In his Gray Mirror blog Curtis Yarvin agues against dissident political action against the regime. He argues that when it is time for regime change it will just happen as natural as you please. One day the old regime will be in power. Next day the new regime will start up.
I suppose he is saying that "take the streets" is a lefty conceit, having to do with their fantasy that they represent the oppressed peoples, whose only way of advertising their suffering is by fighting and dying in the streets.
Very nice, but what he is saying is that the old regime has to utterly discredit itself before it gives up the game.
For instance, I was talking with an elderly educated-class woman waiting for a ferry, watching first the electric bikes driving off the ferry, then the manual bikes, and then motor bikes. I suggested that this order of egress represented some kind of social ordering. She allowed as how she thinks that electric cars are a good idea.
And today Lady Marjorie tells me that Seattle City Council is putting off its plan to institute car congestion charges in downtown Seattle. But, says the Seattle Times,
In the next two years, Seattle will create incentives for public and private companies to electrify their vehicles, encourage more walking, biking and transit ridership and may propose fees on driving in certain parts of the city to decrease congestion.
In other words, the regime is pedal-to-the-metal on its "urbanization" agenda. So, do you write your councilman? Do you hit the streets? Do you argue with your liberal neighbors to change their minds?
Not really, because to our liberal friends everything they are doing is good and progressive and educated and evolved.
As the scientists say, living things just go about their business until, all of a sudden, something frightens them and they stop in their tracks. And recalibrate.
And we have just been taught what happens when the plebs peacefully protest at the Capitol. The ruling class and their bribed apologists all scream about "armed insurrection" and bring out the national guard. Which a bunch of retired Pentagon generals argued against during the Summer of Floyd.
Put it this way. Do we have a chance of changing America before the average nice liberal lady has given up on at least half of the ten woke ideas I tabulated yesterday?
Spiked-online reported on ex-Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings on the disjunction of science and bureaucracy in the British government.
Yesterday he eviscerated the British state’s contempt for science and technology, and the vast bureaucracy that has attached itself to science and technology policy.
Apparently Cummings helped set up the Brits' vaccination policy which worked, while the EU policy did not.
But can any of us trust government and science? Ever? Surely the lesson of the COVID Year is that government loves to use science as an excuse to impose complicated bureaucratic rules and counter-rules.
The Zman shows the problem with government and science.
Over the last year the main thread of the [COVID] story has been the political class trying to contend with the unintended consequences of their actions. The reason their story keeps changing is their inputs never have the desired outputs. They have to keep going back and rewriting the story of their actions to fit the present reality. It turns out that throwing wrenches into the gears of human society was not the smartest play on their part.
Then there is the $1.9 trillion stimulus. Does the government have a clue what it is doing? I doubt it. The pols and the deep state are just doing what comes naturally: spending and borrowing.
The people who initiated these changes in American society are not working from a grand plan or a set of ideological goals. There is no point to what they are doing. Instead, our managerial revolutionaries are swept up in forces they do not understand. It is a strange, recursive and reactionary revolution from the top.
The point of the ten woke ideas is that to justify your ruling-class power you have to have an existential peril to fight against. And if nothing seems to change despite your brilliant agenda, then you pile on and redouble your efforts. The point about the COVID masks and shutdowns is that the pols have to show they are Doing Something to protect us.
The really interesting question about Life, the Universe, and Everything is what do you do when things go wrong.
Well, we know. It's all brought out in When Prophecy Fails by Festinger et al. First you redouble your efforts. Then you keep going despite your doubts. Then people start to desert, and leave the movement. Then it collapses.
And whatever happens, it ain't pretty.
Just like Curtis Yarvin says. One fine day the old regime leaves office and the new one takes its place.
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