The Worse the Better

When Vladimir Lenin said: "the worse the better," he meant what Nikolay Chernyshevsky meant when he used the phrase in the middle of the 19th century

to indicate that the worse the social conditions became for the poor, the more inclined they would be to launch a revolution[.]

But Chernyshevsky got it from John Adams.

Let us borrow the phrase and use it in our own time. If you are a racist-sexist-homophobe like me that wants the American people to rise up against the unjust rule of the educated gentry class in a Great Rebellion then you understand that rebellion is impossible if the left is gently pursuing its march through the institutions.

What we need is something like the sudden lurch to teach critical race theory and LGBT in elementary schools. Because that is what it takes to get ordinary suburban moms angry enough to push back.

So when I read the American Spectator piece on "The Radical Reshaping of K-12 Education: Gender Redefinition and Self-Selection," I was actually encouraged. You cannot beat an ideology with no ideology. You need an citizenry aroused to action by a sudden realization that the kids are not all right.

Extreme ideologies are quickly taking root in U.S. K-12 public schools through new school policies, practices, and curriculums — with devastating effects on students. Unfortunately, Americans are mainly turning a blind eye instead of speaking up against political and social indoctrination that threatens our children’s education and the very fabric of our nation.

Actually, of course, the extreme ideologies have been working their way through the woodwork for decades. But now -- probably provoked by the Trump effect -- the ideologues are going for broke.

So this gives us racist-sexist-homophobes a chance to "take our schools back" from the education blob. 

The point is that all government institutions and programs naturally tend to go with the trends in ruling class culture. And right now the ruling class is captured by the radical racists of critical race theory and the radical LBGTs of transgender activism. Nothing remarkable, you understand. This is the sort of thing that happens to human communities. Call it the "herd effect." Ideologically committed leaders in the ruling class get a movement going, their followers in the ruling class go along, and all-of-a-sudden, "our kids" are being taught to hate their whiteness and adjust their personal pronouns.

This is all perfectly well understood by my reductive Three Peoples theory. The People of the Creative Self are always trying to reinvent themselves and come up with new things and try them out on the rest of society. If they do a business startup and see whether the consumers want their cool new product, or if they form a religious cult that organically grows in society, no harm done. But if they decide to force their idea on the rest of us by commandeering the government to force their ideas down our throats, then we have a problem right here in River City.

We racist-sexist-homophobes have been concerned for ages about the left's "long march through the institutions." La Wik credits Sixties activist Rudi Dutschke with the notion and a bunch of other lefties include Antonio Gramsci. The strategic brilliance of the notion is its slow and steady progress. If it doesn't provoke serious opposition then it just grows, year to year, until it takes over the world.

And there is the truth that the only people that get to work in the ideology business are the ruling class and the educated class. Nobody else has the authority and the reach to promote ideas throughout society.

So the only way that we racist-sexist-homophobes get a chance to push back again ruling-class ideologues is when the ideologues violate the Mr. Brooke maxim and go a "little too far." That is when ordinary people get angry and push back.

I got to see how that works yesterday watching the 2020 Russian movie Dear Comrades! It's about a strike in 1962 at the electric locomotive factory in Novocherkassk, near Rostov, a few miles northeast of the Black Sea. 

What was the problem? Why were the workers striking? It was simple. The Soviet government was increasing food prices and reducing worker wages, and people were frightened and angry. 

The movie is mainly focused on the minor Communist Party officials, in the city government and the KGB, and how they are basically powerless idiots in the monstrous Party hierarchy that descends upon the town to put down the worker rebellion.

The question for us is whether our Inner Party hierarchy here in the good old USA has the chops and the ruthlessness to put down the current populist rebellion just like the Soviets when they put down the Novocherkassk strike. Can they ram through their CRT and their LGBT ideology or will they provoke a rebellion that gets too hot to handle?

Obviously, We Don't Know. We don't know how much power our ruling class has; we don't know how ruthless they are prepared to be; we don't know what kind of pushback is possible.

Over at Taki's David Cole thinks that the MAGA movement is useless. Because, organic though it might be, it has no answer except "Trump!" It needs money and backing and a coherent ideology, he proposes.

Indeed. And just like the workers of Novocherkassk, no doubt our rulers will suppress any rebellious movement. Until the day that it doesn't, like 1989 in the Soviet Union. 

It's interesting that in Dear Comrades! the Soviet government chooses to put down the rebellion not with the army but with KGB sharpshooters firing on the mob from concealed locations high up in buildings that panics the mob into running for cover. And then hides the number of deaths. And makes everyone sign Sergeant Schultz statements that they know nothing. And then stages a dance festival in the town square where the rioters were killed.

In other words, the ruling class is usually afraid to display its ruthlessness in living color. It seems to need to preserve the fiction that it rules for the benefit of the people in the name of the people.

Just like our ruling class needs to assert that the stolen election is a Big Lie and the MAGA crowd of January 6 was an "armed insurrection," and that COVID did not originate in a Chinese lab. 

Oh, wait. Now, all of a sudden it is OK -- and not racist at all -- to say that COVID originated in a Chinese lab. And Twitter and Facebook and the mainstream media fact checkers will allow what was banned in early 2020. 

So that's all right. Boy, thank goodness we live in a free society.

But at least we know that our rulers are running scared.