Understanding Gender Madness

Guess what! The schientists at the New England Journal of Medicine are proposing that “sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people.”

Well, that settles it. The worst thing in the world -- after systemic racism -- is harm experienced by "intersex and transgender people" from the bigotry of transphobes. To paraphrase Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), "if we reduce harm to just one intersex/transgender life..."

But what I want to know is: who is the boss here? I should have thought that the interests of ruling class bureaucrats and administrative Pooh Bahs would come before the interests of the woke radicals. And the more finely graded the data that our rulers have about us, the more wisely they can rule us. But what do I know? Perhaps this is a deeper thing than I can understand.

Maybe as the Biden administration sets forth on its glorious war on climate change and systemic racism, the honor of marching in the vanguard will properly be exchanged between the Imperial Guards Regiment of Administrators and Experts and the Battalion of Intersectional Activists of the Global Guards. These high-status guards regiments tend to be very touchy about the honor and vanity of protecting the monarch. I dare say that back in the day there were a lot of heated words exchanged between guardsmen of the various guards regiments about the size and the shape of their shakos and busbies and bearskins.

Now, I have explained the whole procedure of the left's critical theory stuff, about how it is really a mutton-headed misunderstanding of the whole German Turn in knowledge inaugurated by Kant's notion that we cannot know things-in-themselves but only appearances, driven mainly by a primitive yearning for the good old days of the Age of Politics. Not to mention the tremendous fun of rape-age and pillage in the good old days of the Vikings. I have categorized my critique of the left into the Left's Conceits, the Left's Crimes, and the Left's Errors. And sometimes, when I'm all confused, I just categorize as Liberal Oppression.

One important thing not to be left out of this analysis is George Lakoff's analysis in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. See he says that we initially categorize the world using "basic-level" categories like "dog" and "table." We become expert at this by age 2. But then we get sophisticated, and understand that "dog" is a kind of "animal." But the further we get away from the basic level, the more questions arise, for instance when we are dealing with a form of life that seems to be part animal and part vegetable.

You can see how the gender bender thingy fits into this.  Boys and girls are "basic-level" categories. You know which is which by the time you are 2. But, as you learn more, you get to realize that boys and girls are alike in a lot more ways than they are different. I mean, when you get down to the X and Y chromosomes, you get the notion that the only different between men and women is that out of the total of 46 chromosomes, men have one that is different and that women don't have. Such a tiny difference!

And the point of the "basic-level" category is that it is just an appearance that we humans, from an early age, learn to differentiate. These basic level categories seem to be significant for us at a basic level. But maybe not. And if you are a creature with X-X chromosomes but experience yourself as a man, well, why not?

And how dare -- How Dare -- transphobic bigots suggest that such "intersex and transgender people" are living in a fantasy world!

Mind you, some people might object to the "allies" of "intersex and transgender people" making gender-binary people feel "unsafe." After all, don't believers in traditional morality have their rights too?

It's all very well to invoke Mrs. Patrick Campbell's rule of "do whatever you want but don't frighten the horses in the street." Unless, of course, you are a street urchin and the best fun in the world is frightening the horses in the street.

But the point of moral rules and science is ultimately the survival and thriving of the human race. I mean, the whole point of climate change politics is that, unless we act now! Well, something. And the whole point of traditional gender-binary and traditional morality is that it happens to be the way we get children on the ground and survive to the next generation.

So, if we are going to have carbon taxes and stop the production of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030 and stigmatize skeptics as "climate deniers," because climate change, then maybe we should likewise apply force and name and shame and shun people that don't seem to be too serious about getting the next generation on the ground.

C'mon man! We don't know whether carbon pollution will lead to the end of civilization as we know it, but sure as heck-fire we know that if everyone became "intersex and transgender people" then humans would be outta here in less than a century.

COVID: NY vs. FL; Herd Immunity vs. Lockdown

At Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton compares the COVID experience of New York State and Florida. New York is a poster boy for maximum lockdown and mask-wearing; Florida is the poster boy for back-to-normal and don't sweat the masks. They are similar sized states, with about 20 million people each.

COVID Deaths Per Million through 12/20/20:

Florida: 966 

New York: 1,886

Yes, but, New York has a very dense city with mass transit and it is further north. 

Unemployment at the end of November:

Florida: 6.4% 

New York: 8.4% (NYC: 12.1%)

Whatabout state and local government spending in 2018, from usgovernmentspending.com?

Florida: $188 billion 

New York: $367 billion

But, according to our cultural and political elite, Gov. Cuomo (D-NY) is a hero, and Gov. DeSantis (R-FL) is a wretch. You tell me.

Then we have the dueling experts, interviewed by UnHerd.com. Swedish expert Johan Giesecke says that:

“I don’t think you can stop it,” he said, “it’s like a tsunami sweeping across Europe.” The real death toll, he suggested, will be in the region of a severe influenza season — maybe double that at most — so we should do what we can to slow it so the health service can cope, but let it pass.

Then there is British expert Neil Ferguson, who wants lockdowns.

Much as he’d love to be proved wrong, he said, the UK fatality rate of Covid-19 is likely to be 0.8-0.9%, which  will lead to more than 100,000 deaths later this year. We need to prepare for a long fight, a new socially-distanced normal, potentially for years to come.

So what should we do? Let nature take its course? Or work to protect everyone and prevent transmission of the disease? The question comes down to this, writes Freddie Sayers.

Alongside all the metrics, and the vital assessments of the human cost of different policies, where you stand on this wretched virus also comes down to attitude — your world view. Are you more Giesecke or Ferguson? The expert that most resonates is unlikely to be entirely down to your assessment of the science — more likely a complex combination of your politics, your own life experience, your attitude to risk and mortality and your relationship to authority. 

Well, what I say is that it really comes down to men or women. Women, as I say, "expect to be protected," and clearly, from my personal experience, are more likely to go along with the crowd and the pronouncements of political leaders. Men, as I say, "know they are expendable," and they are right.

But I fear that the concentration on the death rate has rather hidden the suffering rate. The sudden lockdown has grievously hurt the less skilled and the less motivated. It has been worse than a war. In war, you draft the young men and the rest of the country flocks to the colors to make themselves useful.

In the COVID crisis, the well-off have done fine, working from home, or seeing their stocks soar in response to economic stimulus -- my net worth is up 25 percent since the end of 2019. But people with marginal skills and without the will to make something happen have been hammered.

So, all is proceeding as Charles Murray analyzed in Coming Apart. The top 25 percent is doin' fine. The middle half is doin' so so, and the bottom 25 percent is being hammered. 

And whatabout you allies in the "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors" moral equation? I haven't heard or seen much of you in this disease epidemic. Oh, I've seen a lot of mostly peaceful protesters waffling about George Floyd, but I haven't seen folks on the ally front proposing anything that would really help the traditionally marginalized. Does that mean that "allies" take care of themselves before venturing back out onto the Activism trail?

The Woke Cancel Culture is Nothing New

We conservatives and deplorables are just now rather annoyed at the ruling class for insisting that there ain't no election steal, no sir, and you are a racist.

After all, aren't we supposed to have a First Amendment, and aren't we supposed to have free speech?

Truth is: we don't and we never did. If you publish views offensive to the ruling class, in any place and any era, you are headed for oblivion. Oh, maybe not to a concentration camp, but certainly out of the sweet spot of celebration and publicity.

There's an amusing piece about China's lies about COVID from "hacked documents." For instance,

In early February, a directive from President Xi himself directed the CAC [Cyberspace Administration of Chine] in Zhejiang Province to exert efforts to control messaging on COVID-19 domestically and to “actively influence international opinion.” 

Why, the Chinese even pay their citizens $0.40 for flagging a harmful media post!

Gollygeewillikins! You mean the Chinese actually have to pay people to do this? Here in the US we have the bearded @jack and the Zuck that seem to be eager to censor harmful media without even being asked to. And the Twitter wokerati mobs are just slobbering for the chance to cancel someone making wrong comment. Absolutely free!

So then I got to read a Quillette piece about how, sorry chaps, all the systemic racism stuff is a bunch of baloney. Who are doing best in America? Asian immigrants. And whatabout Muslims?

For example, the latest Census data indicate that the median earnings for full-time, year-round female Palestinian American workers ($52,061), female Iranian American workers ($64,220), and female Turkish American workers ($67,759) were all higher than those of white women ($45,581). Turkish and Iranian women also out-earned white men ($57,003). The vast majority of these women have not two but three “oppression variables” because of their gender, ethnicity, and religion (Islam).

Or whatabout this on household income in 2019? 

Indian Americans	$126,705
Taiwanese Americans	$102,405
Filipino Americans	$100,273
Indonesian Americans	$93,501
Pakistani Americans	$87,509
Iranian Americans	$87,288
Lebanese Americans	$87,099
Chinese Americans	$86,281
Japanese Americans	$85,007
Turkish Americans	$83,375
Israeli Americans	$81,901
Korean Americans	$76,674
Syrian Americans	$74,047
Vietnamese Americans	$72,161
White Americans	$69,823

Heck! Who cares? Well, our pal Joe Biden is going to go pedal to the metal on "systemic racism" in the next four years. And you are not allowed to disagree with him, unless you are a racist. And if you are a racist you are going to be canceled, so shut up.

Then there is World War II. Ron Unz has written about the writers of the 1930s that just disappeared. For WrongThink. From them you get the heretical notions that both Churchill and Roosevelt wanted war, to erase their failures. That Churchill started the bombing in 1940 because he was afraid that the British people didn't want the war to continue. So he bombed German cities and the Germans responded. Is that true? And Roosevelt wanted war to erase the utter failure of his New Deal; that FDR provoked the Japanese by freezing Japanese assets and embargoing oil shipments; and by omitting to tell the Navy on Oahu about the fleet steaming towards Oahu to attack the fleet in Pearl Harbor.

Is any of that true? Are you allowed to discuss it?

Or will the official history continue down to the day that our current regime is shown the door?

So yeah. If you are outraged by the narrative control being exercised in the wake of the election, it ain't nothin' new.

But it is so much easier to go with the flow.

Showing the Ruling Class the Door

I don't know whether Joe Biden won the election fair and square, or with the help of shenanigans. Either way, the present ruling class isn't going away, and doesn't have a clue that it has a problem.

OK, no ruling class ever does until it gets shown the door.

Case in point, the Dalton School flap in New York City, where the staff of the swank private school has issued a manifesto demanding total wokerama -- at a fancy-pants private school.

Case in point, the political frou-frah over the school system in swank Brookline, Mass., home of the credentialed and the expert.

Case in point, the move to Biden in white voting districts in the election. Trump did better in immigrant districts, worse in white, and especially white liberal, districts.

It all seems scandalous, but not really when you step back and think about it. The Gentry class is all in on the Woke religious movement, because it gives meaning to their lives to be "allies" helping "oppressed peoples" fight the "white oppressors." The Gentry class is all in on experts and credentials: as in ordering the American people around during the COVID epidemic.

Of course there's a move towards Trump among immigrants; any immigrant with half a brain understands that they are the rising class and that the established class isn't going to make things easy for them. If they aren't consumed with ethnic solidarity, like blacks, then they are going to be populists, voting for politicians that stand for ordinary people.

In an interview with American Greatness youTuber and podcaster Steve Turley says that, with regard to the populist movement, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Up to now, populism has emerged in a "lite" form in the various center-right parties which are a bit embarrassed about the great unwashed, as many Republican officeholders are today. Because, after all, politicians come from the Gentry class. But there will come a time when the center-right parties will become primarily populist. Only we ain't there yet.

Trouble is, in my opinion, we won't get there without the ruling class screwing up royally. That's because the populist masses are not really thinking about politics the way that the upper-class Gentry does. Commoners think about their ordinary lives and how to get a better job. Gentry think about how to change the world.

The upper-class Gentry is all-in on climate change. Why? Well mostly because everyone who is anyone is all in on climate change, darling. Now I believe that, never mind the science, that the economics is going to be disastrous. Of course it is, because it is a top-down quasi-socialist plan that really has no clue what all the unanticipated consequences of a lurch away from fossil fuels will be. Socialist, systemic plans are always disastrous, because the world is not a system, but an emergent phenomenon.

The upper-class Gentry is all in on Wokist racism and particularism, as the foolish Dalton School staff demonstrated to the world. Here's the thing. It may be a horrible moral problem that blacks still aren't wiving and thriving as they should, but to amp up the current racist critical-race-theory successor to the racist "affirmative action" programs is to divide America up. And it violates the basis of modern society, that the individual is the individual first and foremost, and not the member of a race or tribe.

The point is that the upper-class Gentry right now is perfectly happy with their culture and politics. They think they are the good people and they are going to make a better world with their wokism and their climate change and their expert-led programs and their activist-driven agendas that bring more and more of the economy under the supervision of credentialed bureaucratic experts.

Thus nothing will change their minds short of a massive crack-up.

And I am not talking about a crack-up that gets them to change their minds: no chance of that. I am talking about a crack-up that whacks the ordinary Commoner and seriously damages their lives. It might be the damage to lives and livelihoods from the climate change program. Or it might be a rapid increase in human rubble from any number of expert-led programs that provide honor and status to upper-class credentialed Gentry experts.

See, I get the feeling that the Biden administration appointees are all people that are thinking, OK, great, now we can get back to normal, after the stupidities of the Trump years. They have no idea that it is their agenda, the agenda that all good expert, credentialed people support, that is the problem.

Back in 2009 I wrote that this was not the right time to do a huge health-care bill. The only thing that mattered in the aftermath of the generational financial crisis of 2006-08 was the get the economy back on track.

I'd say the same today. This is not the time to do climate change and systemic racism. After the generational smashup to the economy, particularly to ordinary Commoners that can't "work at home," the number one issue is getting the economy back on track.

But do you think there is anyone in Bidenland that appreciates that? No, when they look at the situation, they say that this is our only chance to get our agenda going, to save the planet from global warming and save society from systemic racism. So, pedal to the metal.

In my view, the damage and suffering that this policy will impose on America will cause another Trump situation, and another Trump populist eruption.

But I am sure that our betters in the ruling class have no idea about that. Courtiers in the court of the absolute monarch never do.

White Privilege vs. Little Darlings

Who should get the COVID vaccinations first? Not White Man, apparently, because white privilege and social justice. I love this bit from The New York Times (H/T Powerline).

Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter,” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”

So we lordly white "allies" -- no "white oppressors" here! -- will put our social-justice thumbs on the scales of racial justice and fix things.

We are seeing a similar dance with regard to appointments to the Biden administration, where pressure groups for people of color are advocating for more of their kind of color.

Yep. I sure would like a bit of the privilege that gets you -- whatever your color or gender -- into the higher ranks of the ruling class where you become a candidate for promotion into the ruling clique. I suspect that one of the qualifications is to have -- let us say -- successfully "harvested" a million votes or so.

For as I say in my Maxims.

Government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters.

And it doesn't matter what the game is, whether it is handing out fiefs to loyal barons, or handing out benefits to the workers, or handing out research grants to the scientists, or starting "to level the playing field a bit" in favor of people of color. Government is in the business of loot and plunder, as a reward to its supporters. Period.

Naturally, when governments do this they enlist the assistance of the priests and the moralists, so that it is only fair and just to hand out benefits to the supporters of the ruling class. Hey! "Equality never hurt anyone," as a rich liberal with a house at the top of the hill announces with a hand-painted yard-sign, featuring a clenched BLM fist.

Whatabout my "white privilege?"

Well, my dad's father lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, as the representative of the family firm, and died before World War I. Then his widow and three children got out of Russia in 1918 with nothing but the clothes on their backs. However, the family knew a friend of a friend that got my dad into St. Paul's public school as a charity case. My dad got an engineering degree as an external student while working as an apprentice at a manufacturer. Then he went out to India to design electric power stations and rose to become a top manager at the firm he worked for. But then, of course, came Indian independence, and white guys need not apply. So he came back to England and eventually rose to being a Director at AEI Export Co. And so I got to go to a British public school.

Privilege? Yeah, I'd say, from a family that picked itself up after reverses and made lemons into lemonade and somehow managed to dodge the Bolshevik revolution and two world wars.

Or maybe an Act of God.

But I want to say a word to the "traditionally marginalized" folks that are to be the beneficiaries of the new level playing field. Take your bennies. But then make it on your own.

Why? Why not just connect your electric car to the free charging station forever and enjoy?

Because people that plug into the loot and plunder handed out by the ruling class are what I call "Little Darlings." The ruling class isn't really helping you because it believes in "justice." It is helping you because it wants your vote. The way a rich guy gives presents to his mistress.

And there will come a time when the ruling class does not need your vote any more. The obvious case today is the white working class. Back in the day, the ruling class loooved the working class, and created programs and benefits and wage-and-hour laws to benefit the poor helpless workers. Because social justice and because the bourgeoisie, like the feudal lords of old, had frankly and brutally exploited the subordinate classes. Yeah! Everybody knew that!

But then came 1965 and the civil rights laws and the ruling class decided to buy the votes of privileged white women and blacks. And in due course gays and all "people of color."

And the white working class got cut loose. It started with Affirmative Action; then segued to sneering at the white working class, as in Archie Bunker and All in the Family. Then, in due course, we had Barack Obama speaking to a fundraiser patronizingly about "bitter clingers." Then it was Hillary Clinton's open contempt for her "basket of deplorables." Today? Well, "society is structured in a way that enables [white people] to live longer."

Wait a minute! Just last March I was reading about the white working class "dying of despair." In The New Yorker, so it must be true. So how does that all stitch up?

So my message to the Little Darlings of the ruling class is: grab your goodies while you can. But know this: the day will come when the ruling class no longer needs your votes. And when that day comes you had better be ready to take up the slack and make it on your own, without benefit of government loot.

Because if you don't, you Little Darlings, you will end up like the white working class, that found out one day that those good union jobs at the steelworks were gone; that the police and firemen jobs had to be shared with the "traditionally marginalized," and that the upper-class white women in HR were making them go to critical race theory training. That the rulers didn't care about people like them. Not any more.

But by all means, enjoy your day in the sun.

Let's Kritik Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality

Let's start with La Wik, which says that critical race theory is based on the following notions:

• Firstly, that white supremacy exists and exhibits power maintained over time, and, in particular, that the law plays a role in this process.
• Secondly, that transforming the relationship between law and racial power, as well as achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly, are possible.

By "white supremacy" is meant the academic use meaning, per Frances Lee Ansley:

By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.

Notice that in both definitions, the writer comes close to, but does not quite say "it's a conspiracy!" They do not quite say that White Men got together and decided to Take over the World!

(Although, parenthetically, our lefty friends do have a plan to take over the world).

The point is: could there be an innocent explanation of white supremacy, that explains it as a consequence of White Man being in the right place at the right time with the right ideas and the right technology? In the same way, say, that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a man of undoubted skills and smarts, just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right ideas at an opportune technological moment so that, even though Einstein said that "God does not play dice," our pal Zuck won the lottery and here he is, master of all he surveys.

Because that is how I understand "white supremacy." Here is a likely story:

Back in the day, about 1500, Europeans had developed the technology for ocean-going sailing ships. One thing led to another and pretty soon a chap like Vasco de Gama was sailing around the Cape of Good Hope and landing in India. As La Wik says:

Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula.

I have a more "overdetermined" narrative.

Back in the day the Europeans were being monstrously oppressed by Arab supremacy and the outrageous and exploitative prices of spices. See, when spices came from India -- and a lot of the spices were grown in the Western Ghats as I have seen with my own two eyes -- they got to Europe by an overland route that went through the desert of western India and through Arabia. And every stop on the way meant a nice little excise tax for the local yokels. Wow! Talk about oppression! Talk about racial power! And whatabout the law! What law in the world could justify all those oppressive princes and potentates making the poor helpless White Man of Europe pay through the nose for spices!

Well, in the event, the Portuguese started trading for spices on the west coast of India, and then the Brits got in on the act. The bloody Brits! Who invited them?

And pretty soon the spice trade through the western desert of India and points westward to the Mediterranean collapsed -- as I have seen with my own two eyes and heard with my own two ears from the guide at the once-powerful desert city of Jaisalmer in western India.

Well, when you set up a trading port on the coast of India, guess what happens? You may not be interested in the various princes and potentates nearby but they are interested in you. And so the Ports and the Brits got involved in local politics, and pretty soon young Robert Clive, East India Company "factor," learned a thing or two about soldiering. One thing led to another and in 1757 Clive won the Battle of Plassey against the Nawab of Bengal. With 1,100 Europeans and 2,100 sepoy troops, and with nine field-pieces, Clive beat the Nawab's army of 18,000 horse, 50,000-foot and 53 pieces of heavy ordnance, served by French artillerymen.

Hello "white supremacy!"

Now, I've read The British Conquest and Domination of India by Sir Penderel Moon and perhaps the most significant moment of the whole 1,200 pages is in 1825 when some Brit opined that "these people don't really like us," old chap.

Do you understand the importance of this comment, dear lefty friends and all the ships at sea?

The importance is that, prior to 1825, no ruler in the world gave a damn about whether the people he ruled "liked" him. Nobody gave a damn about white supremacy, Muslim Supremacy, Brahmin Supremacy, Western African Tribal Supremacy or any other kind of supremacy. The rule was simple: the strong ruler set the rules, and if he decided to kill every man in town and rape every woman, well, that's how the cookie crumbled. Until 1825.

Notice that this attitude has not exactly disappeared from the face of the Earth. Joe Stalin: do you think he cared whether the Russian people "liked" him? Mao Zedong: do you think he cared whether the Chinese people "liked" him?

Or whatabout our modern Wokies: do you think that a single Wokie gives a damn about what the average white deplorable thinks about him? Exactly. The average Wokie thinks only about bending the arc of history towards justice and crushing systemic racism and white supremacy until the rubble bounces. "Liking" has nothing to do with the case.

No. The interesting thing about "white supremacy" is that White Man is not that interested in white supremacy. Of course, he likes his own people best, and his own religion of logic and reason and market supremacy best. And he wants to water and weed his 401k until it blooms nicely for his retirement. But, all in all, he is remarkable in that, by and large, he is pretty well copacetic with letting other peoples' sleeping dogs lie.

Unlike our lefty friends.

Now let's talk about "intersectionality." La Wik:

Intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these aspects are gender, caste, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and height.

Couldn't agree more, old chap. You certainly wouldn't want to be a young short white guy from Appalachia at a swank eastern selective college that said the wrong thing about trans people of color within earshot of some Good Little Girl that had been indoctrinated in critical race theory and intersectionality since first going to her snobby pre-school in Manhattan. 

And I certainly wouldn't want to be a Dalit working at Brahmin-dominated Google being harassed all the time by snobby Brahmins feeling for my non-existent "sacred thread!" Oh boy!

To say nothing of being a Google employee being fired and humiliated across the rapidly warming planet for innocently writing an essay in response to a solicitation for feedback to say that "while discrimination exists, it is extreme to ascribe all disparities to oppression, and it is authoritarian to try to correct disparities through reverse discrimination."

Now I say that all this hysterical babbling about postmodernism and critical race theory and intersectionality is due to the fact that our lefty friends do not understand the import of Kant and the whole "German Turn."

Poor dears.

Oh, so you want to mend your ways and actually join the human race instead of doing a Koba or a Mao and just eliminating the deplorables?

Well, reduced to an "overdetermined" simplicity, the German Turn says that because we cannot know things-in-themselves it means that all our knowledge -- from our division of life into genera and species to our fabrication of LED Christmas light strings -- is really only "the story so far," be sure to tune into next week's exciting episode. It means that it behoves everyone to cool their jets instead of winding up the turbines preparatory to launching a crusade against the unbelievers. Because next week we will discover something that changes everything.

And anyone that declares that those haters over there are the oppressors and we here are the noble allies and friends of the oppressed peoples might very well be wrong. After all, we can't know things-in-themselves, and for sure what is going to change next week is today's dominant cultural and political narrative.

To suit the agenda of the ruling class of the moment.

Yes, lefties. Did you ever notice that all speech in any society has to stay pretty close to ruling-class orthodoxy? So, if you chaps are allowed -- nay encouraged -- to mouth off about critical race theory and intersectionality and marginalize the notorious White Man it must mean that the ruling class believes that such activity supports the regime and its power.

Hmm. I wonder why.

Woe to the Conquered, writes Curtis Yarvin

It doesn't matter that the ruling class cheated in the late election, writes Curtis Yarvin in "Vae Victis." A ruling class worth its salt is always going to apply the force needed to maintain its power -- and also remind the ruled who is boss.

The Supreme Court has sent a clear and lovely Schmittian message. No court or other official authority will ever consider the substance of Republican allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 elections. All will be rejected on procedural grounds by the courts, and mocked with maximal hauteur in the legitimate press.

And we know that the Supreme Court choked because we have unofficial reports of Chief Justice Roberts more or less wailing like a woman to get the rest of the court to reject Texas's complaint against the cheating "battleground" states.

What does he mean by "Schmittian message?" Merely this: "the sovereign is he who decides the exception." But, but, but! I thought that the current Supreme Court doctrine was the "living constitution," that the Supreme Court gets to interpret the Constitution any way it wants to. Er, no. Not quite. The Supreme Court gets to interpret the Constitution any way the ruling class wants it to. So, gay marriage: yes. Free and fair elections: sorry, pal.

You don't like an election decided by skulduggery? Well, too bad. Elections are like water polo. All free and fair above water, but no holds -- or kicks -- barred below the waterline. So at least the Dems have taught us a lesson: two can play at that game.

You don't like to read that? Then stop reading because it is going to get worse.

Let's talk about the media. Think of it and its pals in the ruling class as a kind of Gigaphone, and the volume, in the month of October and thereafter was turned up to 11. On a scale of 1 to 10.

We learned something else about the real constitution of America: that it is the press, not the courts, with the sacred power to inscribe official reality. The Fourth Estate is the highest estate, not the lowest—and always has been.

That is what the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, just told us. Really it is good to know. Every ruling class needed a Ministry of Truth. But it is much better if the truth ministry is not an official government bureaucracy, but a volunteer corps of ruling-class suck-ups. 

But really, I'd say, the media is not a Ministry of Truth. It is the Holy Temple of Truth, and the media suck-ups are the Priests and Bishops of Truth.

Then Yarvin speaks truth to the post-Reagan conservative movement. It is not pretty, so I won't comment.

But then Yarvin tells us that the whole Trump phenomenon, from beginning to end, is an Act of God.

Trump had no way to succeed, so the sooner he failed the better. God made him fail. God hacked the voting machines. God performed the experiment. God got the results. And God sacrificed the animal. 

But the Trump phenomenon, thanks to God, was not a waste. "The world-historic purpose of Trump was to validate the market for dreampolitik."

With Trump as his instrument, God has taught us beyond any doubt that, f*cked as America may be, f*cked as America is, we still have a market for dreams. Indeed we are so f*cked that only dreams can save us. We’re going to need better dreams, though.

He means this, from my Maxims:

Politics is downstream from culture (Breitbart) is downstream from religion (Wright) is downstream from “the meaning of life, the universe, and everything” (Chantrill).

Did I mention that I have written such a dream? It is in my series on "A Vision of the Good Life Better than the Left." My basic argument is that the left's celebration of the political activist is a celebration of the Ego Hero, he who worships at the Shrine of Power. This is an error, because the real hero down the ages -- that appears again and again in myth and religion -- is the Sacrificial Hero, that dies on the border of Order and Chaos so that the rest of us may live.

And, I wrote on Election Day in "Donald Trump, the Sacrificial Hero," that if Trump were reelected he would go down as just another two-term president. But if he were thrown out, then he would become a Sacrificial Hero, and become a great American myth for the ages. In his Maps of Meaning, Jordan B. Peterson writes about the "hostile brothers."

Or, to use Yarvin's way of thinking, Trump defeated becomes part of the New American Dream.