Suppose Liberalism and Communism are Just the Same, Only Different

Let us start with my quote from Roy Rappaport: that "No society known to anthropology or history is devoid of what reasonable observers would agree is religion."

Actually let's go a bit further than that. Every society since the dawn of time, and especially ours, is drenched in religion.

Why?  Because for humans, that self-consciously experience themselves as living for a purpose, there is always the question of what should be done. This question presents itself to every human every moment; that is why many humans dull their minds with drugs.

It follows from this that to suggest that ours is an era that is Beyond Religion, or for which God has Died, completely misunderstands the nature of humans and humanity.

Let's go further still and say this: Every human alive has a religion, a religion that explains for him, and especially her, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

So now let us discuss The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
by Ryszard Legutko. I haven't yet read the book, only the review by Adrian Vermeule at First Things. For the Polish Legutko -- the chap too far-right for Middlebury College -- liberalism and communism are birds of the same feather.

Twin children of the Enlightenment, raised in the same nursery of the Revolution, communism and liberalism have the same inner logic, the same intellectual structure, and the same dynamics over time—such is Legutko’s main thesis. Both embody the secularized soteriology of the Enlightenment, the narrative of Progress. The liberal and communist polities are both perpetually poised in the now and not-yet, between the emergence from the dim night of unreason and the final triumph. 

If you want to boil liberalism and communism down to their essence, we are talking about the perpetual situation, “We have made progress, but there is still much to do.” That is why the rights of women come up as soon as the workers get theirs. And that is why transgender rights arise as a burning issue the moment after the Supreme Court puts gay marriage comfortably to bed.

There is always the next battle before us.

And, of course this "much to do," this next battle is a question of politics, of writing laws and regulations to hack progress out of the jungle, and a question of religion, of identifying saints and sinners and dispatching the latter to an auto-da-fé, real or metaphorical. And the whole thing is to be led by enlightened and compassionate activists free of the taint of Sin. That goes without saying.

The point is that all religion and all politics are about the existential fight against the forces of darkness, real and spiritual. And they always have been. Politics is concerned with the physical threat of the Commies, the capitalists, the racists, the sexists; religion is concerned with the spiritual threat of the Evil One that motivates the actions of evil humans.

The problem we face is that the current enthusiasts for the cults of liberalism and communism imagine themselves as something new in history, as a singular movement arising from the swamps of bigotry and superstition to lead the world to a Heaven on Earth. They do not understand that nothing has changed, that they are just the current crop of ambitious politicians and cult-creating religious leaders.

But let us try to think outside of the box on this. Let us propose that human society is based on the risk that something may come and destroy us all, and that this is perfectly natural and physical. If this threat materializes as from a human enemy mobilized into an army or a criminal gang, then we must rally under a political/military leader to defeat the foe and and prevent him from destroying our community from without. If this threat is from someone that wishes us ill but that represents something short of a physical danger, then naming and shaming will keep this Evil One from destroying our community from within.

OK, fine. But how do you know? How do you know if the enemy that the politicians are warning you against is real or just an excuse for them to increase their power? How do you know if the enemy that the moral crusaders are warning you against are real or just an excuse for them to name and shame people that think differently from themselves?

The answer is: you don't, not until it is too late. So all politics and all religion are battles against an existential peril that may or may not be real.

For instance, what about the Chinese? Is the Belt and Road initiative an existential threat to truth, justice and the American Way, that will destroy the world in 12 years unless we do something, or is it a stupid top-down excuse for political power that will self-destruct in 12 years or so?

For instance, what about feminists and gays? Are they a a moral/cultural movement that will destroy our market-based economy and Judeo-Christian culture  and ordinary wiving and thriving in 12 years unless we do something, or are they foolish cults that will self-destruct anyway because of their shallow foolishness?

You tell me.

Or are all political and religious ideologies with their One True Ring a symbol of evil forged by some monstrous Sauron to gain dominion over the ordinary harmless Hobbits of the Shire?

Because if the meaning of life, the universe, and everything cannot be solved by a militant politics or a militant religion, then what?

Back to the drawing board.

Yes, It is Really About the Elite's New Religion

I just finished a book about Jung that complained that Jung was not doing science, but founding a religious cult. And so, in The Jung Cult by Richard Noll, we get chapter and verse on how, clearly, Jung was veering away from the much more scientific approach of Freud, and consciously building a religious cult that would teach its cult members how to have transcendental experiences and become a cut above the ordinary mortals.

Good. So now I picked up a book on essays on Freud, by Bruno Bettelheim, in which he earnestly argues that Freud was not that interested in science. In the 1930s the Freudians in the US wanted to -- and succeeded in -- making psychoanalysis a monopoly for physicians, as a medical specialty. Not what Freud wanted, but there was not much he could do about it because Hitler had demolished the Freudian community in Germany.

Freud wanted psychoanalysis to be done by "lay analysts." So, referring to a couple of his books, according to Bettelheim -- The Question of Lay Analysis and The Future of an Illusion, Freud wrote:

I do not know whether you have guessed the hidden link between 'Lay-Analysis' and 'Illusion.' In the former I want to protect analysis from physicians, and in the latter from priests.

Further, says Bettelheim, Freud recommended psychoanalysis

not as therapy but rather because of what it reveals to us about what concerns man most closely; and because of the connections it uncovers between the widest variety of his actions.

He wanted his ideas to influence child raising, because it could free the largest number of people from

unnecessary repressions, unrealistic anxieties, and destructive hatreds... could help us, in short, become more human.

OK, I get it. We are talking about religion, just like Jung. Just like Christianity. Just like the social activists. Just like everyone of the People of the Creative Self who are trying to find meaning in life beyond the the white picket fence of the bourgeois middle class.

And one thing the creative class knows above all else is that they must lose their "repressions." Good point. The creative life is a voyage of self-discovery and you have got to get beyond the cramped life pettiness, of anxiety that prevents you from risking things, and hatreds that make your life small and mean.

So yeah. Of course the Jungians were trying to start a new religion. And so was Freud, only he didn't want his new religion to become ensnared in the coils of priests and experts. At least, not priests and experts of the old school.

I can relate to all that. I would like us to break free of the priests of the lefty education system and the experts of the lefty administrative state.

And this is the way to understand almost all the stuff coming out of our educated ruling class. Their politics, their cultural hegemony is not really about making a better society for us, the proles and the deplorables. It is about making the educated ruling class learn about themselves and feel good about themselves.

The interesting thing about Jung and Freud is that they both clearly are trying to find the source of meaning in the old myths. Jung's archetypes and his personal and collective unconscious are clearly trying to find some clue from the unconscious residue of the human past. Freud's recasting of the Oedipus myth -- turning it upside down, as I would  say -- is doing the same thing, only differently.

And, if you think of it, my line that the left amounts to a Great Reaction is mining similar territory. Our lefty friends are trying to find meaning in a lost idea of community in socialism, in providing social benefits and collective security with the welfare state as we used to do when the lord of the manor felt some sort of responsibility for the serfs on his domain, and in reviving the spirit of belonging with identity politics.

Only, I like to say, our lefty friends are blind to the benefits of the new world order that is aborning, and that is creating a new community of service and trust with the market economy. Their socialism has only ever resulted in slavery; their welfare state a clumsy return to feudalism, and their identity politics to a crude and divisive tribalism.

And we have to sit here while they slowly learn the facts of life -- on our dime.

There oughta be a law against a dull and foolish ruling class using us as their playground. In the old days, according to the myths rediscovered by Jung and Freud, your hero went on a personal journey into his unconscious -- into the underworld or the wilderness -- and only came back when, in the words of Joseph Campbell, he had become sadder and wiser so that he really could bring a boon to his fellow humans.

I think that the ancients may have stumbled on a piece of real wisdom there. Go and learn your stuff in the underworld and the wilderness, you foolish liberals, and let us get on with the vital business of wiving and thriving.

What's an Elite Scion to Do with his Life?

One of the problems our ruling class has is that its concerns are not the concerns of ordinary Americans.

As a congressional candidate that I recall in the dim mists of memory said. It is all about jobs, jobs, jobs. That is the primary concern of ordinary people.

But the sons and daughters of the ruling class already have jobs. So they must find something else to do in order to find meaning in life.

It is, of course, a problem we would all like to have.

One thing that you can do if you are a wealthy Peter Buttigeig or a Beto O'Rourke is go into politics.

I'd say that it is a sensible and practical thing to do. I suspect that using family money to jump-start a political career is probably a good way to go, especially if you are a likable guy or gal.

(Hillary Clinton need not apply).

But, I would like to say, this is a pretty low-rent way to live.

Or put it another way.

If you are a creative person, as all educated people imagine themselves, what is the best way to be creative and benefit mankind? Artist? Writer? Business startup? Activist? Politician?

I suspect that if you ask a young head full of mush about this they would respond by putting activist first, followed by artist and writer, then politician, then business startup.

I think that I would probably order the list the other way around. If you want to benefit mankind, the most concrete way to do it is the business startup, to bring to market something that nobody ever thought of. But it is the hardest. Then I'd say artist and writer which is relatively harmless, but also much less likely to make a difference. Then politician, which is a way to muddle through with clumsy programs of compulsion because you are too dumb to figure out cultural changes that could do the same thing without force.

At the bottom I'd put the activist, which is 97.2 percent conceit and very little chance to "change lives." Why? Émile Zola made the point way back in 1885 with his novel Germinal. It's about the union activist, Étienne, that comes into a mining district, riles up the miners into striking and sabotaging the mines, bonks all the girls, and then heads out of town to his next activism gig.

Yep. That'll do the trick, Étienne, old chum.

So, I'd say that politics and activism are cheap ways for well-born youngsters to get their names up in lights. But politics and activism don't actually do anything to make human lives better.

Politics in its defensive aspect is protecting people from existential harm; in its offensive aspect it is loot and plunder. In practice politics and government is loot and plunder disguised as protecting us from existential peril. And the politicians are forever conjuring up existential perils, real and imagined, from which we need protection.

And then activism. I think the word on that was given by Barack Obama, who started an activism career organizing the laid-off steelworkers in South Chicago. He quit after a year, and went to law school. Why? Because there was nothing that could be done for the steelworkers. The jobs had gone, and were never coming back, at least not as basic steel union jobs. So all Barack the activist achieved was raising false hopes.

And this is a basic problem with activists and politicians in general. The facts of life are that nothing is forever. When the gig is up, you up-sticks and move on. Politicians and activists propagate the lie that, no, it's not necessary to move on. Instead it's the cruel corporations, the greedy bankers, the system. And we will fight the system and bring back your jobs.

No. Usually the jobs never come back. Not because of the perfidy of the capitalists, but because technology changed and it would cost too much to update the factory to utilize the new technology. Plus the workers were already getting paid well over the market rate, so, from the point of view of the capitalists, it is better to get out of town and start anew with workers that are not yet organized by activists and politicians to demand above market rates for their labor.

Remember this: the real per-capita income of Americans has gone up by 30 times in the last 200 years. There has never been anything like this Great Enrichment in human history, says economist Deirdre McCloskey. And what did it? Innovation. Guys with an idea that put it into a business and made peoples' lives better.

What politicians did do about that? They failed to stop the innovations, probably from ignorance and stupidity. Bully for them. What activists did is they failed to peacefully protest against the innovations until it was too late. Thank goodness for that.

And artists and writers? Maybe they occupy the sweet spot, between the grueling struggle of the business startup and the negative spiral of the politician and activist. And they create the narrative by which we attempt to understand the past and wonder about the future.

But it's a problem. What can elite scions do to make their lives meaningful?

The Elite's Religion: We are Holier Than Thou Because We Care about the Victims

I had an email from a regular correspondent today reminding me that the "backlog of asylum cases at the US border stands at 855,000." Thanks Lon.

You may wonder: why? How in all the world did we get to a situation like this? I mean, come on, fellahs, a border is a border.

So why do we have 855,000 applications for asylum in these United States?

The reason is that the religion, the morality, the "ethics" of our elite educated class is that they care about "the victims."

And everyone in this world has a religion, particularly those people that deny they have a religion. Oh, you may say, with Nietzsche, that God is Dead. No doubt for our educated classes the God of Abraham is dead; the God of whom Christ was the Son is dead. Dead for them, the educated, the compassionate, the enlightened.

So, the fundamental thing to ask, when people say they don't believe in God is to ask: OK, so what do you believe in, that can answer the question of "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything."

For many of our nation's Subaru and Prius and Leaf drivers, the meaning of life, the universe and everything centers around advocating for the victims. That is their religion.

Like I say: first it was the workers, then it was women and blacks, then it was the indigenous, then it was gays. Victims for whom young well-born people advocated and peacefully protested. Now it is Palestinians, Muslims, and "refugees."

There is a double bonus in this religion. In the first place, you get to fight against sin, the sin of exploitation, oppression, genocide; so you get to virtue-signal your virtue to the world. But there is a bonus: you get the political support of the victims, and so your virtue-signaling is a royal road to political power. Really, what's not to like?

Well, you might look at the previous victims, antecedent to the current Little Darlings of the in-crowd: the workers now dying of despair, the women who are less happy than they were half a century ago, the 77 percent of black children not born to two married parents. You may wonder: what was the point of advocating for those victims if this is the payoff?

The point is that, as far as the Subaru and Prius and Leaf drivers are concerned, the system is working. They get to practice their religion and get the absolution of sins -- the sins of you and me -- and they get political power from representing the victims-du-jour.

As you may know, this is not new. Charles Dickens was making fun of this 170 years ago in Bleak House with Mrs. Jellyby, who was working hard on helping "the natives in Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger." While neglecting her own husband and children.

President Trump has been playing on this hypocrisy by proposing to dump illegal aliens in so-called "sanctuary cities" that do not cooperate with federal authorities when it comes to illegal aliens. On cue, the singer Cher has tweeted in opposition to this, because in LA they are already overwhelmed.

I think there are a number of things going on here. There is the need for any upper class to differentiate itself from the common crowd: 100 years ago the rich were fat and the poor were thin; today the opposite is true. And today there is the whole idea of your car making a moral statement about you.

Now, I don't think I am different from anyone else on this. I consciously like to differentiate myself from the liberal hypocrites and their version of virtue-signaling. I think that the vilest, cheapest thing in the world is to be an activist. I think that the vilest, cheapest thing in the world is to advocate for the Green New Deal and kick the global poor out of their cars before they even get a chance to own one. I think that the vilest, cheapest thing in the world is to advocate for big government programs that keep the poor and a lot of the middle class in permanent subordination to government entitlement programs.

But hey! I don't pretend to be anything more than a racist sexist homophobe.

And I say to my betters: you are better than this. If you want to cut a dash in the world, to be a creative, compassionate person to whom everyone genuflects, then this victim game is the last thing you should be doing. Because it is vile and it is cheap. And it is advocated by the ruling-class stooges in the schools, in the universities, in the media, in politics, in the activism community, and in north Seattle.

Eeeuuw! Who would want to be like them?

Actually, I believe that the problem of what do the People of the Creative Self believe in when they no longer believe in God is the biggest problem in the world today.

And we need to solve the problem before the People of the Creative Self kill us all with their compassion and their virtue.

You can quote me on that.

Notre Dame: Civilizations Fall When The Elite Scam Fails

OK, so the image of the Cathedral of Notre Dame burning seems to many of us to be a metaphor for our age.

When I was last in Paris I went to up to Notre Dame, but decided not to go in. I guess my experience with the cathedral in Florence, and the duomo in Siena, is that these buildings are monuments to civic pride, more an expression of "our team is better than yours" than religious devotion.

But it wasn't the burning of Rome that caused its downfall. It was simply that the rulers' economic game didn't work any more.

Rome had operated for centuries on a loot and plunder model. The Roman Army would conquer some place out in the hinterlands, and the loot and plunder would flow back to Rome and enrich the coffers of the state and the ruling class.

But by, let's say, 200 AD, the game was about played out, because the frontiers of the empire were too far out. It was just too hard to find new lands to plunder, keep control of the commanders of the legions, and get the loot back to Rome.

Of course the end of the feudal era was a bit different, but still, similar. The rise of manufacturing disturbed the loot and plunder model of the landed feudatories. And the agricultural revolution meant that wealth and power belonged to people that could adapt agriculture from conservative peasants sitting on the land to energetic improvers using land drainage and new methods to increase crop yields.

Even then in the later stages of the agricultural era the landed magnates still had a good thing going. A lot of their revenue was not from land rent, but from court fees in their manor courts from local farmers buying and selling the leases on the land they farmed.

But ruling classes are all alike. They want to set up a system to loot and plunder the people so they can reward and keep their supporters. As in my maxim:

Government is an armed minority, occupying land and taxing the people thereof to reward their supporters.

The problem is that the world is always changing, so a system of taxing and rewarding that has worked like a charm for centuries may cease to work, at some point. And, of course there is the little problem that the supporters always want "more."

The beautiful thing about our current system of the market economy is that it is the complete enemy of the fixed system, with some elite "farming" the nation for themselves and their supporters. The market insists of serving the consumers, and it insists on what we might call "permanent revolution," so that today's dominant corporation becomes tomorrow's basket case.

So the wise ruler rails and complains about the evil capitalists, but still lets things take their capitalist course. Our Bolivarian socialist pals in Venezuela show what happens when the rulers think they are smarter than the capitalists and staff the technostructure with political hacks: they can't even keep the lights on!

So, in the United States in the wake of the Crash of 2008, caused by the ruling-class policy of low-down and liar mortgages, which resulted in the nationalization of bankrupt General Motors and the bankrupt mortgage twins Fannie and Freddie, the government has sensibly let their nationalized basket cases return to private ownership, and they have eased up a bit on the liar loan thing.

But everyone in the ruling class believes -- and always has believed -- in command and control. That is the internal logic of political power. You rally the nation -- or tribe or army -- to face the foe, and of course that means that all the young men must be enlisted in the army, and the rest of the nation must be subordinated into a common effort that will save us from existential peril.

And jolly good fun it is for the ruling class, win or lose, and indeed for many down the chain of command that get to step out of the normal life of wiving and thriving and do their bit for the cause.

Yes, this is a crucial aspect of a ruling class. They get to thrive, most likely, win or lose. Did Napoleon die on the battlefield of Borodino? Not a bit. When the decision was made to retreat from Moscow, Napoleon rode home in his carriage; the rest of the army struggled and starved their way home to France -- if they got home at all.

We are in a situation today where all the cunning plans of our ruling class are coming to ruin, because they are inflexible top-down stupidities that cannot adjust to changing times.

The US rulers could have set up a pension plan that forced every worker to save ten percent of his wages in a private savings account. In a system like that the worker retires when he can afford to. If there is a nasty recession then maybe he has to put off retirement for a couple of years. But in the system our rulers did set up the pensions are fixed by the politicians, with no idea what will happen in 30 years, and we just hope that the money is there.

Our rulers could have set up a system for senior health care that allowed seniors to determine whether they wanted heroic care or palliative care at their end of life. Obviously, if the government is going to force the income taxpayers to pay for elderly care, as we do now, then everyone wants the gold-plated version. But, I tell you, if I were paying for my Medicare without government assistance, I don't think I would want to pay for heroic surgery up onto my late 80s. But the system our rulers gave us doesn't have that flexibility, at least, not on the surface. But below the radar they have done all kinds of cunning things to make Medicare viable by limiting care. Here's one little item. If you are on Medicare and you can no longer swallow, they don't put you on a feeding tube. The protocol is that you go on Medicare Hospice, and you die in a couple of weeks in a flurry of home health care aides.

Back to the top, and the ruin of Notre Dame and the threat of the end of the world.

The end of a civilization is generally not due to God's will or the sins of the people. It is usually due to the fact that the ruling class's loot and plunder system runs out of other peoples' money.

The Transformations of Modern Life, for Men and for Women

Back in the day, real men were warriors. Or they were hunters.

OK. So most of us were serfs. So now you know the meaning of Cassius' sneer to Brutus, that "our" fault was that we were underlings.

To be an underling means not to be a real man. And only a real man gets the girl.

The fascinating thing, for me, about the modern era is the way that we men have replaced the old order with immensely ingenious social institutions that fill in for the annealing fire of war and the thrill of the chase.

Instead of the hunt we have careers, where the ability to stalk a deer is replaced by the skill to navigate the jungle of business. And instead of war we have team sports where we can all cheer our city's team in the eternal battle for dominance and venerate our heroes. Or maybe it is business that provides the war experience and sports that replicates the hunt. Who knows?

All so we can determine who is the real alpha male that gets the girl.

The remarkable thing is that this all happened in a flash. Back in 1700 the only thing to be was a warrior. By 1900 we had corporations -- which are really reflections of armies, with the same notion of rising through the ranks and doing battle with the competition -- and we had sports teams up the ying-yang.

But what about women, you ask? Exactly my point.

Back in the day, 1800, the lives of nearly all women were entirely engaged as wives and mothers. Their entire lives were consumed with getting a couple of kids out of the womb and keeping them alive until they were out of the nest.

This life was just as nasty, brutish and short as men's lives.

But now things are different. For one thing, women don't die in childbirth. For another children don't die like they used to. Yet another, women can control their fertility, and only get pregnant when they want to.

But I think that women have made a dreadful mistake. They have wanted to become as men, because, I assume, life as a man looks pretty good from the outside.

So women have wanted to become educated, as men. They have wanted to have careers, like men. They have wanted to become "independent women" as men. They have even wanted, some of them, to approach sex as men.

I think this is foolishness, and a dreadful mistake.

I don't think that women need to be sent to schools to learn stuff. I think that women and girls naturally learn everything needful. Indeed, in my experience, women love to go to school and learn stuff and will do so at the slightest excuse. In my view, the purpose of schools is to ram stuff down the throats of boys that, at least since Shakespeare's time, go "unwillingly to school." Shall we run the whole quote? I think we should:

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel.
And shining morning face, creeping like snail.
Unwillingly to school.

Exactly my point. Whoever heard of a girl creeping like a snail to school? Unless, of course, the Mean Girls are making her life a hell.

I don't think that women are that interested in climbing the greasy pole, and their natural way of socialization does not lend itself to the administrative hierarchy of the army and the bureaucracy. Many women complain of women bosses in business and in government. In my view, women practice a form of socialization where there is indeed a hierarchy, but where there is a conceit, at least, that all women in the neighborhood are equal. And then there are committees. If you are a man you assume that when you get on a board or a committee you shut up for a year until you have shown that you deserve to be listened to. But women expect to be able to "share" the moment they get on the board, and they get insulted if they are not treated as an equal from day one.

Sorry girls. I don't think that women in business makes much sense. But there is a lot that women could be doing instead: running neighborhood home schools, charities, and just maintaining a community of women in the neighborhood that keeps an eye on all the kids and the old people.

But here is a Good Thing. Women as writers. I'm all in favor of that. And health care. Let's give the whole health care system over to women. They live and die for health care.

I don't think that women want to be, or even can be "independent women" as Simone de Beauvoir proposed in The Second Sex. And the truth of this is in the absurdity of Oscar Wilde's question: What Do Women Want? No Oscar, old chap. It's not what do women want, it's What Do Women Expect. Just between you and me, anyone that "expects" things is someone that has a servant or a husband providing her with services. Because she expects it.

Then there is sex. I remember a unit on the Dennis Prager radio show years ago where he interviewed a bunch of college girls. What did they yearn for? To be romanced, rather than getting a booty call. No wonder educated women are going every which way except conventional sex and marriage. What they want -- what they expect -- is to be courted, cherished, and loved. What they do not want is to be picked up, pressured into sex, and then dumped after a few weeks: that is my takeaway from Mattress Girl and the frequent lying Title IX accusations of college women against their former lovers. They are dying of despair in the modern sex scene.

Then there is abortion. It is sad that women are joining men in the eternal refrain: "get rid of it."

Now I have kept the prophecy of German sociologist George Simmel close in recent years. He noted that "19th century technologies 'made for less labor in the household.'"

Obviously, Simmel wrote, the public sphere, the world outside the home, in the short term would still be defined by men for men, but in the long term women would transform the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

This is fine and dandy, except that not everything in the world lends itself to "a more feminine sensibility." And I am afraid that we are going to have to find that out the hard way.

But there is plenty of human life in the "world outside the home" that would benefit from "a more feminine sensibility." It's just not where the feminists and their ilk think it is. And I am sure that, in the end, women will show us the way.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Searching for a New Religion: Leftism, Feminism, Wokeness, Etc.

What are we to do about the demoralization of young people? Why are the Kids so unhappy, The Atlantic worries? Christopher DeGroot answers that it's the "autonomy paradox," Yeah, sure, autonomy is great, but it brings new problems to life. For instance, after the sexual revolution, the Kids find themselves battered in a wild world of sexual licence, finding free sex to be a torpedo that has circled round and attacked them in a perfect storm of resentment and rage.

Or feminism. David Solway at PJMedia wonders how, in our amazing age of "the rule of law, scientific discovery, technological invention, educational opportunity for the masses" we have "radical feminism, which seeks the ruin of motherhood and the breakdown of the relation between the sexes." I mean, here we have women freed from the thankless toil of ages, and they are fit to be tied.

Suzanne Fields notes the curious dialectic between the #MeToo movement and the hypersexualized depiction of women in media and screen and notes that in

a provocative article in the conservative journal First Things, published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, Katherine Kersten blames "false feminism," where there has emerged a serious disconnect between women's feverish attention to sexual impropriety on the part of men at the same time they embrace the nation's sex-drenched popular culture that demeans and hypersexualizes women.

Stalwart David Limbaugh worries "how intolerant and filled with rage leftist extremists have become[.]" It's like the runup to the French Revolution, he thinks.

Well, I am not surprised by all this at all. Because you should understand that we are in a period of religious revolution, rather like the Reformation, in which people are all at sea about the "meaning of life, the universe and everything."

The reason that people don't get this is that they have been carefully taught to believe that, oh well, old-fashioned religious frenzy was then: witch hunts, Galileo imprisoned for daring to suggest that the Earth goes around the Sun. But now...

Well, now we have exactly the same situation. People are going off into crazy new sects, the ruling class is trying to clamp down, and people are chasing Evil Ones all over the place. Nothing new under the sun.

But, but, Science, you say. No doubt, but science doesn't tell you anything about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Just the facts, ma'am, and often not much of that.

Oh sure, "science is real" as the #WeBelieve yardsigns say. But it doesn't tell us what we really want to know, which is the meaning of reality. And right now, if you really believe science is real, science can't really tell us whether CO2 is a killer drug or the loving friend of plants and all living things.

What I am saying is that we humans are in the position we have always been in: we need to tell a story about who we are and what our lives mean. But we have a problem. The Great Enrichment of the last two hundred years, not to mention the stunning success of science in explaining how things work and how to use things as a source not just of food but of power, has, shall we say, invalidated the religious narratives of old.

Now, what would you expect of a sudden change in the experience of daily life? You would expect that it would show that the old narratives about the meaning of life, the universe and everything needed a spot of paint.

They might need more than a spot of paint. They might need paint remover, a vigorous sanding, and a complete do-over.

Now actually, most people are perfectly happy with the way things are. Only a few people are all riled up, and as you know, this is perfectly illustrated by my reductive Three Peoples theory.

The People of the Subordinate Self are perfectly happy. Their religion is that you need to stick together in your ethnic enclave and you need a strong leader to defend you from the employers and the fat-cats and the KKK. All they need to do is punch up their political Uber app and an activist will be right along to peacefully protest on their behalf.

The People of the Responsible Self are perfectly happy. Their religion is that you need to believe in the God of divine justice and live a moral and responsible life according to the precepts of their Axial Age religion.

The People of the Creative Self are not happy, and that is what all the fuss is about.

In my view all the fuss and feathers -- not to mention the death of the 100 million -- is about creative people thrashing around looking for a new religion, something that answers the need for a narrative that explains the meaning of life, the universe, and everything for them.

The French Revolution was all about a religion of Reason, only it ended in Terror and the Thermidorean Reaction and Napoleon.

Romanticism was a religion of feeling, that life was clearly not a mechanical thing of logic and reason and Newton. The Romantics believed in a religion "characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature." That's what La Wik says. But what about the workers?

The Communist Manifesto was all about Educated (and creative) Youth in the mid 19th century on a hero's quest to bring justice to the working class -- and more importantly find meaning in their own lives.

Nietzsche and the religion of "free spirits." Forget nationalism; forget the morality of "the priests;" forget socialism and its encouragement of big government. You wanna be a creative genius, a free spirit thinking and doing new things? Then you belong, like Zarathustra, all alone in a cave in the mountains. And that life is hard.

Blavatsky, spiritualism, the discovery of the "unconscious" with Freud and Jung. A religion that tries to mate the conscious mind with the buried unconscious of affect and instinct to solve the problem of the creative life. This is life after bourgeois Christianity, whether you are Freud blowing up the world with your infantile sexuality, or Jung bonking the babes in his Jung cult.

Bolshevism, and educated-class revolutionaries shall be as gods! And kill about 100 million innocents in their project to subordinate all humanity to the wisdom and knowledge of political activists.

Feminism, the religion of female creativeness above and beyond the crude creativity of making children.

Cultural Marxism, a new project for Educated Youth: to bring justice to women and minorities -- and more importantly find meaning in their own lives.

The sexual revolution: finding meaning by breaking the barriers of bourgeois respectability and getting creative about sex by letting it all hang out.

Intersectionality: finding meaning by demolishing the bourgeois culture and making everything into activists and victims -- and more importantly find meaning in their own lives.

What I think.

I think there is room in the world for the religions of subordination, responsibility, and creativity. What we need is the sense to realize that our own religion is not right for everyone.

We enlightened ones should be perfectly happy for People of the Subordinate Self to live in their tribal communities and imagine that the employer or the KKK or the patriarchy is out to get them. We just need to be smart enough to build political institutions around them that prevent the workers and peasants from empowering their leaders to plunder and/or demolish the rest of the world.

We enlightened ones should be perfectly happy for People of the Responsible Self to live their responsible lives and wive and thrive and go to work, obey the law, and follow the rules. We just need to be smart enough and wise enough to do our naughty creative stuff without frightening the horses in the street.

We enlightened ones need to understand that our religious activities and beliefs, in creativity, in breaking the mold, in doing the hero's journey down into the underworld of the unconscious, etc., is not for everyone. Indeed it is probably not for the overwhelming majority. So we should follow Nietzsche's hint and do it in a cave in the mountains. And when the adepts and the fans show up at our door, we should send them away, back, in the words of Lina Lamont, to their hum-drum little lives where they will be much happier than in our lonely cave of creativity where we hope to understand, one day, the meaning of the shadows on the wall.

The big lesson that we creative people need to understand is that we should not draft the rest of the world into our creative projects. We free spirits should have the wisdom to realize that we are not God's gift to humanity, but just a bunch of Educated Youth with more enthusiasm than sense.