Bidenomics and Trash Pickup

All this week Lady Marjorie has been hassling the Department of Utilities of the City of Seattle.

The garbage truck missed our trash bin on Monday, our usual pickup day. So Lady Marjorie called the hot-line to report a missed pickup. The protocol is that the garbage contractor, Waste Management, picks up the bin on the next day.

But they didn't pick up the garbage on Tuesday. So Lady Marjorie reported the failure to pick up on the missed pickup hotline.

Then funny things started happening. She got an email from Utilities with a photo of a garbage can, saying the garbage had been picked up. But the URL on the photo was dated 2019. And the background was all wrong. Then we were told that the garbage can was in the wrong place; in fact is was 3 feet from the curb, below the required maximum of 4 feet from the curb.

But they didn't pick up the garbage on Wednesday. So Lady Marjorie reported the failure to pick up on the missed pickup hotline. Too late! We were at a friend's in the early evening, and missed the reporting deadline! OMG!

So Lady Marjorie went into overdrive demanding to speak to supervisors and bureaucratic bigshots, who were gradually unearthed from their meetings.

I happened to answer one of the returned calls. Guess what the problem is.

Waste Management can't keep their garbage truck drivers. Ever since the beginning of COVID they have been quitting. The result is, of course, that inexperienced drivers are going out on the routes, and they miss some of the cans.

Golly, President Biden, Chief Insurrection Inquisitor Nancy Pelosi and all the ships at sea. I wonder if that is telling us something? I wonder if it is telling us that the current unemployment bonuses -- and whatever else is going -- means that for a lot of lower-paid workers it's a better proposition to stay home and collect a check rather than go back to work. You think?

Hey, we all know about this, because just about every retail business in the land has a help-wanted sign out front.

Golly, President Biden, Chief Insurrection Inquisitor Nancy Pelosi and all the ships at sea. I wonder if that is telling us something?

I wonder if it is telling us that unless you guys get a clue and stop the unemployment bonuses, and stop the rental moratorium, and stop the mortgage moratorium and let the marketplace right itself, you are going to put the Titanic right on that economic iceberg and all hell will break loose.

Our beloved leaders have been raised by an ideological system that praises them for attending to marginalized peoples and giving them privileges and handouts. Because discrimination, because slavery. 

But, in my view, all of the big government programs of the last century are just lipstick on a pig. When you clean off the lipstick what you are left with is simple loot and plunder.

So if you are a wise and cunning politician you know that everything is a lie including "and" and "the." You know that it's all baloney, lies that people want to hear, necessary lies to get yourself elected.

And you know that you'd better not go to far. That's what the incandescent George Eliot had her numbskull Mr. Brooke say, over and over again, in Middlemarch. And, as they say in The Secret Garden, She Knows.

I get the feeling that the Biden administration has no clue about this. Or maybe they do know but don't know how to shorten the reins and get their partisan horses back on the bit. We horsemen know that you never know about horses. One fine day your horse will bolt. The measure of your horsemanship is to quieten the horse and bring it back on the bit. Else doth err.

Or maybe the Bidenoids know but only care about whipping up the faithful to vote in the next election. Or maybe they do know but with a dementia president know that they can't rally the nation to do the right thing. No doubt wise heads will be writing books about this in the decades ahead.

In his Anatomy of Revolution Crane Brinton says that the course of revolution starts with an old regime that really can't get its act together. Then the moderates take over in the first shot of revolution. Then the extremists take over.

But which extremists? My extremists or your extremists?

The old regimes discussed in Anatomy of Revolutions were all feudal or post-feudal monarchies. But our old regime is an educated-class oligarchy. So whatever happens in the near future, it will not follow the exact scripts of the English, American, French, and Russian Revolutions.

But meanwhile, President Biden, if you can't make sure that your economic policy makes sure that the trash gets picked up, what in the world are you good for?

The Only Game Politicians Know

Reading about the five-year hit job on President Trump, detailed by Julie Kelly in American Greatness, makes you think.

What on earth did these intelligence community gum-shoes, these Democratic operatives with bylines, these Schiffs and Robert Muellers think they were doing?

I mean, isn't it a bit of a problem using the police and intelligence agencies to fight your normal political opposition, in an election year, as requested by the campaign of Hillary Clinton, Democrat?

And now we have Nancy Pelosi's latest wizard wheeze to have a January 6 committee with specially selected members, to advance the narrative that, what, Trump supporters are dangerous insurrectionists?

But, parenthetically, if the Trump supporters that broke into the Capitol and apparently wandered around taking selfies are dangerous insurrectionists, then whatabout BLM and AntiFa?

I mean, to me, BLM and AntiFa seem pretty focused on something, and that something seems to be what President Obama called "fundamental transformation." Or revolution by another name.

It makes me wonder: what am I missing here?

I am coming to think that politicians and bureaucrats aren't really that smart. The only thing they know to do is to play campaign tricks, to play their racist, their class narratives, their anti-business screeds. Because politics is division into Us and Them. But once things get beyond this narrow focus, they are all at sea.

One "tell" on this was when Democrats were all dumping on President Trump's Operation Warp Speed vaccine policy last fall. Your Joe Bidens, your Kamala Harrises were all tweeting that they didn't trust President Trump. But now...

I mean, if Democrats can't trust President Trump to have an honest get-the-vaccine-out policy that obviously helps his re-election, why should any Republican trust any of the ever-changing COVID policies of the Biden administration?

And if the health bureaucracy keeps changing its mind about masks and not-masks, vaccines and immunity, lockdowns and non-lockdowns, without really telling the whys and wherefores, and without really telling us what the all-important science says, why should we trust them?

Because they are just politicians, after all, and Narrative is All.

And they really don't know anything else.

But, I suppose, that's why we have revolutions, why we have changes of regimes: because down the ages, tribal chiefs and kings and dukes and dictators have really not been that smart. Just because they won some war, or assassinated some previous big-shot, or rallied a majority of the nobles against the current ruler, doesn't mean that they have a clue about anything else.

I mean, look at Lenin and Stalin, that threw the Russian people and its economy in the garbage can in pursuit of some crackpot economic conspiracy theory. And then, when things went wrong they decided the problem was "saboteurs and wreckers" and launched the secret police on the people to purge them.

Ditto Mao Zedong.

I mean, what's wrong with these people?

Yeah, there's a lot of talk in high places about crackpot conspiracy theories about stealing elections, about the COVID-19 epidemic.

But whatabout the biggest conspiracy of them all, Marxist economics? That the capitalists were out to screw the workers? And that the religious cult selling this narrative has been pushing it all through the biggest increase in the income of the common man in all history, what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls The Great Enrichment?

Maybe it's a good thing that politicians are really dumb, that the only thing they know, per Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy is how to get elected and reelected, and the fact they get any governing done at all is remarkable.

Because if they were smart, imagine the damage they could do!

Here's another thing: the pedal-to-the-metal spending binge that the Democrats are pushing right now.

I'd say that rebalancing the economy after the COVID mess is a really tricky thing to accomplish. I'd say you'd want to get people off unemployment as quickly as possible. I'd say you'd want to end mortgage and rent forgiveness as quick as possible. I'd say you'd want to put the whole de-carbonizing agenda on a 5-year hold, because you really don't want spiralling energy costs to interfere with the rebalancing of the economy. I'd say you'd want to tell all the lefty interests that, hey, we want to help you and advance all your agendas, but first we've got to put the economy to rights. 

I'd say that because the Democrats are not doing anything close to this that they are going to create an economic mess that will really upset the ordinary non-political middle-class voter and elect a Republican Congress and a Republican President that will make the amiable Trump look like a walk in the park.

That's what my Four Laws are supposed to teach:

Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices (Mises). The administrative state cannot work because the Man in Washington does not have the bandwidth to run the economy (Hayek). Regulation does not work because “regulatory capture” (Stigler). Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them (Chantrill).

 The first two laws deal with the fantasy that you can run an economy like a lord of the manor runs his estate. The second two laws deal with the problem that all politics and government ends up as loot and plunder.

And unless the politicians get smart and keep the lord-of-the-manor stuff and the loot-and-plunder stuff down to a dull roar they are going to create a mess that will kick them out of office.

The Bigger Problem with Defunding the Police

I've been thinking a lot about what happens downstream of "defund the police."

Obviously one downstream effect is that criminals feel emboldened. And police head for the donut shop.

But there are other things to consider, such as my maxim that if you defund the police then you get vigilantes and gangs.

Why?  Because the whole point of police forces is so you don't have vigilantes and gangs and their rather loosey-goosey attitude towards rules of engagement.

When the police head for the donut shop, then vigilantes and gangs take their place.

The vigilantes show up in middle-class areas; the gangs in lower-class areas. And I suppose in upper-class areas you get private security: hired guns, darling.

Of course, all this was mere supposition on my part, an educated guess based on years of study and reading -- and the history of the banker William T. Sherman in San Francisco during the era of the "San Francisco Committee of Vigilance." 

That was until I read about the vigilantes of South Africa arising out the the recent riots and looting that were clearly started by real insurrectionists. It started on a Monday with 

small groups of saboteurs entered the malls... [then] literally tens of thousands of otherwise quite ordinary, peaceful people poured into the malls on foot and by car and completed the looting and firing of the shops. 

Then the vigilantes kicked in.

My community’s Whatsapp groups and local news channels kept pace with the mayhem and at mid-afternoon on Monday the expected call went out for all armed citizens to gather at designated points. Our hastily appointed commander advised us that all roads had been cut off by rioters and efforts to raise support from the police, army and local ruling party civic representatives had failed. The State had gone AWOL.

Within 24 hours, a functioning operational command had been set up, barricades were erected at six access points and stickers issued to emergency workers to speed progress. A communication system operated through a mobile app with military efficiency and infrared drones surveyed the surrounding bushland, their operators trying to separate human forms from bushbuck. Pickets guarded mobile phone towers, water points, electrical substations and schools. All of this had been cobbled together in hours by local neighbourhood watch groups, policing forums, private security and businesses.

Wow: drones! Imagine trying to do this with the bureaucrats at the FBI!

Now, here's another angle, from Crane Brinton and The Anatomy of Revolution, putting together the English, American, French, and Russian revolutions.

What is weird is that in all four revolutions, when it came to the first outbreak of violence, the old regime government was caught flat-footed. Each government totally flubbed its response to the provocation. The authorities responded to the violence, of course,

but in each case with a striking lack of success. Those of the ruling class responsible for such responses in all our societies proved signally unable to make adequate use of force.

In the case of the Fall of the Bastille, numerous soldiers actually joined the rioters.

Hmm. Did I not read somewhere that some of the police at the Capitol on January 6 actually let the rioters into the Capitol?

Hey you liberals, lefties, BLMs, AntiFas, House Speakers, Democrats, Pelosi Republicans, devoted activists and all the ships at sea! A word with you.

Is it not possible that, were a real "armed insurrection" by crazed right-wing racist-sexist-homophobes to materialize in this sacred land of activism the police might do a Bartleby, and say they "would rather not" shoot on the insurrectionists? After you chaps have been dumping on them for the last year and more? And sending the poor schmuck stuck with arresting some crazed drug-addled crook to jail?

And whatabout the armed forces, whose generals are busily saluting to the CRT folks and saying to the Bidenoids, "Yes sir, how high?" Do you not realize that the ordinary rank-and-file soldiers from the hills might not in fact obey their wokist officers when the regime chips are down?

Just sayin'.

My point is that the police and the military are doing the dirty work for you politicians and ruling-class swells -- so you don't have to. All they ask is a little respect, and maybe a nod and a wink when they make a mistake in the heat of battle.

Have you liberals, lefties, Democrats, and all the ships at sea ever thought about the strategic consequence of using the police and the military as punching bags so you can strut and fret upon the stage before your wokie supporters?

Maybe it's time you did, before it's too late.

Understanding the Left's Big Push on Education

 The latest "thing" in government education is "critical race theory," in which our children are to be taught that racism is everything, and "equity," in which, well, let Keri D. Ingraham explain:

Identifying and labeling students based on their socioeconomic and ethnic or race group dominates the education conversation, with group academic performance based on these demographics the frequent focus. Any differences in academic performance between demographic groups (especially based on race) are labeled “achievement gaps,” the remedy for which is more equity.

So, the explanation of everything is racism. And the solution of everything is racism.

Meanwhile, the AP is breathlessly reporting that homeschooling is exploding. 

The rate of households homeschooling their children doubled from the start of the pandemic last spring to the start of the new school year last September, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report released this week.

But here's the big thing.

Black households saw the largest jump in rates of homeschooling, going from 3.3% in the spring to 16.1% in the fall. 

Breitbart expands:

Charmaine Williams, a parent in the St. Louis area, said she is using the National Black Home Educators curriculum to homeschool Justin, age 10, and Janel, age 6.

“There’s no turning back for us now,” she added. “The pandemic has been a blessing — an opportunity to take ownership of our children’s education.” 

Wow. As a devoted racist-sexist-homophobe I sure do like to read about blacks getting on the homeschool train. Come right in, folks, the water's fine.

But what on earth is all the rubbish about critical race theory and equity really about? I mean, this is crazy-cakes stuff. 

The answer, of course, is trivial, but telling.

The answer is that the only warrant for government power is existential peril. Back at the dawn of public education, the peril was that millions of children were growing up unlettered. The "common school" was the idea of Horace Mann. 

The reform movement he led sought to create the virtuous republican citizenry needed to sustain American political institutions, the educated workforce required to expand the American economy, and the disciplined generation necessary to forestall the social disorders so common in American cities in the decades before the Civil War.

Mann was a Protestant and a Unitarian. Today, we call them "transcendentalists." But was there a hidden agenda? The Irish Catholics reckoned that the common school movement was all about curing them of their Catholicism, and so the Catholic Irish, inspired by John "Dagger" Hughes, developed the idea of "first build the school, then build the church." You will notice, if you drive by a Catholic church, that there is a school attached.

Yep, we couldn't have those dangerous ignorant Irish Catholics irradiating their children with crazy Catholic doctrine. So let's have a government school system where kids study the King James Bible not the Catholic Bible. That's how the whole thing started.

Now, of course, we need government schools to make sure that children are taught ruling-class ideas on race and sex and gays rather than the primitive bigoted ideas of their parents.

But it's really all about power, and the fact that no politician or bureaucrat can ever admit being wrong.

Actually, most government programs, most of the time, Make Things Worse. Of course they do, because if you strip away all the narrative and the division, government programs are about one thing, and one thing only: rewarding the supporters of the government.

So if politicians can never admit a mistake, and government is all about loot and plunder, what do you do when the public schools are persistently failing to boost blacks into the middle class.

It can't be because blacks are a standard deviation below whites in IQ.

It can't be because all government programs are loot and plunder.

It can't be because the real clients of government education are the teachers and administrators that support Democratic politicians.

It can't be because affirmative action doesn't work.

It can't be because No Child Left Behind doesn't work.

It can't be because Every Student Succeeds doesn't work.

It can't be because Common Core doesn't work.

It can't be because every Baldrick's Cunning Plan of the education blog Makes Things Worse.

Do you see that the one thing that our liberal friends cannot admit, will not admit, is that their politics is a failed politics, and their programs are failed programs?

Because if they did that then the only decent thing to do would be to retreat from politics and hand over their power to a successor regime. And they are not going to do that, because politics is their religion and power is their drug.

So, our liberal friends will always be coming up with some new dodge to marginalize and humiliate ordinary middle-class Americans and justify their continuing grip on political power.

Until we show them the door.

Nancy Pelosi's Darkest Hour

I've been wondering about our Democratic friends for a while, really going back to the 2000 election when Al Gore didn't concede a normal change election. By that I mean that it's normal for the voters to think it is Time for a Change after one party has had two consecutive terms of the presidency.

The exceptions merely prove the rule, where Michael Dukakis, he of the tank photo, lost to George Bush I.

My point is: what is their problem? Of course the other guys are going to win elections, the bums, especially after we've been in office for a couple of terms. But wait until next time. We'll show 'em, the bums.

Obviously, in 2000, and again in 2016, our Democratic friends didn't approach losing a normal change election in this quintessential male way.

My feeling is that this is explained by a deep and existential understanding in our Democratic friends that something has gone wrong in the political universe. The stars are no longer moving in their accustomed courses.

I think they are getting more and more desperate to hang onto power. Because they feel it slipping away. They don't know why. They just know that Republicans and white oppressors are evil and that Gaia wants them dead.

So now we come to Our Nance: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House of Representatives.

What's it all about Alfie Nancee? 

What's the deal with endless committee investigations of Donald Trump and two abortive impeachment efforts? What in the world do you think you are doing with these nukings of the political system, Madam Speaker?

Well, I have a few ideas, based partly on my eevil sexism, and my understanding of the difference between honor in men and women, after Honor: a History by James Bowman.

According to Bowman, honor among men is the reputation for courage, and I think it issues from the necessity for men to stick together in battle and not run for the exits.

But honor among women is the reputation for chastity, he says. You can see why. There are enormous advantages for a woman in not spreading her favors around, for any number of reasons. But I think this culture of chastity in women goes way beyond sex, and especially applies to the reluctance of women to admit when they are wrong.

Yeah, I know. Men hate to admit when they are wrong. But women are worse, in my opinion.

When women lose an argument, or are exposed as less than pure in heart, they tend to lie about it, and they tend to be vindictive towards their opponents.

Oh, sure, men do that too, but with men vindictiveness is considered "bad sportsmanship."

I have extended this into a whole philosophy, that women do not like, do not relate, and cannot thrive in the "public square." Because women do not communicate in a kind of public "open outcry" of a public meeting. They communicate one-on-one over coffee, and judge the world through "I can't believe she said/did that" of "Much as I hate to say it..."

Also, I think that women are very bad at revising their world view when it starts collapsing about them. This is because I believe that very few women have "strategic minds." They are good at the tactics of manipulating the family and the community of women in the neighborhood on a day-to-day basis. But, with some remarkable exceptions, women just don't get strategy.

So, to me, all this explains Our Nance to a tee. Nancy grew up in a Democratic world, scion of an Italian political family in Baltimore, Maryland. It just does not compute that America is now 50-50 and Democrats can't just take the white working class for granted like in the Good Old Days.

It explains all her shenanigans, especially now in the Trump era, when the white middle class (and increasingly the East Asian middle class) is rebelling against half a century of vindictive ruling-class anti-white racism. At a strategic level, I just don't think Nancy understands what to do. So she does what comes naturally to a woman, which is to say nasty things about the other women in the neighborhood and "stop talking" to the women that offend her.

Miranda Devine has some nice takes in the NYPost on this.

If anyone is to blame for the hyper-partisanship in Washington these days, it’s the spiteful House speaker.

Everyone in Congress — and, by extension, the nation — has been sullied by the spite and vitriol she has injected into the political sphere. There is no grace or Christian charity, just the barren wasteland of the zero-sum game, power for power’s sake. 

Of course, the January 6 committee is at the center of this, and the unassailable fact is that Nancy Pelosi is the boss of Congress, and she "commands" the Capitol Hill police. So, if there weren't enough police on hand to defend the Capitol, Nancy is to blame. Period, end of story, no need for a commission.

Guess what: the one person that should not be running the January 6 investigation is Nancy Pelosi!

Now, the point is that the most difficult thing for a politician to do is to admit blame and, I would say, particularly so for a woman politician for the reasons articulated above in respect of honor in women.

There is a strategic reason why it is a good thing to admit when you are wrong. It clears the decks. It lets you get on with life. It lets you say: wow, we screwed that up, so let's make sure we don't do it again.

But if you don't admit when you are wrong you are trapped using all your energy to twist the facts around to absolve yourself of guilt and blame other people when you should be figuring out how to avoid the same mistake in the future.

So really, for me as a racist-sexist-homophobe, it is a Good Thing that Nancy Pelosi is tying herself in knots with her spitefulness and vindictiveness. It means that she will lead the Democrats into the wilderness, and let the rest of us figure out how to avoid the stupid Nancy Pelosi mistakes in the future.

One thing I, as a profound racist, wonder about is what happens when the current White-as-Snow Democratic leaders retire and are replaced by the quota People of Color and Gender. Just between you and me, I don't think the next generation of Democrats are up to snuff. Can you spell K-A-M-A-L-A?

Anatomy of Revolution: Thermidor and Summary

After a revolution reaches the peak of ideological fever, writes Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution the fever breaks, and things return, relatively, to normal. This retreat from frenzy is called "Thermidor" after the fall of Robespierre, the director of the Reign of Terror, in the revolutionary month of Thermidor.

In the English Revolution, Brinton reckons that Thermidor arrived in April 1653 when Cromwell dissolved the Rump parliament and became Protector. Then,

In 1657 Cromwell became Lord Protector, half a king at least, and with the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 the great English Revolution may be said to have ended.

In France the fall of the "incorruptible" Robespierre was brought about in 1793 by a conspiracy among apparently orthodox Jacobins that were involved in war profiteering and the like. Although the conspirators had not intended to end the Terror, the public reaction communicated to the government that the ordinary people were done with it, and the Terror slowly subsided through the Convention and the Directory, until Bonaparte's coup d'état in November 1799. 

In the Russian Revolution, Thermidor is more complex. The New Economic Policy of 1921 certainly counts as a relaxation in revolutionary frenzy, but Lenin's death in 1924 led to a rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky and a revival of revolutionary tension. But the enforcement of Five Year Plans and the Great Purge in the 1930s count not as revolutionary but as the normal acts of tyrannous rulers.

The striking commonality in the post Thermidorean period is that the establishment of the monarchical rule of a tyrant.-- even Washington was regarded as a tyrant by some -- should be regarded as normal. 

[W]hen "the "silken threads" of habit, tradition, legality are broken, men must be held together by the "iron chains" of dictatorship. 

Thus the frenzy of terror is replaced by the more reliable rule of an uncontested ruler that inherits the revolution.

As time goes on, the pressures of the Terror applied to ordinary men are relaxed: the special tribunals give place to more regular ones, the revolutionary police are absorbed into the regular police... and the block, guillotine or firing squad are reserved for more dramatic criminals.

Ordinary people can get on with their ordinary lives, and slowly the politically proscribed are amnestied, or are allowed to return, and even allowed back into public life. The new governing class tend to be "a very miscellaneous lot," but they slowly get the country some sort of normalcy, "once more working."

However, Thermidor does not mean a return to economic normalcy.

One of the most striking uniformities... notably in France and Russia, but to a certain extent in the England of the 1650's and the America of the Articles of Confederation, there was more widespread economic suffering, especially among the poorest classes, than during the Terror, or during the last years of the old regime.

Another thing: the messianic universalism of the revolution and the Terror gets replaced by ordinary nationalism, not excluding a little ordinary war and conquest.

Thermidor also means the rehabilitation of the old church. In England, France, and Russia the established church was cruelly persecuted by the revolutionaries. But in the reaction, the persecutions were relaxed, and the old religion allowed to resume its place in the national culture.

Thermidor meant a return to pleasure, especially in England and France. That is what "Restoration Comedy" was all about in England.

[I]n the frank return to the pleasure of the senses, to gambling, drinking, dancing, open love-making, to a light and cynical literature, to a frank joy in clothes and other vanities, the two countries present a very close parallel.

Even in Soviet Russia, in the New Economic Policy period, the "Nepmen" were seen as exceptionally vulgar, and prostitution and gambling returned to Moscow. Of course, Russia seems to be an exception -- even in 1964 in the revised edition of Anatomy -- in that it maintained a "continuous pressure" for decades on the individual to conform or else. There are many reasons that can be found to explain this, but Brinton worries about straying into the realm of "prophecy." Still, he suggests,

The ideas, the promises of orthodox Marxism as now embodied in Russia  may well prove in the next few years almost as embarrassing in Russian internal politics as useful in Russian external politics.

Still, despite the inevitable end of revolutionary frenzy, we cannot say that "revolution has changed nothing." Life in all the post-revolution regimes was different. But what did the revolutions change?

Some institutions, some laws, even some humans habits, the clearly changed in very important ways;

 Other institutions, etc., not so much.

In the case of France, it can be said that the revolution ended "the worst abuses, the worst inefficiencies of the old regime, that resulted from a "thousand year struggle between the centripetal forces of the Crown and the centrifugal forces of the feudal nobility." The achievement of government efficiency is the most striking common achievements of the revolutions. And the metric system. It is curious that revolutions all launched in the name of freedom ended up merely promoting the efficiency of government. All the revolutions took property from at least some of the previous upper class, and brought some new men into the ruling class, while throwing out some at least of the old ruling class.

And yet how much did the revolutions change life for the ordinary man? The revolutions had grand plans to change the family, religion, and "personal habits," but after the Thermidor the average man stands "on certain matters about where he stood when the revolution began."

What is loosely called the "Industrial Revolution" had certainly a much greater effect, forcing John [Jones] into a more difficult series of adjustments than did our revolutions.

But the revolutions turned "verbal instruments of revolt" into the new myths and rituals or their societies, a mere recitation of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." 

Finallt Brinton offers the following uniformities in the four revolutions.

First, the revolutions occurred in societies on the upswing, from the discontented who felt restraint from the old order.

Second, there were "bitter class antagonisms" in each of the prerevolutionary societies.

Third, there is the "transfer of allegiance of the intellectuals" over to the revolution.

Fourth, in a rapidly changing society the old-regime "governmental machinery is clearly inefficient... [and] laid an intolerable strain on governmental machinery adapted to simpler, more primitive, conditions."

Fifth, the old ruling class starts to "lose faith in the traditions and habits of their class". It "becomes politically inept."

Thus, Brinton ends with three major conclusions:

First, there seem to be uniformities between the four revolutions; second, that there is a difference between men's deed and words, for in the crisis they may say one thing and do another; third, that it is not easy to change society, and that the vast effort of revolution and terror fails, and that, after the Thermidorean reaction, society is "not greatly altered."

Anatomy of Revolution: Accession of the Extremists and Reign of Terror

Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution now looks at the details of the successful seizure of absolute power by the extremists and its culmination in the Reign of Terror.

The simple reason the extremists succeed is that they acquire control of a parallel, but illegal, government alongside the legal government run by the moderates. It turns out that the moderates are weak, but the extremists are strong.

The extremists are able to bring off their coup d'état because they have steadily managed to oust any and all opposition to them in the organizations they control, such as the New Model Army, the Jacobin clubs, and the various soviets throughout Russia. Typically they learned the techniques needed for this from years of secret organizations, plotting, and underground conspiracy.

And they were few. They were not leaders of a widespread movement, but conspirators in a small minority that advertised themselves as representing the Inevitable Future. And they "were very sure that they were superior to the inert and flabby many." It is also true that, as a revolution proceeds, ordinary people drop out of participation, whether in voting in elections or in keeping their heads above the parapet. Of course, the extremists encourage this non-participation, beating up notables, "starting riots at polling places and electoral assemblies;" making it difficult for the hum-drum to support and cast their votes for hum-drum moderates. The extremists are few, but "they are fanatically devoted to their cause" and put their whole energy into seizing power, "acquiring the technique of any pressure group." This even occurred in the English Revolution when a crowd of apprentices appeared at the House of Commons demanding it vote on the extremists' agenda.

The great leaders of the Terrors are fitted for their task by a genuine vocation, a vocation which in ordinary times would exclude them from political power.

And they learned their trade on the job as their pressure groups transformed into an illegal parallel government, usurping government functions and issuing administrative orders and laws as the opportunities offered.

The extremists are not, then, politically innocent or inexperienced; they have a long experience of oppression, and a briefer, but very intensive, training in actual government before they come to power.

Armed with their basic training in governance, they extremists created governments with a rough-and-ready centralization executed through a central committee, and executed through an extemporized bureaucracy and revolutionary tribunals. Plus a secret police: Cheka, comité de sureté générale, and in England through parish clergy! This centralized administration extended to the economy, whether or not self-consciously socialist. And inefficient. 

Indeed, one of the reasons why the governments of the Terror seem so tyrannical and hard to bear, even retrospectively, is precisely that they were so inefficient.

And yet there was one ray of hope: ordinary criminality seems to be reduced. Possibly because the petty thief on occasion got lynched when the normal authorities became disorganized.

With respect to the Reign of Terror the important thing is to understand its pervasiveness.

During the Terror, politics becomes as real, as pressing, as unavoidable to John Jones or Jacques Dupont or Ivan Ivanovich as food and drink, wife or mistress, his job and the weather. Political indifference, that mainstay of the modern state, becomes impossible for even the most selfish, the most unworldly.

It is all very hard on the outsider, the man who gets on the bandwagon, but then has to put up with endless celebrations of revolution -- processions, festivals of reason. Then there are the renamings, "that tend to confuse and annoy the outsider." In France it extended from renaming the Place Louis XV to the Place de la Révolution, changing the calendar and the names of the months. And you never know when "lightning is going to strike him and his household," to be haled into court as a counterrevolutionary. In France there was a concerted effort to shut up brothels, gaming houses, and eliminate drunkenness. There is a "saturation point in large-sclae, obsessive political propaganda after which such propaganda actually backfires."

For the devoted insider, the experience is close to what we call "religious," in the sense that 

men work very hard and excitedly in common to achieve here or somewhere an ideal, a pattern of life not at the moment universally -- or even largely -- achieved.

But humans cannot be transformed overnight, for human behavior changes "with glacial slowness," and so Brinton writes that

the violence... of the Terror is in some sense an overcompensation for the inability of the extremists to carry their ordinary brothers along with them. The Terror is a desperate overshooting of the mark.

Of course.

Our revolutionists are convinced that they are the elect, destined to carry out the will of God, nature, or science... The opponents... are not just political enemies, not just mistaken men... they are sinners, and must not just be beaten -- they must be wiped out.

And even though these revolutions became progressively secular, from English, to American, to French, to Russian, they all seek a heaven "here, now, on earth...to conquer evil once and for all."

But what explains the Terror? Brinton has seven explanations:

First, the "habit of violence" cultivated in the revolutionary process.

Second, most importantly, "the pressure of a foreign and civil war" that justifies the total mobilization and disciplining of the people.

Third, "the newness of the machinery of this centralized government... that works in fits and starts, and frequently jams badly."

Fourth, the "economic crisis... the shortage of the necessities of life."

Fifth, "class struggles" and the polarization between the extremists and the rest of society.

Sixth, the fact that the leaders have been selected "almost in a Darwinian sense... to push on to extremes, to use their special influence to heighten the already high tension of life in society."

Seventh, the element of religious faith shared by the extremists in each revolution.

And then it all comes tumbling down.

[L]arge numbers of men can stand only so much interference with the routines and rituals of their daily existence... The outsider in the crisis period is pushed to the limit of his endurance by interference with some of his most prized and intimate routines[.]

And so comes the Thermidorean Reaction.

Next: Thermidor. and Summary.

More In Common's "American Fabric"

The research outfit More in Common gets funding by, among others:

Luminate (UK), Social Change Initiative (UK), Robert Bosch Foundation (Germany), European Climate Foundation (France), Open Society Foundations (US/Europe) and Ford Foundation (US).

But here is its social fabric of "Hidden Tribes" in America:

Tribe Name	Percent in America
Progressive Activists	8%
Traditional Liberals	11%
Passive Liberals	15%
Politically Disengaged	26%
Moderates	15%
Traditional Conservatives	19%
Devoted Conservatives	6%

Here is how More In Common defines the Hidden Tribes (yes, More In Common is clearly Progressive Activist):

Progressive Activists are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media. 

Traditional Liberals tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.

Passive Liberals tend to feel isolated from their communities. They are insecure in their beliefs and try to avoid political conversations. They have a fatalistic view of politics and feel that the circumstances of their lives are beyond their control.

The Politically Disengaged are untrusting, suspicious about external threats, conspiratorially minded, and pessimistic about progress. They tend to be patriotic yet detached from politics.

Moderates are engaged in their communities, well informed, and civic-minded. Their faith is often an important part of their lives. They shy away from extremism of any sort.

Traditional Conservatives tend to be religious, patriotic, and highly moralistic. They believe deeply in personal responsibility and self-reliance.

Devoted Conservatives are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat.

Here is how the Hidden Tribes and generations and races feel about "Pride in Being American."

Tribe Name	Pride in being American
Progressive Activists	34%
Gen Z 1997-	52%
Passive Liberals	60%
Asian	62%
Millennials 1981-96	62%
Traditional Liberals	65%
Black	70%
Gen X 1965-80	73%
Females	73%
All	74%
Politically Disengaged	75%
White	75%
Male	76%
Hispanic	76%
Baby Boomers 1946-64	85%
Moderates	87%
Silent Gen 1926-45	94%
Traditional Conservatives	96%
Devoted Conservatives	100%

Just Sayin'.

Anatomy of Revolution: The Rule of the Moderates

Having described the different types of revolutionists, Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution now looks at the rule of the moderates, and why it always seems to be doomed to failure.

At the outset of revolution, the moderates seem to be just the right people to take over; even in Russia in February 1917 when moderates, led by Prince Lvov, took power.

The problem is that the moderates are faced with an impossible task: keeping a government going, writing a new constitution, and usually confronted with a foreign war. And they are confronted with the extremists,

who insisted that the moderates were trying to stop the revolution, that they had betrayed it, that they were as bad as the rulers of the old regime -- indeed, much worse, since they were traitors as well as fools and scoundrels.

And the result is that the radicals end up taking power. Even in the American Revolution, it was the radicals that won, in the Declaration of Independence. There is something about the revolutionary process that leaves moderates in the dust.

In the English Revolution the revolutionaries, the Parliamentarians, were divided roughly into three: an Episcopalian group that were almost Royalists: a moderate group, "Presbyterian in religion, puritan in ethics," constitutional monarchists at heart; and extremists, the Independents, extreme Calvinists. They Indpendents made themselves effective through their control of the New Model Army. The Independents were the most ideological, and under Cromwell they won the revolution.

In the American Revolution there were Loyalists that really didn't have a problem with the royal government, the moderate merchants that started the agitation with their opposition to the Stamp Act, and the radicals with their committees of correspondence and committees of safety "exhibited extraordinary technical skill in the practical politics of revolution" and organized the Continental Congress. in 1774.

In the French Revolution the Royalists were dispatched almost immediately, Moderates like Mirabeau, Lafayette, and the Lameths were opposed by radicals Pétion, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot. But then war broke out with Austria and Prussia, France was invaded and the radicals threw out the monarchy in an attack on the Tuileries Palace in August 1792. When it came to try the King, the moderates were divided, and so the radicals, "better organized, more aggressive, and perhaps more unscrupulous," won absolute power.

In the Russian Revolution the first government was supported mostly by Kadets, the left-wing of pre-revolutionary Russia. But it fell over the question of continuing the war to support the "imperialist" allies. It was followed by a Socialist government, accused by the Bolsheviks of being "compromisist," certainly moderate compared to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks almost lost when they backed a "rising of workers in Petrograd" in July, but got their mojo back in the October Revolution when they "took over Petrograd with astonishingly little difficulty and almost no bloodshed."

Brinton explains the victory of the radicals according to a theory of "dual sovereignty," that a parallel illegal government was growing alongside the official, legal government, and eventually acquired enough power to stage a coup and take over. This occurred twice in the English Revolution where the legal government of King Charles was overthrown by the Long Parliament, and again, the Parliament was overthrown by the New Model Army. In the American Revolution this is obscured somewhat because men adhering to the illegal government often served in the legal town councils and colonial legislatures. In the French Revolution the radicals slowly increased their control of Jacobin Clubs. In the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks slowly gained control of the various soviets -- literally "councils" -- set up after the 1905 rising that ended up constituting a rival government. The point is that in each revolution the extremists were able to construct a rival illegal government network that, at the critical moment could seize power from the legal government.

The weakness of the moderates derives mostly from the difficulty of suppressing the radicals without seeming to be the enemy of the revolution, a situation that all the radical groups exploited, up until the radicals seized power and declared and enforced an end to politics. In other words, if you want to win a revolution, then opposition politics ends on the day that you take power. If you are a moderate and believe in a fair and free discussion of the issues, this is impossible to bring off.

Next: Accession of the Extremists and Reign of Terror.

Anatomy of Revolution: First Stages and the Types of Revolutionists

Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution now looks at the events surrounding the breakout of revolution, the combination of factors that lead to open defiance and replacement of the old regime.

He begins with Figaro, the barber of Beaumarchais' plays, and his devastating critique of the old regime in Marriage of Figaro. He notes that, "after much vacillation, the censor did not stop Beaumarchais' play."

But in all four revolutions, the old regime, with its vacillations and half-hearted attempts at putting down revolution rather indicate the regime lacked the tyrannous instinct it was reputed to have.

But how did the revolutions begin? With a bang or with a whimper? The revolutionaries preferred the bang theory.

History has tended to mark the battle of Concord as the shot heard round the world, and people marveled at the Fall of the Bastille, but it is not clear just when those revolutions began. But the fall of the Czarist regime following riots in Petrograd in March 1917 seems to be the unquestionable start of revolution. 

The English revolution exhibits more of a rolling start, with King Charles dissolving Parliament in 1629 and disastrously summoning it in 1640 when he was going bankrupt. Pretty soon one thing led to another and in 1642 both Parliament and the King were raising armies.

In America there is a good argument that revolution began with the Stamp Act in 1765 which led to "a series of clashes with increasingly well-organized groups of Americans." Or perhaps it began with the Continental Congress in 1774 or the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 or the glorious Fourth of July in 1776.

In France there was no Parliament to focus resistance, but there was the Parlement of Paris, a kind of aristocratic supreme court, that led to "a dramatic defiance of royal power and the forced exile of the judges." Then the Assembly of Notables in 1787 led to the summoning of the Estates-General in 1789. But the Third Estate decided not to conduct business unless the Estates-General were called the "National Assembly." And then the King yielded.

Was it all planned by committees of malcontents, or a nation rising spontaneously to smite its oppressors? Brinton opts for a bit of both. The Bolshevik narrative is that it was all carefully planned, the other revolution narratives propose a spontaneous uprising. 

Clearly, the occasion of revolution arose when "the existing government attempted to raise money from people who refused to pay." Also, it is clear that after the first clash between the old regime and the party of opposition, there ensues a "brief period of joy and hope... the... charming honeymoon of that impossible pair, the Real and the Ideal." Yet was the Bastille a spontaneous response to the dismissal of Necker, or the scheming of freemasons, philosophes, and professional agitators? Brinton proposes a gardening metaphor, that

revolutions do grow from seeds sown by men who want change, but that these men do do a lot of skillful gardening, but that the gardeners are not working against nature but rather in soil and in a climate propitious to their work; and that the final fruits represent a collaboration between men and nature.

What is weird is that in all four revolutions, when it came to the first outbreak of violence, the old regime government was caught flat-footed. Each government totally flubbed its response to the provocation. The authorities responded to the violence, of course,

but in each case with a striking lack of success. Those of the ruling class responsible for such responses in all our societies proved signally unable to make adequate use of force.

In the case of the English revolution, King Charles didn't really have an army to put down the rebellious Parliament. In the case of America, the attempts to put down the rebels actually encouraged them. In the case of the Fall of the Bastille, numerous soldiers actually joined the rioters. In the case of the Russian revolution the soldiers joined the rioters as well, and the railway workers refused to allow the Czar to travel by train.

When the first stages of the revolutions were successful, enlightened people all over the world were delighted. But having won the first battle, 

It has now become the government, and is facing a new set of problems. When it actually gets to work on these problems the honeymoon is soon over.

Because there are all kinds of different revolutionists. And, although both supporters and opponents of revolutions tend to imagine revolutionaries as uniquely good or uniquely bad, they are not that different from ordinary people. 

Brinton himself wrote a book about The Jacobins in the French Revolution and found that and found that about two-thirds were middle class, a quarter were working class, and less then 10 percent were peasants. Average age of members was about 40, They represented, the abler, more ambitious, and successful."

In the English revolution the revolutionists were often merchants, great lords, and small landowning gentry, like Cromwell himself. They were not riffraff. In the American revolution, it was the merchants that first organizes opposition to the Crown. There were disreputable street fighters, but also respectable yeoman farmers. In Russia almost everyone from liberal noble to businessman to professional to working man and kulak was eager to see the back of the Czar.

The leaders of the French revolution ranged from nobles like the Duc d'Orleans, lawyers, scientists, journalists. In the American revolution over half the signers of the Declaration of Indpendence had college degrees. Sam Adams, scion of a merchant family, went to Harvard. The leaders of the English revolution pretty well all came from the highest ranks of society. The leaders of the Russian revolution also included nobles and professionals. Lenin was the son of a school inspector, and Stalin, of peasant-artisan stock, went to a seminary for a while.

The revolutionists were not uniquely successful men or desperate failures. They came from all walks of life, and displayed a whole range of talents.

In other words, 

it makes almost as many kinds of men and women to make a revolution as to make a world...They certainly create a number of empty spaces to fill, and give an opportunity to clever young men who may also be unscrupulous... But they do not re-crate mankind, nor so they eve make use of a completely new and hitherto suppressed set of men and women.

The rank and file are ordinary men and women, and not "riffraff, scoundrels, scum of the earth." The ability of the leaders "is certainly very high." The fact that in the crisis periods of revoluion some very nasty stuff happens, is probably the effect of the emergency on men rather than men creating an extraordinary emergency.

Next: The Rule of the Moderates.

Anatomy of Revolution: The Old Regimes

After setting up his "conceptual scheme" that revolution is a "fever" Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution looks at the Old Regimes of the four revolutions under analysis: British, American, French, and Russian.

Disorder and conflict are not uncommon in all societies. Brinton cites Sorokin in his Social and Cultural Dynamics who cites in England "one hundred and sixty-two 'internal disturbances in intragroup relationships' between 656 and 1921." That's one every eight years. In other words there are likely to be too many symptoms of breakdown in any society to please the analyst of revolution.

First of all, what about the economic situation? The main item of contention was government finances. In England they argued about "Ship Money, benevolences, tonnage and poundage"; in colonial America, they didn't want to pay for the Seven Years War; in France the revolution-friendly Estates-General was called because of the government's financial problems; in Russia "the Czarist regime had achieved an all-around collapse in all fields of government activity." And everyone thought their government was incompetent.

Notice it is the government that was in trouble. In all four societies, the people were doing OK economically: Stuart England was definitely more prosperous than Elizabethan England; in America "the early years of the 1770 were distinctly years of prosperity"; "France in 1789  was a very striking example of a rich society with an impoverished government"; even in Russia, aside from the government breakdown, things were looking up.

But plenty of people thought that the government was hindering them: in America the Stamp Act and Navigation Act and the incorporation of the lands west of the Allegheny into Canada; in France tax-reform offended the privileged and the un-privileged, and tariff reductions with England increased unemployment in Normandy.

Of course, the intellectuals were all against the government. But then they usually are. Victorian intellectuals were "united apparently in nothing but a profound dislike for their environment." But no revolution. But in ancien régime France,

One has the impression of immense numbers of intellectuals... all convinced that the world, and especially France, needs making over from the tiniest and more insignificant details to the most general moral and legal principles.

In Russia, being a writer or teacher "meant being against the government." In America, there was no such unity. But the Enlightenment, with Locke and Montesquieu, introduced the "natural and inalienable rights of man." England in the Stuart era was drenched in pamphlets -- in an era before newspapers -- all busy discussing "religion or politics," or both.

What these intellectuals were selling was "another and better world than that of the corrupt and inefficient old regimes." In England they called the ruling class "Normans" after the Norman Conquest; in France they liked to brand the nobility as Franks, descendants of barbarous Germans; in Russia the nobles were all "Varangians, or Tartar or Western": foreigners.

But did the intellectuals cause the revolutions? Brinton is clear: "No ideas, no revolution." But that does not mean that the ideas caused the revolution.

What about class conflict? Such "feelings of dislike" occur in all societies, but are seldom as simple as "bourgeois vs. feudal or bourgeois vs. proletariat." But there is no question that "the ruling class seems in all four of our societies to be divided and inept." In a healthy society the lower orders probably "dream rather of joining them rather than dislodging them." And when members of the ruling class "begin to believe that they hold power unjustly, or that all men are brothers," etc., they are probably not long for this world.

In Russia, the nobility had been "bemoaning the futility of life, the backwardness of Russia," and so on. And when they used force, "they used it sporadically and inefficiently." In France ruling class members "discussing the cause of discontented or repressed classes -- upperdogs voluntarily siding with underdogs." And in Stuart England there were the Cavaliers, "romantic even to themselves."

Except perhaps in America, we find the ruling classes in the old regimes markedly divided, markedly unsuited to fulfill the functions of a ruling class.

 Also, many in the ruling class were in a shaky economic position. They had opted for "finer houses, finer clothes" but still lived off their agricultural rents.

And the middle classes hated the upper class. They "felt morally superior to their aristocracies" and, in France by the end of the 18th century, no longer wanted to join the aristocracy, but abolish it. In England this was partly the effect of the artisan classes being "won over to Puritanism."

The lower classes seemed to hate the upper class more than usual. But "trustworthy materials... are scarce."

Was there any particular resistance to talent rising to the top? There is some indication of the French nobility "tightening its lines." In Russia, the nobility "closed the very highest social honors to plebeian talent." Still, the expanding economies permitted plenty of people to rise.

But not to the top.

[T]he countries were "run" by other, and privileged beings, and from the highest social distinctions the bourgeoisie as a class were hopelessly excluded.

"Where wealth... cannot buy everything.. you have a fairly reliable preliminary sign of revolution." Still, "The actual revolution is always a surprise."

Next: First Stages and Types of Revolutionists.

Anatomy of Revolution: Introduction

The Anatomy of Revolution by Crane Brinton is a comparative study of the four great European revolutions: English, American, French, and Russian. They are not necessarily "typical" but they are four important revolutions about which Brinton proposes to try to observe parallels.

He does not expect to divine the truth of these revolutions; he is a Kantian, and does not expect to find the truth, the thing-in-itself. Nor is the book about the "facts." But he does propose to use a "conceptual scheme" to approach the analysis of the four revolutions, which he will use to frame questions and hypotheses about them, and facts, but not rigidity. And he hopes to steer clear of wishful thinking about "what he would like to prevail" with respect to the four revolutions.

But what conceptual scheme? The notion of a storm, starting with rumblings, building to a thunderous climax, and then subsiding back into sunshine? The notion of equilibrium, of a society getting out of equilibrium and then rocking to and fro before returning to some sort of equilibrium?

Brinton chooses the conceptual scheme of a "fever." In the old regime, 

there will be found signs of the coming disturbance... Then comes a time when the full symptoms disclose themselves, and when we can say that the fever of revolution has begun. This works up... to a crisis, frequently accompanied by delirium, the rule of the most violent revolutionists, the Reign of Terror. After the crisis comes a period of convalescence, and the patient is himself again,

and maybe "strengthened by the experience... perhaps in some respects stronger for it[.]" But, in later chapters, he also uses the notion, as in "disequilibrium" as a sign of regime ill health.

Three of the four revolutions, the British, the French, and the Russian, have a "social or class" basis.

All are begun in hope and moderation, all reach a crisis in a reign of terror, and all end in something like dictatorship -- Cromwell, Bonaparte, Stalin.

The American Revolution is different. It was "predominantly a territorial and nationalistic revolution, animated by patriotic American hatred for the British." But it had a social, class character, and had "some terroristic aspects." It does not fit quite as well into the "fever" conceptual scheme.

There will be no "great discoveries," Brinton warns, and the reader should expect the anatomy of revolutions to yield familiar results. The uniformities in four the revolutions will turn out to be "just what every sensible man already knew about revolutions." 

Next: The Old Regimes.

Censoring "Misinformation:" Don't Do It!

Why are our rulers so bent upon censoring "misinformation?" As a Thoroughly Modern Millie that believes in the truth of Critical Theory -- the original truth, that you cannot know things-in-themselves, so every fact and every truth is subject to change -- I can't believe that our wise rulers want to censor non-regime narratives.

We've seen, in living color over the last year, how the narrative changes.

First of all, masks didn't work. Then they did. Now it seems that masks don't make a blind bit of difference. Probably.

Then hydroxychloroquine, a non-prescription drug for malaria seemed like a good idea, then it wasn't because Trump, and now it seems to work. Ditto Ivermectin. But did you know that hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin are over-the-counter drugs and so Big Pharma doesn't make too much money on them?

Eric Erickson has more details on all the changing narratives.

Why do governments -- and religions -- insist on a single narrative, and label conflicting information as "misinformation" and "heresy." Why do they think that there is a good reason to block annoying voices that challenge the official narrative?

I suspect that it has something to do, first, with military culture, because once the military leader has decided upon a route of march or a tactic or an attack, then it would be disastrous in the short term to keep debating the options.

I also suspect that it has something to do with the female culture, where all the women in the community pretty well agree on things. And any woman that does not agree finds that nobody will talk to her.

There is also, of course, the shabby reason that most of politics is about division, shaming the opposition, and getting on with the loot and plunder. So the sauntering politician does not like to have his narrative or his policy questioned, because that challenges his status as glorious leader.

You can see that in the recent flap about the Biden administration wanting to silence several voices that were challenging its policy on COVID, particularly the efficacy of vaccination. The Biden administration and all good people want everyone to get vaccinated. Because science.

But there's a lot of pushback out there, from various quarters, suggesting that the vaccination doesn't stop transmission, doesn't stop you from getting reinfected, has serious side effects. From the point of view of the rulers, this is all dangerous misinformation -- insurrection even! Michael Barone:

[Biden press secretary Jan Psaki] called on Facebook to suppress 12 accounts that she said were spreading "misinformation" about COVID-19 vaccines. These accounts, she said July 15, were "producing 65% of vaccine misinformation on social media platforms."

"Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts. Posts that would be within their policy for removal often remain up for days, and that's too long. The information spreads too quickly."

Well, maybe. If we assume that the Biden administration is really leveling with us, and really knows its stuff, and really has the science straight and is not just playing politics with us. 

See, the reason we have a First Amendment and the reason we have LEDs is that back in the day our rulers agreed that nobody had a monopoly on the truth, and that anyone that did have a monopoly on truth would abuse that monopoly. Just like monopolists in the business world.

And that is what Critical Theory was about, before lefties decided to turn it into a political weapon. Critical Theory says that your brilliant theory of "life, the universe, and everything" may explain everything so far, but what about tomorrow? That is why the physicists' union demands "rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty."

Now, the theory of the moment with respect to the COVID epidemic and the response to it is obviously not a theory with the prestige of Newton's mechanics, or Einstein's relativity. The government and its scientist bureaucrats are dealing with a disease about which we do not know everything we need to know. The facts change every day. And the government, like all governments, tends to be slow to change its mind when the facts change. As they do. Governments tend to stick with a narrative and demand people conform to the narrative until the day when the narrative is utterly exploded and even nice liberal ladies with virtue-signaling yards signs in the front yard realize it.

But I don't care. I think that the Biden administration and its Democratic operatives with bylines in the media are going to end up with egg on their faces. Because they cannot control the narrative, and shouldn't imagine that they can, or think that controlling the narrative will have a better outcome for the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and the nation than allowing a frank and fair discussion of the science and the issues.

But what do I know?

Putin's Russian History Lesson

Let's see. What do I know about Russian history?

I know that, back in the day, the Vikings were running slaves down the Volga. I know there was a thing called the Kievan Rus. I know about the Mongols and how they rolled over Russia, leaving behind the Golden Horde.

Then I know about Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and the Nicholases.of the Romanov dynasty. And somewhere in there the Prussian Frederick the Great was fighting with Russia over Eastern Europe when he wasn't playing the flute in the evening.

And the pogroms and Fiddler on the Roof.

Then came World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War between the Reds and the Whites, followed by Lenin's New Economic Policy and Stalin's famines and purges. Then World War II and the occupation of Europe. Then the Cold War. Then the breakup of the Soviet Union into separate nations like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, etc. Then the Russians retake the Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

And now the US is involved in stirring things up between Russia and the Ukraine and Hunter Biden is using his dad's connections to pay for his cocaine.

And that's about it.

But did you know that Vladimir Putin has just published an article about Russian history, in particular how Russia and Ukraine have united and divided over the centuries? Nor did I until prompted by "The Saker."

Putin's article is called "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." You can see what his angle is: hey, we Russians and you Ukrainians have always been part of the same religion and the same culture going all the way back to the Ancient Rus. We should get together again!

Well, of course he does. But the article -- obviously not written by Putin -- was remarkable. Here are my takeaways:

Putin's article at least pretends to be history, rather than ideological narrative, Nikole Hannah Jones, the wokies and all the ships at sea.

Here are a couple quick takes:

• Egad, what a mess Russian history is, with all kinds of conquests, divisions, reunitings, religious divisions. 
• And what's this Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that was forever encroaching from the west into the sacred Russian lands?

Wow, I had no idea that the civil war after the Bolshevik revolution was so complicated. Not just Reds against Whites, no indeed. There were, instead, all kinds of minor political entities and rebellions and local political entities rising and falling until everything was united, by fair means and foul, into the USSR.

From the perspective of Putin, the invasion of eastern Poland in 1939 was a recovery of Russian lands.

In 1939, the USSR regained the lands earlier seized by Poland. A major portion of these became part of the Soviet Ukraine.

See back in the 19th century, says Vlad, Russia's pals to the west, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were interested in stirring up the idea of a separate Ukraine. Because, of course they were.

At the same time, the idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians started to form and gain ground among the Polish elite and a part of the Malorussian intelligentsia. 

"Malorussia" means "Little Russia" and includes a lot of what is now the Ukraine. 

Since the late 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian authorities had latched onto this narrative, using it as a counterbalance to the Polish national movement and pro-Muscovite sentiments in Galicia. 

Galicia is a region between Poland and Hungary and Ukraine and includes the city of Lviv (or Lvov). Back in the day when Austrian economist (and Jewish) Ludwig von Mises was born there in 1881 Lviv was called Lemberg and was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now it is part of Ukraine.

But the really big take was that Putin aims to sound reasonable, not taking a the straight ideological line that we know and love from our lefty pals. He starts the article with this statement:

First of all, I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy. These are, first and foremost, the consequences of our own mistakes made at different periods of time. But these are also the result of deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity.

Whoever imagined that a Russian leader in our lifetimes would speak with such an obvious effort at "on the one hand, on the other hand" rhetoric? I found it shocking. Or this:

Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. 

An ex-KGB guy writing in an avuncular way about Orthodox Christianity. Who woulda thunk it?

He's right, of course. You don't solidify and unify a country with reckless talk about America's or Russia's Original Sin. You talk about the shared culture, the shared sacrifice, and the shared history of the past.

Obviously, Putin wants Ukraine and Belarus back in the Russia. But so would we want to reunite the good old USA if the left coast decided to split off in the the Woke States of America.

Stay tuned. This ain't over.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): What's the Grift?

Since we all need to know about the left's latest wizard wheeze, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), it's time to make sure we understand it and put it in the context of government finance in general and how government finance developed in history.

I understand the historical progress of government finance as follows:

Stage One: Physical Collection. This occurred in the days before Italian banks. Governments collected tribute in grain and silver from their feudal vassals, and the vassals collected the same from their underlings. But the king was always short of money. Always. Of course, if the king were conquering another country then he and his soldiers would loot and plunder the country to the bare walls. The Roman Empire ruled the world for centuries on this plan.

Stage Two: Italian Bankers. By the time of England's Edward III (reigned 1327-1377) a European monarch could borrow money for his military adventures from the leading bankers in the world: Italian bankers. Pity that Edward defaulted on his loans, and all. Maybe that's why the Brits lost the Hundred Years War and have had a soft spot for the Italians ever since.

Stage Three: Dutch Finance. In their war of independence from Spain the Dutch invented the central bank, the Exchange Bank of Amsterdam, to finance the war. It worked so well that they exported their idea and their regime to Britain and the British used the idea to win the Second Hundred Years War against the French at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The beauty of Dutch Finance is that enables the rulers to loot and plunder using the indirect method, partly through seigniorage and partly by the advantage of having its debt as the foundation of the banking system. In the 20th century the various nations used central banking and unlimited debt to fight two world wars. They could do this because they could use money printing and debt to loot their countries to the bare walls without the people rebelling.

Stage Three and a Half: Hamilton Economics. Alexander Hamilton, first US Secretary of the Treasury, ignited an economic boom when he determined to honor the war debt of the various states in the Union at par, and service the debt with new federal taxes.

Stage Three and Three Quarters: Bagehot Economics. After the Crash of 1873 Walter Bagehot in Lombard Street proposed that in the case of a credit collapse the government's central bank should act as "lender of last resort" to keep the financial system alive.

Stage Four: Keynesian Economics. After the cock-up of the Great Depression western political leaders needed a real simple strategy (like in The Manchurian Candidate) to know what to do when the economy was wrecked by a financial crash. The strategy was spend and borrow and elect, preferably with a genius like Lord Keynes in charge.

Stage Five: Bretton-Wood Economics. A big problem in the aftermath of wars conducted under Dutch Finance was "resumption," the attempt to return the value of a national currency to its pre-war value after the monetary inflation of war. After the Napoleonic Wars, the US Civil War, and World War I this resulted in "deflation" and social unrest, and usually a big credit crisis. So, after World War II the US did not resume gold payments at the pre-war level while pretending the value of the dollar was still $35 per ounce. The pretense of $35 per ounce was abandoned in 1971 by President Nixon at Camp David.

Stage Six: Supply-side Economics. After the cock-up of the inflationary 1970s politicians needed a real simple strategy to know what to do when Keynesian Economics wasn't working. The idea was to think about what government taxing and regulation was doing to actors in the economy. Maybe high marginal taxes on the rich wasn't a good idea. Notice the cunning in this strategy. It doesn't attempt to deal with the real problem, the loot and plunder of entitlement programs, but attempts some fine-tuning of the loot collection game in order to restore the economy after the stupidity of a Keynesian episode.

Stage Seven: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). After the cock-up of the 2006-08 Great Recession -- caused by under-collateralized and non-performing home loans and a sub-standard recovery -- politicians that hated Supply-side Economics needed a real simple strategy to know what to do when Keynesian Economics wasn't working. La Wik says that MMT 

describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires.

So, print money until the economy begs for mercy. MMT also says that the government should run "a budget deficit large enough to achieve full employment through a job guarantee." using "non-accelerating inflation buffer employment ratio (NAIBER)" rather than "non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU)," which I take to be the conventional Keynesian option.  In other words, politicians should do what comes naturally without limit.

Stage Eight: Schachtian Economics. Hjalmar Schacht was the guy that ended the hyperinflation in Germany after World War I. He simply stopped printing unlimited paper money.

Here's what I think.

I think that going back to the dawn of time, governments are always cocking-up the economy with their wars or their loot-and-plunder economic policies. And it's worse than it used to be. Back in Stage One it was really hard for the king to loot the place to pay for his wars. Stage Three: Dutch Finance made war-making much easier, but didn't have a real simple theory for dealing with the financial crashes that occurred from time to time, especially after wars when the government attempted to return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity.

Also, I think that as governments have fine-tuned and learned more and more how to use money printing and debt to loot the country that they have had to let the financial system in on the action. So now we have highly leveraged private-equity funds that the government permits, probably because the finance sector is willing to pay powerful people for the privilege of doing highly-leveraged finance.

My guess is that almost all government spending amounts to loot and plunder and is a net loss to the prosperity and the well-being of the people. So, with government spending at 40 percent of GDP in the US and 50 percent of GDP in the UK you can see that there is a lot of looting and plundering going on, and it subtracts from the possible prosperity that might obtain if the government weren't collecting so much of peoples' incomes and handing it out to its supporters.

And, I would say, as government collects and spends more and more money, it needs new theories to justify its looting and plundering and to get it out of a jam when its cock-ups wreck the economy.

The interesting thing to me is that even lickle AOC knows all about MMT. Like in The Manchurian Candidate, your average politician needs it to be "real simple."

But we wouldn't need all these dodges and cunning tricks to pay for wars and entitlements if government would only keep out of wars and away from loot-and-plunder entitlements.

In another world.

One Man's Truth is Another Man's Disinformation

I guess that White House Press Secretary Jan Psaki's statement that:

"We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We're working with doctors and medical experts…who are popular with their audience with accurate information. So, we're helping get trusted content out there."

is what they used to call a "bombshell" back in the days of Russia, Russia, Russia.

"Disinformation"? How do you know? How do you know that, say, anti-vaxxers are spreading disinformation rather than government experts? Hey, back in the day Democratic heavyweights like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sending out tweets that were trying to sow mistrust in President Trump's Operation Warp Speed vaccine program.

The whole mania about "fact-checking" during the Trump administration and the notion that he committed 30,573 false or misleading statements over four years, is nothing more than liberals being outraged by the other guy's lies. Liberals don't notice their own lies as lies. If the "fact-checkers" were conservatives doing their thing on President Obama, I'm sure they could have come up with similar statistics.

If you do not understand that all politicians and activists lie, all the time, then you are a fool and a knave.

The funny thing about this is that critical theory, the parent of critical race theory -- that all good people agree is logical and true -- says that you can't trust anyone, can't give anyone the power to determine what is true and what is false. And that goes back to Kant and his dictum that we can't know things-in-themselves. Everything we know is a theory. Actually, it goes back before Kant to Hume, that correlation is not causation. Or to Descartes, "I think, therefore I am." How do you know "I think," René? Got a direct line to God?

So, when we get to the Frankfurt School Horkheimer and Adorno say, critiquing Newtonian mechanics:

Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity. Men pay for the increase in their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator towards men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them.

Everything, everything, is a guess, a theory, and when politics is involved, a power play.

And yet now we have gubmint schools using critical race theory as a tool of the ruling class to marginalize the opposition. See, back in the day, the critical theorists imagined themselves as heroic activists battling against the rulers and the powerful.

So the reason we have a First Amendment and the idea "not abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" is that one man's "disinformation" is another man's truth. And vice versa.

And when we talk about "petition the Government for a redress of grievances" we are not yet saying anything about whether the grievances are true or just a bunch of people bewitched by some lying political activist.

Surely, after the last 18 months of COVID stupidity, that started with Brit scientist Neil Ferguson's model that turned out to be off by about a factor of ten, that continued with various bureaucratic ukases about lockdowns and masks and not-lockdowns and not-masks, we should understand that everyone, everyone, is playing it by ear.

And, may I suggest, playing it by what will advance the political interest of the player.

For instance, why do you think that politicians all got on the lockdown train? Because Science, or because they needed to be Doing Something? If you think "because science" I gotta bridge to sell you.

Here's a shocking idea. Everyone, everyone, thinks that they have the truth and that anyone that disagrees with them is peddling "disinformation." Especially if they are in the religious or political worlds.

That is why we have the First Amendment. And that is why our lefty friends were First Amendment absolutists back in the day. Back in the day when it was lefties getting censored by eevil McCarthyite anti-Communist rabble-rousers.

Hey, how about this. Right now, if you want, you can go get vaccinated. If you get vaccinated then chances are about nil that you will die from COVID. (But, say the anti-vaxxers, you might die of a reaction to the COVID vaccine. But what are the odds? I don't know).

Here's the deal. 

First, if you don't trust the vaccine and you get COVID and you die of COVID, then it is your fault. You did it.

Second, the COVID virus turns out to be about five times more lethal than the average flu virus. Just between you and me, I doubt if this is a justification for shutting down the world economy. Maybe a year ago it made sense, when we didn't have the epidemic data to tell us what the risks were. (Although we did have the Diamond Princess data that the experts are still busily arguing about whether the fatality rate was 0.6 or 1.2 or 2.0).

Third, the whole idea of modern society is that people are responsible and have the right to make informed judgments. So the government's word is not the last word.

Fourth, all people in politics lie. Because we the people insist upon it.

The basic problem is that all humans think that the other guy, that disagrees with us, is full of it, and should be deplatformed for spreading disinformation.

And that ain't gonna change.

The "Tell" on Election Law, Immigration, and More

More and more I am understanding the political world through the notion of the "tell" in poker, the idea that the other player unconsciously signals the value of his hand in his face and body language.

And so I interpret the behavior of our Democratic friends as desperation, the last mad bet of a gambler about to get cleaned out.

Take the Democratic Texas legislators that left town and headed to Washington DC so they could gesticulate about racist election laws. Really? Are the arcane election laws really that important to you? Why would that be?

Now we read that the Senate Dems are putting immigration law changes into the budget reconciliation package. That's because it is much harder for Democratic senators who might be on the fence about immigration to vote against the juicy loot-and-plunder items in the reconciliation package. But why would you snuggle immigration into the budget package unless you knew it was a vote loser that would never have a chance of passing if it were offered up by itself?

You really want election laws that do not have the imprimatur of a straight-up bill passed by both Houses of Congress with a Moynihanian 70-30 vote in the Senate. If you don't understand that then you don't belong in national politics.

I keep reading my racist-sexist-homophobe friends agonizing about the Democrats setting up a "one-party" state. But you don't even think about a one-party state unless you are afraid that you are about to lose the whole game.

But still.

I get that our educated ruling class has the notion that it knows best, on everything from race relations to mass transit and climate change. What is interesting that it doesn't seem to occur to anyone that the way to advance these ideas is through a free and open discussion of the issues, in which the opinion of the "other" party is at least accommodated in the final result. In other words, to persuade. Instead all opponents to the educated-class agenda are stigmatized as "deniers" and "bigots." What's that all about?

I mean, really. Does our ruling class think it can rule without even a pretense of accommodating the opinions and the world view of the great middle class?

I get that with the current ruling-class ideology of "antiracism" you are either an ally, an oppressed people, or a white oppressor. So, obviously, the only thing to think about are the needs of the oppressed peoples. Otherwise you are not an ally, but a white oppressor.

But, how do you allies know what is best for the oppressed peoples? Done any social science lately? Do you have any ideas that contradict the ideas of Charles Murray that say that the ruling educated class has Made Things Worse for the lower orders starting not later than the Great Society programs of 1965? Other than saying Charles Murray is a racist?

I mean, why all the pedal-to-the-metal opposition to President Trump? Can he really mean the end of everything we hold dear when you Dems won back the House in 2018? How much damage can a president do when he is facing a divided Congress?

Or is the problem the very idea of a middle-class rebellion against your rule? I mean, given that the educated class takes pretty well all the bandwidth of the public square, wouldn't you expect an inchoate revolt of the deplorables every now and again? And wouldn't it be the very height of political wisdom to throw the plebs a bone every now and again?

See, the way I think, it is a "tell" to overreact to the election of a populist nationalist in a normal change election. The "tell" is that you regard the rise of an opposing narrative as a threat to your very being. Really? Is your rule based on such a weak foundation?

And what's with the trillions upon trillions of spending this year? What does it mean? That your supporters demand a huge payoff right now or else they are goin' fishin'? Or what?

For instance, I expect that the inflation and consequent efforts to contain it will fall heaviest upon the lower class and upon the middle class, who will react by voting for Change. Did you chaps think about that before you put your pedal to the metal on the spending accelerator?

And climate change. I read a piece that suggested we need to build a 1.2-gigawatt nuclear plant every month till 2040 if we are going to eliminate fossil fuels. Because certainly wind and solar ain't gonna do it. Yeah. Good luck getting even one nuclear plant built between now and 2040. So what is this climate change thing really about?

Did you chaps think about the effect of your COVID lockdowns on the livelihoods of ordinary American workers? Or that it would toss millions our of the workforce into homeless camps?

I just have this nagging feeling that you rulers really don't have a clue, that you are madly punching buttons up there in the cockpit without a clue what you are doing.

I just hope I am wrong, and that everything turns out for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Predicting the Future When the Universe Changes

The ZMan has an interesting take today on the similarity between today and the world before World War I.

This is supposed to be the peak of liberal democracy, but it feels more like the dying embers of the old aristocratic order that evolved out of the 19th century in response to the French Revolution and the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Then as now, the one thing agreed upon is the current order is not satisfactory. The old order has failed.

The Commies, he writes, were the only people back then seriously trying to predict "what happens next."And they said that "the arc of history bent towards socialism."

I think that gives the Commies too much credit. Everyone understood that the industrial age was transforming the world. Everyone, back then, was eagerly proposing plans to improve the world through politics. It's just that the Commies had a full-blown religion that promised Heaven on Earth if only we followed the Prophet Marx's True Prophecy.

More likely, says the ZMan, everyone is reverting to type.

Russia, for example, has kept reverting back to being Russia, despite the changes in political economy. We see this quite clearly with China today, which is a high tech version of the Tang Dynasty. 

In our own age, we are experiencing that the technological revolution is changing everything, just as the industrial revolution changed everything in its time. "The world after the internet is a very different place from the world before it." The Commies understood that the industrial order involved a huge movement of people and changed power relationships; "Similarly, technology has created new power relationships and set up a massive movement of people." 

For the ZMan, it is "the dissident subculture in which there is any serious thought about what is driving the ongoing crisis." 

The dissident knows that today is the result of the millions of decisions that have happened up to this moment on the timeline. A man is the sum of the mating choices of his ancestors and a people is the sum of all the choices that made the people.

But the future? "Nothing is inevitable other than the fact that people have always been wrong about the future."

That sets me to thinking, about what we humans are consistently wrong about. And I think that there are a couple things to seriously deal with.

1. Don't prophesy! The temptation of all religions is to try to prophesy the future. Don't do it! We humans are never going to wrap up the future in a comforting -- or a terrifying -- prophecy about what God or Gaia or the arc of history or climate change is going to do.
2. Be ready to adapt. The whole point of humans is that we are pretty good at adapting to whatever God or Nature or out boss throws at us. So let's keep those skills sharpened.
3. Help others to adapt. The problems of the last century, I feel, occur when political and religious leaders teach their followers that there is no need to adapt. The Commies teach their followers to follow them and they will smash the exploiters. Wrong! Teach the workers how to wive and thrive in the new world. The modern educated class teaches its followers to just sit there and they will take care of everything. Wrong! Everyone has to learn how to deal with the future and deal with its challenges.

When you think about it, the prophets are bound to be wrong. They might be telling us that God will provide, or that God will damn us to Hell unless we repent. But, it seems to me, both these approaches are trying to reduce fear by prophesying certainties. And there ain't no such thing.

For there is no way to know what the "unanticipated consequences" of our actions are going to be. We humans are always meddling with things without a clue about what we are meddling with. There is no way to figure out, in advance, what is going to happen when some butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil. Maybe nothing, maybe the end of the world. But we can respond to "unanticipated consequences" and try to mitigate them. I think that, on the whole, we are pretty good at that.

The other thing we can do is help other people adapt. That, I think is the great takeaway from the fraternal associations and mutual-aid societies of the 19th century. They developed a culture of helping and coping and getting on with life. I feel that the dominant movements arising out of the educated class have operated on the conceit that all we needed to do was to follow the leader, the political or intellectual leader, because He Knows!

And to reduce it to my reductive Three Peoples theory, the People of the Creative Self need to get out and set an example of creative adaption to the curve balls that the world throws at us, the People of the Responsible Self need to responsibly adapt within the framework of their culture of doing the right thing. And the People of he Subordinate Self need to up their game, because following along and looking to someone else to pull your irons out of the fire tends not to work when everything is changing. Because when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Nobody can predict the future. Not God, not prophets, not scientists, and not political leaders and bureaucrats. What we can do is adapt.