Really? We Can't Make Art Beautiful Because Ugliness?

I only found out about Alma Deutscher a couple of days ago. Because reasons. And I don't know whether she is a musical genius or just another musical prodigy. The Wall Street Journal says of her "A Girl Makes Music Without Irony or Ugliness."

What? No irony? No ugliness? What's her problem? As she says told the audience in Carnegie Hall last December:

But some people have told me that nowadays, melodies and beautiful harmonies are no longer acceptable in serious classical music, because, in the 21st century, music must reflect the ugliness of the modern world.

Really? I admit I never thought of it that directly. But, as Rush Limbaugh says: she just nailed it.

So the modern artists think the world is an ugly place and art ought to reflect that.

Really? More ugly than Vienna at the turn of the 19th century when chaps like Beethoven were perpetually sick as dogs from the urban pathogens -- and lack of personal hygiene -- and Beethoven couldn't get it on with his aristocratic girl students because class barriers, darling.

Actually, I think the problem is that too many artists and composers get sinecures from universities and so don't have to develop a popular style to earn their Benjamins.

Anyway, Deutscher wrote a waltz about sirens:

In the piece, “Siren Sounds Waltz,” the music moves from the dissonant sounds of Vienna’s city center, with its noise and ambulance sirens, to a buoyant big-hearted waltz in which the “sirens” are made to sound like Homer’s rather than Vienna’s.

What? Deutscher knows about those pesky sirens that bothered our pal Odysseus on his way home to Penelope in Ithaca? How did she ever get to do that in this world of "woke" education? Oh, I see...

“I don’t go to school,” she says. “I’m home-schooled. I read lots and lots of books about almost everything—history, geography, fiction, science, whatever. As long as they’re interesting.” 

But, but, but! How in the world does she have the time for a classical education when she is a concert level violinist and pianist and has composed a violin concerto, a piano concerto, and two operas?

But she does echo the pyschologists who say that the unconscious mind is the ruler of all.

She has spoken elsewhere of melodies coming to her from an early age, so I ask if they get in the way of her study. “Very often,” she says. “Sometimes when I’m talking to someone or trying to concentrate on something, a melody will come. It never comes when you want it to come.” But, she points out, “composition is not like inspiration that just comes out of the head and onto the page. It’s work. I have studied many scores. The greatest teachers are the old masters. I’ve studied the scores of Richard Strauss,  of Beethoven,  of Mozart and many others.”

Deutscher raises an interesting question for me. How do we recover a tradition of beauty in art? From the people that insist that we live in an ugly world, riven by exploitation, oppression, hegemony, and all the rest. And that irony is the only thing?

Not that our Betters in the Gentry ever exploited, oppressed anyone. Oh no. Because they are the good guys.

You know. I would say that our modern problem is not that we are too ugly but that we are too bland. If anything, the appetite for ugly among the cognoscenti represents an effort to get away from bland and experience something real, something original.

And, of course, the easiest way to be original is to be ugly, or break something. Being beautiful is a lot harder. And imagining beautiful without getting into kitsch is harder still.

It's interesting, innit. Right now we are experiencing a number of teenage-girl phenoms, from St. Greta Thunberg of Climate to her German opposite Naomi Seibt. And now Alma Deutscher.

What I experience in Naomi Seibt and Alma Deutscher is a complete absence of postmodern cant. They almost sound like they actually read a book rather than recited teacher's lesson.

Considering my prejudice about Good Little Girls that hate and fear from day to day as they are carefully taught, it is a welcome dose of reality.

All I can say is God bless the good ship Alma Deutscher and all that sail in her.

Uncertainty Doesn't Go Away

In the middle of the current Coronavirus panic Martin van Creveld, the strategist, reviews the scene to remind us that things are not tied down.

He remarks on a new book about how we are soon going to transform ourselves from Homo Sapiens into Homo Deus, where we will be able "to look into the future and control our fate" much better than before.

But will we really? We thought we had it all tied down back in the Age of Reason with mechanical theories from the likes of "Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and others."

Many nineteenth century scientists in particular believed not just that the world is deterministic but that, such being the case, they would one day be able to predict whatever was about to take place in it.

This was considered to be a great improvement on the old days when the only way to get a handle on things was with divine help from gods and spirits and seers. Even after the revolution in physics with relativity and quantum theory scientists, even including Stephen Hawking, were still spinning the idea that "there only remained a few minor gaps to be closed."

But Creveld is having none of it. Responding to young students who wondered how they could ever learn what he knew, he drew a little square on the blackboard, and a slightly bigger one next to it. The little square was the students' knowledge. The slightly bigger one was his, Creveld's, knowledge. The blackboard was the scope of all available knowledge.

That is my understanding of the "meaning of life, the universe, and everything." We still don't know nothin'.

And it's remarkable. On the one hand we have evolved as animals that have wived and thrived on this earth to a remarkable extent. On the other, the whole of the world of life except us operates without our fabulous human reason. How does that work?

Used to be that we sneered at our forefathers for their ignorance and superstition. But what exactly should we do about the current Coronavirus scare? There are all kinds of possibilities, from Do Nothing and let the virus work its way through the population and pick everything up after it's all over, to Stop the World and quarantine everyone until the virus gives up. So, which one does our science recommend? And which one does our human social instinct, which, scientists say, is the key to our survival thus far?

You tell me.

In other words, we are just as hopeless at forecasting the future as we ever were. And no sooner do we figure that we have it all figured out than life comes along and reminds us that we don't have a clue.

You will notice that there are several strategies for life and survival. There is the small organism and thousands of eggs approach, favored by the insect world. There is the large organism and succor of the young approach that mammals and humans prefer. There is the non-social plan of solitary species like the orangutan and the incredibly social organization of termites. And every combination in between.

What does it all mean? And what if it doesn't mean anything?

The fact is that life and the world were a mystery when humans thought of the sun god riding his chariot through the heavens. And it is all still a mystery when we reckon the universe as unimaginably big, and we can't decide whether there is a universe or multiverses.

To use the current fashion of talking about "scale," it seems that the the world we live in is a mystery, at whatever scale you choose to experience it.

And what does that mean?

Are Democrats Getting Desperate?

One of the basic tent-pegs holding up my world view is the notion developed by Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution. The idea is that there comes a time in every revolution where the revolutionaries get desperate. Despite the glorious prophecy, the New Age has not dawned.

Why? It's got to be the reactionaries, the kulaks, the saboteurs and wreckers. In our day, of course, it's the racist-sexist-homophobes. Did you know that it is xenophobic to refer to the Chinese Flu instead of the WHO approved COVID-19?

What to do? The answer is always the same: pedal to the metal. Push the movement's agenda to the utmost. Stop compromising with the other side. Push them out of the way.

In the French Revolution it was the Reign of Terror and Virtue. In the Bolshevik Revolution it was Death to the Kulaks. In Maoist China it was the Great Leap Forward followed by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Now I believe that in the United States we are seeing the failure of the progressive agenda. I think we are seeing that the big government adminisrative state doesn't work. I think we are seeing that the Sexual Revolution doesn't work. I think we are seeing that the regulatory state doesn't work. I think we are seeing that "I am woman, hear me roar" doesn't work.

That is why the left is accusing everyone of being a racist-sexist-homophobe.

And so our wokerati friends are overreaching. In California they are trying to kill the "gig" economy -- meaning especially Uber and Lyft -- with the so-called AB5 act -- and are demolishing the arts, including writers and musicians. In Oregon they are so determined to save the climate that they are steamrollering a cap-and-trade policy past a desperate GOP opposition and the Democratic governor is now implementing the policy by executive action. Here in Washington State the Democrats are pushing a cap-and-trade bill. What is cap and trade?

a system for controlling carbon emissions and other forms of atmospheric pollution by which an upper limit is set on the amount a given business or other organization may produce but which allows further capacity to be bought from other organizations that have not used their full allowance

See? Another "system," beloved of bureaucrats and ideologists.

Because there is no time to be lost! The climate deniers, funded by eevil oil and gas interests, are going to kill us. Unless we act now.

And the Democrats in Washington have been running a three-year campaign to hinder and humiliate President Trump in every way possible. Including a special prosecutor investigation and an impeachment effort. Now, according to reports, House Democrats are trying to put abortion policy into emergency legislation to help deal with the Hunan Virus Epidemic.

Yeah, you might say. What is wrong with these people? What happened to bipartisan compromise and both sides working together?

What is wrong is that the world promised by the prophets is not working out for them. All the things their prophets told their supporters are turning out false. And so they are getting desperate; they are turning up the volume.

Well, here's my Prophecy. It's all going to collapse, the whole lefty world view. Because? Because the progressive agenda is a conceit of the educated Gentry that does nothing for ordinary Commoners. It is an excuse for the educated Gentry to puff itself up with Important Issues and activisme and peaceful protests and Goals and Timetables. But it does nothing for ordinary people.

And, I would argue, it devastates the Clients, the Subordinates, the grateful serfs that suck on the tit of the admninstrative state and its entitlement programs. But that is another story.

So our lefty friends are desperately lunging for the finish line. One last WWI-style Big Push. One last ideological purge to clear the world of deplorables and haters.

The argument of Anatomy of Revolution is that the Reign of Terror is followed by a Thermidorean Reaction that ends up as Napoleon.

The Thermidorian Reaction was a liberal-conservative counter-revolution that followed the toppling of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794. It wound back the Reign of Terror, purged the government of Jacobin influence and attempted to restore some of the political, social and economic values of 1789.

Brinton argued that the ideological frenzy of revolution cannot be sustained. Eventually, people demand to return to ordinary life.

In our day, if you like, the Sixties Kids were followed by the Nixon Reaction of the Silent Majority and the Reagan era.

And the "fundamental transformation" of Barack Obama was followed by the Trump Reaction of the bitter clingers and deplorables.

Notice the common denominator of the Nixon and the Trump Reaction? Both Reactions were really revolts of the Commoners. Or, as Nietzsche might have said if he were writing today, revolts against the hoity-toity Gentry secular "priests" that were teaching us to hate ourselves.

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe this time really is the Millennium of the Wokerati. Maybe.

What's that? You are looking for a bridge to buy?

Keeping a Proper Distance: A Strategy for Foreign Policy

About four years ago this crazy orange-haired businessman ran for President of the United States on a platform of putting America First. As Conservative Tree House puts it, this whacky guy proposed:

1. The U.S. needed to have control over our borders, and a greater ability to control who was migrating to the United States.  A shift toward stopping ‘illegal’ migration.
2. The U.S. needed to stop the manufacture of goods overseas and return critical manufacturing back to the United States.  A return to economic independence.
3. The U.S. needed to decouple from an over-reliance on Chinese industrial and consumer products.  China viewed as a geopolitical and economic risk.

Well I Never! Whaddya think of that, here in the US and A on March 12, 2020?

What I want to know is: who is the brains trust behind President Trump? Is it really Trump himself? Or his son-in-law Jared Kushner? Or who or what?

Because today it looks almost like divine intervention, the old saw about God taking care of children, drunks, and the good old US of A.

The alternative is to accept that Donald Trump has an astonishing strategic mind. And that is impossible, right, geniuses?

The point is that Trump has been pretty cagey about a lot of things. We were all taught to believe that his 2016 campaign was a complete amateur hour. Then, after the election, Brad Parscale appeared on FoxNews and talked about their social-media campaign and how they targeted this and that, and so on.

What! I thought that Trump was supposed to be totally winging it. And yet managed to target exactly the states that put him over the top -- with the help of Parscale who was creating websites at the Trump Organization back in the day.

Now, with the "foreign virus" -- yeah! Call me a xenophobe! -- he is looking like a genius. What! You mean to say that nearly all our antibiotics are made in China? Who knew? We oughta do something about that!

When you look at the three principles listed by CTS above, you see that Trump is arguing for a certain distance between the US and other nations.

But the question is: how distant? I have an idea.

Take President Putin's latest announcement, that allows him two more terms as president of Russia. I'd say that the US needs to keep a distance from nations that have presidents-for-life. Nothing personal, you understand.

So that would also mean we keep a distance from China, with President-for-life Xi.

Nothing personal, you understand. Nothing xenophobic. Heavens no. It's just that any guy that signs himself up to be president for life is missing the point. In fact he is dumb as a post, and dangerous for that reason.

You see, politics is a blunt instrument, basically designed to defend the border from the baddies. It doesn't take a genius to do that. But the dirty secret about border defense is that the defenders expect to be paid for their trouble: loot and plunder. So the longer the current leader gets to run the border-defense racket the deeper will be the corruption of his regime.

And since politics is usually a succession of one stupidity after another, it can't hurt to change one idiot for another.

Plus, we democratic societies have found, after about a decade of one chap in power, the voters start to feel it is Time for a Change.

So we Yanks should keep regimes at arm's length that go in for president for life or for mullahs for life. Just not our kind, darling.

Here's something to think about. How about the European Union, that seems to be a bureaucracy for life? Yeah. Good point, senator. Maybe we should keep a certain distance from those chaps too. Not as much as the presidents-for-life, of course, but still...

Here is my thought on politics. In chimpanzee society it makes sense to defend the border to the death, because the whole troop depends on the food -- and baby-chimp -- growing capacity of the troop's territory. That is according to Nicholas Wade in Before the Dawn. But as soon as you get humans on the job the absolute necessity for enough food on the land becomes less important, because humans trade, and human trade seems to go back about 200,000 years before even the Dawn of Agriculture.

Still, right through the agricultural era, the basis of wealth and security was food-growing land with a bit of trading on the side. So humans put a high priority on defense of the homeland.

But now, food is something you put on grain ships in the harbor of Vancouver, BC, and send across the world.

But do you see? The less that the food-growing capacity of our sacred land equals survival the less we need warriors on the border and charismatic leaders to lead them.

Put it in a different way: the less important food-growing becomes to our well-being, the less we need brave warriors and a warrior elite to protect us.

Thus, to say that a President Putin is so essential that he must stay as president into his 80s is baloney. Russia doesn't need to be led by a charismatic leader. Same with China. Just get on with producing stuff and selling it. And never mind being the charismatic leader.

But whatabout the danger of Donald Trump, the charismatic leader?

Good point. But see, here in these United States we have a Constitutional Amendment restricting presidents to two terms. And we also have a cultural and political elite that would take poison rather than allow Trump a third term.

So, no worries. And anyway, I dare say that Trump will have a recession in his second term, and everyone will agree that we need the Democrats in office again.

And in 2021 Trump will leave office and everyone will live happily ever after.

'Splaining the Democrats for Deplorables Like You and Me

Well. Now we know. After Super Tuesday and Mini Tuesday, now that Joe Biden looks like the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democrats in 2020. In the Democratic Party, the party of equality, there is too a hierarchy.

It goes like this.

Top dog is the old hand-out-the-free-stuff guy still keeping on keeping on: that's Joe Biden. And it makes complete sense that he is barely able to put a sentence together. Because the program of the administrative welfare state has really got past its sell-by date. We know that slowly and steadily bringing everything under the aegis of political control really does not work. It usually buys the next election, but at what price?

Second-in-command is the politics-as-religion guy, who is trying to make the ancient practice of border defense amped up into loot and plunder into a sacred faith: that's Bernie Sanders. Interesting that the Kidz are the key supporters. What is it about our normal religions that does not speak to the educated young'uns?

Third is the high-status feminist woman: that's Elizabeth Warren. It's interesting to me that her line is part free stuff, part the moral necessity of free stuff, and part identity politics where you are sexist if you don't support her.

Back of the bus are the varous Coalition of the Fringes candidates: the gay guy, the minority woman, the black guy, the fake Hispanic guy.

Do you mind if I say that all these notions are bankrupt?

Look, I can understand that, back in the 19th century, it seemed like a good idea to bring the working class into national politics by offering them free stuff. On a modest scale it doesn't hurt too much. But if entitlement programs add up to 20 percent of GDP then, old chap, we are pushing it. In particular we have a problem because it becomes impossible to reform the entitlements, the free-stuff handouts. That means that they will only get fixed when we have a generational economic crisis, one that makes the 2008 crash look like a walk in the park.

Look, I get the moral framework of socialism -- in the context of the mid 19th century when it seemed sensible for a chap like Marx to imagine the future dominated by power-hungry capitalists like the feudal era had been dominated by power-hungry lords and barons. Only it turned out that the capitalists were not that interested in power. Indeed, the lesson of the last century is that the socialists are the power-hungry monsters, not the capitalists. And the socialists refuse to learn the basic lesson that it is not a good idea to combine politics and religion. I mean, how dumb-or-somep'n can you be not to see that ideological political regimes that totalize religion into politics are a recipe for global human disaster?

Look, I get the ambition of high-status women. Why should high-status men get all the power and the adulation? Hey! I'm as good as any man! Look at my degrees! Well, I would say that there is no privilege in America that comes close to the privilege of high-status white women. The feminist idea that women are helpless victims is a bunch of baloney. Oh sure, low-status women have it pretty rough, and one of the reasons is the sexual revolution advocated by high-status women. Ever thought about that girls?

Look, I understand the logic of identity politics. The Frankfurt School guys were bloody geniuses to convert Marxism from the dialectics of class to the dialectics of race and sex. And if you look at the story of America for the 150 years you see that in wave after wave of immigration the immigrants camped out for a couple of generations in ethnic ghettoes in the cities, each with its private army of criminal gangs. Politicians understood this from the earliest days, and appealed to immigrant voters on the basis of their ethnic origin. So we had the Irish vote, the Catholic vote, the Jewish vote. And now the Hispanic vote and the black vote.

But I say that all this is rubbish, to be tolerated as inevitable survivals from the pre-industrial past. That's why I call it a Great Reaction, a foolish and ignorant return to political and religious memes that had their day but are now worn-out husks.

We must backtrack on entitlements for all, because all economic relationships need to adjust to new social realities, from decade to decade, and the whole point of government programs is to protect favored people from change and make other people pay for it.

We must, all of us, even Good Little Girls like AOC, realize that combining moral ideologies with politics is a recipe for disaster. It leads directly to slavery and economic failure, and millions of dead. Look, our Founders knew that 250 years ago, because they had learned the lessons of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War. Then we had a global test on human subjects, something that would never be allowed if we were testing vaccines, that caused the deaths, probably, of 100 million souls.

High-status women need to get a grip and stop mean-girling the rest of society.

We need to understand the sub-national loyalties of people newly arrived in the city. But we need to teach them to leave the culture of Subordinates and become Responsible Commoners that have learned to wive and thrive in the city. Did I tell you I wrote a book about this, Road to the Middle Class?

The amazing thing about the present moment is that President Trump, coming out of nowhere, has invented the politics of catering to the Commoners, the vast world of ordinary people that just go to work, follow the rules, and obey the law.

Instead of the politics of the Democratic Party that caters to the conceits of the Gentry and to the tribal loyalties of the Subordinates.

Golly Geewillikins! No really! Why didn't anyone put this together before. It's so obvious! The very idea! Centering politics and economic policy on the needs and aspirations of ordinary Commoner Americans!

Why in the world did it take a businessman with a flair for reality TV to figure this out? Where were all the intellectual geniuses? The political scientists? The moral philosophers? The political consultants?

Well, I guess the answer is pretty simple. It never occurred to anyone because the thinkers and philosophers and intellectuals and politicians are all educated Gentry. And really, none of us can think outside the box of our own class interests and think about how life looks to the lowly Commoner.

What is Best in Life for Children of the Privileged?

Back in the old days things were simple. What is best in life?

For a male chimpanzee: Get to the border with two of your pals and kill any chimp from another troop that shows up.

For a hunter-gatherer: Have a jolly good hunt, and, by the way, keep the other tribe on their side of the border?

For a medieval romance hero: Make sure it is your opponent's lance that shivers into splinters. And then head for bed and hope to wake up to discover some sweet damsel dressed in green samite bathing your face in her tears.

For Conan the Barbarian: To drive his enemies before him and hear the lamentation of their women.

For a feudal aristocrat: To boldly outdare the dangers of the time and get to wear that kingly crown.

For a post-feudal aristocrat: Get a seat in the House of Commons and make a name for yourself.

For the sons of the bourgeoisie: Become a lefty activist, like Marx and Engels and Horkheimer and Marcuse and Bill Ayers.

And now this kid, one of a generation of "Liberal Children of Privilege" that are having a grand old time acting like the tribunes of the marginalized.

[Carlos] Maza, who goes by the name “gay wonk,” is known for whining about people who’ve earned a lot of money and trying to “cancel” conservatives for making fun of him.

HIs mother and her fiance made millions with a software startup. So the kid has plenty of money to get on social media and "cancel" people.

Actually, I think that this highlights the Great Problem of this age, and indeed all previous ages.

Whatabout the children of the rich and powerful?

We all know that What is Best in Life for Conan the Barbarian. But whatabout his son? Yeah! You ever thought about his problem? What does he do, given that his dad already did all the enemy-driving and lamentation-of-women stuff?

In The Millionaire Next Door social scientists Stanley and Danko proposed that what millionaire moms do is they send their kids into the well-paid professions, like doctors and lawyers, because to repeat the millionaire success of dad goes against the odds. And, of course, that solid professional life starts with the most selective college possible.

But obviously the hands-down favorite for rich kids is to become a lefty activist. And it obviously appeals to the young: see the Bernie Bros and the enthusiasm of lefty college activists to descend on their cancel victim of the day. Like that girl student who dared, dared to say that socialism was more deadly than the Wuhan Flu. Well, the activists taught her a lesson!

But let us be serious, for a change. Our era is a revolutionary era, meaning that in the last 200 years we have utterly transformed society from agriculture to industry. And now, it seems from industry to the knowledge game.

In the old days the future of rich kids was clear. You inherited the lands of your father; you made a good marriage; you jostled with the other grandees at Court. Second sons and daughters, of course, had a harder time of it.

But now the war cray is "to become creative." An artist, a writer, an activist. It all sounds pretty straight forward, only it ain't.

The problem is that the whole point of being Gentry or being a People of the Creative Self is that just having a good job, good marriage, home and kids is not good enough for someone that wants to differentiate himself or herself from ordinary Commoners. Gentry kids want to be something special.

Only, being something special is really hard.

Here's the deal. And the philosophers and psychologists and mythologists are pretty clear on this.

To be a shooting star, a Hero, means becoming not just a tin-pot dictator or social-media "cancel" artist. It means being a Sacrificial Hero. It starts with the perilous journey into the underworld of the unconscious, from which you probably won't return. And if you do return from a successful encounter then, following Joseph Campbell, you may indeed return with a "Boon" for mankind.

"The Ultimate Boon" is the benefit, favor, or blessing that is bestowed on the hero figure. There is a drive for the hero to share the boon with humankind, whether it is an elixir of immortality, a holy grail, true love, perfect knowledge, or the meaning of life.

Or, in the version from Jordan B. Peterson, you return as the Sacrifical Hero, dying on the border between Order and Chaos while converting a small area of unknown Chaos into known Order.

Or, you become Nietzsche's Übermensch and that means stepping out of the "herd" and daring to go where no man dared to go before, stripped of all the comforts of home and the swaddling blankets of religion.

In other words, a real creative life is not Sunday in the park. It is a confrontation with demons; it is being "stressed" to the limit. It is to submit yourself to the Ultimate Truth -- and certainly not submit other people to your Ultimate Truth.

And that is one of the reasons I say that everything about the Left is a lie, including "and" and "the." In the narrative of the left the Noble Activist gets to bend the arc of history towards justice and the activist or the progressive politician, participating, as AOC recently said, in a mass movement.

No it ain't. They lied to you, honey.

White Trash: The View from Mt. Olympus

I had been thinking I ought to read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg ever since it was published in early 2016. Naturally, I was afraid that it would be just the usual liberal rubbish. But you never know: I might learn something!

Yes indeedy, the Better Sort of people have every been worried about

Waste people. Offscourings. Lubbers. Bogtrotters. Rascals. Rubbish. Squatters. Clay-eaters. Tackies. Mudsills. Scalawags. Briar hoppers. Hillbillies. Low-downers. White niggers. Degenerates. White trash. Rednecks. Trailer trash. Swamp people.

And the Better Sort has been worried about them for centuries.

But who are they, these problems? How, for instance, do they fit into a three-layer social theory like Curtis Yarvin's Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.

Well, I have to admit they don't. They are lower-order people that aren't part of the system. They are "off the grid." And that is what is so threatening about them. They are living in the swamp, in the woods. They are people who upped and went "out west" and now they are living in despicable shacks up in the hills, multiple generations in one room and who knows who is shacking up with whom. Of course, they don't work. Instead they forage, or hunt, or steal, or... well, who knows exactly how they manage?

But what are we going to do about them? I guess when you are the ruling class, or the Gentry class that does the ruling class's bidding, the fact of an unorganized rabble out there that isn't connected into your power tributary system is clearly a problem. Suppose they get out of control?

Obviously the solution to the White Trash problem has changed over the years. Back in the day, they got shoved off the land they occupied as it got scarfed up by politically connected gentry. That was when agricultural land was the foundation of wealth.

At the turn of the 20th century Gentry people were into Darwinist eugenics. So the solution was the stop these defectives from breeding.

During the New Deal the solution was to try and round them up and put them into model communities funded by the government. Or build bloody big dams with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In the Sixties, it was time to make fun of them with TV series like The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, and The Beverly Hillbillies. Or was it? After all, by putting hillbilles into Beverly Hills, you get to hit two birds with one stone, White Trash and Movie Moguls.

ON the other hand, with NASCAR and 1970s TV series like Smokey and the Bandit we are starting to celebrate hillbilly values. Or with the movie Deliverance showing the country hicks as dangerous monsters threatening young male city-slickers.

Or, with the 1980s, we get Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker at their PTL Club evangelical TV show. And later reality shows like Here Comes Honey Bo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

The truth is that Our Betters really don't have a clue what to do with the out-of-control White Trash. And Isenberg reflects that truth. She's a professor at Louisiana State University and her book carefully hews to the liberal line.

So she's outraged by the snobby attitude towars mudsills and clay-eaters in the 19th century. She is appalled by eugenicists in the early 20th century. She is understanding about the New Deal effort to clean up the dirty whites. But then what?

Thing get complicated in the Civil Rights era. Because the victims du jour are now poor blacks, not poor whites. So the helpless victims of the New Deal era become the racist followers of Southern segregationists. And Sarah Palin, who came up from pretty humble beginnings to get elected Governor of Alaska and GOP vice-presidential nominee, is dismissed as an ignorant simpleton, the "first female redneck on a presidential ticket... [that] had attended six unremarkable colleges."

Look, I get it. You wanna get a book published by Viking; you gotta toe the ideological line. And these days, we Gentry chappies are concerned about our intersectional Little Darlings, from upper-class women sobbing about sexism in politics to blacks to helpless gays and transgenders, the homeless, and migrants.

So Isenberg gives us a helpful look at conventional Gentry wisdom about the white underclass. In today's Gentry firmament the white underclass is a bit of a bother.  It is, you may think, a "glitch" in the Matrix, something that does not compute with your world view. You brush it aside as an annoying interruption of normally scheduled service. So you understand why President Obama talks about bitter clingers and Hillary Clinton about a "basket of deplorables." And why the media condemned the tiki-torch bearers of Charlottesville as white racists.

Nothing remarkable here. We humans have to brush off things that don't conform with our view of reality. Otherwise we'd never get to work in the morning. Indeed, scientists say, there is no reason to bother about any unexpected informaiton unless it looks like it is going to kill you.

And that is why everyone from professors to activists to the media are out to get Trump. Because if Trump suceeds then he is going to damage their nice comfortable world of sinecures and cultural hegemony.

But White Trash for me points out that all the upper class frenzy down the ages about the fractious lower class is just so much idle chatter. Instead the upper class should just do its job: don't get into stupid wars, don't loot the economy to reward your supporters; don't allow people to scam the system and erect privileges for themselves; don't fall down on the job in the next credit crisis.

Looking at the bigger picture I'd say that every time you have a big event, whether the Industrial Revolution or a big war or a big credit crisis then millions of people are going to be thrown out of the system; many of them will never get their lives together again. But it certainly helps to hand out money to the victims: keeps them from tearing the whole thing down.

Can we do anything else? Education? Training? Model communities? Maybe. But I'd say that 97 percent of all government programs is the Gentry wanting to feel good about itself.