Presidential Debates as Oral Exams in Regime Orthodoxy

I don't usually watch presidential debates; instead I rely on sites like PJMedia or Breitbart that run blow-by-blow accounts of the debates. And then I read up on the post-debate spin.

But I did watch the October 22 debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden.

Now when I listen to Republican politicians I am always conscious of the Overton Window of what you are allowed to say today in America.

So it was cringingly obvious to me that President Trump did not answer the question made to him by NBC reporterette Kristen Welker on Climate Change. Trump talked about how he loved the environment. He said nothing about how the whole Looming Disaster on Climate Unless We Act Now is a globalist ruling-class lie. Because he is not allowed to say that.

What I would like is for the president to say, look, climate change is a total fraud, a fake panic ginned up by the swamp to order us around and make big bucks for its supporters. And especially to create lots of Jobs for educated Gentry.

Ditto on the question about Race and "the talk." The president completely avoided the question, instead talking about how he has done all kinds of wonderful things for blacks.

What I would like is for the president to say, hey, whatabout "the talk" white parents need to give to white kids, like "The Talk: Non-black Version" that got John Derbyshire fired from National Review? But he is not allowed to say that.

Lots of people have been complaining that the moderators of the debates are all pro-Biden. And they are right.

But the reason is not that the moderators are biased and/or Democrats and/or swamp creatures, although they are: hey, reporterettes gotta eat too!

The reason is that presidential debates are Oral Exams in Ruling Class Orthodoxy. Let us review the issues and discover the Ruling Class Orthodoxy that you are not allowed to challenge.

COVID: OMG, if we can just save one life!

Climate Change: OMG, we're all going to die unless we act now and get rid of polluting fossil fuels!

Race: OMG, the white supremacists -- or white oppressors, or systemic racists!

Health-care: OMG, we've got to insure pre-existing conditions!

Education: OMG, we gotta have free college!

On each of these issues, which you will note I have framed as an emotional response that you would expect from a young woman, the way that all good Democrats with #WeBelieve signs out front believe is the only moral, moderate, evolved thing to do.

So, when the Democrat in a presidential debate answers a question about one of these issues, he starts with the orthodox moral position that all good people believe and then continues by talking about billions of dollars in loot and plunder for this sub-issue and regulations for that sub-issue. Don't forget the regulations aspect: regulations are Jobs for Gentry.

Whereas the Republican has to do a dance, to avoid contradicting the Orthodox Position directly, but still dog-whistling to his supporters that he is on their side. This is something that President Trump has shown himself to be expert at. He has to be expert at this Ali Shuffle because the default Republican position -- and indeed the reality -- on these issues is not acceptable in polite society.

Here's where I stand on the Big Issues:

COVID: Hey kids, it's an epidemic; let's get through it, protecting old people and the vulnerable, but get on with life.

Climate Change: Hey kids, ever met a snake-oil salesman? Guess what: the Earth is not about to fry; it is in the middle of an interglacial, a brief warm period in the middle of the current Ice Age. That means: cold weather ahead!

Race: Hey kids! Guess what: it is illegal in these United States to commit racial and/or sexual discrimination. Who knew?

Health care: Hey kids! If you try to skate by and don't pay for health insurance, it could cost you.

Education: Hey kids! Ever thought that compulsory education amounts to confinement in government child custodial facilities?

Feeling a bit embarrassed while reading the above? Did you check behind you to see if someone was watching? I understand. You have a job and a wife and kids to protect.

The point is: you are not allowed to say such things. And it could cost you.

We all know what this is about. It starts with the Breitbart Dictum: politics is downstream from culture. As modified by the John C. Wright Proviso: politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion. A modified by the Christopher Chantrill Maxim: politics is downtream from culture is downstream from religion is downstream from "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything."

First, you gotta get out ahead on the meaning-of-life question. Everything else is just a mopping up operation.

Reaching Towards an Un-Ally-ism

I've been intrigued for the last few months with the Ally moral political philosophy that I got from Matt Taibbi:

It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

Mainly, I'm intrigued because of the way that it presents liberals as the noblest, kindest, bravest, evolve-est people that ever lived. What could be nobler than fighting for the oppressed against the oppressors!

But, I tend to think, do you really mean to say that all those middle-average Americans at Trump rallies are really the deplorable "white oppressors" of which we've heard tell? Really? Cross your heart and hope to die? 

I'd believe it if our liberal friends weren't so interested in political power. Because the basic requirement of the Ally paradigm is that we give the Allies the power to hunt and kill the "white oppressors."

In other words, our liberal friends do not propose to do all their ally work for free. Oh no. The whole point of their moral positioning is Jobs for Gentry. Preferably life-time jobs with tenure.

OK. Suppose that I was commissioned by a well-heeled tech billionaire to come up with a counter-Ally moral paradigm? What would it be? Who would be the innocents? Who would be the villains? Who the heroes?

I think I'd like the archetypal notion of the Sacrificial Hero as the good guy, and my notion of the Ego Hero as the bad guy. So there are your "allies" and "white oppressors" taken care of.

So, whatabout the "oppressed peoples?" My little problem is that I don't believe in the notion of "oppressed peoples." The only way you would get that is with a powerful political elite with a monopoly on the levers of power. It takes big-time political power to create a class of "oppressed peoples." Something like a feudal system or a Commie dictatorship. Otherwise the natural jealousy in every human that is instinctively opposed to other people having political power would put a stop to all efforts at oppression. Except that, it seems to me, many Subordinate people are quite happy to see political power used to provide them with benefits. That, after all, is the universal plan of lefty politics. You "oppressed peoples!" Give us political power and we will stick it to the "white oppressors!" In return for free stuff. Hmm. There is something weird about that notion.

It seems to me that the salient characteristic of the "oppressed peoples" is that they don't act; they expect someone else to act for them. And really, that is also true of the supposed "white oppressors." Just what are those notorious "white oppressors" up to this week? Well, back in 2017 there were a couple-dozen tiki-torch bearers around a statue of Robert E. Lee. And the other week Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon was worried by a Proud Boys peaceful protest in North Portland:

“I am incredibly concerned about the increased risk of violence in Portland this weekend,” Brown told reporters.

Ya know, Gov. Brown, when you are nonchalant about months of AntiFa protests in Portland but declare a state of emergency about one Proud Boys protest way out in the northern suburbs, that is what they call, in poker, a "tell."

Just what are all those "white oppressors" actually doing? Apart from carrying tiki-torches and all? Not much. Of course, lots of them are going to Trump rallies, Trump Car Parades, and Trump Boat Parades.

So, I think that the characteristic of almost everyone who is not trying out for a Hero role is that they are the "audience." Think about your average superhero movie. There is the good-guy hero, the Batman or Spiderman. There is the bad-guy villain, the Joker or whoever. Everybody else, including the Gotham city police, especially the Gotham city police, are spectators. They have no action role to play; they are just watching the action, hoping that the good guys win.

So, I say that if you want to understand modern life, it is like a superhero movie. Here goes.

I experience humans as choosing one of three roles on the stage of life: Sacrificial Hero, Ego Hero, or Spectator.

The point is that most of us, whoever we are -- whether ginormous tech billionaires or stupid idiots clearing the shelves of Walgreens in San Francisco just down the street from Crazy Nancy's $24,000 side-by-side refrigerators -- are doing nothing about it. We are just following the rules, going to work, checking in everyday to our social media accounts, or consuming cable news, cheering one side and booing the other side. But not really doing anything about it.

And isn't that exactly what happens in superhero movies?

Is the Trump Phenomenon a New "Awakening?"

One of the ways to understand social change is through the notion of the "Great Awakening." The North American colonies such a religious awakening in the years before the American Revolution.

You might say it is a confirmation of Andrew Breitbart's notion that politics -- the revolution -- is downstream from culture, as modified by John C. Wright that culture is downstream from religion. So,

Politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion.

In other words, a political revolution is the product of a cultural revolution and cultural revolutions are products of religious "awakenings." Another way of looking at this is to say that a Great Awakening is a time when a mob of people suddenly revise their understanding of "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything." And so the world changes.

So, the Zman was descanting about Awakenings and wondering if we were in the middle of such an event, that the combination of waking up to the left's race grift, the mass media keeping its creatures in power, the Hunter Biden story, are going to wake people up.

But that made me think of the Trump phenomenon. Even my fairly Democratic Greek friend admits that the Trump enthusiasts are not "white oppressors" but people that have been left behind by the current rulers.

And I have to think that there is something organic, something Jungian and archetypal, in the phenomenon of the Trump rally, the Trump Boat Parade, the Trump Car Parade. I don't mean to say something specific, that it shows Trump will win the election; I am just saying that, if you are a human, programmed like every living thing to "notice" things that don't compute, then you are bound to suspect that something deep and archetypal, something of the unconscious, is going on, as people seem to be coming together in something below the obviously rational consciousness.

Of course, for me, with my mind trained by my reductive Three Peoples theory, it all connects. Obviously, to me, this is a Great Awakening of the Commoners, the People of the Responsible Self, starting to rise up, instinctively, against an unjust ruling class of educated Gentry. But, just as obviously, I could be completely wrong. I could be connecting dots in one way when, in reality, the dots are connecting in another way that will make me look like a complete idiot.

What will it all lead to, continues the Zman? Will it lead to civil war? Insurrection? Revolution? He plumps for "Insurrection, then Revolution." Civil war, to him, is a fight between two sides of the ruling class.

Revolutions, on the other hand, are when a new elite overthrows the old elite, because the old system offers no way for the new elite to join the elite.

So we aren't there because the ruling class is in fact pretty united, at least on the surface. So that means insurrection.

When people begin to sense that the invisible bargain between the people and the ruler is breaking down, that the ruler is not holding up his end of the bargain, that is the beginning of an insurrection.  

For instance, if the state won't let the cops do their job then people will start to police the streets themselves. If the schools don't do the jobs, they start to pull their kids from school.

Actually, he says, there is an insurrection going on in the elite, as liberal cities refuse to keep law and order, and federal judges don't follow the rules, Judge Sullivan. But that is an insurrection within the ruling class!

This is the soil of revolution. On the one hand, you have the people seeing a breakdown of that invisible bargain between themselves and their rulers. Basic things like road maintenance, policing and public order are not being done. On the other hand, you have members of the elite who no longer accept the authority of the system in which they function, causing that system to further breakdown. American is a machine that is breaking down and no one wants to repair it. 

For me, it's all rather odd. You would think that the elite would be smart enough to fob off the Commoners and the Deplorables with some penny-ante action to make the bitter-clingers think that the elite "cares about people like me." But they haven't.

Indeed, with the Ally-ist notion of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors" they are proposing that the people you see at Trump rallies are "white oppressors."

Sorry, wokies. For me it does not compute. I'd say that Jeffrey Toobin, he of Zoom fame, is a "white oppressor" cunningly disguised as an "ally," up until the day before yesterday. That would make sense.

Of course, I would say that nothing illuminates a possible Commoner Great Awakening better than my Commoner Manifesto, that begins

A spectre is haunting the liberal elite -- the spectre of the Commoners. All the powers of the liberal establishment have entered into a secular alliance to exorcise this spectre...

Ooh. See that word ally-ance? And I continue:

It is high time that Commoners should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of “systemic racism” with a manifesto of the Commoners themselves.

And more of the same. But it's going to get worse before it gets better. 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Slavery

Everybody knows that the only thing you need to know about slavery is the Middle Passage and Negro Slavery and plantations and white racism.

I'm sure that's what you were carefully taught, to hate and to fear, in school.

I had my first warning that it ain't necessarily so years ago when I read The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger.

See, back in the feudal era you could ask your feudal lord to make you a slave. Sure, the most notorious source of slaves was war: "conquest slavery." And you could be made a slave for a criminal offence; of course you could, because prisons are expensive. 

But voluntary slavery? Here's how Lacey and Danziger put it.

People surrendered themselves into bondage at times of famine or distress, when they simply could not provide for their families any more... [I]n the year 1000 the starving man had no other resort but to kneel before his lord or lady and place his head in their hands. No legal document was involved, and the new bondsman would be handed a bill-hook or ox-goad in token of his fresh start in servitude. It was a basic transaction -- heads for food.

Of course, this is not particularly scandalous to me, because my reductive Three Peoples theory understands that a lot of people are Subordinates, or people that believe they need a protector. Just like in 1000:

In the year 1000 people could not imagine themselves without a protector. You had a lord in heaven and you needed a lord on earth. 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb expands on the topic in his Skin in the Game. It is covered in Chapter 3: How to Legally Own Another Person.

First, Taleb talks about the roaming monks of early Christianity, that were banned and enslaved into monasteries by the edit of St. Benedict. What was going on? The problem is that the vagrant monks were free, and

Complete freedom is the last thing you want if you have an organized religion to run.

But that is not all. Whatabout the corporation and the company man?

Total freedom for your employees is also a very bad thing if you have a firm to run[.]

Why? Well suppose you have a small airline and the pilots are contracted. Suppose that tomorrow you have a fully booked flight to Munich for the Oktoberfest, and at 5pm your pilot calls you to cancel, because he got a better deal that day from a Saudi sheik. You can see that it would be better to have salaried employees, even if they spend a lot of time sitting around, rather than risk a contract pilot saying, sorry Bob, I got a better offer today. As Taleb says:

People you find in employment love the regularity of the payroll, with that special envelop on their desk at the last day of the month, and without which they would act as a baby deprived of mother's milk.

And so we developed the culture of the "company man" who was guaranteed employment until retirement and then retired with a pension.

The system worked when large corporations survived a long time and were perceived to be longer lasting that nation-states.

But now, Taleb says, in the tech age, the important thing for security is to be "employable," to have skills that employers want.

Here's another curious form of slavery. To employ someone, say in a foreign country, at a salary and benefits way over the market rate back home. "The best slave is someone you overpay and who knows it, terrified of losing his status." 

Or suppose you are a high-ranking civil servant. You are terrified of losing your reputation and your sinecure, and so behave exactly as required -- say by the deep state -- in order to keep your status and your perquisites.

Yes, you say, but these examples are not really slavery. Maybe not, but they do illustrate that the dominant narrative -- that back in the old days people were brutally enslaved, but now, in the glorious light of enlightenment those days are gone forever and everyone is free, except for the remaining "oppressed peoples" that we "allies" are determined to liberate -- is a little too simplistic.

And I say, with my Great Reaction notion, that the left, despite its glorious devotion to ending all oppression and domination, is in fact reintroducing subjection: thus I argue that socialism is a return to slavery and the welfare state is a return to feudalism.

In fact, all social animals are hierarchical, not egalitarian. True equality, true freedom don't exist in the real world. Every living thing lives in a hierarchical world and obtains protection from its subordination to the hierarchy and its place in the power hierarchy.

Some people want a lot of protection: at some point the level of protection and subordination approaches what we like to call slavery. Other people want very little protection; they are what we might call "free spirits" after Nietzsche. It ain't black and white, but all shades of gray.

But, of course, we Hegel scholars have always known that. Because, having taken the short cut and read Alexandre Kojève's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, we know that the Master and Slave relationship is not as simple as we might like to think. For instance, the Slave knows a lot more about the Master than vice-versa. And knowledge, as they say, is power.

One fine day, I predict, our lefty friends will completely change their minds about slavery. Because their political power will depend upon it. But don't ask me when.

Meanwhile keep your nose in the air, knowing that you know a lot more about slavery than your virtue-signaling Black Lives Matter liberal neighbor.

Lefty Ally-ism, and What Real Allies Look Like

It is a couple of months since I read the definitive word on our current Woke witch hunt and first commented on it. It was from Matt Taibbi's piece on "white fragility." The "antiracism" movement, he wrote, is based on the following three-layer theory of society.

It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

Of course, I jumped on it, because of my interest in three-layer theories, which are the typical way that humans understand each other -- that is when they have the sophistication to graduate from a simple Us and Them theory. I lay out the theories in a table here.

I call this meaning-of-life theory "ally-ism." Because, of course, the point of "antiracism" is not being against racism but being an activist force for good, being the ally of "oppressed peoples."

Notice that, like the original Marxism, this ally-ism is not a theory of society but a theory of conflict. In Marx's concept, humans are engaged in an eternal Us vs. Them conflict, feudal lords vs. serfs, and now capitalists vs. proletarians. But there is hope! The Communists, the vanguard of the proletariat, will ally itself with the proles and smash the capitalist domination and hegemony. And then the problem of good vs. evil would be solved for all time.

In the new concept, we have the "white oppressors" dominating and oppressing the "oppressed peoples." But along come the "allies" who heroically insert themselves into this dominatory hellhole and join the battle of the oppressed against the oppressors as the allies of the "oppressed peoples."

Do you see the absurdity of this analysis? That it reduces human society to a war of all against all. Really? So how does the concept of humans as social animals come in?

And by the way, whatabout the notion, that I have advanced with respect to slavery, that some people actually voluntarily place themselves into slavery? Bad boy Nassim Nicholas Taleb updates the notion in Skin in the Game. He suggests that monasticism is a form of slavery. It was invented by St. Benedict to deal with the problem of itinerant monks that were totally out of the Catholic Church's control. Says he (p.96)

Complete freedom is the last thing you want if you have an organized religion to run. Total freedom for your employees is also a very, very bad thing if you have a firm to run[.]

So, Taleb argues, in this supposed post-slavery age, there are all kinds of dependence going on, especially in the corporate world. By offering security of employment -- and dependence -- an employer buys loyalty. The high-water mark of this was the old lifetime employment deal offered by big corporations in the post-WWII era. That worked when the life of big corporations was sixty years or so. But not in the current era where "firms stay in the top league by size (the so-called S&P 500) for only about between ten and fifteen years."

That's why my maxim about the Great Reaction says that the welfare state is a return to feudalism. It works because a lot of people prefer the life of subordination to the life of responsibility.

In other words, a big chunk of your "oppressed peoples" may be subordinate by choice.

That's why I think that a good three-layer theory is descriptive before it is prescriptive. Who are these "oppressed peoples" these "white oppressors" when they are at home? And who are the glorious white-knight "allies?"

Well, my reductive Three Peoples theory does just that. It describes the Creative people, that want to create something new; the Responsible people that just want to obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules, and the Subordinates, that look to someone else to tell them what to do.

Let us try to mesh my theory with the Ally-ism theory. I'd say that the "oppressed peoples" align with my Subordinates. But what if, for many "oppressed peoples," their Subordination is a choice. Nobody, for instance, is forcing you to take welfare. In fact, you demand your welfare and your unemployment check and your Medicaid as a right. Really? You mean that your average "oppressed" person has enforceable "rights?" Oh, I forgot: they would have nothing without the heroic assistance of the "allies."

Whatabout the "white oppressors?" Are these graduates of prestige universities and prestige media or NGO jobs? Certainly not? Are they Tech Lords? Certainly not! Tech Lords are for the people. Are they Trump supporters, the kind that often get suspended and censored on social media and can be found enthusiastically cheering at Trump rallies? I think you have a funny notion of oppressor if the average "white oppressor" can be fired for expressing the wrong opinion, James Damore.

And whatabout "allies?" Are these graduates of prestige universities with prestige media or NGO jobs? You betcha! Are they Tech Lords? You betcha! Are they nice liberal ladies in swank gentrified inner suburbs with #WeBelieve yard signs out front? You betcha.

Hmm. I am getting a sneaking suspicion that the Mary McCarthy Rule applies here. You remember Mary McCarthy. She said of Lilian Hellman:

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

I'd have to agree with Mary, since the day I saw Lilian Hellman's play "The Watch on the Rhine" at the Berkeley Rep. 

Against this putrid philosophy I offer an notion of real Ally-ship. It is based on my Three Peoples theory and recognizes that different people need and want different things. 

I'd say that Subordinates -- or "oppressed peoples" -- need a decent support from society but should be encouraged to lift themselves out of dependency. That's what I think a real ally would do.

I'd say that Responsibles -- or "white oppressors" -- need to be allowed to just be ordinary people and go about their business without being hassled by credentialed "allies" and accused of being monsters when they are not. But Responsibles also need to be encouraged to rise above mere responsibility and try something new. That's what I think a real ally would do.

I'd say that Creatives -- or "allies" -- need to be encouraged in the courage of creativity, but not if it means running about being white knights and beating up on "white oppressors." True creativity means being willing to sacrifice yourself rather than sacrifice others, to be a sacrificial hero rather than an ego hero, and Creatives need to be told that in no uncertain terms. That's what I think a real ally would do.

Now let us look at the bigger picture. In our era, the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years, the wages of cooperation have been immense. Take just one statistic: there are 3.8 billion smartphone users in the world today. In a world of 7 billion humans.

Just sayin'. How oppressed can you be if you have a smartphone? For one thing, it means that if you are one of the Factory Girls in southern China you can text with your friends about the best -- and the worst -- employers.

Now I think that the emergence of the Great Reaction, of well-born allies that went to selective colleges proposing to right the wrongs of the world with politics, is a sign that the Age of Politics, the age of using force to make people get along, is coming to an end. It is clueless scions getting the wrong end of the stick. It is a sign that the rule of the educated Gentry is coming to an end. Because we Commoners can get on perfectly well without the supervision of our Betters. Why? Because with smartphones and credit scores and cashless transfers there is a gigantic "nudge" encouraging each of us to be faithful and trustworthy in every life transaction.

In other words if there is a crisis in the modern era it is the crisis of people that are not trustworthy: people that crash their credit scores, that can't keep a job, that get pitched out of the circle of trust because they demonstrate untrustworthiness. The Fools.

Back in the day, the untrustworthy could disappear. A Brit could take a ship to the Americas. A New England Puritan could disappear and head Out West. People could give themselves a fresh start. But today, I'd say, the penalties for untrustworthiness are huge.

Hey, Wokies! How about a program for you guys to go out in the world and teach the "oppressed peoples" how to earn the badge of "trustworthiness?"

But meanwhile, we "white oppressors" will do our thing with the "oppressed peoples" and give them jobs and reward them for trustworthiness. And in the fullness of time they may become rabid Trump voters too. 

That's that I call real allies.

Taleb on the Sacrificial Hero. But Whatabout Women?

I just finished up Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. Actually, it's a bit of a hot mess. The key concept, he says, is "ergodicity." What does that mean when it's at home?

Ergodicity: In our context here, ergodicity holds when a collection of players have the same statistical properties (especially expectation) as a single player over time... Absence of ergodicity makes the risk properties not directly transferable from observed probability to the payoff of a strategy subject to ruin...

But he does say something very significant that complements my Good Life philosophy, in which the highest, best person is the Sacrificial Hero, who dies that others may live. He writes that 

Courage is when you sacrifice your own well-being for the sake of the survival of a layer higher than yours.

He has a six-layer hierarchy as follows:

Ecosystem
Humanity
Self-defined extended tribe
Tribe
Family, friends, and pets
You

Now that fits right into my notion of courage being honor among men. The courage to fight a duel, I would say, is not a sacrifice for the survival of the group. Or, as I say, the Ego Heroism of Nietzsche's Übermensch is not the highest form of courage.

But, I thought, all this is guy stuff. Whatabout women, you sexist? As we know from James Bowman's Honor: A History, honor among women is the reputation for chastity: broadly, the reputation for being a good little girl. So how would women fit into Taleb's notion of courage as sacrifice for the bigger community?

I was pondering this in the middle of last night, as I am wont to do. And the answer from my unconscious came pretty quickly. The answer is: Forgiveness. 

If women don't forgive, then the community of women is all bollixed up with destructive Mean Girl competition and the seminal "I can't believe she said that." Because women play-acting at chastity are the first to name, shame, and shun other women as whores. And as we know, women can hold a grudge for a lifetime.

Indeed, I remember distinctly a acquaintance reciting how, whenever he did something wrong, his wife would rehearse The Catalog of all the things he had done wrong since he and his wife first met 40 years ago -- for which she had still, it appears, not forgiven him.

This notion came upon me pretty strongly while watching the Polish movie version of Quo Vadis: a Narrative of the Time of Nero. In the DVD version it is a six-part series. 

Quo Vadis is all about Nero sending the Christians to the lions after Rome burned. The book was originally written by a Pole, Henryk Sienkiewicz, so you can see why the post-communist Poles would be eager to do a movie version.

But the big scenes occur when someone does something really bad and St. Peter forgives them in the name of God. This concept of forgiveness absolutely knocks everyone for a loop in good old pagan Rome. They never heard anything like it in their lives.

But that's the highest thing for you, ladies. Forgiveness. But whatabout a recipe for living?

Taleb has a three-point program for a guy to live as if he had Skin in the Game:

1. Never engage in virtue-signaling
2. Never engage in rent-seeking
3. You must start a business

Obviously, this is a guy thing. But whatabout for women? As a starter, I would say

1. Never engage in virtue-signaling
2. Never say "I can't even!"
3. You must learn to forgive

Whaddya think of that, sports fans?

The Tell: Cheating When You Start to Lose

When do businessmen start cooking the books? Exactly: when they have sustained a horrific loss and need to hide it from the CEO or the stockholders or the bank.

When do politicians start to cheat? Exactly: when their glorious movement, for some reason, starts to fade.

When did the Democrats start their tactic of Borking Republican Supreme Court nominees? Right after they won back the Senate, in 1987, after six years of Ronald Reagan.

When did the current wokey cancel culture really get started? When the First Black President failed to bring in the millennium, and when the Tea Party populist revolt of 2010 indicated that Something Was Rotten in the State of Progressive Denmark.

When did the current social media censorship begin? After the unthinkable election of Donald Trump. And why has social media suddenly decided to censor an October Surprise? Because it targets the Democratic candidate.

Yesterday, I quoted a bit from Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, written in 1843-44, where Dickens satirizes the New York City press of the day. He comments on that well-known paper, the New York Sewer, and writes of

the Sewer's exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight years old; now communicated, at a great expense, by his own nurse.

Charles Dickens went on a tour of the United States in 1842. So his experience was fresh in his mind when he wrote Chuzzlewit. But really, after the Brett Kavanaugh nomination fight, with accusations of high-school shenanigans, not to mention the tales of Mitt Romney's high-school bullying antics, you can see that nothing has changed.

But you see, I think all these Supreme Court nomination shenanigans, and social media censorship shenanigans -- not to mention the Democratic attempts to muck around with the voting system -- criminal as they are, are worse than a crime, a blunder. They are attempts to reverse the tide of history. 

But nobody knows the meaning of history, or what it will do next. The only thing we can be sure of is that a high tide is likely to be followed by a low tide.

Progressives have had a pretty good run since the 19th century. They have enacted huge government programs, they have erected huge regulatory bureaucracies, they have turned education into a progressive seminary, they have turned sex against gender and race against race. And yet the millennium has failed to arrive.

Instead, all over the west, populist movements have arisen to counter the rule of the experts and the educated. In general, these populist movements have been rather inchoate: unorganized movements of Commoners, middling sorts of people, that just feel that something is wrong and nobody is listening to them.

But our progressive friends just can't get their brains around this. I remember back in the days of the Tea Party, Nancy Pelosi grumbled about "AstroTurf" groups, fake groups ginned up presumably by right-wing billionaires. Do you see? Nancy had no idea. Nobody had any idea; the Tea Party just happened. Republicans were just as clueless about the Tea Partiers as Democrats.

Whatabout the Trump Car Parades? This NPR story tries to be as negative as possible, but certainly suggests that the parades are spontaneous efforts by ordinary Commoners. Are they? Maybe after the election we will find out who the evil genius is that came up with the idea.

Maybe, despite the best efforts of the social media giants, conservative Commoners are finding ways to organize and find each other.

You can see why the left would be ignoring the elephant in the room. In their simplistic religion of Ally-ism, of "allies" helping "oppressed peoples" in their fight against "white oppressors," there is no existence, no category, of just ordinary people that aren't allies, aren't oppressed, and aren't oppressors.

So, when you have a simplistic world view like that you are simply not going to notice things that don't conform to your expectations.

And yet, one of the things that humans are supposed to be good at is "noticing" when something unexpected happens. But, in part, the whole point of religion is to help people ignore unexpected or frightening things, because, for the believers, everything is all for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Candide. Nothing to see here, move right along.

But should we be cavalier about this, about the damage that the woke left might cause? I think that, a century ago, when the left was fresh and new, we should have been. But now the left is old and corrupt, an ancien régime. I expect the left to stumble and bumble in their efforts to wound and deflect the populist rebellion.

Rather like the efforts of Twitter and Facebook to censor the reports of Hunter Biden's corruption and his father's involvement in his son's shenanigans. Now it's the Chinese!

Unfortunately, as happens when failing businesses cook the books, the efforts to stave off disaster usually make things worse as the cheaters double down.

And so the only question is: How big the butcher's bill?