The Left's Religion of Political Power

They say that Lenin's question -- Who? Whom? (кто, ктого) -- is the central question of politics: who gets to do what to whom?

But let us try to understand this at a higher level. The question for social animals like humans is how disagreements are to be handled, and the basic question is how to minimize the expensive and risky resort to force. That is the meaning of Jordan B. Peterson introducing the lobster into his 12 Rules. The lobster is a creature that goes back 300 million years, yet it is programmed to avoid force by use of the concept of hierarchy. In other words, lobsters know their place in the hierarchy and accept their place most of the time. This means that not every lobster conflict -- usually having to do with sex -- is settled by force.

The same thing, Peterson wanted us to understand, applies to humans. We have hierarchy to minimize the incidence of violence. And incidentally, the incidence of violence has gone down from 500 violent deaths per 100,000 per year in the hunter-gatherer age, to 50 per 100,000 in the high Middle Ages, to 5 per 100,000 today in the US.

But today we have a completely new way of reducing violence than mere hierarchy. It is the market system. Instead of the hierarchy among males in the village, or the hierarchy among landowners in a hierarchy of feudal vassalage, we have the interactions of market buying and selling. The guy that satisfies the demands of the consumers at the sweet spot of price and quality preferred by the consumers makes more profit and gets to mate with a more beautiful girl than the guy that is not quite as attuned to the choices of the consumers. No need to resort to fisticuffs. 

We do not appreciate just how much of a staggering revolution this represents in human social cooperation. Let us look at it through the lens of the Indian caste system. Here, everyone inherits the caste status of their parents and their means of livelihood: priest, warrior, merchant and artisans, laborers, and untouchables. But suppose things change and society needs more merchants and artisans and less laborers? Or suppose the prince Gautama Siddhartha wants to become a priest? Sorry, Charlie, no can do. Thus the unfortunates either submit to the caste system or they bust it up.

We moderns would regard such social rigidity as a recipe for revolution. But, most likely, down the centuries of the agricultural age it didn't much matter. Things didn't change much except for the odd invasion and the periodic famine, so what else were we going to do?

But the thing about the market system, we have learned, is constant change and constant economic revolution. This constant change and constant economic revolution, scientists say, is the basis of the extraordinary economic growth of the last two centuries: there has never been anything like it before, not ever.

But think of it. If there is going to be an economic revolution every generation -- machine textiles; steam power; steam transportation; oil illumination; electric power; internal combustion engine transportation; cheap steel; airborne transportation; computers; internet; smartphones -- then in every generation there is going to be an upheaval in the economic lives of the people. And the people that were doing very well just yesterday will find that the new thing has utterly cut their livelihood to ribbons. We know that when this happens to people they are not happy.

In the old days of agriculture there wasn't much the average person could do if the weather or the climate or the ruler changed. You died or survived; if you could you migrated in the knowledge that to stay put meant starvation. If you had a bit of military might you might try to resolve your problem with a spot of conquest and loot and plunder.

But today? Today there are two strategies for dealing with economic change. You can keep your eyes open and respond to the changes in the market for labor and skills by adapting when things go against you. Or you can depend on the political system to bail you out of trouble. You can follow the market or you can follow a political leader.

In my view the strategy of adapting is the new and the revolutionary way of dealing with the world; and the resort to politics is the old and the dysfunctional strategy. If you use the adaptation strategy in your life you are likely to weather the inevitable changes and revolutions in the economy; if you use the political strategy you will likely end up like the white working class that is reported to be dying of despair. If you adopt the adaptation strategy you are surrendering to the verdict of the market and its price system; if you adopt the political strategy you must surrender to some political leader that promises to lead you to safety and justice.

This is why I have declared that the leftist movement is a Great Reaction. It is a reactionary faith in the power of politics and force to put off the challenge of economic change.

It's all very well to allow combinations of workers in restraint of trade. But nothing is going to save a mature corporation where the workers are organized into a labor union and the labor union leaders refuse to countenance pay cuts when a recession bites or the market changes. But if there had not been a labor union then there is a chance that the corporation might have weathered the recession or adapted to a change in the market. The truth is that union workers are trapped in the walled garden of their above-market union wages and benefits. Everything is great until the market rings down the curtain.

It's all very well to legislate a pay-as-you-go old-age pension scheme funded by taxes, but what happens if life expectancy changes? Or the birth rate changes? What happens as, over the years, the politicians rejigger the plan to reward various political supporters? What happens as, year after year, the politicians put off adjusting the workers' contributions to the plan and the beneficiaries' benefits from the plan?

It's all very well to interpret the Civil Rights Acts as demanding Affirmative Action of hiring by race and sex or "diversity and inclusion" which is the same thing by a different name. But how are you ever going to bring the system of reverse discrimination to an end when the people benefiting are going to raise holy hell if you try to cut back on their benefits?

Our lefty friends believe that political power is the way to resolve the problems of the people: legislation to protect workers from the bosses. Government pensions to assist people in old age. Hiring quotas to assist people marginalized in olden times. But I say that this political faith is a reactionary return to a philosophy of force. And I say that the whole point of social cooperation from lobsters to humans is to reduce the costly and destructive incidence of force.

I say that when a new idea comes along that allows the resolution of millions of economic transactions through the market and prices and avoiding the indirect power of hierarchy, it should be understood as an astonishing miracle. And it should be a signal for our modern advanced and evolved citizens to educate the people and lead them to the promised land teach them to worship the new god, and they should be the first to abandon the worship of the graven images of the old god and his philosophy of force.

And my faith is that we are living through the last tempestuous years where the lefty reactionaries are making their last desperate efforts to cling onto their crumbling faith in political power and government force.

Hey, it's not really that surprising. Humans live in the past as much as the present, and many of us long for a return to an imagined golden age. The current market economy is a brutal and unimaginable destruction of all old and venerable customs and culture. Of course there are many of us that long for that wondrous time in the past when everyone lived in communal bliss.

But I am here to say that the left's Great Reaction back to the old faith in political power is a monstrous lie: for socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism; and lefty identity politics is neo-tribalism.

They way to the Promised Land flowing with the milk and honey of the market economy is the way of a new god, and his Ten Commandments begin with the command that thou shalt have no other gods, such as the gods of political power, before him.

Don't doubt me on this.

Interpreting a Smirk in 2019

Hey Catholics! Any of you guys planning to vote Democrat any time soon after the Covington kids free-for-all?

Considering that liberal Democratic senators now want to apply religious tests on Catholic judge nominees. 

Considering that your average Twitter leftie looks at a clean cut Catholic high-school kid trying to be polite to a mostly peaceful protester drumming right in his face and sees a racist sexist white supremacist smirk.

Yeah it's interesting. Your average Twitter mobster looks at a clean-cut white kid trying to be polite and sees a monster. Not to mention having nothing to say about a bunch of African Americans spewing racist sexist homophobic bile at a bunch of white kids.

Yeah it's interesting. It's nothing for a bunch of leftie mostly peaceful counter-protesters to insult pro-lifers at the annual March for Life. Nothing to see here.

But imagine if a bunch of MAGA-hat wearers showed up at the sacred (and anti-semitic) Women's March. I am not talking about them showing up and shouting "build the wall," or marching around with fife and drum playing Yankee Doodle and singing "Baby Ir's Cold Outside." I am talking about some MAGA folks just showing up at a sacred lefty mostly peaceful protest. Imagine the outcry! Imagine the doxxing! Imagine the vile threats! Imagine the foaming lefties throwing themselves on the ground in a rage about white supremacy and toxic masculinity!

If you are a mom, what do you think about the possibility that your polite teenage son could be traduced from one end of Twitter to the other? Imagine mostly peaceful lefties interfering with your son's college applications. Whaddya think of that?

If you are a dad, what do you think about the American Psychological Association deciding that the normal masculine traits that you are teaching your son are an expression of "toxic masculinity?" Whaddya think of that?

Now, I believe that my reductive Three Peoples theory explains the whole procedure. What we have in America and on all the ships at sea is a natural tendency among the special People of the Creative Self to regard the ordinary People of the Responsible Self as less than human, or at the very least, limited, rigid, superstitious and bigoted.

This is a natural tribal instinct, and that is why certain wise heads developed the notion of tolerance, the separation of church and state, or belief systems and force systems. The idea was to keep our natural tribal instincts down to a dull roar, and let other people live according to their lights, even if there lights were rather dim.

You see, when you are a creative person the basis of your world view is that the established cultural memes are there to be broken. Nobody, you think, should just accept the mores and the beliefs of yesteryear. The meaning of life, the universe and everything, you believe, is to break the mold, to create something new: break old sexual roles, both in bed and out of it, break old ways in art and literature, etc. Transvaluation of all values, baby. And if you don't agree you are a racist sexist homophobe.

Well, I say that such an attitude is great among People of the Creative Self. But I say it is utterly wrong to insist that everybody else believe in and practice your religion of creativity. Because, as my Three Peoples theory explains, there are also in this world People of the Responsible Self and their belief system says that you should live your life as a responsible individual according to well-established religious and cultural rules about how men should behave, how women should behave, and how children should be raised. You think that your religion of creativity gets to impose itself on all the other religions of the world? Just between you and me, pal, I think that your attitude is a recipe for religious war.

And suppose that you chaps of the Creative Self lost that religious war? What would you do then, poor things?

My warrant for my belief is the lesson that the People of the Creative Self, the Educated Youth of the 19th century, taught the People of the Responsible Self, the bourgeoisie way back when. Educated Youth -- like Marx, Engels, and the British Fabians -- said that it was monstrous -- not to mention unjust -- of the bourgeoisie to insist on a society of individualism, markets, and laissez faire, and impose it on the working class. The working class wanted the protection of labor unions, of wage-and-hour laws, of government-run social insurance, and they had a right to insist on it, and pass laws to institutionalize it. Maybe some day they would want to become People of the Responsible Self, but right now they wanted society to protect them from the harsh winds of corporate power and market prices.

And you know what? The bourgeoisie basically accepted this critique; they gave the workers the vote and the workers voted for government benefits and the combinations in restraint of trade implied by organizing into labor unions.

Speaking as an upper-middle-class person I am perfectly willing to be taxed to support social insurance programs for the workers-- not to mention widows and orphans. But I don't want to be forced to be enrolled in them. In other words, I want the right to be a responsible person and take care of my own retirement income through personal savings and investment, and I want to be responsible for my own end-of-life medical and custodial care.

But the Educated Youth of the 19th century and the educated ruling class of today deny me the right to be a responsible individual in these central issues of life. The educated rulers arrogate to themselves and their supporters the right to dominate and control the People of the Responsible Self and make them march to their idea of justice; they deny ordinary responsible people the freedom to organize their lives in their own way according to their own lights.

See what I mean? Back in the day lefties demanded that the middle class adjust the political system to accommodate the workers. Today the lefties demand that the right to adjust the political and cultural system to suit themselves, and to hell with the People of the Responsible Self as mere "deplorables,"

So I say that the lefty People of the Creative Self are cruel and unjust, and violate their own sacred principles of inclusion and diversity and compassion for those less fortunate, less educated, less evolved than themselves.

And that is why I think that ordinary Catholics -- not to mention ordinary moms and ordinary dads -- are slowly coming to see that the Democratic Party and the Twitter thugs are not their kind of people and that it is not likely that they will be voting Democratic much in future elections. Because justice.

What Do We Know About Sex in the Lower Classes?

If you think about the sexual revolution of the last century, you soon realize that almost all you know is about the educated class.

I was reminded of this as I read Stefan Zweig's excellent memorial, The World of Yesterday, of his adult life from about 1900 to 1940.

Zweig tells us all about the horror of girls in high bourgeois cities like Vienna being trussed up in girdles and corsets that completely disguised their real bodies, and mourns their utter ignorance about sex. That was upper-class bourgeoise girls. Whatabout the tidal wave of prostitutes that the young men of the era patronized, given that they couldn't sample the wares of the well-born girls that were being chaperoned out of all recognition.

How much better it was, he writes, after World War I when young people could freely mix and match, and actually be friends with the opposite sex.

Well, Zweig died in 1942 so he couldn't have known about the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s arising out of the pill and abortion on demand. And he couldn't have known about today's confused backlash against the sexual revolution in the #MeToo campaign and the demand for safe spaces and the Age of  the Cat Lady.

But one thing that struck me was that apart from prostitution, we folks in the Olympian world of the educated class really have no idea how sex goes down in the lower classes.

The only thing I know is the progress of the Irish Americans from "shanty Irish" and 50,000 "nymphs of the pave" in the New York City of the mid 19th century to "lace curtain Irish" by the turn of the 20th century. I translate this to mean that in 1850 the potato-famine Irish were dumped on the streets of New York and Boston and had to make their way as best they could. But by the turn of the century, with the help of Archbishop "Dagger" John Hughes and the slogan "first build the school, then the church" the Catholic Irish had achieved an astonishing and remarkable ascent to middle-class respectability.

So, what was going on with the family and sex in the world "below" the middle class all this time? What was the effect of the cultural transformation between the Edwardian era and the inter-war period on the European and North American working classes? We know all about hippies and feminists in the Sixties, but what was going down in the households of factory workers and policemen and firemen? I doubt if All in the Family exhausts  the possibilities.

And what did the welfare revolution of the Sixties do to the lower classes? We know that premarital childbearing went up and marriage went down. And thanks to Charles Murray and Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 we know that, in upper-class households, career and merger marriages reign, while career and marriage aren't that firm in the middle. And that the bottom 30 percent don't work much and don't marry much.

And that is just for white people!

See, my feeling is that back in the day liberals were drenching us with narratives about working-class life and then African American life, in service to their lefty politics, but what did we really learn?

And in the aftermath of the civil rights era, I'd say that things aren't going so great that liberals want to talk about them.

All I know about lower-class life is from visits to Rudy's Barbershop where I encounter the tattooed and the pierced at first hand. Or I interact with the aides that attended upon Lady Marjorie's mother at her end of life. Just between you and me, I feel that life ain't so great if you live outside the charmed circle of the educated class.

That's because the educated class is great at making a society fit for the educated to live in, but really doesn't have a clue about anyone else, except as a vehicle for activism.

Of course, you know me. I blame liberals for everything. For demolishing the unions and fraternal organizations and mutual aid societies of the 19th century. For demolishing the Catholic Church with Vatican II in the Sixties. For demolishing the lower-class family with welfare on demand. For sending women on a wild goose chase of "career" which was society's amazing solution to the problem of how to socialize aggressive men. For devaluing sex with abortion-on-demand and divorce-on-demand and the attack on bourgeois respectability.

See, I wonder how kids are socialized about sex and marriage in the lower classes today. I wonder how all the ruling-class obsessions about non-binary genders and the rape crisis and #MeToo and safe spaces plays by the time it has filtered out of the educated class out onto the street.

It may be just me, but I don't believe that the obsessions of well-born women and carefully-taught activists has any relevance to the lives of ordinary people that work at "jobs."

I guess that I should keep a weather eye out for writing that would give me a clue about life outside the charmed circle of ruling class privilege and ruling-class obsession. I'll bet it's out there, for anyone willing to pay attention.

And Stefan Zweig has reminded me that to learn anything useful you have to pay attention and look away from the endless rubbish of ruling-class propaganda.

I better get to work.

The Knotty Problem at the Center of Western Politics

I've been reading the autobiographical look at the glory days of Vienna before World War I by Stefan Zweig: The World of Yesterday. The book depicts the glorious summer afternoon of bourgeois luxuriance, before working-class politics took over and built the welfare state, and before the Great War and its ruinous post-war inflation unleashed Bolshevism and Nazism.

Well, there was the terrifying day that the workers staged their first May Day parade and marched to the Prater, the great public park in the center of Vienna -- and nothing happened! The workers and their wives marched "four abreast" singing the Internationale and their kids sang school songs. Just a Sunday afternoon at the park!

Zweig and all his buddies in high school were absolutely transfixed and intoxicated by the ongoing revolution in the arts, from Nietzsche to Hofmannstahl to Mahler. But at the same time, there was this young chap, son of a customs official, who experienced fin de siècle Vienna as a mortal threat to ethnic Germans because in the Austrian-Hungarian empire ethnic Germans were a divided minority fighting against all the other ethnic nationalities: Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, you name it. You may know his name; it begins with an "H."

The point is that the Hapsburg imperial regime had been playing mild ethnic politics with all the various ethnic identities for decades, and thought it had the whole thing pretty well in hand. No doubt it did, provided it did not get into a losing war and lose most of its revenue and therefore find itself unable to reward its supporters in the manner they expected.

In many ways we are in a similar position all across the West. Our ruling class successfully marshalled the working class into the bourgeois state decades ago by rewarding it with a broad array of neo-feudal benefits while warping the bourgeois state of individual rights and limited government almost out of recognition -- and dealing itself lots of lovely sinecures.

Then our ruling class brought high-born women and blacks into the room with the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s. This was a great idea except that the supporters of political parties are not really interested in rights: they are interested in loot, which was delivered first as Affirmative Action, then diversity, and now diversity and inclusion. Hey, handing out loot and privilege is what politicians do, whether they wear kingly crowns or merely facelifts.

The problem is that, first, people are insatiable: what have you done for me lately; second, at some point you run out of other peoples' money; and third, the ruling class tends to forget who deserves what loot and why.

That's how I understand the rage of the white working class here in the US, of the gilets jaunes in France, and of the White Van Man in Britain. Was a time when these folks were the little darlings of the ruling class. Well, when you are a little darling you are supposed to get regular presents from your sugar daddy, right? How come the presents stopped coming?

Of course, from the ruling class things look different. Hey, pal, you are still getting your Social Security, your Medicare, your health insurance, so what's yer problem? Well, any little darling knows the answer to that. How come you don't look at me the way you used to, Daddykins? And it's Sugar-Puff, not "pal."

But the thing is that the ruling class promised a perfect world of safety and justice and benefits, and that the working class and the gilets jaunes would live happily ever after. And the little darlings, starting to get lonely in their love-nests remember every loving word, every promise, every gorgeous present of jewelry from Sugar Daddy as if it were yesterday.

The answer, to chaps like me is to tell the little darlings that their first mistake was that first date with the married Sugar Daddy. Sooner or later, you have to get with the bourgeois program,  and stop believing in the blandishments of every damn politician to show up on the hustings.

But, as Stefan Zweig points out, all good things come to and end. That long-ago glorious summer of the Viennese bourgeoisie, particularly including the Jewish bourgeoisie, came to a crashing end -- through no fault, really, of the bourgeoisie. The Hapsburgs got reduced to Dukes. And after the crash, you have to suck it in, and get with the program.

So I dare say that the knotty problem at the center of  western politics: how does the wise and worthy ruling class take care of the ageing stable of little darlings while beguiling the pretty new faces at  the same time and still keeping a credit balance at the bank?

I  don't  know. I just don't want  to be the fall guy that has the pay the bill for the ruling class's many follies and injustices.

To What Do The Three Peoples Subordinate Themselves?

One of the delicious things about my reductive Three Peoples theory, that there are three kinds of people -- People of the Subordinate Self, People of the Responsible Self, and People of the Creative Self -- is that it makes me think.

For instance, the whole point of the People of the Subordinate Self, workers and peasants, is that they consciously subordinate themselves to some loving -- or not so loving -- lord. If you are a peasant you hope that the landowner from who you rent your land, or whose serf you are, will protect you from the usual looters and plunderers that range across the fertile plains you farm.

But will he come to your aid when you do call him? Obviously, he will come -- if it makes sense to him. But what if he does not? What recourse do you, a lowly peasant, have to ensure that he protects you? It is pretty obvious that the serf only gets protection from his loving lord if the mood takes him.

What about the workers? Same thing. Their employers tend to make all kinds of comforting promises in their employee manuals. But when the profits turn to losses, then the bosses will start cutting costs, doing the tough job of management that maybe they had been neglecting in the fat years. Yeah! But what about the labor union? Yes indeed. The union does make a difference; it makes it much more difficult for the management to manage and make hard decisions about laying off the workers. But the result of that difficulty is that the employer will fail to take tough action until his back is up against the wall. So probably the whole enterprise will go down in one big implosion and bankruptcy. And instead of a trickle of workers getting laid off over a period of time, they will all be laid off together, making it much more difficult for them to get a job.

OK, so the People of the Subordinate Self are screwed, any way you look at it, because they have trusted themselves to employers and union leaders that cannot protect them when the going gets tough. I have memorialized the unenviable position subordinate people with my notion of "Little Darlings."

What about the People of the Responsible Self? They experience themselves as individuals, responsible for their lives. So, strictly speaking they should be wary of landlords, knowing that the landlord doesn't care about them, but only about his rents. They should be wary of employers, knowing that employers are going to save the corporation, not the workers, when the going gets tough.

It seems to me that the responsible person must subordinate himself to the will of the market. Let us just think in terms of work skills. If our responsible worker sees his wages increasing that is a sign that the labor market is bidding up the wages of people like him. But if he sees that his wages are stagnant, that is a warning signal. Look out, pal: Red light ahead. And so our responsible person would set about improving skills, or maybe acquiring new skills.

The point is that the responsible person does not imagine that anyone cares about people like him. All they care about is that he can do the job, and does his work to benefit the company.

Now we come to our friends the People of the Creative Self. They experience themselves, as Nietzsche pointed out, as the Übermensch, the "overman," or "superman," or however you want to translate the untranslatable word from the German.

Then there is Joseph Campbell and his Hero's Journey, where the hero, if he is up to scratch, returns sadder and wiser from his journey into the underworld of his unconscious to deliver a boon to mankind. Or if we prefer, we can use the concepts from Jung, lately popularized by Jordan Peterson, and see the creative person as the Sacrificial Hero exploring the boundary between Order and Chaos.

It seems to me that the creative person, the truly creative person, surrenders himself to the creative process, knowing that, in making the journey into the unconscious, into the exploration of the boundary between Chaos and Order, the chances are he will never come back. Because in creativity, many are called and few are chosen.

I think that one of the great facts of our current era is that many people that think of themselves as evolved and creative are not really willing to make the sacrifice needed. They want their cake and eat it too. They want to be creative, but at the same time strut their stuff as if they were already returned from the Hero's Journey with that creative boon to mankind. Sorry Charlie. If you want to be a true creative, you must surrender yourself to the creative process, and accept that you will probably disappear into the trackless waste of the underworld of your unconscious, never to return.

Now, this does not exhaust the possibilities. What about people that are living on the borderlands between the Three Peoples? What about the people, for instance, that are half way between being People of the Subordinate Self and People of the Responsible Self.

It is my notion that the whole point of religion since the Axial Age is to guide people that are making the perilous journey from subordination to responsibility. That is the whole point of the Divine Lord with his Divine Law and his Divine Justice and his Divine Love. He is saying, go forth into the world and take up the Cross of responsibility. Here are the Rules you need to guide you. And know that, as you struggle in the world, my Divine Love is there to keep your spirits up. But don't think you can run off the road into the weeds, because at the end of the day, St. Peter and I will be judging your life from the Book of Divine Justice at the Gates of Paradise. The person on the border between subordination and responsibility is subordinating himself to God, and also to his representative on Earth, the priest whose job it is to make the Divine comprehensible.

OK, what about the folks living on the border between responsibility and creativity? How should they live?

In my view this question is the Big Question we are all struggling with. I think that the Big Error is to think that a life of creativity replaces the life of responsibility. This is the Big Error of the left, from Marxists to intersectionalists and safe spacers. They are saying that there is only subordination and victimhood on the one hand and creative activism on the other. Do you see what they are missing out of the equation? Yep: The Big "R."

I think that the creative life can only be lived in humble acceptance of the responsibility of the creative person. To borrow the environmentalists' notion of the Precautionary Principle: don't impose anything new on the rest of society unless you know that it is not going to make things worse. Funny how our lefty friends never apply this principle to their activism and their government programs and subsidies and confident predictions of the End of the World unless we act now.

Yes, on the border between responsibility and creativity, the watchword is that the creative process can only succeed if the creative ego accepts the awful responsibility of creating something new. The creative person must live a life of tolerance for those who choose to be merely subordinate, and those who choose to be merely responsible.

And the Great Fact about our era is that our lefty friends do not get it, that every creative person must practice tolerance for the merely responsible.

Because what our lefty friends have been carefully taught is to hate and to fear is people that merely live lives of conventional responsibility, as responsible workers, heterosexual husbands and wives and parents, and as responsible citizens.

And that is a monumental error.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition

The marvelous thing, to me, about the  whole Trump-Russia thing is that our liberal friends don't see what is sitting there right in front of us.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

In 2016 the Obama administration decided to spy on the opposition party's presidential campaign. And when it went to the FISA court to get permission for spying it justified this surveillance on the basis of cooked-up opposition research paid for by the Hillary campaign.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Can you spell police state? Do you liberals not understand what was done? Using the national police force -- the FBI -- and intelligence agencies -- CIA etc. -- to spy on the opposition? Hello liberals! That is what F-A-S-C-I-S-T-S do! Not to mention right-wing authoritarians, totalitarians, communists, tin-pot dictators, caudillos, etc. Let's replay this in words of one syllable.

In 2016 the Obama administration spied on the opposition's presidential campaign, using the government police force and the government's spy agencies.

And what did they use to justify this oppressive and illegal action? Cooked up oppo. research paid for by the Hillary campaign.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

And then, for the last two years, the FBIs and DOJs and ruling-class media have been kicking sand in our eyes to cover up what was done. That's what that Friday night New York Times piece about the FBI investigating Trump for possible illegal motives in firing James Comey was all about. Way down in the article it comes out that the FBI did't really have any evidence of wrongdoing: just a suspicion. Yeah! Round up the usual suspects, as the saying goes.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Way to go FBIs and DOJs and CIAs. Just open an investigation on anyone, based on a suspicion! Hey, why not the president? Just defending our national honor, or national morality, or whatever it is you chaps are defending today.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Hello liberals! This is as bad as bad can be! Remember Watergate? That was about some campaign operatives, ex-intelligence employees, doing a bit of freelancing to place a bug in headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Why, that was innocent joy-riding in the family car compared to actual spying, by actual government agencies, on the political campaign of the opposition party.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Oh I know why you liberals don't get it. It's because you live in the ruling-class media's walled garden, where you never get to hear a discouraging word about the ruling class and its governance. And even if you did accidentally hear some bird trilling outside the garden, you still know not to believe a word, because racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe, or whatever.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Now I know that there are people out there saying that, if you liberals get away with it this time, then the way is open for Republicans to return the favor and spy on the opposition.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Won't happen, because the moment that any liberal gets word of some eevil Trumpist using the FBI or intelligence agency to massage the opposition the whole sky will explode in a fireworks display. Every gorgeous big-breasted newsreader from Nome to San Antonio, from San Diego to Bangor, Maine, will be expiring on a fainting couch wailing "I Can't Believe Trump Did That!" And as for the Soros-funded activist groups! Imagine their fury!

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

So we are left with trying to explain to the two or three liberals in late-stage administrative-state America with half a brain why it is not a good idea to use the government to spy on the opposition.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

It is because when the government, any government, uses the police and intelligence agencies to spy on the opposition then the opposition starts to realize that, in the words of Shakespeare's Cassius, "speak, hands for me." The opposition starts to think that there is no way it is going to get a fair shake, and that the only option is armed resistance.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

And you know, liberals, you  really don't want to go there. You know why? Because you chaps are soft, scions of the regime, wafted aloft because of your well-connected parents, and tutored in left-wing folly at the university, but knowing nothing else. If things start to go south you will discover that, out of the bushes, a whole generation of hard men will appear that will eat you chaps for breakfast.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Back in the day, young men of ruling-class family went to Oxford to study "Greats," or Greek and Roman classics and philosophy in the original language. The idea was to educate the young skulls full of mush in the great political and philosophical issues of governance as experienced in the days of Ancient Greece and Rome so that they would enter Parliament with
half a brain.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Then rather later, young men of ruling-class family went to Oxford to study "Modern Greats," or philosophy, politics, and economics, so that when they went into Parliament or the Civil Service they would have half a clue about how to govern a modern state.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

When Calvin Coolidge went to Amherst in 1890ish, it was understood that graduates of Amherst needed to be prepared for careers in politics and government. La Wik:

While at Amherst, Coolidge was profoundly influenced by philosophy professor Charles Edward Garman, a Congregational mystic, with a neo-Hegelian philosophy.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to college at Boston University, it seems that the only thing she learned was activism. So that is what our ruling class thinks that young skulls full of mush need to know to prepare them for a life of politics and governance.

The Obama Administration Spied on the Opposition.

Do I make myself clear?

Is China' s President Xi Dumb or Something?

I've been wondering about China lately; well doesn't everyone. Because it seemed to me that President Xi's promotion to President-for-life seems to indicate that the rulers of China don't get it.

Then I wondered about the Belt and Road initiative, which seemed to me to be a return to the ancient Silk Road and imperial China's policy of having tributary states. And given that it is a big government infrastructure initiative, I figured it was bound to be a bottomless pit of waste and fraud. Like all government programs.

Now I  read that under President Xi, who gained power in 2012, Chinese domestic lending has switched from mostly private sector to mostly state sector.

In 2013, 57 percent of loans went to private firms and 35 percent to state-controlled firms. By 2016, there had been a stunning reversal; state firms received 83 percent of loans, compared with 11 percent for private firms. Much of this lending came from state-owned banks.

There are reports that Chinese growth is declining rapidly, maybe to zero. And I recently saw a graph showing Chinese energy consumption flatlining since 2013.

I wonder what President Xi is thinking.

Well, obviously he is thinking about his power. Maybe he thinks that his power depends on maintaining the state-owned companies and their jobs because otherwise he will face too much opposition from disappointed lifers in the state industries. Maybe he thinks that state economic power translates into regime power.

Maybe widespread unrest and the 5,000 or so annual violent protests that we sorta hear about have taught the Chinese Communist Party to hunker down and stick to regime defense.

Maybe the stock market decline in third quarter 2018 was about factoring in economic decline in China.

Maybe the political hunkering down by the Xi regime may have the reverse effect and provoke anti-regime protests.

Maybe the Belt and Road initiative is turning out to be a staggering mess that is bleeding Chinese wealth into stupid boondoggles that don't have a hope of profitability.

Maybe the next big challenge for the US President is to bail out China from a Xi-provoked nose-dive.

OK, I know that my view of this is colored by my maxim, that

government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the people to reward its supporters.

In my view what this maxim tells us is that you can't expect a damn politician to understand anything more than getting power and keeping it by plundering the people to reward the supporters. Given how long loot and plunder has been going on in human history it would be naive to expect that your average politician would grasp that to head up a big and powerful world-conquering state today requires first of all a world-conquering economy, and you don't get a world-conquering economy unless the state keeps its cotton-picking debt-drenched hands off the private sector.

And it would be even more naive to expect lefty politicians to grasp such a notion, when they have been carefully taught to hate and to fear the market-based economy since they graduated out of their red diapers.

It's a wonder. In the last 200 years we have seen a Great Enrichment all across the world whereever the market has been allowed to work its magic. And 97.2 percent -- my crude estimate -- of people in the richest countries don't have a clue about that.

All across the USA we are shaming people for not being sufficiently lefty and woke. When we should be shaming them for not knowing where their prosperity comes from.

And it would be a global tragedy if China's present rulers dump its excellent people back into the toilet, back to the days of the genius Mao Zedong.