What does it all mean? What are the Biden people trying to do? What are the Wokies all about? What is the meaning of the populist phenomenon and the working class move away from the left in the UK and here? Will the GOP ever get a clue? We all would like to know what is going on, and what is coming next.
And, of course, nobody knows, for sure. Hey, nobody even knows a thing.
For me, it all starts with the basic need of every ruling class. It has to have a political formuls, a narrative -- a Mandate of Heaven -- that justifies its power. In the good old days the justification centered around protecting the people from foreign threats and from domestic troublemakers and rebels.
Since today there really aren't any foreign and domestic threats, our rulers have to make it up out of whole cloth.
That's what the whole climate change thing is about. It's a global, planetary threat to everyone and everything. Therefore we must mobilize as if for war, and everyone must do their part to fight climate change. Oh Boy! What fun we will have directing the armies of climate warriors in their sacred quest.
On the domestic front, the rulers need a doctrine that justifies their power. In the old days the aristocracy just were. They were the best people and the best people were the obvious people to rule. But things changed with the rise of the educated class in the 19th century. Ever since the educated class has justified its power by some sort of over-under narrative. For Marx, it was the Communists fighting for the proletarians against the bourgeoisie. For the US liberals it was the progressive educated people designing and implementing a New Deal for the workers devastated by the Great Depression and moderating the power of the malefactors of great wealth.
In our day the rulers justify their power because they are the allies of the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors. That is what Critical Race Theory is all about. It is about affirming the truth of white supremacy and the truth of the oppression that traditionally marginalized people have suffered throughout the history of the United States.
This switch is not remarkable, it is makes complete sense. If the white working class no longer feels particularly oppressed and no longer feels that the Democratic Party is its ally, then the progressive rulers need to find a new doctrine to justify their power, and they need to develop pejoratives to replace the old ones about malefactors of great wealth, about Big Business, about WASPs, and about exploitation of the workers.
In the UK the process is a little behind the US. Our white working class has felt unhappy with the Democratic Party at least since Nixon -- that's what the Silent Majority and Reagan Democrats were all about. So it is utterly shocking, beyond comprehension, for the North London sophisticates that the working class in the North of England (where the workers of the industrial revolution once did their thing) has switched parties. Expect that the North London luvvies will embrace a more direct Allyism, and completely dump the working class so that the helpless victims are no longer the workers at all but the traditionally marginalized non-whites, helpless professional women and gays, and all the rest of the woke agenda.
Let us say that, back in the days of Obama, there was a fair amount of concern about not appearing too radical. And Nancy Pelosi's two big mid-terms, 2006 and 2018, were all about electing nice moderate Democrats who were people just like you. Only, when it came to the crunch, those moderates voted the party line.
I suspect that the cooler heads in the Democratic Party have lost control of the process. I suspect that today they have to package all the crazy wokey agenda items into their legislative agenda because there is no moderate faction left to balance the crazies.
In a way, the Democrats seem determined not to learn the lessons of the past 50 years: not the lesson of the Silent Majority, not the lesson of the 70s stagflation, not the lesson of Reaganomics, not the lesson of the Trump populist phenomenon.
Because here they are doing a full court press as though they owned the Congress with 70 Senators and 350 Representatives. And, as we see, the Biden agenda is already coming unglued, with chaos at the border, hedges against inflation -- from housing to crypto -- going crazy, and employers bidding in vain for workers who would rather enjoy their unemployment benefits than go back to work.
For a guy like me, it is all rather surreal. You mean you guys didn't see any of this coming? Really? For Sure?
But that's the point of a religion, of a cult. It is to advance a narrative about the world and keep its believers believing through all hardships and reverses, and to teach them that there is no way back, but only forward.
One of the naughty little lies that our liberal friends tell themselves is that the AstroTurf groups like Occupy Wall Street and BLM and AntiFa are the authentic voice of the people, the oppressed peoples. In fact there is no real oppression for the oppressed groups, unless you reckon that the oppressed peoples mainly consist of what Curtis Yarvin calls the "human rubble of the old regime’s failed experiments."
Here's something I want to suggest. The populist groups going all the way back to the Tea Party of 2009-10 are not AstroTurf. They are organic groups organized by ordinary Commoners. And I think that the Trump Car Parades were such a phenomenon. Here's a report on one such.
You couldn’t miss them. Hundreds of vehicles paraded up and down Texas Avenue in College Station on Sunday to rally and show support for President Donald Trump... In all, it’s estimated more than 1,200 people were part of the event that was organized by Luke Holland. "I posted the idea on Facebook last Monday, and now look at this," exclaimed Holland[.]
And now we have reports of people spontaneously organizing to push back on Critical Race Training in schools. Our liberal friends have exhumed their favorite word from the Seventies: "Backlash."
The thing to remember is that activism is what liberals do for a living; it is what gives meaning to their lives. They have activist groups up the ying-yang and the highest and best thing for a liberal is to be a national-headline activist. Their activism is, of course, all about advocating for the oppressed peoples. And so it has nothing to do with the oppressed peoples, except the importance of the oppressed as stage machinery. Look, the main problem with the oppressed is that they are the human rubble still bouncing after the latest failed program advocated and rammed down our throats by our liberal activist friends.
Ordinary Commoners do not do activism for a living or for an avocation. But, they do have the skills, if motivated to do so. They can get up a car parade on Facebook. They can give 'em hell down at the school board. And when they do, the liberals are shocked, shocked, at the "backlash," and go at once to the dictionary to find a new pejorative ending in "-phobe" with which to malign them.
So what happens next? I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine.
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