie. And has defined itself as the champions of the marginalized: the workers, minorities and women. Back in the day this was a cool strategy because the numbers were with the workers, with the middle class a minority band between ruling class and underclass.

But I would say that the middle class is now the Commoners, the folks that used to be workers but are now various employees in various skilled and semi-skilled trades: people with a family, a house, and a car. Yesterday on my daily walk I ran into a couple of Commoners. One was a construction worker that had forgotten where he parked his truck; the other was a contractor, born in a yurt to a hippie couple, who was building a 4,000 sq ft house right there in north Seattle. Both these men, Commoners, were as happy as clams, and their good cheer was infectious.

And thus, by an imperceptible process the Gentry that once advocated for the helpless workers is now advcating for illegal aliens, for minority tribes, and for Gentry hot-house LGBTs against the ordinary Commoner, now defined as a racist-sexist-homophobe deplorable. Happy Commoner construction guys need not apply.

Back in the day the Gentry could win the votes of the marginalized with the promise of loot: Social Security, Medicare, free education, worker benefits. But now the game has shifted. You can see that in the failure of Elizabeth Warren to sell her Medicare-for-All. What is the problem? More free stuff, right?

Right. Except for one thing. The vast majority of ordinary Americans already have health insurance through their employer or through Medicare or Medicaid. And the vast majority looks at Medicare-for-All and sees that their access to health care is going to be disturbed.

That is the problem that Democrats are facing right now. They are still offering free stuff to their clients, but the clients are no longer the vast majority of American voters, but limited subgroups. And the vast majority sees that the free stuff on offer is going to cost them personally and benefit some guy behind the tree. No sale.

I've been reading Deirdre McCloskey's Why Liberalism Works. Around p.213 she praises liberalism -- as trade tested betterment -- as the Good Thing while nationalism and socialism are the Bad Thing. Well, yeah, I get that. But liberalism, especially economic liberalism, is meat and drink for people that are up for "creative destruction" and most people aren't. Nationalism can lead to fascism and Nazis, but I'd say that it is the natural tribe of the Commoner. In other words, if you are a commoner you identify as a Brit or a Yank but not as a educated enlightened gender-crosser of the world like McCloskey. Whatabout socialism? McCloskey points out that socialism appeals to the children of the educated, because socialism is a family thing and the children of the educated stay in the family longer than most because they hang around getting an advanced education and must worry about whether they can actually make it in the world: so socialism works for the white educated SJWs because they are really terrified about facing the real world in which they might come out second best.

We are going to see more of nationalism because that is the natural tribe of the Commoner. But whatabout the Nazis? Well I'd say that Nazis is what you get after you have lost a war and the victors impose a Carthaginian peace and it seems that everything is going to hell and here is a leader who promises to fix things and restore the glories of the nation and cares about people like me.

Last night President Trump gave us a lesson in how to appeal to the Commoner. First of all he praised America the nation and Americans the people. And how we were going from strength to strength. That is how you appeal to Commoner men and show that you care about Commoner men like them. Then he set up a stack of emotional catharses with people in the gallery. The kid who wanted to be an astronaut and -- wait for it -- whose great-grandfather was a Tuskegee airman right there next to him! The mother and two children whose husband was in Afghanistan and -- wait for it -- here's the father back from Afghanistan right here in the Capitol: tears and hugs all round! Even Rush Limbaugh, diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, so you have Melania hand a Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck right there in the House gallery! That is how you appeal to Commoner women and show that you care about women like them.

How come. How come, you might ask, does a huckster real-estate mogul and reality TV star figure all that out?

I don't know. But I can tell you that there are dozens of politicians around the US and A right now saying to themselves: I Can Do That. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. But Trump is showing us Commoners the way out of our subordination to the proud and dull rule of the educated administrative elite of the globalist Gentry.

Maybe it will all end in a successful revolution that humbles the educated Gentry. Maybe it won't.

But at least Trump is lighting the way. Maybe not the way, but a way.

And that is better than just sitting there letting the SJWs walk all over us.