What is the Political Future?

Here's a piece at JewishWorldReview about a new generation gap and how the Kidz are all diverse and liberals and and we are all doomed. He quotes a demographer:

"This gap is reflected in negative attitudes among many older whites toward immigration, new minority growth, and big government programs that cater to the real economic and educational needs of America's younger, more diverse population," he said.

Well, yes. maybe. Or maybe the average kids of diverse background will just grow up to become middle-class patriotic Americans that want a job, a house, and a family. I know a family from Mexico where the kids are all the first to go to college. But they are all planning to be medical technicians and stuff.

Then there's a piece by the Z-man at Taki's. He's worried about gyno-fascism.

Patriarchal authoritarianism provides the firm slap of authority when it is needed. The point is to maintain order. Once it is applied, that’s it. The feminine version has no point other than to inflict endless torment in an effort to gain attention. Of course, it never ends. The ruling class is now a needy girlfriend with a personality disorder, demanding we drop everything to hear about her day.

I'd put the problem a little differently: in terms of the part-time 73-year-old teacher sacked from a Brit university. His boss and the boss of the university were both women. He said, in a private conversation with his female boss that “Jewish people are the cleverest in the world” and “Germans are good engineers.”

The 73-year-old’s remarks were then investigated by Solent University after Dr Bonar complained about his use of racial and national stereotypes.

Do you see the problem here? Normally in the community of women, after a man had said something like this, the women would all get together in their Kaffee Klatsches and tell each other "I can't believe he said that." "Everyone" would agree that he was a ugly man, that they were "literally shaking" and after a while things would get back to normal.

If this episode had just been men, the boss of the 73-year-old would have said to him, "I say old chap, I think you are a little bit off the deep-end on that one." The idea of firing the guy wouldn't have occurred to them. Unless some woman complained.

Hey ladies! I think there is a bit of a problem when a guy gets fired for something he said rather than for something he did. But I realize that in the women's world, everything is about stuff that people have said.

Then we have a general piece about how university students are liberal, but east-coast students at selective colleges are much more liberal. Well, yeah. And there is a reason for that. One: all their teachers are liberal; two: nearly all the jobs in the Gentry class are grift jobs, where you are paid to virtue-signal with gubmint money, and where you never subject yourself to the grueling possibilities of starting your own business. So it makes sense to be a virtue-signaling liberal with a degree in Activism.

Then we have good old Victor Davis Hanson opining about "Why Our Universities Have Failed." He asks

Where did Antifa youth rioting in the streets receive their intellectual and ethical bearings? Why are the First and Second Amendments no longer fully operative? How did the general population become nearly ignorant of their Constitution, history, and the hallmarks of their culture? Why do employers no longer equate a bachelor’s degree with competency in oral and written communications, basic computation, and reasoning? How in the 21st century did race and ethnicity come to define who we are rather than become incidental to our individual personas? In answering all these questions, we always seem to return to higher education—the font of much of our contemporary malaise.

But the point is that, from the point of view of the ruling class, the system is working. They want a gentry-proletariat of angry young people with gigantic student loans. They want a canting moral universe where they can play racial roulette to teach people to hate and to fear. They want a world where they get to name and shame. They need the Deplorables so they can sneer at them.

My point is that the university system has always been a place where the ruing class teaches the candidates for entry into the ruling class how to be a good ruling-class member in good standing and qualify for the top jobs in ruling-class-dom. Back in the day they taught the young sprigs the classics. Then they taught them philosophy, politics, and economics, because rulers needed that knowledge to preside over a modern representative industrial-age republic. 

Now they teach the Kidz critical race theory and the "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors" moral framework. Because the political formula of today's ruling class is that the rulers are battling valiantly against the dragons of systemic racism on behalf of poor helpless minorities and women and non-binaries everywhere, and that is what they want the future leaders to be carefully taught.

My judgement is that it won't work. But there is going to be an slight unpleasantness at the Bellona Club  and a significant butcher's bill before the smoke clears and we emerge into sunny green uplands in the Era After Woke.

What Will Happen to the Economy Post-COVID?

The three trillion dollar stimulus of the last year -- see my COVID-19 page for details -- carpet-bombed the economy during the spring lockdown. But now what?

The hard part of national economics is what to do after the war or the stock-market crash or the epidemic, and past history is not very encouraging.

Back in the days of the gold standard, governments would implement policy of "resumption," to cancel the inflation of the war years and return the value of the national currency to its pre-war level. The idea was to pay back holders of government debt for their losses during the war inflation. The results were not happy.

After the Napoleonic War the Brits were determined to get back to pre-war parity. The result was deflation and unhappy workers, like the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the Captain Swing riots of 1830. Of course it all ended happily ever after with the Great Reform Bill of 1832.

After the US Civil War which featured a ton of paper money and debt, the government determined to return to the pre-war parity of the dollar. This led to the Great Panic of 1873. Farmers that took out mortgages in the 1860s were screwed because their farm mortgages were underwater -- also debtors in general. What followed was the Long Depression. And then there was the Panic of 1893 with a depression that lasted until 1896. Remember William Jennings Bryan and the "Cross of Gold" speech, as in "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." He means the gold standard.

After World War I countries like Britain and the US went back on the gold standard at pre-war parities. And the workers and debtors hated it. Of course, Germany, dismembered by the Treaty of Versailles, was unable to service its war debts and keep paying all its social democratic benefit programs and so devalued the currency in hyper-inflation and wiped out the widows and orphans in the middle class that kept their savings in Reichmarks. Thanks, pal, said Adolf Hitler.

After the 1929 stock market crash the US Federal Reserve Board fluffed its first financial crisis by failing to act as lender of last resort. With the help of the New Dealers this gave the US a ten-year Great Depression that only ended when the US started spending (and releasing business from regulation) in the run-up to World War II.

After World War II there was not a depression. But the dollar was kept at its pre-war value. The US government ran surpluses for a couple years, but managed to get the federal debt down from over 100 percent GDP down to 35 percent of GDP. I still don't know how they did it.

Then we had the Crash of 2008, when Little Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, failed to act as lender of last resort when Lehman Brothers went south. Ben, oh Ben! Then with Barack Obama as president the federal government decided it was more important to do gubmint health care than to get the economy back on track. Thanks, Barack!

So here we are about to emerge from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the question is: how well will the federal government handle it, threading the needle between getting the economy back on track, avoiding inflation, and doing or not doing the massive agenda of the climate change religion?

How should the federal government thread the needle? Honestly, I don't have a clue. Except that I know that one thing to do is to put off the elimination of fossil fuels for now, and avoid new subsidies for "renewable energy." And I have a feeling that a President Trump, who knows a thing or two about debt, would do a better job than Joe Biden who, I suspect, literally knows nothing except how to play the game of politics, and will outsource economic policy to conventional-wisdom swamp creatures.

One thing from the post WWI German hyper-inflation. Stocks and gold did all right. Bitcoin? Wasn't invented yet.

An Immigrant's Thanks to America

As I get older I appreciate more and more that life is a process of lucky breaks and of successfully dodging bullets.

What a lucky break that my dad, who worked in export for the British electrical manufacturer AEI (now defunct), and got sent out to Denver in 1965 to assist in a wacky electric generation project. 

And so I got to fly out from my first term at the University of Leeds in England to Denver in December of 1965. And I still remember the glorious Colorado dawn viewed from my parent's apartment on 8th & Clarkson on my first morning in the good old USA.

Then we headed out on 6th Avenue in my dad's 1955 Olds 88 and up into the Rocky Mountains on US 40. And so, as soon as I graduated from engineering school in 1968 I immigrated to the United States of America and became a citizen as soon as possible in 1975.

What a lucky break that, with my parents living in India in 1947 the Indians were too busy killing each other in "communal" riots over partition to worry about killing the imperialist Brits, and that we all got out alive in 1948 and returned to Britain.

What a lucky break that my mother, born and raised in Japan, got out in 1940 to "help" her sister with her new baby in Calcutta, India, a comfortable year before Pearl Harbor.

What a lucky break that my father, born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, got out in 1918 before the full force of Leninism and civil war could suck him up and destroy him.

Of course, the fact is that we are all the result of lucky breaks and dodged bullets, because if any one of a dozen events had gone the other way none of us would be here.

And so I look on the lucky breaks of my life and my ancestors and marvel.

And now I have six grandchildren, thanks to my two whip-smart accomplished daughters, and now I know that the meaning of life, the universe and everything, is grandchildren.

It's easy to get discouraged by the stolen election, by the Woke Reign of Terror, by the stupidities of Democratic governors imagining that you control an epidemic by keeping people out of churches, by the deficit, by the looming horrors of unfunded entitlements, by the blindness of the Great Reset and Building Back Better. All these inanities will cost us, although I expect they will cost me personally less than ordinary American commoners, to say nothing of "women and minorities hardest hit." And we will not get past the inanities and injustices of today until our liberal friends see disaster and ruin staring them in the face and the American people turn away from them with disgust and scorn.

But meanwhile on this Thanksgiving Day we are still Americans, the best people in the world. We still live in the United States of America, the best country in the world. 

And we ain't seen nothing yet.

Now Penguins are Getting Triggered

Sooner or later it had to happen. Penguins down at the South Pole would want into the fun and games of micro-aggressions and taking offence.

And now it has happened, reported by the lefty wizards at Vice.com. The special snowflake LGBT+ staffers at Penguin Random House are all in a twitter because Penguin is going to publish the sequel to the #1 best-seller 12 Rules. The new book is titled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

(That title is interesting, because in my reductive Three Peoples theory, the middle people are the Responsibles, the people of Order, and the Creatives are the chaps trying to live beyond Order.)

They are all in a twitter because Peterson, who opposed the Canadian C-16 law on preferred pronouns, has become the preferred target of hate for Good Little Girls that Literally Know Nothing. Here is one foolish young thing quoted at Vice.

“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” a junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community and who attended the town hall told VICE World News. 

It is bootless to get into their whiny girly complaints, except to note that women have a Culture of Complaint.

But obviously Penguin has missed an opportunity to Send a Message to its employees. Something like this:

Hey snowflakes! Get a clue! The whole point of non-fiction publishing is to get new ideas out there. Guess what! New ideas are almost always deeply unsettling to the defenders of conventional wisdom and the status-quo: evidently chaps and chapettes like you.

If you feel that you are not up to the challenge of living and working in the public square where uncomfortable ideas are bruited about by thinkers and writers that may not be quite out of the top drawer I invite you to hand in your resignation. You are not a good fit at Penguin.

Not only that, but any student of The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca would know that a sensible ruling class always allows room for upstarts from the lower classes. They bring much needed vigor into the ruling class and help it avoid decaying into a sterile aristocracy that is closed to new blood. A sensible ruling class also keeps the vapid twitterings of upper-class girls on its staff well in check.

I checked over to my pal Vox Day who is a severe critic of Peterson. Of course he is crowing, and offering a copy of his Jordanetics to the snowflakes.

My problem with Vox Day is that when he says something like this that Immanuel Kant was "wrong, completely wrong, and utterly wrong... And the Jungians are not merely wrong, they are mad" he is telling us that he does not understand the German Turn that more or less invented the modern world.

And all Kant said was that we cannot know things-in-themselves, but only appearances. What is so wrong with that?

Jordan Peterson is saying that if we understand Kant and then go through the whole German Turn to Jung then, well then the Jungian archetypes give us a cloudy window into the goings-on inside our unconscious mind. Then if we want to understand hierarchy as a way to reduce violence we should take a look at lobsters, which have been doing hierarchy for 350 million years. Then 12 Steps and Beyond Order: 12 More Steps to Life. Then the idea of the Sacrificial Hero who gives his life on the border between Order and Chaos so that others may live.

We are at an interesting moment in the history of the world. We have a ruling class that just stole an election so it could install a vapid ageing idiot as president. We have chaps like Vox Day still flapping around in the age when reason and logic were going to save the world. We have lefties and their silly snowflake adepts running around trying to stop free speech. We have a clueless health bureaucracy flapping around with terminal incompetence.

And then we have you and me and that fellow behind the tree that hope that we will survive the current madness until a time that the world gets a clue again.

Commoners and National Politics Since 1960

If the 2020 presidential election was stolen, that the Commoner's president was chucked out by the Gentry ruling class, it ain't the first time. Let's run a little narrative about the experience of US Commoners in national politics since 1960.

1960 - The election of Richard Nixon is stolen by Democratic machines in Illinois and Texas. Richard Nixon was born a Commoner: his dad ran a grocery store and gas station in Whittier, California after his ranch failed.

1963 - Right-wingers in Dallas are blamed for the assassination of President Kennedy by leftist Lee Harvey Oswald.

1974 - Commoner President Nixon, champion of the "silent majority," is hounded out of office for deeds that our Democratic friends do every day.

1980 - Candidate Ronald Reagan attracts "Reagan Democrats" to his campaign but all the best people dismisse him as a right-winger and an "amiable dunce." Ronald Reagan was born a Commoner: his dad was a salesman and his mother a member of the Disciples of Christ.

1986 - Deep state runs Iran Contra investigation to try to impeach President Reagan, but fails when Reagan plays Sergeant Schultz and remembers nothing.

1988 - Bush the elder promises "No New Taxes" but reneges, betraying his Commoner supporters.

1992 - Many Commoners desert President Bush and support third-party candidate H. Ross Perot and that helps elect Bill Clinton president.

1994 - With Newt Gingrich in the lead, Commoners elect the first Republican Congress in 40 years, helped by backlash against HillaryCare. Gingrich was born a Commoner: son of a teenage couple whose marriage broke apart within days.

2001 - Second President Bush appeals to patriotism and sends US Commoners to fight in endless Middle Eastern war.

2010 - Spontaneous Tea Party of Commoners arises, rebelling against left-wing agenda of President Obama and his Obamacare. Obama siccs little Lois Lerner on them to hinder their acquisition of tax-exempt status.

2016 - Son of millionaire Donald Trump -- who plays a Commoner on TV -- runs for president explicitly as the candidate of the Commoners. Hillary Clinton calls his supporters a "basket of deplorables." Obama administration spies on Trump campaign and interferes with transition by spying on Trump officials.

2020 - Entire ruling class, from media to social media billionaires to street "activists," runs against Trump, president of the Commoners, and probably steals the election.

As I review the narrative that I have written above, one thing seems to come out at me, something I wrote in my "Commoner Manifesto."

A spectre is haunting the liberal elite -- the spectre of the Commoners. All the powers of the liberal establishment have entered into a secular alliance to exorcise this spectre. Etc.

Am I right or am I right?

It seems to me that as we look back over the last 60 years, what we see is the gradual coming-into-focus of a genuine American Commoner movement. In the beginning, this movement was led by Commoners that had vaulted into the political class with luck and talent, but the movement did not seem to have legs without a leadership from on high.

I propose that in 2010, with the Tea Party, a new phase began, when Commoners organized themselves for political action without assistance from on high. A big "tell" for me was Nancy Pelosi's comment that the Tea Party was AstroTurf. Our Nance could not comprehend political action unless sponsored from on high.

I propose that in 2020 the Trump Car and Boat Parades are another organic self-organizing movement of Commoners. OK, I'm sure that it all had help from the Trump campaign. But something caught fire.

The question is whether this movement can continue without the inspiration and energy of Donald Trump. If he is defeated in the post-election shenanigans does he return triumphant at the head of a veritable army of deplorables? If he wins does the movement continue without the spur of humiliation and injustice?

My feeling is that the Commoners all across the western world are being screwed by the educated ruling class and its Gentry supporters, and they are all waking up to the fact of their domination by an unjust ruling class. This injustice is a result of the current administrative state and its "activism" partners extending a seductive offer to all members of the Gentry: jobs and power to flatter its ambition, its vanity, and its honor. The problem is that everything this unholy alliance does ends up screwing the ordinary Commoner. And it always involves the humiliation and the marginalization of the Commoner.

At some point the Commoners are bound to say: this far and no further. Have we already reached this point, or is it still in the future?

An Indictment of the Ruling Class

Reading the tone of the reporting of the election aftermath it looks like the usual suspects want President Trump to give up on the rather evidently stolen election.

Let's concede that, in the recounts and the Trump lawsuits that our Democratic friends will be able to cover up the dead bodies enough to get through to January 20 and the inauguration of Joe Biden.

But let us rehearse the Chris Chantrill narrative of why you ain't seen nothin' yet.

First of all, the cheating. Normal humans only start to cheat when things are going unexpectedly wrong. It can't be true that my business is losing money! It can't be true that the voters think they are getting screwed by the ruling class! So, a little thumb on the scales ought to get us through the current unpleasantness.

Second, the "deplorable phenomenon." Of course, ruling classes have always thought that the people they ruled were yahoos. Else why would the rulers be the rulers and the ruled the ruled? But the truth is that rulers tend to "overdetermine" their virtues, which are, after all, not universal but only present in a few exceptional individuals in the ruling class. The rest of it is ruling-class conceit. And so almost everything that a ruling class does is a manifestation of its conceit and its disdain for the lower orders.

Third, "the natives are restless." One of the points that Gaetano Mosca makes in The Ruling Class is that a good ruling class is always sensitive to the tides and passions among the masses. It knows that one of its biggest jobs is to keep the people more-or-less content. One of the strengths of the British colonial system was its recognition that when "the natives are restless" then the imperial regime needed to pay attention. But our ruling class has declared war on the basket of deplorables, because racist-sexist-homophobe, and counts it a virtue to humble and humiliate the plebs.

Fourth, naked self-dealing. Of course, a ruling class has to take care of its own, but any sensible ruling class knows that there are limits. In particular there is the injunction of the British actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell:

My dear, I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.

There are a whole bunch of issues on which the ruling class is indulging itself and making things a lot worse for the average Joe. As in

Issue	Ruling Class	Commoners
Climate change	Jobs for gentry	makes energy more expensive.
Environmentalism	Jobs for gentry	makes houses more expensive.
Feminism	Gentry women feel good	turns world upside down for commoner women
Sexual Revolution	Bit of fun in college	turns world upside down for commoner women
LGBT	Gentry gets creative about sex	er, what?
Mortgage subsidies	Increases value of gentry homes	makes housing less affordable.
Education	Inside track on private ed.	puts education in hands of teachers' unions.
Mass transit	OK for gentry neighborhoods	makes it harder for suburb-to-suburb commuting.
Building codes	Enforces gentry- style luxury	makes housing more expensive
Diversity	Jobs for gentry	disfavors white working class
Student loans	OK for professional class	makes college unaffordable

The consequence of all these issues is that the educated ruling class soars above all the problems, because of various advantages, but the ordinary schmuck is left holding the baby.

My feeling is that our ruling class has literally no idea how it oppresses and exploits the ordinary Commoner American. The main reason is that the ruling-class's belief system, its religion, declares that the current ruling class of the educated gentry is the best thing since sliced bread.

But I like to use the "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors" moral framework to show how deluded this is. First of all, just how oppressed are the blacks, Latinos, women, LGBTs supposed to be? Not very, I submit, because discrimination is illegal. And how oppressive are the white oppressors? Who are they, anyway? Since the whole educated class these days seems to be Democrats, down for the struggle, that leaves home builders, small business people, fundamentalist Christians, white males that drive trucks. And they are supposed to be powerful? And how noble are the "allies?" If you ask me, the allies are the people that have declared certain groups as oppressed, and other groups as oppressors, but they are the practically perfect people in every way with the power to make things right.

There's a famous saying, by Talleyrand:

He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and can not imagine that there can be happiness in life.

Yes. No doubt life is pretty sweet for our educated ruling class. But it ain't so sweet for many of the Commoners and even for the Clients of the ruling class. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Or maybe it does. 

Everybody Gets the "Great Reset"

I was muttering about the two basic themes of the proposed Biden regime: "Build Back Better" and "systemic racism" a couple of days ago. 

Build Back Better is a meme of the World Economic Forum, part of its Great Reset. The founder of WEF is Klaus Schwab. All the right people are in on Build Back Better and the Great Reset, including Joe Biden and Boris Johnson.

And all the bad people are opposed. Like James Delingpole of Breitbart, who writes that the "Great Reset is Not  Conspiracy Theory" of right-wing kooks. If you needed persuading, Breitbart has a nearby article "John Kerry Hypes 'Great Reset': 'We're at the Dawn of Extremely Exciting Time."

Yes. I'll bet we are. Especially for ruling-class notables.

The point is that politicians of all stripes since the dawn of time have been complete suckers for the Comprehensive and Mandatory Program to Change the World. It's what they do. And here's what Portuguese-born Sarah Hoyt has to say about that.

If a story is too smooth, it’s a lie.  Whether it’s a political theory/prediction or a narration of an historical event, if everything fits... it’s a lie.  Real life is messy, self contradictory and confusing.  Real history stumbles, falters, weaves across the road like a spider on LSD. 

All government programs -- from the Communist Manifesto to the New Deal to the Great Society to Whip Inflation Now to Obamacare to Free College to the Great Reset -- are a lie.

But every political leader or political wanna-be sees himself as Henry V before Harfleur.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
...
On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war.
...
The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

Actually, the Brits besieging Harfleur were batting on a bit of a sticky wicket, because they were all dying of disease consequent upon being encamped in unsanitary conditions. Rule One for armies: First dig the latrines!

Do you get the point? It is that every political leader is proposing to lead his people once more unto the breach and fill it up with his English dead. Whether you are Al Gore proposing to fight climate change, or John Kerry salivating over an "extremely exciting time" or Barack Obama promising "fundamental transformation."

Nothing personal, you understand, it is just What Leaders Do. Here's another piece out today about the LBJ Goldwater election of 1964.

Then as now, the mainstream media were largely a cheering section for the Democrats, depicting their massive programs for social justice and economic equality as bold, brilliant steps into a brighter future. 

Actually, the Great Society was an unmitigated disaster, and one of its disasters was the marginalization of lower-class fathers, resulting in this chappie, the guy that was pursuing Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His name: "JoJo" Rosenbaum, white trash:

• Joseph Rosenbaum — depressed, homeless and alone . . . had spent most of his adult life in prison for sexual conduct with children when he was 18
• Rosenbaum met his father only twice and told his mother that he was molested by his alcoholic stepfather “on an almost daily basis,” according to court documents.
• When he was 13 his mother was sent to prison for two years, and Rosenbaum was sent off to a group home, where he began using heroin and methamphetamine, according to court documents.

Actually, it is my belief that this sort of thing happens all the way down the ages, for all kinds of reasons: conquest, famine, family breakup, stupid gubmint programs.

The peasants were dying in their millions at the end of the agricultural age; the Skid Row bums spent their lives on Skid Row after the 1929 Crash; the "homeless" are the victims of the end of manufacturing unions, and the major recessions and the government screw-ups of the last decades, including the COVID-19 screw-up.

As Sarah Hoyt says: "Real life is messy, self contradictory and confusing.  Real history stumbles, falters, weaves across the road like a spider on LSD. " And you'd better work like hell not to be caught in the undertow.

Because "sure as heckfire" the gubmint ain't gonna save you.

A Word in Your Ear, Noble Lord

My latest American Thinker piece "Trying to Think Ahead" got noticed by Instapundit and by Lucianne.com. And it got 558 comments so far. In the piece I merely asked why, if Dems are The Emerging Democratic Majority, they need to cheat. Surely a noble and confident aristocracy of intellect does not need to descend to the mass production of ballots.

And even if a charlatan like Trump should win a couple of presidential elections the ruling class still rules, right? No need to call in the Spanish Inquisition and cancel everyone for WrongThink.

In fact, of course, things are not as well as they might be in the court of the ruling class. The rulers seem to be giving off signals that, as the Brits say, they have "lost the plot."

That is certainly my view. If you look at Joe Biden's agenda, "Build Back Better" is just part of the anodyne globalists-know-best agenda of the World Economic Forum. And "systemic racism" is part of the ruling class's desperate attempt to keep the black mamas voting Democrat -- and hand out goodies to educated blacks.

Then I thought even deeper, that Build Back Better (and climate change) is a politics pandering to supra-national educated globalists, while systemic racism is pandering to sub-national ethnic tribes.

There is nothing in the Democratic agenda for ordinary Commoner Americans. There is nothing for ordinary nationalists, citizens of the nation-state of the United States of America.

Now I would say that a ruling class that has no interest in pandering to the great middle sector of American voters has got a screw loose, and possibly may not be long for this world.

I think of the way the French aristocrats are portrayed in the TV series John Adams. They are all powdered and bewigged and gorgeously attired, both men and women. 

But our pal Benjamin Franklin, ambassador from the rebel American colonists to the court of Louis XVI, is dressed in homespun, does not wear a wig, and wears a coonskin hat that he sent home for. He is playing a role: the crude frontiersman -- he, the genius that connected lightning with the sparks from electrostatics, the natural leader that organized the first public library in Philadelphia. Ben Franklin was playing the part of the Commoner to those fancy-pants Frenchie aristocrats.

Of course, Donald Trump, real-estate magnate, also plays the part of the Commoner. I wonder why?

Now, I'm about two-thirds of the way through Mosca's Ruling Class. His basic line is that all societies since whenever have been governed by a minority, a ruling class, because it must be so. Every ruling class must come up with a "political formula," a justification for its role as the ruling minority that every ruling class invents to meet the "need, so universally felt, of governing and knowing one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but of the basis of a moral principle." A ruling class must persuade the rubes that it is not just in it for itself, but cares about the people.

In the old days, the political formula would be that the king is the Lord's Anointed -- and yes, in 1953 at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, she was Anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But in the United States the political formula is different. Our President rules on a formula that he is the people's choice, and the people chose him because he cares about people like you and me. Our educated ruling class rules on the formula that it is the educated class, the knowledgeable class, the caring class, that has the knowledge and the wisdom to run the complicated and sophisticated government that is so necessary in the modern age. Yahoos like Trump need not apply.

Notice the little glitch in the Matrix here? What if you are elected president and you stole the election? That is what the Dems and the ruling class have been saying about Trump and Russia Russia Russia. And that is the little problem that a President Biden might have going forward.

And what if you are a ruling class that is not very educated, not very knowledgeable, not very caring, and makes big mistakes like creating the Great Society that has marginalized the poor, that has bombed out the manufacturing sector, that cranked up a housing bubble that nearly wiped out the financial system and hurt the very people it was designed to help: minorities without the means to come up with a decent down payment on the home of their dreams?

What if you get elected president and your agenda is all about Jobs for Gentry in climate change and "systemic racism" and college debt forgiveness for wokies and nothing for the broad mass of Americans?

What if an ordinary American might well feel that the current ruling class rules on the basis "merely of material and intellectual force," because shut up peasants? And that there was no "moral principle" that he could see to justify the ruling class's use of force?

See the problem?

My gut feeling, you noble lords, you Bidens and Harrises and Schumers and Pelosis and all the ships at sea, is that you really have no idea that every ruling class must persuade the ordinary people that it does not rule merely for its own interest and power, but to recognize and promote the interests of ordinary people, the ordinary people that we saw so clearly in the Trump Car Parades and Trump Boat Parades this summer and fall.

Now I don't know whether the Trump agenda of build the wall, check the ChiComs, end the wars, and Frack Baby Frack, is really in the long term interest of America and the world. Time will tell on that.

But you can certainly say that Donald Trump, like no presidential candidate in recent history, really focused his agenda like a laser on flattering and persuading ordinary American Commoners that he understood them and would rule America in their interest.

The "Bondman" in More's "Utopia"

I've been reading Sir Thomas More's Utopia, because I thought I oughta. And there I was cruising along, trying to decipher the very thick prose, when suddenly I came upon the word "bondman."

What! There were slaves in the perfect state of Utopia? I had no idea.

Actually, I have two translations of Utopia. One is a chatty translation by Paul Turner in 1961, and the other is the original translation from the Latin by Ralph Robinson in 1556. I've been reading the original translation, but I think that the Sixties version is easier to understand. Here is the start of the original:

They neither take bondmen of prisoners taken in battle, unless it be in battle that they fought themselves, nor of bondmen's children, nor, to be short, of any such as they can get out of foreign countries, though he were there a bondman.

But let us look at the original Latin. That I just downloaded, old chap. And you can too! The paragraph begins:

Pro servis neque bello captus habent.

So, More is using the Latin "servus" that Robinson translates as "bondman." It's interesting that Google Translate has two synonyms for "servus:" "mancipium" and "famulus." Let's write these up with Google's suggested meanings:

Servus -- servant, slave, bondman 

Mancipium -- slave, property, manicipation, possession, bondman, thrall 

Famulus -- servant, slave, house slave, housecarl, valet, varlet

See, what I experience here is that back in the good old days there were all kinds of gradations in subordination. And we, who have so nobly cast slavery aside -- Commie socialist paradises excepted -- really don't know what we are talking about when it comes to human bondage.

Of course, by the Sixties we call a slave a slave. Here is the modern version from Turner:

By the way, the slaves that I've occasionally referred to are not, as you might imagine, non-combatant prisoners of war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets. They're either Utopian convicts, or, much more often, condemned criminals from other countries, who are acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing.

The reason for slaves in Utopia is that they don't have any of your modern prisons of which we are so proud. Whaddya do with the antisocial, anyway? Put 'em in jail or put 'em to work?

Both types of slave are kept hard at work in chain-gangs, though the Utopians are treated worse than foreigners. The idea is that it's all the more deplorable if a person who has had the advantage of a first-class education and a thoroughly moral upbringing still insists on becoming a criminal -- so the punishment should be all the more severe. 

Hmm. Compare the following with our current illegal immigration and work-under-the-table economy: 

Another type of slave is a working-class foreigner who, rather than live in wretched poverty at home volunteers for slavery in Utopia. Such people are treated with respect, and with almost as much kindness as Utopian citizens, except that they're made to work harder, because they're used to it. If they want to leave the country, which doesn't happen often, they're perfectly free to do so, and receive a small gratuity.

Now, the thing to remember about Utopia is that it is hard to be sure when More is serious and when he is joking.

But I would say that our present notion that slave equals negro slave equals Middle Passage equals the crime of the ages equals white supremacy equals systemic racism is desperately adolescent.

Slavery is part of a continuum of domination and hierarchy, and subordinate status in human society. There are all kinds of gradations in human freedom and human subordination. (Was there ever a slave more abject than the Soviet prisoner in the Siberian Kolyma gold mines?) 

And there are all kinds of different people. Some people want to be free and a bird and damn the torpedoes; others want security, whatever it costs. Most of us want to be free and expect to be protected. Ain't we all stinkers, as Bugs Bunny put it?

What made plantation slavery scandalous in our age, I suspect, began with the fact that, for a while, plantation slavery was very profitable for enterprising men that were not out of the top drawer, especially in the production of cane sugar, from Cyprus to the Caribbean. It was especially annoying when they brought their wealth back to England and built Mansfield Park and bought baronetcies and went into Parliament.

It is interesting that More's bondmen were not conquest slaves; the Utopians were done with that. But it is fascinating that "immigrants" from poor countries were put to work as slaves, and no doubt thought themselves better off than in their previous life. And it is interesting that the immigrant slaves were given a bonus if they decided to leave Utopia.

See, in my view the American immigrant story is not that different. Many peoples that have immigrated to the US had to start out working very hard for meager wages, under near slave conditions in those famous "sweat-shops" of which we've heard tell.

And in my view the union worker is working in a kind of quasi-slavery, the creature of his union boss and his corporate boss who both play power games using the helpless worker as a pawn. Like many a slave, they were cast out when they were no longer useful.

In my view, the gubmint worker with lifetime employment and a pension is not exactly a free person.

Nor is the employee of a corporate colossus.

And what is the status of the current American citizen that must contribute 30-40 percent of his earnings to the government? Is he a free-man? A serf? A bondman? A "famulus?" You tell me.

"Build Back Better" and "Systemic Racism:" The Horror

A week or so ago, the Biden campaign said its agenda was COVID-19, the economy, climate change and systemic racism. Obviously they are serious about the systemic racism, because "Biden Fills Posts With Experts on Systemic Racism."

I must say that the article on systemic racism depressed me more than anything else out of the stolen election thingy. Even that Mark Malloch-Brown was all tied up with the Dominion/Smartmatic voting machine scandal. Mark Malloch-Brown, in case you didn't know, is a George Soros pal.

Can't we put the racism thing to sleep? Fifty-five years after the civil-rights acts? In a year when California voters -- deep blue California voters -- voted against reintroducing race policy in California government?

Well, no. And we know why. First, because Democratic bigwigs still thing that having a race panic in election years helps get out the black vote. Second, because fighting racism is part of the ruling class's virtue-signaling. That's the benefit of the #WeBelieve yard-signs. They tell us where the ruling class and its women supporters hang their hat on their virtue-signaling. Shall we run down the list?

• Black Lives Matter -- we fight racism
• Love is Love -- we fight homophobia
• Women's Rights are Human Rights -- we fight sexism
• Science is Real -- we fight climate change
• No Human is Illegal -- we fight xenophobia
• Kindness is Everything -- we are Good Little Girls

Just about covers the list, doesn't it. But, hey, why don't I get a word in edgewise?

• Black Lives Matter -- Hey, let's treat blacks as adults for a change
• Love is Love -- yes, but whatabout the children that LGBTs don't have
• Women's Rights are Human Rights -- Allows guys to say: get rid of it
• Science is Real -- If you think that you don't know science, darlin'
• No Human is Illegal -- Yeah, why not lower American wages
• Kindness is Everything -- I'm waiting...

I wonder if bearded @jack considers this bulleted list hate speech.

The thing about systemic racism is that our ruling class is going to keep hitting it until it flat out loses them three elections in a row, until even the dullest journalist on TV is embarrassed by it.

But now let's turn to "Build Back Better," which is the big program of the World Economic Forum, the chaps that meet at Davos, Magic Mountain-ville, every year. 

Yep. "To Build Back Better We Must Reinvent Capitalism. Here's How." Also called the Great Reset.

An inclusive and green recovery is vital if we are to create more resilient economies and a world in which business can thrive, not just now but long into the future.

Oh yeah. I'm totally convinced. Here are the main headings of Build Back Better. 

Resilience: "companies will need to establish a better balance between efficiency and resilience in everything from financial management to supply chain configuration." So, “Just-in-time” may be superseded by “just-in-case”.

No kidding! Hey, if there is any CEO that is not already concerned with "just-in-case" he should have his head examined! And fired on the spot.

Future growth: "The case for ‘green’ stimulus measures is clear: they are likely to deliver more jobs and higher (equitable) growth in the short-term, while reducing longer-term risks linked to climate change and biodiversity loss." 

Really. Wanna have a bet on this? And if you chaps are wrong, will you pony up the damages to the world economy from your green stimulus?

Future-proofing capitalism: "COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and societally negative outcomes of contemporary capitalist economies. It has strengthened the case for shifting to a more sustainable and inclusive model... Governments and regulators must intervene to ensure the costs of environmental and social damage are internalized by the companies responsible: profits cannot come at the expense of long-term societal resilience... If we don’t seize this opportunity to build back better – to reset and reinvent rather than 'return to normal' – systemic risks and vulnerabilities will continue to accumulate, making future shocks both more likely and more dangerous."

You can see what is going on here. To our globalist overlords, the COVID-19 event is a wonderful opportunity to impose their top-down agenda on us all. Because Resilience. Because Future Growth. Because Future-proofing Capitalism. It assumes that they know better than we do and they know better than the market.

Now, in my view, this gets it all wrong.

Resilience? I'd say that the biggest threat to resilience is the debt and the entitlement programs of the modern state. And the various policies that encourage individuals and businesses to load up on debt. Why? Because when I take out a debt -- or anyone takes out a debt -- I make a bet on the future, that everything will be copacetic, and I'll be able to service my loan. In other words, debt is the opposite of resilience. You think that governments are going to ease up on the debt any time soon?

Future growth? Don't you guys know that nobody knows what will power the future. That has been the lesson of the last 200 years. Nobody saw anything coming, not the textile revolution, not the steam revolution, not the electric revolution, not the personal transportation revolution, not the computer revolution, not the internet revolution. So what makes you guys think that "green" is the wave of the future? My nickel says that the wave of the future will be something completely unexpected.

Future-proofing capitalism? I agree, we need to make capitalism more robust, watch out for externalities, reset and reinvent. But  my nickel says that what really needs to happen is to unwind all the rigidities and rent-seekings that have been created by the century-long top-down political domination of the present ruling class. Only that is probably impossible because of Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. Not until they crash.

Hey, ruling classes gotta virtue signal -- as in systemic racism. Ruling classes gotta rent-seek -- as in Green New Deal. 

Otherwise how are they going to get the support they need from the voters, the Deplorables and the Bitter-clingers?

So what really saddens me is that, to coin a phrase, the ruling class has learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the Trump experience.

And that is a pity, because it is We The People that will be paying the butcher's bill for this nonsense.

Will The Diversity Gospel Take Over The World?

An acquaintance emailed today about the situation of white guys in STEM. What do you do, as "the 40-something engineer, with wife, house, car, kids" in the face of the current diversity madness, knowing you are "not of the appropriate gender or color?"

The simple answer, of course, is that you don't work for a big corporation, or any other place where they have time for piddling around with ruling-class inanities. You go work for a smaller company where they can't afford to have a DIE policy:  because "Get Woke, Go Broke."

But why? What is really going on with "diversity in the workplace" and diversity in movies, and the current panic on "systemic racism" that will be a major thrust in the Biden administration, along with climate change?

And will this diversity religion take over the world?

I think the diversity thing issues from the conceit of our ruling class, its self-image, that the educated elite is the virtue elite. As I am learning from The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca every ruling class lives on the narrative that it is the most valiant, or the Best and Brightest, or the most moral thing going, and that is why we peasants should bend the knee.

That is what the Deplorables and Bitter Clingers are about. Ruling-class virtue-signaling.

In my view the two big things the Biden administration proposes, climate change and systemic racism, illustrate the driving forces of any government and/or moral elite.

Government is about defending us from existential peril. In the past this has been the danger of the dawn raid from the tribe next door. Then it was the Nazis, then the Commies. But now, China aside, we really don't have an existential peril to arm against, the global elite has come up with climate change, to save us from runaway warming.

Then the moral agenda. What better than to save America from the notorious "systemic racists?" Only I think that government cannot help us on the moral front. Morality is a girl thing, what women enforce in the home and around the neighborhood. If it is enforced by government is it no longer morality but simple coercion, or, as our liberal friends used to say, "legislating morality."

But whatabout all the stereotype smashing, with the black astronomer in Interstellar, the endless superheroines bashing the living daylights out of big male thugs, or the brilliant female scientist? With the white male as the villain?

I just think that this stereotype bashing isn't going to work. My reason, of course, is deeply intellectual. We humans are, above all, storytellers. Why? Because stories are the way we remember: our life, the past, the birth of the nation, everything. Stories are the way we fill the world with meaning. And in those stories, as Carl Jung reminded us, we fill the cast with "archetypes:" the sacrificial hero, the cruel monster, the dumb jock, the good mother, the evil mother, the innocent girl, the nerdly boy.

Notice that in the original Star Wars all the characters were straight out of Jung's archetypes That's because director George Lucas was a fan of Joseph Campbell who was a follower of Jung. So all the characters are all straight out of mythology: Luke, the innocent boy learning to be brave; Hans Solo, the flawed but lovable rascal; Princess Leia, the beautiful maiden; Obi Wan, the wise teacher; Darth Vader, the satanic villain.

That is why Star Wars was such a mega success: because it connected deep into the human psyche. And that is why the later Star Wars movies are so mediocre: because they abandoned classic Jungian archetypes for lefty wokeness.

If you start turning the story upside down, putting people into roles that make no archetypical sense, you are going to lose your audience.

Now I think that what we need to do as a nation and a society is to refound our culture in the light of Jung's archetypes. So that men can be brave warriors, defending the hearth, and teaching the children to be worthy and honorable adults. So that women can be devoted carers, keeping the kids alive and ordering the local community, organizing learning pods and micro schools, returning to charitable work.

I think we need to stop the gender-bender madness, not because I think that gays should be strung up, but because I think that if you want to be creative with sex you should have to sign a release first, saying that if you screw up your life it is your fault, not society's fault.

Actually I think the same is true of all non-traditional role-playing. Sure, you can go and do all that, but before you go, you have to go through a briefing that educates you on the science of driving through the guard-rails.

The point of stories, whether in books or plays or movies, is to take the standard archetypes and mix them up. Sure, you can turn them upside down, but if you do that you should realize that you are doing screwball comedy; you are making a joke about archetypes.

Sure, there are blacks who can be rocket scientists, but right now it just ain't believable to cast them like that in movies. Now, a nerdly east-Asian: that would work. Nor does a girl superhero work: not unless she is some sort of a Kali, the destroyer of evil -- but not featuring kick-boxing stunts. Read this narrative about Kali:

In relation to Shiva, she [Kali] appears to play the opposite role from that of Parvati. Parvati calms Shiva, counterbalancing his antisocial or destructive tendencies; she brings him within the sphere of domesticity and with her soft glances urges him to moderate the destructive aspects of his tandava dance. Kali is Shiva's "wife" as it were, provoking him and encouraging him in his mad, antisocial, disruptive habits. It is never Kali who tames Shiva, but Shiva who must calm Kali.

See what is going on here? The good goddess Parvati calms Shiva; the evil goddess Kali provokes him.  Notice that neither Parvati or Kali are actors; they are whisperers, the power behind the throne. Recast your superheroines as Parvati and Kali and your stories will work -- all the way to the bank.

See, my belief is the the whole wokey phenomenon will crash and burn. I think it is a last desperate effort of our educated elite ruling class to maintain its relevance before it crashes and burns on the waste-heap of history.

I think that what we are going to do in the future decades is create new religions and politics that are based on the old archetypes, but reformulated to fit the modern age. I have attempted to imagine how this might look for men in my "Good Life" blog series where I propose the highest and best role for men is the Sacrificial Hero.

Somebody should do the same for women. Should they be Kalis or Parvatis?

Whither the Good Old USA?

There is really only one narrative out there about the long-term future of US politics. It is the one proposed by Judis and Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority back in 2004. Their thesis is that the future belongs to Democrats because of women, minorities, young people, and the professionals.

Well, it's obvious isn't it? Even Pat Buchanan darkly foresees the end of the Trump era, as in:

1. Demography: the white fraction of the population is going down
2. Free stuff: Democrats are the party of government
3. Blue wall: "carrying every state that touches the Atlantic from Maine to North Carolina."

But. Here's Powerline with some post-election numbers. and a concerned analysis from The Guardian.

Biden’s win depended on suburbanites tired of Trump, who voted Republican down ballot and will certainly vote Republican in future elections... 

Most concerningly, Democrats hemorrhaged votes among non-white working-class voters. . . Even in the crucial states Biden was able to flip, Trump reduced Democratic margins in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. These results should be setting off alarm bells among Democrats.

I guess my analysis -- which of course expresses my hopes -- is that race is not as important as we are carefully taught to believe, Black Lives Matter. My belief is that national origin matters for a generation or two, but then class takes over.

Class in the sense of my reductive Three Peoples theory and Curtis Yarvin's Three Layers theory. In this theory the electorate divides up:

1. Educated Gentry: Democrat, because we are qualified to direct traffic (we want power)
2. Commoners: Republican, because we want to live our own lives (not that interested in power)
3. Clients: Democrat, because we want the powerful to protect us

Obviously, the genius of Trump was to create a class consciousness among ordinary Commoner Americans and it seems, from the Guardian, that he is making headway among non-white Commoners as well as white Commoners.

However, let us not forget Michael Barone's theory:

The Republican Party appeals to “typical Americans” as understood at a given time, and the Democratic Party represents a coalition of “out-groups.” 

Now do you see why Dems are still playing the race card? They want everyone to think of themselves as an "oppressed" out-group. But Deplorables are not an out-group. They are "white oppressors."

Nor should we think of the parties as hopelessly out of touch.

[B]oth parties have adapted, swiftly or haltingly, to shifting opinion and emerging issues, to economic change and cultural currents, to demographic flux.

Then there is the actual party history in the US House of Representatives over the last century:

Well. So if you figure that Judis and Teixeira made their predictions back in 2000, I'd say that so far, nothing has happened. Indeed, you might say that the House of Representatives has been going slowly GOP ever since 1937. Or you might say that there was a Dem wave that lasted from 1900 to the 1960s and ever since the opposite has been true.

OK. Here is my fearless prediction. I think that we have in our future a battle royal between the educated Gentry and the Commoners:

The educated Gentry wants the climate change grift because it means tons of power and jobs for educated experts and administrators and it wants continued intersectional politics because it encourages Americans to think of themselves as members of "out groups."

 The Commoners want ordinary economic growth because they want to wive and thrive. But don't touch their Medicare and Social Security, you Green New Dealers.

The point about Donald Trump is that he found the way to energize the ordinary Commoners with the notion of appealing to them directly as typical Americans and boosting economic growth -- for Americans. No professional Republican had figured out how to do that before, except maybe Ronald Reagan.

I think the place to look is the white professional elite. Do they really want to keep with the Woke movement and its cancel culture and its flirtation with socialism that might easily turn on them as a privileged and exploitative upper-class, bearded @jack?

Also, I would say, in the short range, the Democrats seem to be divided between the moderate Democrats that represent swing districts and the ideologues that represent safe districts. Just sayin'.

I don't think that Republicans are similarly divided right now.

My only problem is that if Trump wins the cheating wars, and continues in office till 2025, the country will be so fed up with Trump that Dems will win it all decisively in 2024, White House and Senate and House. 

And then you ain't seen nuttin´ yet.

It's a Bit Late to Start Condemning Beheadings, Globalists

There's a piece over at Quillette by writer Brian Stewart that approves of French President Macron for taking a stand against beheadings of secular Frenchies by Muslim religious fanatics.

Pointing to France’s tradition of secularism, known as laïcité, Macron has insisted that it “is the glue of a united France,” which must be defended against Islamism’s “conscious, theorized, politico-religious project” to subvert the freedom of the republic.

No doubt. and I was just reading Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class. He says that in a multi-sect society the ruling class has to develop a unifying ideology so that, e.g. in France, you can be a good Muslim and a good Frenchie.

Unfortunately the time to have done that would have been 20-30 years ago. Instead the French ruling class, like ruling classes elsewhere in the West, have tended to be patronizing towards "victim groups," permitting them to develop ideologies of separation that they would never permit in ordinary middle-class Westerners.

And we know the reason why. Because condoning the primitive tribalist ideologies of the victims has been great for the ruling class on the voting front. Peoples that have not yet succeeded in finding a place in the city's market economy tend to hunker down in sub-national identities, and they protect themselves from the larger society with urban gangs. The job of a ruling class worth its privileges and its self-regard is to encourage by all means the ethnic group to identify with the nation rather than the tribe. 

But not our ruling class. Because, for the time being, they could be the champions of the oppressed, the "allies" if you like, and rule by dividing ordinary Americans.

So it's a bit late for President Macron suddenly wake up and say: Wow, these beheadings have got to stop!

Why, that's almost as radical as a Democratic Party leader getting up and saying "this mostly peaceful protesting has to stop." Yeah. We are a few years away from that happening.

It would be funny, a topic for late-night comedy shows, if it weren't so serious. Imagine a skit about the global elite running around turning up their noses at "patriotism" and "nationalism" and sneering at the populist nationalists from France's Le Pen and Britain's Farage and Hungary's Orbán, and Germany's Meuthen, and the US's Trump.

(Interesting: I didn't even know the name of the leader of Germany's Alternativ für Deutschland. I wonder why, MSM?)

Then all of a sudden the ruling class wakes up one day and decide sthat this beheading thing, that it has basically condoned for decades, Has Got To Stop!

The problem with history is that it is all one step forward and two steps back. And if you are lucky, you finally get a step ahead. That's because your average ruling class just inherited the job from its fathers and it really has no clue how its forefathers created the regime so many moons ago.

Here's a radical idea, you educated-evolved-compassionate ruling class. Start praising the Nation. Start praising the Founders (of whatever nation); start encouraging the immigrants to join the cult of the nation. And stop being snobby globalists meeting up in Magic-Mountain-ville in the Swiss Alps to teach the rubes how to "build back better."

Here's the reason. A good ruling class is always sensitive to the passions of the masses. Its glorious beribboned members dripping with knightly stars and magnificent awards want to know what the plebs are thinking and what is bothering them. Because, after all, the ruling class, every ruling class, lives on the conceit that it knows what is good for the country -- and the world! And it cannot have an idea about this unless it is pretty knowledgeable about what is actually going on in Fly-over Country or the banlieue of Paris.

But you can see what a useless ruling class would propose to do. Hey! I know! Let's get rid of Trump by fixing the mail-in votes in Pennsylvania. That will give us a fabulous mandate to Build Back Better.

Not!

Hey. You know what? For the last four years the US had a president that encouraged Americans to identify as Americans, and he encouraged the marginalized -- you know who they are -- to join the party and be proud of belonging to America. Because the American people are the best people in the world and America is the best country in the world and the best is yet to come.

Golly. You would think that Donald Trump had spent the last ten years reading, learning, and inwardly digesting The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca. But that would be impossible, because Orange Man Bad.

What Will Make Our Next Ruling Class Special

Here am I fizzing along with Gaetano Mosca's The Ruling Class and writing it all up here. And one of his aperćus is that every ruling class lives -- and dies -- on its specialness. Because that is the basis for its right to rule.

The special people are the people that get to rule. All over the world.

Back in the day, of course, the ruling class was simply the warriors. The best warriors were the ruling class, period. I suppose that when we get to the feudal era we get not just the warrior virtues, but blood and lineage which the ruling class advertises as a marker of their superior character and wealth and power. 

But whatabout our own ruling class? What do they advertise to signify their specialness and their right to rule? The answer is obvious. It is a whole cluttered drawing room full of conceit.

What our rulers know is that they are

more educated, more evolved, more caring, more inclusive, more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more kind, more scientific, more virtuous, more compassionate, more honest, more open, more empathizing, more involved, more sharing, more encouraging, more apologizing, more forgiving 

than the common run of deplorables and bitter-clingers. (I got a lot of these from the "Be the one to" website).

And their clients, the "oppressed peoples" are innocents.

No really! Go up and read over that list again. Is it not true that your liberal friends really believe all that?

That is why I think that our liberal friends are making a strategic mistake with censoring social media, with canceling racist-sexist-homophobes, with pursuing Donald Trump for four years, with stealing elections, with nominating a man in his dotage and a woman who made it up the old-fashioned way.

The reason is obvious: such low-life behavior completely negates the virtue-signaling PR. And it signals weakness.

A truly educated-evolved-caring-inclusive-intelligent-kind, etc. person does not censor, cancel, fake-dossier, fake-impeach, or steal. Not nohow. And not just because it is wrong, not just because it is beneath a truly educated-evolved-caring etc. person of high estate. But because it signals weakness.

Should I repeat that? Yes I think I should.

When you censor, cancel, fake-dossier, fake-impeach or steal elections you are signalling weakness. As in "they're a weak lot, some of them in Europe, you know. Weak. Feeble."

Now I believe that the true markers of specialness are the three virtues of @nntaleb.

Never virtue-signal 

Never rent-seek 

You must start your own business

Since I don't want to be sexist, I have also included three virtues for women

Never virtue-signal 

Never say "I can't even!" 

You must learn to forgive

As opposed to what I regard as our ruling class's real markers.

We are all virtue-signallers 

We are all rent-seekers 

We never quite got to start our own business

Am-I-right or am-I-right? 

Yep. My fearless prediction is that our next ruling class will live or die on the @nntaleb virtues. 

Because it's the only thing left.

Ten Reasons Why Our Liberal Ruling Class is in Trouble

In The Ruling Class Gaetano Mosca writes that a ruling class needs certain qualities in itself as a group and in its individuals.

1. It should be united. 
2. It should be careful about unrest in the masses and respond to it. 
3. It should be able to adapt to changes, in wealth, knowledge, etc. 
4. It should be excellent in the virtues of the age. 
5. It should be seen to be excellent in the virtues of the age. 
6. And so on.  

 You can see that our liberal friends are not doing too well on the ruling-class virtue front. But let us count the specifics. Just to help them out.

1. A good Ruling Class does not steal elections; it does not need to.
2. A good Ruling Class does not even appear to steal elections; such behavior is beneath it.
3. A good Ruling Class does not call the masses "deplorables" or "bitter-clingers." It is the benevolent lord of all it surveys.
4. A good Ruling Class does not legislate a "Great Society" and instrument it with social science so it can praise itself and then find out that it made things worse, and then do nothing about it. (Charles Murray in Losing Ground)
5. A good Ruling Class does not call Charles Murray a racist for pointing out in The Bell Curve that the modern era benefits the "cognitive elite" and that blacks, that exhibit lower than normal IQs, would likely not do too well compared to people with high IQs.
6. A good Ruling Class does not ignore Charles Murray in his Coming Apart when he writes:  that the top 20 percent of whites in America is doin' fine with great careers and merger marriages; that the middle 50 percent of whites is doin' so-so; that the bottom 30 percent of men don't work much and the women don't marry much.
7. A good Ruling Class does not hang the white working class out to dry for half a century.
8. A good Ruling Class does not let blacks molder away in crumbling, crime-ridden cities for half a century.
9. A good Ruling Class does not censor the opposition with its tame tech lords. It does not need to.
10. A good Ruling Class does not let its supporters riot in the cities. It would be beneath such crudity.

I could go on. My point is that a good Ruling Class does not have to cheat. It does not make life great for itself and its supporters at the cost of real decline in the welfare of people outside the Ruling Class. It allows a little fun and frolic from the masses, because it wants to know what the masses think and feel, the better to rule them.

And another thing. A good Ruling Class knows when it is in trouble, and knows what to do and does it. It does not dig the hole deeper.

A Week Later, Where Are We?

I am reading The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca in a desperate attempt to understand the present post-election chaos. For Mosca deals, as does Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, with the fact that the majority, or The People, do not rule. They cannot rule. Instead we are ruled by a ruling class, and the ruling class is necessarily a minority.

So how does the ruling class do it? And, more important, when "the natives are restless," what does the ruling class do to stay in power and/or accommodate the restlessness of the natives?

That, it seems to be, is the current political situation in the United States in the Trump era.

Obviously, the ruling class does what is best for the ruling class. But how much should it accommodate the feelings and tendencies of the lower orders? Should it just tell the rubes to shut up? Or should it accommodate the lower orders, catering to their agenda even if the rulers think the lower orders are deplorable bitter clingers?

The Z-man reckons that the whole show is a sham.

All human societies have elites and those elites control the institutions of the society. In theory, popular forms of government either check the power of the elites or place real power into the hands of the people... 

In reality, voting is entirely meaningless in a liberal democracy, as the elites control public policy exclusively.

Is voting "entirely meaningless" or would a wise elite take the results of elections into account when making its ruling-class decisions?

Victor Davis Hanson categorizes the various flavors of NeverTrump, the GOPers that didn't like Trump back in 2016, that

First, were a small cadre of self-described conservatives and doctrinaire Republicans, who under no circumstances would have ever voted for Trump or embraced his agenda, or in some extreme cases, ever voted for any who would vote Trump. 

So there are gradations of NeverTrumpers. But mostly the general pique comes down to cultural, comportment, class—and often careerist—concerns, rather than policies per se.

It is hard to avoid the notion that the NeverTrumpers are not that smart. Does not the smart political operator put himself at the head of the parade rather than grumbling in a café on the sidelines?

Mark Bauerlin looks at the establishment Republicans in DC, and how the likely 2020 outcome, 

To hold the Senate, close the gap in the House, and get rid of Donald Trump—that’s a big, big win for establishment Republicans in and out of office.  

They’ve lived in Washington, D.C., for a long time. Life’s been very good to them, and so has the swamp. If you don’t live here, if you’ve never worked in an agency or met with congressional staffers or been to the dinners, it’s hard to imagine the sublime air in which these people circulate. It’s like Versailles under Le Roi Soleil, an American version of courtiers and entourages, rivalries and intrigues, who’s up and who’s down and who’s next, what is the king’s and the duke’s and the general’s pleasure. Most importantly, the whole scene is limited to insiders.  

So on this view DC is just like the Capitol in The Hunger Games. They are all courtiers, and the Trump people are all poor schmucks living from hand to mouth out in the Districts. 

The big question, between the three takes above, is how much the ruling class is a ruthless criminal gang, cunningly manipulating the plebs for power and profit, and how much of it is clueless courtiers that really don't look much beyond the ins and outs of court life in the Capitol, cluelessly assuming that they will rule over the Districts forever.

Honestly, I don't know. But I do know this: ruling classes don't rule forever. They get slack and corrupt. They are like family business empires, started by a cunning and lucky upstart, kept going by the son and heir, and eventually bankrupted by the clueless grandson.

But read what Mosca writes on France and England, from The Ruling Class at the end of Chapter IV: "Ruling Class and Social Type."

One should note... that in the course of the nineteenth century England adopted peacefully and without violent shocks almost all the basic civil and political reforms that France paid so heavily to achieve through the great Revolution. Undeniably, the great advantage of England lay in the greater energy, the greater practical wisdom, the better political training, that her ruling class possessed down to the very end of the past century.

Really, how did they do it? It wasn't from reading Anthony Trollope's The Pallisers. For Trollope was merely anticipating Mosca, that, in the crunch, the Brit ruling class still had its wits about it.

For Mosca politics is not just a dumb show, a Hunger Games at the Capitol to amuse the courtiers. It is real power politics, and the wise ruling class sees which way the wind is blowing and prunes the trees so that they do not get blown down in the storm. And if it transpires that the old ruling class must give way to new men, well, there is a graceful way of doing that, that preserves the honor of the old regime as it exits the stage, and that avoids a butcher's bill.

The fact is that Donald Trump took the Capitol by surprise. They had no idea that a guy like him appealing to ordinary Commoners had a chance of winning a presidential election. Their response ever since has been to get rid of him, by shenanigans.

So the question is whether we have an English-type ruling class with its "practical wisdom" or do we have a court of the Sun King, the roi soleil, that does not have a clue and that abandoned France to a century of revolution and turmoil.

If you ask me, today, it looks like we have a Frenchie ruling class rather than the Wellingtons, Disraelis and Salisburys of the 19th century Brit ruling class.

Clinton Rallies the Democratic Troops

So why did Bill Clinton “lose his temper” with Chris Wallace last weekend?

Perfectly simple, writes William Kristol. He was helping Democrats.

He rallied the troops, and he “reminded them of their talking points on Bush's alleged passivity” during the runup to 9/11. Which is the line that the Democrats were pushing on the 9/11 Commission. So now Clinton can take credit for showing up the evil Republican push on terror as a mere campaign ploy.

Then, of course, Clinton helps his wife with her presidential campaign in 2008. She hasn’t been doing too well with the Democratic left wing lately. Clinton’s defense of his terror record and his attack on the evil Fox News rallies the left and makes them forget how angry they are at her.

It was interesting, of course, to read Noel Sheppard’s quotes of Republican officeholders supporting President Clinton when he sent cruise missiles against Bin Laden in August 1998. How quaint it seems to hear bipartisan support for the president. Said former Vice-President Dan Quayle on CNN:

I don't have a problem with the timing. You need to focus on the act itself. It was a correct act. Bill Clinton took--made a decisive decision to hit these terrorist camps. It's probably long overdue.

We won’t be getting that kind of support from Democrats on national security any time soon.

Maybe that’s OK. It is likely that the developing conflict with Islam needs to mature a lot more before we can get our progressive friends on side.

Getting to Acceptance

Yeah, I know about the Five Stages of Grief. It starts with Denial and ends with Acceptance.

So I am already coming up with rationalizations for why, maybe, after all, it is OK that Trump is (probably) going to lose. Because reasons:

If Trump wins reelection then probably the Senate will flip in 2022 and the Dems will win it all in 2024 because Time for a Change. No Thanks. 

Chances are there is ugly economic news in the immediate future, as we dig out of COVID. With Trump, it's all his fault; with Biden he's doing his best. 

Chances are there will be a recession before 2024. Blame Trump and elect a Democrat. 

"There is no more money." Because of the COVID stimulus and the Trump tax cuts. So there is really no money for Medicare For All, Free College, and End Fossil Fuels. But a Biden administration would still try. And screw the economy. 

At some point the Commoners are going to have to say: Enough of this race-sex-intersectional virtue-signaling; Enough of all these rent-seeking programs that only benefit the educated Gentry; Go away and leave us alone.

Let's divide the last century or so into three Ages. First there was the Pioneer Age of the frontier and building the railroads; the Republican Party and the Civil War veterans dominated. It ended in 1929. Then there was the Victims Age of the New Deal and the Great Society and Civil Rights; the Democratic Party and the educated Gentry dominated. It ended in 2016. Now we have the Commoner Age. Maybe it will be a Republican Party domination, and maybe the Commoners will teach the Gentry a lesson.

Or maybe not.

The thing that sticks in my mind, since I read it from Matt Taibbi in the summer, is the moral framework of "anti-racism."

It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

So if you are Amazon you virtue signal by posting a BLM message on your home page;  if you are United Airlines you virtue-signal by supporting Proposition 16 in California to re-institute Affirmative Action. That makes you an "ally" and one of the good people.

But, given that the allies and the white oppressors are all white or Brahmins like Google's Sundar Pichai and daughter-of-academics Kamala Harris, who gets to decide which is which? Would that be God? Or would it be the bearded @jack? Thank goodness the allies have the Brahmins on their side; the Brahmins have been successfully divining the will of Brahma for thousands of years.

I have a different moral calculus. I think it is very virtuous because nobody gets to look in the magic mirror and say "mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest in the land?" Virtuously speaking, that is.

Now in my cultural calculus the oppressed peoples are Clients and follow whoever leads them; the allies are the educated Gentry, full of ambition, honor, and vanity; and the white oppressors are the Commoners, that just want to wive and thrive and hand down a little to the kids. In my calculus nobody gets to be the all-conquering virtue-signaler with the Hate Has No Home Here yard-signs. 

Because we all have our virtues, some of the time, and we are all hypocrites, most of the time.

Here's my moral calculus, adapted from Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

We are all virtue-signallers -- and hypocrites!

We are all rent-seekers -- and you better give us our share!

We never quite got to start our own business -- but we always wanted to! 

The problem with all moral calculi and virtue-signaling and Grand Inquisitors is that the people on the receiving end of your virtue get really pissed off. Because they don't like being belittled; they don't like someone else having first crack at the cookie jar. And they don't like some jerk making billions because he was in the right place at the right time.

But go ahead, vote cheaters and allies and all the ships at sea. You may as well make hay while the sun shines.

But maybe in a couple years, or four years, it will be you guys going through the Five Stages of Grief. Last time, in 2016, you chaps didn't seem to do so well; in fact it seems to me you are still in Trump Denial Syndrome from the Trump election.

But I'm sure your grief counselor can help you better than I can.

Cheating is a Sign You Are Losing

Our Democratic friends have been stealing elections since -- well since well before Boss Tweed. But never mind that. Let us talk about the cheat-ology going on with our educated Gentry ruling class today.

It's pretty obvious that the Democrats have engaged in widespread vote fraud in this 2020 election. Hey, what else is new?

But what is more important is the whole "fake" culture surrounding it.

It's not just a question of "fake news." It is fake everything.

Why does our ruling class have to lie about so many things?

Why did Hillary Clinton have to set up the "fake" Steele Dossier? Why were swamp creatures like Brennan and Clapper and Comey and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all in on the deal?

Why did the Dems decide we had to have two years of the "fake" Special Prosecutor Mueller investigation to investigate "fake" Russian collusion?

Why did Nancy Pelosi empower Schiff and Nadler for their creepy "fake" investigations?

Why is The New York Times putting out its "fake" 1619 Project proposing that the United States was founded to do slavery?

Why is social media censoring conservative voices?

Why are the liberals screaming about racism sexism and homophobia half a century after race and sex discrimination was made illegal? And after the Supreme Court legislated gay marriage?

Why do liberals believe in the Manichean belief system of good "oppressed peoples" and "allies" against the evil "white oppressors?" 

And whatabout the low-rent nature of the principals? Nancy Pelosi, the 80ish Democratic Speaker of the House, capa di tutti capi of the California political family that features her unimpressive nephew Governor Newsom and the featherweight Sen. Harris. Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader in the Senate: what's his claim to fame?

And whatabout the utterly unimpressive Democratic candidates for president disporting themselves a year ago? The ageing socialist Sanders, the quota blacks and women and gays?

And why have the opinion poll guys been putting out so many "fake" polls?

And why is education a total wreck and force-feeding "fake" critical race theory religion to our children from K through grad-school?

I will tell you. It is because things aren't working for the educated Gentry any more. The world isn't working for them. So they do what humans do when things start to go wrong. They cheat. They can't believe their eyes; it cannot be that their hour in the sun is coming to an end.

Here's an item that has stuck with me over the years. Back in the early days of the Tea Party, Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as "astroturf." Do you see the "tell" here? Nancy Pelosi cannot imagine an organic, spontaneous political movement. Because her entire political life has been about "fake" activism:  trained activists masquerading as helpless victims, marshaled up before the news cameras. It was inconceivable -- inconceivable in Princess Bride terms -- that any political movement should be organic and real. 

In real life, we still don't know how the Tea Party came to be. (Oh yeah, in due course it was hi-jacked by all the usual suspects, but that was after.)

Let us use the "fake" arc-of-history metaphor to describe what is going on. Every life, every family, every community, every empire, every ruling class goes through its history describing an arc: it is born, it grows, it succeeds, it rules, it declines, it cheats, it dies.

Let us say that our present educated ruling class was born with Rousseau, with the fantasy that people are basically good, and it is society that corrupts them. Let us say that it grew with the Educated Youth of the 19th century that gave us Marx and the Fabian Society and the Progressive movement in the US. Let us say that it succeeded with the democratic politicians that gave us social legislation. Let us say that it ruled with FDR and LBJ. Let us say that it declined with the corrupt Clinton and the ideologue Obama. Let us say that it cheats with Hillary, Nancy, Chuck and the "fake" media and the social media moguls.

So really, there is nothing left for our educated Gentry but to die a decent death. Or, if it chooses, an ugly death.

Enough of the past what of the future?

What new arc of history is upon us? What new dawn is breaking with its glorious sun rising with a new and blinding light? What is presently being born and like to grow and succeed?

I would like to think that we are entering the Age of Commoners, ordinary people that want to live honest, responsible, productive lives, and maybe leave children and grandchildren behind them; people that don't need to blaze across the heavens in a glorious arc like a meteorite; people that aren't motivated to great deeds in service of ambition, honor, and vanity; people that aren't just followers of a great leader.

But I could be indulging in wishful thinking.

The End of the Commoner Rebellion

We don't know yet exactly how our Democratic friends are going to cook up the votes in the states remaining to be called in the 2020 Presidential Election as of this moment: in NV, WI, MI, PA, NC, GA. 

But I don't think it matters.

The fact is that President Trump didn't expand the map beyond his victory in 2016. To establish the Revolt of the Deplorables as a thing he needed to increase his 300 odd Electoral College votes to 350 or 400.

And if he has in fact increased his support among blacks and Hispanics, then he has lost support among white educated Gentry.

One of the notions of Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class is that the Commoners don't get a vote. Political change only occurs when the ruling class divides and the change faction wins.

My hope was that a Trump reelection would redefine politics in the US and that the educated Gentry would decide to compose its differences with the Commoners. But that did not happen. If you are an educated Gentry this morning you are saying to yourself and your educated Gentry friends: pedal to the metal, on Critical Race Theory, and on saving the planet from climate change. We've got those racist-sexist-homophobe bigots just where we want them.

In other words, the global educated Gentry is going to go Full Speed Ahead on its Great Reset agenda, "building back better" under the benevolent supervision of the educated and the evolved and the creative people. That means, of course, also, Full Speed Ahead on climate change and eliminating fossil fuels.

And all the Good Little Girls of intersectional politics are going to be cooking up new "1619 Projects" and other reasons to oppress the Basket of Deplorables. Because they had it coming. Let us rehearse Hillary Clinton's Basket of Deplorables speech one more time:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

Notice the end of the quote, that the "irredeemable... are not America." Do you see what that does? It empowers the speech police to go out throughout the land to identify and cancel anyone guilty of being "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic  – you name it."

Hey, there is never a shortage of people ready to teach the other guys a lesson. And now that the Commoner Rebellion has failed, they will be out there working their tails off on social media, in the movies, in the schools, K thru retired professor.

Oh yes. In the end the Reign of Woke Terror will sputter out, perhaps in a Thermidorean Reaction, or perhaps just in exhaustion, or perhaps after defeat in civil war. But as of now I can promise you it has its bit within its teeth.

I feel that the Woke Religion is a Great Reaction, a lurch back to the primitive. We don't need religions with that kind of discipline, and the Woke Inquisitors are going to do nothing but harm. Tell that to the woke enthusiasts, and see what you get.

Nothing new, of course. There are always people hanging around panting to dive into a moral war against the Evil One. Usually the moral warriors are the Evil Ones they are supposed to be fighting. My belief is that in the modern era we really don't need such strong religion. But what do I know. There is always a moral component to humans as social animals, and always will be.

Then there is the Green New Deal, the plan to save the planet from runaway global warming from the burning of carbon-based fuels. If you are a ruling class you slobber at a supposed existential peril like runaway global warming. Because it licenses you to mobilize every corner of society in a gigantic war to save humanity. Think of the power, the glory! There are always people lusting after power and glory and there always will be.

Now my belief is that a totalitarian moral hierarchy that the current Woke Religion calls for, and the totalitarian economic/political hierarchy that the current climate panic calls for can only end in disaster. And that is because of my Four Laws.

Socialism cannot work, because it cannot compute prices.

Administrative government cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth to supervise everything. 

Regulatory administration cannot work because of "regulatory capture" by the businesses being regulated

Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them except by expanding them. 

In other words top-down anything, except in an actual war, doesn't work because it isn't social, and humans are social animals. When we set up a hierarchical top-down structure we are setting something in concrete, assuming there is One Correct Way, and the one thing we can be certain about in human life is that tomorrow the world will change and we will have to change our plans.

One fine day, we humans will emerge from the Dark Age into which our globalist educated Gentry is leading us. I just hope that my descendants are among the happy ones that survive till that day.