The Spendapaloosa and the Fools Promoting It

Because my very own congresscritter Pramila Jayapal is Chair-something-or-other of the House Progressive Caucus I feel I have some responsibility for the utter folly of the current spendapalooza that the Democrats are trying to pass in Congress.

By the way, do you think that, having failed to pass the House this week, the spendapalooza will pass next week after the results of the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey?

Here is helpless oppressed peoples Jayapal talking about caste back in the day:

And so I remember hearing about caste through that, and the Nayars were always considered, they were the advisors to the king on financial affairs and business affairs. And so we weren't in the top two...

OK, so she isn't a priestly Brahmin; she isn't a warrior Kshatriya, but hey, we're Number Three: valuable advisors to kings and potentates! Enjoying the benefits of systemic caste-ism for a couple thousand years! And we certainly aren't those eeeuw Dalits. Actually, I get it. Back in the day, we now know, you high-caste chapettes had a good reason to want to avoid pollution from the shit-carriers. Because germs!

Listen, I'm just a low-caste nobody; my grandfathers were low-caste small businessmen, not the noble Stiltstockings advising kings and potentates in the Circumlocution Office. I have to admit it: my ancestors were not quite out of the top drawer, old chap. One great-grandfather was a dairyman, and another was a "maltster," a guy making sugar from grain. 

So I don't know nuttin'. But I don't get what genius decided that with a 50-50 Senate and a 222-213 House that he/she/xir had a mandate to crank the welfare state into the stratosphere.

I mean I guess why I understand why the girls think that, Jayapal, AOC, Omar, Tlaib. And hey, there's about 100 of these folks in the Progressive Caucus. And I suppose if they spend their whole days talking to each other they might not, as Susan Sowerby says in The Secret Garden, have figured out that they don't get the whole orange.

But whatabout the adults in the room? Nancy! I'm talking to you, girl!

Look, I don't suppose we can expect our noble elected officials to remember what went down in the 70s, how the glorious promise of Keynesian economics, that you should spend your way out of anything, didn't quite work out. But just about everyone was around in 2009 in the aftermath of the 2008 Housing Credit Crisis, and rather notably it was obvious that the money spent on Democratic supporters by the Obama administration didn't really pan out.

I'd say the lesson of the Obama years is that it set us up for Trump. So what's the lesson from that, dear progressives? Maybe to cool your jets and slow down a bit? Else maybe the American people will put you chaps out of power for a generation?

But, of course, The Girls don't understand that. The Girls -- Jayapal, AOC, Omar, Tlaib and Co. -- only know they have a moral imperative to bend the arc of history towards justice, because that's what they have been carefully taught in schools and the whole secular religious activism culture ever since they were little babies.

OK. I'll stop ranting.

Fact is, I believe, we are soon going to enter a new age in which the best and brightest will understand that using government, the agent of blunt force and violence, is not really the right tool to use in the exquisite work of negotiating the social issues of humans living in society.

Or, let's put it more crudely. How do we humans help the helpless in our society without using force? Force is one thing when you are dealing with Nazis or robbers or frauds. But educating children? By force? Caring for the elderly? By force? Helping economic dropouts? With government handouts?

There's got to be a better way for humans to look after the people that need looking after than by appointing the guys that used to be the brave warriors defending against Vikings and Huns and Mongols to do the job.

Thank you for asking. Because I do know what we need to do. We need to engage the women's Culture of Kindness and its doppelganger, the women's Culture of Complaint, in this task. That's what women are good at. And they should be doing that, using their natural instincts to care and nurture -- and also name and shame -- instead of wrecking corporate HR and imagining in the Progressive Caucus that the answer to all our problems is free college and more money for day-care workers -- by force. Just so mothers can go out to work and have careers.

How's that women-going-out-and-having-careers-just-like-men working out, cupcake?

Liberals Learn the Three Step Polka

Yes, our liberal friends are in the middle of a course at Arthur Murray dance studio, and they are learning the Three Step Political Polka. Only they have No Idea what they are getting themselves into, bless their hearts.

You know what the first step was. Right Foot Forward, with Donald Trump.

But Trump! How could this be? How could a right-wing racist-sexist-homophobe be elected President of the United States that had elected a First Black President?

The point is that our liberal friends have No Idea what their politics has done to ordinary white middle-class Americans over the last 50 years. You can see the No Idea in the #WeBelieve yard-signs that nice liberal ladies started putting in their front yards in the wake of the Trump victory. The yard-signs generally feature the entire universe of self-congratulating liberal conceits:

Black Lives Matter / Women's Rights are Human Rights / No Human is Illegal
Science is Real / Love is Love / Kindness is Everything

The funny thing is that the nice liberal ladies in question have No Idea that the self-congratulating conceit in all these slogans is exactly why Trump won in 2016. Because on the receiving end of the politics behind the slogans ordinary white middle-class Americans get screwed.

But not nice liberal ladies, of course. They will do fine.

The second step was Full Left Lunge, with the far-left agenda of President Biden.

Look, I get it. When the Democratic power brokers decided to stop Bernie in the 2020 primary season there was obviously a deal to be made. The Biden folks had to promise Bernie to push his Commie agenda. They had to offer Peter Buttigieg a cabinet post. And every liberal interest group had to have its agenda item in the multi-trillion dollar loot and plunder package. And they had to go full climate change and full systemic racism. Because that was the deal.

But just about every one of the ideas on the left are ideas that are going to hammer the economy. And it ain't gonna be pretty. Actually, just about every idea the left ever had hammers the economy and hurts the lives of ordinary people. 

But we will see, over the next year:

as the vaccination narrative falls apart with the ineffectiveness of the vaccines and the cruelty of vaccine mandates

as the green agenda falls apart with skyrocketing energy prices and electric power blackouts

as the CRT agenda falls apart with angry parents blowing up the government school racket

as the war on policing yields increased violence in liberal cities

as the homeless crisis metastasizes into a return of the diseases of the pre-sanitation age like cholera and typhoid...

We will see our liberal friends having to deal with the fact that their Democratic Party has led them into the wilderness. They won't desert the party. Not yet. They will just be collapsing in confusion and reaching for the old reliable scapegoats of race and the rich and the corporations. And guns, and God, and whatever else can distract them from facing the truth.

What about the third step? That will be the Two Way Splits, with all our liberal friends sitting on the floor in blank stupor, when even nice liberal ladies with their #WeBelieve signs realize that "Houston We Have a Problem."

No doubt it will be in the wake of a Republican win in 2024 with a president and both Houses of Congress with a mandate for, as liberals like to say, Real Change.

Honestly, I don't know how our liberal friends will react to that. After all, when you are of a certain age, you really don't want to try crazy stuff like doing the splits on the dance floor. And the point is that if you have been getting your news and politics from the usual suspects in the mainstream media you have been carefully taught that everything is fine, our guys are the good guys, and anyone who disagrees is a racist-sexist-homophobe. So when the world stops tracking with the world view of the mainstream media, and there is that famous glitch in the Matrix, most of our liberal friends are going to be paralyzed with fear and loathing.

And when that happens there is no telling what they will do next.

"Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste"

We all remember our pal Rahm Emanuel and his famous line in 2008:

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

Guess what: Rahm wasn't the first guy to come up with that line. Winston Churchill said "Never let a good crisis go to waste" towards the end of World War II.

And we are seeing the same thing with the COVID crisis. Pile on every imaginable new spending program you can think of, AOC and Bernie. There'll never be a better time than right now.

But really, it was ever thus. Humans don't like to get radical unless there's a serious crisis. Indeed, we know from hurricanes and the Cajun Navy that humans, in a way, love to drop everything and work together when the world is falling apart.

So, you Friends of Brandon, how about thinking about what to do to take advantage of the metastasizing crisis in the glorious sunshine of the Biden administration?

Although I hate and fear what is coming down the pike, in terms of inflation, the Fed having to step on the brakes -- if it does! -- unemployment, peoples' lives disrupted, let us not forget that the glorious Reagan years were impossible without the abject failure of the Carter years.

Hey, remember? For a few years our Democratic friends would say stuff like: "Liberal? Who me? No, no. Nobody here but us New Democrats and moderates."

Incidentally, that's why liberals changed back from liberals to progressives. For the same reason they switched in the 1920s from progressives to liberals. In the 1920s, after the glorious Wilson years, the progressives decided a name change was in order. And so, after the Sixties and Seventies, liberals decided n their turn that a name change was needed.

But what should we be doing "that you could not do before?" and ram down the throats of the wokey fools and knaves of our present crisis? Of course, I have my dream list, such as phasing Social Security into a genuine retirement savings program featuring Fidelity and Vanguard.

My Social Security reform would allow people to have the option of earmarking some of their FICA taxes for their own savings program. The amount would rise over time so that, in a generation, people could earmark up to 50 percent of FICA taxes to their own retirement program.

Medicare reform? You know, I don't think the ladies would let us. Healthcare is all-in-all to the fair sex.

Education? You know, I think this is the big opportunity this time around. The absurd Loudon Country shenanigans and the ridiculous Biden initiative that siccs the FBI on eevil violent extremist parents may really have upset the suburban moms of the world. We could have a window of opportunity where we can increase school choice: partly because of the transgender frou-fra, and partly from the COVID experience when the teachers decided, like Bartleby, that they would rather not, and moms all over experimented with home-school, micro-schools, and learning pods. Oh, and did you know that black moms are also pro-school choice?

Also, I think, coming up, there is a good chance that with gas prices going through the roof we will get a chance to lance the boil of green energy, at least for a while.

And whatabout putting the shiv into universities? I think it should be something to do with the size of the bureaucracy and the size of the endowment with a complicated factor that says that any university with a big administration and/or endowment would be forced to offer scholarships and bursaries to victims of cancel culture.

Then there is social media. I don't have a clue what we can do, but I'm sure the experts can come up with something.

Then, I think it is time we started to tax activist groups. They should be regarded as profit-making businesses and treated as such. There should be something to penalize non-profits that just spend all their money on activism instead of actually giving money to widows and orphans.

But the main thing is: Wouldn't it be Fun!

Imagine the screams and the cries of racism! Imagine the rage of George Soros and the Tides Foundation. Imagine the stupidities that Brian Stelter and his Reliable Sources would blather on about. Imagine the fancy dresses that AOC would wear to show how hip she is, still.

I think that the important prequel to all this will be in the 2023-24 time frame, assuming that the midterm results in a GOP, er, let's call it a Brandon Congress.

Yes. If I were the Speaker in 2023 I'd start and end every media availability with a "Let's Go Brandon." And I think that when President Biden is announced for the State of the Union speech by the House Sergeant-at-Arms he should say: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States." And then the Speaker should say: "Let's Go Brandon."

Hey, if Nancy Pelosi has the time to sit in a SOTU and shred the president's speech, I'd say that the next Speaker of the House of Representatives should wear a Let's Go Brandon face mask.

Or, in response to the women members that all dress in white for the SOTU, maybe all the Republicans should wear Let's Go Brandon suit jackets.

OK. That s enough for now. We don't want things to get out of hand.

No! The State Can't Manage Anything

My guy Curtis Yarvin has a curious piece on the economics of John Ruskin, the Victorian writer. He was, like George Bernard Shaw and Vladimir Lenin, a socialist. So he thinks that it's the job of the government to make sure that everyone has a job and doesn't starve. In other words, the government has an interest in making sure that we all wive and thrive.

Hey, let's face it, says Yarvin,

Since the people are the property of the regime, the people are the assets of the regime. The regime’s incentive is therefore to maintain and improve this human capital.

But is this really how governments act in real life? I don't think so. I think that governments treat their people not as an asset to be carefully managed and tended but as an army to be used in the rulers' glorious fight to win the future. The fight may be a war against the country next door, or it may be to fight climate change. But a ruling class never thinks of itself as merely a night watchman, keeping the streets safe at night. On the contrary, the last thing it wants is for everyone to be nicely tucked up in bed at night. What would be the point?

Yarvin, in his notion of monarchy as the preferred mode of governance, has a point. A monarchy is more likely to treat its people as an asset to be nurtured than as subject people to be looted to reward his supporters.

But even a monarch is not to be trusted with the peoples' welfare. Because his No.1 priority is Number One: himself, the monarch, and his power project. And in his power project the people are just an asset to be exploited for the greater glory of the monarchy, not an asset to be husbanded and improved.

Whether you are talking about a medieval noble arguing with the neighboring nobles about who really inherits some vital dukedom, or nationalist leaders trying to get their nation a place in the sun or American presidents winning glorious world wars, or the present world leaders beating back the horror of climate change, the government is not interested in the wealth and the happiness of the people. It is thinking of the arc of history, whether it bends to national glory or global justice.

Look at the current situation in the United States. The last thing that the present government is thinking about is to "maintain and improve [its] human capital." Instead it is passionately engaged upon expanding the welfare state so that practically every need of its people is the responsibility of some government bureaucracy: so it is going to succeed where a century of bureaucratic administration has failed?

Then the government is passionately engaged upon a total transformation of the energy economy, because climate change. Does anyone really think that this will lead to anything but embarrassment and disaster?

The fact is that, other than making war, governments are absolutely clueless. They know nothing about how to manage the present, let alone prepare for the future.

And if there is one thing we know about the future is that we know nothing about the future. So, any government that makes commitments about the future, whether in workers' wages or workers' rights or workers' skills, it is going to mess it all up. The government cannot make guarantees about incomes or pensions or the future. Because the only thing we know about the future is that it will be a lot different from what we figured.

Yarvin quotes a long paragraph from Ruskin on the situation of domestic servants in a Victorian household, where he argues that the best work is done out of affection -- for the master, presumably.

And so it is, maybe. Until things go south. Guess what happens when things go south for the Victorian gentleman? He closes his house in "town" and sends his domestic servants on their way, with a "reference" attesting to their competence and good will. And when things go south in today's economy and the company can't afford to pay its wages? The company tries to lower wages and the workers probably go on strike. Like that's going to help!

I know. Let's analyze things for the point of view of my reductive Three Peoples theory: Subordinates, Responsibles, and Creatives.

If you are a Subordinate, then you just sit there in your wage-labor job, trusting that you will have that job in the future -- for the next forty years? Really? Remind me what happened to the unionized US auto workers.

If you are a Responsible then you work the best you can, but you know that nothing is forever, so you prepare for a change in the economic weather, figuring to keep your skills up to date, and switching jobs if it looks like the management at your employer is just coasting. But you know that, sooner or later, things will go south and you will have to make the best of it.

If you are a Creative, you will know that the future belongs to those that are creative and have a strategic mind, but even then chances are that most of your brilliant ideas won't work out. So you are always half-prepared to change direction and try something new.

The future belongs to those who...

Yes, what exactly? To those who believe? To those who show up? To those who prepare?

Or just to those who get lucky? Or a combination of the above?

I would say that the key is the spirit of 2 Corinthians, about "things seen" and "things unseen." Government and politics are things seen. But life and instinct and the social nature of humans and the human Lebenswelt are the unseen things that we usually don't "notice."

In my view the whole of the modern miracle of prosperity and science and the market economy are emergent phenomena about which we know a lot less than we imagine.

The only thing I am certain about is that government and politics are probably the best way to smash it all up.

Which Enemy is Best?

Government and politics are all about enemies and war. Oh, and the necessary loot and plunder to reward the victorious soldiers and/or voters.

But which enemy? That, it seems to me, is the critical question. Here are a few of my maxims to clear the underbrush.

Politics is all, and only, about rallying the men to fight against the foe — external or internal enemy — in the present emergency.

There is no politics without an enemy. — Curtis Yarvin

Four political strategies: Unite the country against a small country for a quick win; unite the country against a big country for a world war; unite half the country against the other half for a civil war; unite most of the country against a small minority for a witch-hunt.

Of course, Yarvin's maxim comes straight from our pal Nazi Carl Schmitt. I have thoughtfully summarized his book The Concept of the Political for your convenience. Schmitt says that the "specific political distinction... is the distinction between friend and enemy."

On my "four political strategies" above you can see that the wise and thoughtful political leader will choose war against a small country, or uniting the country against a small minority, in his war for political supremacy.

That, it hardly needs be said, is what Literally Hitler did in Germany in 1920-33. The National Socialist German Workers Party was clearly attempting to cover as many bases as possible in the "friends" department. And the "enemy?" It was the small minority, the Jews.

Earth to aspiring politicians: Do Not Mess with the Jews. Just sayin'.

But obviously, the rule still applies. The best way to unite a political entity is to unite it against a small minority. But if it can't be the Jews, then who?

Back in Marx's time it made sense to unite the workers against the capitalists. The workers were many and the capitalists were few. Even the "bourgeoisie" was relatively small, compared to the masses coming off the farm and into the factories. Read this German Commie writing of his years of street fighting in Germany in the 1920s. He is a Richard Krebs, quoted in The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans.

I was proud to be a worker and I despised the bourgeois... Policemen were enemies. God was a lie... Every employer was a hyena in human form[.] (p.239)

Hmm. Maybe now we understand why our lefty friends have taken out after the police in recent years. When you think about it, it makes sense. It is better to get young blacks riled up against the police than against the whole of white society. Because the police are a small minority.

Of course, George Wallace in the 1960s had a line about "pointy-headed intellectuals" and Spiro Agnew in the 1970s had a line about "nattering nabobs of negativism." And Donald Trump had a line about the "swamp." These political practitioners are all taking out after a small minority.

Now our liberal friends have succeeded in making it toxic to stigmatize many of our small minorities in the United States, from LBGT to Muslims. They prefer to stigmatize the small minority of "far-right" conspiracists. 

But then, of course, their Ally narrative stigmatizes "white oppressors." I suppose the idea is that these "white oppressors" are some small minority way up there in the Bohemian Grove or some such. But in practice it means stigmatizing all whites as beneficiaries of "white supremacy." I wonder if this is a good idea, strategically. Personally, I think that the anti-white ideology of white liberals and lefties will one day bite them back.

Note my maxim about "unite half the country against the other half for a civil war." It is the Ally narrative that sets up the "white oppressors" -- half the country -- as the enemy. And that is why we have people talking about a "cold civil war."

I still don't know what the cunning politician should do to rally the whole American nation against a small minority enemy. But then I'm not a politician: what do I know.

Why Did Americans Compromise on Slavery in 1787?

At American Greatness Sean Ross Callaghan notes that in 1787 northern abolitionists managed to compromise with southern slaveholders to write and ratify the US Constitution. But here we are in 2021 and it seems we can't compromise on anything.

How many would-be abortions is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) willing to stop in exchange for shored-up Medicare and Social Security or an expanded child-care subsidy? For how long is Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) willing to postpone pushing for a federal ban on abortion in exchange for better-controlled immigration and narrower labor offshoring? 

Yes, why don't we compromise today when the Americans of old were able to do so? Well here's one reason: Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. La Wik.

A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. 

Now you see what Bismarck meant by his statement that "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." Good old God. He made sure that we had the Constitution under lock and key before He let Eli Whitney invent the cotton gin and all of a sudden make plantation slavery a lot more profitable. And my nickel says that a cotton gin in 1784 would have made Southrons a lot less inclined to compromise in 1787.

Plus, I am sure that back in 1787 that all Americans were joined in a common fear of the Brits who might decide to try again to teach the rebels a lesson. Which they did in the war of 1812.

Today, we don't really fear foreign invaders. And we haven't had much of a worry since the good old days of the Cold War and nuclear bombers ready to take off at a moment's notice. Oh, for sure, we were scared for a couple of minutes after 9/11 and our leaders got into a jolly old war in the Middle East to show the rag-heads who was boss.

Plus our noble liberal leaders are much more concerned about the United States stepping on some helpless victim nation than worrying about, say, the terrible threat of Russia or China.

Oh, sorry, our fearless leaders were all worked up about Russia, Russia for a few months when it was helpful to discredit Donald Trump. My bad.

But Hoo Boy, were they mad when President Trump started talking about the Chinese Flu!

No, the absence of foreign threats means that for people that believe in politics, the enemy must be at home.

Remember Nazi Carl Schmitt and his dictum that politics is based on the friend/enemy distinction? If you are going to have politics you are going to have friends and enemies. If there are no foreign enemies then there must be domestic enemies. And, of course, the more passionate you are about your politics the more you are going to need those enemies.

Now, of course the whole point of elections is to encourage political diehards to get all worked up in the fight of the campaign and then cool their jets once the election is over. There is a certain calming effect, also, when you lose 60-40. But closely fought election and elections with disputed results tend to bring out the enemy hunter in all of us. Liberals were mad as hell when Bush won narrowly in 2000, and the liberal media was all over the rigged election of 2016.

So I don't think the current Wokeness era and its doppelganger the populist-nationalist era is going to be resolved any time soon.

Maybe President Xi will frighten us all to death and get us all to unite. But I'm not sure that I'd like that kind of a unity too much. I really don't want a repeat of President Wilson sending the doughboys off to France or FDR sending the GIs off all over the world. World wars were really cool for the ruling class, but I'm not sure I want a repeat. (And no, WWII was not all about saving the Jews. Not until after the war).

So, I'm afraid that we are caught in the present horrible divisions for a while. My hope is that our liberal friends will overreach themselves so much that the vast majority of good Americans recoil in distaste. But you never know.

Prosecutor to reconsider the meaning of the word “justice”

Here's the word from the "first Black US Attorney in Western Washington" Nick Brown, 44, is the perfect prosecutor for the Biden Moment. 

His solution is shake things up within his office, urging his prosecutors to reconsider the meaning of the word “justice” and to “empower my people to push law enforcement into a different way to look at crime.”

Hey, guy. You have one job. It is to prosecute. Redefining "justice" is the job of priests and moralists. Pushing law enforcement around is the job of elected politicians, pal. Not appointed US Attorneys.

Look, I feel sorry for our liberal masters. A century ago they were going to manfully reform and redirect the United States in a progressive direction. With educated, evolved politicians and administrators they would shepherd us into a new age of justice and efficiency. And now look: Crime is up; the Sacred Negro is a mess. And the the progressive response to a normal coronavirus epidemic is to shut the place down and put tape on little kiddies in school. And don't you dare object or you will be deplatformed from social media.

All the nonsense about pronouns, the desperate lurch for another ratcheted expansion of the welfare state, the Soros prosecutors, the DEI frenzy in universities and corporate HR departments, the mad wokeyness in the entertainment world: all this means that the glorious vision of a century ago is failing on all fronts. It is falling apart.

And our progressive masters can't believe it. They are frantically sitting at the controls of World HQ hitting all the buttons and all that happens is that everything they do Makes Things Worse. And like Captain Kirk, they are always asking Scotty for more power.

Think how you would feel in their place. You are the best, the most educated, the most evolved, the most sensitive, the most caring. And yet everything is going wrong.

For me, no problem. You see, I don't believe in "objective reality," or "reason and logic." I don't believe in "justice" or "progress." I believe that all knowledge is a narrative, a myth, a story. And I know that, at bottom, I don't know nothing. Now, our present scientific narrative is a very good narrative; it predicts that when you put radioactive uranium in a reactor -- very carefully -- you get heat and you can use the heat to run a turbine generator. Karl Popper calls a working nuclear reactor "objective knowledge." Because it works.

But we still don't know the thing-in-itself behind all this. And we still don't know how the universe came into being and how it will end, if it ends. Our present creation narrative, our Genesis, our founding myth, says that the universe was created in a Big Bang. And before the Big Bang? Good question, senator.

The thing about narratives -- the "tell" -- is when things start to go wrong. For instance, if the results from our public schools don't change even as we change from No Child Left Behind to Common Core and I know not what, and Bill Gates comes up with a new idea every month, maybe Houston We Have a Problem. And guess what: progressives have been in charge of education the whole time.

If blacks still aren't getting into the middle class half a century after the Civil Rights Act and are committing half the murders in the country, and the highest and best thing that young black males can imagine is being an "aspiring rapper" maybe Houston We Have a Problem. And guess what: progressives have been in charge of race relations the whole time.

So maybe the problem isn't racist-sexist-homophobes or whatever the pejorative du jour favored among our ruling is. Maybe the problem is the ruling class itself.

Actually, maybe the problem isn't the ruling class, but its crazy ideology.

Hey, here's an idea. It comes from the Nazi Carl Schmitt, so you know what to do with it. Schmitt wrote that the political is this:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

OK. Maybe that is a bit to thick and treacly. How about this:

Politics is about friends vs. enemies. Period.

In other words, you oughta be a bit careful before you bring an issue into politics. Because politics is about friends vs. enemies, and in the extreme case, conflicts with the enemy are possible. Possible?

Moreover, there is the little problem that

Government is war followed by loot and plunder.

This is noticeable in our glorious elections, which are a sham fight for the keys to the kingdom, or the security code on the money printer go brrrrr.

Do you see the point, dear liberals and progressives and newly minted US Attorneys?

I am saying that as soon as you make a difference between humans into a political issue you are defining it in terms of the friend/enemy distinction. And that means already that "conflict" or killing is a possibility, what certain chappies in the 20th century said would be a "final solution."

So the progressive idea that educated evolved people presiding over the nation in charge of the government is what they call a category error. Because a political leader is is fact the guy in charge of protecting us from our enemies. He is not the guy in charge of resolving all our little disagreements. Indeed, his skill is exploiting differences between people -- maybe even suggest that those deplorables over there are engaged in "domestic terrorism" so that he can win the next election.

You will notice that liberals and progressives absolutely hated it when Donald Trump was president. Just as now conservatives and deplorables absolutely hate having Joe Biden as president.

Hey, I know. What if the president were just in charge of defending the borders, and had nothing to do with education or race relations or crime or non-binary genders?

But try telling that to your liberal friend and see where you get.

"Never Trust Experts" Dear Ruling Class

Here we are nearly two years into the COVID crisis and the politicians and the women are all telling us to "follow the experts."

But Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister of Great Britain in the late 19th century, had a different take on experts.

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.

Not to mention Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of Great Britain in the last 1950s.

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

Here's something that caught my eye this morning. "COVID mutation." OMG! MUTATION! 

UK doctors call for urgent return of Covid restrictions as experts monitor new mutation.

What? A mutation? Sounds awful! End of the world! Women and minorities hardest hit! Only this is a mutation of the COVID Delta variant.

Oh. Well. Is that all? Who knew?

So I am here with a word to all you chaps and chapettes in the Ruling Class being advised by experts. Science, dontcha know.

Now I don't know how many of you ruling-class chappies are familiar with Lord Salisbury. This aristocrat acted as his own Foreign Secretary, because he thought that the bureaucrats at the Foreign Office were nincompoops. And one of his principles was that Britain should not have alliances in Europe. That was because he felt it would encourage the allied power to gang up on the other powers. 

Don't understand? Well, soon after the death of Lord Salisbury his son-in-law Arthur Balfour set up an Entente Cordiale with the French. And by 1914 there was a Triple Entente with Russia and France and Britain. And then World War I.

Because maybe the poor bloody Germans thought that everybody was ganging up on them. You think?

So I am here to tell you geniuses: "be careful of experts." Why? Because experts are weasels. What they want is the ear of the powerful, so they can strut their stuff with their colleagues. Oh, and grants.

That means that, ten-to-one, they will tell the politician what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear.

And I would say that right now the Biden administration desperately needs to hear from experts that are willing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth instead of nice comfortable words to make the rulers feel good about themselves.

Item: Economics. In my view, the way to understand macroeconomics is that it exists partly to let politicians do what comes naturally, to spread out loot and plunder, and partly to help politicians get out of a jam from too much loot and plunder. That's what Keynesian economics was about. It said to politicians: go ahead and spend all you like! It will get us out of the Great Depression (Only it didn't). Until the Seventies when it got the Carter administration in a bit of a jam and led to President Reagan. The same thing is happening right now with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that says that it's OK for governments to do Money Printer Go Brrrrr. Until it isn't. Until we get big inflation and food prices and gas prices and heating costs go into the stratosphere, and ordinary voters that don't pay much attention to politics get really mad. 

Reality Check: deficit spending and money printing are going to get you in trouble Mr. Politician. Do as little of it as you must.

Item: COVID. In my view COVID is like any epidemic. It burns through the population, and at the end of it the survivors survive and the dead are remembered only by their mothers. There is stuff you can do to help; there is stuff you do that doesn't help. But. In our age with women in the public square and voting, and my maxim that "women expect to be protected," politicians feel they have to take the "if we can just save one life" approach. That's what lockdowns and mask mandates and vaccine mandates are all about: appealing to women that that believe that the whole world can go hang as long as their children are safe. It's why the Democrats are all-in on mandates, because Democrats are the women's party. It's why a chap like Ron DeSantis in Florida is going the let-it-burn-through route. Because the GOP is the men's party. 

Reality Check: an epidemic is an epidemic. We can do things to mitigate it, maybe. But in the end it has to burn through, especially now that it looks like the vaccinations only provide partial protection and the majority of hospitalized COVID cases are fully vaccinated. This epidemic seems a lot less horrible than we are pretending. It's basically killing off "fully vaccinated" old geezers like Gen. Powell, age 84, who already had multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Back in the day, we called pneumonia "the gentleman's friend" because it took him out swiftly with very little pain.

By the way. There seems to be a reverse experts effect right now where experts are reluctant to go public with science that challenges the ruling-class narrative. And social media is censoring scientists that go against the ruling-class narrative. You know what, rulers? This is not good. Not for you and not for the American people.

The "Allies" are Deceivers

I woke up in the middle of the night last night because my unconscious mind had a message to deliver. Hey, punk, it said, when are you going to come up with a word to describe the "Allies"?

My unconscious mind was talking about what lefties call "Allyship" and I call "Ally-ism." It is the notion, as described by Matt Taibbi, that there are three kinds of people in the world.

It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

So, the Allies are the Chosen, the valiant knights riding their chargers through the forest rescuing damsels in distress.

Or not. 

But if the Allies are not Allies, what are they? I think the answer is that they are Deceivers, deceiving both themselves and the "oppressed peoples."

After all, what is an "oppressed people" in the real world? It is a people that is friendless, helpless, naked before its enemies: the kulaks in Soviet Russia; the Jews in German-occupied Europe in 1944; the freed slaves in the Jim Crow South. If noble Allies are out there peacefully protesting for the "oppressed peoples" and the oppressed peoples get to demand their right to e.g., receive welfare and Medicaid, and Directors of Diversity and Equity are bashing "white oppressors" over the head even including a dumb Yale Law School student that invited people to his "trap house" for a party, then the term "oppressed people" does not apply.

Notice how our liberal friends, the self-described Allies, are deceiving both themselves and their clients.

When you are running around doing "activism" and you learned your activism in a government school, then whatever it is you are doing has the approval and the imprimatur of the ruling class. So if you are an Ally, you are an Ally of the ruling class, first and foremost. You are deceiving yourself if you imagine yourself an Ally of the oppressed.

Not only that, you are also deceiving yourself also because you are using the wrong way to help "oppressed people." The wrong way is to rile up the oppressed into street mobs and resentful serfs. The right way is to teach them how to get out of the oppressed class and become ordinary middle-class commoners. I'd say that "the science" and "the facts" are in on that.

Then, of course, you are deceiving yourself into believing that ordinary white middle-class Americans, the Commoners, are in fact a monstrous cabal of oppressors. In fact, of course, ordinary white middle-class Americans are the victims of progressives politics in the era after the Civil Rights Acts. It is the white union members that lost their jobs to globalism; it is the white lower-middle class that have lost their firefighter and police jobs to quotas and Affirmative Action, and ordinary white and east Asian youngsters without connections that have lost places at elite colleges to "diversity" students. It is ordinary white guys like James Damore that are losing their jobs to the "cancel culture."

But above all, lefty political help for oppressed peoples is deceiving the oppressed peoples themselves. It Makes Things Worse. Lefties taught the white working class to believe in unions -- but the day came when union labor was overpriced, the global elite sent the union jobs to China, and the white working class were screwed. Lefties taught the newly enfranchised blacks to protest in the 1960s so they thoughtfully burned down their cities. In 2020 lefties taught blacks that was injustice, straight up, for a police officer to restrain a black robbery suspect that resisted arrest and was high on drugs. I'd say that Made Things Worse. I'd say that lower-class people that believe in the lefty agenda today are people that have been deceived.

What the lower class needs is a culture that encourages them to get an education, to get a job, to get married, and follow the rules and obey the law. For sure, the culture needs to be understanding and accept that there will be many that are not up to the challenge. Fine, but they are not oppressed peoples, and not really helpless victims. They are just losers.

So let us turn the lefty Ally narrative upside down. Let us say this:

In America we see three kinds of people. There are elite Deceivers; the subordinate Deceived peoples, and ordinary Americans.

Of course, the Deceiver narrative is rubbish. But it is no more rubbish than the Ally narrative.

The real problem with the "oppressed peoples" narrative is that, while plenty of people have been oppressed down the ages, there are plenty of people who are quite content to be subordinate serfs. Back in the Middle Ages, a serf could even apply to his lord to become a slave, "head for food" they called it. There are millions who become government employees for the lifetime employment and a pension. There are millions who work for .large corporations hoping for lifetime employment and a pension. All fine and dandy. But those people are not oppressed peoples. They are just people that are content to be subordinate and live at the pleasure and under the patronage of the powerful.

The "Houston We Have a Problem" Moment

I see that I have been blogging on really one topic for the last week or so: Ruling Class in Crisis.

Today, I got to read a Zman piece at Taki's where he complains about democracy not being democracy.

The stated point of the political system is to make it highly responsive to the will of the voters, but temper that will with the limits of constitutional order...

In reality, the system is entirely unresponsive to public will. 

This in the context of the ruling class uniting against Trump during the 2016 election and thereafter and showing him the exit in 2020.

I think that Zman wants to think that this is a failure of the system, but I don't think so.

I think that the notion that the results of an election are supposed to change the direction of the country is to misunderstand politics and government and ruling classes.

Really, an election gives the ruling class a gut check on what the people are thinking, and whether the "natives are restless." Most of the time the ruling class shrugs its shoulders and keeps on carrying on. Because any ruling class believes that it is ordained by God or Gaia.

But from time to time, the election result will cause ripples in the corridors of power. And then the question is: do we have a problem here? Do we wise rulers need to make a course correction? Or do we need to teach the plebs a lesson? 

Or, does the ruling class say, realizing that things are really going south, that they had better get their act together, right now. In other words the classic moment when the fuel cell on Apollo 13 blew up and everybody had to get real serious about how to keep the astronauts alive and safely returned to Earth.

And, if you remember, the explosion took place on the outward journey to the Moon, and NASA had to figure out how to keep the astronauts alive for the rest of the journey to the Moon, around the back, and then the return journey back to Earth.

Now I would say that the Trump 2016 election was a "natives are restless" moment that the ruling class decided to ignore. In fact, what with the increasing ruling-class devotion to climate change and systemic racism, I think we can safely say that our rulers doubled down and teach the plebs a lesson.

I do not say that the ruling class "decided" to double down. The double-down just happened "organically" in the social space of the ruling class.

But I would say that, from the point of view of the ruling class, the current Biden administration multiple organ failure means that we are rapidly approaching a "Houston we have a problem" moment.

Hey, I wonder if we will look back and say that the Death of Colin Powell from COVID at age 84 was the turning point. Because Colin Powell was fully vaccinated, you see. And that rather puts the ruling-class narrative that universal vaccination is The Answer in question. Good Little Girls all over will be asking "Is It Safe, Mr. President," and they will not trust the answer.

See, I think that the ruling class is being really stupid about a whole lot of things. A wise ruling class would have trimmed its sails decades ago. Let's review a few issues: And put it in a table, because I am an en-guin-eer.

Issue	Ruling Class Narrative	The Science	Sensible Policy
Climate Change	OMG end of the world, unless we act now.	Earth is presently in an interglacial period in a multi-million year Ice Age.	OK, let's do a few nice things like ramp up nuclear power
Systemic Racism	We must fight for the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors	All humans are tribal, but ordinary middle-class commoners are not that tribal, unless you get them riled up. And they certainly ain't responsible for the travails of the oppressed.	Let's be nice to blacks, and help them transition from underclass to middle class
Entitlement Spending	Hey kids: free college! Hey seniors free dental and eye care!	Big government entitlement programs make society vulnerable to unexpected shocks. The market system is an emergent social phenomenon that has worked wonders.	Hey, you don't get elected without offering free stuff. But there are limits, indicated by hyper-inflation.
Education	Let's teach kids all about oppression and intersectionality with CRT. Because "equity."	Education as a government monopoly eventually ends up as a system that pays teachers salaries and pensions and teaches children nothing.	For now, let's put the money for education in the hands of parents so they can get the education they want. If they care.
Class Conflict	OMG, those deplorables, bitter-clingers, and insurrectionists!	In any society larger than a village there will be differences between classes, races, religions. Any ruling class needs to recognize that ordinary people have a right to live their dull lives in peace.	The ruling class should not force its religion and its culture on the rest of society. It just leads to trouble right here in River City.
COVID-19	Mandatory Lockdown, Mandatory Vaccination. Follow Orders	It's an epidemic, just another corona virus, and it will work its way through the human population until its propagation withers due to acquired immunity.	Do some stuff to make women "feel safe" but don't overdo it Remember the health scientists are bureaucrats and their #1 concern is to keep their salaries and pensions.
Government Finances	Hey, who cares! We can print our way out of it.	Except in time of war and disaster, the government should run a surplus and pay down its war debt.	Hey, you gotta hand out goodies to the rubes, but wise rulers keep the loot and plunder down to a low roar.

I realize that there is a necessary great gulf fixed between the ruling class narrative and my proposed "sensible policy." The great gulf exists because of the nature of politics and government.

As I say, politics is division and government is force. But humans are social animals. Go figure.

But this means that, following Nazi Carl Schmitt, the political is the "friend vs. enemy distinction." That means that in politics you always have the Enemy. And the Enemy, by definition, is a threat to all we hold dear. So, sensible practical people will understand that the less that gets decided by politics in any society the better. Unfortunately, every political leader, whether they realize it or not, gets to act like Shakespeare's King Henry V at Harfleur: "once more unto the breach" etc. They can't help it, the poor dears.

At some point, our ruling class is going to wake up one morning and realize, OMG, "Houston we have a problem." I hope they will decide to change course, rather than double-down again.

My judgement is that the sooner the better, for all Americans.

You Only Had One Job, Politicians

The current free-fall of the Biden administration is instructive. Because it shows the problem with modern politics.

If you accept my notion that the job of government and politics is to protect us against enemies, foreign and domestic, then the next question is: "what do you do when there are no enemies on the horizon?"

The answer is: "you make them up."

Let us pose the question in a different way. In their creation narratives, that Rousseau developed in his Discourse on Inequality and George Bernard Shaw wrote about in Fabian Essays in Socialism, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden is replaced by another event. For Rousseau in A Discourse on Inequality the fateful moment is described thus:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying "This is mine" and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.

For Shaw beginning of Sin is the establishment of "the first colonist, the original Adam" into "a vast green plain of a country virgin to the spade". Shaw:

Adam is, as Political Economy fundamentally assumes him to be, "on the make": therefore he drives his spade into, and sets up his stockade around, the most fertile and favorable patch he can find.

Do you see the comedy in this? Both Rousseau and Shaw were city guys; the notion of growing your own food and defending it from others is become a joke. Hey, peasant: food is something you buy at the store. If only they had taken the trouble to tell Hitler that, because Hitler thought that the Germans, the most advanced people in the world, needed Lebensraum in eastern Europe to grow their own food.

But in the bad old days, including the days of chimpanzees, establishing a territory of food-yielding land was not just a scandal of private property, but a matter of life and death. If your little band of chimps didn't occupy and defend its patch of land then the girl chimpanzees didn't have enough food to bear and raise baby chimps. Ditto humans, down to the beginning of the industrial era when Rousseau and Shaw lived where food-growing land isn't an issue any more. What matters is to find something to do for which other people will pay money. It could be writing discourses on inequality and novels like Emile, Or Treatise on Education or writing essays on socialism and mega-hit plays about a London flower girl and a phonetics professor. Or, for lesser lights, it might be inventing power looms that make clothing affordable for poor folks and steam trains that let the poor move about.

What I am saying is that political leaders, whose job it is to protect us against enemies, don't have a job to do any more.

Oh, I know. George Soros's prosecutors are busy encouraging criminals so that in about five years or so some fool politician will rise to power on a platform of fighting crime.

My point is that politicians are running around pretending to be great leaders in an age when we don't need great leaders.

We don't need great leaders to solve the supply-chain problems; we just need someone to undo all the regulations that prevent the supply chain from doing its job. We don't need someone to order everyone to get a COVID vaccination; we just need a little more work on COVID treatments so that people with co-morbidities aren't quite so vulnerable to a disease that is about 5 times worse than the regular flu. We don't need the FBI to be hunting down domestic terrorists threatening school boards; we just need school boards that do their job and don't let rapists into the girls' bathroom.

Our great problem today is that we have ruling classes and political structures that want to act like ruling classes of olden times, fighting the foe to protect us from our enemies. Only, 97 percent of people can and should be just getting on with their responsible middle-class lives without unnecessary interference from elite people with a Savior complex.

What we are seeing right now, as the Biden administration dissolves into mind-numbing stupidity, is an object lesson in governance.

Government is only useful in fighting an enemy. All other human activity can be better done without political leaders wanting to shove themselves out front waving a sword and promising to save us from... well what, exactly?

And when rulers force themselves to the front and act like Henry V at Agincourt they only Make Things Worse.

End of an Empire: Bang or Whimper?

In T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" he writes:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

So. Is that the way the Grand Empire of the United States of America ends?

Today Victor Davis Hanson reviews the end of the Roman Empire and its division into two parts, eastern and western. The eastern, Byzantine, empire lasted for a thousand years till the Ottoman Turks conquered Byzantium in 1453. The western half devolved into feudal Europe -- featuring for many centuries the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation -- and then into the Europe of nations and now the Europe of whom Margaret Thatcher opined, "they're a weak lot, some of them... weak, feeble."

Hanson wonders about an America divided into a Byzantine heartland and Roman coasts.

The Zman looks at the end of the Soviet Empire. He thinks we are seeing something like the rise of the oligarchs at the end of the Soviet Union, and thinks that the rise of our current financial and tech oligarchs is telling us something. OF course, he writes, the oligarchs didn't inherit the Soviet Union.

In Russia, the oligarchs were brought to heel by the one universal source of power. Vladimir Putin, with the support of the intelligence community and the military was able to reassert civil control of Russia.

The career of Vladimir Putin is instructive. La Wik:

Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He later moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of president Boris Yeltsin. He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999. 

Makes you wonder if there is someone in the US "intelligence community" with the talents and the ambition of a Putin. And when Putin resigned from the KGB was he acting on his own or with the approval and support of a "deep state" within the KGB? Or what.

Or, can we defang the "deep state?" Theodore Roosevelt Malloch proposes limiting careers of bureaucrats and congressmen and gradually defunding the intelligence agencies. But some of his commenters would prefer a midnight strike.

I don't know. But I would say that the modern middle-class, market-oriented society is different from the Roman Empire and the Soviet Empire, because the middle-class market-oriented society could operate perfectly satisfactorily without its "deep state" overlords.

So I would say that the important question is whether the ordinary middle class could tell the current ruling class to go fly a kite, and make it stick.

Or, more specifically, could the current vaccine mandate and CRT resistance cause the collapse of the current ruling class? Could the resistance tell the FBI to go pound sand, and make it stick?

We don't know.

What Should We Teach the Ruling Class to Do?

My line on ruling classes is that human nature programs the leaders of society to be warriors, fighting the existential foe to save the tribe from extinction.

And I say, following Nazi Carl Schmitt, that politics is about friend vs. enemy. In other words if you are in politics your game is identifying and making war on an enemy. Otherwise you have nothing to do.

That's how I understand the ruling class's current obsession with climate change and systemic racism. Climate change empowers the world's ruling class to lead to lead the whole world against the existential threat of runaway warming. Because fossil fuels. Think about it. It's really a natural, because it avoids the little problem that any problem less than global warming would mean that the enemy is some nation state: Russia or China or some such.

And systemic racism allows the educated ruling class to make war on bigots and racist-sexist-homophobes. What could be funner?

My judgement is that both climate change and systemic racism are less about fighting real enemies and more about finding something for the ruling class to fight against. Because the ruling class is political and politics needs an enemy, per Nazi Carl Schmitt.

Now, I would say that to have the ruling class fighting climate change and systemic racism is an improvement. After all, our ruling class in the last century has been in the business of world wars, starting with college president Woodrow Wilson sorting out Europe in 1917-19. And rich-kid FDR sorting out the world in 1941-45. And various warrior presidents sorting out the Commies in 1948-89.Two generations of young men were sent to war; fortunately most came back. I have come to believe that it was all ruling class conceit and baloney, but that's just me. And if our ruling class is currently all worked up about systemic racists, maybe cancel culture is better than a full-on Reign of Terror or Great Purge or Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

But can't we think of something better for our rulers to do? Some way for them to be heroic warriors without actually having a fighting war that wrecks the economy, or a fake war like climate change that wrecks the economy.

Hey I know! How about a war on bureaucracy! A war on useless schools that fail to teach the children of "oppressed peoples" how to wive and thrive in the modern world! A war on racial quotas and DEI? But, of course, there is one little problem. These wars do not establish the ruling class as the political heroes beloved by their grateful peoples.

But just as we have progressed from leaders as actual military fighters -- as in the days of Henry V -- to politicians that leave the fighting to generals that leave the fighting to actual lieutenants and corporals, and now to the fight against climate change that has no real fighting at all, I don't see why we can't make national heroes out of guys that clean up the mess in the bureaucracy. You know, like Donald Trump promised to clean up the Deep State.

And I don't see why we can't make heroes out of the men and women that stand up to the lefty cancel culture "activists," rather than making heroes out of "activists" that are tilting at the windmills of racism-sexism-homophobia in a world where you are a complete fool ever to even roll your eyes at one of the "oppressed peoples" of whom we'eve heard tell.

This is all to say that my idea of the most heroic and noble thing in the world is not to be a warrior hero, real or fake, but a sacrificial hero, someone who sacrifices his life on the border between Order and Chaos so that the rest of us may live. I call it "A Vision of the Good Life Better Than the Left."

Hey! Sounds like a great idea. The only question is what is the Next Step.

And I have No Idea what to do next.

Climate Science Made Real Simple

Are you pissed off by the climate change boondoggle, that CO2 is a polluting gas that must be curbed when, as anyone with half a brain knows, CO2 is a life-giving nutrient for plants?

Here's a theory of climate that will knock your socks off, from Jack Cashill at American Thinker. "Figuring out the lack of connection between CO2 and ice ages." It explains the whole procedure.

It's a great article and I suggest you read it yourself. But here is my take.

1. Ice ages are provoked by a cooling stage in the Milankovitch orbital cycles that are about 22,000 years per cycle.
2. But ice ages typically go on for 100,000 years. What gives?
3. Once big ice sheets have formed in the northern hemisphere the high albedo of the ice sheets -- reflecting the sun's rays and heat back into space -- prevents natural warming.
4. But the cold is bad for CO2 as the oceans absorb more and more CO2. And the low CO2 level is bad for plants, because CO2 is plant food. 
5. When the CO2 level gets down to about 180 ppm, C3 photosynthesis stops, especially at higher elevations, and that creates deserts in e.g., the Gobi desert.
6. Desert plus wind equals dust storms. You could call it Global Dusting. And dust on ice sheets lowers their albedo, absorbing the sun's heat and allowing the climate to heat up.
7. End of ice age and beginning of interglacial.
8. Return to Step 1.

For me there is one big "thing I didn't know" here.

I knew about the CO2 concentration going down to 180 ppm during ice ages. But it had never occurred to me that the result of that would be deserts and dust storms.

But when you think about it, of course it does! Sahara desert. Dust storms. Why, I read all about that in Biggles Sweeps the Desert as a young'un. In Biggles Sweeps the Desert there is a big dust storm -- "the dreaded haboob of the African deserts" -- in the Western Desert west of Egypt. Biggles and Ginger are caught in the storm while driving a German armored car in the desert.

Of course! And when you get the CO2 level down to 180 ppm and the whole of the northern hemisphere is a bloody dust storm that ends up polluting the sacred ice sheets with dirty black desert dust, well, what you get is runaway Global Warming, a climate change from the frigid Ice Age into a nice cozy interglacial until the next Milankovitch cycle plunges you back into the Ice Age again.

To be continued. They say, however, that we are about 4,000 years from the end of the present interglacial. So that's all right. Plenty of time to stamp out systemic racism before it's too late.

Suppose We Had a Wise and Prudent Ruling Class

I was reading the Zman today inveighing against Democracy, because "one man one vote" and equality goes against the whole of history -- and pre-history.

Democracy flies in the face of everything we know about human organization, because it rejects the natural hierarchy we see everywhere. 

I'm not so sure. The point about democratic elections is that the voters in a community can divide over governance and fight to the finish in an election rather than a civil war. Much better than the alternative.

There is plenty of hierarchy in democracy, if you ask me. And, as the last election proved, most voters are influenced by high-status influencers, like scientists and intellectuals and the journalists that make everything "real simple" for the masses. The rulers and the talkers set the agenda: there is hierarchy for you.

No, I see the problem in the basic problem of all human governance. The job of a government is to protect us from enemies and raiders. And governments have paid the soldiers that protect us since time immemorial in the coin of loot and plunder.

So just as the sham fight of elections has replaced the real fight of border wars, the entitlement state has replaced loot and plunder.

Really, you can say, what has changed?

Or, more to the point, will we ever change?

Because I see our current problem as the problem that politics and elections inevitably descend into loot and plunder. It's in our genes.

So if we had a really wise and sensible ruling class, it would get together with a nod and a wink; it would still play the game of loot and plunder to pander to the peasants. But when it came to the usual deals in the corridors of power, the game would be reduced to something harmless. Just as an election is an extremely harmless alternative to a real civil war.

But that's not where we are. Over the weekend I read how the $3.2 trillion infrastructure plan -- with free Pre-K and free college and Medicare-for-all -- is a mere shadow of the $30 trillion plan that Bernie Sanders was originally pushing.

See, my reaction is incredulous. Surely, I would say, we now know that the entitlement state is really not a good idea. Maybe it's a good idea to help people in trouble. Certainly it makes sense to deal with the usual and periodic financial crisis. But surely it is time to stop the expansion of routine loot and plunder and think about how we can reform the welfare state. To make it more social and less rigidly administrative and bureaucratic.

I don't think that "the people" demanded the welfare state. I don't think that "the people" have ever had the imagination for that. A "free" universal education system? It takes an educated person to think that up. Ordinary people don't think above the level of labor-union members trashing their employer's factory when the employer wants to lower wages during an economic downturn.

I say that the welfare state was concocted by ruling-class intellectuals because the welfare state creates a lot of jobs for bossy intellectuals and educated middle managers. The attraction of entitlement programs is that We the Special People get to run them.

Oh yeah, sure. When you appeal to The People during an election and ask them if they would like free health care, of course they are going to say yes.

But it is the job of a Wise and Educated elite to look down the road and think: "wow, this is all very well, but how are we ever going to adjust the program to changing conditions and keep it from descending into corruption and incompetence?"

I mean, it's not as if the idea of a useless bureaucracy is new. Charles Dickens was making hay in Little Dorrit with the Circumlocution Office staffed by useless Barnacles and Stiltstockings. This was back in 1855!

I think that a Wise and Educated elite would be thinking about how more people need to be engaged in society contributing to our social welfare, rather than being cogs in a bureaucratic machine and helpless recipients of welfare from a beneficent Oz.

In other words, I believe that we should have a society in which people are engaged in helping each other, educating each other, benefiting each other, rather than voting for a politician to do it all for us: paid for by the rich, of course.

Yes, but, you say. How can the ruling class change direction of society? How can they ignore the will and the appetite of the people for free stuff?

Really? Serious? The ruling class ignores the will of the people all the time.

Look at it this way. Our ruling class has decided that we need to completely change our energy economy, because global warming. Whether or not global warming is true, there is no popular enthusiasm for transformation of energy; it is all ruling class. Our ruling class has decided that the biggest social problem is "systemic racism." But ordinary people didn't come up with that. It was an elite thing, from start to finish.

So here's my idea, ruling class. It's time for you to lead us. To lead us to a more social society. Not a society where you guys get to strut and fret your hour upon the stage saving us from a climate apocalypse, or pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of systemic racism.

Indeed, your enthusiasm for climate change and systemic racism is a "tell." It is a tell that you don't have anything serious to do. That you have had to invent issues like climate change and systemic racism in order for you to have something to do. In other words, it tells us that you are empty-headed fools and knaves that just aren't serious about being a responsible and responsive ruling class.

But to reform the welfare state, to make it more social, more interactive, to give more responsibility to ordinary people to contribute to the welfare of society: what a glorious vision! Think of how the leader of such a movement would go down in history!

Instead of which we are teaching our Good Little Girls to be "activists," to cancel university professors that don't toe the lefty line. To pursue United States Senators into the bathroom.

Really? This is all that you ruling-class geniuses can come up with?

In other words, we have a clueless ruling class pursuing useless ideas that lead nowhere. Hey you guys make the ancien régime of France look like political geniuses.

No, Democracy isn't the problem. It's the rulers that are the problem.

Let's Count Our Midterm Chickens

Yes, I know you're not supposed to count your chickens before they are hatched, but everybody does. And there is this little question of a Midterm Election coming up in a little over a year. In the tradition of "wait until next time" a guy can't help but wonder.

Traditionally, as everybody knows, the president's party tends to lose seats in a midterm, and especially in the second midterm of a two term presidency. Because.

So, guess that the biggest midterm gain was for Republicans since 1900? Any takers?

Yep it was 1938, in the second term of national savior Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Here are the results.

Year	Dem Seats	Dem Gain	Rep Seats	Rep Gain	Ind
1938	262	-72	169	81	4

Imagine! The GOP gained 81 seats and the Dems still had a 93 seat majority.

OK. Enough of that. What was the next best midterm for the GOP?

Exactly, it was 1914 just after Princeton University President Wilson was elected.

Year	Dem Seats	Dem Gain	Rep Seats	Rep Gain	Ind
1914	230	-61	196	69	9

And notice that, even then, the Dems had a 30 seat majority in the House.

OK. Let's get to the third best GOP midterm.

Year	Dem Seats	Dem Gain	Rep Seats	Rep Gain	Ind
2010	193	-64	242	64	0

Wow. We forget what a blowout that 2010 midterm was. Perhaps that's because our noble friends in the media don't like to talk about it too much. Because, after all, if the World's First Black President suffers the third worst midterm blowout since 1900 in the middle of his first term it must be because of racism. Right?

And think of this! Back then, in the dim and distant past, nobody was shouting "Let's Go Brandon" at NASCAR races.

Yes, imagine. Back in the day in 2010 we just had gentlemanly Tea Partiers waving the odd "Don't Tread on Me" flag. Remember how remarkable that felt?

OK, Newt Gingrich, your turn next, with your Contract with America in 1994. But your midterm was only the Fifth Best for Republicans since 1900.

Year	Dem Seats	Dem Gain	Rep Seats	Rep Gain	Ind
1994	204	-54	230	54	0

Remember back in 1994? The deal was that Bill Clinton had run as a New Democrat, a complete moderate, dontcha know. Then he got into office and immediately had a fainting fit. He had No Idea what a mess the federal finances were. So a tax increase was needed. And then he sent Hillary to work on Hillarycare.

Funny how things repeat themselves. Nobody here but us moderates during the campaign but tax and spend to the limit once we get in power.

But at least the Dem lies and obfuscations have got worse over the years. When they were pushing Obamacare they had the decency to lie that we would save money and keep our doctor. Now everything is "infrastructure." Oh, and now the additional spending costs "zero dollars."

So, what will be the result in the midterm in 2022?

I haven't a clue.

But I'd say that anything less that a 40-seat GOP gain in the House would be shameful. A 50-seat gain would be respectable. A 60-seat gain would be "now you're talkin'."

The only fearless prediction I am willing to make is that the Biden presidency will look worse by this time next year.

Rep. Clyburn's "Tell" on Reconciliation Package

One of my maxims is Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. Of course that is just one side of the fact that government programs cannot work because you can never cut them.

Why? Because all government spending is loot and plunder, goodies handed out to the supporters of the regime. No different from the jolly old Vikings. And one thing that supporters of the regime demand is that their checks never be reduced, or, God forbid, taken away.

So when House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) went on TV recently he advocated for cutting down the cost of the reconciliation bill by shortening how long some of the programs in the bill will be in place, because once a program is in place, it will “be difficult to take it away.”

You know when you turn the shelf life of something and reduce the number here, let’s say make a five-year plan rather than a ten-year plan, you know very well that it’s very hard to get rid of these programs that ever are initiated five years out. So, you know that you’ll get your way anyway in that event. Because whatever you get, it’s something that’s hard to take away when they expire, right?”

Is Rep. Clyburn right, or is he right?

He's right until the federal government can't pay its bills. Then the only question becomes will the government start cutting programs or will it just inflate them away with Money Printer Go Brrrrrr.

And that is why Republican voters are always pissed off at their representatives because they have no spine. Cut all these useless programs, we say. Why don't you cut Obamacare? Why don't you cut welfare? Why don't you cut health care for illegal immigrants?

But not Social Security and Medicare, the primary programs for average middle-class people. Heavens no!

Of course, every government program that ever lived has always been justified by its usefulness, its justice, its diversity, its anti-racism, its equity. But all that is really lipstick on a pig. The only thing that matters is handing out stuff to your supporters.

And this really illustrates the utter moral bankruptcy of our liberal ruling class. For all the pretty talk, what they want is to stay in power, and whether they know it or not, the key to staying in power is to offer goodies at the next election.

And I say that every new program ends up Making Things Worse. And more Unjust as well.

Let's go through the programs in historical order.

Education (est. $1.3 trillion in 2020) was supposed to raise the people up. And drive crime down. That's what Horace Mann told us in the 1840s. Well, now it is just a jobs program for unionized supporters of the regime, and more and more does less and less actual education and more and more indoctrination of ruling-class ideology, as in Critical Race Theory. So government education Makes Things Worse.

Social Security ($1.1 trillion in 2020) was supposed to be a fully funded insurance program. But in fact it is just a transfer program from workers to retirees. If it had been a genuine savings program then the savings of the retirees would be creating jobs for workers. And people would retire when they could afford to -- in other words when their savings had created enough jobs for the young'uns to pay their pension.Oh, and get this: retirees would often have wealth to hand down to their children! But, in fact, Social Security will run out of money and then they will either raise taxes on workers, cut pensions on retirees (probably by raising taxes on Social Security payments), or just inflate pensions away. So government Social Security Makes Things Worse.

Medicare (gross $0.92 trillion in 2020) has always been funded mostly by the federal income tax. So it means that rich people subsidize middle-class health care and end-of-life care. Frankly, I'd prefer it if the middle class paid our own health care, and if the rich earned brownie points by helping those who cannot-afford-health-care-through-no-fault-of-their-own. But the main thing would be to have health care not be government-regulated stem-to-stern. Because "regulatory capture," dontcha know. Yes, but whatabout "end of life" health care? Well, don't look now but the experts and the bureaucrats and the scientists are busy stitching up Medicare to make sure that grandma doesn't cost too much at end of life -- as in Medicare Hospice, which in my experience is a conveyor belt to the graveyard. So government Medicare Makes Things Worse

And so on.

But here is my secret hope. I hope that the lefty progressives from Sen. Sanders to Rep. Clyburn to Rep. Cortez are overstepping the mark. I hope that they are making ordinary Americans so mad that the ordinary Americans will elect a Congress and a President to go ahead and repeal everything done during the Biden administration. Just because Let's Go Brandon!

But I realize that I am dreaming of a world that will never be.

But what is life without its dreams and fantasies?

Open Letter and Questionnaire to Sens. Murray and Cantwell

Dear Senators Murray and Cantwell:

As a concerned citizen of the State of Washington I am confused. On the one hand my Democratic friends and neighbors seem to be copacetic with riots organized and performed by left-wing groups like BLM and AntiFa. On the other hand they seem be deeply threatened by riots organized by right-wing groups like Proud Boys.

Of course in these difficult times, it is not surprising that educated and evolved people feel threatened. Who knows what collusions with the Russians to disrupt the congressional elections in 2022 -- in which I dare say that you, Sen. Murray, will once again offer yourself to the voters of Washington -- are even now in the planning stage?

Now, in the last week we have experienced a United States Senator being the target of left-wing activists over the issue of normalization of status for so-called Dreamers. But we also have the phenomenon of angry parents attending school-board meetings to protest the teaching of "critical race theory" to their children in our public schools.

Now, I read, the Attorney General of the United States has directed the FBI to investigate the parents that have threatened school board members. I am bound to say that I have not heard of any federal investigation of the LUCHA activists that protested Sen. Sinema.

I have not heard any reaction from you two faithful Senators to this developing situation. I wonder what your take is? Do you find it concerning that female United States Senator Sinema was followed by protesters into a bathroom and photographed? And what about the parents that protested outside the home of a female school-board member Shirley Brown in Sarasota County, Florida?

Of course, I am sure that your take on these matters is extremely wise and nuanced. But maybe your staffers take a different line.

Would you please submit the following questionnaire to each of your staffers, which asks them to indicate their take on the two recent protests, and return the results to me. I would appreciate getting your responses by October 15, 2021.

Questionnaire

Q: What is your closest reaction to the recent protests involving Senator Sinema (R-AZ) and immigration activists from LUCHA? Please mark an X against the response that most nearly approximates your own view.

In my opinion protesters are:	Mark X in box
Dedicated Activists
Peaceful Protesters
Angry and justified
Mostly Peaceful Protesters
Dupes of George Soros
Far-left extremists
Racist bigots
Violent rioters
Domestic terrorists
Armed insurrectionists
Attempted assassins

Q: What is your closest reaction to the recent protests involving Shirley Brown of the Sarasota Country School Board and anti-CRT parents? Please mark an X against the response that most nearly approximates your own view.

In my opinion protesters are:	Mark X in box
Dedicated Activists
Peaceful Protesters
Angry and justified
Mostly Peaceful Protesters
Dupes of Donald Trump
Far-right extremists
Racist bigots
Violent rioters
Domestic terrorists
Armed insurrectionists
Attempted assassins

Please call an all-hands meeting of your staffers and aides and direct them to fill in the questionnaire not later than Friday October 8, 2021 and email the results to me at chrischantrill at gmail dot com by October 15, 2021.

In these trying times, please make sure to keep safe so you both can continue to serve the people of the State of Washington.

Sincerely,

Christopher Chantrill

The Intersection of Politics and Religion

I wanted to start this piece with a reference to an article I read a day or two ago about the intersection of politics and religion, and how problematic that is. But I can't find it.

Obviously politics and religion are inevitably intertwined. And that is as clear to me as ever since I read Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political where he defines the political as friend vs. enemy and the moral as good vs. evil.

Let us define an enemy as someone who is a physical threat, who might visit violence upon us.

Let us define an evil person as someone who is something less than a physical threat to us: someone who is a moral threat to the community.

The point is that an evil person is not necessarily an enemy, although an enemy is probably evil.

The problem is that the more anyone mixes up politics and religion the more likely they are to consider an evil person to be an enemy.

And the point about an enemy, as Carl Schmitt makes clear, is that "conflict," ultimately leading to killing, is inherent in the notion of "enemy."

We humans can argue all day about whether the chap down the street is evil or not. And that is pretty harmless, until we bring politics and government into the equation. Because government is force, and politics is Us vs. Them, Friend vs. Enemy, and ultimately the only safe thing to do with an enemy is to kill him. 

And that's the problem with our progressive friends. Once you have decided that the job of government has to do with justice, righting wrongs, then pretty soon you are labeling the unjust as people that need to have their heads chopped off. Hello Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.

Obviously, there is no complete separation of the political and the moral, or church from state. But I'd say that the whole point of the moral is to influence humans into doing pro-social acts short of actually threatening them physically to get their act together.

Put it another way. The reason he humans experience a thing called "guilt" is probably God's way of helping us avoid a lot of violent conflict. When we feel guilty we probably decide not to do something evil, or regret actually doing something that we come to understand as evil.

Inevitably the two -- the political and the moral -- will intermix, and there will always be a tendency for humans to regard someone they experience as evil as nothing less than an enemy.

And let us connect this with my notion of male honor and female honor that I got years ago from James Bowman's Honor: A History. Honor in men is courage, standing in line with the brothers against the enemy. Honor in women is chastity, or being a good little girl, as I like to sneer. "Don't be evil," as Google says. But you can see that honor in women also means holding together with the other women in the community and "not talking to" someone who is acting against the mores of the community.

So the question always comes down to this: is the obnoxious guy down the street causing enough of a problem to classify him as an enemy, and invoke the power of the state to compel him to observe social norms?

Does he have a couple of wrecked cars and a bunch of trash on his property? Is he building a mega-mansion that is three times the size of every other house on the block? Does he have loud parties that go on into the middle of the night? Does he steal the odd dahlia in high summer?

Then obviously there are things that have to be agreed if things are to work: driving on the right. Then there are nice-to-haves: keeping businesses out of a residential district. Then there smelly factories on the downwind end of town. Then there is the issue of pollution, factories that are not just smelly but emit substances that actually harm other living things. In other words what the economists call "externalities," activities that harm other people. And if you want to carry it to the limit, then there is the question of climate change, where fossil fuels are going to cause irreversible changes to the climate.

Hey! It's complicated!

But I would say that the "tell" is when the normal argument about good and evil escalates into the designation of the evil person as an "enemy."

And I would say that our liberal friends are a little too quick to designate political opponents as enemies. 

But I understand why. When you have merged politics and religion, as many of our modern belief systems do, then the difference between and evil person and an enemy becomes at best confused and at worse erased. The evil one is an enemy and the enemy is evil.

And what can you do with an evil enemy, except destroy him? Or her.

Tiger Moms and Equity

I was to a party recently and found myself in a group with three moms of children on the cusp of college. They were full of AP and Running Start and Berkeley and other swank colleges.

Did you know? Back in the day there weren't any counselors to advise high-schoolers on Running Start ("Running Start is a program that allows 11th and 12th grade students to take college courses at Washington[ State]'s 34 community and technical colleges.") But now there are.

I asked the mom next to me what was driving all this super-achievement, and she said that it is a combination of kids and parents and school. Then she said something about "Equity."

Because she is a Nice Person. As usual, I didn't have a retort ready: not even "Puleeeze!" And anyway I wouldn't have wanted to prick her progressive bubble. That's not what parties are for.

But I immediately had a divine vision, directly from God. There is no way that the current fashion for "equity" among our educati is going to make a blind bit of difference.

Why? Because to play the game of Get Into a Good College you need one thing. You need a Tiger Mom. Everything else is liberal b*llsh*t.

OK, I know. You anti-racists are out there condemning me to Twitter Death for racism, because we know that Tiger Moms are all East Asian moms. OK, let's use a cat that's native to the good old US and A. Bobcat? Not fierce enough. Mountain Lion? Too long -- as in "mountain lion mom." Maybe "Panther Mom" will do the job.

But back to our story. There is no way that any gubmint program of "Equity" to assist BIPOC or other "oppressed peoples" children to get into college is ever going to beat the white liberal Panther Moms or the East Asian Tiger Moms.

Why? Well you tell me. Because the Tiger Moms are educated and they talk to each other and they care, they really care about getting their kids into selective colleges. Because the BIPOC moms are not that much into education and selective colleges. Because the BIPOC culture is not into higher education so much as aspiring rapperology. Because any program of Equity will devolve into a pure loot-and-plunder operation, because that it what all government programs are about.

And I'll betcha that any Equity program would end up screwing over ordinary white middle-class kids. You know, the kind of people that got screwed by Affirmative Action and then Diversity and then DEI, and now CRT.

And maybe there's another factor. I remember when I was a teenager in my pre-college years. I remember distinctly thinking that not going to college was unthinkable. What would I do if I didn't get into college? I couldn't imagine an adult life except as a college graduate.

Yes, think about this. If you are the child of educated parents, then working hard in high school and going to a good college is the road to a nice safe orderly life. You always get to be in a world where talent and intelligence and credentials are sensibly rewarded, and you gently advance through some corporate or government bureaucracy that seems to be eternal.

But the world outside that nice safe check-the-boxes life? As in start a business? As in join a tech start-up? That, clearly, is a horse of a different color.

Here's my Fearless Prediction. Whatever "Equity" becomes as the rubber hits the road and it gets instantiated into a thousand gubmint programs, I have one fearless prediction.

It will Make Things Worse.