Remember, the "Activists" Aren't Revolutionaries

Now that Seattle's CHAZ/CHOP is winding down, according to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, in a "phased" way, we can now say what it was not.

It was not revolution. What is was, instead, was regime supporters getting to let off a bit of steam after the glorious emotional experience of the George Floyd riots.

And it was, as all left-wing activity is, a reactionary moment, a nostalgic recreation of the good old days of organic, pre-city, community.

In a way, you can say it was a scientific experiment. Let's see what happens if you set out as a new Adam, as "he drives his spade into, and sets up his stockade around, the most fertile patch of land he can find?" That's Bernard Shaw, writing the first pages of Fabian Essays in Socialism.

Well, thanks to intrepid reporter Andy Ngô, we know that it means going through a couple thousand years of history in ten days. First of all, establish the borders. Then the men start to fight over who will be boss. Then you have to figure out the laws. Then you have to keep the peace. Then you identify that people that dress like you are the good guys and you start to hate the people beyond the border.

I suppose that one of the things that drives the Great Reaction, the movement of the left to recreate the primitive community, is the annoying realization that all the cool stuff has already been done. No Fair!

So you decide to do a redo, to re-enact the scenes from the past. Setting up a new community. Enforcing the peace. Competing to see who will be leader. Hating the monsters on the other side of the border.

What you are not, are revolutionaries. You are regime-sponsored "activists" doing what you have been carefully taught: You cannot be a revolutionary when the local mayor pats you patronizingly on the head and talks about a "summer of love." When activism is taught in government schools to children. When degrees are awarded in government universities in grievance studies. When the media reports on "mostly peaceful protest" in a burning city.

What you are doing, you activists, is doing the dirty work for the ruling class, frightening the Commoners, canceling the stepmother of an accused policeman. Roughing up conservative websites for their comment section.

If your protests were real revolution then the functionaries of the Inner Party -- the Nancy Pelosis, the Chuck Schumers, the tame journalists that parrot their sound bites -- would be coming down like a ton of bricks on the protesters, invoking the End of Days, the brutal behavior, the pile of skulls, the racism-sexism-homophobia of the terrorists, the wild violence of the protesters, er, riotous mob.

When you walk around my neighborhood full of nice white liberal ladies and see Black Lives Matter yard-signs and protest signs you are not seeing revolution. Nice liberal ladies do not do revolution; they instinctively seek out the approved line on everything and chant the responses with the rest of the faithful.

Here's a lovely tweet out today about the Beckys supporting revolution (Or are they Karens?):

Woke White Women continue to take over these protests. https://t.co/ZvlVLPuzkT

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) June 23, 2020

As Instapundit puts it: "White Women's Self-Esteem Matters." And Woke White Women don't do revolution, baby. They do and say what they have been carefully taught. By Mommy, by Daddy, by teachers, by professors, by other Woke Women. Women Don't Do Revolution.

And this reminds me to make the obvious point.

The reason we have cities and states and police and the market culture is because it is staggeringly beneficial to humans that get with the program. That's what the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years is about.

When you stop fighting over affronts to your sacred honor, and stop the vengeance culture and trust anyone that acts trustworthy to you, then a thousand flowers bloom. Not to mention a million IRAs.

But there is a problem. A part of the human instinct is the instinct to protect your little patch of land from looters and plunderers, to only trust your kind of people, and to be ready to drop like a ton of bricks on anyone that "disses" you and yours. A part of the human instinct loves to dump on the neighbors, whether in the women's gossip network of "I can't believe she did that" or in the man's honor culture of "you wanna back that one up, pal?"

What we need is a way to sublimate the women's gossip network into something that isn't mean-spirited naming and shaming and shunning, and a way to sublimate the men's insult culture into something that doesn't end in a fist-fight or worse.

And I don't know how we do that. Not when the ruling class prefers to keep the Commoners frightened and demoralized.

The Sublimation of Primitive Instincts

Back in the day the only thing that men did, more or less, was defend the border. That is what we men are programmed to do. So men are creators, warriors, destroyers.

Back in the day women did everything else, in a close-knit village community of women that bore and raised the children. So women are learners, carers, teachers.

So now what?

Well, we know what. We decided, or God decided, to sublimate our primitive instincts into less violent channels.

For men we have invented exploration, sports, video games, winning market share, tech startups. But clearly young men still need the opportunity to create a bit of mayhem, as in the recent riots and CHAZ/CHOP insurrections. I wonder if we can do a better job of providing scope for mayhem without the unfortunate admixture of lefty lunacy.

But whatabout for women? I think that is the Big Problem today, because the feminists and all the Goodwhites have assumed that What Women Want is to get into the public square and have careers and STEM and become fighter jocks and all.

I think the disproof of that was the incident where a US Navy ship collided with a container ship. And why? Because two women officers "weren't talking to each other."

Yes, how do we sublimate the women's culture of gossip and complaint and social moralizing from the old village community to the modern world? I have to admit that I don't have a clue.

Well, I do have a few ideas. Women should run the education of children, but not as gubmint employees. Rather they should organize their own neighborhood schools for their children and the neighbors' children.

Women should run the social welfare system. But not as gubmint employees. Rather they should act as a voluntary neighborhood or citywide committee to help the helpless. And do the necessary social moralizing to shame the shameless into social behavior.

And women prefer person-to-person jobs and careers. So let's stop worrying about whether women should be in STEM or corporate execs. The truth is that women are instinctively drawn towards activity that involves person-to-person contact and maintains the status quo. So they probably will not like being stuck in front of a computer or directing risky financial and business ventures.

Above all, women should not think that they want to do all the things men do. That is going down a rabbit hole. Men do the things they do because they have had to figure something else to do, something less lethal, now that they don't spend their days sharpening their weapons and keeping an eye on the border.

Women? Well they are not as far down the road as men, because women have been completely engaged in bearing and keeping kids alive until the day before yesterday.

One of the tricky things, in my opinion, is the intersection of this sublimation trend and government. For instance, I see government as a way of reducing male-on-male conflict. But whatabout the moral world? One of the problems I see with modern government is the irruption of the moral. Instead of people conducting their own moral communities separate from government we now have everyone trying to impose their moral principles using the power and the force of government. I don't think this ends well. It certainly didn't in Soviet Russia and Communist China.

And this is a problem where women are concerned, because women control their community of women through their culture of naming and shaming and shunning. Fine, if this social control is the community of women. But if women are using government to impose their moral structure, not so good.

Government and its law and police are designed to deal with serious violations of the peace for which forcible encouragement is needed. Morals and values are for the lesser anti-social behaviors where frowns and less extreme correctional measures are appropriate.

See what I mean? Government is a guy thing, because force. Morals is a girl thing, because "I can't believe you did that" and social moralizing.

Still, it's all a work in progress. Because we are still primitives deep down, and those primitive instincts want to emerge from under the modern repressions. The primitive instincts got their rights, after all!

The Different Kinds of Hero

Last night I had another of my 3:00 am Aha! moments. I realized that the Sacrificial Hero is the hero that inaugurates a new religion. But whatabout people inaugurating a new culture? Or a new politics? Whatabout them?

Let's get back to fundamentals.

Politics is downstream from culture. Said Andrew Breitbart.

Culture is downstream from religion. Says John C. Wright.

Religion is downstream from the question "what is the meaning of 'life, the universe, and everything?'" Says Christopher Chantrill.

And I say, in my "Vision of the Good Life," which is supposed to replace the left's reactionary vision, that the new answer to the question of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything," is the Sacrificial Hero. Like Moses, bringing his tablets of a new religion down from the mountain, but never getting to the Promised Land. Like Jesus Christ, dying for the idea that you don't need blood sacrifice to atone for your sins.

But whatabout the guy that creates a new culture out of the new religion providing a new answer to the question of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything?"

That was the point of my Aha! moment. Because I thought to myself: probably the chap that develops a new culture is not a Sacrificial Hero. But what is he? Is he a Hero? Is he a Philosopher? An Artist? A Writer?

See, the point is that the cultural innovator is not really, as Jungian analysis proposes for the heavy lifting, a Hero teetering on the border between Order and Chaos. Because the heavy lifting has already been done. By the time the cultural innovator comes along the area of Chaos is no longer complete Chaos. The outlines have been mapped out.

So let's do the decent thing and say about the cultural innovator: I don't know.

Same thing for the political innovator that creates a new politics. This chap is not really tilling virgin ground that has never felt the blade of the plow. He is taking a culture and working out the implications of the culture when it comes to politics.

And that means we have to do the decent thing and say about the political innovator: I don't know.

But already my mind is seething with ideas. What do you call chaps like Calvin and Luther? What do you call Montesquieu, the chap that invented the political framework that our Founders hammered into the good old US and A? What do you call Kant? My pal Nietzsche? Whatabout the Rousseaus and Marxes and Marcuses? Whatabout Saul Alinsky, of Rules for Radicals? Whatabout Martin Luther King, Jr.?

And what you you call the actual high-profile politicians, the Lincolns, Bismarcks, Roosevelts, Reagans, Obamas?

What indeed do you call President Trump, the most unlikely of political innovators?

I don't know. Because I just don't want to jump to conclusions. Not just yet.

But I will be back!

Gorsuch Decision Means Back to the Drawing Board

With Justice Gorsuch legislating gay rights into the Civil Rights Act of 1965, another fantasy of conservatism bites the dust.

We are never going to win the culture war with conservative justices on the Supreme Court. Why?

Because the judicial branch is the aristocratic branch; it reflects the culture of the educated Gentry. And always will. Actually, that was the intention of the Founders.

Right now, the educated Gentry thinks that LGBT rights is a Good Thing that all Goodwhites agree on.

Let us be clear about what this means. It means that if you want to change the laws of the country you have to do more than win elections.

Because, as Andrew Breitbart said, politics is downstream from culture. Don't expect to win political battles unless you occupy the high ground of the culture.

But that is not enough for, as John C. Wright writes, culture is downstream from religion. 

Don't doubt me on this. And if you did, you might change your mind and get to see why Wright is right on this, in a moment when the devotees of the religion of Wokeness dominate the culture with their religious devotions and flagellations "mostly peaceful protesting" for Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police.

So is it all over? Do we all just take a knee, the baptismal rite of Wokeianity? Not at all.

Because there is something upstream from religion. And that is the classic line from Douglas Adams, that he repeats again and again in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It is the eternal human search for the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

Let it be said that we are no closer to succeeding in this search than the first humans that developed the conceit of self-consciousness. And we never will. The closer we get, as we increase our knowledge and wealth and power and wokeness, the further the answer recedes into the depths of the universe.

For instance, just this week the "Physicists Union" -- that demands, if you remember, "rigorously defined areas of doubt and uncertainty" -- announced that the Hubble Constant isn't quite as constant as we thought, and this "bolster[s the current] challenge to the basic model of the universe."

Whatever it is that the universe is. If, indeed it is something rather than nothing.

So, what we need to do is to come up with a meaning of life, the universe and everything that will condense into a new religion for the educated Gentry that will change the culture that will change the politics and that will make it unthinkable for the aristocrats on the Supreme Court to continue with the current faith in finding new "rights" to enshrine in law and new "victims" to be inducted into the sacred hall of victims.

Should be a snap, right?

I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to find some sort of meaning of life that is higher and better than Wokeness, the religion of Activism that there are billions of helpless victims out there wallowing in helplessness unless straggly-haired Chés and Good Little Girls in face masks all get together and hand-letter signs and mostly peacefully protest and demand that we bend the arc of history towards justice for the helpless victims?

I mean, surely smarter minds that you and I should have figured this all out by now, and forged a new and better meaning of "life, the universe, and everything." Right?

Of course they have. And I have made it my life's work to sniff out these noble heroes. And now I have published my findings, "A Vision of the Good Life Better than the Left's," that begins here.

I warn you, it is an extremely sophisticated analysis that is way beyond the ken of the average Ché or Good Little Girl in a good little face mask.

Now I have come up with the Ideal of this new meaning of "life, the universe and everything." It is the Sacrificial Hero who dies upon the border between Order and Chaos.

This Hero is not the Warrior Hero of old, the Prince Harry or the Harry Percy of Shakespeare. He is not the Revolutionary Hero of leftist revolutionary fantasy literature. He is not the Activist Hero of the current Activism Culture.

But what is he, then?

I will tell you. He is rather like Jordan B. Peterson, author of Maps of Meaning and 12 Rules for Life. 

Why would I pick him, when tough guy Vox Day makes fun of him in Jordanetics: A Journey into the Mind of Humanity's Greatest Thinker? Two reasons:

1. Peterson came out against Canada's C-16 law that basically legislated the LGBT agenda. If you watch his testimony before the Canadian Senate you can see that he is basically offering himself up as a sacrifice.
2. His latest blog post, taking aim at the entire current culture in the university, "Missives of Appalling Idiocy and Envy Embarrassing to Behold," in which an eminent Canadian chemistry prof has been thrown to the woke mob.

When you do this you are offering yourself up to Pontius Pilate as a sacrifice to the search for the meaning of life. It means you are willing to sacrifice reputation, career, respectability, honor, everything.

But actually, of course, you are transcending the woke mob and its Cancel Culture, because in offering yourself as a sacrifice you are in fact daring the wokies to make you into a martyr. And that is something that they don't want.

But who really has the courage to stand up to the mob? Not me. But maybe you are. Anyway, Jordan B. Peterson is, in my opinion, an example of what it takes to be a Sacrificial Hero. Needless to say, his Maps of Meaning goes into great depth about the Sacrificial Hero and the whole question of the Hostile Brothers. 

I investigate Maps of Meaning here.

So, All we need to do is make the philosophy of the Sacrificial Hero a conventional wisdom among the educated Gentry. Then the whole religion and culture and politics of Wokeranity will vanish in a puff of smoke.

And we can start to deal with the next problem.

What is the Current Moral Revolution All About?

Let us start with the Zman who argues that our liberal democracy, unlike the classical forms of monarchy, republicanism and tyranny, has no overall architecture.

There is no sacred text or body of philosophical work to provide authority. Like a school of fish, morality shifts on a dime and that new direction is assumed to be the general will and therefore the proper course. Morality in a liberal democracy is a riot with no real purpose, other than to feed the need of the people to feel they are the virtuous actor in the great drama of life.

Well, I think he is missing the point. Our liberal democracy used to be about fluffing the nest of the workers, and then the minorities. But if an evil policeman can snuff out the life of a poor helpless black, then what is the point of it? That is what I understand about the current moment. So everyone is all in a flutter.

John Gray, in Unherd, compares the current moment to late medieval flagellants. The Wokies know society is immoral, just like the flagellants. But they don't have a clue what to do about it, except to cancel anyone that disagrees with them. Then Gray goes off into the weeds talking about America's founding on the crimes of black slavery and the seizure of indigenous lands.

Let's go back to the Zman. Whaddya mean "there is no sacred text?" We have a century of lefty thought, from Marx to Marcuse, which is nothing if it is not a Bible of sacred texts. Only this Bible is staggeringly, mind-blowingly wrong about its analysis and its moral program. It accuses the capitalists and bourgeoisie of a program of oppression and hegemony that is flat wrong. The capitalists and the bourgeoisie are not that interested in political power. If you come to them complaining of some injustice they will likely listen to you and try to do something about it.

And the lefty solution to all problems is flat-out wrong. It always proposes some kind of top-down supervisory system to right all wrongs, run by people like them. When it could have suggested minor tweaks to encourage pro-social behavior.

For instance, instead of government education it could have proposed employer-supported schooling for the children of employees. Instead of government-run health care it could have beefed up the 19th century universe of mutual-aid societies.

Then, instead of forming its own churches to create communities of lefty belief it has infiltrated all the institutions of society, from government to corporations, and essentially forced its wokey secular religion on the whole of society.

I would say that all this has been a complete failure and thus the lefty adepts and advocates are beside themselves with rage, because the whole world was supposed to be perfect by now. And there are plenty of young kids perfectly happy to burn the place down if the police will only stand back and let them have at it.

Look at the last ten years.

How could our betters have screwed up the credit system and allowed a generational credit panic like 2008? I thought they were experts.

How could President Obama have screwed up the recovery with old and failed policies like free money for teachers, and cartelizing the health care system when what was needed was jobs, jobs, jobs.

How could the health care experts mis-predict the effect of the Wu Flu epidemic by an order of magnitude? What is the point of experts if they can't predict the future within an order of magnitude?

How could black men still be out-murdering white and brown young men by a factor of 8 times? What are experts and policy professionals for if not to solve social problems like over-representation in crime statistics?

The answer is obvious. Our betters are complete idiots whose world view has failed and who don't know what to do other than keep on keeping on, and making sure that they and theirs get all the top jobs, as of old.

So, the world is totally screwed up, and naturally the young'uns do what they have been carefully taught. They go out into the streets and make hand-lettered signs and peacefully protest as though they were helpless peasants from 1819 instead of educated scions of the middle class in 2020.

So, liberals, what exactly was the point of that "march through the institutions" and purging of everyone that disagreed with you? Because if you haven't created a perfect world by now I'd say that your world view and your shock troops occupying all the commanding heights of the institutions amounts to a big fat zero.

And there is nobody left in the "institutions" except mindless idiots like you. So who is going to repair them and reform them?

The "Nazis' favorite intellectual" Fritzi Nietzsche predicted it all. When God is Dead -- i.e., the progressive agenda has utterly failed -- then you get decadance, a dying of the old order. Hmm. Aren't we seeing that, with populist Trumps and Borises popping up all over as people lose faith in the old ways? And then we get to nihilism, with nobody believing in anything. Hmm. Wouldn't that exactly describe our AntiFa friends who certainly know how to bomb and burn, but don't have a constructive idea in their heads?

Let me be clear. The problem is not with the helpless victims, who are just responding to the perverse incentives set up by the clueless ruling class. The problem is not the Commoners, who just want to wive and thrive, obey the laws, go to work, and follow the rules.

The problem is our educated Gentry that just know that they are ordained to bend the arc of history towards justice. And if the last program to bend the arc of history didn't work, well, they have another one that is bound to work this time.

Well, I have an analysis of the present situation, a Vision of the Good Life that transcends the failed vision of the left. And it centers on the basic error of the lefty educated Gentry, that they are warrior heroes hacking their way through the unjust jungle towards a perfect world of equality and justice. Wrong! Real heroes are sacrificial heroes that sacrifice themselves on the border of Order and Chaos.

But I don't expect lefty idiots to have a clue what that means. Maybe it's time for you chaps to shut up and go read a book.

Reign of Terror Means the Revolution is Failing

One of the conventional wisdoms on the right these days is that the Conservative Establishment failed us. It failed to fight against the left. And now look where we are, with the left canceling everyone in sight, and Big Business keeping its powder dry by mouthing conventional platitudes about Black Lives Matter.

So argues Julie Kelly at American Greatness.

The argument of the Conservative Establishment, on the other hand, is that Trump's crazy chaos politics radicalized the left. But for Trump, we would all be getting along.

I think that both arguments are wrong. I believe that what we are experiencing is the classic case of a religious movement dealing with the impossible situation, that its faith is not moving mountains.

Do you realize the impossible place our lefty friends are in? The whole arc of leftism is that, with a new politics, we could create a heaven on earth, free of hunger, free of poverty, free of discrimination, free of oppression, free of racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other -phobias in the dictionary.

They said that their labor laws would revolutionize the workplace. Oh yeah, how are the workers doing these days? Dying of despair? How come?

They said that their Civil Rights laws would transform race relations and lift African Americans up from centuries of slavery and Jim Crow oppression and segregation. Oh yeah, how are the blacks doing these days? Still getting killed by police for resisting arrest? How come?

They said that feminism would liberate women from the patriarchy of the ages. Oh yeah? Then how come women reported themselves happier in the 1950s than today?

When the revolution fails to deliver the promised Paradise, the revolutionaries do not just give up and go home. They redouble their efforts. And redouble them again.

Eventually we get the Reign of Terror, Great Purge, Cultural Revolution, Great Awokening.

And then comes Reaction.

That's the model proposed by Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution. And I like it.

But why Reaction? Why don't the wokies keep on keeping on naming and shaming and canceling from now until forever, or until the last Deplorable Statue has been erased from history and the last "far-right" activist has been fired from his job and divorced by his wife?

Because, Crane Brinton writes, humans cannot live forever in the frenzy of white hot religion. Eventually we relapse back to normal life.

The classic Reaction is the end of the French Reign of Terror in July of 1794, the so-called Thermidorean Reaction when Robespierre was removed from office. And it led to the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Of course, Bonaparte then led France through the disaster of the Napoleonic Wars from which France has never really recovered. Some people think that is a good thing.

But I think that, because the United States is a proof of God's existence, that we in America will get through the Reign of Wokeness without the bloodbath of the Reign of Terror.

And that is because the voters of the United States elected Donald Trump in 2016.

Yes, of course Conservatism Inc. is really resentful about Donald Trump. Hey, he's managed to do what they failed to do for 60 years, ever since William F. Buckley Jr. decided to stand athwart history, yelling Stop. Wouldn't you be angry?

Yes, of course the left is fit to be tied by Donald Trump. According to their arc of history, Donald Trump ought to be impossible. Yet here he is. 

And One Million people have signed up for his June 20th rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Although the top Tulsa city health expert wants Trump to cancel the rally, because health.

Do you see why that would be? Why a million people might have signed up for Trump's rally in a stadium that holds 19,000? 

It's because the vast majority of people just want to live their "humdrum lives" -- immortalized by Lina Lamont. They don't want to bend the arc of history towards justice, or stand athwart history, or amaze their college classmates with a brilliant career, or get into activism, or even go to Mars with our tech billionaires. They just want to live and work and get married and have a family and live to enjoy their grandchildren.

And let it be said that this simple agenda has never been easy, down the ages, on account of the Four Horsemen representing pestilence, war, famine, and death.

In a way, it is appropriate that President Trump has been assailed non-stop by a series of harassments from the ruling class, starting with surveillance from the intelligence community, then an effort to take out his advisor LTG Flynn, then the Special Prosecutor investigation, then the impeachment effort, then the hyped-up WuFlu epidemic, and lately the faked-up riots over the death of a black career criminal in police custody.

Really, what president in our history could have stood up to all this abuse the way Trump has done?

Now I believe, following my research into Jungian psychology and his concept of "archetypes," that the proper role for the man who wishes to change history is the role of the Sacrificial Hero, one who probably perishes on the border between Order and Chaos trying to understand and stand for new ideas and knowledge despite the baying of the mob.

Donald Trump is, of course, an improbable candidate for Sacrificial Hero of the Year, since he is a proud and boastful egomaniac, thrice married, and I know not what.

And yet he has stood against the rage of the mob for nigh on four years, standing for Making America Great Again and promising to Drain the Swamp of the Deep State.

Will he succeed or will he go down to ignominious defeat at the hands of the wokey mob and the devious wranglings of the Deep State?

Nobody can tell, but I believe that he has changed history to this extent. He has redefined the Republican Party as the party of the ordinary American Commoner. As opposed to the Democratic Party that is clearly the party of the educated Gentry and its Clients.

In my view the only question is now how the left in its current Great Awokening will go down the tubes. Will it be at the hands of Donald Trump, as the Sixties went down the tubes with the two elections of Richard Nixon, or will it be at the hands of a future Reactionary that seizes the reins of power at the next Thermidorean moment?

You tell me.

Jews, Anti-Semitism, and the "Other"

One of the astonishing things about the Jews is how they have managed to maintain a religious/tribal identity from whenever.

And, remember, for most of this period, Jews have maintained this separate identity as tiny minorities within larger, hostsile political units.

How did they do it? Because, if you look at the broad sweep of history, all the eternal nations and tribes and empires and religions are not eternal at all. They are born, they grow, they squabble, they divide, they combine, they die. 

But the Jews have kept their identity going against all odds, let us say, ever since the Romans made Palestine a part of the Roman Empire.

How do you do that, when you are a tiny minority in a much larger political unit?

I think the answer is that you create a culture of perpetual innocence.

Of course, all nations and cultures do this. And I supposes it relates to the notion of "fault" in the primitive mind. If something goes wrong, there must be a fault. And the fault must be the other guy.

But if we, whoever we are, are perpetually innocent then whatever happens can't be our fault. Therefore we should soldier on, and never falter.

Of course, the Jews, who, we can say, came out rather on the wrong side of the nation-state movement of the last millennium, have now created the most nationish nation state in the world with the nation of Israel.

But when your define yourself with such determination, you define yourself as the "Other" to the rest of the world.

And when things go wrong, people usually blame the "Other." Because there must be a fault, and it can't be that "we" are at fault.

Having a bit of a problem with the Black Death? Blame the Jews. Or, as a convenient backup, the witches.

Having a bit of a problem in Germany after the disaster of World War I? Blame the Jews.

You see this with the current WuFlu. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories flying around, from the Chinese did it deliberately in their Wuhan lab in Wuhan to the US did it and seeded the offending viruses in the unsuspecting Chinese lab in said Wuhan. And then all the blame games, from Trump doing too little or too much, too early or too late, to the Dem governors deliberately wrecking their state economies in order to get Trump defeated in November.

And don't get me started on all the mostly peaceful protests over the death of the black innocent George Floyd.

One of my tentative notions is that the innocence culture of almost all left-wing groups issues from the fact that intellectual Jews have been their leaders, from the workers and communism and socialism to blacks to the current wokey AntiFa and Black Lives Matter.

See, I have a problem with innocence culture. I think that in the modern era with the market economy and the city culture people have to get beyond a reactive innocence culture and grow up a little. Because nobody is innocent; nobody is perfect. We all have to rub along and put up with people that, given our druthers, we would rather not.

Hmm. Maybe I need another leg in my Great Reaction concept, something along the line of "identity politics is a re-assertion of innocence."

Notice that one of the things in Christianity is its notion of Sin, that we are all sinners, and that we all have to work for salvation. Nobody is an innocent. The Jews have a similar concept, the Book of Life, in which God records who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

The point is that all politics depends on "Us" and "Them." And all politicians establish their tribe by demonizing the "Other."

Obviously, if we humans are to ascend from the dusty plain of political conflict to the ethereal heights that soar above such petty squabbles, we all have to shed the armor of innocence.

And I don't know how that works. Well, I do, but I don't know how to get there.