"Gammon:" The Latest Leftist Hate Pejorative

We all know that the worst thing in the world today is the racist-sexist-homophobe white supremacist next door. But maybe there is something worse.

See, in Britland today the educated-gentry lefties have invented a new pejorative: "Gammon."

What in the world is "gammon," you ask? I will tell you. Here is Brendan O'Neill at Spiked!

Mainly aimed at angry men of a certain age who are pro-Brexit and possibly a bit iffy about mass immigration, this fleshiest of epithets reduces people to lumps of meat. Pig meat, at that. It is the closest any side in our maddening culture war has got to likening human beings to animals.

Get it? Gammon is pig meat. Or, as the OED says "The ham or haunch of a swine." But it also means "the lashing of a bowsprit." And the game of backgammon. And in thieves' slang, to gain someone's attention while another is robbing him. And it also means "to talk (plausibly or persuasively)." Or, "to feign, pretend." Or "to stuff with ridiculous nonsense, to humbug, deceive, hoax."

When referring to working-class middle-aged white males that the educated graduate might encounter in a pub, the pejorative dramatizes the likelihood that the said "gammon" may get red in the face, like the actual pig-meat product available at your local butcher's. The pejorative was created back during the "Brexit Wars" about whether Britain should leave the European Union.

According to Brendan O'Neill, the pejorative is really a reflection of the confusion and disorientation that the graduate left experienced in Britain during and after the Brexit vote -- and indeed in the demolition of the "red wall" of working class Labour constituencies in the North of England in the 2019 British General Election.

It can't be that the policies of the educated gentry of the last century has created divisions and winners and losers, and indeed has victimized the very people that the left claims to represent.

I think that the current wokism, the cancel culture, the left-wing street thugs, the new pejoratives invented every day by our educated betters: all these things issue from the fact that the glorious certainties of the last century are crumbling.

And when the glorious certainties are crumbling the chaps who rode the wave -- we thought it would never end -- cannot believe what is happening.

It's not a problem for me, oh no. As a naive Kantian I believe that we cannot know things-in-themselves, that everything is a crude theory that papers over the cracks, and that one day there will be a minor earthquake and the cracks will reappear.

So I go through life wondering about what cherished assumption will get demolished tomorrow.

And I laugh at my lefty friends that think they have it all figured out. Not to their faces, of course.

And I hope that we can get to the next regime without too much of a butcher's bill.

But that's how politics and religion and science work. Part of it is an attempt to understand reality. Part of it is an attempt to convince ourselves that we have everything figured out and there is no need to change the benevolent and compassionate arrangements that so benefit us, the shimmering, glowing stars in the political firmament. And part of it is an attempt to imagine how much better left, the universe, and everything could be. If Only.

And part of it is a cowardly and base attempt to blame everything on some pathetic scapegoat. Like the "gammon" in the local pub.

What Do the Bidens Think They Are Doing on Ukraine, Taiwan?

I asked a military acquaintance about the Obama Iran Deal: did he have any information about what the Obamis thought they were doing, back in the days Before Trump. He came up with some notions, but nothing that really stepped inside their thinking.

So what do the Bidens and the Europeans think they are achieving by normalizing relations with Iran? Especially when it seems like the whole of the Sunni world is making peace with Israel.

Now Victor Davis Hanson is worrying about mixed signals and confusion from the Biden administration on the Russians massing on the border of Ukraine and China invading the airspace over Taiwan. Are they going to get us into a war?

Do they even know what they are doing?

And, by the way, do we really want to Do Anything about Ukraine and Taiwan?

Put it this way. The Global Threat if communism is over. But Russia certainly wants to secure it's non-Arctic access to the sea. And just generally remind everyone that they are the big dogs in the region.

I'm sure that China has a similar agenda, to end the 200 years of humiliation and restore the Han people to their rightful place as the boss of East Asia.

Ok, but then what?

I'd say that it wouldn't hurt to have Russia embroiled with their neighbors, and it wouldn't hurt to have China riling up its non-Han neighbors from South Korea to Japan to the Philippines to Vietnam.

That's because I think that the world is now in a post-imperial age. It doesn't make any sense to have an empire. The Brits figured that out over half a century ago, after more than a century of knowing that "these chaps don't like us" in India; we Yanks are in the middle of figuring it out, as in: why are we paying to defend Europe? From what?

Problem is, of course, that everyone in the political arena believes in the importance of political power. It must be important, right? Because if it weren't then why are you politicians politely listening to the dumb voters just so they'll reelect you, or think you are a great leader saving them from some existential peril. Why are you wasting your lives being "some damn politician?"

Yes, politicians, why are you wasting your lives trying to pretend that there is some existential peril out there, from climate change to systemic racism to anti-Asian hate to the Russia threat to the China threat? The world would like to know.

See, the way I look at it, all these emergencies and existential perils and hates and oppressions come down to one thing: you guys get to spend more of my money on your power trips.

And I don't see any percentage in any of that for me. And that's how politics works, right? The politician gotta pay off the rubes for their support.

Yes, Young Liberal Women Have Mental Health Issues. But...

All of us racist sexist homophobes are having a grand old time with the latest news -- reported by Instapundit -- that "Over 50% Of Liberal, White Women Under 30 Have A Mental Health Issue." Akshully the article's text puts it slightly differently, and in the interests of truth, justice, and the American Way, the result comes from people answering a poll, whose question was:

"Has a doctor or other health care provider EVER told you that you have a mental health condition?"

So, 56.3% of liberal white women aged 18-29 answered "yes" and 33.6% of liberal white men answered "yes." For white conservatives the numbers are 27.3% and 16.3%. The numbers go down as whites get older.

But do you see a rather important point? It is not "woman have mental health issues" but women reporting that a doctor told them they had a problem.

I think that we should take all this with a grain of salt. First of all, mental health treatment is what we might call a "cure of the soul," a job that was performed in the old days by priests and ministers. You would expect that secular people like liberals would seek "cure of the soul" from a mental health professional rather than a minister. Second is that no doctor or other heath professional would tell someone that they have a mental health problem unless their patient "signaled" to them that they would accept such a recommendation. I find, on the rare cases that I interact with the health care system, that the medical practitioner in question is keenly interested in knowing what you want to hear.

The other thing is the "women in the public square" issue that I keep an eye on. It comes from German sociologist Georg Simmel who wrote, over a century ago, that women were coming into the public square, due to various trends, and that we could expect that they would change the public square "to suit a more feminine sensibility."

I say that women do not like the male-created public square, which is a domesticated version of male fisticuffs. Women don't confront each other; they just don't.

Women also, you may have noticed, find "stress" to be a problem. For men, the whole point of "stress" is whether you are man enough to deal with it.

So I would say that educated women today have embarked on a life that is not well adapted to "a feminine sensibility." And I mean everything from consecutive "sexual relationships" to living together before marriage to abortion to combining career and family to divorce to managing finances. In my view, all of these aspects of a modern woman's life are experienced as "stressful" and an unjust imposition.

As I say, "women expect to be protected." What does that mean? It means that no woman can successfully run a household and raise kids and keep everyone healthy -- in other words create the next generation -- unless she is protected from the physical vicissitudes of life. And I say this not in a patronizing way, but as a definition of reality.

And when Simmel talks about adapting the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility" I interpret that as everything that women are trying to do in the public square from "safetyism" to "microaggressions" to sanctioning students in college that raise controversial questions.

This, in my view, goes right back to hunter-gatherers. If a male hunter-gatherer gets into a row with his band-mates, do you know what he does? He quits the band and joins another.

What! And you thought that tribes were tribes and ne'er the twain shall meet! Wrong! Tribes were invented later.

But here is what I read into that. If you are a woman in a hunter-gatherer band and you don't get on with the other women, then you will literally descend into hell. The other women will shun you and name and shame you and your life will be a perfect hell. And leaving the band for another was not an option, I suspect.

The whole culture of women not confronting each other, but complaining about each other behind their backs in conversations about "I can't believe she said that" is  all about the situation of women since time immemorial: that they have to make their life within the community that they were born into or were married into. It means that women have to get along with the other women.

To expect women to suddenly adapt to a more male culture of open outcry and verbal fisticuffs is essentially demanding that they drop the culture that human females have practiced since time immemorial.

And most women will find the "stress" of that to be intolerable. And blame the patriarchy. And encourage their doctor to recommend that they seek care from a mental health professional.

Some Things I Don't Get

I don't get why we -- and the Europeans -- are holding the hands of the Iran regime. To do what? To put off its acquisition of nuclear weapons by a couple of years? To help it get more money for its military adventures in southern Arabia and in Syria and Lebanon? What's the point of that?

Is there something I am missing? I've had my antennae out for a while, hoping to catch a careless word from one of the actors that will tell me what is going on.

Otherwise, I suspect that we will eventually discover that the whole thing was a cluster you-know-what. That it goes back to some action made back in the 1970s. Maybe it even goes back to the left's opposition to the Shah and his notorious SAVAK secret police? Or something the Carter administration thought it was doing in the months before the mullah regime attacked the US embassy in 1979?

I don't get why the Democrats are still advocating big-time immigration. I understand the notion of "replacement" of the ordinary white American people with Democrat-voting immigrants. I understand the lordly notion of being above nationalism and racism. But surely, our Democratic friends must care a little about the lower wages that must inevitably paid to native-born Americans, particularly black Americans, if immigration numbers continue. And there is the question of what happens, a decade or two down the road. I recall reading a few years ago that the Tony Blair government of 1997 opted for increased immigration to teach the Tories a lesson, to stick 'em in the ribs. Really?

I don't understand why we are getting involved in Ukraine vs. Russia. I can see the idea of helping the little guy against the big bully Russia. But really, what do we know about the whole mixture of eastern Europe, from the Baltics to Belarus to Ukraine? Not to mention Romania, Bulgaria, the various fragments of Yugoslavia. I just think that the potential for doing something really stupid is really high. And I don't have much confidence that our noble and worthy foreign policy experts have a clue.

And then there are BLM and Antifa. I wonder if our worthy rulers really know what they are doing by turning a blind eye to the rioting and looting of their street thugs. The whole point of city policing and due process is that, in the famous icon, justice is blind. I understand the position of the activists: their religion requires that they find and advocate for helpless victims. But I have this idea that the adults in the room, the Democratic Party leaders, understand that street action should be kept down to a dull roar.

But that's not the message we are getting from the Democratic Party leaders. What does that mean? Does it mean that the activists run the show, and that the wise heads in the corridors of power know that they must accommodate the activists?

I don't understand why the Democrats, with a 51-49 Congress, are pushing the pedal to the metal and imposing their agenda on the nation as though they had 70-30 support -- and then lying about what they are about, saying that their Green New Deal policies and loot-and-plunder for every liberal activist group is "public health" and "infrastructure." And then pushing gigantic multi-trillion spending bills.

I just don't get what the bigger picture is supposed to be. And I don't know what the strategy is for the inevitable inflation and economic cock-up. Of course, it is easy to say "modern monetary theory" and say that deficits don't matter for "governments that control their own currency." That's what Keynesianism was all about. Keynesianism, as I recall, came a cropper in the "stagflation" of the 1970s. And so did a lot of Americans.

Of course, this could all be explained by the notion that our rulers are idiots and can't think beyond the current crisis, and do whatever it takes to win the next election, and spend whatever they can get away with. This week.

But I'd rather not think that. So I'm still confused. I just don't get it.

Four Laws: Government Cannot Reform

There are, I believe, Four Laws, scientific principles, if you like, that need to be understood in relation to all proposals for More Government.

The First Law is that Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices. This law was discovered in 1920 by Ludwig von Mises.

The Second Law is a corollary of the First Law. It argues that the Man in Washington cannot outperform the millions of producers and consumers: he just doesn't have the bandwidth. This law was enunciated by F.A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom.

The Third Law is that government regulation of the economy cannot work, because of "regulatory capture" of the regulators by the regulated. It was developed by George Stigler.

The Fourth Law is mine own. It states that government programs cannot work because government can never reform them.

Why is this?

It is because every government program is a program of loot and plunder, taking money from the general population to give to the supporters of the regime.

This is obviously true in the case of Vikings in their longships sailing up the rivers of England in the autumn to kill the men, enslave the women and children, and empty the storehouses of grain and the churches of silver. It is obviously true of the Pirates of the Caribbean of yesteryear and the Somali pirates of today.

You can see it in the operation of the feudal system where the kings needed to reward their baron supporters with manors and estates that would be taken from the baronial opponents of the king.

You can see it in the various leftist ideologies from Communism to Critical Race Theory. The whole point is to rally the helpless oppressed to your banner and smash the capitalists or the racists. And then each supporter will get his share.

But the same principle obtains in every democratic election in these United States. The Democrats always offer new spending -- in the interests of Justice, of course -- and the Republicans always offer tax cuts. Donald Trump in 2016 proposed to benefit the middle class by reducing immigration and increasing tariffs on China. The middle class understood that these measures were designed to increase their wages.

But no politician is out there saying: "hey, this program doesn't work, so we better cut it back." Not if it benefits his supporters.

So you can never reform Social Security; you can never reform Medicare. You can never reform education.

Let's look at an example: the folks at AntiFa.

Here's what I read in Andy Ngo’s Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. He wrote of Antifa members that

While some are indeed highly educated and in white-collar professions ranging from law to academia to health care, those who are involved in the street violence are disproportionately individuals dealing with housing insecurity, financial instability, and mental health issues like gender dysphoria...

Grievance ideologies resonate with millennials and Gen Z because of an economic reality they experience: crushing student debt, job insecurity, and the inability to ever afford a home.

Now, I would say that "crushing student debt" is a direct result of "free money" flowing from students to universities arising out of the federal government's student loan program. You think that anyone, Democrat or Republican, is going to turn off the spigot? I'd say that "job insecurity" is a direct result of increased immigration since 1965. You think that the Democrats are ever going to agree to reduced immigration? And "inability... to afford a home" is a consequence of the subsidies for long-term mortgages that started in 1938. You think that any damn politician has the cojones to turn off the spigot for low-down payment long-term fixed-rate mortgage loans?

Notice how Democrats are perfectly happy to encourage Antifa to riot in the streets and loot mom-and-pop stores. But they are not going to do anything about the "root causes" of the grievances of the millennials and Gen Z.

The normal way in which government responds to the failure of its programs is to throw more money at them. Of course it does, because all politics is an appeal to supporters that are looking to use their vote to obtain benefits, and all government is a mechanism for the rulers to distribute loot and plunder, "free stuff," to their supporters.

You see confirmation of this in the incidence of hyperinflation, of which the marquee example is Weimar Germany after World War I. In the years before World War I Germany had been the leader in creating social democratic programs like pensions and health care. But after World War I and the Allies' demand for reparations there was No More Money. Did the post-war German government cut the programs down to match the reduced revenue? Not a bit of it. They kept the programs and printed the money until the economy completely collapsed and then the people were desperate enough to agree to anything, in the hope that some sort of life could emerge from the debris.

We see this principle operating in US politics over the last half century. Back in the day, Republicans were all for balancing the budget. So when Ronald Reagan became president, what did he do? He cut taxes, and gussied up some sort of a deal with the Democrats to cut spending. Only spending was never cut. Since then Republicans have just pushed for tax cuts and left the spending alone. Candidate Trump was specific that he would not cut Social Security and Medicare. And believe me, pensions and health care is where it's at:

Total Government Spending in the United States Federal, State, and Local Fiscal Year 2021
Government Pensions	$1.5 trillion
Government Health Care	$1.7 trillion
Government Education	$1.1 trillion
National Defense	$1.1 trillion
Government Welfare	$0.4 trillion
All Other Spending	$1.8 trillion
Total Government Spending	$7.7 trillion
Federal Deficit	$1.0 trillion

So. Nothing will be done about reforming the system until we run out of Other Peoples' Money. And maybe not even then.

Like I say. Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them.

The Eternal Misdirection of Leftist Politics

I finished Andy Ngo's Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy today at the gym, and my takeaway comes in the last chapter, where he describes -- after telling the story of his Vietnamese "boat people" parents -- "who they are" in Antifa.

While some are indeed highly educated and in white-collar professions ranging from law to academia to health care, those who are involved in the street violence are disproportionately individuals dealing with housing insecurity, financial instability, and mental health issues like gender dysphoria...

Grievance ideologies resonate with millennials and Gen Z because of an economic reality they experience: crushing student debt, job insecurity, and the inability to ever afford a home.

Gollygeewillikins, and I wonder how student debt and housing unaffordability came about? It couldn't be the Democratic Party shoveling cheap debt at everyone over the last 50 years, could it?

Suppose that we say that we actually are going to solve the problem of student debt. How do we do it? By making college "free?" By forgiving student debt? By regulating college fees and housing payments?

See, the basic problem is that government is always about loot and plunder. College debt started with free stuff for students, and free money (from student debt) for colleges. The net result has been that college debt and college fees have risen to meet the available demand. So the obvious solution is to stop the student debt program.

Only, of course, then the students are going to be mad, because they can't afford to go to college, and the colleges are going to be mad because they need that free student money, and the parents are going to be mad because college will cost them more. Hey, don't worry! No government is ever going to do that. Because no government ever dares to reduce the loot and plunder.

Same with home prices. High home prices came about because of the fixed 30-year loans from the New Deal era Fannie Mae. Government could afford to guarantee those loans, because it's government. Naturally, home buyers borrowed the maximum amount they had in mind, and home prices soared into the stratosphere to the benefit of existing homeowners. 

The solution is clearly to end the subsidy for mortgage loans and for low down payments. But any program to do that would result in, at best, 50 years of flat home prices and, at worst, a housing price collapse. That would not be good. And anyway, as right now, the government is often in the position of wanting to gun the economy to fight recession with low interest rates, and that usually results in a boom in housing prices.

So, if you are in education you are not going to stand for a policy that cuts the flow of Benjamins. If you have a home that has gone up by 500 percent in the last 30 years, you are not going to stand for a policy that will lower the value of your house.

If your are a millennial or a Gen Z you blame "the system," and you take to the streets.

If you are a politician then you blame "systemic racism."

If you are a corporate CEO you try to keep one step ahead of the "liberal activist groups" or "lefty racist hate groups" with occasional corporate virtue-signaling.

So the only way the madness ends is the day that the US gubmint can't sell its debt in the financial markets.

Any other ideas? I've seen the proposal that makes colleges liable for student debt. My own idea would be to replace "free" education with direct payments to students that would slowly fade away and to encourage employers to fund their employees' education.

I'd end the mortgage monster by slowly reducing the amount that could be borrowed down to about 50 percent of the home's value, and slowly reducing the maximum period of a home loan from 30 years down to 25, then 20, then 15.

But I doubt if any of these ideas are politically possible, Because the only way government works is by buying votes at the next election, and paying off the supporters with loot and plunder. The last thing government will ever dare to do is cut spending programs. That's why you get hyperinflation in Weimar Germany and today's Venezuela. Government dare not reduce its programs, because voters.

The Eternal Dilemma of a Ruler

Here are a couple of pieces that don't quite get it. Victor Davis Hanson does a take on the corporate boycott of Georgia for its new racist Jim Crow election laws in "Wealthy and Woke." Yes it's true that Delta CEO Ed Bastian thinks he's virtue-signaling by condemning those gap-toothed Republican lawmakers and staving off the liberal activist groups. And that it seems like all the corporate execs have got the message. But:

First, the corporation never harangues unless it feels it has more to lose—whether by boycotts, protests, or bad publicity—than it stands to gain in staying neutral and silent. 

Second, class concerns are never mentioned. Bastian is paid about $65,000 for each working day of the year. In a sane world, he might seem a ridiculous voice of the oppressed. 

Third, CEOs never fear offending the conservative silent majority, who are assumed not to boycott or protest. 

And Cal Thomas berates President Biden for pretending he's a capitalist. He recalls Chevy Chase's line: "I'm Chevy Chase... And you're not."

That line came to mind over President Biden's massive tax-and-spend proposals, which are unlike anything since FDR, after whom Biden appears to be modeling himself. The president thinks he's a capitalist ... but he's not.

Yes, yes. All true. And "capitalism is an economic system... made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations" rather than gubmint. And socialism is "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of" the economy "usually through a centralized government."

But I have made it my business to make a sharper analysis of what is going on.

And what I believe is that "the only warrant for government power is existential peril." There must be Mongols or Nazis or Commies or "white supremacists" threatening to annihilate civilization as we know it. Otherwise why are we paying all these taxes? Otherwise there is no need for a rich and powerful ruling class.

And because we humans are programmed to see existential threats as a moral threat, there is usually a condominium between the political ruling class and the religious ruling class. Thus the First Estate of the clergy and the Second Estate of the nobles.

It was the genius of Marx to imagine a new existential threat, the evil capitalists who were going to "immiserate" the working class. Because science.

But in fact we live in an era when the Mongols are no longer a threat. Why? Because, as I say, the old game of conquest and loot and plunder doesn't really give the conqueror much in the way of riches, because wealth is the present value of all the production and exchange of ordinary commoners all across the world. If you destroy or steal the means of production and exchange then you evaporate that present value of all the production and exchange.

It is important to understand what a revolution in human reality this is. And how it has forced the political class to invent new existential perils to justify their power and perquisites.

Thus Climate Change. OMG, if we don't cover the world with wind turbines and solar panels and completely switch from "fossil" fuels to renewable energy and electric cars and trains the whole world will come to an end.

Thus Systemic Racism. OMG, if we don't hunt down those white supremacists and their guns then all the Sacred Negroes and Sacred Gays and Sacred Transgenders will be annihilated in mass shootings.

And the same with capitalism. OMG, if we don't keep a rigorous watch on all those capitalists they will take the last dollar from the last helpless worker and keep all the loot for themselves.

Do you see the point?

Let's put it another way. Maybe there really is serious climate change going on. But maybe, even if there is, the best strategy is to let the market and individuals respond and adapt. Maybe the temperate zone where we grow the world's grains will move northwards into Canada. Oh well. Maybe we'll run out of "fossil" fuels and the scientists will have to hurry up and develop safe fusion power. Maybe the oceans will rise a bit and all those rich corporate chieftains with their waterfront homes will have to abandon them and move.

Maybe there really is systemic racism. But then the highest income people in the US are Asians and there are several non-white races that have higher income than whites. Maybe the best way to counteract systemic racism is not to fight it but just stop talking about it all the time and for the ruling class to insist on treating people as people rather than as Sacred Relics.

Maybe capitalism does create inequality, but since per-capita income has increased by 3,000 percent in the last 200 years -- and nobody, least of all Marx, had a clue about that -- maybe we should admit that we really don't know how to control and direct capitalism. And anything we do might make things worse.

Do you see the problem? If climate isn't really such an emergency, if systemic racism isn't quite such a moral horror, if capitalism muddles along, but mostly brings people out of poverty, then what do we need a strong and purposeful ruling class for?

Needless to say, you are not allowed to ask that question.

Because the one thing all our rulers all agree on is that après nous, le déluge. That is just another word for "shut up, peasants."

I really appreciate the dilemma of our rulers. Suppose they are surplus and unneeded, despite their fervent belief?

Inconceivable.