With Trump and Boris, Time for a "Rectification of Names"

OK. Now the Brits have gone and done it too. They have elected a "buffoon", Boris Johnson, to be Prime Minister, just as we Yanks elected the clown Donald Trump to be our president.

What is going on?

Well, when things appear to be confusing, the first thing to do, Confucius says, is a "Rectification of Names" to make "words correspond to reality."

So here is my contribution.

Stop talking about "white working-class" Trump voters. They are not working-class workers. They are "commoners" of the nation state of the United States of America.

Stop talking about "working class" Boris voters in the old Labour heartlands. They are "commoners" of the nation state of the United Kingdom.

So let me explain what I mean. My use of "commoners" follows Curtis Yarvin in "The Clear Pill" over at American Mind.

As Orwell wrote, all societies have three human layers. We may call ours gentry, commoners, and clients. The gentry are urbanites, cultivated and ambitious; the commoners are suburbanites, educated and independent; the clients are Marx’s proletariat and lumpenproletariat, uneducated and/or dependent.

Yarvin is a Three Peoples guy, just like me.

When you look at the folks attending Trump's rallies, you are not seeing the working class. You are not seeing people that have been bused to the rally by "activistes" and Soros money. You are seeing ordinary Americans, commoners, that drove to his rally in their SUVs. They have had some education, and are probably working in the trades, or as technicians. And they consider themselves Americans, proud and free. That, in part, is what the dreaded "gun culture" is all about, that I take care of mine. They go to Trump's rallies because they feel he "cares about people like me."

When you consider the Brits that voted for Brexit and for Boris, you are not seeking the working class, satirized by Peter Sellers in his "what about the workers." You are seeing ordinary "commoner" Brits that have been voting Labour for generations because that is what people like them did. Labour represented the "workers;" the Tories represented the "toffs." 'Nuff said. They voted for Boris because they cannot stand lefty Jeremy Corbyn.

By the way, the lefties I heard on the BBC last night were all still talking about "Thatcherism" and "austerity," just like they were a generation ago.

And really, all this is because the "gentry" in the US and the UK is no longer trying to communicate to the "commoners" that were once workers. They have gone on to bigger and better things: the identity politics of race and gender; helping helpless migrants; saving the Earth from climate change. And the commoners-that-were-once-workers are not to be the beneficiaries of this new politics. No, the beneficiaries of the new politics are to be the gentry themselves and their new "clients" the traditionally marginalized and oppressed.

Look, let's give the gentry their due. Of course they are internationalists: they have the education and qualifications to work anywhere in the world, and they do not experience the nation state as protecting them from the cold winds of the world. Of course they are totalitarians, combining religion and politics, for everyone needs a religion and with God dead, they are picking up the secular religion of the left and carelessly mixing it together with their politics. But they need something to make themselves feel special. And because an advanced education does not really equip you to make better products and services in the market economy, they gravitate towards government, the administrative state, and the education state. And because they need to be "leaders" they need followers, the current "clients:" the migrants just off the farm, "uneducated and/or dependent" who need protection and look to a powerful lord to protect them from the cold winds of the market economy.

One result of the Trump/Johnson effect is the moving of the Republican Party of the US and the Conservative Party of the UK from the Reaganite/Thatcherite minimal state and free trade agenda towards a more protectionist politics, in the sense of protecting the commoners from the cold hard world with Trump trade deals, and cranking up the NHS in Britain. We libertarian conservatives regard protectionism of all kinds as a fool's errand. We say that you are fooling yourself if you think that "protection" will actually protect you. But the truth is that "commoners" expect the government to protect them. And they have a point. What is the point of government if it does not protect you?

But is the expectation of the commoners any worse than the expectation of the gentry that the government should provide them with magnificent careers in the Deep State to match the depth and breadth of their cultivations and ambitions?

The cunning thing about Trump is that, under cover of helping the commoners he is doing libertarian things like dismantling job-killing federal regulations and lowering marginal tax rates. Without making a big ideological point of it.

Boris says he is going to build hospitals for the NHS -- including in his own constituency -- and do climate change. But I wonder what he will be doing without actually making a big deal of it.

I also think that the Rectification of Names should extend to calling our "progressives" and "democratic socialists" as "reactionaries," following my notion of understanding the left as a Great Reaction.

But that is another story.

What Happens to Democrats When the Pelosi-Biden Generation Retires?

OK, I know. First of all, what is left of Republicans when Trump leaves the scene? Never mind! That is a question for another day.

Seriously. All the Democratic presidents we grew to know and love were elected as mere pikers. FDR was elected at 50, JFK at 43, Carter at 52; Clinton at 46; Obama at 47.

Only Harry Truman was over 60 on becoming president. That just shows it!

Now we have Joe Biden, who will be 77 on election day. Elizabeth Warren, who will be 71. If we look at Democratic leaders in Congress, we have Our Nance, from a distinguished Baltimore political family, who will be 79 in March. Chuck Schumer will be 70 next November.

If you ask me, this is an unfortunate consequence of modern health care and medicine, that politicians live a lot longer than they used to. And since politicians never retire, it means that the younger set now grow old waiting for their olders and betters to retire. Perhaps we should bring back the smoke-filled room to hasten our politicians on their way.

I remember back in the day when the MSM was scandalized by all those ancient Southern Democrats occupying chairmanships of Congressional committees that should have been going to worthy young northern liberal Democrats.

The problem is, of course, that when the current crop of veteran Democrats retires the folks that step into their shoes will either be vile monsters like Adam Schiff, 59, or minority members from inner-city one-party districts.

I know that we are all supposed to be thrilled by multicultural America, but I have a feeling that it will be nasty, brutish, and short compared to the current America that we have been taught to hate.

In other words, I think that multiculturalism is all very well when liberal professors are instructing their students at Deep State U, but not so much fun when open racist sexist multiculturalists are practicing what they have been carefully taught on the political stage.

See, I know that all the good people know that nationalism equals Hitler. But I think nationalism is one of the most remarkable ideas ever, to persuade a motley crew of people that really have nothing in common to believe that they are all joyful members of the fake tribe of the nation.

And I think that when you do the reverse procedure and persuade men and women and LGBTs and various racial and ethnic minorities that they have nothing in common.-- Well I think you are sowing the wind and will shortly reap the whirlwind.

But what do I know!

Here's another problem that I don't think our Democratic friends have thought about. We all had a grand old time in the 20th century cranking government spending from 10 percent of GDP up to the present 36 percent, as below:



But do you see what has been happening? The growth of government spending has been slowing, except for that blip in the Great Recession. I just think that the good years of bribing the voters will lovely free stuff is coming to the end of its useful life.

That's why Elizabeth Warrn has run into a buzz-saw with her Medicare-for-all thingy. Most Americans don't think they will benefit. Right now a lot of Americans are all in favor of climate change policy. That's because they don't understand that the money is going to billionaires and bottom feeders not to good ordinary Americans like them.

And when it comes down to it, the basis of modern democracy is that voters believe that the free stuff should only be going to people like them. And we have carefully taught folks to believe in this. There's the geezer saying that "they'd better not cut My Social Security" because he paid in all his life. Or the girl geezer just flat out saying "they'd better not cut My Medicare." Just sayin'.

Somewhere out there is an newly fledged politician in the process of figuring out how you play free-stuff politics when all the good ones are taken.

That guy is a genius.

I wonder what he is doing right now? Maybe he will sweep in and send sweep the current crop of septuagenarians out to the retirement community.

But is the Deep State up to the Job?

The ZMan has a trio of pieces about whether the Deep State can sink Trump and reform.

In "Our Revolutionary Age" he writes about the similarities between the "decadent and indifferent ruling class" in the lead-up to the French Revolution and our present Deep State. Our present rulers are "hot house flowers;" the intelligence community that spied on the Trump campaign imagines it is playing "a game without consequences." Only they are idiot Marie Antoinettes saying "let them eat cake."

In "The Community" he writes about why "reform is impossible" because everyone who is anyone is a member of the informal community of the ruling class, the "party" if you like. For instance, the folks who did the dirty on spying on the Trump campaign think they are going to be taken care of.

If these people had any fear of Barr or Durham, they would be lying low. Instead, they are doing the same service for the community they were doing before all this. They are members of the community in good standing. They have nothing to fear.

And Zman thinks that when impeachment gets to the Senate "Trump will be given a list of things he must sign in order to avoid conviction." Reform? Fuggetaboutit. Because the ruling class is a closed society that won't allow it.

In "True Reform" he writes about how the current ruling class is not going to allow genuine reform, for

no reform that would work against the interests of the ruling class will ever see the light of day. These people... are not stupid or naive. They understand perfectly well how they remain in power and it sure as heck is not by allowing social reformers to strip them of their authority. So any reform would have to come from the billionaires who control the political class... [S]ome crisis will have to scare the global pirates, who run the West, into hiring a new political class. If that does not happen, then we are headed for a revolutionary moment when this order is violently overthrown as a matter of survival.

OK. But if the ruling class has a high percentage of Marie Antoinettes, are they really up to the job of stamping out reform? Maybe, but I would say that the story so far is that the efforts to stomp on Trump haven't exactly taught me that the ruling class is up to the job of heading off the deplorables. They look to me to be like the stupid generals that liberal historians keep telling us about that are trying to fight the last war.

Actually the squib about generals fighting the last war is a cheap shot. Of course the generals don't  know how the fight the current war until battle in joined and the generals and the colonels and the politicians in charge learn from bitter experience and the deaths cemeteries full of young men how to fight the current war.

And I have a feeling, based on my judgement about the performance of ruling class types like Pelosi and Schiff and Nadler and the MSM, that they are really not ready the fight the war on Trump and the deplorables. I feel that they are a day late and a dollar short trying to play the role of the Duke of Plaza Toro and stay one step in front of the left-wing army of woke-aholics.

For instance, suppose the Dems had conceded the election to Trump? Then the left-wing crazies wouldn't have started their #Resistance and, if they had, the Pelosis could have disciplined them by saying that we are all Americans and we must all accept the results of elections. Then the Dems could have mounted an offensive of moderates against Trump, as they did when turning the House Democratic in 2018. On this notion, the Pelosis shot themselves in the foot by allowing a #Resistance to form that seems to be forcing them into an impeachment to prove that they have hair on their chests.

So I don't think that the ruling class really knows how to deal with the Trump phenomenon. They are pressing the familar buttons in the control room but they are not getting the result they expect.

And whatabout the billionaires and the "pirates?" The thing about them is that they are not all that sharp when it comes to politics. Soros? Helluva speculator, and a fiend when it comes to funding left-wing activist groups, and an avowed enemy of the nation state, but I wonder if he is really getting the results he intends? And other billionaires, like Bloomberg, Gates, the Google guys, Carlos Slim, Jeff Bezos? I don't think those guys are really playoff material. Maybe there is some Dark Lord directing traffic behind the scenes, but I doubt it. The fact is that, when it comes to politics, the politicians are the experts, and if they don't know what to do, then I doubt if the billionaires do either.

And whatabout the Crash of 2008?  Does the ruling class really understand what happened, and how it was their foolish policy of subsidizing housing loans, and allowing low down payments and loans to high-risk borrowers? Does the ruling class understand that the problem was not "greedy bankers?" Suppose the real ruling class understands what happened. OK, great. But does the liberal gentry class understand? I doubt it. A wise elite would have kept the lid on home mortgages, would have warned the congressional advocates of more mortgage subsidies to cool it, and would not have allowed this to happen:


"Agency" debt is more or less Fannie and Freddie, the government mortage twins that, at their peak just before the 2008 crash, had issued debt of about 55% of GDP. Good idea, ruling class? I don't think so.

See, I don't think that the ruling class is smart enough to see around corners and avoid easily avoidable problems. I think that they are losing control, of their own crazies, and of the economy and the loyalty of the "commoners" that they have humiliated as "deplorables."

So I think, despite what the Zman says about the ruling class, that our rulers are not that smart, and not really able to steer the ship of state to keep themselves in power, and not really able to keep the deplorables down.

And if Trump gets to a Senate trial, I don't know that the Republican senators are really going to give Trump "a list of things he must sign in order to avoid conviction." I think that the Republican senators are going to be more interested in making sure that their supporters know that they aren't buyin' nothing that the Democrats are selling. From what I understand about vote-buying, from The Calculus of Consent by Buchanan and Tullock, the question would be what the pro-removal forces would have to offer Republican senators on the fence that would compensate them for losing their seats.

None of these guys are willing to boldly outdare the dangers of the time. They want to keep their current positions and their influence, and I doubt that many Republican senators are much tempted by the prospect of removing Donald Trump. They want to stick around and become committee chairmen some day.

Hey, if I were a Republican senator right now I would be rather enjoying watching the Democrats in their present difficulties, and I would be saying to myself: "serves them right, the a**holes. They think they are smart, but that's just because the media tells them they are smart. And the lobbyists. And the academics. Reserve my ringside seat."

When the world changes, it changes from bigger things that ruling-class power and conceit. It changes because, as I say, "there is no such thing as justice, only injustice." By that I mean that the best a government can do is to keep 'em down on the farm, muttering about their grievances. Because there are always grievances, for govenment is force, and anyone on the receiving end of force is experiencing injustice.

The problem about being a ruling class is that everyone is sucking up to you, telling you what geniuses you are, telling you that the opposition is just a bunch of whiners and deplorables, that really don't amount to much.

And you believe them. Until it is too late.

NYT: Nothing to See Here, Impeachment Über Alles!

Well, I thought to myself this morning, maybe I should take a look at the on-line version of The New York Times to see their take on the "Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation" by DOJ Inspector General Horowitz. Imagine my surprise: nothing on the report, but a piece about impeachment in the House.

OK, I said. Whatabout the Opinion section? Nothing.

Then I went to my Tuesday yoga class where the instructor, Jim, usually has the day's NYT/Atlantic/New Yorker talking point. I was all ready with my counter points (you have to be ready with the one-liners, because l'esprit d'escalier). But guess what: bupkis from Jim on politics today.

So I realized why the Democrats in the House had to start formal impeachment today. To take the Horowitz report off the front pages.

All in all I think we can take it as read that our Democratic friends are feeling a bit flat-footed today. I think that Instapundit pretty well covered it with this post:

"51 violations and 9 false statements".

So why is Lt. Gen. Flynn being criminally pursued for "false statements?"

"Fusion Co-Founders Glenn Simpson and Jonathan Winer Refused to Talk to IG; James Comey and Former FBI Attorney James Baker Also Avoided Fully Testifying."

Well I Never! What shrinking violets we have these days in the Deep State.

"If you have 17 FBI "mistakes" and 100% of those mistakes favor the party in power against the candidate, those aren't mistakes."

But do 97% of statistics scientists establish a consensus on this?

"IG Report Reveals Comey Did Brief Obama on Trump Campaign Investigation."

But it would be racist to investigate this.

As you may know, I believe that the fundamental problem here is that our ruling-class and its gentry-liberal supporters have forgotten the basic idea of democracy: that parties respect the results of elections, and peaceably leave power when they lose an election after a couple of terms in power.

In other words, it is the job of the defeated presidential candidate to concede defeat, wish the winner well, and tell the supporters "wait until next time." Al Gore did not do this in 2000; Hillary Clinton did not do this in 2016 (but hey, she was probably drunk on election night). When the defeated candidate fails to concede, and fails to tell their supporters to go home, then they are putting the peace of our nation at risk. Yes, "Peace," dear liberals. Because politics is civil war by other means, and a lot better than real civil war.

Look, I get it, that the left represents a Great Reaction against the modern era and its notion to lift and separate -- I mean limit and separate -- political and other powers. And I get that the left represents a religious movement that has raised politics into a holy sacrament. And so we are likely to get, about once a generation, a cult-like prophetic movement out of the left announcing that this time they are going to save the world with their politics.

In the US, the Civil War was one such movement, with the anti-slavery Republican Party determined to teach Democrats and the South a lesson.

Then the New Deal was going to fundamentally transform America, but merely extended the Great Depression until FDR took the fetters off private business in order to fight his two-front war.

Then the Sixties was going to save America from the dull suburban conformism of the Fifties. Only the commoners all voted for Nixon. And then Reagan.

Now we have the Woke Years, with a new enthusiasm for Democratic Socialism, in violation of my Four Laws, that:

1. Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices.
2. Administrative government cannot work because thousands of bureacrats cannot outperform millions of producers and consumers.
3. Regulation cannot work because of "regulatory capture" of the regulators by the regulated.
4. Government programs cannot work because the people will not allow them to be reformed.

Other than that, Democratic Socialism is cool, man.

All this woke and #Resistance nonsense is very annoying, but maybe it is all for the best. The story of the last 200 years is the story of successive gentry enthusiasms, led by educated rich kids. But each time the enthusiasm has run up against a brick wall, usually the brick wall of the commoners. So it was in the Sixties, and so it may be in the Woke Years.

But there is the problem. If educated youth is not running around getting Woke, what other mischief will they get up to?

The Two Centuries of the Great Reaction

Today NRO has a piece on the end of the Soviet empire in 1989: "Reflections on the 'Revolution' of 1989" by A. Wess Mitchell. And how that was the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in 1789.

Mitchell "is a former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs and a principal at the Marathon Initiative, an initiative focused on preparing the United States for great-power competition."

But Mitchell asserts that:

However momentous the changes of 1989 may have been in human terms, in constitutional terms they embodied the restoration of a Western legal and civic order to lands from which it had been uprooted.

Or, in my terms, it signaled the end of the Great Reaction of 1789-1989. What was the Great Reaction? Well, Mitchell has a good try by contrasting the American Revolution of 1776 with the French Revoluion of 1789.

The object of 1776 was the preservation of the accumulated rights of Englishmen[.]... By contrast, the object of 1789 was the dismantling of public order in favor of abstract concepts.

I think that Mitchell misses the point. Hey, if you want to talk about "abstract concepts" how about the "Separation of Powers?" That's about the most abstract convoluted pie-in-the-sky notion ever conceived! The difference in the Revolutions is that, following the procession of political theorists culminating in Montesquieu, the American Revolutionary Founders were trying to found the modern era on a limitation of political power. The French Revolution enacted the vision of people like Rousseau that believed in a transformation of society by political power.

The piece also has a lot of conventional wisdom that I have learned over the years to discount. FIrst of all, the German Question, which, according to Mitchell was also decided in 1989. For the conventional wisdom, the creation of a unified Germany in 1871 ended the benefits of a divided Germany for the rest of Europe, and heralded a century of war until Germany was put back in its place: united but tamed.

My line is that 1871 opened up a possibility, a Europe of equal nation states that, with wise leaders, could have all lived in equanimity. Only the leaders were fools. Kaiser Bill, the revanchist French humiliated by the Franco-Prussian War, the stupid generation of British leaders like Balfour and Asquith. The stupidity of WWI; the stupidity of the Treaty of Versailles; the stumbling bumbling new US Federal Reserve System that bumbled into the Great Depression, and thus prepared the way for a frustrated German people to follow Hitler.

What all these fools and knaves did was assume that politics and power is the answer to most questions about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Yes, maybe it was in the agricultural age, where you needed rough tough leaders to defend your patch of food-growing land against pirates and predators. Because in those days, land was the source of wealth and survival.

But not any more.

The transition in western life, I believe, must have happened around 1700. If you look at Spain in the New World, the purpose post 1492 is simply conquest and exploitation of the gold and silver. But what good did it do Spain, which by 1650 needed all the gold and silver from the New World just to pay the interest on their loans. If you look at Britain in the 1600s, you see the simple conquest of North America, as the various trash people spread out from the coastal colonies into the interior.

But when the Brits went to India in the 1700s, their purpose was trade. They were not particularly interested in conquering India. They wanted to trade. But in the event they ended up conquering most of India because they always had a frontier with native princes for whom loot and plunder was the name of the game, in particular the Maratha Confederacy. The Brits in India would also get antsy when they were in a war with the French, or getting worried about the Russkies.

Then there was the Brit in 1685 that could see the future:

Already at the time of the British Glorious Revolution in 1688 people were beginning to appreciate that the new manufacturing offered an economy of limitless wealth that contrasted with the obvious limits of an agricultural economy. Wrote Carew Reynell in 1685: “Though we are a nation already pretty substantial... yet it is easy for us to be ten times richer.”

Do you see the point? If you are doing manufacturing, then agriculture is no longer the name of the game: nor is the conquest of land the royal road to riches. Now, in fact, Reynell was too pessimistic. We are in fact today 30 times richer than back in 1685. And we got here not by politics, not by conquest, not by land, but by manufacturing, trading, and the various technological revolutions on the way.

That is why, if you read the World Bank's study of the wealth of nations in 2000, the wealth of rich nations like us is 80% "intangible capital," or the capital between peoples' ears.

Notice the staggering changes in conventional wisdom: In 1700 conquest becomes passé. In 1800 slavery becomes a scandal. In 1900 the subjugation of any human becomes a scandal.

And yet, nobody was directing these changes; they occurred "organically."

Now I maintain that humans actually yearn to know that "someone is in charge." I think that the staggering changes that were already well in train by the mid 1700s is at the bottom of the Great Reaction, the great faith in politics as the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

If there was not to be a monarchical will of the warrior king that protected us from all perils, then there needed to be a General Will of the people.

If there was not to be the eternal hierarchy of nobles lording it over peasants, then look out for a something that was bound to be worse, a hierarchy of capitalists over proletarians.

And if that weren't bad enough, what about the oppressive horror of whites over blacks, men over women, straights over gays!

Thus we have had a Great Reaction for the last 200 years that has believed that the only way to save the world is with political power.

But I say it has sown misery wherever it was tried, as in my maxim:

Socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism is part neo-knight-errantry, part pro-regime street-thuggery, and part activisme, or gentry kids putting on a play; helpless victims are neo-sacrifice, social justice is neo-plunder.

 I am not really angry about this. My Hegelian instinct says that we should have expected that, when the need for political power went away we would expect a last ditch effort to build a shrine to political power and to make it into a golden idol and worship it.

But I say that humans are a hierarchical species, so how does hierarchy work in a post-political age? And humans are religious animals, lusting after the meaning of life, the universe and everything. So how do we do religion without it turning into an apocalyptic cult like Communism or Climate Change?

The truth is: I don't know. And I don't think anyone else does either.

Which Is Worse: Trump's Insults or The Racist Canard?

We all know that all educated suburban women are disgusted with -- cannot believe! -- the crudities of President Trump, the Twitter Insult Dog.

But I have a question for you educated suburban women. What do you think about the lefties in our land that think nothing of calling anyone with an opinion they don't like of being a "racist?"

Which is worse? A presidential insult? Or the admission that when you are a billionaire, women will let you pet them in the crotch?

Or being accused of being a "racist" the Summum Bonum of the Pejorative Culture?

Now, I would think that there is no contest. A few insults on Twitter, about Slow Joe Biden or Pencil Head Schiff, are just joshing among the guys, the kind of thing that is normal and natural on, say, the locker room and the golf course.

But I realize that among women such insults are experienced in a conversation at the coffee shops as "I can't believe he said that." An abomination!

Whatabout the accusation of "racism?" Isn't that much, much worse? Particularly if it means that your husband loses his tech industry job because some woke HR woman had it in for him?

OK, ladies, I'm waiting for your answer.

I was thinking about this, as one does when you have had an idea for a blog and haven't yet written it.

And then I thought, OMG. Yes, even I say OMG from time to time.

Because I realized that the question of honor among men, and honor among women, as developed by James Bowman in Honor: A History applies here. And how!

Bowman's simple dictum is that honor among men is the reputation for courage; among women honor is the reputation for chastity. Or, to quote Bowman directly:

[T]he basic honor of the savage -- bravery for men, chastity for women -- is still recognizable beneath the surfaces of the popular culture that has done so much to efface it. If you doubt it, try calling a man a wimp or a woman a slut.

Now, Bowman develops the idea that the institutionalization of society leads to a situation where the honor culture of bravery among men gets diluted by the presence of women and the substituting of police and courts for the revenge culture of the tribesman or the gang member.

In fact, following Nietzsche, we could say that Christianity and "the priests" have switched entirely the bravery culture among men for the good vs. evil culture among women. And what, says Nietzsche, would happen if good finally triumphed over evil, so there was no evil in the world, but only good? What then?

So here is what I think. I think that, indeed, it has been necessary and appropriate to diminish the honor-as-bravery culture among men and dilute it with the chastity culture among women, so that men become good little boys in the peaceful market economy.

But whatabout women? And here I return to the prophecy of Georg Simmel from a century ago, who understood that things were going to change, what with women emerging out of the home.

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." 

But do you know, I am coming to think that the opposite is true, and that women in the public aquare will have to adapt to a more masculine sensibility. In other words, following Nietzsche, they will have to acquire something of the culture of the Übermensch, the "free spirit:"

Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this? The most moderate; those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede, but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense… human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride. 

I don't think you can thrive in the public square unless you are a person "sure of their power" and someone that can not just endure but "love a fair degree of accidents and nonsense."

Now, it seems to me that the women's culture of chastity demands absolute purity. You are not allowed to make mistakes; you are not allowed to push against the community of women that define what "good" is in your community. In this sort of culture it makes perfect sense to name, shame, and shun people who are not perfectly chaste in all their actions. That's all very well in the private women-only culture of the tribe, where men live in a different world of war and hunting.

But the modern public square cannot be a perfect moment of chastity maintained to eternity. It is a roiling mess of accidents and nonsense, and that's just on a normal day. Why is this? Because the public square is the old world of tribal warfare and defending the border that has been civilized into the market economy and democratic politics.

So I say to educated suburban women: if you don't like the male honor culture of Trump, and insist of enforcing the name and shame and shun culture of "she's a racist-sexist-homophobe" then you had better retreat from the public square and live in a male-provided safe space.

And one thing is for sure. You are not a liberated woman.

Suppose a Failed Impeachment is Part of Nancy's Cunning Plan?

Last week we had the "striped pants boys" (and a girl) telling the Schiff committee that President Trump had been acting against the "interagency consensus."

This week we had four Democrat-voting law professors before the Nadler committee voting 3-1 to impeach Trump. Because democracy. What they were really saying was, yeah, go ahead and impeach the guy. He deserves it.

OK. This is getting a bit too much for me. "I can't believe they are doing this." Surely they can't be that dumb.

Unless.

Unless Dem Central figures, hey, this election is a bye. It's pretty difficult to depose a president running for reelection when the economy is good.

But, they tell each other, we gotta problem.

(Now we switch to a transcript of a conversation between two well-know Deep Staters.)

Yeah, we sure do, Nance. Our radical #Resistance is doing a replay of the Sixties.

And we know where that ended up, Chuckie. Two Nixon terms -- which our chaps managed to abort nicely in '74 -- and then two Reagan terms and one Bush term. A national nightmore.

And don't forget, Nance, that even when we finally got Clinton in for two terms, the first thing that happened was a Republican Congress.

Right, Chuck. We can't do that again.

Hey, I know, Nance. Let's run the impeachment all the way, infuriating the GOP base. And then let Trump win reelection and probably get the House back.

Exactly, Chuck. And that's when you and I start to work on the contributors. We'll tell them that this crazy-lefty stuff has got to stop. And the best way is to starve it for money.

And, Nance, we should remind our friends that we can't do any favors for them if the crazy left is taking all the oxygen out of the room.

OK. Agreed, Chuck. But what about the moderate Class of 2018? We gotta give those guys an out, so they don't have to commit political suicide by voting for impeachment.

Yeah, Nance. I guess that's your baby. Incidentally, congratulations once again on your 2018 results.  But I wonder if those educated suburban women will really be down for a trial in the Senate?

Good point, Chuck. I think that Job One is to protect Jerry Nadler until it's too late for the Justice Democrats to run a lefty in his district. Once we are past the deadline for candidate sign-up we can take another look at it.

True. But Nance. Do we really care what happens to Jerry? I mean, as soon as he leaves office I'd say his district is bound to be won by some "woke" activist type. So whether the district goes left in 2020 or 2024, what's the difference?

I know, Chuck, but I owe Jerry one. He's been a good supporter, and I can't throw him overboard. Anyway, the strategy is to expose the #Resistance as well-intentioned people that are just not going to help us get the job done, of winning elections up and down the ballot. And whether we sacrifice Jerry or the Class of 2018, the strategic necessity is to put the blame on the Trump reelection where it belongs, on the DSA and the Justice Democrats and the rest of the over-enthusiastic activist community.

OK, Nance. Your call. But we don't want too much of a trainwreck in 2020. I'd say the important thing is to be setting up for Trump's second midterm in 2022 and make sure we win back the House and maybe the Senate. 2022 will be a good opportunity for us, as there will be 20 Republicans up for reelection and only 10 of ours: 12 if you count the independents.

Exactly, Chuck. 2022 is the key, to set up for the next presidential change election in 2024. I'd say we'll eat the GOP's lunch in 2024 if we can keep our left down to a dull roar.

OK, Nance. See you at the fundraiser tomorrow night.