I argue that the left represents a Great Reaction, a religious and cultural and political attempt to return to the past. My Maxim is:
Well, I spent a few days reading some medieval romances in a college textbook collection, including the story of "Perceval," the Grail Knight, from Chrétien de Troyes, "Tristan and Isolt" from Gottfried von Strassburg, and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Anonymous.
Chrétien de Troyes, according to La Wik, flourished from 1160-1191. Gottfried con Strassburg, according to La Wik died in 1210. And, of course, for Brits there is "La Morte d'Arthur" a reworking of the tales by Sir Thomas Malory who lived 1415-1471 according to La Wik.
All of the narratives are highly colored. The court of the king is incredibly lush and rich, cloaked in costly fabrics, inlaid with gold, and banners are flying, and the queens are astonishingly beautiful and attended by beauteous maidens. And the feasts! The meat! And fine wines! They go on for days! But not to worry, all these chaps are deeply religious, observing all the Christian festivals and getting shriven and making confession before they ever go off on their palfreys into the wilds.
Well, if you were entertaining the rough tough medieval barons in the long winter evenings how would you do it? Exactly. You would concoct stories to flatter your hosts. Here is a piece that I particularly liked, as Sir Gawain arrives at the moat of the castle of the Green Knight in the middle of nowhere.
We know a bit about what those barons and bishops and knights were really like. They were rascals. Here is the Frankish drive to the east under Clovis, in 500 AD from The Barbarian Conversion by Richard Fletcher.
In our day we have similar "romances" to tell the glorious story of the progressive intellectuals and reformers. One of the most durable is the idea that Fidel Castro in Cuba may have been a tyrant, but at least he did literacy and provided universal health care. And our Sixties Kidz all went around with a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. And there is the iconography we saw in the Soviet Union of Marx to Engels to Lenin to Stalin.
In progressive narrative riots and rebellions are represented as "demonstrations" a polite way of saying "show of force." But then "demonstration" was further softened into "peaceful protest." And thus a "mostly peaceful protest" is the modern term for a violent riot.
Thus rebel is transformed into "revolutionary" rather than "agitator" and now into "activist."
And street riots are turned into the street theater of Extinction Rebellion that provides opportunities for well-born maidens to dress up and do their hair.
The point is that politics and kingship in the Middle Ages was a pretty thuggish affair. You had to be rough and tough and rougher and tougher than the baron next door. And when castles came in in the 9th and 10th centuries having the biggest and bestest castle became the name of the game, because until guns appeared, a castle made you the master of all you surveyed. And of course you wanted to dress it up into something glorious and fashionable, with banners flying and queens beautiful and damsels dimpled.
Likewise, our modern progressive government is a pretty thuggish affair, spending money on its supporters that it has forcibly taken from ordinary wage-earners and businesses. Its devotees are instinctively eager to dress it up in noble robes, a knightly quest to succour the victims and protect them from oppression.
But whatever they do and say, government is still force, taking money from one person and giving it to another.
That was the point of Don Quixote, to laugh and sneer at the whole medieval romance genre, and imagine a guy that actually tried to make the medieval fantasy a reality.
We await our Miguel de Cervantes to write the novel that will satirize the whole progressive conceit into embarrassment.
Because I say that the whole point of the Great Reaction is a last desperate attempt to make politics relevant and pretty before we go forward into a post political era where politics has become a minor irritant while most people just get on with their business, and their wiving and thriving, having got past the notion that force and compulsion should be front and center in human life.
For are we not, at heart, social animals that have learned how to minimize the resort to expensive and deadly force?
Socialism is a return to slavery; the welfare state is a return to feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism a return to revolution, rioting for the ruling class, part medieval knight-errantry, and part activisme, or gentry kids putting on a school play for their parents; helpless victims are a return to sacrifice, social justice is good old loot and plunder.What's not to like! But I wondered a bit about the medieval knight-errantry bit. Was that really true, or was I over-determining a bit?
Well, I spent a few days reading some medieval romances in a college textbook collection, including the story of "Perceval," the Grail Knight, from Chrétien de Troyes, "Tristan and Isolt" from Gottfried von Strassburg, and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Anonymous.
Chrétien de Troyes, according to La Wik, flourished from 1160-1191. Gottfried con Strassburg, according to La Wik died in 1210. And, of course, for Brits there is "La Morte d'Arthur" a reworking of the tales by Sir Thomas Malory who lived 1415-1471 according to La Wik.
All of the narratives are highly colored. The court of the king is incredibly lush and rich, cloaked in costly fabrics, inlaid with gold, and banners are flying, and the queens are astonishingly beautiful and attended by beauteous maidens. And the feasts! The meat! And fine wines! They go on for days! But not to worry, all these chaps are deeply religious, observing all the Christian festivals and getting shriven and making confession before they ever go off on their palfreys into the wilds.
Well, if you were entertaining the rough tough medieval barons in the long winter evenings how would you do it? Exactly. You would concoct stories to flatter your hosts. Here is a piece that I particularly liked, as Sir Gawain arrives at the moat of the castle of the Green Knight in the middle of nowhere.
The wall ran down into the water wonderfully deep, and towered up to a huge height above it, wrought of hard hewn stone right up to the cornices, and with bantels of the best under the battlements. There were fair turrets fashioned between, with many loopholes designed to shut fast.Yeah. I imagine that every second-tier baron of those days wanted a castle like that. In his dreams.
We know a bit about what those barons and bishops and knights were really like. They were rascals. Here is the Frankish drive to the east under Clovis, in 500 AD from The Barbarian Conversion by Richard Fletcher.
It was the obvious direction for Frankish kings to turn when the annual campaigning season came around: let us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.Golly. It seems really similar to modern progressive government that depends upon "regular, successful, predatory" taxation to reward the regime's supporters and maintain political power.
In our day we have similar "romances" to tell the glorious story of the progressive intellectuals and reformers. One of the most durable is the idea that Fidel Castro in Cuba may have been a tyrant, but at least he did literacy and provided universal health care. And our Sixties Kidz all went around with a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. And there is the iconography we saw in the Soviet Union of Marx to Engels to Lenin to Stalin.
In progressive narrative riots and rebellions are represented as "demonstrations" a polite way of saying "show of force." But then "demonstration" was further softened into "peaceful protest." And thus a "mostly peaceful protest" is the modern term for a violent riot.
Thus rebel is transformed into "revolutionary" rather than "agitator" and now into "activist."
And street riots are turned into the street theater of Extinction Rebellion that provides opportunities for well-born maidens to dress up and do their hair.
The point is that politics and kingship in the Middle Ages was a pretty thuggish affair. You had to be rough and tough and rougher and tougher than the baron next door. And when castles came in in the 9th and 10th centuries having the biggest and bestest castle became the name of the game, because until guns appeared, a castle made you the master of all you surveyed. And of course you wanted to dress it up into something glorious and fashionable, with banners flying and queens beautiful and damsels dimpled.
Likewise, our modern progressive government is a pretty thuggish affair, spending money on its supporters that it has forcibly taken from ordinary wage-earners and businesses. Its devotees are instinctively eager to dress it up in noble robes, a knightly quest to succour the victims and protect them from oppression.
But whatever they do and say, government is still force, taking money from one person and giving it to another.
That was the point of Don Quixote, to laugh and sneer at the whole medieval romance genre, and imagine a guy that actually tried to make the medieval fantasy a reality.
We await our Miguel de Cervantes to write the novel that will satirize the whole progressive conceit into embarrassment.
Because I say that the whole point of the Great Reaction is a last desperate attempt to make politics relevant and pretty before we go forward into a post political era where politics has become a minor irritant while most people just get on with their business, and their wiving and thriving, having got past the notion that force and compulsion should be front and center in human life.
For are we not, at heart, social animals that have learned how to minimize the resort to expensive and deadly force?
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