Collapsing Three Layers into Two

If you want to understand humans as simply as possible, but no simpler, then, in my opinion and the opinion of Curtis Yarvin, you need to divide us into three parts. Three Layers, he calls it, with his Gentry, Commoners, and Clients. Three Peoples, as I call it, with my Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.

That is what you do when you want to survey the human landscape and understand your fellow men.

But if you are playing politics, then, as per Curtis Yarvin, there is no politics without an enemy. So you have to collapse the Three Layer view of human society into the Two Sides of a conflict: "us" and "them." Where "them" is the enemy.

Once you do that then you are embarking on one of four wars.

1. Fight against a small country for a quick win.
2. Fight against a large country for a world war.
3. Fight against a large minority for a civil war.
4. Fight against a small minority for a quick win.

And Grok.

But, there is one other thing to consider: the question of the small minority. You would think that small minorities would keep their heads down, hoping that nobody would notice them. But they don't. E.g., the Jews. 

In fact, small minorities tend to be intransigent, because they feel that they need to be on their guard all the time. Just in case a mob of the majority should come down the street and take them out. Also, they need to remind the majority that nobody better mess with them. Because.

So our modern small minorities like to pretend that, really, they are all powerful and that if you mess with them then you are asking for trouble. Thus the Jews have elevated "anti-Semitism" into the worst thing in the world and if you are guilty of anti-Semitism you will find that the whole world is against you, you bigot you. The same thing seems to apply with the blacks. Anti-black racism is the worst thing is the world and you'd better not be identified as a racist, you racist you.

Our liberal friends practice the "intransigent minority" gambit with their Activism Culture. And all of their activist groups have some sort of call-to-battle slogan. I noticed that the BMW next to me on the ferry crossing from downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island had two mini bumper stickers on the back: "Black Lives Matter" and "Stop Asian Hate." Then I went into a nice liberal bookstore and it feels like all the books are playing the activism game, making a case for some helpless minority mired in injustice that only a wise, sensitive activist class can resolve. Yes. Activism is an upper-class, educated-class thing in the modern western world.

Why does the "intransigent minority" gambit work? I think it is because most people are not up for a war, they don't like to get into a pissing match, whether on the national front or on the international front. So, if an "intransigent minority" gets in your face, particularly if it is supported by the ruling class -- and the educated and the media and the universities -- you'd better watch out, pal. 

Thus, an "intransigent minority" often boxes above its weight, particularly if it is supported by the ruling class, because people know that getting targeted by an "intransigent minority" means trouble, right here in River City.

Notice how in the modern era our politics involves collapsing the Three Layers into two. Obviously Marxism did this, by collapsing the three layers of Bourgeoisie, Proletarians, and Communists into two: Communists and Proletarians on one side and the Bourgeoisie on the other.

In the case of the modern Allyship narrative, we have Allies, Oppressed Peoples, and White Oppressors. The Allies and Oppressed Peoples stick together so the White Oppressors are on their own.

It is, of course, a conceit of Marxism and Allyship that they represent the vast majority of the people -- rather than the minority interest of an "intransigent minority" with an appetite for political power. But that conceit provides the opportunity for us ordinary mortals. When it comes to the crunch, does the activist group really represent the vast majority of helpless victims, as their ideology pretends, or not?

I think that for the first half of the 20th century the educated elite and their clients really did represent the majority. But since the 1960s this majority has been whittling away, because the majority of the population, more and more, is the ordinary middle class.

I think that, again and again since the start of the 1970s we have seen a movement of the ordinary middle class erupt in politics. But up to now the educated ruling class has managed to abort each eruption.

At some point, in my judgement, the educated class will fail to abort a middle-class eruption. And then the regime will change.

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.

Murray Facing Reality, Yes You Liberals

The point of Charles Murray's Facing Reality is quite simple. Whatever you fervently believe with every cell in your activist brain, liberals, human groups are different.

(The bigger meaning of Facing Reality)

That means that if you use government or secular religion to force group outcomes to be "representative" of society as a whole you are going to have to use force. A lot of force.

And even when you use force, it will probably not make much difference.

Charles Murray has spent his life showing liberals how their fervent beliefs are in fact virtue-signalling fantasies -- from way back before "virtue-signalling" became a thing. Let's recapitulate.

In Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, 323 pages, published in 1984, Murray wrote that the Great Society was a wrong turn and failed, and that liberals should know it because they instrumented all the wonderful new programs so they could boast about their successes, so the numbers are all there for anyone that cares. But the liberals didn't want to write about the failures. So they didn't.

In The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, 845 pages, published in 1994 and co-written with Richard Herrnstein, Murray argued that the future would belong to those with more "cognitive ability." I.e., black Americans would not do well in the job market of the future. Liberals said that Murray was a racist.

In Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, 407 pages, published in 2012, Murray wrote that, considering only white Americans, the cognitively able were doing fine with great careers and merger marriages (of cognitive able men to cognitively able women), the middle 50 percent were doing so-so, and at the bottom the cognitively disabled men didn't work much and the women didn't marry much.

Now in Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America, 151 pages, published in 2021, Murray says told-ya so liberals. Groups that test with lower IQ have worse outcomes in life and work and crime. Period, full stop, science.

For me Facing Reality crystallized two notions that hadn't previously crystallized in my brain.

First, I have known for a while that humans do not give up their fervent beliefs when presented with "science" that demonstrates their ideas are wrong. Not at all. Instead humans go for one more Big Push, a Reign of Terror, a Great Purge, a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Only when their brilliant ideas lie around them in graveyards from here to the horizon do people give up on their glorious vision of a better world. So this is it. This is our Great Purge. That is the meaning of "systemic racism" and Wokism and pushing Critical Race Theory into the nation's schools. Liberals instinctively know their ideas have failed. So the response is to destroy their political opponents. Humans always do things like that when things start going wrong. 

Second, "woke" corporations are a natural and physical response by corporations to the double-bind the Civil Rights era puts on them. The original Civil Rights Act in Title VII provided for affirmative action and the idea that the only way to show an absence of bias was by showing that a corporation's workforce "looked like America" from janitor to CEO. Thus, if a traditionally marginalized group is "underrepresented" at any level in a corporation then the corporation is just sitting there, like a rabbit before a coyote, easy prey for any lefty activist group hungry for a nice tasty lunch today. But, because of the distribution of cognitive ability in different groups it is physically impossible to achieve this. So all a corporation can do is salute and contribute to BLM and close the accounts of Republican candidates at their bank.

So, if gubmint programs can't achieve what they promise to do, because reality, what is the point of them? The point is that every government program is a war on some horrid monster, and the noble supporters can expect loot and plunder from here to eternity.

Thus, all politics is about ginning up a war on some frightful enemy and then sharing the loot out among the supporters. There are four ways to do this.

You can declare some small neighboring country an enemy and invade and conquer them, as Bismarck did to Denmark (!) in 1862. This is the best strategy, because it unites the whole country against an insignificant foe that can't really fight back.

You can declare that Japs and Nazis are the enemy and have a world war over it. This is obviously a high risk strategy: what if you lose? But still, you get to unite the whole country to fight the monsters: keep your fingers crossed.

You can declare some large minority to be an enemy and fight a culture war against them, as the left is doing right now against "white supremacists." The danger is that you might ignite a real civil war, as happened in the US culture war of the 1850s. But nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

You can declare a small minority to be the cause of all our problems, and unite the rest of the country against them, as Hitler did with the Jews. Not much fun for the small minority. Hey, I wonder if the current liberal use of blacks as a helpless victim small minority might not rebound in a "backlash."

See, I think that the real need for liberals to "face reality" is that there is a good chance that their present way of dividing the nation -- as all politics does -- might work against them. What if whites and Latinos and Asians all decide that low IQ blacks are a problem in the workforce, and a menace on the streets? You can say that the group differences between blacks and the rest mean that blacks are helpless victims. Or you can decide that since blacks commit about 50 percent of all murders that blacks are an existential problem. 

Suppose we experience the US politics of the last 50 years as a continuous effort of liberals to insist that blacks are "helpless victims" and to cancel anyone that disagrees, because raciss.

In the end life, the universe, and everything is a throw of the dice. That's what modern "science" says.