The Usual Suspects and Harper's Wet-Noodle Manifesto

Earlier this week, on July 7, 2020, the unwoke sector of the educated Gentry issued what I would call a Wet-Noodle Manifesto through the website of Harper's magazine. 

All the usual suspects have signed the manifesto: from Margaret Atwood, she of the clueless Handmaid's Tale; to Deirdre McCloskey, whose helpful Bourgeois Era books dissolved in the end into LGBT advocacy; to Gloria Steinem, she who needed a man like a fish needed a bicycle, but ended up marrying a rich guy.

And so on. The only signer that I half respect, as someone that mildly rows against the current, is John McWhorter.

The manifesto starts by praising the mostly peaceful protests following the death of a career criminal during his arrest  -- and makes no mention of riots and looting. This man allegedly passed a fake $20 bill and, if you believe the postmortem, was suffering from heart disease and various comorbidities and had high levels of the post-heroin drug fentanyl and other mind-altering drugs in his body.

Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts.

Let's translate that shall we?

Regime-sponsored rioters and looters have demanded we turn the clock back on sensible "broken-window" police reforms and further break the spirit and letter of the Civil Rights Acts of the Sixties with straight-up racist quotas and jobs for gentry.

 Then we get to Donald Trump:

The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.

Just what planet are you usual suspects living on? I presume this is really saying that Donald Trump represents a threat to supra-nationalist educated gentry in "education, journalism, philanthropy... the arts" and global corporations. as in:

All across the world nationalists and populists are rising to political power, representing in general the ordinary middle-class commoners that get short shrift from the educated gentry in the ruling class that has plans to rise to glory on huge programs of political power from tackling climate change to continuing the failed program of international development. These populists are threatening jobs for gentry.

Listen, usual suspects. Donald Trump rose to power by beating more than ten other Republicans in a fair fight. Then he beat Hillary Clinton in the general election by concentrating on winning Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Rust Belt states are home to millions of people that have not done well in the last 50 years. Meanwhile the Obama administration was spying on Trump's campaign using the "intelligence community" and a faked up "dossier" provided to them by an agent of a foreign power.

Hey, remember when Nixon spied on the Democrats, using not the intelligence community but a few ex-cops and former IC guys?

Then, usual suspects in the ruling class have spent three years conducting an unprecedented campaign to destroy President Trump personally and politically. And you say it is President Trump "who represents a real threat to democracy."

I don't know what Kool-Aid you usual suspects are drinking, but the biggest lesson I ever learned about politics was from a Greek friend expatiating on the end of the dictatorial rule of the Greek colonels. What was needed, he said, was for the center-right to win the election and for the left to accept the result and then for the left to win the following election and for the right to accept the result. 

That, usual suspects, is the basic ground rule for "democracy." Do you understand what I mean? It means that when the other guys win the election, your candidate steps up and concedes, and says "we are all Americans" and we all revere the same Declaration of Independence, the same Constitution, and the same Founders.

But you chaps have contested the last two change elections, in 2000 and 2016, when your guys were voted out in a normal change election. That, usual suspects, is "a real threat to democracy."

But you will talk to a thousand usual-suspect gentry liberals before you will find one that understands such a basic notion.

I've been reading and commenting on Curtis Yarvin's work-in-progress Gray Mirror in recent days. He proposes that political action, for or against the regime, is meaningless, because the regime always wins. "Detachment" is what he recommends, doing something orthogonal to the power regime.

I've been worried that there is something missing in his analysis. And I am coming to think that the missing link is that he assumes that the ruling class is functional, knows what it is doing.

But what can you say about a ruling class whose usual suspects put out a Wet-Noodle Manifesto like the one they put out this week?

You say that they really don't have a clue. That they are like the ancien régime in France in the middle of the 18th century, fumbling and bumbling from one cock-up to another.

Then, you say, someone is going to knock over these Klueless Klots some day soon, and it might as well be us.

Then, of course, the educated gentry will have to get a real job.