What Will Make Our Next Ruling Class Special

Here am I fizzing along with Gaetano Mosca's The Ruling Class and writing it all up here. And one of his aperćus is that every ruling class lives -- and dies -- on its specialness. Because that is the basis for its right to rule.

The special people are the people that get to rule. All over the world.

Back in the day, of course, the ruling class was simply the warriors. The best warriors were the ruling class, period. I suppose that when we get to the feudal era we get not just the warrior virtues, but blood and lineage which the ruling class advertises as a marker of their superior character and wealth and power. 

But whatabout our own ruling class? What do they advertise to signify their specialness and their right to rule? The answer is obvious. It is a whole cluttered drawing room full of conceit.

What our rulers know is that they are

more educated, more evolved, more caring, more inclusive, more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more kind, more scientific, more virtuous, more compassionate, more honest, more open, more empathizing, more involved, more sharing, more encouraging, more apologizing, more forgiving 

than the common run of deplorables and bitter-clingers. (I got a lot of these from the "Be the one to" website).

And their clients, the "oppressed peoples" are innocents.

No really! Go up and read over that list again. Is it not true that your liberal friends really believe all that?

That is why I think that our liberal friends are making a strategic mistake with censoring social media, with canceling racist-sexist-homophobes, with pursuing Donald Trump for four years, with stealing elections, with nominating a man in his dotage and a woman who made it up the old-fashioned way.

The reason is obvious: such low-life behavior completely negates the virtue-signaling PR. And it signals weakness.

A truly educated-evolved-caring-inclusive-intelligent-kind, etc. person does not censor, cancel, fake-dossier, fake-impeach, or steal. Not nohow. And not just because it is wrong, not just because it is beneath a truly educated-evolved-caring etc. person of high estate. But because it signals weakness.

Should I repeat that? Yes I think I should.

When you censor, cancel, fake-dossier, fake-impeach or steal elections you are signalling weakness. As in "they're a weak lot, some of them in Europe, you know. Weak. Feeble."

Now I believe that the true markers of specialness are the three virtues of @nntaleb.

Never virtue-signal 

Never rent-seek 

You must start your own business

Since I don't want to be sexist, I have also included three virtues for women

Never virtue-signal 

Never say "I can't even!" 

You must learn to forgive

As opposed to what I regard as our ruling class's real markers.

We are all virtue-signallers 

We are all rent-seekers 

We never quite got to start our own business

Am-I-right or am-I-right? 

Yep. My fearless prediction is that our next ruling class will live or die on the @nntaleb virtues. 

Because it's the only thing left.

Ten Reasons Why Our Liberal Ruling Class is in Trouble

In The Ruling Class Gaetano Mosca writes that a ruling class needs certain qualities in itself as a group and in its individuals.

1. It should be united. 
2. It should be careful about unrest in the masses and respond to it. 
3. It should be able to adapt to changes, in wealth, knowledge, etc. 
4. It should be excellent in the virtues of the age. 
5. It should be seen to be excellent in the virtues of the age. 
6. And so on.  

 You can see that our liberal friends are not doing too well on the ruling-class virtue front. But let us count the specifics. Just to help them out.

1. A good Ruling Class does not steal elections; it does not need to.
2. A good Ruling Class does not even appear to steal elections; such behavior is beneath it.
3. A good Ruling Class does not call the masses "deplorables" or "bitter-clingers." It is the benevolent lord of all it surveys.
4. A good Ruling Class does not legislate a "Great Society" and instrument it with social science so it can praise itself and then find out that it made things worse, and then do nothing about it. (Charles Murray in Losing Ground)
5. A good Ruling Class does not call Charles Murray a racist for pointing out in The Bell Curve that the modern era benefits the "cognitive elite" and that blacks, that exhibit lower than normal IQs, would likely not do too well compared to people with high IQs.
6. A good Ruling Class does not ignore Charles Murray in his Coming Apart when he writes:  that the top 20 percent of whites in America is doin' fine with great careers and merger marriages; that the middle 50 percent of whites is doin' so-so; that the bottom 30 percent of men don't work much and the women don't marry much.
7. A good Ruling Class does not hang the white working class out to dry for half a century.
8. A good Ruling Class does not let blacks molder away in crumbling, crime-ridden cities for half a century.
9. A good Ruling Class does not censor the opposition with its tame tech lords. It does not need to.
10. A good Ruling Class does not let its supporters riot in the cities. It would be beneath such crudity.

I could go on. My point is that a good Ruling Class does not have to cheat. It does not make life great for itself and its supporters at the cost of real decline in the welfare of people outside the Ruling Class. It allows a little fun and frolic from the masses, because it wants to know what the masses think and feel, the better to rule them.

And another thing. A good Ruling Class knows when it is in trouble, and knows what to do and does it. It does not dig the hole deeper.

A Week Later, Where Are We?

I am reading The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca in a desperate attempt to understand the present post-election chaos. For Mosca deals, as does Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, with the fact that the majority, or The People, do not rule. They cannot rule. Instead we are ruled by a ruling class, and the ruling class is necessarily a minority.

So how does the ruling class do it? And, more important, when "the natives are restless," what does the ruling class do to stay in power and/or accommodate the restlessness of the natives?

That, it seems to be, is the current political situation in the United States in the Trump era.

Obviously, the ruling class does what is best for the ruling class. But how much should it accommodate the feelings and tendencies of the lower orders? Should it just tell the rubes to shut up? Or should it accommodate the lower orders, catering to their agenda even if the rulers think the lower orders are deplorable bitter clingers?

The Z-man reckons that the whole show is a sham.

All human societies have elites and those elites control the institutions of the society. In theory, popular forms of government either check the power of the elites or place real power into the hands of the people... 

In reality, voting is entirely meaningless in a liberal democracy, as the elites control public policy exclusively.

Is voting "entirely meaningless" or would a wise elite take the results of elections into account when making its ruling-class decisions?

Victor Davis Hanson categorizes the various flavors of NeverTrump, the GOPers that didn't like Trump back in 2016, that

First, were a small cadre of self-described conservatives and doctrinaire Republicans, who under no circumstances would have ever voted for Trump or embraced his agenda, or in some extreme cases, ever voted for any who would vote Trump. 

So there are gradations of NeverTrumpers. But mostly the general pique comes down to cultural, comportment, class—and often careerist—concerns, rather than policies per se.

It is hard to avoid the notion that the NeverTrumpers are not that smart. Does not the smart political operator put himself at the head of the parade rather than grumbling in a café on the sidelines?

Mark Bauerlin looks at the establishment Republicans in DC, and how the likely 2020 outcome, 

To hold the Senate, close the gap in the House, and get rid of Donald Trump—that’s a big, big win for establishment Republicans in and out of office.  

They’ve lived in Washington, D.C., for a long time. Life’s been very good to them, and so has the swamp. If you don’t live here, if you’ve never worked in an agency or met with congressional staffers or been to the dinners, it’s hard to imagine the sublime air in which these people circulate. It’s like Versailles under Le Roi Soleil, an American version of courtiers and entourages, rivalries and intrigues, who’s up and who’s down and who’s next, what is the king’s and the duke’s and the general’s pleasure. Most importantly, the whole scene is limited to insiders.  

So on this view DC is just like the Capitol in The Hunger Games. They are all courtiers, and the Trump people are all poor schmucks living from hand to mouth out in the Districts. 

The big question, between the three takes above, is how much the ruling class is a ruthless criminal gang, cunningly manipulating the plebs for power and profit, and how much of it is clueless courtiers that really don't look much beyond the ins and outs of court life in the Capitol, cluelessly assuming that they will rule over the Districts forever.

Honestly, I don't know. But I do know this: ruling classes don't rule forever. They get slack and corrupt. They are like family business empires, started by a cunning and lucky upstart, kept going by the son and heir, and eventually bankrupted by the clueless grandson.

But read what Mosca writes on France and England, from The Ruling Class at the end of Chapter IV: "Ruling Class and Social Type."

One should note... that in the course of the nineteenth century England adopted peacefully and without violent shocks almost all the basic civil and political reforms that France paid so heavily to achieve through the great Revolution. Undeniably, the great advantage of England lay in the greater energy, the greater practical wisdom, the better political training, that her ruling class possessed down to the very end of the past century.

Really, how did they do it? It wasn't from reading Anthony Trollope's The Pallisers. For Trollope was merely anticipating Mosca, that, in the crunch, the Brit ruling class still had its wits about it.

For Mosca politics is not just a dumb show, a Hunger Games at the Capitol to amuse the courtiers. It is real power politics, and the wise ruling class sees which way the wind is blowing and prunes the trees so that they do not get blown down in the storm. And if it transpires that the old ruling class must give way to new men, well, there is a graceful way of doing that, that preserves the honor of the old regime as it exits the stage, and that avoids a butcher's bill.

The fact is that Donald Trump took the Capitol by surprise. They had no idea that a guy like him appealing to ordinary Commoners had a chance of winning a presidential election. Their response ever since has been to get rid of him, by shenanigans.

So the question is whether we have an English-type ruling class with its "practical wisdom" or do we have a court of the Sun King, the roi soleil, that does not have a clue and that abandoned France to a century of revolution and turmoil.

If you ask me, today, it looks like we have a Frenchie ruling class rather than the Wellingtons, Disraelis and Salisburys of the 19th century Brit ruling class.

Clinton Rallies the Democratic Troops

So why did Bill Clinton “lose his temper” with Chris Wallace last weekend?

Perfectly simple, writes William Kristol. He was helping Democrats.

He rallied the troops, and he “reminded them of their talking points on Bush's alleged passivity” during the runup to 9/11. Which is the line that the Democrats were pushing on the 9/11 Commission. So now Clinton can take credit for showing up the evil Republican push on terror as a mere campaign ploy.

Then, of course, Clinton helps his wife with her presidential campaign in 2008. She hasn’t been doing too well with the Democratic left wing lately. Clinton’s defense of his terror record and his attack on the evil Fox News rallies the left and makes them forget how angry they are at her.

It was interesting, of course, to read Noel Sheppard’s quotes of Republican officeholders supporting President Clinton when he sent cruise missiles against Bin Laden in August 1998. How quaint it seems to hear bipartisan support for the president. Said former Vice-President Dan Quayle on CNN:

I don't have a problem with the timing. You need to focus on the act itself. It was a correct act. Bill Clinton took--made a decisive decision to hit these terrorist camps. It's probably long overdue.

We won’t be getting that kind of support from Democrats on national security any time soon.

Maybe that’s OK. It is likely that the developing conflict with Islam needs to mature a lot more before we can get our progressive friends on side.

Getting to Acceptance

Yeah, I know about the Five Stages of Grief. It starts with Denial and ends with Acceptance.

So I am already coming up with rationalizations for why, maybe, after all, it is OK that Trump is (probably) going to lose. Because reasons:

If Trump wins reelection then probably the Senate will flip in 2022 and the Dems will win it all in 2024 because Time for a Change. No Thanks. 

Chances are there is ugly economic news in the immediate future, as we dig out of COVID. With Trump, it's all his fault; with Biden he's doing his best. 

Chances are there will be a recession before 2024. Blame Trump and elect a Democrat. 

"There is no more money." Because of the COVID stimulus and the Trump tax cuts. So there is really no money for Medicare For All, Free College, and End Fossil Fuels. But a Biden administration would still try. And screw the economy. 

At some point the Commoners are going to have to say: Enough of this race-sex-intersectional virtue-signaling; Enough of all these rent-seeking programs that only benefit the educated Gentry; Go away and leave us alone.

Let's divide the last century or so into three Ages. First there was the Pioneer Age of the frontier and building the railroads; the Republican Party and the Civil War veterans dominated. It ended in 1929. Then there was the Victims Age of the New Deal and the Great Society and Civil Rights; the Democratic Party and the educated Gentry dominated. It ended in 2016. Now we have the Commoner Age. Maybe it will be a Republican Party domination, and maybe the Commoners will teach the Gentry a lesson.

Or maybe not.

The thing that sticks in my mind, since I read it from Matt Taibbi in the summer, is the moral framework of "anti-racism."

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

So if you are Amazon you virtue signal by posting a BLM message on your home page;  if you are United Airlines you virtue-signal by supporting Proposition 16 in California to re-institute Affirmative Action. That makes you an "ally" and one of the good people.

But, given that the allies and the white oppressors are all white or Brahmins like Google's Sundar Pichai and daughter-of-academics Kamala Harris, who gets to decide which is which? Would that be God? Or would it be the bearded @jack? Thank goodness the allies have the Brahmins on their side; the Brahmins have been successfully divining the will of Brahma for thousands of years.

I have a different moral calculus. I think it is very virtuous because nobody gets to look in the magic mirror and say "mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest in the land?" Virtuously speaking, that is.

Now in my cultural calculus the oppressed peoples are Clients and follow whoever leads them; the allies are the educated Gentry, full of ambition, honor, and vanity; and the white oppressors are the Commoners, that just want to wive and thrive and hand down a little to the kids. In my calculus nobody gets to be the all-conquering virtue-signaler with the Hate Has No Home Here yard-signs. 

Because we all have our virtues, some of the time, and we are all hypocrites, most of the time.

Here's my moral calculus, adapted from Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

We are all virtue-signallers -- and hypocrites!

We are all rent-seekers -- and you better give us our share!

We never quite got to start our own business -- but we always wanted to! 

The problem with all moral calculi and virtue-signaling and Grand Inquisitors is that the people on the receiving end of your virtue get really pissed off. Because they don't like being belittled; they don't like someone else having first crack at the cookie jar. And they don't like some jerk making billions because he was in the right place at the right time.

But go ahead, vote cheaters and allies and all the ships at sea. You may as well make hay while the sun shines.

But maybe in a couple years, or four years, it will be you guys going through the Five Stages of Grief. Last time, in 2016, you chaps didn't seem to do so well; in fact it seems to me you are still in Trump Denial Syndrome from the Trump election.

But I'm sure your grief counselor can help you better than I can.

Cheating is a Sign You Are Losing

Our Democratic friends have been stealing elections since -- well since well before Boss Tweed. But never mind that. Let us talk about the cheat-ology going on with our educated Gentry ruling class today.

It's pretty obvious that the Democrats have engaged in widespread vote fraud in this 2020 election. Hey, what else is new?

But what is more important is the whole "fake" culture surrounding it.

It's not just a question of "fake news." It is fake everything.

Why does our ruling class have to lie about so many things?

Why did Hillary Clinton have to set up the "fake" Steele Dossier? Why were swamp creatures like Brennan and Clapper and Comey and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all in on the deal?

Why did the Dems decide we had to have two years of the "fake" Special Prosecutor Mueller investigation to investigate "fake" Russian collusion?

Why did Nancy Pelosi empower Schiff and Nadler for their creepy "fake" investigations?

Why is The New York Times putting out its "fake" 1619 Project proposing that the United States was founded to do slavery?

Why is social media censoring conservative voices?

Why are the liberals screaming about racism sexism and homophobia half a century after race and sex discrimination was made illegal? And after the Supreme Court legislated gay marriage?

Why do liberals believe in the Manichean belief system of good "oppressed peoples" and "allies" against the evil "white oppressors?" 

And whatabout the low-rent nature of the principals? Nancy Pelosi, the 80ish Democratic Speaker of the House, capa di tutti capi of the California political family that features her unimpressive nephew Governor Newsom and the featherweight Sen. Harris. Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader in the Senate: what's his claim to fame?

And whatabout the utterly unimpressive Democratic candidates for president disporting themselves a year ago? The ageing socialist Sanders, the quota blacks and women and gays?

And why have the opinion poll guys been putting out so many "fake" polls?

And why is education a total wreck and force-feeding "fake" critical race theory religion to our children from K through grad-school?

I will tell you. It is because things aren't working for the educated Gentry any more. The world isn't working for them. So they do what humans do when things start to go wrong. They cheat. They can't believe their eyes; it cannot be that their hour in the sun is coming to an end.

Here's an item that has stuck with me over the years. Back in the early days of the Tea Party, Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as "astroturf." Do you see the "tell" here? Nancy Pelosi cannot imagine an organic, spontaneous political movement. Because her entire political life has been about "fake" activism:  trained activists masquerading as helpless victims, marshaled up before the news cameras. It was inconceivable -- inconceivable in Princess Bride terms -- that any political movement should be organic and real. 

In real life, we still don't know how the Tea Party came to be. (Oh yeah, in due course it was hi-jacked by all the usual suspects, but that was after.)

Let us use the "fake" arc-of-history metaphor to describe what is going on. Every life, every family, every community, every empire, every ruling class goes through its history describing an arc: it is born, it grows, it succeeds, it rules, it declines, it cheats, it dies.

Let us say that our present educated ruling class was born with Rousseau, with the fantasy that people are basically good, and it is society that corrupts them. Let us say that it grew with the Educated Youth of the 19th century that gave us Marx and the Fabian Society and the Progressive movement in the US. Let us say that it succeeded with the democratic politicians that gave us social legislation. Let us say that it ruled with FDR and LBJ. Let us say that it declined with the corrupt Clinton and the ideologue Obama. Let us say that it cheats with Hillary, Nancy, Chuck and the "fake" media and the social media moguls.

So really, there is nothing left for our educated Gentry but to die a decent death. Or, if it chooses, an ugly death.

Enough of the past what of the future?

What new arc of history is upon us? What new dawn is breaking with its glorious sun rising with a new and blinding light? What is presently being born and like to grow and succeed?

I would like to think that we are entering the Age of Commoners, ordinary people that want to live honest, responsible, productive lives, and maybe leave children and grandchildren behind them; people that don't need to blaze across the heavens in a glorious arc like a meteorite; people that aren't motivated to great deeds in service of ambition, honor, and vanity; people that aren't just followers of a great leader.

But I could be indulging in wishful thinking.

The End of the Commoner Rebellion

We don't know yet exactly how our Democratic friends are going to cook up the votes in the states remaining to be called in the 2020 Presidential Election as of this moment: in NV, WI, MI, PA, NC, GA. 

But I don't think it matters.

The fact is that President Trump didn't expand the map beyond his victory in 2016. To establish the Revolt of the Deplorables as a thing he needed to increase his 300 odd Electoral College votes to 350 or 400.

And if he has in fact increased his support among blacks and Hispanics, then he has lost support among white educated Gentry.

One of the notions of Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class is that the Commoners don't get a vote. Political change only occurs when the ruling class divides and the change faction wins.

My hope was that a Trump reelection would redefine politics in the US and that the educated Gentry would decide to compose its differences with the Commoners. But that did not happen. If you are an educated Gentry this morning you are saying to yourself and your educated Gentry friends: pedal to the metal, on Critical Race Theory, and on saving the planet from climate change. We've got those racist-sexist-homophobe bigots just where we want them.

In other words, the global educated Gentry is going to go Full Speed Ahead on its Great Reset agenda, "building back better" under the benevolent supervision of the educated and the evolved and the creative people. That means, of course, also, Full Speed Ahead on climate change and eliminating fossil fuels.

And all the Good Little Girls of intersectional politics are going to be cooking up new "1619 Projects" and other reasons to oppress the Basket of Deplorables. Because they had it coming. Let us rehearse Hillary Clinton's Basket of Deplorables speech one more time:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

Notice the end of the quote, that the "irredeemable... are not America." Do you see what that does? It empowers the speech police to go out throughout the land to identify and cancel anyone guilty of being "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic  – you name it."

Hey, there is never a shortage of people ready to teach the other guys a lesson. And now that the Commoner Rebellion has failed, they will be out there working their tails off on social media, in the movies, in the schools, K thru retired professor.

Oh yes. In the end the Reign of Woke Terror will sputter out, perhaps in a Thermidorean Reaction, or perhaps just in exhaustion, or perhaps after defeat in civil war. But as of now I can promise you it has its bit within its teeth.

I feel that the Woke Religion is a Great Reaction, a lurch back to the primitive. We don't need religions with that kind of discipline, and the Woke Inquisitors are going to do nothing but harm. Tell that to the woke enthusiasts, and see what you get.

Nothing new, of course. There are always people hanging around panting to dive into a moral war against the Evil One. Usually the moral warriors are the Evil Ones they are supposed to be fighting. My belief is that in the modern era we really don't need such strong religion. But what do I know. There is always a moral component to humans as social animals, and always will be.

Then there is the Green New Deal, the plan to save the planet from runaway global warming from the burning of carbon-based fuels. If you are a ruling class you slobber at a supposed existential peril like runaway global warming. Because it licenses you to mobilize every corner of society in a gigantic war to save humanity. Think of the power, the glory! There are always people lusting after power and glory and there always will be.

Now my belief is that a totalitarian moral hierarchy that the current Woke Religion calls for, and the totalitarian economic/political hierarchy that the current climate panic calls for can only end in disaster. And that is because of my Four Laws.

Socialism cannot work, because it cannot compute prices.

Administrative government cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth to supervise everything. 

Regulatory administration cannot work because of "regulatory capture" by the businesses being regulated

Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them except by expanding them. 

In other words top-down anything, except in an actual war, doesn't work because it isn't social, and humans are social animals. When we set up a hierarchical top-down structure we are setting something in concrete, assuming there is One Correct Way, and the one thing we can be certain about in human life is that tomorrow the world will change and we will have to change our plans.

One fine day, we humans will emerge from the Dark Age into which our globalist educated Gentry is leading us. I just hope that my descendants are among the happy ones that survive till that day.