What Will It Take to End the Progressive "Great Reaction?"

I suppose that the split decision of the midterms is the best outcome, although as a racist, sexist homophobe, I'd have preferred a GOP House. Our progressive friends really need to understand that their politics-is-everything schtick is a no-go. And the only way to do that is to give them the stage so that the American people can honestly and fairly decide if that is what they want.

Yeah! Imagine a 2020 election with a reelected Trump and a GOP Congress and the Notorious RBG replaced by another teenage rapist.

The dispiriting thing about the current progressive wave for me is the realization that this is what they  teach kids at school. When the girls at Google all come out on a protest it is not some desperate cry of the oppressed. It is good little professional-class girls acting out what they have been taught in school and university: activism, peaceful protest, demands. And professional-class liberal women are not victims. They are part of the ruling class, pal.

But this is all rubbish. There has never been a time in human history like the present. I am talking about the reality that today most people are able to satisfy their needs without kowtowing to their political lord and relying on his grace and favor. That's because of the market economy, which does not care about lords and ladies and the nobility of their grace and favor.

The problem with the market economy is that it doesn't provide the ego-stroking that the scions of the ruling class demand and expect. Time was when you had to stroke the pride of your lord because it was he that protected you from pirates and plunderers, and you paid for your protection with a bit of droit de seigneur. But now your average person can with modest effort acquire competences that free him from the need to attach to a powerful patron. So there are millions of people in the modern world living and going about their business having cut the humiliating bonds to the better sort.

But what will the better sort do then, poor things?

That is what the left is all about, glomming onto people that haven't yet learned the culture of the city and the market economy, people who still "know" that the way to get on is to connect into the power structure. That is why I call the left's welfare state "neo-feudalism." Back in the 19th century ordinary people developed their own welfare state through the huge culture of mutual-aid societies: everything from labor unions to Masons, Elks, and Odd Fellows. But then along came the left and the progressives with the need among those they called the "best men" to supervise the ordinary folk. They took the working class and diverted it off the road to the middle class and taught them to subordinate themselves to political parties and government programs.

Was that really a good idea for the working class? It seemed to look good for a while, until the factories and corporate bureaucracies started to hollow out with the rise of Japan, China and India and the global competition that put an end to the monopoly rents that, for a season, made worker aristocrats out of labor-union members.

In the last 50 years progressives have made blacks and women their special charge. How has that been working out? Perhaps the great benefit of Barack Obama, the First Black President, is for blacks in America to realize that, contra the wild enthusiasm of 2009, politics is not the answer. Certainly, we understand, blacks are disappointed with the results of the Obama presidency.

The situation of women, in my view, is similar but different, with attempts to mobilize women on the issue of pay parity and to push women towards the mechanical arts of STEM, and indeed that women should have "careers" just like men. I suspect that when women free themselves from the baleful influence of "the priests" of progressivism we will discover that "What Women Want" is very different from what "the priests" have been carefully teaching them.

At some point all of this "Great Reaction" foisted upon us by the rich kids of the left is going to collapse in moral and cultural bankruptcy, and then we can build cultural movements in genuine exploration of the market-economy world, and end the forced marches of political armies that are all about the glorious vision of entitled rich kids (Marx through Marcuse) where ordinary people are just  foot-soldiers rather than independent agents exploring the fascinating modern world on their own account.

I suspect that the inflection point in the modern era will be the moment when educated-class white women finally realize they have been had, and that the artificial attempt to elbow into the man's world of career and hierarchical status ends in nothing but tears for most women.

The problem is that the inflection point will not be the end of the Great Reaction, but perhaps the end of the beginning. Because there are going to be a lot of angry women on the day after they wake up from the Big Sleep of progressivism, and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

And we are going to have to get through all that anger before we can start to build the future.

Building the future? What will that look like?

I am here to tell you that Rule One is: nobody knows nuttin' about the future.

The Three Peoples and Power

It's all very well to talk about my reductive Three Peoples theory, but what about power? I told an acquaintance about my theory and he immediately started talking about being in meetings where people naturally genuflected towards the guy that exuded power.

Yeah. It's a problem. How do my Three Peoples -- the People of the Subordinate Self, workers and peasants;  the People of the Responsible Self, middle-class bourgeois; and the People of the Creative Self, artists and writers -- stack up with respect to power?

My unconscious finally decided last night, and woke me up to tell me. I think that the determining factor was having lunch with a guy in Manhattan on Monday. He had come up through the Irish Bronx, and his dad had made it as a city bus driver. One day, he told me, the call came in from an Irish friend for his dad to be at the bus depot on Monday morning, and his dad was a made man.

That's how the People of the Subordinate Self relate to power. They don't expect to wield it; they just form up next to a power outlet and hope that one day they get to plug in. Of course the other side of it is that, when the power goes out in the power outlet, or the jobs leave town, or the political regime changes and abandons our subordinate chappies, then they just wither away, "die of despair" in the words of the Washington Post, or even stage a futile riot or uprising. But power, for the People of the Subordinate Self, is something that someone else does for them.

What about the People of the Responsible Self? I think it is pretty obvious that for responsible people, power is something you find and develop in yourself. In consequence, responsible people are in favor of limiting power in the human world: limiting the power of politicians and government, limiting the power of others. The only legitimate power, in the words of Jordan B. Peterson, is the power of competence; you acquire power and status not from force or intimidation but from the power of your competence. And of course competence is a positive power, that benefits the world rather than looting it.

Then we come to our friends, the People of the Creative Self. I've puzzled a bit about this, because I want to keep it simple, and really, power is not all that simple. But I think that the experience of power for People of the Creative Self is encapsulated in the notion "we are the power." Whether we are talking about a king or an elected politician, or a business magnate, or a rich-kid intellectual or a lefty "activist," we are experiencing a person that believes in power, the power of their creative genius to change the world. Now this power might be beneficial, as in the power of a technical innovation to transform peoples' lives or the intellectual power to reform society to reduce injustice. Or it might be the creative force of evil, such as the power of the Frankfurt School intellectuals to create an identity politics that teaches people a new form of hate or the power of a new government program to make people into subordinate drones. And there is the creative power of activism to get people fighting each other.

My point is that power in the People of the Subordinate Self is the power of sucking up to the powerful, using the power of others; power in the People of the Responsible Self is the power of competence, of being useful to other people, a two-way exchange of competence more than power; power in the People of the Creative Self is the power of transformation, transforming the world with the power of your originality, your charisma, your brilliance, projecting yourself upon the world as the source of power and light.

In my view, the power of sucking up, while annoying, is basically harmless; the power of competence is beneficial and social. It is the power of creativity that is the problem, for it drives forward with a self-confidence that is often conceit, secure in the faith of its brilliance but too proud to submit its creative brilliance to the judgement of its fellow men.

In my judgement the great problem of the world is the conceit of the People of the Creative Self and their faith in their own brilliance. For the problem is that there are many brilliant ideas in the world but only a few that are any good. So anyone with half a brain knows that every creative idea needs to go through the annealing fire of a blacksmith's forge and the tempering process of the hammer. The model that works is the business start-up, in which a brilliant technology or business idea is tried out by people that are willing to accept the verdict of the market and their fellow humans.

Right now the business model of the People of the Creative Self is that they enlist the People of the Subordinate Self in their brilliant ideas with visions of sugar-plums, not to mention jobs and pensions. But then, in due course, they tire of their feudal serfs and abandon them. We have seen how the People of the Creative Self seduced and abandoned the white working class, and then seduced in turn blacks and women.

It is my hope that when blacks and women find out how they have been seduced and abandoned they will be ready to enroll in the ranks of the People of the Responsible Self and found their lives upon the acquisition of competence rather than subordination. If and when that happens we will then be able to insist that the proud People of the Creative Self, also called "Cloud People," submit their grand and creative plans to the verdict of their fellow humans, and abandon their current creative model in which the Cloud People get to open their creative ideas on the Great White Way without an out-of-town tryout and then force the rest of us to buy tickets in perpetuity.

Why Don't We Fix the Deficit? Part One

I was lunching yesterday with a guy in Manhattan who wants to do something about the deficit. He's an Irish kid from the Bronx that went to Fordham and had a successful career CFOing and COOing in the financial industry.

Yeah! What shall we do about the Deficit?

The short answer is Nothing. Not until the Mongols invade.

The reason is pretty simple. None of are willing to cut back on our government bennies. Not Social Security grandpas, nor Medicare grandmas. Not lifer public employees with their pensions. Not corporate America with their subsidies and carve-outs.

This is not just because we are all selfish and greedy. It is because we have all adjusted our lives and businesses to the current framework of government handouts, and if things changed it would cause, at very least, the inconvenience of adjusting our expectations and expenditures, and for many, real hardships and difficulties.

We humans usually only adjust to reverses in the face of disaster. When disaster strikes, then we all pull together and help each other out, and the Cajun Navy launches its flotilla of bass boats. But not until.

In other words, humans, the social animals, are pretty selfish creatures until disaster strikes. We reckon that people should stick to their own affairs. But when disaster strikes then we all pitch in to dig out of the rubble.

Obviously, the same thing applies to the Deficit. Nobody is going to agree to a cut in their take of government spending unless everybody else takes a cut also. And that ain't gonna happen, because we all have persuaded ourselves that we deserve our slice of the pie. Hey! I paid FICA taxes all my life! Hey, my business is vital to national security. Hey, we need well-paid teachers to teach Our Kids.

So no politician with half a brain proposes to cut the basic middle-class entitlements. Maybe that explains why Republicans could never get the white working class aboard until Trump ran and vowed not to touch Social Security and Medicare.

The fact is that governments find it almost impossible to cut spending programs, even in the face of economic disaster. Think Germany and Austria after World War I. The reason they went into hyperinflation was because they didn't have the guts to cut spending after the disaster of losing the war and all that lovely revenue. So they printed the money. Or Venezuela. You would think that Chávez's party, the party of the poor, would be able to persuade its supporters to take a cut in benefits when oil prices cratered in 2014 as a result of eevil fracking by eevil Yanqui frackers. But the Chávistas didn't dare.

Really, this is not surprising. The purpose of government is to protect its people. So it gives them bennies. But to reduce the bennies: you call that protection? Hey, pal. You reduce my bennies and I am going to go find another government to protect me.

Now, of course, government can be anything from a robber gang to an urban ethnic gang to a rebel insurgency to a genuine modern nation state. But the principle is the same. People put up with the taxation because they believe the government will protect them. And at the low end of the spectrum we call the taxation system of the urban gang "protection money."

Now to my definition of government:

An armed minority, occupying territory and taxing the inhabitants to reward its supporters.

Do you see what is missing? Protection. That is why Mao and Cho found they had to maintain their Red Base in southeastern China with terror. All that Mao did was loot and enslave the people in his Red Base to fund his Red Army. When you aren't protecting the people, and just taxing them and enslaving them you have to use force to keep them in line. Otherwise they will rebel.

When a normal government fails to protect its people it has to use terror to keep them from rebelling. That is what is going on in Venezuela right now. Since the Maduro government has utterly failed to protect the Venezuelan people from starvation and poverty it is reduced to beating up the opposition and jailing opposition leaders and anyone else who may object to the lack of protection from starvation and the elements.

But wait, you say. How does a government stop short of disaster, and pull back from financial disaster before it collapses in financial ruin and the president heads out of town to enjoy the loot conveniently stored offshore in a Swiss bank? Good question. We will investigate that in the next episode.

Who Will Turn Out to Vote

The thing about this mid-term election is that everyone is selling the idea that it's the most important mid-term since whenever. And I suppose it is, in a way. That's because of the Trump phenomenon.

If the Republicans hold Congress it means that the voters were serious about "change" in 2016. If the Dems take the House, not so much. And if the Dems take the Senate then it was all a mistake, sorry fellahs.

And do you know? I have no idea what the voters want. OK, we know what racist sexist homophobes like me want. And we know what #TheResistance wants. But then there are ordinary Americans that are neither rich nor poor nor educated nor uneducated nor woke nor fast asleep. Yes, that kind of American.

We are talking about people that just want a decent job, the chance to make a family, raise some kids, buy a nice house: all that stuff. What do they want, politically? Well, we are about to find out.

But I would say this: the elites of America are peculiarly detached from the ordinary people. Here are a couple of illustrations of this.

First, the liberals. Their identity politics, their social agenda politics is just out of joint with ordinary Americans. Abortion? I'd say that for ordinary Americans the big thing is not controlling fertility, but just being able to afford kids and cars and houses. Diversity and inclusion? I doubt that ordinary Americans think too much about that except when it impacts them negatively. I think that playing the diversity game is mostly an educated-class thing: getting access to fancy colleges, getting into tech companies. Oh, and the question of getting into the gravy train of the local fire department. And when it comes to the feminist obsessions with #MeToo and safe spaces, and the non-binary gender game, I suspect that this is way out of range for average ordinary people. Yeah: when you are in the workplace as an ordinary person you are vulnerable to people with power. They might be aggressive males or rich-bitch women. But you don't think about playing politics about this, like the fancy-pants women at Google did last week. You just do what it takes to hang in there, knowing that people like you don't have an "in" and never will have.

But then the conservative elite. We think about our kids, their colleges, their advanced degrees and the ins and outs of selective colleges. But what about the ordinary folk? People that want an education that leads to a decent job: never mind all the fancy-pants stuff of a liberal education in the humanities, let along the utterly incomprehensible "studies" stuff. We conservative elites have not exactly betrayed the ordinary folk, but we have not thought seriously about their needs and how we might help them.

Here is how my mind works on this. I would like to help detach the ordinary people from the chains of the public school system, so they would have the power to choose an education for their children: E.g., charter schools and home-schooling. And I mean by "home-schooling" creating a culture where ordinary middle-class moms in a neighborhood get together to cooperate and curate their children's education. Then I want a radical turn to apprenticeships, where employers step up to the job of training the future workforce, rather than expecting government to do the job. Really, why would government have a better idea of what employers need than the employers themselves? And I would encourage kids to start transferring from school to apprenticeship in their early teens, for unless you are really going for an elite education what you want is to be directed to a skilled job, and it seems to me that employers would have the best idea about what skills are needed and what kind of kids they need.

The reason I go for apprenticeships is that it shares the cost of education and training between employer and future employee:  Both benefit, in my view. The employer gets to select and train the kind of employee he expects to need, and the employee accepts a reduced wage for the term of apprenticeship. I call that a deal that avoids the horror of student debt. In my view the student debt model is absurd because nobody knows before starting skills education what the payoff is going to be. Education financing is an equity play, not a debt play. In the apprenticeship model both parties share the risks.

The other big thing for ordinary people without well-heeled parents is housing. The fact is that government policy to assist with "affordable housing" by providing low-down-payment long-term mortgages has enriched existing home-owners and saddled new home-owners with brutally unjust burdens. My affordable housing policy would end low-down payment mortgages but assist people in saving for down payments. And it would end the long-term mortgage. Why? Because nobody can project interest rates 30 years into the future. But, in the financial system, someone has to take the burden of risk. A high down-payment policy and ten-year mortgages with refinancing to mark to the latest interest rates combined with an encouragement to save that down payment would put sensible protections and safety zones into the housing market and maybe reduce the number of price crashes and credit panics.

Of course, if I had my druthers I would replace the current government-centric SoSec/Medicare/Unemployment racket with a National Savings Plan where everyone gets to save 10-15 percent of wages presently taxed by payroll taxes into a life-long personal tax-protected plan. The idea would be for people to tap the plan for education, home-buying, business startup, kids education, old-age pension and end-of-life medical care. I mean, that's the point of money and credit and investment. You can use it for anything. But putting peoples' life savings away in government-run lock-boxes is straight up theft and injustice. Because government doesn't care about you, it only cares about your vote; it ain't gonna use your money to benefit you, but instead use the money to buy the support of the votes needed to win the next election.

But all that is just my blathering on about my idea for a fair and just society. Meanwhile we have a mid-term election coming up and folks are going to be voting to decide what they want from America.

I know what I want, but the voters may have a different idea.

Not Left vs.Right, But Skeptic vs. Fanatic

The Zman says, in "The Cancer of Fanaticism," that we should get off the conventional political axis of Left to Right, as in Commies and Nazis, and think instead of the continuum from absolute skepticism to absolute fanaticism.

For instance, he writes, his teachers taught him to think about good Germans, who might, but did not, stand against the evil of Hitler. Wrong question, because the Nazis and Commies all thought of themselves as the good guys:

These were not people who thought of themselves as evil or on the wrong side of history. To the contrary, they saw themselves as the champions of light, fighting the forces of darkness. As such, they were duty bound to use any means necessary to win. Maybe the people at the top were more cynical, as is usually the case, but the rank and file were the truest of true believers.

So, a "good German" would just be a different "champion of light," fighting a difference force of darkness. And how far would he have got battling the champions of light in the government?

A better scale, especially in the current age, is probably one that has the true believer at one end and the non-ideological skeptic at the other. 

The point is, though, that nobody can be a complete skeptic, because you have to believe in something, and nobody can be a complete true believer, because you have to deal, at some level, with reality.

But, in fact, there is no limit on the belief of the believer, because "the next step on the road to paradise and each step is more inviting than the next, at least to those built to seek it."

The only thing that stops the fanatics is a leash, to limit the ability "to seek the ultimate goal."

The cunning trick of Christianity was that the ultimate goal, "that grace was for the next life," put a leash on the fanatics. But with the left's "immanentizing of the eschaton," with the notion that real justice can be achieved in this life, that leash is gone.

Thus the "metastasizing cancer in the form of increasingly deranged true believers... Either the cancer is removed, or the host will die."

Of course, the whole point of limited government and due process is precisely to put the leash on the fanatics, in the era of sadder wiser people in the aftermath of the Reformation and its "religious wars." And the fact that the fanatics have no idea of this has at least this benefit, that the rest of us look upon the fanatics and their deeds and are scared straight that we need to stop these guys before they get to the social nuclear button.

By no idea I mean, e.g., the notions among Democrats that we need to abolish the Electoral College or the composition of the Senate to reflect population rather than states. These people have no clue. Sarah Hoyt points to the importance of "oral traditions" of experts that know all the things you need to know that are not in the books and not in the science: the kind of things you learn hanging out with the guys. Anyone that has been around the block a couple times knows that the details of the Founding and its constitutional framework are one of the wonders of the world, ancient or modern. And one of the things our constitutional framework does is, by secret hidden channels, put the brake on the fanatics.

But no lefty kid or budding "activist" has a clue about such things. How come, they whine, that you can win the presidency without a majority of the total vote? Well, because, honey, the founders figured that they needed to prevent the big states from eating the small states for breakfast.

Now my line is to agree with Nietzsche that we are Beyond Good and Evil, an era he presents, naughtily, as "the priests" teaching us to hate ourselves. His vision is the creative hero (who has to be hard) going on his quest  without fear in the land beyond Good and Evil.

But what Nietzsche does not quite get around to is that 97.2 percent of creative heroes fail. As in the business startup culture. That is why he must teach hardnesss.

And when you get beyond Nietzsche to Jung and Peterson, you are talking about the Sacrificial Hero acting on the boundary between Order and Chaos. The Sacrificial Hero does not get to impose his vision of the perfect world on the world. He only gets to point to it, after the completion of his Hero's Journey into the Underworld (of the unconscious).

Here is the problem with our lefty fanatics. They want to play all the parts: the Hero, the Priest, the Teacher, the Executioner. I think it was Bottom the Weaver that wanted to play all the parts.

What we need is a new social vision that separates the Good and Evil part -- which is the proper concern of the People of the Responsible Self -- from the Creation and Destruction part, which is the world of the People of the Creative Self.

Decide what you want to be: responsible or creative, and understand that once you have made the journey from the Land of Responsibility to the Land of Creativity then the question of Good and Evil and punishing the Evil-doers has become, for you, penny-ante stuff. You should leave that to the little people. For you must realize that the Creator, living life as an example to others on the border between Order and Chaos, is probably doomed to destruction. That is why the Jungians call him a Sacrificial Hero. And because you are hard you accept that daunting truth.

That is what our liberal fanatics do not understand. They think that the great "activist," battling for "justice" for the traditionally marginalized, gets to be enthroned and worshiped and venerated in this world, trailing clouds of glory.

No, lefties, that is not how the world works, and the world is waiting for you to grow up  and learn it.

Think "Basic White Bitch" Is New? Read Jane Austen

Apparently there is a new thing in liberal-land. "Basic White Bitch." Well, it's a bit complicated because while the Democrats are busy complaining about basic white bitches, well, the core Democratic constituency is educated white women who, Good Little Girls that they are, have learned their Gender Studies lessons well. That's why they have Jewish liberal women and East Asian liberal women at the New York Times to tell us all about it. You've got to be carefully taught, as they sang in South Pacific.

But really girls. This is nothing new. I was just running through the good bits in Pride and Prejudice the other night, and what is Miss Bingley but your basic white bitch. Rich bitch, I should say, but is there any other kind?

Then there is Mansfield Park. The whole point of the story is that My Girl Fanny Price is surrounded by basic white bitches. There are the Bertram sisters, Maria and Julia. Total bitches. Naturally, one comes to a Bad End and the other just gets the heck outta there. Then there is Mary Crawford, daughter of the "vicious" Admiral Crawford. A nasty piece of work. (By the way, at La Wik, they are struggling with the notion of whether they should approve or disapprove of Fanny Price. Because she is such a "prig"don'tcha know.

What about Sense and Sensibility? Well, obviously the Prime Suspect is Mrs. Ferrars. A nasty rich, basic white bitch it what I would call her for fouling up the innocent loves of the main characters. How dare she! There is also, of course, Miss Sophia Grey, who barely appears, but who marries Willloughby. And so forth.

Ah yes. Emma. Here, the basic white bitch is the heroine, so she is not a bad as the antagonists of the other novels. But that just means that Emma has to be fully and completely humiliated in order to appreciate the love of her knight in shining armor, Mr Knightley. So there is no need, in Emma, to distract the reader's attention with additional basic white bitches.

Finally, let us not forget Persuasion. Here, our matchless heroine is bothered by two basic white bitches. There is Anne's sister Elizabeth, an empty-headed young woman obsessed, like her father, with rank and physical appearance. And then there is the spoiled Mary Musgrove. The less said about her, the better.

All I am saying is that nothing has changed. There have always been well-to-do women in the Anglo-Saxon world that have traded on their wealth, their rank, and their status. And a real pain in the you what they are.

The only thing is that right now, because of the way that women of wealth and status now all get university educations, they are more insufferable than ever, because, in addition to the status of their Daddies they have swallowed the lies of the left to imagine themselves victims. Imagine! The richest, most privileged women in the world, and they think they are victims.

But then, Miss Bingley felt herself the victim of the scheming Elizabeth Bennet. Except, of course, that Lizzy spends most of Pride and Prejudice hating on Mr Darcy. It is only when she views for the first time the extensive grounds of Pemberley that she realizes what it would mean to be mistress of that magnificent domain.

Real Power: "You Are Not Allowed to Say That"

Down the centuries, we have tended  to think of power as the clunking fist of political and military power: Roman legions, the Royal Navy, US Carrier groups.

But is not the real power just simply to power to say: "you are not allowed to say that" and make it stick with the punishment of defenestration, either through a real window or the the metaphorical window of being defenestrated from your job?

I suppose it is obvious from my maxim, that politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion.

The notion that to utter a "racist" remark is evil obviously suggests a religion, from the left's religion of anti-racism. So nobody even thinks of uttering the "N-word" except for African Americans, who use the word just because they can. But woe-betide Megyn Kelly for suggesting that going black-face for Hallowe'en is harmless. Oh no it isn't, say the Social Media Commies, and they have the power to make it stick and get Kelly fired.

That, I suppose, is real power. Jolly good fun, and very intoxicating to boot. Unless you are Megyn Kelly.

Of course, this is nothing new. There was never a time when blasphemy, "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable," didn't get you in trouble.

Only difference is that today you can swear up and down about God and nobody will bother you. Back in the day, W.C. Fields used to say "Godfrey Daniels, Mother of Pearl." I can translate most of that, except for "pearl." What is that standing in for? That is the job of a comic, to almost say what the ruling class and "the priests" say you are not allowed to say.

So the fact that comics like Seinfeld say that they could never take their acts to college campi these days is telling us a lot about who is defining what you are not allowed to say.

So today the worst thing in the world is to say something "racist." Whatabout the idea of "the race" according to La Wik?

A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.

So if "race" is a "social construct," according to "modern scholarship," who cares? Well, everyone, at least for now. But why? Because of slavery? Because of western colonialism?

Because, sports fans, the only power in the world that really matters to people in love with power is the power to make people grovel at your feet for saying the wrong thing.

You can see that this power, of punishing "thought-crime," is much more convenient than, for instance, the power of punishing for the crime of a deed. You can see that in the Kavanaugh episode. There, at least, there was in the background the question of "did he do it?" But punishing people for saying something like:

But what is racist? You truly do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as like a character.

Hey, that is real, delicious power. And cheap too! All you need is lefty social media that permits your noble left-wing hate speech and that censors eevil far-right hate speech. No need to maintain a police force and its expensive pensions, or a military and its expensive gadgets. Just lubricate social media with a teensy bit of Soros money and you are ready to go!

The thing is that "racism" is clearly a movable feast. And, according to my doctrine of "fake tribalism" developed here and here, all concepts of political groupings, of clan, tribe, nation, religion, race, gender, etc. are purely made-up out of whole cloth by religious, cultural and political leaders in order to separate people into separate groups for the purpose of religious, cultural, and political warfare.

Never mind. Say the wrong thing on race, Megyn Kelly, and you get fired. Say the wrong thing on "women," Tim Hunt, and you get fired. Say the wrong thing on gays, Brendan Eich, and you get fired. As in racist, sexist, homophobe.

The joke is that, 50 years ago, all we heard from liberals was what a dreadful thing the Salem Witch Trials were. And lefty playwright Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to prove it. And the worst thing in the world was the witch hunts to winkle out Commie schoolteachers wherever they might be found and fire them! Yeah! That'll teach 'em.

But that was before liberals acquired the religious and cultural and political power to fire people that they disapproved of. So that is different.

So how do we get out of this trap? I am hoping for the moral and cultural equivalent of organized sports. Today we channel a lot of the male appetite for violence and military glory into organized sports where we can cheer on the home team in sports stadiums instead of raping and plundering folks on the battlefield. Surely there is a genius out there who can invent something to divert the social media mobs into safe channels where they can demolish people for liking the wrong dog or the wrong Christmas decoration.

Because in my view the benefit of rousing everyone into a howling mob to defend the tribe is probably past its sell-by date.