After Democracy

Back in the day, it seems to me, government was a simply hierarchical thing. The warriors ruled; their servitors served them, and the peasants serve the servitors.

Let's say that the rising bourgeoisie wanted something more than that. They wanted government under law, an expansion of the political class beyond the landholders of the feudal regime.

But they set a movement in motion that ended up with universal democracy, where governments are elected through the vote of all adult men and women.

And starting probably with Rousseau and Babeuf, and not later than Marx, we got the over / under political formula that rules us today, the coalition between the educated class and the underclass against the middle class.

The formula is the formula of any ruling class: we are protecting you helpless ones against the enemy. The enemy started out as the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, became a generalized notion that the country-club set didn't care about the man on the street, and finally became the notion of oppressed peoples under the thumb of white oppressors.

Really, it is an immensely cunning idea, that the rulers -- in this case the educated professional class -- are fighting for the folks at the bottom of the class or race or gender hierarchy. If only the bloody middle class or capitalists or patriarchs or white supremacists weren't arrogantly oppressing the poor helpless lower ones!

Of course, it has been a lie from the very beginning. The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the fathers, the white middle class don't have any ideology of supremacy. They are just living their lives, operating their businesses, presiding over their families according to the rules, without any idea of ruling or oppressing anyone. If their business succeeds, they hire more people and promote the ones that show promise. If the business does not succeed then their try to cut costs, and may lay off workers, and also try to cut labor costs.

But when anything goes wrong with the economy, the educated class does not hesitate to blame the businessman. Of course it does. The problem could not be the educated class, and it could not be the workers.

I'd say that this formula worked very well in the day when the working class was a majority of the population, and the middle class a definite minority. But now the middle class is probably a majority of the population.

So the question arises, can the old over / under political formula of the educated class continue?

Obviously, it can, especially if you convince people in the middle class that they are really helpless victims, and create new categories of victims to swell the ranks of the underclass.

But if you screw up the economy and Make Things Worse for the underclass and the fake victims then you may find that your over / under political formula no longer works.

Or, a cabal may arise within the ruling class to appeal directly to the middle class and get them to fight back against the rule of the educated class.

Obviously, according to the ZMan, the old conservative movement was not that cabal. It was always, as William F. Buckley, standing astride history, shouting Stop, but not really doing anything about it.

But what would such a new regime look like?

To start with, if it is a politics then it must have an enemy. That enemy would be the educated class of Barnacles and Stiltstockings: the Barnacles being the hangers-on to the megastate, and the Stiltstocking being the whole activism grift. Because? Because the ruling class had ruined the lower classes by its New Slavery of entitlement programs. Because it had declared war on ordinary people that just wanted to live ordinary lives of work and family. And because it had bankrupted the nation with its eternal fake existential crises from climate change to systemic racism.

Would it be an alliance between the middle class and the lower class against the educated class? Is such a thing possible? I don't know.

Here's the problem. I don't think that the middle class is interested in power. The whole point of the middle class is that it just gets on with life. It really doesn't believe in enemies, unless you stick it in the ribs with, e.g., recession and or inflation, like right now.

Take the Reagan years. Reagan got elected in the aftermath of the Democrats' failed 1970s "stagflation." He served a couple of terms, his vice president served a term, the Democrats said: "we are all moderates," and it was over.

Even so, the Reagan revolution was merely about fixing the most egregious mistakes of the previous decade. It never got to eat real meat, as in reform of the welfare state.

And Donald Trump said, right up front, that he wasn't going to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Guess what. One Fine Day, some president is going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Could the over / under political era be replaced by a middle / out regime, that rules under a political formula that says that the middle class is the best class, the worthiest class, the sensible class, the most American class, and the educated are conceited asses and the lower class needs to get a clue?

I don't know.