As we all know, Angelo Codevilla died this week after being hit by a drunk driver. You and I know him as the author of an epochal article written in 2010 in The American Spectator titled "America's Ruling Class."
In the article he described America as divided between the Ruling Class, "supported by no more than one-third of Americans — and a country class comprising two-thirds of the country."
Let me say that this is the one thing where I disagree with Codevilla. I don't believe in the binary Ruling Class and Country Class. That's because I believe in a Three Layer understanding of society. Codevilla hints at this when he writes of entertainment that
since the 1970s most of Hollywood’s products have appealed more to the mores of the ruling class and its underclass clients than to those of large percentages of Americans.
So in my "Three Layers in Brief" I adapt his two layers into three: Ruling Class, Country Class, and "underclass clients."
But I agree that only the Ruling Class and the Country Class are involved in politics. The "underclass clients" are just serfs of their Ruling Class lords.
But here are a couple of really important takeaways from "America's Ruling Class" that I got from re-reading it yesterday. I express them as questions that I have for a while about today's America.
"Why are Social Media and Big Tech and Big Business in the tank for the Ruling Class?" Because they have to be.
Health care:
[T]he health care bill of 2010 takes more than 2,700 pages to make sure not just that some states will be treated differently from others because their senators offered key political support, but more importantly to codify bargains between the government and various parts of the health care industry, state governments, and large employers about who would receive what benefits (e.g., public employee unions and auto workers) and who would pass what indirect taxes onto the general public.
This is what I call sharing out the "loot and plunder" with regime supporters.
Finance:
The financial regulation bill of 2010, far from setting univocal rules for the entire financial industry in few words, spends some 3,000 pages (at this writing) tilting the field exquisitely toward some and away from others.
Again: can you spell l-o-o-t-a-n-d-p-l-u-n-d-e-r?
So, in general, "By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support." As in the classic line: "nice little business you got here; pity if something should happen to it."
Now whatabout the professions?
"Why are the professions in the tank with the Ruling Class?"
What about the doctors, and the American Medical Association (AMA)?
Those who run the AMA, however, have a government contract as exclusive providers of the codes by which physicians and hospitals bill the government for their services.
Oh. So now I understand why various professional organizations have issued threats to their members that they will lose accreditation if they, e.g., don't support mandatory COVID vaccination. The professional association gets a government grant, and so is now in the pocket of the Ruling Class, and anyway has to keep good relations with the regulatory authorities.
In other words any high profile institution in America needs to maintain good relations with the Ruling Class. Or else. And that will continue, until it doesn't.
Now, I notice, after reading "America's Ruling Class" all over again, that my maxims about government apply in spades.
Government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters.
Government is force plus loot and plunder.
All government is unjust, because government leaders reward their supporters before the rest of the people.
And, I would say, that the $3.5 trillion "infrastructure bill" is an indication that the Ruling Class feels it needs to amp up the provision of loot and plunder to its supporters. Seems like the natives are restless on the loot and plunder front.
Why is that, you may ask? I think it is because when you distribute loot and plunder to your supporters they don't say: "wow, thanks a million" for ever after. Next election cycle they take the previous handout for granted and expect to get more. So once you start handing out loot and plunder you have to keep on keeping on, scraping up new loot and plunder to distribute. Otherwise your supporters will drift away.
Obviously, Stein's Law applies here. "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
And the problem with loot and plunder is that it represents a part of the economy that is cast in concrete. And as the Ruling Class extends the concrete -- or if you prefer, continues paving over the nation -- there comes a point at which there is no fertile land left. What happens then? Nothing good.
You many not like the price system, but the price system forces people to face reality, first gently, and then not so gently. But with the loot-and-plunder system things are different. The loot-and-plunder system allows people to ignore reality. Until that day when the whole system collapses.
So, if you are a wise Ruling Class, you keep the loot and plunder down to a very dull murmur. Because you want the economy -- upon which your sacred taxes rest -- to look after itself, as an "emergent phenomenon" that all-unknowing, responds to changes in the firmament and corrects itself before you and I have a clue what is going on.
Our Ruling Class has not kept the loot and plunder down to a dull murmur. That means that it has a problem. That means that it has to back up its loot and plunder with threats and force. That means that our Ruling Class is headed for the waterfall.
But so are you and I.
Looking back at "America's Ruling Class" it is interesting to review the Trump Era. We may call Trump an idiot. We may say that his first mistake was not to fire all the insiders in the government and replace them with his own people. And so on.
But I would say that the Trump Era gave us a vital and important thing. It prompted the Ruling Class to show its claws. Or, if you like, we got to see into its subterranean "intelligence community" depths. And it let the rest of us see how corrupt and clueless it is.
For that, we Americans will be grateful to Donald Trump for ever more.
And to the searing analysis of the late Angelo Codevilla.
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