Everybody Gets the "Great Reset"

I was muttering about the two basic themes of the proposed Biden regime: "Build Back Better" and "systemic racism" a couple of days ago. 

Build Back Better is a meme of the World Economic Forum, part of its Great Reset. The founder of WEF is Klaus Schwab. All the right people are in on Build Back Better and the Great Reset, including Joe Biden and Boris Johnson.

And all the bad people are opposed. Like James Delingpole of Breitbart, who writes that the "Great Reset is Not  Conspiracy Theory" of right-wing kooks. If you needed persuading, Breitbart has a nearby article "John Kerry Hypes 'Great Reset': 'We're at the Dawn of Extremely Exciting Time."

Yes. I'll bet we are. Especially for ruling-class notables.

The point is that politicians of all stripes since the dawn of time have been complete suckers for the Comprehensive and Mandatory Program to Change the World. It's what they do. And here's what Portuguese-born Sarah Hoyt has to say about that.

If a story is too smooth, it’s a lie.  Whether it’s a political theory/prediction or a narration of an historical event, if everything fits... it’s a lie.  Real life is messy, self contradictory and confusing.  Real history stumbles, falters, weaves across the road like a spider on LSD. 

All government programs -- from the Communist Manifesto to the New Deal to the Great Society to Whip Inflation Now to Obamacare to Free College to the Great Reset -- are a lie.

But every political leader or political wanna-be sees himself as Henry V before Harfleur.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
...
On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war.
...
The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

Actually, the Brits besieging Harfleur were batting on a bit of a sticky wicket, because they were all dying of disease consequent upon being encamped in unsanitary conditions. Rule One for armies: First dig the latrines!

Do you get the point? It is that every political leader is proposing to lead his people once more unto the breach and fill it up with his English dead. Whether you are Al Gore proposing to fight climate change, or John Kerry salivating over an "extremely exciting time" or Barack Obama promising "fundamental transformation."

Nothing personal, you understand, it is just What Leaders Do. Here's another piece out today about the LBJ Goldwater election of 1964.

Then as now, the mainstream media were largely a cheering section for the Democrats, depicting their massive programs for social justice and economic equality as bold, brilliant steps into a brighter future. 

Actually, the Great Society was an unmitigated disaster, and one of its disasters was the marginalization of lower-class fathers, resulting in this chappie, the guy that was pursuing Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His name: "JoJo" Rosenbaum, white trash:

• Joseph Rosenbaum — depressed, homeless and alone . . . had spent most of his adult life in prison for sexual conduct with children when he was 18
• Rosenbaum met his father only twice and told his mother that he was molested by his alcoholic stepfather “on an almost daily basis,” according to court documents.
• When he was 13 his mother was sent to prison for two years, and Rosenbaum was sent off to a group home, where he began using heroin and methamphetamine, according to court documents.

Actually, it is my belief that this sort of thing happens all the way down the ages, for all kinds of reasons: conquest, famine, family breakup, stupid gubmint programs.

The peasants were dying in their millions at the end of the agricultural age; the Skid Row bums spent their lives on Skid Row after the 1929 Crash; the "homeless" are the victims of the end of manufacturing unions, and the major recessions and the government screw-ups of the last decades, including the COVID-19 screw-up.

As Sarah Hoyt says: "Real life is messy, self contradictory and confusing.  Real history stumbles, falters, weaves across the road like a spider on LSD. " And you'd better work like hell not to be caught in the undertow.

Because "sure as heckfire" the gubmint ain't gonna save you.

A Word in Your Ear, Noble Lord

My latest American Thinker piece "Trying to Think Ahead" got noticed by Instapundit and by Lucianne.com. And it got 558 comments so far. In the piece I merely asked why, if Dems are The Emerging Democratic Majority, they need to cheat. Surely a noble and confident aristocracy of intellect does not need to descend to the mass production of ballots.

And even if a charlatan like Trump should win a couple of presidential elections the ruling class still rules, right? No need to call in the Spanish Inquisition and cancel everyone for WrongThink.

In fact, of course, things are not as well as they might be in the court of the ruling class. The rulers seem to be giving off signals that, as the Brits say, they have "lost the plot."

That is certainly my view. If you look at Joe Biden's agenda, "Build Back Better" is just part of the anodyne globalists-know-best agenda of the World Economic Forum. And "systemic racism" is part of the ruling class's desperate attempt to keep the black mamas voting Democrat -- and hand out goodies to educated blacks.

Then I thought even deeper, that Build Back Better (and climate change) is a politics pandering to supra-national educated globalists, while systemic racism is pandering to sub-national ethnic tribes.

There is nothing in the Democratic agenda for ordinary Commoner Americans. There is nothing for ordinary nationalists, citizens of the nation-state of the United States of America.

Now I would say that a ruling class that has no interest in pandering to the great middle sector of American voters has got a screw loose, and possibly may not be long for this world.

I think of the way the French aristocrats are portrayed in the TV series John Adams. They are all powdered and bewigged and gorgeously attired, both men and women. 

But our pal Benjamin Franklin, ambassador from the rebel American colonists to the court of Louis XVI, is dressed in homespun, does not wear a wig, and wears a coonskin hat that he sent home for. He is playing a role: the crude frontiersman -- he, the genius that connected lightning with the sparks from electrostatics, the natural leader that organized the first public library in Philadelphia. Ben Franklin was playing the part of the Commoner to those fancy-pants Frenchie aristocrats.

Of course, Donald Trump, real-estate magnate, also plays the part of the Commoner. I wonder why?

Now, I'm about two-thirds of the way through Mosca's Ruling Class. His basic line is that all societies since whenever have been governed by a minority, a ruling class, because it must be so. Every ruling class must come up with a "political formula," a justification for its role as the ruling minority that every ruling class invents to meet the "need, so universally felt, of governing and knowing one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but of the basis of a moral principle." A ruling class must persuade the rubes that it is not just in it for itself, but cares about the people.

In the old days, the political formula would be that the king is the Lord's Anointed -- and yes, in 1953 at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, she was Anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But in the United States the political formula is different. Our President rules on a formula that he is the people's choice, and the people chose him because he cares about people like you and me. Our educated ruling class rules on the formula that it is the educated class, the knowledgeable class, the caring class, that has the knowledge and the wisdom to run the complicated and sophisticated government that is so necessary in the modern age. Yahoos like Trump need not apply.

Notice the little glitch in the Matrix here? What if you are elected president and you stole the election? That is what the Dems and the ruling class have been saying about Trump and Russia Russia Russia. And that is the little problem that a President Biden might have going forward.

And what if you are a ruling class that is not very educated, not very knowledgeable, not very caring, and makes big mistakes like creating the Great Society that has marginalized the poor, that has bombed out the manufacturing sector, that cranked up a housing bubble that nearly wiped out the financial system and hurt the very people it was designed to help: minorities without the means to come up with a decent down payment on the home of their dreams?

What if you get elected president and your agenda is all about Jobs for Gentry in climate change and "systemic racism" and college debt forgiveness for wokies and nothing for the broad mass of Americans?

What if an ordinary American might well feel that the current ruling class rules on the basis "merely of material and intellectual force," because shut up peasants? And that there was no "moral principle" that he could see to justify the ruling class's use of force?

See the problem?

My gut feeling, you noble lords, you Bidens and Harrises and Schumers and Pelosis and all the ships at sea, is that you really have no idea that every ruling class must persuade the ordinary people that it does not rule merely for its own interest and power, but to recognize and promote the interests of ordinary people, the ordinary people that we saw so clearly in the Trump Car Parades and Trump Boat Parades this summer and fall.

Now I don't know whether the Trump agenda of build the wall, check the ChiComs, end the wars, and Frack Baby Frack, is really in the long term interest of America and the world. Time will tell on that.

But you can certainly say that Donald Trump, like no presidential candidate in recent history, really focused his agenda like a laser on flattering and persuading ordinary American Commoners that he understood them and would rule America in their interest.

The "Bondman" in More's "Utopia"

I've been reading Sir Thomas More's Utopia, because I thought I oughta. And there I was cruising along, trying to decipher the very thick prose, when suddenly I came upon the word "bondman."

What! There were slaves in the perfect state of Utopia? I had no idea.

Actually, I have two translations of Utopia. One is a chatty translation by Paul Turner in 1961, and the other is the original translation from the Latin by Ralph Robinson in 1556. I've been reading the original translation, but I think that the Sixties version is easier to understand. Here is the start of the original:

They neither take bondmen of prisoners taken in battle, unless it be in battle that they fought themselves, nor of bondmen's children, nor, to be short, of any such as they can get out of foreign countries, though he were there a bondman.

But let us look at the original Latin. That I just downloaded, old chap. And you can too! The paragraph begins:

Pro servis neque bello captus habent.

So, More is using the Latin "servus" that Robinson translates as "bondman." It's interesting that Google Translate has two synonyms for "servus:" "mancipium" and "famulus." Let's write these up with Google's suggested meanings:

Servus -- servant, slave, bondman 

Mancipium -- slave, property, manicipation, possession, bondman, thrall 

Famulus -- servant, slave, house slave, housecarl, valet, varlet

See, what I experience here is that back in the good old days there were all kinds of gradations in subordination. And we, who have so nobly cast slavery aside -- Commie socialist paradises excepted -- really don't know what we are talking about when it comes to human bondage.

Of course, by the Sixties we call a slave a slave. Here is the modern version from Turner:

By the way, the slaves that I've occasionally referred to are not, as you might imagine, non-combatant prisoners of war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets. They're either Utopian convicts, or, much more often, condemned criminals from other countries, who are acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing.

The reason for slaves in Utopia is that they don't have any of your modern prisons of which we are so proud. Whaddya do with the antisocial, anyway? Put 'em in jail or put 'em to work?

Both types of slave are kept hard at work in chain-gangs, though the Utopians are treated worse than foreigners. The idea is that it's all the more deplorable if a person who has had the advantage of a first-class education and a thoroughly moral upbringing still insists on becoming a criminal -- so the punishment should be all the more severe. 

Hmm. Compare the following with our current illegal immigration and work-under-the-table economy: 

Another type of slave is a working-class foreigner who, rather than live in wretched poverty at home volunteers for slavery in Utopia. Such people are treated with respect, and with almost as much kindness as Utopian citizens, except that they're made to work harder, because they're used to it. If they want to leave the country, which doesn't happen often, they're perfectly free to do so, and receive a small gratuity.

Now, the thing to remember about Utopia is that it is hard to be sure when More is serious and when he is joking.

But I would say that our present notion that slave equals negro slave equals Middle Passage equals the crime of the ages equals white supremacy equals systemic racism is desperately adolescent.

Slavery is part of a continuum of domination and hierarchy, and subordinate status in human society. There are all kinds of gradations in human freedom and human subordination. (Was there ever a slave more abject than the Soviet prisoner in the Siberian Kolyma gold mines?) 

And there are all kinds of different people. Some people want to be free and a bird and damn the torpedoes; others want security, whatever it costs. Most of us want to be free and expect to be protected. Ain't we all stinkers, as Bugs Bunny put it?

What made plantation slavery scandalous in our age, I suspect, began with the fact that, for a while, plantation slavery was very profitable for enterprising men that were not out of the top drawer, especially in the production of cane sugar, from Cyprus to the Caribbean. It was especially annoying when they brought their wealth back to England and built Mansfield Park and bought baronetcies and went into Parliament.

It is interesting that More's bondmen were not conquest slaves; the Utopians were done with that. But it is fascinating that "immigrants" from poor countries were put to work as slaves, and no doubt thought themselves better off than in their previous life. And it is interesting that the immigrant slaves were given a bonus if they decided to leave Utopia.

See, in my view the American immigrant story is not that different. Many peoples that have immigrated to the US had to start out working very hard for meager wages, under near slave conditions in those famous "sweat-shops" of which we've heard tell.

And in my view the union worker is working in a kind of quasi-slavery, the creature of his union boss and his corporate boss who both play power games using the helpless worker as a pawn. Like many a slave, they were cast out when they were no longer useful.

In my view, the gubmint worker with lifetime employment and a pension is not exactly a free person.

Nor is the employee of a corporate colossus.

And what is the status of the current American citizen that must contribute 30-40 percent of his earnings to the government? Is he a free-man? A serf? A bondman? A "famulus?" You tell me.

"Build Back Better" and "Systemic Racism:" The Horror

A week or so ago, the Biden campaign said its agenda was COVID-19, the economy, climate change and systemic racism. Obviously they are serious about the systemic racism, because "Biden Fills Posts With Experts on Systemic Racism."

I must say that the article on systemic racism depressed me more than anything else out of the stolen election thingy. Even that Mark Malloch-Brown was all tied up with the Dominion/Smartmatic voting machine scandal. Mark Malloch-Brown, in case you didn't know, is a George Soros pal.

Can't we put the racism thing to sleep? Fifty-five years after the civil-rights acts? In a year when California voters -- deep blue California voters -- voted against reintroducing race policy in California government?

Well, no. And we know why. First, because Democratic bigwigs still thing that having a race panic in election years helps get out the black vote. Second, because fighting racism is part of the ruling class's virtue-signaling. That's the benefit of the #WeBelieve yard-signs. They tell us where the ruling class and its women supporters hang their hat on their virtue-signaling. Shall we run down the list?

• Black Lives Matter -- we fight racism
• Love is Love -- we fight homophobia
• Women's Rights are Human Rights -- we fight sexism
• Science is Real -- we fight climate change
• No Human is Illegal -- we fight xenophobia
• Kindness is Everything -- we are Good Little Girls

Just about covers the list, doesn't it. But, hey, why don't I get a word in edgewise?

• Black Lives Matter -- Hey, let's treat blacks as adults for a change
• Love is Love -- yes, but whatabout the children that LGBTs don't have
• Women's Rights are Human Rights -- Allows guys to say: get rid of it
• Science is Real -- If you think that you don't know science, darlin'
• No Human is Illegal -- Yeah, why not lower American wages
• Kindness is Everything -- I'm waiting...

I wonder if bearded @jack considers this bulleted list hate speech.

The thing about systemic racism is that our ruling class is going to keep hitting it until it flat out loses them three elections in a row, until even the dullest journalist on TV is embarrassed by it.

But now let's turn to "Build Back Better," which is the big program of the World Economic Forum, the chaps that meet at Davos, Magic Mountain-ville, every year. 

Yep. "To Build Back Better We Must Reinvent Capitalism. Here's How." Also called the Great Reset.

An inclusive and green recovery is vital if we are to create more resilient economies and a world in which business can thrive, not just now but long into the future.

Oh yeah. I'm totally convinced. Here are the main headings of Build Back Better. 

Resilience: "companies will need to establish a better balance between efficiency and resilience in everything from financial management to supply chain configuration." So, “Just-in-time” may be superseded by “just-in-case”.

No kidding! Hey, if there is any CEO that is not already concerned with "just-in-case" he should have his head examined! And fired on the spot.

Future growth: "The case for ‘green’ stimulus measures is clear: they are likely to deliver more jobs and higher (equitable) growth in the short-term, while reducing longer-term risks linked to climate change and biodiversity loss." 

Really. Wanna have a bet on this? And if you chaps are wrong, will you pony up the damages to the world economy from your green stimulus?

Future-proofing capitalism: "COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and societally negative outcomes of contemporary capitalist economies. It has strengthened the case for shifting to a more sustainable and inclusive model... Governments and regulators must intervene to ensure the costs of environmental and social damage are internalized by the companies responsible: profits cannot come at the expense of long-term societal resilience... If we don’t seize this opportunity to build back better – to reset and reinvent rather than 'return to normal' – systemic risks and vulnerabilities will continue to accumulate, making future shocks both more likely and more dangerous."

You can see what is going on here. To our globalist overlords, the COVID-19 event is a wonderful opportunity to impose their top-down agenda on us all. Because Resilience. Because Future Growth. Because Future-proofing Capitalism. It assumes that they know better than we do and they know better than the market.

Now, in my view, this gets it all wrong.

Resilience? I'd say that the biggest threat to resilience is the debt and the entitlement programs of the modern state. And the various policies that encourage individuals and businesses to load up on debt. Why? Because when I take out a debt -- or anyone takes out a debt -- I make a bet on the future, that everything will be copacetic, and I'll be able to service my loan. In other words, debt is the opposite of resilience. You think that governments are going to ease up on the debt any time soon?

Future growth? Don't you guys know that nobody knows what will power the future. That has been the lesson of the last 200 years. Nobody saw anything coming, not the textile revolution, not the steam revolution, not the electric revolution, not the personal transportation revolution, not the computer revolution, not the internet revolution. So what makes you guys think that "green" is the wave of the future? My nickel says that the wave of the future will be something completely unexpected.

Future-proofing capitalism? I agree, we need to make capitalism more robust, watch out for externalities, reset and reinvent. But  my nickel says that what really needs to happen is to unwind all the rigidities and rent-seekings that have been created by the century-long top-down political domination of the present ruling class. Only that is probably impossible because of Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. Not until they crash.

Hey, ruling classes gotta virtue signal -- as in systemic racism. Ruling classes gotta rent-seek -- as in Green New Deal. 

Otherwise how are they going to get the support they need from the voters, the Deplorables and the Bitter-clingers?

So what really saddens me is that, to coin a phrase, the ruling class has learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the Trump experience.

And that is a pity, because it is We The People that will be paying the butcher's bill for this nonsense.

Will The Diversity Gospel Take Over The World?

An acquaintance emailed today about the situation of white guys in STEM. What do you do, as "the 40-something engineer, with wife, house, car, kids" in the face of the current diversity madness, knowing you are "not of the appropriate gender or color?"

The simple answer, of course, is that you don't work for a big corporation, or any other place where they have time for piddling around with ruling-class inanities. You go work for a smaller company where they can't afford to have a DIE policy:  because "Get Woke, Go Broke."

But why? What is really going on with "diversity in the workplace" and diversity in movies, and the current panic on "systemic racism" that will be a major thrust in the Biden administration, along with climate change?

And will this diversity religion take over the world?

I think the diversity thing issues from the conceit of our ruling class, its self-image, that the educated elite is the virtue elite. As I am learning from The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca every ruling class lives on the narrative that it is the most valiant, or the Best and Brightest, or the most moral thing going, and that is why we peasants should bend the knee.

That is what the Deplorables and Bitter Clingers are about. Ruling-class virtue-signaling.

In my view the two big things the Biden administration proposes, climate change and systemic racism, illustrate the driving forces of any government and/or moral elite.

Government is about defending us from existential peril. In the past this has been the danger of the dawn raid from the tribe next door. Then it was the Nazis, then the Commies. But now, China aside, we really don't have an existential peril to arm against, the global elite has come up with climate change, to save us from runaway warming.

Then the moral agenda. What better than to save America from the notorious "systemic racists?" Only I think that government cannot help us on the moral front. Morality is a girl thing, what women enforce in the home and around the neighborhood. If it is enforced by government is it no longer morality but simple coercion, or, as our liberal friends used to say, "legislating morality."

But whatabout all the stereotype smashing, with the black astronomer in Interstellar, the endless superheroines bashing the living daylights out of big male thugs, or the brilliant female scientist? With the white male as the villain?

I just think that this stereotype bashing isn't going to work. My reason, of course, is deeply intellectual. We humans are, above all, storytellers. Why? Because stories are the way we remember: our life, the past, the birth of the nation, everything. Stories are the way we fill the world with meaning. And in those stories, as Carl Jung reminded us, we fill the cast with "archetypes:" the sacrificial hero, the cruel monster, the dumb jock, the good mother, the evil mother, the innocent girl, the nerdly boy.

Notice that in the original Star Wars all the characters were straight out of Jung's archetypes That's because director George Lucas was a fan of Joseph Campbell who was a follower of Jung. So all the characters are all straight out of mythology: Luke, the innocent boy learning to be brave; Hans Solo, the flawed but lovable rascal; Princess Leia, the beautiful maiden; Obi Wan, the wise teacher; Darth Vader, the satanic villain.

That is why Star Wars was such a mega success: because it connected deep into the human psyche. And that is why the later Star Wars movies are so mediocre: because they abandoned classic Jungian archetypes for lefty wokeness.

If you start turning the story upside down, putting people into roles that make no archetypical sense, you are going to lose your audience.

Now I think that what we need to do as a nation and a society is to refound our culture in the light of Jung's archetypes. So that men can be brave warriors, defending the hearth, and teaching the children to be worthy and honorable adults. So that women can be devoted carers, keeping the kids alive and ordering the local community, organizing learning pods and micro schools, returning to charitable work.

I think we need to stop the gender-bender madness, not because I think that gays should be strung up, but because I think that if you want to be creative with sex you should have to sign a release first, saying that if you screw up your life it is your fault, not society's fault.

Actually I think the same is true of all non-traditional role-playing. Sure, you can go and do all that, but before you go, you have to go through a briefing that educates you on the science of driving through the guard-rails.

The point of stories, whether in books or plays or movies, is to take the standard archetypes and mix them up. Sure, you can turn them upside down, but if you do that you should realize that you are doing screwball comedy; you are making a joke about archetypes.

Sure, there are blacks who can be rocket scientists, but right now it just ain't believable to cast them like that in movies. Now, a nerdly east-Asian: that would work. Nor does a girl superhero work: not unless she is some sort of a Kali, the destroyer of evil -- but not featuring kick-boxing stunts. Read this narrative about Kali:

In relation to Shiva, she [Kali] appears to play the opposite role from that of Parvati. Parvati calms Shiva, counterbalancing his antisocial or destructive tendencies; she brings him within the sphere of domesticity and with her soft glances urges him to moderate the destructive aspects of his tandava dance. Kali is Shiva's "wife" as it were, provoking him and encouraging him in his mad, antisocial, disruptive habits. It is never Kali who tames Shiva, but Shiva who must calm Kali.

See what is going on here? The good goddess Parvati calms Shiva; the evil goddess Kali provokes him.  Notice that neither Parvati or Kali are actors; they are whisperers, the power behind the throne. Recast your superheroines as Parvati and Kali and your stories will work -- all the way to the bank.

See, my belief is the the whole wokey phenomenon will crash and burn. I think it is a last desperate effort of our educated elite ruling class to maintain its relevance before it crashes and burns on the waste-heap of history.

I think that what we are going to do in the future decades is create new religions and politics that are based on the old archetypes, but reformulated to fit the modern age. I have attempted to imagine how this might look for men in my "Good Life" blog series where I propose the highest and best role for men is the Sacrificial Hero.

Somebody should do the same for women. Should they be Kalis or Parvatis?

Whither the Good Old USA?

There is really only one narrative out there about the long-term future of US politics. It is the one proposed by Judis and Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority back in 2004. Their thesis is that the future belongs to Democrats because of women, minorities, young people, and the professionals.

Well, it's obvious isn't it? Even Pat Buchanan darkly foresees the end of the Trump era, as in:

1. Demography: the white fraction of the population is going down
2. Free stuff: Democrats are the party of government
3. Blue wall: "carrying every state that touches the Atlantic from Maine to North Carolina."

But. Here's Powerline with some post-election numbers. and a concerned analysis from The Guardian.

Biden’s win depended on suburbanites tired of Trump, who voted Republican down ballot and will certainly vote Republican in future elections... 

Most concerningly, Democrats hemorrhaged votes among non-white working-class voters. . . Even in the crucial states Biden was able to flip, Trump reduced Democratic margins in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. These results should be setting off alarm bells among Democrats.

I guess my analysis -- which of course expresses my hopes -- is that race is not as important as we are carefully taught to believe, Black Lives Matter. My belief is that national origin matters for a generation or two, but then class takes over.

Class in the sense of my reductive Three Peoples theory and Curtis Yarvin's Three Layers theory. In this theory the electorate divides up:

1. Educated Gentry: Democrat, because we are qualified to direct traffic (we want power)
2. Commoners: Republican, because we want to live our own lives (not that interested in power)
3. Clients: Democrat, because we want the powerful to protect us

Obviously, the genius of Trump was to create a class consciousness among ordinary Commoner Americans and it seems, from the Guardian, that he is making headway among non-white Commoners as well as white Commoners.

However, let us not forget Michael Barone's theory:

The Republican Party appeals to “typical Americans” as understood at a given time, and the Democratic Party represents a coalition of “out-groups.” 

Now do you see why Dems are still playing the race card? They want everyone to think of themselves as an "oppressed" out-group. But Deplorables are not an out-group. They are "white oppressors."

Nor should we think of the parties as hopelessly out of touch.

[B]oth parties have adapted, swiftly or haltingly, to shifting opinion and emerging issues, to economic change and cultural currents, to demographic flux.

Then there is the actual party history in the US House of Representatives over the last century:

Well. So if you figure that Judis and Teixeira made their predictions back in 2000, I'd say that so far, nothing has happened. Indeed, you might say that the House of Representatives has been going slowly GOP ever since 1937. Or you might say that there was a Dem wave that lasted from 1900 to the 1960s and ever since the opposite has been true.

OK. Here is my fearless prediction. I think that we have in our future a battle royal between the educated Gentry and the Commoners:

The educated Gentry wants the climate change grift because it means tons of power and jobs for educated experts and administrators and it wants continued intersectional politics because it encourages Americans to think of themselves as members of "out groups."

 The Commoners want ordinary economic growth because they want to wive and thrive. But don't touch their Medicare and Social Security, you Green New Dealers.

The point about Donald Trump is that he found the way to energize the ordinary Commoners with the notion of appealing to them directly as typical Americans and boosting economic growth -- for Americans. No professional Republican had figured out how to do that before, except maybe Ronald Reagan.

I think the place to look is the white professional elite. Do they really want to keep with the Woke movement and its cancel culture and its flirtation with socialism that might easily turn on them as a privileged and exploitative upper-class, bearded @jack?

Also, I would say, in the short range, the Democrats seem to be divided between the moderate Democrats that represent swing districts and the ideologues that represent safe districts. Just sayin'.

I don't think that Republicans are similarly divided right now.

My only problem is that if Trump wins the cheating wars, and continues in office till 2025, the country will be so fed up with Trump that Dems will win it all decisively in 2024, White House and Senate and House. 

And then you ain't seen nuttin´ yet.

It's a Bit Late to Start Condemning Beheadings, Globalists

There's a piece over at Quillette by writer Brian Stewart that approves of French President Macron for taking a stand against beheadings of secular Frenchies by Muslim religious fanatics.

Pointing to France’s tradition of secularism, known as laïcité, Macron has insisted that it “is the glue of a united France,” which must be defended against Islamism’s “conscious, theorized, politico-religious project” to subvert the freedom of the republic.

No doubt. and I was just reading Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class. He says that in a multi-sect society the ruling class has to develop a unifying ideology so that, e.g. in France, you can be a good Muslim and a good Frenchie.

Unfortunately the time to have done that would have been 20-30 years ago. Instead the French ruling class, like ruling classes elsewhere in the West, have tended to be patronizing towards "victim groups," permitting them to develop ideologies of separation that they would never permit in ordinary middle-class Westerners.

And we know the reason why. Because condoning the primitive tribalist ideologies of the victims has been great for the ruling class on the voting front. Peoples that have not yet succeeded in finding a place in the city's market economy tend to hunker down in sub-national identities, and they protect themselves from the larger society with urban gangs. The job of a ruling class worth its privileges and its self-regard is to encourage by all means the ethnic group to identify with the nation rather than the tribe. 

But not our ruling class. Because, for the time being, they could be the champions of the oppressed, the "allies" if you like, and rule by dividing ordinary Americans.

So it's a bit late for President Macron suddenly wake up and say: Wow, these beheadings have got to stop!

Why, that's almost as radical as a Democratic Party leader getting up and saying "this mostly peaceful protesting has to stop." Yeah. We are a few years away from that happening.

It would be funny, a topic for late-night comedy shows, if it weren't so serious. Imagine a skit about the global elite running around turning up their noses at "patriotism" and "nationalism" and sneering at the populist nationalists from France's Le Pen and Britain's Farage and Hungary's Orbán, and Germany's Meuthen, and the US's Trump.

(Interesting: I didn't even know the name of the leader of Germany's Alternativ für Deutschland. I wonder why, MSM?)

Then all of a sudden the ruling class wakes up one day and decide sthat this beheading thing, that it has basically condoned for decades, Has Got To Stop!

The problem with history is that it is all one step forward and two steps back. And if you are lucky, you finally get a step ahead. That's because your average ruling class just inherited the job from its fathers and it really has no clue how its forefathers created the regime so many moons ago.

Here's a radical idea, you educated-evolved-compassionate ruling class. Start praising the Nation. Start praising the Founders (of whatever nation); start encouraging the immigrants to join the cult of the nation. And stop being snobby globalists meeting up in Magic-Mountain-ville in the Swiss Alps to teach the rubes how to "build back better."

Here's the reason. A good ruling class is always sensitive to the passions of the masses. Its glorious beribboned members dripping with knightly stars and magnificent awards want to know what the plebs are thinking and what is bothering them. Because, after all, the ruling class, every ruling class, lives on the conceit that it knows what is good for the country -- and the world! And it cannot have an idea about this unless it is pretty knowledgeable about what is actually going on in Fly-over Country or the banlieue of Paris.

But you can see what a useless ruling class would propose to do. Hey! I know! Let's get rid of Trump by fixing the mail-in votes in Pennsylvania. That will give us a fabulous mandate to Build Back Better.

Not!

Hey. You know what? For the last four years the US had a president that encouraged Americans to identify as Americans, and he encouraged the marginalized -- you know who they are -- to join the party and be proud of belonging to America. Because the American people are the best people in the world and America is the best country in the world and the best is yet to come.

Golly. You would think that Donald Trump had spent the last ten years reading, learning, and inwardly digesting The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca. But that would be impossible, because Orange Man Bad.