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.

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.

Learning from the Astor Place Riot

Wat? What in the world was the Astor Place Riot of 1849? I'm glad you asked.

I only learned about the Astor Place Riot in New York City a couple of days ago while reading Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro, a Columbia English professor.

Did you know that about the only entertainment in 1850 America was the playhouse? And that all classes went? And that the Big Thing was Shakespeare, which all classes enjoyed. For instance, did you know that California gold miners liked to recite Shakespeare of an evening?

And the leading actors of the day were rock stars. And they had feuds with each other.

In the case of the Astor Place Riot there was a Brit actor and a Yank actor. La Wik:

Its ostensible genesis was a dispute between Edwin Forrest, one of the best-known American actors of that time, and William Charles Macready, a similarly notable English actor, which largely revolved around which of them was better than the other at acting the major roles of Shakespeare.

Macready's  Brit Macbeth was a mincing take. Forrest's All-American Macbeth was a rough tough hombre. Here's is La Wik's intro on the riot:

The Astor Place Riot occurred on May 10, 1849, at the now-demolished Astor Opera House in Manhattan and left between 22 and 31 rioters dead, and more than 120 people injured. It was the deadliest to that date of a number of civic disturbances in Manhattan, which generally pitted immigrants and nativists against each other, or together against the wealthy who controlled the city's police and the state militia.

I get the impression, from La Wik and from Shapiro, that riots were a pretty normal feature of urban life in the 19th century.

But now I will get to the point.

The point is that, reading about New York City in the mid 19th century it seems pretty clear to me that it has a two-class politics. There was the lower-class, part native-born Americans -- e.g. "nativists"-- and part immigrant Irish and Germans. And then there was the middle and upper class.

Whereas in our time we have the over/under politics of the educated Gentry, with the educated elite successfully selling the lower class with the idea that they are their "allies." In its crudest form this over/under political formula is the Allyship notion of the Allies sticking up for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors.

And it made me think that maybe the staged riots of the present day, sponsored by the ruling class, are better than the unstaged, visceral riots of the 19th century.

In other words, I am saying that the "mostly peaceful protests" that are carried out by well-born products of our glorious universities should be regarded in the same light as the bear-baiting of olden times: boys will be boys and men like a bit of rough trade.

But when you have the nativist lower class and the immigrant lower class combining into a deadly riot -- ostensibly about Shakespeare but really as a way of thumbing their noses at the ruling class -- well, I think that I prefer the modern three-class culture and politics where the upper class struts and frets pompously and conceitedly around acting as though they were the best thing in the world for the oppressed peoples instead of a bunch of idiots that Literally Know Nothing and are Making Things Worse.

And really, what this country needs is a responsible and patriotic ordinary middle class sensibly organized into a nationalist and patriotic party of the middle class that sensibly balances the political scales against the poseurs of the educated upper class. And, needless to say, it is a middle class that gradually enrolls members of the lower class into the national community of the middle class as soon as they are ready to shed their subordinate status as victims and become ordinary responsible One Hundred Percent Americans.

So what I am saying is that we should not grumble about the vile and unjust gentry class that has split this country apart and Made Things Worse. We should go forward with joy and with a spring in our step, luxuriating in the glory of the America we know and love and the possibility of what America might become after the inevitable humiliation and defeat of the delta-minus morons that currently rule us.

We should laugh and sing at our liberal friends, pat them on the head and tell them that they can't help it, having been Good Little Boys and Good Little Girls that learned to hate and to fear as they were carefully taught from year to year in their dear little ear.

And every now and then we should speak to the Little Darlings of the liberals, the "oppressed peoples" of which you've heard tell. And we should ask them whether the liberals are really helping them, or whether they are Making Things Worse.

See, getting the Little Darlings to grow up into One Hundred Percent Americans takes time. Look at the white working class: the liberals abandoned them after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it has taken them fifty years to take down the FDR pictures on the wall and start organizing Trump Car Parades.

Why should it take blacks any longer to realize that they have been had?

Or ordinary women to realize that have been bamboozled into supporting the agenda of upper-class women snobs?

I think we can see that Hispanics are naturally moving out of the Democratic orbit as they move into the middle class.

But whatabout gays? And trans? And they/them? Well, they are all educated class twerps: we don't need to worry about them.

By the way, I was to a dinner with the neighborhood liberals lately, and boy, do they hate Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida.

And who, you may ask, taught my liberal neighbors to hate and to fear Ron DeSantis? I couldn't possibly say.

Ignoring Supreme Court: It's OK When We Do It

I get why the Biden administration is extending the rent moratorium. Their lefty activist pals are all in a twist on the injustice of making oppressed peoples pay rent.The Noive! What is the point of an ally if he/she/xir can't shove it on the white oppressor landlords on behalf of the oppressed peoples?

But I'd say, with all my years of wisdom and experience, that the sooner you Bidenoids get the economy back to normal, with no stimmy checks, no extended unemployment benefits, no rent moratoriums, no mortgage pauses, no mega-trillion handout bills, the better it will be for you in 2022 and 2024.

Frankly, I am sitting here "literally shaking" my head at what I consider the serial stupidities of the Biden administration. For me it starts with this chart from my ugovernmentspending.com.

To my way of thinking total government spending, federal, state, and local, has been about 35 percent of GDP since 1980.

Let me be clear about this. That means that 35 percent of the national GDP is decided By Force. I think that is wrong; I think it is unjust, and I think that trying to increase it, as the Bidenoids are proposing to do, and at least attempt major tax increases, is going to end in tears, in part in Democeratic circles, and in part among the voters on the receiving end of this injustice. And look at the chart: in the peak of COVID-ology governments in the US were spending 45 percent of GDP. Almost as much as in World War II. 

I think that if Democrats think they are going to boost spending above the 35, 36 percent of GDP they are going to reap the whirlwind. Don't know quite how, but I think that the 35 percent GDP number is not an accident; it represents the correlation of political forces over the last 40 years. There is no broad-based warrant for a surge in spending. Except for Democratic lefty activist groups.

Obviously in this moment our Democratic friends are trying to push through a major increase in spending. That they imagine will be permanent. I suspect that they will live to regret it.

I've been re-reading Crane Brinton's Anatomy of Revolution, and one of his takes is that revolution and counter-revolution exacts a terrible toll on ordinary people, through the disorganization of the economy by the rip-tides of politics.

My judgement about the last 18 months of COVID-ology is that it represents something getting close to a revolutionary disruption. The result will be that the top 25 percent of Americans will do fine; the middle half will do OK, and the bottom 30 percent is having their lives totally disrupted, and many of them are going to be screwed for the rest of their lives in drugs, despair, and homelessness.

And I expect that there will be major political disruptions that nobody will have seen coming.

The whole point of the Era of the Educated Ruling Class is the conceit in the Allies narrative, that "we" are the allies of the working class/oppressed peoples against the rich/white oppressors.

But I say that the educated ruling class has Made Things Worse. It made things worse for the white working class that is now "dying of despair;" it has made things worse for women, that have been disrupted from modesty, from marriage, and from children and neighborhood social works; it has made things worse for blacks, who are leading the nation in murders of and by blacks; it is making things worse for marginal people of all kinds: people with marginal job skills, marginal social skills, marginal common sense.

And now the Biden administration is defying the United States Supreme Court on the rent moratorium.

You don't wanna do that, Bidenoids. You'll regret it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But still.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tribalism: China will Divide, because Politics is Division

One of my maxims is that the only way you create a nation or a tribe or a race is by fighting a war. It is not true that people "of one race" -- whatever that "social construction" means -- are naturally united whereas a multiracial society is naturally divisive.

"Nowt o' the sort!" as they say in The Secret Garden. 

Now here is the Zman on Taki's saying that the Chinese are naturally united, because they are 90 percent Han.

The great chain of causality begins with biology, then culture, with institutions being culture-specific. Asian societies are biologically homogeneous. China proper is almost entirely Han. Their culture of conformity is mostly the result of being a unified people.

OK. So how come China keeps having its Time of Troubles in between dynasties? How come the Chinese willfully engaged in a civil war from 1921, when the Holy Roman Communist Party was founded, and 1949 when the son of a rich peasant, Mao Zedong, took power in Beijing.

And incidentally culturally appropriated the backdrop of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen, its Gate of Heavenly Peace. There are five gates, by the way, and only the emperor gets to go through the center one, peasant.

So the Chinese are all Han and therefore united. So why did Mao decide to do his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? If the Chinese were all united and stuff? Why bother, old chap?

So here is my philosophy, again.

You create a people -- whether a tribe, a nation, a class, a labor union, by  fighting and winning a war, because the experience of a war unites all the men that served and fought in the war. It's instinctive in men.

Women, on the other hand, do not unite in that way. But they do unite, as they did during COVID, by all being Good Little Girls and wearing masks and keeping social distance and crossing to the other side of the street when someone is walking their dog in the opposite direction. Let's say that women unite for a season in order to be safe.

But once the war is ended then normal politics resumes, and division appears again. Doesn't matter if it is feudal politics where the various barons and counts and dukes all conspire against each other and occasionally besiege each other's castles, or court politics as in the days of the absolute monarchs, or democratic politics where politicians divide the electorate with promises of more spending for the educated class and the underclass and lower taxes for the middle class, or neighborhood politics where the women all complain about each other with "I can't believe she said that."

Once the war is over, then the tribe begins to divide up again. Period.

So the reason why China is united and we can all talk about them being 90 percent Han is that normal politics has not resumed, what with the current single-party rule under President-for-life Xi Dingping.

But it will. I seem to recall that the southerners in China call the northerners wheat-eaters and the northerners call the southerners rice-eaters. I think that these are supposed to be insults, but not being Chinese, I wouldn't know. But, don't forget, there are plenty of dialects in China, from Mandarin to Cantonese. And I seem to recall from the delightful Crazy Rich Asians that the Chinese are as tribal as anyone. And snobbish? You betcha. But look at the Map of Chinese dialects: "China is a large and diverse country." Who knew?

No. No go. All tribes are fake tribes, gussied up to take men to war. And as I say, the tribe of the lower class is the ethnic group, the tribe of the middle class is the nation, the tribe of the educated class in the global educated class.

Notice that the preferred political division of our current ruling class, called "antiracism," posits a division of America between the "oppressed peoples, their allies, and white oppressors."

Notice how there are three lies in the Allyism manifesto.

Lie 1: The so-called "oppressed peoples" are in fact the lower class that is particularly privileged by the rulers with diversity and inclusion and welfare-state loot and plunder.

Lie 2: The so-called "allies" are in fact the ruling class -- oppressors by any other name -- that uses the notion of "oppressed peoples" as a political formula to justify its power.

Lie 3: The so-called "white oppressors" are just ordinary middle-class whites that don't have any particular political power with which to oppress people. They are people that the rulers can cancel in a New York minute as "racist" if they step out of line.

I think that my concept that all tribes are "fake tribes," gussied up in war, is a profound and liberating concept.

Because, you see, in my vision of the good life, if people naturally accept that different classes have different tribes, then the educated Gentry happily lives in its global community of high-minded educated priests all over the world. But the educated class benevolently allows the Commoners to live and wive and thrive in their nations, because in its wisdom it understands that the natural tribe of the middle class is the nation, and the poor dears will never grow out of it. The middle class benevolently allows the Subordinates to live in their ethnic enclaves, but encourages the Subordinates to come out of their ghettos and join the middle-class world of responsibility and trust whenever they are ready.

What a world that would be.

For now, we should start erecting the bleachers so we can watch the Chinese people quarrel among themselves once the Emperor Xi no longer rules a one-party state.

The End of Over/Under Politics

Back in the day, we didn't have over/under politics. Back in 12th century England, politics was all about squabbling nobles. In Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir there isn't a word about the middle class or the oppressed peoples. Politics is all about King Henry II of England and his Angevin Empire -- which included England and a good half of France. When he wasn't putting down rebellions among his feudatories he was playing political games with the King of France and quarreling with his sons.

And if he got really annoyed with one of his feudal retainers he would lay siege to his castle and destroy it and probably set fire to the town around it.

I guess if you were a poor person you just hung on and hoped that your lord would prosper -- and not tax you too heavily to finance his wars.

But then there was the Black Death and in its aftermath wages went up and the lower orders became a bit uppity what with Wat Tyler's Rebellion in 1381 against the poll tax needed to finance the Hundred Years War.

And then came the nationalization of the armed forces and the development of agricultural "improvement" and the surplus peasants were sent packing.

Thus the first Vagabonds and Beggars Act of 1497. And the first Poor Law in 1536, although the first big poor law was in 1597. Clearly, in this world, the poor have emerged into political consciousness: as a problem, rather than an opportunity.

So how do we get from the taken-for-granted hierarchy of the Middle Ages to the over-under political philosophy that is clearly in full bloom with rich kids Marx and Engels by 1850?

Well, more research is needed. But, to start with, in the 18th century, we have Rousseau. In The Discourse on Inequality he argues that mankind in the "state of nature" is driven by pity and self-preservation. Says SparkNotes:

Man in the state of nature has few needs, no idea of good and evil, and little contact with other humans. Nevertheless, he is happy.

But he has "perfectibility." And this drives him to respond to his environment, and live in groups, and develop reason and society. But this is not good, because

As men start to live in groups, pity and self-preservation are replaced by amour propre, which drives men to compare themselves to others, and to need to dominate others in order to be happy.

This leads to a dangerous instability between rich and poor, leading to war, that is solved by a trick where the rich entice the poor into a political society that merely "fixes the relations of dominance." And, of course, private property is the cornerstone of this dominance.

In The Social Contract "agreed upon by all citizens for their mutual preservation" Rousseau defines the "sovereign" as "the collective grouping of all citizens" that "expresses the general will that aims for the common good." It is in conflict with the actual "government to exercise executive power." And the "sovereign" and "government" are typically in conflict.

Then we have Babeuf, in the French Revolution. His "newspaper Le tribun du peuple (The Tribune of the People) was best known for its advocacy for the poor and calling for a popular revolt against the Directory, the government of France. He was a leading advocate for democracy and the abolition of private property."

But both Rousseau and Babeuf were commoners -- Rousseau was the son of a watchmaker; Babeuf the son of an officer who was working as a domestic servant at the beginning of the Revolution. 

Next we get Saint Simon, born an aristocrat, and another socialist theorist. But he recommended the rule of an "industrial class... [that] included all people engaged in productive work that contributed to society such as businesspeople, managers, scientists and bankers, along with manual labourers, amongst others."

Honestly, I don't see how all this muddle gets to Marx and the brilliant idea that rich educated kids like him will lead the helpless workers to glorious revolution and heaven on Earth.

But, clearly, the logic of politics as war by other means leads Marx to invent a struggle of the poor helpless workers against the monstrous and evil capitalists and bourgeoisie, not because the capitalists and bourgeoisie are necessarily evil but because the logic of his over/under political system requires an enemy.

In fact, of course, the two centuries since the French Revolution and the century and a half since The Communist Manifesto have seen a Great Enrichment, an increase of 30 times in real per capita income in the western world. And we have had scientific experiments on whole populations that have conclusively demonstrated that the market economy delivers prosperity to ordinary people and poor people, and that the ideas of Marx lead to slavery and death camps and famine.

So I say that the current spasm of over/under politics, in the antiracism of Allyism, with allies advocating for "oppressed peoples" against "white oppressors" is more nonsense driven by the logic of over/under politics that requires the middling sort of people to be the enemy. That's because the logic of politics requires an enemy, and the logic of over/under politics requires that the enemy be the middle. Who else could it be?

I say there is a reason why over/under politics switched from Marx's over/under politics of class to the current over/under politics of race. The reason is that by, say 1970, the numbers weren't working, because the Great Enrichment had lifted too many helpless workers into the responsible middle class. So a new concept was required, of racial oppression and white guilt. "Anti Whiteness," if you will.

But what do we do about it?

I don't think that the answer is a conscious whiteness race movement. And my reason arises out of my reductive Three Peoples theory. In the Three Peoples theory it is easy to understand the logic of the left's over/under politics. The "over" class of rulers is the educated elite, the Cathedral of Curtis Yarvin's notion, and it wants to be important, wants to rule. But the ordinary responsible Commoners of the middle class don't want too much government rule, thank you very much, so the obvious thing for the overclass to do is to champion the "under" class, the Subordinate Clients, and hopefully get to direct traffic. This situation is obviously a class situation.

And I don't think that the middle middle people experience themselves as "white." That's because the logic of being middle class and doing middle-class things is that you work to serve the consumer and you associate with people that you can trust because they exhibit a record of trustworthy behavior; you obey the law, you go to work, and you follow the rules, and you don't really think about it. Notice how this middling trust culture differs from the overclass where you trust people with the right ideas and credentials and from the underclass where you associate with people of your race, or class, or language, or kindred.

And that is why I think that the future for the middle middle is a class identification of being middle class commoners rather than white people.

So I believe that the Great Rebellion of Commoners will not be defined by race but by class.

Yes, but whatabout the non-white members of the middle class? Won't they identify with their ethnic and religious origins rather than with whiteness?

No, I don't think they will, and the reason is war. In my view all groups and tribes and nations are defined by the war in which various disparate elements are drawn together and forged into a political (or military) army. This experience creates a new cultural community, a new identity, a new "band of brothers." If the "army" wins its war then it defines a new community, a new identity. In our time, the "band of brothers" creates a new nation. If it loses, of course, it disappears into the mists of time.

So my prophecy is that the facts of the situation today in which the ordinary middle class finds itself attacked by the Cathedral is radicalizing the middle class, and the experience of defending the middle-class identity, and the instinctive political strategy of the politicians representing the middle-class identity, is creating a new political identity and a new unity. And the disparate people that are coming together into this new identity will increasingly experience themselves as united into a nation of commoners rather than the previous identity they may have experienced.

I give you President Trump. Our lefty friends insisted that he was a racist sexist homophobe, because Charlottesville. But I'd say that President Trump has and does define himself as a leader of Americans, ordinary, patriotic, middle-class Americans. In other words, he defines himself exactly as you would expect a leader of ordinary middle-class American commoners rebelling against the rule of the educated overclass.

And I think the current instinctive panic of our Democratic friends, where they are trying to ram through their entire woke agenda in six months, demonstrates that, even if our Democratic friends don't consciously understand the rise of the Commoners, they just feel that something is rotten in the state of Denmark and the foundations of their world are shaking. So there is no time to be lost.

And they are right to be concerned. Because I prophesy that the Age of Domination of Over/Under Politics is coming to an end.

Politics Equals Us vs. Them Equals Hate

In my eternal quest to understand the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" I come back again and again to politics. Here are all my maxims that mention politics:

Politics is the art of division.

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

Politics is the royal road to injustice.

Politics is the exercise of collective power against human opposition. (Curtis Yarvin)

There is no politics without an enemy. (Curtis Yarvin)

The only thing that politics knows is hate and loot and plunder.

The more politics, the more injustice.

When a political movement achieves its objectives it doesn’t go home.

When a political movement achieves its objectives it doesn’t have to play nice any more.

When a political movement achieves its objectives it is time to crush its enemies.

Nietzsche: “the priests” teach us to hate ourselves. Me: the politicians teach us to hate others.

Politics is the division between “us” and “them;” Religion is the division between “good” and “evil.” Totalitarianism is the division between “us good people” and “them evil people.”

Politics is about trying to get things you shouldn’t want.

The first rule of politics is: never tell people the truth.

Politics and government are all about force; law is all about private property; religion is all about morality.

Politics is downstream from culture (Breitbart) is downstream from religion (Wright) is downstream from the meaning of “life, the universe, and everything” (Chantrill).

I think it is time to add a couple new ones

Politics equals "Us" vs. "Them."

Politics equals Hate.

See, the guy that got me going on this is my own special Seattle City Councilman Dan Strauss. I had a phone conversation with him a while back, and before he got to his signature line "I have a meeting in five minutes" he allowed as how he was all opposed to "hate." And he spoke the word "hate" with particular affect to show how he hated "hate." Hatey hate hate.

But really, Dan old chap, if you are in the politics business, you are in the "hate" business. Why? Because the whole point of running for election is that there is a crisis! If we don't act now, our city will wither away. Because greedy landlords. Because lack of needle exchanges. Because lack of affordable housing. Because potholes in the street. Because lack of public transportation. Because lack of social workers to help people in crisis. And why do we have all these crises? Because there are evil people out there preventing helpless victims from getting the help they need.

Politics is all about "Us" the good people and "Them" the bad people. See, if things weren't that bad then we wouldn't need politicians to "fight" for us.

The same goes for "activists" that are all about fighting for justice. If you are fighting for justice there must be injustice out there. What kind of person perpetrates injustice? An evil person. So activists hate evil unjust people: probably white supremacist patriarchs, I expect. They usually are. The point is that once you have declared a moral quest, as activists do, then you have divided the world into "Us" and "Them" and you have determined to fight the Evil One.

Notice the cunning of religion on the Evil One front. Religion tends to say that it is not you that is evil, but Satan that has tempted or corrupted you. So, all an evil person needs to do is repent and all is well.

Notice the un-cunning of Allyism. Allyism says that the world is composed of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors." Do you see how the only thing for the Allies to do is to defeat the "white oppressors" utterly. The "white oppressors" are the enemy, not Satan.

See, I think that politics is problematical, on its face. Because once you make something a political issue then you have reduced it to "Us" and "Them" and the only thing to do is to hate the "Them" and fight to defeat them.

And then, when the fight is over, it is time to reward the loyal soldiers and supporters with loot and plunder taken from the evil defeated "Them."

In my reductive Three Peoples theory I say that the world is not "Us" vs. "Them." I say that the world is peopled by different people, who look on the world in different ways, and expect different things from it. So, immediately the "Us" and "Them" of politics is problematical. The question becomes how to understand and organize the world so that different people can live in it and work and wive and thrive in it -- and just get along.

That is why I say that the Age of Politics is over, because the need for "Us" to fight against "Them" is over.

Tell that to your lefty friend.

How Meaning of Life, Religion, Culture and Politics Connect

We all know the basic truth of humans as social animals. It is the notion of Downstream-ism, that

Politics is downstream from culture, is downstream from religion, is downstream from the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

But why? I was writing about downstream-ism yesterday in "What if Wokism is Implied in the Civil Rights Laws," but after I finished it came to me, in a vision, how the four things -- politics, culture, religion, and the meaning of life -- are connected. So here goes.

The meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" is the vision of eternity. Of course, it is way short of the real meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I maintain that the more we know the more we know we don't know. Think of the simplicity of the universe of The Iliad that was just humans and the gods on Mt. Olympus. Or the geocentric model of the universe. Or explaining everything with spirits in the trees, or God creating the universe in six days and then deciding everything. Now we believe that the "observable" universe is huge, about 100 billion light years across. But really, we still don't have a clue.

The point is that at every stage in the story of human existence we seem to need a story of what the universe is and how it got there and what it all means to us. I wonder why?

Religion is the vision of eternity reduced to a system. That's what Moses did when he came down from Mt. Sinai. He reduced the divine vision he had experienced to the Ten Commandments. The vision of Jesus Christ was reduced by St. Peter and St. Paul to the systematic religion we call Christianity. The vision of Marx was reduced to the religious system we call Marxism. The vision of the Frankfurt School was reduced into the religious system we call Wokism, and woke priests are teaching it in the schools as Critical Race Theory.

Religion is inevitable. Most people live their daily lives; they have no time for visions in the wilderness or Nietzschean Thus Spake Zarathustras. So they experience the vision reduced into the processed food of church services on Sunday or mostly peaceful protests downtown.

Culture is the religious system turned into a true story. It is all about people living their lives according to the vision of eternity as promulgated into systematic religion. It is responding to our human need to see the world in human rather than systematic terms, and it is responding to the human need to experience and remember everything in a story, a narrative, and to see what happens to people if they go with the system. But what happens if they rebel against the vision turned into a system. Nothing good, needless to say. Obviously the story that Homer told in The Iliad is different from the story that John Bunyan told in Pilgrim's Progress is different that the story told by women novelists in the 19th century is different from the story told by James Joyce in Ulysses is different from the story told in the 20th century in 1950s TV sitcoms or by Eve Ensler in The Vagina Monologues.

Domestic politics is the religious system's true story reduced to enforcement by a ruling class. Enforcement is only experienced by those on the receiving end. To the rulers, politics is just good people doing God's work. It only makes sense that, when the rubber hits the road, something must be done about people that don't get with the program of the ruling class's vision of eternity, their well-thought-out religious system, and their morally improving tales. And of course, the foot-soldiers that get with the ruling-class's program need to be rewarded with loot and plunder.

International politics -- war -- is the defense of the religious system's true story against foreigners. That'll teach 'em!

Now you can understand America under the rule of the woke. The vision of eternity is the idea of perfect equality here on Earth, the lion lying down with the lamb: all races, all genders, all workers, all activists, all billionaires. The religion is the commandments on the yard signs: Black Lives Matter, Love is Love, Kindness is Everything. The culture is the multiracial advertisements, the superhero heroines, the wise black grandfathers, the husbands as idiots, the businessmen as villains. The politics is the allies protecting the oppressed peoples from the white oppressors and mandating the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools.

Got it?

The Importance of "Victims with Attitude"

I had a minor Aha! moment over the weekend. It had something to do with the Hamas rocket attacks in Israel and the Associated Press's Sergeant Schultz moment when they said that they Knew Nothing about the Hamas offices in the same building as theirs.

In other words, what's with the left that they are so wedded to victim groups like the Palestinians?

And then I realized that for the Allyism thing -- oppressed peoples, their allies, and white oppressors -- to work the oppressed peoples can't just be sitting around like slaves on a plantation or touching their forelocks like the folk on Bathsheba Everdene's farm in Thomas Hardy's Wessex.

The victims need to have Attitude. They need to be protesting; they need to complain about the cops; they need to make "the boss" into a villain; they need to burn it all down. Otherwise the lefty process doesn't work.

So that's why our lefty friends have continued to radicalize blacks in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Revolution. That's why all good BDS believers think that the Palestinians are helpless victims and the Israelis are Literally Hitler.

Blacks are "victims with attitude." Palestinians are "victims with attitude." And so are all the Islamist communities in Europe and Britain. So are "trans" people.

You don't count as a registered "oppressed people™" unless you have "attitude."

Hispanics in the US need not apply. They are too busy getting on with their lives, urging their children to go to college, starting a small business, rising up the social ladder.

East Asians need not apply. They are Ice People. Not enough attitude. They just get on with life, working hard every day and helping family and other East Asians.

Brahmins? They seem to be auditioning in the US as Allies. Not victims, but leaders of the victims. Although, of course, Dalits, untouchables from India, need not apply.

When you think about it, the need for "victims with attitude" is essential. And really, not just for lefty Allyism, but for all politics.

The point is that, unless you are making a ruckus, and telling the ruling class that unless they trim their sails you very well might bust up the place, then you don't exist in the political firmament. Because politics is all about Us and Them, how We are the noblest, most innocent, most virtuous people since the Creation. And those Them, they are rascals and monsters, and if we don't take arm against that sea of troubles, we will get run over and demolished, maybe even annihilated.

The trick of our lefty friends is that they are the ruling class, but justify their power because they care about the helpless victims. Only, of course, they need to select as victims folks who are not just victims -- after all, slavery has existed since the dawn of time -- but  victims with attitude who are not going to take it any more.

And guess what: if the victims du jour don't have enough attitude we activists and advocates and Rules for Radicals chappies will teach you the rules of Attitude. We will lead you into a glorious future of perfect equality and justice. And hey, you deserve that 50-inch 4K TV down at Walmart!

Note that all politics needs this dynamics. It's just that populist nationalist politicians don't need a local source of "victims with attitude." They assert the innocence of the nation and then blame the Russkies or the Chinese or the Deep State for all our problems.

So, a candidate for president like Donald Trump represents himself as the leader of the Commoners against the overclass of the Deep State. He is almost playing the same game as the Allies of Allyism. Because, of course, in reality Donald Trump is part of the overclass and when he represents himself as a Commoner he is pulling a fast one. He is no more a Commoner than Bill Gates, billionaire son of an establishment lawyer.

So what is the difference?

Donald Trump advertises himself as the leader of the American Nation of Commoners against the Deep State: the leader of the whole nation of ordinary Americans. Anyone can be an ordinary American, even members of the overclass that have half a brain.

The liberal overclass represents itself as a avant-garde of Allies fighting for the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors.

So what's missing? In the Trump version, he is missing the fact that there are a lot of lower-class Americans who identify more with their class or ethnicity or religion than as American.

In the lefty Ally narrative, everything is a lie, including "and" and "the." The Allies are not the allies of the oppressed peoples. They are simple power-seekers using the oppressed peoples as their political foot-soldiers until they degrade into "human rubble." The oppressed peoples are not really that oppressed, except as being enslaved by the welfare state and its failed programs run by the Allies. The white oppressors are not really white oppressors: they don't have the power. In fact, like the LTC in the Space Force they can be fired for any crime against the narrative right here right now. 

So. The left's politics requires victims, but victims are no use unless and/or until they have attitude. Thus the importance of "Victims with Attitude."

You read it here first.

The Ten Woke Ideas from FiveThirtyEight

 The chappies at FiveThirtyEight founded by Nate Silver have produced a piece on the ten issues that make up the Woke Agenda.

I thought I should put up a table of the ideas, with the validity of each idea and a counter argument.

	Idea	Validity	Counter
1.	America "not an exceptional nation." "U.S. has disempowered its Native and Black populations and women throughout its history," and has "never been a true or full democracy."	Baloney. Every nation is an exceptional nation. Every political entity favors the agenda of the ruling class and its supporters.	Yes, but the US has made extraordinary efforts to balance the agenda of all kinds of different people. US ruling class used to favor whites in the past, now it's anyone-but-whites.
2.	White people, particularly white men, are especially advantaged in American society (“white privilege”).	Actually, it was more Virginia plantation owners, followed by New England Protestants, followed by WASPs, followed by today's educated elitists.	Are white men -- ordinary middle-class white men without advanced degrees -- privileged in today's America? I don't think to.
3.	"People of color in America suffer from not only individualized and overt acts of racism" e.g., racial slur,  "but a broader 'systemic' and 'institutional' racism."	True up until 1964 Civil Right Act. But not enough. Otherwise why do you need Jim Crow laws to enforce racism and segregation?	It is one thing to use the government to prosecute acts of discrimination. Another thing to discriminate by affirmative action and diversity.
4.	Capitalism as currently practiced in America is deeply flawed, giving way too much money and power to the wealthy.	True. Humans are flawed, and capitalism is human! But capitalism doesn't "give money." it rewards good ideas until replaced by newer ideas.	Don't you mean Government "gives way too much money" to the wealthy, the middle-class elderly, to the politically active?
5.	Women suffer from systemic sexism.	Women only entered the public square in 1900ish. Prior to that, of course, upper-class women ran the world from their salons.	Women "expect to be protected" and will complain until protected. Only upper-class educated women with #WeBelieve signs need apply.
6.	People should be able to identify as whatever gender they prefer or not to identify by gender at all.	Yeah. Why not? But do we force the rest of the world to pay for gender reassignment surgery?	One little problem. If people don't have kids there won't be any genders in a generation. Just dust and ashes.
7.	The existence of a disparity — for example, Black, Latino or women being underrepresented in a given profession or industry — is evidence of discrimination, even if no overt acts of discrimination are visible.	No it ain't. People are different.	This accusation is just an application for a license to discriminate. In my America an absence of disparity would be prima facie evidence of government discrimination. Let the lawyers loose!
8.	Black Americans deserve reparations to make up for slavery and post-slavery racial discrimination.	Reparations is vengeance. The whole point of the legal system is to reduce vengeance to a dull roar.	And just who is to pay this? The Irish that suffered under the Brits for centuries? The Jews from the Russian pogroms or Nazi Holocaust? And to whom? The children of Barack Obama, scion of a tribal chieftain in East Africa and raised by whites?
9.	Law enforcement agencies, from local police departments to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are designed to defend America’s status quo as much as any public safety mission.	Yes. law enforcement is designed to protect people (especially women) from "domestic enemies," e.g., violent lower-class males in cities. That's why the Brits invented modern policing.	Hey, no skin off my nose. The police are there to keep violence in low-income communities down to a dull roar. And given the absence of fathers in low-income communities, what do you expect wokies?
10.	Trump’s political rise was not an aberration or a surprise. Politicians in both parties, particularly Republicans, have long used racialized language to demean people of color — Trump was just more direct and crude about it.	This is a straight-up lie. Trump is a "nationalist," meaning that he values Americans as Americans. And in 2020 increased percentages of Hispanics and Blacks voted for him. I wonder why.	If I were Trump I would sue for slander. The key and obvious thing about Trump was that he encouraged all people living in America to think of themselves as Americans and not as ethnic, or racial or gender minorities.

This sort of thing is going to increase until it gets batted down. The whole point is that the ruling class, our educated elite, obtains power from the Woke Effect. Because it gives them the right to use political power to help their supporters and to punish their enemies. 

That's the point. If there is no discrimination, no systemic this-or-that, then there is no need for allies to save the oppressed people from the white oppressors. QED. Period. Full Stop. 

That is all.

The Small Minority Gig and the Ruling Class

In his NY Post piece on "To beat woke tyrants the rest of us must treat them like the monsters they are," Instapundit Glenn Reynolds invokes the Chapter 2 in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Skin in the Game: "The Most Intolerant Wins." He starts by noting that almost all prepared drinks have a "U" symbol on them that establishes the drink as Kosher. Even though full kosher eaters are less than one percent of the US population. Taleb writes that

It suffices for an intransigent minority -- a certain type of intransigent minority -- with significant skin in the game (or, better, soul in the game) to reach a minutely small level, say 3 or 4 percent of the total population, for the entire population to submit to their preferences.

Not quite. It requires an intransigent minority supported by the ruling class to force the entire population to submit to them. If the ruling class doesn't care about them, or actively wants to use the small minority as a punching bag, well, keep your heads down fellahs. 

Because unless the ruling class encourages a narrative, and publicizes it, and teaches it in the media and the schools, it didn't happen. Case in point, The American Spectator's Dov Fischer, who is a Jewish lawyer and an orthodox rabbi. Says he in "Let's Play Holocaust:"

I grew up in the 1950s and much of the 1960s relatively unaware of the Holocaust.

See, the Holocaust didn't become much of a thing until the Seventies. And before World War II our national savior FDR wasn't in too much of a hurry to let the Jews of Germany into the United States.

You can see that this is the key to our ruling class's brilliantly successful campaign of championing small minorities against the rest of America to maintain its domination and hegemony. First it was blacks, because slavery and Jim Crow. Then it was women, because the patriarchy. Then it was gays, because of centuries of homosexual persecution. Then transsexuals -- sorry, transgenders -- because.

If it weren't for the ruling class championing these chappies, they would all keep a low profile and make sure to keep below the radar.

As you probably know, because of your eevil habit of consuming far-right media, a trickster has turned this game on its head by championing the idea of "Super Straights" as a helpless minority that demand their rights not to date transgenders.

But naturally, our ruling class has swung into action to censor this dangerous and "far-right" and transphobic movement.

See what I mean? If you are a small minority, be you ever so intransigent, and the ruling class don't like you, better head for the hills.

Because while the ruling class can use small minorities to solidify its power -- as our ruling class does today -- it can also turn on a dime and crush small minorities as the very agent of the Devil. That's what Literally Hitler did.

I maintain that all minorities maintain themselves using a Culture of Innocence. We, whoever "we" are, are innocent. Everything that goes wrong with us is the fault of the big guys, so we'd better all stick together. That is the point of the Culture of Innocence. It is the means for our community to stick together united against the world.

But the Culture of Innocence is almost always a lie. I had a serious confrontation with the lie of America's innocence lately, reading Flyboys by James Bradley, about the naval fliers in World War II. The Japs were inhuman killers, right? Well, the US treated Filipinos in the Spanish-American War rather similar to the way that the Japanese treated the Chinese in the 1930s. And the first thing the US did in WWII was the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, which outraged the Japanese as an attack on civilians. Then, towards the end of the war was the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, culminating in the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And never mind about carpet-bombing German cities. Hey, but we were the Good Guys, remember?

Yes, and so it is with our Woke Ruling Class today. All the Wokies are doing is fighting the "white oppressors," as the noble "allies" of the "oppressed peoples."

Akshully, this game of innocence occurs wherever politics is found. If you want to get the people off their behinds to fight a war for you, whether hot or cold or woke, you need to scare the people out of their wits with talk of a frightful danger, real or imagined. They, the enemy, are the worst thing since Frankenstein invented fossil fuel, and we, the helpless innocents, are the most oppressed and ill-treated since the invention of the patriarchy.

But, of course, one fine day, the world changes, and today's ruling class becomes yesterday's ruling class, and a new company of innocents takes the stage.

The only question is the size of the butcher's bill.

When a Protest is "Mostly Peaceful" Then Maybe Crowd Control is Needed

When I had a chat with my Seattle City Councilman Dan Strauss a couple of weeks ago I was a little surprised by his invocation of the 1990 WTO riots in connection with police brutality in Seattle, especially considering that he would have been 13 at the time. I know know what it was all about, now that I have got into the CHAZ chapter in Andy Ngo's Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. Here's the quote:

Despite the ultraviolence of the Seattle riots, police were prohibited from using the best tool they had for crowd control: CS gas [tear gas].

That's because "Police Chief Carmen Best relented to political pressure from the Mayor's Office to ban the SPD from using [tear gas] despite its effectiveness."

I'd say that anyone with half a brain would recognize that the failure to deal firmly with Antifa has been a strategic mistake. But by concocting a story about Seattle Police Department brutality going back to 1990 my pal Dan Strauss gives himself permission to be a squish where crowd control is concerned.

Which leads to the whatabout issue with regards to Antifa vs. the January 6 riot. Which is the real problem? Antifa? The white supremacists? Or both? Or neither?

It's a "tell" isn't it, that the whole ruling class from Nancy Pelosi on down was genuinely shocked by the Capitol Hill riot on January 6: Build a Wall! Call out the National Guard! Notice that nobody really got hurt except rioter Ashli Babbitt. There was no bomb, like in the Capitol on March 6, 1970. Just a mob running through the Capitol building, taking selfies in the House chamber.

And yet, we learn, the Our Nance may have refused the offer of 10,000 troops from President Trump.

I have two questions. One is to understand what is really going on in the heads of chaps like Dan Strauss and Democrats in general with respect to lefty riots. Are they just lying, and going with the line that nothing to see here, just peaceful protests, because they want to destroy the GOP commoner voters? Somehow I can't believe that. I think that the problem is probably weakness, the "no enemies on the left" culture. The problem for a progressive politician is that he needs to be sympathetic to the protest/activist culture, because justice. If he is not as strong as the next lefty on the sacred right to "peaceful protest" then I suspect he can't have a career in Democratic politics.

Maybe it's just as simple as the existence of "oppressed peoples." First, there is systemic racism. Therefore we must protest against injustice. Therefore we can't be surprised if concerned activists sometimes cross a line; their hearts are in the right place.

And, clearly, both sides of the political conflict are fairly relaxed when their own side is in the streets, but terrified of the activists of the other side.

The other thing is the basic problem for all nationalistic Commoner Americans. When are our leaders going to figure out how to blow up the race card, and blow up the victim card, and blow up the "mostly peaceful protest" card?

I had a flash of intuition today reading two articles in Quilette about "suffering." You know, the suffering of a rough night on social media, and the paradox of increased "stress" in a time of physical plenty. The takeaway is that a good person cannot be indifferent to suffering; therefore we should do something about it.

The issue of suffering is also a big issue in Roger Scruton's Wagner's Parsifal: The Music of Redemption, i.e., redemption from suffering. There are all kinds of people suffering in Parsifal. But what do we do about it, Dick?

Obviously, while we are all called to ease suffering, there is a temptation for sufferers to take advantage of, or demand the compassion of others.

But that, of course, is exactly what our lefty friends tend to do. They demand that we redeem the sufferers, or we are racist-sexist-homophobes: What, they say? You don't care about other peoples' suffering?

Of course, we racist-sexist-homophobes might be tempted to say: after you, Alphonse. Let me see you do your Good Samaritan bit before you force me to contribute. And anyway, what is left of the redemptive aspect of relieving suffering when it is forced? No more Good Samaritan: just another taxpayer.

One of the points that Scruton brings out in his analysis of Parsifal is the cruelty of Titurel, forcing Amfortas to perform the Eucharist even though Amfortas suffers increased pain from his wound. Whaddya mean, forcing someone to redeem someone else's suffering at the cost of enormous pain? Who are you to insist, Titurel, old chap? Maybe that is what our liberal friends do, forcing America to succor their victim du jour no matter the cost to the ordinary Commoner forced to do the liberal's will.

Oh well. More research is needed.

Allyism, Republicans and Democrats

Yesterday I posted the results of a post-election poll. Republican voters believe that the three most important issues are:

Illegal immigration
Lack of support for the police
High taxes

Whereas Democratic voters believe that the three most important issues are:

Donald Trump's supporters
White nationalism
Systemic racism

You will notice that the concerns of Republican voters are not particularly blared through anyone's bullhorn. I wonder where they get their concerns? FoxNews? Qanon? Far-right websites? Donald Trump's secret decoder ring? Couldn't be from Twitter or from youTube or Facebook because eevil far-right ideas get censored on social media as fast as you can say @jack.

But it is not hard to figure where Democratic voters get their concerns. White nationalism and systemic racism are right now the obsession of the mainstream media and the educated gentry class that runs the media, the universities, the bureaucracy, the non-profits. If you lend half an ear to the gentry liberal class you will probably be persuaded that white supremacy and systemic racism are tearing the country apart.

Let us look at this through the lens of Allyism, understanding the America as "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors."

Because pretty obviously, if you are an Ally, doing activism 24/7 on behalf of oppressed peoples, then it stands to reason that Donald Trump's supporters, white nationalism and systemic racism are the reasons why those oppressed people are oppressed. And they will go right on being oppressed until the power of Donald Trump's supporters are well and truly extinguished at a class on systemic racism where they work or go to school.

How systemic is racism? It's a good question. If a half-black man like Barack Obama could be elected president, how bad can things be? If a part black half Brahmin like Kamala Harris can be elected  vice-president, how bad can things be? If a black like Tim Scott can be elected United States Senator as a Republican from the former Confederate state of South Carolina, how racist can those Trump supporters be? If black church ladies are counting the ballots in cities like Philadelphia, how bad can things be? If just about every ad and commercial has "people of color" in it, how bad can things be? If just about every big corporation is a supporter of Black Lives Matter, how bad can things be? If anyone that utters the pejorative "n-word" gets utterly humiliated, how bad can things be?

Obviously, more research is needed. Not.

You know what I think.

I think that every ruling class needs one of two things, preferably both. It needs an existential peril to battle against. Climate change will do nicely. And it needs someone to blame when things go wrong. Yeah! Sytemic Racism! These issue, I argue, from the basic condition of ancient humans. 

First, it is the job of any ruling class to defend the borders of its realm -- although not so much these days since food-growing land is not as critical as it used to be. The enemy used to be the tribe next door. Then it was the barony next door, then the nation next door, then the Communist threat, then the Islamic threat, and now the threat of climate change. Notice how the threat keeps getting bigger. First a local problem with the chaps next door. Then the nation next door. Then the secular religion next door. Then the future of the planet itself! Wow! We are really getting into the big leagues these days.

Second, rulers need someone to blame when things go inexplicably wrong. Take your pick: the crabby older woman living just out of town; the neighbor woman that you are never gong to speak to again; the evil spirit in the tree that just fell on your house; the wrath of God that sent a hurricane and flooded the plain; "malefactors of great wealth;" big corporations. Or the systemic racists in a conspiracy on the Internet.

Our liberal friends have plumped for two threats on which to justify their rule. The first is the existential peril of climate change. The second is the evil of systemic racism. See, without the need to battle these two threats people might start to ask: "why do we need these guys?"

And, of course, the point isn't whether these are real threats and real evils. The only question is whether the rulers can persuade the ruled that their power is needed to fight the existential perils and evils.

I say that the reason that our ruling class has been upping the amplitude on its claims of peril and evil is because of its accumulated failures and its evident incompetence are raising the unmentionable question: what are these guys good for. Anything? Bueller?

Let's put our liberal friends to the test and inquire into its moral narrative of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors."

Liberal allies have been fighting for almost two centuries to bring justice to the workers. And yet we read that the white working class is "dying of despair." How come? The ruling class has had all the money and all the power in the world to help the working class. If it is dying of despair then something is wrong. Maybe the whole program to help the workers was a mistake? Could the problem be white oppressors? Who would that be other than white educated gentry that style themselves as "allies?"

It was 50 years ago that the United States declared racial and sexual discrimination illegal and then set up racist "affirmative action" and quotas to help formerly marginalized peoples. If that hasn't solved the problem then maybe our rulers have been barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the completely wrong thing to do is to give the rulers more power to track down and destroy the "white oppressors." Hey, maybe the problem is something else. Maybe it's aliens.

Or maybe the whole notion of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors" is a lie, including "and" and "the."

Or maybe the whole problem is the fault of liberals that have spent the last 200 years discouraging the immigrants from the city from acquiring middle-class culture and instead has encouraged them to become the serfs and slaves of the educated ruling class, relying on the rulers for benefits and set-asides instead of acquiring skills and culture that help them thrive in the city on their own.

As you know, I think what we are seeing is the self-destruction of the ruling elite of the last century, as a result of its false conceits, its accumulating errors, and its foul crimes.

Because the problem is that your average ruling class just can't bring itself to say: "sorry fellahs, we screwed up. Your turn now." Instead failing rulers always turn up the heat, and beat up the plebs and the peasants that dare to point out their conceits, their errors, and their crimes.

What a pity.

But Tear Gas and But Hate

I had my jolly little phone chat with Seattle City Councilman Dan Strauss yesterday, and here are my takeaways.

When it comes to policing, Year Zero for Strauss is the occasion of the mostly peaceful protests in Seattle in 1999 against the WTO. You can see what the ruling-class conventional wisdom is, from La Wik's "1999 Seattle WTO protests" with a picture of Seattle Police doing a spot of pepper spraying.

That's interesting to me, because Dan Strauss, born in April 1986 according to La Wik, would have been 13 at the time of the riots. Was he on the street back then? Or his social-worker parents? Why exactly would a 13-year-old be exercised by the WTO protests? Was he pepper-sprayed? Or one of his parents?

So Dan Strauss is interested in reducing the Seattle Police Department use of violence and tear gas and pepper spray. At least, that is what I understood from his comments.

Later on I introduced the "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors" moral narrative -- Allyism -- and proposed that it was problematic to describe the world with a moral narrative before you have described the world with a descriptive narrative. 

I advanced my reductive Three Peoples theory as an example of a descriptive theory, that tries to understand the world before judging it. Mind you, the idea of a descriptive narrative rather than a moral narrative is incredibly modern and progressive. If we are dealing with ancient religion, the whole of creation is subject to the wrath of the gods, and, as Mircea Eliade argues in his Myth of the Eternal Return:

The primitive... cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering; it arises from a personal fault... or from his neighbor's malevolence... but there is always a fault at the bottom of it[.]

See, I'm so sophisticated that I hesitate to blame my neighbor's malevolence for all the sins of the world.

And the narratives that arose later in the Axial Age are all moral narratives, too.

I went on to mention to Dan the virtue-signaling yard-signs so common in the gentry liberal neighborhoods of North Seattle that Dan represents: the Black Lives Matter, the #WeBelieve, the Hate has no Home Here signs.

In response Dan Strauss muttered about Hate. At least that is what I understood him to say.

Unfortunately I did not get in my Hegel zinger, that Hegel says that the thing is the same as its opposite, as in the north pole and the south pole of a magnet: the same, only opposite. On this notion, when you are exercised about racism as an noble anti-racist you are really putting yourself on the racist's level: obsessed with race. And if you are fighting Hate, you are probably a hater, because after all, you hate the Haters. Right?

The joke, to me, is that our liberal friends have become precisely the people they have criticized all these years. They used to rail against McCarthyite witch-hunts -- although back in the day Hollywood actually took fairly good care of the Commies in their midst. Now they get people fired for their political beliefs. They used to rail against censorship: now they applaud it. They used to sneer at enthusiastic Christianity and its obsession with sinners. Now they are obsessed with sinful racist-sexist-homophobe Haters.

Like they say: be careful who you choose as your enemies, because you will become them. 

Well, well, well. It's Nietzsche who said that:

Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that's who you become most like.

Or Marcus Aurelius arguing the opposite:

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Or Sun Tzu:

To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy. 

Golly Geewillikins. Who knew?

But it does raise the question of how we deal with our liberal friends. Really, we don't want to wipe them and their hatey-hate Hate from the face of the Earth. We know that if we were to wipe out all liberals they would just be reborn as something just as foolish and knavish. Correction: as something more foolish and knavish.

Hey liberals! Ever thought that if you utterly cancel all the bitter clingers and deplorables they will return as something far worse?

And, of course, it is my conceit that I understand liberals and the left, that they are reactionaries lurching back to the past, that their activism culture is a kind of neo-Quixotic movement, pretending to be revolutionaries way after the end of the Age of Revolution.

And it is my belief that liberals, devoted to the idea of the creative life, of making a difference in the world, have totally misunderstood how the creative life works. It is not a triumphant bending of the arc of history, but a harrowing journey into the unconscious that, if successful, may well end in the death of the Sacrificial Hero rather than the applause of a grateful world. As I rehearse in my Good Life concept.

But hey, if the gentry liberals of North Seattle want a councilman concerned about police brutality and Hate, why, they got exactly what they want in Dan Strauss. Bless their hearts.

Dueling Three Layers: Allyism vs. Americanism

I was doing an American Thinker piece about my brilliant notion of "fake tribalism," that all tribes and tribalisms are fake because humans didn't develop tribes until they started living in villages/towns of 2,500+ inhabitants.

One of my present obsessions is the Allyism notion of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors." It comes from a piece by Matt Taibbi "On White Fragility" where he takes down Robin DiAngelo's megahit On White Fragility. He writes, of progressive ideology:

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

You can see that this is all about the epidemic of virtue-signaling in our ruling class. We rulers are the Allies, les chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche. We are so special it makes your head spin. But, of course, it is all a lie. Let us count the ways.

Members of oppressed groups. Yes but just how oppressed are the oppressed groups? Compared to conquest slaves captured in West Africa? Compared to Brits captured by Vikings in 1000AD and sold in the slave market in Dublin? Just what are the roadblocks to any human in America that sticks around for an average public school education and gets some sort of a skill? Oh yeah! Credential laws that discriminate against new entrants; high payroll taxes on wages; mortgage subsidies that benefit existing homeowners and boost house prices for aspiring oppressed groups; minimum wage laws; anti-gig economy laws. I could go on.

Allies. Just who are the allies helping? Are they really helping oppressed groups by encouraging them to gather in identity politics enclaves? My line is that the best thing you can do for minorities is to teach them the skills and the culture of middle-class life, as per my Road to the Middle Class. But, in fact, the policy of our ruling class for the last century has been to lure the "oppressed groups" off the road to the middle class and into the brambles of free stuff and subordination. And how much of being an Ally means getting Jobs for Gentry in government regulating business and doing climate change?

White Oppressors. Just who are these white oppressors? Tech billionaires? Heavens no! @jack and the Zuck are Allies, censoring "far-right" conservatives on social media and donating hundreds of billions towards getting out the Democratic vote. Good old Jeff Bezos has rescued the liberal Washington Post from oblivion. Are they Trump Car Parade enthusiasts? Really? And how much power does a Ford F-150 driver have to oppress oppressed groups? OK, not much. So how about Ford F-350 drivers. Boy, there are guys with more money than sense!

Pretty obviously the whole Allyism thing is a fake doctrine intended to make ruling-class activists feel good about themselves. But, let us not forget Nassim Nicholas Taleb's dictum enshrined in my Maxims:

Never virtue-signal; never rent-seek; you must start a business.

Hey Allies! Allies? Anybody there?

Now my Americanism retort to the Allyism is short and sweet. There are Americans, known to each other as 'Muricans; there are Emerging Americans, not quite ready to fly the Trump flag. Then there are Anti-Americans, who are above the commoner culture of Americanism. Shall we go into more detail? I think we should.

Americans. Today’s America is the greatest country in the world, and the American people are the best people in the world. Most of us are straight-up Americans: we go to work, we obey the law, we follow the rules. And we thrive in the best country in the world. Go ’Muricans! 

Emerging Americans. Some Americans, the “Emerging Americans,” are not so sure about America. They have heard tell that the suburbs of America are teeming with racists and sexists, human werewolves and the like, that wish them harm. But we Americans say to the Emerging Americans: come on in: the water’s fine and the membership is open to all that came here legally.

Anti-Americans. Hoo boy. They Anti-Americans hate America; they despise ordinary Americans -- on a good day -- as “bitter-clingers” and “deplorables.” On an average day they are inventing corrupt Jobs for Gentry programs like climate change, the great reset, critical race theory and 1619 Projects. On a bad day they hate ordinary Americans as racist-sexist-homophobes. And they lie to Emerging Americans, telling them that they are doomed unless they hunker down in their identity-politics enclaves. So there you have it: the Anti-American politics of Hate and The Big Lie. Why, that is Literally Hitler!

Of course all these Three Layer theories are absurdly simplified rubbish. Or are they?

I would just say that Three Layer theories -- my prize collection is here -- are the minimum social theory that makes any sense. If you say that all humans are alike, you learn nothing. If you advance to a two layer theory, then it becomes Us vs. Them, which has use only for the War of All Against All. If you go beyond three layers to multi-layer theories like Piaget and Wilber, you lose your general audience and appeal only to obsessional people like me.

Yep. Good old Americanism. What's not to like?

The Decline and Fall of the Progressive Empire

Today I am starting a new topic, the decline and fall of the present ruling class. But let's steal the words of Edward Gibbon, he of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Why did the Roman Empire decline and fall? According to academic Michael Mann in The Sources of Social Power, it began to decline when its modus operandi no longer worked. Up until the second century AD the Roman Empire fed on conquest and slavery. Its army would conquer a new province and the empire would feast on the plunder and the slaves. But then the Empire got too big, and the frontiers too far away from the center. And so the potential for conquest and plunder started to dry up.

But whatabout the empire in which we live? And what do we call it, anyway? Liberal Empire? Lefty Empire? White Supremacist Empire? Capitalist Empire? Empire of the Educated?  I think I will stick with Progressive Empire for the time being.

The reason I prophesy the decline and fall of the present regime is that its anthems, its agendas, are getting rather threadbare.

There seem to be two justifications for political power. The first is the promise of physical protection. This obviously goes back to the apes, that the males protect the band and its food-growing territory from invaders. I consider this a male thing. The second is the promise of protection from evildoers within society, the backstabbers and gossipers that are the bane of every woman's life. I consider this a female thing.

In the last century, the century of the educated ruling class, our rulers have heroically defended us -- or rather we have defended our rulers -- from the menace of Kaisers, of Hitlers, or Commies, of oil sheiks. Golly, where would we have been without them! But now our leaders are promising, at enormous expense, to protect us from climate change.

You know what I think? I think our rulers are running out of reasons to protect us. This climate change thingy depends on the predictive computer models of gubmint scientists -- which are completely different from the divinations of the temple priests and soothsayers of old, completely different. In other words, climate change looks and feels like a scam.

In the last century, the century of the educated ruling class, our rulers have heroically defended us -- or rather we have defended our rulers -- from the internal menace of monopolists, exploiters of labor, Southern racists, and now patriarchs, white supremacists and the menace of systemic racism.

You know what I think? I think our rulers are running out of moral menaces with which to terrify us. The proof is in the moral narrative of "allyism," that America is composed of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors." What "white oppressors?" Educated white liberals in the schools, universities, and journalism? Heavens no, those are all allies. Evil corporate moguls? Heavens no, those all pay their indulgences to Black Lives Matter. Would they be Trump Car Paraders and crazed Qanon cultists wearing viking costumes in the US Capitol? Yep, that must be it.

But why? Why is our ruling class singing such ridiculous anthems to their rule? What is really going on? Is it a conspiracy?

I think it is because the basis of human social cooperation has been transformed.

I think the old system, of male defense of the border, and female defense of the hearth, made complete sense back in the days of the chimps: that's what Nicholas Wade says in Before the Dawn. And more or less sense in the days of the hunter-gatherers, and even down through the agricultural age. You needed brave warriors to defend the food-growing land, and you needed moral arbiters to sort out troublesome youths and quarreling women.

But not any more.

Loot and plunder of the neighbor's lands? But wealth today is in intangible capital, ideas and techniques.  Loot and plunder does not pay, except in the internal taxation and regulation systems by which today's rulers fleece their own sheep, not the neighbor's sheep.

Calling sinners to repentance? But today's market economy rewards trust and names and shames cheaters and defaulters in a hundred different ways. Oh yeah, we need a few cops to crack heads here and there; but the vast majority of people go with the program, because there is a huge benefit in doing so, and a huge penalty for being identified as untrustworthy.

Obviously this new situation is so brand new as to be breathtaking. It has really taken hold only in the last 200-300 years, whereas the agricultural age extended for, say, max, 50,000 years, and the hunter-gatherer age a million or so, and the chimps for tens of millions of years.

We cannot expect our rulers, our neighbors, and ourselves to have suddenly adapted to the new setup. We are programmed for another age.

Instead, we should expect everyone -- from noble lords to cathedral priests to young punks to the nice ladies next door -- to keep punching the old buttons, and being completely flummoxed when the old actions don't have the desired effect.

But, "scientists say," the future belongs to those that adapt. And the number of people adapting, "experts agree," will be a minority. This will mean, "ethicists believe," a profound change in human society.

Because, as I say, every story is a survivor story.