The Old Regime Doesn't End Until It's Screwed Up Big Time

We armed insurrectionists complain away about Republican leaders as wimps and toadies, without backbones and cojones. They really don't represent us, we complain; they are as wedded to the system as the Democrats.

But I think we peasants protest too much. I don't think the current regime and its administrative state goes away until it screws up big time. The Zman recognizes this when he says.

[C]an the administrative state survive its own failures. A bad king in a monarchy can be replaced by the next in line. The bad office holder in a republic can voted out of office in favor of someone new. What happens when vast swaths of the administrative state have become gangrenous? How is that addressed. How are the rotten bits removed and who is given the authority to remove them?

That, of course, is the question addressed by Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. The whole point of the administrative state is that "we, the educated" get to rule and you peasants just do what you are told.

Yes, yes. But what happens when the administrative state changes its orders every other month and doesn't seem to know what it is doing? As seems to happen with the COVID crisis?

It is only then, to use a concept from our liberal friends, is when you get the opportunity for Real Change. 

Or, over at American Greatness Benjamin Braddock calls out the right "to stop being rank amateurs when it comes to politics and governance."

Yes but. I don't think the right has a chance to interfere with the current regime until the regime's politics and governance is shown to be a pathetic failure. As in a couple of years of 10 percent inflation. As in a couple of years of twerpy cock-ups on the COVID front.

And this is where, as Bismarck apparently did not say: "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America."

Really, if God wanted a spot of regime change in the United States what would He do? I think He would arrange for a senile lightweight to become president during a time when the US really needed a chap with a bit of grey stuff in his noddle. And He would arrange for a 50-50 Senate and a Majority Leader like Chuck Schumer that doesn't seem to be that good at convincing his Republican opposition to get with the program but prefers instead to threaten everyone. And He would have Nancy Pelosi -- who started out adult life doing jobs for Daddy in the D'Alesandro political machine. and has never had a real job -- as Speaker of the House and using her power to prey on the opposition.

But you don't get Real Change until the old regime runs out of money and really starts to screw over ordinary people. In normal times the ruling class does stupid things -- like green energy, for example -- but it doesn't really hit ordinary people in the pocket book good and hard. So, even though ordinary people don't see the point of giving up their pickup trucks for electric cars and bikes, nothing happens to stop the ruling class in its silliness.

But then it all hits at once. Gas prices go through the ceiling as the regulatory monster shuts off oil exploration and transportation. Green energy checks out for a couple days because no wind and/or no sun and natural gas prices go through the ceiling. And refineries stop producing urea, because natural gas prices. Urea? Yep, urea is a "feedstock" for all kinds of things from fertilizer to plastics. 

I was there in the 1970s, and I remember how ordinary people were really riled up by spiking electricity prices and gas lines.

But things have to go wrong before we can set them right. Like Education. Education has been going downhill for decades, captured by teacher unions and by all kinds of special-interest pandering and general ruling-class conceit about "we know best." Hey, but when teachers say, oh dear, I'm too stressed to go to work because COVID, and parents suddenly find out about critical race theory in the schools, then maybe there is an opportunity to go to some kind of school-choice. And even liberal gay Colorado Gov. Polis reminds us he's all for school choice.

But you can't change things until they break. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But I wish it weren't like that.