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.

ABC of Politics: Layers

We should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, as Albert Einstein didn't quite say. But what about human society? Can this unimaginably complex emergent phenomenon be simplified?

Maybe, maybe not. But we humans do it anyway; it is our way of trying to understand and deal with the world of other people.

The simplest thing is to divide the world into "us" and "them," friends and enemies, and this is what politics does. But if we want to get beyond simple binaries and the war of all against all, or at least the binary of my people against your people, or the Hunger Games binary of Capitol against the Districts, we must make the world a little less simple.

Most students of human society have divided it, like Gaul, into three parts. For George Orwell it was Inner Party, Outer Party, and Proles. For Marx it was Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. For Tolkien it was Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves. For the Vikings it was Earls, Peasants, and Thralls  (or slaves). For Curtis Yarvin it is Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.

I have joined this three-layer parade with my reductive Three Peoples theory. I submit it as an honest attempt to simplify human society as much as possible, but no further.

I propose that there are three kinds of people in the world:

People of the Subordinate Self Call them slaves, serfs, workers, clients, marginalized, oppressed: these are people that do not experience "agency." They are go-along-to-get-along people, villagers under the thumb of the big man, the serfs of the feudal lord, the factory workers of the corporate behemoth, the ward heelers of the precinct captain, aspiring rappers dealing drugs for the urban gang.  They attach themselves to a powerful patron in return for scraps from the lordly table.

People of the Responsible Self Call them commoners, citizens, middling sorts, "deplorables," these are people that believe they can understand the world according to already established rules and have a responsibility to do something about it. These are people that follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law.

People of the Creative Self These are people that want to live a creative life, maybe as a writer, an artist, a videographer, an activist, a revolutionary. They don't want to follow the rules, they want to discover new rules. They don't want just to go to work, they want to reinvent work. They don't just obey the laws; they want to make new ones. 

I got the idea of the Responsible Self from Robert Bellah in his "Evolution of Religion." I got the idea of the Creative Self from Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class.

In medieval times, England's King Alfred divided the world into "those who pray, those who fight, those who work." This is similar to the three French Estates, with the First Estate the clergy, the Second Estate the nobles, and the Third Estate the peasants and burghers. There is, in addition, the three-layer theory of Allyship currently popular among our lefty friends. In this world the evolved and activist Allies are fighting for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors. It is clearly an update of Marx's three layers of Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. But notice that both the Allyship narrative and Marx collapse the three layers into two.Allies and Oppressed Peoples are united as one against the White Oppressors. Communists and Proletarians are united as one against the Bourgeoisie. I maintain that this collapse is reactionary, a step back to the primitive.

But things don't have to be that serious. I have proposed a three layer system of Snobs, Schmucks, and Scum. A less insulting version is to think of society as composed of Somebodies, Anybodies, and Nobodies. You may think of today's America as composed of Anti-Americans, Americans, and Emerging Americans; I couldn't possibly comment.

Let us not insult Richard Wagner by omitting his three-layer theory. He divided the world of The Ring into gods, humans, and Nibelungs.

Of course, the world is much more complicated than a mere three layers. Yet most of the time most people have difficulty imagining anyone different from themselves as anything but an enemy, in a crude "us" and "them" approach to life, religion, and politics. So a Three Peoples theory is one step up from crudity, from the war of "us" against "them." And there is another thing, suggested by Ken Wilber in his analysis of developmental psychology as applied to human consciousness. He proposes that anyone in a particular "level" will regard people in a lower "level" as delta-minus morons, and people in a higher "level" as madmen.

The most obvious use of this Three Layer concept is as a way to understand our modern politics, which always seems to be based upon an over/under coalition between the highest Layer and the lowest Layer against the Middle Layer. In the current Allyship narrative, the Allies of the ruling class fight for the Oppressed Peoples of the lower class against the White Oppressors of the middle class. Or, using Yarvin's three layers, the educated-class Gentry combine with their underclass Clients against the middle-class Commoners.

I have come to believe that the modern over/under politics is a recipe for conflict. The three-layer world of noble, commoner, and serf of the olden time sets up a world of established hierarchy, and hierarchy, according to Jordan B. Peterson and his lobster notion, is Nature's way of reducing violence. Thus it is not surprising that the leftist politics inspired by Marx -- to replace peaceful hierarchy with a fight for equality by collapsing the Three Layers of educated, middling, and underling into an us-against-them binary of allies and oppressed against white oppressors -- is a recipe for killing fields.

The Three Layers notion also allows us to understand the emerging populist nationalisms in the United States and in Europe. The populist movements are all associations of ordinary middle-class people fighting back against the over/under coalition that dominated politics during the last century when the working class had the votes to empower the educated class to use the political system to reward the workers with programs and benefits and reward itself with power, with sinecures, and with pensions. The ordinary middle class is emerging as a political force because it is now the largest sector of society, if it chooses to use its numbers in the political arena.

The populist nationalisms of the present day are thus an inner-outer politics, of "us," the middle class against the enemy, the "them," of uppers and downers. Because "there is no politics without an enemy."

Maybe after it is all over we can return to a peaceful hierarchy, like the lobsters.

Yes, But the Republicans Have Nothing

Now that our Democratic friends are staring utter failure in the face, the latest "messaging" is that Republicans don't believe in anything, e.g., WaPo's Jennifer Rubin: "Republicans are embarrassed to tell us what they are for."

Well yes. And part of that is that chapettes like Jennifer Rubin and the whole of the rest of the educated class sneers at the modest goal of ordinary American Commoners to live an ordinary life of going to work, obeying the laws, following the rules, having children and living in a nice house in the suburbs.

People on the right get in on the sneering act too. David Cole at Taki's is always up for a sneer at the utter ineffectiveness of Repubicans.

And frankly, I get it. What in the world is the point of arguing whether John Locke was a Christian or not when our lefty friends are telling us to worship their LGBT gods or else?

And what does the Republican Party have to offer to counter the wall-to-wall spending something-for-everyone spending spree and saving the world from climate change?

Because everyone deserves free stuff and everyone wants to save the world from burning up.

Well. I'd say that the free-stuff and save-the-world is on the way to self-destruction.

Free stuff? I discussed that yesterday in respect of Charles Murray's work. His books show pretty conclusively that the big-government model of the Great Society programs Makes Things Worse for the very people they are intended to help. And the current education and credentials system modified by racist DEI is making life really cool for the educated class, but Making Things Worse of average people and much worse for lower class people.

And I think that ordinary people are going to be reacting big time against the green agenda that means the end of personal transportation and cheap energy.

But then what?

Thank you Senator, I'm glad you asked that.

I used to wonder about what the next regime would be like.

Wait, using the "downstream" notion of Andrew Breitbart, I'd have to say that I know what the next politics will look like, what the next culture will look like, what the next religion will look like, what the next meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" will look like.

And I am here to say that I didn't invent any of it. It's all out there; all you have to do is look for it.

First of all, you must understand that there are three kinds of people. I didn't invent that; tons of thinkers have come up with the idea of Three Layers of humanity. Curtis Yarvin's idea is that the top layer is Educated Gentry; the middle layer is ordinary middle-class Commoners; and the bottom layer is Clients -- or serfs or underlings.

The Clients need a boss to tell them what to do; the Commoners need a set of rules to tell them what to do; the Gentry need the chance to invent new rules, be creative.

The next regime needs to help the Clients learn how to live by a set of rules rather than today's order from the boss. It needs to help the Commoners get a bit creative; and it needs to teach the Gentry that ordinary people are not their playthings: their creative projects should be about improving themselves, not improving others.

Second, we need to internalize what has happened in philosophy, and knowledge generally in the last 200 years. I call it the German Turn and it left the lefty dream of Heaven on Earth and the Road to Justice in the dust 50 years ago.

Roughly speaking, the human world of the future will not be a system, a political cultural machine. It will be an emergent lifeworld, a community in the world with other humans with whom we communicate and negotiate and develop moral agreement in an ongoing person-to-person process, per Jürgen Habermas.

Notice how, at present, the way the world works is that the Educated Gentry imposes its moral system on the rest of us rather than engaging and negotiating morals and values with others as respected people that just think differently than they do.

What sort of person would the people in the new Educated Gentry of the human lifeworld be? I've sketched it out in my series "A Good Life Better Than the Left."

I have to say that none of these ideas are mine. They are all ideas and concepts that are out there in the world that I have encountered in my reading. And I don't suggest that anything is the last word. Indeed, the whole point of the notion is that it is emerging, developing, through the interactions of people, and not a fixed eternal system imposed from above or from outside.

Then, of course, it doesn't matter if Republicans Have Nothing. Things will just develop, on their own.

Angelo Codevilla RIP: Nuggets from "America's Ruling Class"

As we all know, Angelo Codevilla died this week after being hit by a drunk driver. You and I know him as the author of an epochal article written in 2010 in The American Spectator titled "America's Ruling Class."

In the article he described America as divided between the Ruling Class, "supported by no more than one-third of Americans — and a country class comprising two-thirds of the country."

Let me say that this is the one thing where I disagree with Codevilla. I don't believe in the binary Ruling Class and Country Class. That's because I believe in a Three Layer understanding of society. Codevilla hints at this when he writes of entertainment that

since the 1970s most of Hollywood’s products have appealed more to the mores of the ruling class and its underclass clients than to those of large percentages of Americans.

So in my "Three Layers in Brief" I adapt his two layers into three: Ruling Class, Country Class, and "underclass clients." 

But I agree that only the Ruling Class and the Country Class are involved in politics. The "underclass clients" are just serfs of their Ruling Class lords.

But here are a couple of really important takeaways from "America's Ruling Class" that I got from re-reading it yesterday. I express them as questions that I have for a while about today's America.

"Why are Social Media and Big Tech and Big Business in the tank for the Ruling Class?" Because they have to be.

Health care:

[T]he health care bill of 2010 takes more than 2,700 pages to make sure not just that some states will be treated differently from others because their senators offered key political support, but more importantly to codify bargains between the government and various parts of the health care industry, state governments, and large employers about who would receive what benefits (e.g., public employee unions and auto workers) and who would pass what indirect taxes onto the general public. 

This is what I call sharing out the "loot and plunder" with regime supporters.

Finance:

The financial regulation bill of 2010, far from setting univocal rules for the entire financial industry in few words, spends some 3,000 pages (at this writing) tilting the field exquisitely toward some and away from others.

Again: can you spell l-o-o-t-a-n-d-p-l-u-n-d-e-r? 

So, in general, "By making economic rules dependent on discretion, our bipartisan ruling class teaches that prosperity is to be bought with the coin of political support." As in the classic line: "nice little business you got here; pity if something should happen to it."

Now whatabout the professions? 

"Why are the professions in the tank with the Ruling Class?"

What about the doctors, and the American Medical Association (AMA)?

Those who run the AMA, however, have a government contract as exclusive providers of the codes by which physicians and hospitals bill the government for their services.

Oh. So now I understand why various professional organizations have issued threats to their members that they will lose accreditation if they, e.g., don't support mandatory COVID vaccination. The professional association gets a government grant, and so is now in the pocket of the Ruling Class, and anyway has to keep good relations with the regulatory authorities. 

In other words any high profile institution in America needs to maintain good relations with the Ruling Class. Or else. And that will continue, until it doesn't.

Now, I notice, after reading "America's Ruling Class" all over again, that my maxims about government apply in spades.

Government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters.

Government is force plus loot and plunder.

All government is unjust, because government leaders reward their supporters before the rest of the people.

And, I would say, that the $3.5 trillion "infrastructure bill" is an indication that the Ruling Class feels it needs to amp up the provision of loot and plunder to its supporters. Seems like the natives are restless on the loot and plunder front.

Why is that, you may ask? I think it is because when you distribute loot and plunder to your supporters they don't say: "wow, thanks a million" for ever after. Next election cycle they take the previous handout for granted and expect to get more. So once you start handing out loot and plunder you have to keep on keeping on, scraping up new loot and plunder to distribute. Otherwise your supporters will drift away. 

Obviously, Stein's Law applies here. "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

And the problem with loot and plunder is that it represents a part of the economy that is cast in concrete. And as the Ruling Class extends the concrete -- or if you prefer, continues paving over the nation -- there comes a point at which there is no fertile land left. What happens then? Nothing good. 

You many not like the price system, but the price system forces people to face reality, first gently, and then not so gently. But with the loot-and-plunder system things are different. The loot-and-plunder system allows people to ignore reality. Until that day when the whole system collapses.

So, if you are a wise Ruling Class, you keep the loot and plunder down to a very dull murmur. Because you want the economy -- upon which your sacred taxes rest -- to look after itself, as an "emergent phenomenon" that all-unknowing, responds to changes in the firmament and corrects itself before you and I have a clue what is going on.

Our Ruling Class has not kept the loot and plunder down to a dull murmur. That means that it has a problem. That means that it has to back up its loot and plunder with threats and force. That means that our Ruling Class is headed for the waterfall.

But so are you and I.

Looking back at "America's Ruling Class" it is interesting to review the Trump Era. We may call Trump an idiot. We may say that his first mistake was not to fire all the insiders in the government and replace them with his own people. And so on.

But I would say that the Trump Era gave us a vital and important thing. It prompted the Ruling Class to show its claws. Or, if you like, we got to see into its subterranean "intelligence community" depths. And it let the rest of us see how corrupt and clueless it is.

For that, we Americans will be grateful to Donald Trump for ever more.

And to the searing analysis of the late Angelo Codevilla.

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.

A New Three Layer Theory: Snobs, Schmucks, and Scum

I was reading The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy by William Strauss and Neil Howe, after my daughter recommended it five years ago.

I agree with its notion of historical cycles, and that they tend to be about the length of one full human life, eighty to one hundred years. And that it is convenient to break up the cycles into 20-year generations.

But I'm not sure I agree with grafting Jungian archetypes onto the generations: Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artist.

And I don't agree with the idea of distilling hundreds of topical best-sellers as a real view of social and cultural reality. The picture that Strauss and Howe paint is really the ebb and flow of educated-class fashions. It does not really deal with politics as the ebb and flow of who-whom, to coin a phrase.

I'd say that a better way to understand history is to think about how the ruling class, living in its bubble, is often clueless about the miseries it is committing on the rest of the society. Let us rather say that a cycle begins with a new elite dishing out loot and plunder to its supporters, and then dealing with the unanticipated consequences of its actions. For instance, it might have seemed like a good idea to offer loot to senior citizens with Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, but what happens when these programs end up eating the budget? And the well-to-do seniors make sure the politicians know that they'd better not mess with their entitlements.

The basic fact is that the ruling class, any ruling class, is nothing but a bunch of Snobs. The ruling class thinks it is the fount of all wisdom, and no wonder when nobody dares to challenge it, because consequences. In our case we have a ruling class that is endlessly coming up with cool ways to buy votes and launch impressive projects of self-admiration. But what happens to the ordinary middle-class Schmucks on the receiving end of the ruling-class brilliance?

For instance, take California, please. In the 1970s, my first decade in the US, California was already in the lead in controlling suburban development and saving the coastline from development. But the result was to make housing brutally expensive for the young'uns just starting out. It was clear to me that I could never afford to live and work in California. But the existing residents of California that I met seemed to be copacetic with the new order: they accepted the importance of saving the environment for future generations.

No wonder. Because the new California worked well for the establishment Snobs, and for minor Snobs, people already enjoying modest positions of honor from the ruling class. Ordinary middle-class Schmucks, not so much.

And then there are the lower orders, people just trying to get by, somehow. The Snobs have spent the last century telling the helpless victims how much they care for them and how much welfare and housing and benefits they are going to get. But in truth the Snobs do not care about the Scum; they only care about their votes.

I wrote 20 years ago that a truly enlightened elite would set up the culture and the economy -- a Road to the Middle Class -- to encourage the lower orders to acquire the skills and the culture of the middle class and rise up from indigence and the lower-class culture of subordinate serfdom or rebellious gang-dom into the responsible culture of middle-class work, home, family, and order. That is not the policy of our ruling-class Snobs.

The result, as Charles Murray described in his Coming Apart: the State of White America 1960-2010, is an America where the Snob class of educated professionals has great careers and merger marriages, a Schmuck middle class is doing so-so, and a Scum at the bottom where the men don't work much and the women don't marry much.

The beauty of the current system is that the ruling class Snobs get to tell the Scum how much they care, and then blame the Schmuck cops and other notorious white supremacists for the travails of the Scum.

No doubt at some point this false ruling-class narrative will fall apart. And then the only question will be the size of the butcher's bill.

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?

America's One and Only Problem: Our Ruling Class

Today, New Years Day, is the day that writers write hopefully about the future. Or we worry about the gathering storm.

I'm a pretty simple-minded fellow, and I believe that the future is golden, but for one thing: the inability of our betters to think out of the box -- their box.

Our ruling class cannot think beyond its own moral benefit, its own advantage, its own "ambition, honor, and vanity," to quote Curtis Yarvin. We see this play out in the three major "issues" front and center at the moment.

The first issue is the COVID pandemic. Our ruling class instinctively assumes that the way to tackle the COVID crisis is the supervision of politicians advised by experts.

Well, we have seen that the experts don't know much, and the politicians less. They are quick to impose actions to "lock down" the populace, without really a clue about what such actions will do to the people.

Politics and government are peculiarly unsuitable for dealing with an uncertain problem because politicians and experts are very reluctant to admit they are wrong. A politician is the leader of his people, and must seem almost godlike; he must seem to enjoy the Mandate of Heaven. If things go wrong then it must be because he has lost the Mandate of Heaven, and no politician wants that. Experts are similar: they live and die by their credentials. But the truth is that life is uncertain; we advance by correcting our mistakes.

We see this play out in the difference between NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX. NASA hates to have accidents and mistakes; Elon Musk is unafraid and just learns from each mistake.

The second issue is Climate Change. Our ruling class has bought into the Climate Change Prophecy, hook, line and sinker, and you can see why. The Climate Change Prophecy is a classic end-of-the-world play, and appeals to politicians because it is an existential peril, and as I say, "the only warrant for government power is existential peril." But is the warming all it is cracked up to be? Maybe not, but suppose it is true! Better safe than sorry! Only, the great skill of humans -- and of Nature in general -- is adaptation. If the climate really does change, then we humans are in a position to adapt, and how! Anyway, the most likely effect of climate change will be the movement of climatic regions towards the poles. Thus, for example, the wheat-growing regions of North America will move northwards into Canada. Will the oceans rise? Maybe, but we humans are, I think, up to the challenge of either moving our cities inland or protecting them with dykes, like the Dutch.

The third issue is Systemic Racism. Ruling classes have always been eager to be the military saviors of their people, to save us from the invaders. But running a close second has always been the temptation to be moral saviors as well, to save people from a fate worse than death. The temptation has grown particularly in the last few centuries as rulers have stopped being warriors and become administrators. Even military leaders now are more administrator than warrior. Since a leader must distinguish himself somehow, it makes sense to celebrate the moral virtues if the opportunity to vaunt martial virtues diminishes over time.

In my view, the folks most tempted by moral leadership are rich kids, the scions of wealthy or powerful families that lack, perhaps, the warrior personality. Thus we had the rich kid William Wilberforce that wanted us to repent of our slavery sins, rich kid Marx that wanted us to repent of our class sins. And now we have veritable armies of children from notable families eager to moralize over us on the "activism" front and demand that we repent of our racism sins.

The thing is that anyone can gussie up a moral narrative. The Systemic Racism narrative proposes a Three Layer moral universe of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors." Lucky is he or she that gets to be an "ally!" I prefer a slightly different narrative, using "human rubble, liberal oppressors, and ordinary commoners," because I think our Big Problem is liberals and their gubmint programs that have reduced the lower classes to demoralized victims dying of despair.

But the bigger issue, I think, is the recognition that there are at least three kinds of people that live in modern society, and they have the right to live their lives each according to his lights; it is the world view of my reductive Three Peoples theory. There are the Subordinates that just want someone to take care of them; there are Responsibles that want to be left alone to work, marry and have children without having some liberal interfering all the time, and there are Creatives, the educated Gentry, that live for "ambition, honor, and vanity" in making a better world. Our problem is to figure out how these three rather different kinds of people can all live their lives according to their lights.

I say that our religions, our culture, and our politics should start from the knowledge that different people want and need different things, and the beginning of wisdom is to understand that.

But when your are a ruling class it is easy to assume that it's your way or the highway. That works fine, of course, unless some folks find that the ruling class way is not their way.

Reducing Yarvin's Four Strata to Three Layers

Back in the day Curtis Yarvin had a nice sensible Three Layer theory of Gentry, Commoners, and Clients. But now he has revised it into four strata, as follows:

Across human history we see four different ways of living. Let’s label these varieties of social existence cosmopolitan, traditional, deracinated, and ancestral. For variety, we’ll pair these adjectives with synonymous nouns which almost no one knows: armigers, yeomen, lazzari, and autochthons.

Only, then he goes and adds another stratum on the bottom end: the "human rubble of the old regime’s failed experiments." For human rubble, you could also substitute "white trash," which, according to Nancy Isenberg in White Trash, has been a thing in the Anglo-American world for hundreds of years. Back in 1500, the Brits had a law to deal with "vagabonds and beggars." Nothing new on the human rubble front.

Now, by lazzari Yarvin refers to the "name for the Neapolitan underclass in the Bourbon era," and he includes the gang members in this classification. By saying that they are deracinated he means that they are uprooted -- uprooted yeoman that just need to be re-yeomanized. I don't think so. I agree that the lazzari are uprooted, but I don't agree that they were previously yeomen.

By autochthons Yarvin means pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers, the "original inhabitants" of a place. They really cannot fit in today's society because they never learned to be bored, boring farmers sitting in one place watching the corn grow. Various commentators have noted that these pre-agricultural people tend to extinction when confronted by the modern world, as in native Americans, Australians aboriginals, and Amazon tribes.

Now I think that Yarvin has muddied the waters with his new strata. I like his armigers, or, as I would prefer, armigeri, just to make it sophisticated and Italian. But I think that yeomen is not a good fit. This is because I feel that to make it in the city you cannot be a yeoman right off the farm. You have to transform yourself into a bourgeois, a burgher, a townie. That's why I like Yarvin's Commoner from his Three Layer theory and my Responsible from my reductive Three Peoples theory. If you look at the heroes of Thomas Hardy and George Eliot novels, these agricultural yeomen had to transform themselves to make it in the new world of the nineteenth century. And they did.

See, I look at the lazzari, the autochthons, and the human rubble as "misfits." They do not fit in the modern world of the city, the employment at will, the hegemony of the market, the need to upgrade skills to keep yourself employable in the city economy. Moreover, they are people that do not really "get" how life operates in the city. They are Subordinate people that expect to live as a subordinate to someone who will make all the decisions and tell them what to do.

There are a ton of people that inhabit this Subordinate realm. The whole arc of labor unions, wage-hour laws, government pension systems and government health care are really manifestations of the fact that a lot of people don't want to be free burghers. They want to be taken care of. The only problem is that, as Yarvin says above, they tend to become "human rubble," the detritus from the latest wizard wheeze dei armigeri. I call them Little Darlings, because their descent is usually assisted by the armigeri enlisting them as special people in their political army, for their votes, and then abandoning them by the side of the road when they are no longer politically useful. As in white working class.

Now we like, with our modern conceit, to sneer at the old world of serfs and slaves. But you tell me what a corporate employee with life-time employment is, other than a serf. You tell me what a welfare recipient is, who goes to the government for money to live on, other than a slave. Oh yes, back in the day you could apply to become a slave to your local feudal lord. Slaves weren't all conquest slaves, or sold to the highest bidder in West African slave ports.

But I think it is nicer to call the misfits, the serfs, the slaves, as Subordinates. They are people that don't have the spirit, the chops, the cultural preparation to be Commoners in the city: not yet, maybe not ever. And that's OK

But let us at least admit that the lazzari, the autochthons, the "human rubble" are all "misfits," people that have not found a place in today's rapidly post-industrializing society.

And, by the way, suppose they never do find a place in today's society. Do we put them all on "reservations" where they can drink themselves to death? Or do we let them molder away in the countryside blacking out with OxyContin, like the white working class that is "dying of despair?"

Or do we make everyone go through post-industrial boot-camp? I mean, if it was copacetic to put a whole generation of young men through boot camp in World War II and then the GI Bill to beat the Nazis and make the kids into good Fifties factory workers and suburbanites, why not do it again?

Only, of course, I wouldn't trust i nostri amati armigeri to do it right. With their record, they would probably create a whole new category of "human rubble."

Whither the Good Old USA?

There is really only one narrative out there about the long-term future of US politics. It is the one proposed by Judis and Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority back in 2004. Their thesis is that the future belongs to Democrats because of women, minorities, young people, and the professionals.

Well, it's obvious isn't it? Even Pat Buchanan darkly foresees the end of the Trump era, as in:

1. Demography: the white fraction of the population is going down
2. Free stuff: Democrats are the party of government
3. Blue wall: "carrying every state that touches the Atlantic from Maine to North Carolina."

But. Here's Powerline with some post-election numbers. and a concerned analysis from The Guardian.

Biden’s win depended on suburbanites tired of Trump, who voted Republican down ballot and will certainly vote Republican in future elections... 

Most concerningly, Democrats hemorrhaged votes among non-white working-class voters. . . Even in the crucial states Biden was able to flip, Trump reduced Democratic margins in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. These results should be setting off alarm bells among Democrats.

I guess my analysis -- which of course expresses my hopes -- is that race is not as important as we are carefully taught to believe, Black Lives Matter. My belief is that national origin matters for a generation or two, but then class takes over.

Class in the sense of my reductive Three Peoples theory and Curtis Yarvin's Three Layers theory. In this theory the electorate divides up:

1. Educated Gentry: Democrat, because we are qualified to direct traffic (we want power)
2. Commoners: Republican, because we want to live our own lives (not that interested in power)
3. Clients: Democrat, because we want the powerful to protect us

Obviously, the genius of Trump was to create a class consciousness among ordinary Commoner Americans and it seems, from the Guardian, that he is making headway among non-white Commoners as well as white Commoners.

However, let us not forget Michael Barone's theory:

The Republican Party appeals to “typical Americans” as understood at a given time, and the Democratic Party represents a coalition of “out-groups.” 

Now do you see why Dems are still playing the race card? They want everyone to think of themselves as an "oppressed" out-group. But Deplorables are not an out-group. They are "white oppressors."

Nor should we think of the parties as hopelessly out of touch.

[B]oth parties have adapted, swiftly or haltingly, to shifting opinion and emerging issues, to economic change and cultural currents, to demographic flux.

Then there is the actual party history in the US House of Representatives over the last century:

Well. So if you figure that Judis and Teixeira made their predictions back in 2000, I'd say that so far, nothing has happened. Indeed, you might say that the House of Representatives has been going slowly GOP ever since 1937. Or you might say that there was a Dem wave that lasted from 1900 to the 1960s and ever since the opposite has been true.

OK. Here is my fearless prediction. I think that we have in our future a battle royal between the educated Gentry and the Commoners:

The educated Gentry wants the climate change grift because it means tons of power and jobs for educated experts and administrators and it wants continued intersectional politics because it encourages Americans to think of themselves as members of "out groups."

 The Commoners want ordinary economic growth because they want to wive and thrive. But don't touch their Medicare and Social Security, you Green New Dealers.

The point about Donald Trump is that he found the way to energize the ordinary Commoners with the notion of appealing to them directly as typical Americans and boosting economic growth -- for Americans. No professional Republican had figured out how to do that before, except maybe Ronald Reagan.

I think the place to look is the white professional elite. Do they really want to keep with the Woke movement and its cancel culture and its flirtation with socialism that might easily turn on them as a privileged and exploitative upper-class, bearded @jack?

Also, I would say, in the short range, the Democrats seem to be divided between the moderate Democrats that represent swing districts and the ideologues that represent safe districts. Just sayin'.

I don't think that Republicans are similarly divided right now.

My only problem is that if Trump wins the cheating wars, and continues in office till 2025, the country will be so fed up with Trump that Dems will win it all decisively in 2024, White House and Senate and House. 

And then you ain't seen nuttin´ yet.

Getting to Acceptance

Yeah, I know about the Five Stages of Grief. It starts with Denial and ends with Acceptance.

So I am already coming up with rationalizations for why, maybe, after all, it is OK that Trump is (probably) going to lose. Because reasons:

If Trump wins reelection then probably the Senate will flip in 2022 and the Dems will win it all in 2024 because Time for a Change. No Thanks. 

Chances are there is ugly economic news in the immediate future, as we dig out of COVID. With Trump, it's all his fault; with Biden he's doing his best. 

Chances are there will be a recession before 2024. Blame Trump and elect a Democrat. 

"There is no more money." Because of the COVID stimulus and the Trump tax cuts. So there is really no money for Medicare For All, Free College, and End Fossil Fuels. But a Biden administration would still try. And screw the economy. 

At some point the Commoners are going to have to say: Enough of this race-sex-intersectional virtue-signaling; Enough of all these rent-seeking programs that only benefit the educated Gentry; Go away and leave us alone.

Let's divide the last century or so into three Ages. First there was the Pioneer Age of the frontier and building the railroads; the Republican Party and the Civil War veterans dominated. It ended in 1929. Then there was the Victims Age of the New Deal and the Great Society and Civil Rights; the Democratic Party and the educated Gentry dominated. It ended in 2016. Now we have the Commoner Age. Maybe it will be a Republican Party domination, and maybe the Commoners will teach the Gentry a lesson.

Or maybe not.

The thing that sticks in my mind, since I read it from Matt Taibbi in the summer, is the moral framework of "anti-racism."

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

So if you are Amazon you virtue signal by posting a BLM message on your home page;  if you are United Airlines you virtue-signal by supporting Proposition 16 in California to re-institute Affirmative Action. That makes you an "ally" and one of the good people.

But, given that the allies and the white oppressors are all white or Brahmins like Google's Sundar Pichai and daughter-of-academics Kamala Harris, who gets to decide which is which? Would that be God? Or would it be the bearded @jack? Thank goodness the allies have the Brahmins on their side; the Brahmins have been successfully divining the will of Brahma for thousands of years.

I have a different moral calculus. I think it is very virtuous because nobody gets to look in the magic mirror and say "mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest in the land?" Virtuously speaking, that is.

Now in my cultural calculus the oppressed peoples are Clients and follow whoever leads them; the allies are the educated Gentry, full of ambition, honor, and vanity; and the white oppressors are the Commoners, that just want to wive and thrive and hand down a little to the kids. In my calculus nobody gets to be the all-conquering virtue-signaler with the Hate Has No Home Here yard-signs. 

Because we all have our virtues, some of the time, and we are all hypocrites, most of the time.

Here's my moral calculus, adapted from Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

We are all virtue-signallers -- and hypocrites!

We are all rent-seekers -- and you better give us our share!

We never quite got to start our own business -- but we always wanted to! 

The problem with all moral calculi and virtue-signaling and Grand Inquisitors is that the people on the receiving end of your virtue get really pissed off. Because they don't like being belittled; they don't like someone else having first crack at the cookie jar. And they don't like some jerk making billions because he was in the right place at the right time.

But go ahead, vote cheaters and allies and all the ships at sea. You may as well make hay while the sun shines.

But maybe in a couple years, or four years, it will be you guys going through the Five Stages of Grief. Last time, in 2016, you chaps didn't seem to do so well; in fact it seems to me you are still in Trump Denial Syndrome from the Trump election.

But I'm sure your grief counselor can help you better than I can.

Cheating is a Sign You Are Losing

Our Democratic friends have been stealing elections since -- well since well before Boss Tweed. But never mind that. Let us talk about the cheat-ology going on with our educated Gentry ruling class today.

It's pretty obvious that the Democrats have engaged in widespread vote fraud in this 2020 election. Hey, what else is new?

But what is more important is the whole "fake" culture surrounding it.

It's not just a question of "fake news." It is fake everything.

Why does our ruling class have to lie about so many things?

Why did Hillary Clinton have to set up the "fake" Steele Dossier? Why were swamp creatures like Brennan and Clapper and Comey and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all in on the deal?

Why did the Dems decide we had to have two years of the "fake" Special Prosecutor Mueller investigation to investigate "fake" Russian collusion?

Why did Nancy Pelosi empower Schiff and Nadler for their creepy "fake" investigations?

Why is The New York Times putting out its "fake" 1619 Project proposing that the United States was founded to do slavery?

Why is social media censoring conservative voices?

Why are the liberals screaming about racism sexism and homophobia half a century after race and sex discrimination was made illegal? And after the Supreme Court legislated gay marriage?

Why do liberals believe in the Manichean belief system of good "oppressed peoples" and "allies" against the evil "white oppressors?" 

And whatabout the low-rent nature of the principals? Nancy Pelosi, the 80ish Democratic Speaker of the House, capa di tutti capi of the California political family that features her unimpressive nephew Governor Newsom and the featherweight Sen. Harris. Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader in the Senate: what's his claim to fame?

And whatabout the utterly unimpressive Democratic candidates for president disporting themselves a year ago? The ageing socialist Sanders, the quota blacks and women and gays?

And why have the opinion poll guys been putting out so many "fake" polls?

And why is education a total wreck and force-feeding "fake" critical race theory religion to our children from K through grad-school?

I will tell you. It is because things aren't working for the educated Gentry any more. The world isn't working for them. So they do what humans do when things start to go wrong. They cheat. They can't believe their eyes; it cannot be that their hour in the sun is coming to an end.

Here's an item that has stuck with me over the years. Back in the early days of the Tea Party, Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as "astroturf." Do you see the "tell" here? Nancy Pelosi cannot imagine an organic, spontaneous political movement. Because her entire political life has been about "fake" activism:  trained activists masquerading as helpless victims, marshaled up before the news cameras. It was inconceivable -- inconceivable in Princess Bride terms -- that any political movement should be organic and real. 

In real life, we still don't know how the Tea Party came to be. (Oh yeah, in due course it was hi-jacked by all the usual suspects, but that was after.)

Let us use the "fake" arc-of-history metaphor to describe what is going on. Every life, every family, every community, every empire, every ruling class goes through its history describing an arc: it is born, it grows, it succeeds, it rules, it declines, it cheats, it dies.

Let us say that our present educated ruling class was born with Rousseau, with the fantasy that people are basically good, and it is society that corrupts them. Let us say that it grew with the Educated Youth of the 19th century that gave us Marx and the Fabian Society and the Progressive movement in the US. Let us say that it succeeded with the democratic politicians that gave us social legislation. Let us say that it ruled with FDR and LBJ. Let us say that it declined with the corrupt Clinton and the ideologue Obama. Let us say that it cheats with Hillary, Nancy, Chuck and the "fake" media and the social media moguls.

So really, there is nothing left for our educated Gentry but to die a decent death. Or, if it chooses, an ugly death.

Enough of the past what of the future?

What new arc of history is upon us? What new dawn is breaking with its glorious sun rising with a new and blinding light? What is presently being born and like to grow and succeed?

I would like to think that we are entering the Age of Commoners, ordinary people that want to live honest, responsible, productive lives, and maybe leave children and grandchildren behind them; people that don't need to blaze across the heavens in a glorious arc like a meteorite; people that aren't motivated to great deeds in service of ambition, honor, and vanity; people that aren't just followers of a great leader.

But I could be indulging in wishful thinking.

The End of the Commoner Rebellion

We don't know yet exactly how our Democratic friends are going to cook up the votes in the states remaining to be called in the 2020 Presidential Election as of this moment: in NV, WI, MI, PA, NC, GA. 

But I don't think it matters.

The fact is that President Trump didn't expand the map beyond his victory in 2016. To establish the Revolt of the Deplorables as a thing he needed to increase his 300 odd Electoral College votes to 350 or 400.

And if he has in fact increased his support among blacks and Hispanics, then he has lost support among white educated Gentry.

One of the notions of Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class is that the Commoners don't get a vote. Political change only occurs when the ruling class divides and the change faction wins.

My hope was that a Trump reelection would redefine politics in the US and that the educated Gentry would decide to compose its differences with the Commoners. But that did not happen. If you are an educated Gentry this morning you are saying to yourself and your educated Gentry friends: pedal to the metal, on Critical Race Theory, and on saving the planet from climate change. We've got those racist-sexist-homophobe bigots just where we want them.

In other words, the global educated Gentry is going to go Full Speed Ahead on its Great Reset agenda, "building back better" under the benevolent supervision of the educated and the evolved and the creative people. That means, of course, also, Full Speed Ahead on climate change and eliminating fossil fuels.

And all the Good Little Girls of intersectional politics are going to be cooking up new "1619 Projects" and other reasons to oppress the Basket of Deplorables. Because they had it coming. Let us rehearse Hillary Clinton's Basket of Deplorables speech one more time:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

Notice the end of the quote, that the "irredeemable... are not America." Do you see what that does? It empowers the speech police to go out throughout the land to identify and cancel anyone guilty of being "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic  – you name it."

Hey, there is never a shortage of people ready to teach the other guys a lesson. And now that the Commoner Rebellion has failed, they will be out there working their tails off on social media, in the movies, in the schools, K thru retired professor.

Oh yes. In the end the Reign of Woke Terror will sputter out, perhaps in a Thermidorean Reaction, or perhaps just in exhaustion, or perhaps after defeat in civil war. But as of now I can promise you it has its bit within its teeth.

I feel that the Woke Religion is a Great Reaction, a lurch back to the primitive. We don't need religions with that kind of discipline, and the Woke Inquisitors are going to do nothing but harm. Tell that to the woke enthusiasts, and see what you get.

Nothing new, of course. There are always people hanging around panting to dive into a moral war against the Evil One. Usually the moral warriors are the Evil Ones they are supposed to be fighting. My belief is that in the modern era we really don't need such strong religion. But what do I know. There is always a moral component to humans as social animals, and always will be.

Then there is the Green New Deal, the plan to save the planet from runaway global warming from the burning of carbon-based fuels. If you are a ruling class you slobber at a supposed existential peril like runaway global warming. Because it licenses you to mobilize every corner of society in a gigantic war to save humanity. Think of the power, the glory! There are always people lusting after power and glory and there always will be.

Now my belief is that a totalitarian moral hierarchy that the current Woke Religion calls for, and the totalitarian economic/political hierarchy that the current climate panic calls for can only end in disaster. And that is because of my Four Laws.

Socialism cannot work, because it cannot compute prices.

Administrative government cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth to supervise everything. 

Regulatory administration cannot work because of "regulatory capture" by the businesses being regulated

Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them except by expanding them. 

In other words top-down anything, except in an actual war, doesn't work because it isn't social, and humans are social animals. When we set up a hierarchical top-down structure we are setting something in concrete, assuming there is One Correct Way, and the one thing we can be certain about in human life is that tomorrow the world will change and we will have to change our plans.

One fine day, we humans will emerge from the Dark Age into which our globalist educated Gentry is leading us. I just hope that my descendants are among the happy ones that survive till that day.

Lefty Ally-ism, and What Real Allies Look Like

It is a couple of months since I read the definitive word on our current Woke witch hunt and first commented on it. It was from Matt Taibbi's piece on "white fragility." The "antiracism" movement, he wrote, is based on the following three-layer theory of society.

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

Of course, I jumped on it, because of my interest in three-layer theories, which are the typical way that humans understand each other -- that is when they have the sophistication to graduate from a simple Us and Them theory. I lay out the theories in a table here.

I call this meaning-of-life theory "ally-ism." Because, of course, the point of "antiracism" is not being against racism but being an activist force for good, being the ally of "oppressed peoples."

Notice that, like the original Marxism, this ally-ism is not a theory of society but a theory of conflict. In Marx's concept, humans are engaged in an eternal Us vs. Them conflict, feudal lords vs. serfs, and now capitalists vs. proletarians. But there is hope! The Communists, the vanguard of the proletariat, will ally itself with the proles and smash the capitalist domination and hegemony. And then the problem of good vs. evil would be solved for all time.

In the new concept, we have the "white oppressors" dominating and oppressing the "oppressed peoples." But along come the "allies" who heroically insert themselves into this dominatory hellhole and join the battle of the oppressed against the oppressors as the allies of the "oppressed peoples."

Do you see the absurdity of this analysis? That it reduces human society to a war of all against all. Really? So how does the concept of humans as social animals come in?

And by the way, whatabout the notion, that I have advanced with respect to slavery, that some people actually voluntarily place themselves into slavery? Bad boy Nassim Nicholas Taleb updates the notion in Skin in the Game. He suggests that monasticism is a form of slavery. It was invented by St. Benedict to deal with the problem of itinerant monks that were totally out of the Catholic Church's control. Says he (p.96)

Complete freedom is the last thing you want if you have an organized religion to run. Total freedom for your employees is also a very, very bad thing if you have a firm to run[.]

So, Taleb argues, in this supposed post-slavery age, there are all kinds of dependence going on, especially in the corporate world. By offering security of employment -- and dependence -- an employer buys loyalty. The high-water mark of this was the old lifetime employment deal offered by big corporations in the post-WWII era. That worked when the life of big corporations was sixty years or so. But not in the current era where "firms stay in the top league by size (the so-called S&P 500) for only about between ten and fifteen years."

That's why my maxim about the Great Reaction says that the welfare state is a return to feudalism. It works because a lot of people prefer the life of subordination to the life of responsibility.

In other words, a big chunk of your "oppressed peoples" may be subordinate by choice.

That's why I think that a good three-layer theory is descriptive before it is prescriptive. Who are these "oppressed peoples" these "white oppressors" when they are at home? And who are the glorious white-knight "allies?"

Well, my reductive Three Peoples theory does just that. It describes the Creative people, that want to create something new; the Responsible people that just want to obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules, and the Subordinates, that look to someone else to tell them what to do.

Let us try to mesh my theory with the Ally-ism theory. I'd say that the "oppressed peoples" align with my Subordinates. But what if, for many "oppressed peoples," their Subordination is a choice. Nobody, for instance, is forcing you to take welfare. In fact, you demand your welfare and your unemployment check and your Medicaid as a right. Really? You mean that your average "oppressed" person has enforceable "rights?" Oh, I forgot: they would have nothing without the heroic assistance of the "allies."

Whatabout the "white oppressors?" Are these graduates of prestige universities and prestige media or NGO jobs? Certainly not? Are they Tech Lords? Certainly not! Tech Lords are for the people. Are they Trump supporters, the kind that often get suspended and censored on social media and can be found enthusiastically cheering at Trump rallies? I think you have a funny notion of oppressor if the average "white oppressor" can be fired for expressing the wrong opinion, James Damore.

And whatabout "allies?" Are these graduates of prestige universities with prestige media or NGO jobs? You betcha! Are they Tech Lords? You betcha! Are they nice liberal ladies in swank gentrified inner suburbs with #WeBelieve yard signs out front? You betcha.

Hmm. I am getting a sneaking suspicion that the Mary McCarthy Rule applies here. You remember Mary McCarthy. She said of Lilian Hellman:

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

I'd have to agree with Mary, since the day I saw Lilian Hellman's play "The Watch on the Rhine" at the Berkeley Rep. 

Against this putrid philosophy I offer an notion of real Ally-ship. It is based on my Three Peoples theory and recognizes that different people need and want different things. 

I'd say that Subordinates -- or "oppressed peoples" -- need a decent support from society but should be encouraged to lift themselves out of dependency. That's what I think a real ally would do.

I'd say that Responsibles -- or "white oppressors" -- need to be allowed to just be ordinary people and go about their business without being hassled by credentialed "allies" and accused of being monsters when they are not. But Responsibles also need to be encouraged to rise above mere responsibility and try something new. That's what I think a real ally would do.

I'd say that Creatives -- or "allies" -- need to be encouraged in the courage of creativity, but not if it means running about being white knights and beating up on "white oppressors." True creativity means being willing to sacrifice yourself rather than sacrifice others, to be a sacrificial hero rather than an ego hero, and Creatives need to be told that in no uncertain terms. That's what I think a real ally would do.

Now let us look at the bigger picture. In our era, the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years, the wages of cooperation have been immense. Take just one statistic: there are 3.8 billion smartphone users in the world today. In a world of 7 billion humans.

Just sayin'. How oppressed can you be if you have a smartphone? For one thing, it means that if you are one of the Factory Girls in southern China you can text with your friends about the best -- and the worst -- employers.

Now I think that the emergence of the Great Reaction, of well-born allies that went to selective colleges proposing to right the wrongs of the world with politics, is a sign that the Age of Politics, the age of using force to make people get along, is coming to an end. It is clueless scions getting the wrong end of the stick. It is a sign that the rule of the educated Gentry is coming to an end. Because we Commoners can get on perfectly well without the supervision of our Betters. Why? Because with smartphones and credit scores and cashless transfers there is a gigantic "nudge" encouraging each of us to be faithful and trustworthy in every life transaction.

In other words if there is a crisis in the modern era it is the crisis of people that are not trustworthy: people that crash their credit scores, that can't keep a job, that get pitched out of the circle of trust because they demonstrate untrustworthiness. The Fools.

Back in the day, the untrustworthy could disappear. A Brit could take a ship to the Americas. A New England Puritan could disappear and head Out West. People could give themselves a fresh start. But today, I'd say, the penalties for untrustworthiness are huge.

Hey, Wokies! How about a program for you guys to go out in the world and teach the "oppressed peoples" how to earn the badge of "trustworthiness?"

But meanwhile, we "white oppressors" will do our thing with the "oppressed peoples" and give them jobs and reward them for trustworthiness. And in the fullness of time they may become rabid Trump voters too. 

That's that I call real allies.

Taleb's Three Layers of "Skin in the Game"

The best-selling writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb is from what he calls "the Levant." That is, I suppose, to remind us that the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean has been a sophisticated trading culture since whenever. Those were the days when Beirut was considered the Paris of the Levant. Alas, no more and so the refugees from the Levant are all over. There is Taleb in New York, and there is Mexican cellphone magnate and New York Times owner Carlos Slim. And many more.

Taleb worked for 23 years as a financial trader, and made the big time with his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The idea was that every now and again a big event occurs that wipes out everyone's expectations. We all expect minor changes in the world, but from time to time a tidal wave obliterates everything. So, he argued, you need to keep that Black Swan event in mind. What would happen to your life and your fortune -- never mind your sacred honor -- if the unexpected happened?

Now he has written Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, the notion that you can't trust people that don't have skin in the game. But tucked away in the book is a three layer table on page 47 labeled "Appendix: Asymmetries in Life and Things." Three Layers? That's where I live.

Taleb's first layer is "No Skin in the Game," meaning the guy that "keeps upside, transfers downside to others, owns a hidden option at someone else's expense."  This includes bureaucrats, consultants, large corporations, scientists "who play the system," centralized government, politicians, bankers. In other words we are talking about a person that

Seeks awards, prizes, honors, ceremonies, medals, tea with the Queen of England, membership in academies, handshake with Obama.

The second layer is "Skin in the Game," meaning the guy that "keeps his own downside, takes his or her own risk." this includes citizens, merchants, businessmen, artisans, laboratory and field experimenters, governments of city states, writers, speculators, activists, hedge fund traders.

The third layer is "Skin in the Game of Others, or Soul in the Game," meaning the guy that "takes the downside on behalf of others, or for universal values," This includes saints, knights, warriors, soldiers, prophets, philosophers (old-time), artists, innovators, maverick scientists, municipal government, "journalists who take risks and expose frauds," activists, dissidents and revolutionaries. in other words the kind of person for whom

Highest -- even only -- award is death for one's ideas or positions: Socrates, Jesus, Saint Catherine, Hypatia, Joan of Arc.

 Of course this is quite a bit different from my reductive Three Peoples theory -- with its Subordinates, Responsibles, and Creatives -- and Curtis Yarvin's Three Layers, with its Clients, Commoners, and Gentry. That's because all three layers of Taleb's Asymmetries refer to my Creative class or Yarvin's Gentry layer.

Still, you can see that the No Skinners are rather like my Subordinates, especially when you read Taleb basically calling them suck-ups, wanting tea with the Queen, etc. And the regular Skin in the Gamers are like my Responsibles: they don't expect other people to pick up their garbage. The highest and best layer, the Soul in the Gamers, are clearly like the Jungian ideal of the Sacrificial Hero, who gives his life that others may live.

Actually, I'd say that Taleb makes an important point:. In every sector of society, from high to low, there are Subordinate Clients who expect to live without having to suck it in on the downside; there are Responsible Commoners, that willingly take the risk of caring for them and theirs; and there are the Creative Heroes, that put their life on the line that others may live.

One thing I would add, because of my notion of Activism Culture. There are a lot of fake Sacrificial Heroes out there. That is why I say that activists are "play-acting revolution." They know that the activist that gives his life for others is the highest kind of person. But if you play-act the Sacrificial Hero then you ain't.

Hamnet and "A More Feminine Sensibility"

As I keep writing, I read, years ago, the German sociologist Georg Simmel who wrote that while the public square -- Öffentlichkeit in German -- was invented by men for men, the emergence of women into the public square starting in the 19th century meant that women would start to change the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

I pondered that for a few years but have since come to believe that women don't relate to the public square, not at all. The public square is a relic of the duel, the fight between two men for dominance, only conducted today with words rather than fists. That is not how women live, or interact. As I say, women communicate one-on-one over coffee and in that conversation they do not disagree with each other, not at all. They talk about other women, as in "I can't believe she said/did that." The public square is not just a thing invented by men for men. It is inaccessible to women because they are women and their brains are wired differently.

So whenever I read a woman author I am thinking about her world-building: how does she present her women characters? Are they presented as just like men only better, like Mulan or a thousand martial-arts female heroes in the movies of the last two decades? Or are they handmaid victims in The Handmaid's Tale? Or what?

Recently a friend gave me a copy of Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O'Farrell, an Irish-born writer that seems to have worked her way up in the Brit world as a journalist. The book is about the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet, as experienced by Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, of the well-known cottage.

Hathaway -- called Agnes in the book -- is not your regular feminist kick-ass heroine. Instead the whole book is about her feelings and emotions: what it was like when she first had sex with our Will, what it was like to be left behind in Stratford with the in-laws when Will went to London. And above all what it was like when her beloved son Hamnet dies of the plague and our Will heads back to London after a couple of days: things to do, people to see. And what it was like when Will wrote and produced a play called Hamlet.

Considering that Maggie O'Farrell lives and works in the liberal and woke environment of Brit journalism -- being at one point "deputy literary editor of the Independent on Sunday" -- it is remarkable that she writes a book so free of feminist cant and orthodoxy. And it makes me feel that the worm is turning, and that high-status educated women are starting to get beyond the fantasy of competing mano-a-mano as "independent women" with men in the public square. Instead these high-status women are realizing that the life of a woman just isn't anything to do with strutting your macho stuff on the public stage. It is about who you love, who you hate, who you look after, who you mourn, and what you feel about the day-to-day events of life -- oh, and, of course, the kind of people you invite to dinner.

Now, of course we know, with Curtis Yarvin, that for people in the educated Gentry life is all about "ambition, honor, and vanity." So well-born women are still going to be all about that, only of course, in the feminine sense of ambition, honor, and vanity. And don't forget from Honor: a History by James Bowman that honor among men is the reputation for courage, and honor among women is the reputation for chastity -- or as they say over at Washington Examiner, "Am I a good person?"

Nobody should doubt the emotional wear and tear that come from living a life in a male skin suit, doing that male swagger and male hierarchy thing while still being a woman inside that instinctively is programmed to life a completely different life.

I've been appreciating this more and more from reading Jung and his notion of the battle between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. When you remember that almost the whole animal world lives only by the instinct and stimulus and image-making from the unconscious mind -- or whatever it is that prompts ants to ant and swallows to swallow -- it helps you appreciate that we humans, that have distinguished ourselves from all other animals by our conscious mind, are still complete beginners in the consciousness game. And, to use Jung's emphasis on the importance of dream analysis in understanding the operation of the unconscious, every time we fall asleep the unconscious mind rears its head and rushes forth from the shadows on to center stage and performs a little playlet, starring the archetypes.

So, I would say that the worm is starting to turn on the women-in-the-public-square front. But don't get your hopes up. Not yet. Not for a while. But it is a start.

It's Not a Good Idea for the Supreme Court to Legislate Morality

So here we are, with another Supreme Court nomination fight on our hands.

I was to dinner with the liberal neighbors last night and they were all sighing over the death of Supreme Court Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They had seen the documentary of her life, RBG, and were full of scenes like the moment in law school when the professor publicly made fun of her taking a place away from a guy.

For me, Ginsburg was a problem, because as a Good Little Girl of her feminist generation she thought that the job of the Supreme Court was and is to legislate liberal morality.

Of course, liberals high and low are horrified by the idea that Donald Trump might nominate a conservative Christian woman like Amy Coney Barrett. The Noive!

All I have to say, liberals, is that this is the wages of your strategy of legislating from the Supreme Court.

That is not what the law is all about. In the end, you will rue the day that you decided to start legislating your agenda through the administrative state and the law courts, but that time is not yet.

Now, some years ago I read The Story of Law by John Maxcy Zane. And the big takeaway for me was how much that the story of law has been about inheritance and commerce. In other words, when things go wrong with inheritance and with trade, that's when you have to call in the lawyers. It's amazing how complicated things can get. Why is this? Zane writes:

Nothing is more silly than to say that the law made private property. The fact is the exact opposite. Private property came to exist and it made the law. (p.147)

In other words, once humans began to treat some or all property as private, attached to an individual, then humans needed law to sort out conflicting claims about private property. 

That has made me skeptical, ever since, of the usefulness of law when it comes to morality.

Let us ventilate three ideas.

Politics and government are all about force. On what grounds can the state apply force to people? Because of violence? Because the state needs the money to pay for its wars?

Law is all about private property. What do you do when the heirs to railroad magnate -- and notorious robber baron -- Jay Gould start fighting over his $30 million fortune?

Religion is all about morality. What do you do about behavior you regard as immoral?

May I say that I regard this separation of powers as one of the most amazing achievements of humankind?

Let us investigate the question of abortion in this light of this separation of powers.

What do you do, for instance, about a woman who aborts her fetus? Immediately after conception? After the first trimester? Just before normal birth? Right after birth?

Now, I would say that a man that tells a woman carrying his child to "get rid of it" at any point is a cad. I take the moral position that if you have sex with a woman then your act is a commitment that says you would like her to have your child. Don't like my morality? Fine. I ain't forcing it on you.

But whatabout a woman who decides to abort her fetus?

In the first trimester? I'd call her flighty and foolish.

In the second trimester? I would call her very flighty and very foolish.

In the third trimester? I would call that flat out immoral.

At or immediately after birth? I would call that a crime.

See, I believe there is a difference between an immoral act, where all good women agree to name and shame and shun the immoral wench in question, and a criminal act, which implies an act of force, where police and criminal courts and hanging judges and gaolers are needed to take care of things.

But there is always a temptation, especially if you are a fervent believer or an ambitious elitist, to legislate morality, to treat questions of morality using the state institutions for dealing with human-on-human violence.

And that is the Big Problem of our times. Our liberal educated Gentry have abused their position as cultural arbiters, as what Curtis Yarvin calls the "Cathedral," to impose their morality on the rest of humanity.

See, even though I think that a woman that gets an abortion is flighty and foolish, and a man that encourages his partner to "get rid of it" is a cad, I still don't think that it should be a question of criminal procedure.

However, when a woman encompasses the death of her newborn baby, as George Eliot dramatizes in Adam Bede, where the abandoned mother Hetty Sorrel abandons her baby in a pile of leaves, well, that is something that requires the state to intervene. George Eliot makes it perfectly clear that Hetty Sorrel is both flighty and foolish. But she saves her from the gallows and sends her off to Australia. George Eliot was a sweetie.

Back in the day it seemed like a good idea to liberals to legislate Roe v. Wade from the bench and bring the US into the 20th century and legalize abortion like all modern societies in Europe. But did you know that the "modern societies in Europe" all pretty well ban abortions after the first trimester? Whereas in the US liberals are toying with OKing abortion "after birth?"

Then, of course, liberals legislated Affirmative Action and gay marriage and I know not what from the Supreme Court.

Problem is that what yesterday's Supreme Court decides last year can be reversed next year. So all your liberal Supreme Court decisions rest on a knife-edge, the partisan composition of the nine justices. So that is why all liberals go crazy whenever there is a vacancy on the court that takes place when a Republican is president. Because suddenly everything is at risk!

Let me tell you a story. Back in 1984 in Washington State, the religious right put Initiative 471 on the ballot to ban public funding of abortions. It went down, 53%-47%. And that decided the question of abortion in Washington State. Basically, we haven't  had a peep from the religious right since.

Do you see the difference of deciding this by a vote of the people and a vote of the educated elite? When the people decide, that is final. When the elite decides they end up having to enforce their decision with cancel culture. Why? Because they didn't take the trouble to persuade people. They just used their power as the educated elite to change the rules, and don't you dare object, peasant.

I don't know when our liberal friends will see the error of their ways. I would guess not for decades, not until there is a permanent Republican majority on the Court and a permanent Republican majority in the Congress.

What? Is that even conceivable? Well, it does according to my reductive Three Peoples theory. The evolving Republican Party under Donald Trump is a party of the ordinary middle class Responsibles, the Commoners. And our liberal friends have no idea, No Idea, that Commoners have a different view of the meaning of life, and have a right to have the government and its laws take account of that.

But, the bigger question would be for the government to get its cotton-picking hands off morality and let ordinary religious communities take care of the question of naming, shaming, and shunning the members of their community that violate their unwritten moral values.