So, US Imperalism is Dead

Let us propose the following idea. After the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, the notion of the US as the global guardian of democracy -- er, Democracy -- is dead.

It's the end of the Age of US Imperialism. And Joe Biden did it.

I don't know exactly when the US ruling class decided it wanted to be the Global Hegemon. I'd say the 1845 annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War that followed would be a bit early. And college President Wilson's entry into World War I would be a bit late. Spanish-American War? Maybe.

The point is that when you are a political entity -- whether monarchical or oligarchic or democratic or Soviet or fascist or tin-pot dictator -- the natural, instinctive thing for you to do is to swagger on the international stage: win a nice little war.

Don't try a World War. Not unless your name is Wilson or Roosevelt.

In my view this aggressiveness in political elites is a vestigial survival of the old reality of politics, that of defending the border of your food-growing territory against an "other" that would like to appropriate your food-growing territory for itself.

The food-growing territory thing is just the same as chimp society, where the males defend the border against males from the neighboring band, and the females munch on the food produced by the food-growing territory as they bear and raise baby chimps: the more food, the more baby chimps. That's how Nicholas Wade describes it in Before the Dawn.

You could say that the ultimate description of this ape culture is in Geoffrey of Monmonth's History of the Kings of Britain. Old pal Geoffrey is quite open about kingly conquest and the slaughter and plunder of the defeated. He speaks openly of times when Britain was more or less depopulated after a particularly severe bout on the wrong end of conquest-ology.

But it doesn't matter where the food is grown. Not any more.

But when the universe changes, and owning food-growing territory isn't all that important, then you can expect that the ruling classes will be the last to know. They will still keep on keeping on at their conquest and loot and plunder, because that is all they know.

The point is that it really doesn't matter who owns the food-growing territory any more. Food is for sale; grain from the western Canadian prairies gets put on ships in the harbor of Vancouver BC and gets sent all over the world.

It doesn't really matter where products and produced and manufactured.

Now there are a few caveats. You really don't want to get all your oil from the Arabs in the Middle East. They are a bit late to the modern era and haven't yet cooled their jets in the marketplace. So it's a Good Thing for everyone to do a spot of fracking on their own lands and get the natural gas out and not rely upon the Arabs for their fossil fuels.

You don't really want the Chinese to do all the manufacturing in the world. We need jobs for our kids too.

The point is that expanding your food-growing territory doesn't make you richer any more. It doesn't feed any baby chimps any more. Wealth doesn't come from broad rich acres but from what the World Bank calls "intangible capital." That is to say that wealth is not even the physical capital of buildings and factories. Eight percent of wealth is the intangible capital inside peoples' heads.

So I say that this old instinct needs to be properly sublimated, like with modern business and sports. We don't need men to be strutting the world showing their military stuff. Men need to get their aggressions out on the sports field and as road warriors. And jolly good fun it is for all.

So forget the US Empire. Let's just be a nation state devoted to keeping its people safe and prosperous. And minding our own business.

But whatabout Russia and China? Don't we need to keep them in check? Maybe, somewhat.

But I'd say that what Russia does about Belarus and Ukraine is not really worth going to war over. And I would say it is a good thing for Germany to integrate with Russia on the Nordstream 2 pipeline front.Is Russia really going to threaten to invade Europe as it did in the post-WWII era of the Soviet Empire? I doubt it. But Russia really benefit the more that it gets integrated into the European economy.

And China. China is pretty sure to want to reclaim Taiwan. Because national pride. And it is going to want to bully everyone around the South China Sea. And it seems to want to do a replay of the old China policy of the tributary states around the Chinese periphery, and tie them down with the Belt and Road initiative. Which I expect will be a mixed blessing for the Chinese people.

I accept the need to oppose the Soviet Union and prevent it from its millennial dream of conquering western Europe in fulfillment of Marx's religious prophecy.

But after the end of the Soviet Union the US should have dissolved NATO and gone home. Because the US Empire doesn't make any more sense than the British Empire.

The thing about the British Empire is that is was rather an accident. The Brits and the Portuguese didn't like the high prices for spices and silks available at the western end of the Spice Route and the Silk Road. They figured that they could get a better deal with sailing ships around the Cape of Good Hope and on to South Asia. And they were right.

But then, as they established ports in India and South East Asia, they came into conflict with the local feudal lords, and ended up teaching them lessons. And forming empires. And then they got into the slave plantation thing and set up colonies in South America and the Caribbean, and made a ton of money, for a while.

And, with the instinct to extend the border they established the European colonial empires. But it wasn't the colonies that made them powerful; it was the trading.

And the proof is that after World War II when the European powers gave up their colonies to local native tin-pot dictators the only people that suffered were the locals that got plundered by their new rulers. And a few whites left over in Rhodesia and South Africa. But hey, we got Elon Musk, born in South Africa, and he is reinventing space travel, the rascal, right here in the good old USA instead of in South Africa.

If you look at the awful far-right neo-fascist populist nationalist regimes about which our lordly global educated elite like to expectorate, you don't see anyone bent on world conquest. Not Donald Trump, not Nigel Farage, not Marine Le Pen, not Viktor Orbán. Of course, to our democratic rulers they are all Literally Hitler. But then everything is Literally Hitler to our noble lords of the global elite.

But I admit. A world of nation states run by Trumps and Farages and Le Pens and Orbáns wouldn't be much fun for the educated, credentialed, global elite. Because it would be a boring middle-class sort of thing, with everyone minding their own business instead of strutting out and Changing the World!

Regime Change: What Does It Take?

When you are an armed insurrectionist busily conspiring and insurrecting for regime change, you often ask yourself: what are the magic incantations that might work? What does it take for the old regime to just pick up sticks and head for the exits?

Because we armed insurrectionists really don't want any violence -- or even the mostly peaceful protest beloved of our lefty friends. No butcher's bill for us, please. 

I've already looked at the question of regime change in reviewing a piece by Malcolm Kyeyune on the current regime:

Every ruling class throughout history advances various claims about its own legitimacy, without which a stable political order is impossible. Legitimating claims can take many different forms and may change over time, but once they become exhausted or lose their credibility, that is pretty much it.

Interestingly, I've already written about Kyeyune, in "Two Strikes Against the Ruling Class -- in One Day."

So what does it take for a ruling class to lose legitimacy?

Lose a war? You know, I think this is probably rather important, especially because I think that defending the people against enemies, real and imaginary, is the one and only job of government. When there's a cock-up on the war-making front, I think that there is an unconscious feeling that the ruling class doesn't have a clue. And this feeling might even include women, who, as you well know, "expect to be protected."

Money Printer go Brrrrrrr? I wonder if this is a consequence rather than a leading indicator of ruling class exit. Because the two German hyperinflations occurred after defeat in war. On the other hand, there is Venezuela, where the Old Regime of Hugo Chávez is still in power under the expert guidance of President Maduro. Certainly, inflation is a sign of ruling-class incompetence. We know how to keep inflation in check. Because Science.

Economic Crisis? The classic case is the Great Depression that ended the 60-year domination of the Republican Party after the Civil War, and began the 70 year domination of the educated class through the Democratic Party. Obviously the Carter era "stagflation" was a real body blow to the "leave it to the experts" political formula of the New Deal. And the Great Recession and its slow recovery didn't do any good for the current ruling class. But, I suspect, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Crack-down on Opposition? When a ruling class is in the cat-bird seat the opposition is rather amusing, and the regime can afford to let it warble its ineffective tune. But when things are getting serious, then there is a tendency in all ruling classes to get the word out that the opposition is really a deadly threat to all good people. Of course we have seen this in black and white over the last year, as "everyone" agreed that the BLM/AntifFa riots were nothing-to-see-here, while the January 6 riots were an "armed insurrection."

Censorship? A confident ruling class sneers at censorship. It wants to know what the fools and knaves in the opposition are saying. It knows that it can haul out its tame journalists any time to laugh and sneer at the opposition's pathetic lies and utter detachment from reality. But when things are getting too close to the bone, then it is time to crack down on "disinformation." Because Science.

Ramming Stuff Through Congress? According to the Moynihan Rule, you don't want to pass major legislation with less than a 70-30 vote in the United States Senate. I think the idea is that political peace means consensus, where the opposition doesn't feel too threatened. But the current Democratic Congress that is more-or-less evenly divided between the parties is ramming controversial stuff, including major climate-change stuff, on simple majority votes. The implication is that if we don't pass this now we will never get to pass it. Which suggests that the ruling party is not long for this world.

Impeaching Presidents? It's telling that the impeachments of presidents generally resulted from a feeling of outrage against a president that the ruling class considers illegitimate. The first president impeached was Andrew Johnson, right after the Civil War for daring to fire his Secretary of War. Then Richard Nixon, regarded by all good liberals as illegitimate (my liberal boss had a $3 bill Nixon coffee mug). Then Donald Trump, regarded by all good liberals as a liar and a colluder with Russians. Bill Clinton? I'd say that was more: if you guys can impeach Nixon for practically nothing then we can impeach Bill Clinton for lying about "I did not have sex with that woman..."

Government of Old Men? What is it about the current era that we have aged presidents and leaders? Trump, 75; Biden, 78; Pelosi, 81; Schumer, 70. Is it a case of OK Boomer hanging on? Is it that the next generation just isn't up to snuff? Or has the current generation kept genuine challengers to their power under wraps? Or is it just that modern health care keeps older people more active and thus able to hang onto their power? Why would younger politicians not be able to challenge the existing generation?

I'm sure there is more, much more. But, I'd say, the portents and the runes and the joss sticks are not too favorable right now.

Ruling Class: Hoist with their Own Petard? Or Not?

In this chaotic moment, the question is whether it is all part of our ruling class's brilliant and eternal strategy to maintain itself in power. Or whether it is all a Baldrick's Cunning Plan, as rehearsed over and over on the Blackadder TV series.

If you remember, the whole schtick of the Blackadder series was that the British ruling class since whenever had been a bunch of snobby twerps.

Odd, isn't it, that that kind of comedy has kinda gone out of fashion. We don't really see too much comedy on TV or anywhere about how the woke lefty ruling class is a bunch of vicious snobby twerps that wouldn't be seen dead in a Chevy on the levee.

So, on the one hand, I get the line of the Zman that we have a Roman Empire Mk 2 that conducts its business at a level way up beyond the ken of the ordinary mortals of the plebs.

On the other hand I would point to the shambolic Russia collusion epic that dogged Donald Trump for five years. And we had the shambolic effort to find ballots in the 2020 election when it turned out that Donald Trump won more votes than the ruling class had expected, and so extraordinary measures were needed to ensure a correct result. And now we have the shambolic disaster in Kabul. And the shambolic lockdowns and vaccine passports that really do nothing to deal with the COVID epidemic. And the ridiculous overreach in the Democratic Congress to pass everything including the kitchen sink in one year.

I just can't help feel that these rulers really aren't up to snuff. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe they are smarter than they appear.

See, I think that the over/under political formula of our educated ruling class is breaking down because of the "internal contradictions" of the over/under formula.

Back in the day, Karl Marx argued that there was an "internal contradiction" between what he called "commodity production" and "surplus value," the value of labor snitched by the capitalists from the workers. Except that the classical economics he used for his theory got blown up in the 1870 marginal revolution. So there wasn't an internal contradiction after all.

Our rulers are getting boxed in, more and more, by the logic of their over/under political formula, that they are the allies, the noble advocates of the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors.

Previously, of course, their over/under political formula was that they were the saviors of the working class against the capitalists and the malefactors of great wealth. But they switched horses in the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s, abandoning the old working class and now advocating for blacks and women.

Only, the program of the ruling class necessarily includes rewarding loyal supporters in the ruling class as well as helping the working class and/or blacks and other oppressed peoples. So they are become the very exploiters that they claim to oppose. And the victims of all this is the middle class caught in the middle.

Look, this is the soft underbelly of every ruling class since the dawn of time. They pretend to be the saviors of the people from a fate worse than death, but really they are always just in it for themselves. And, as often as not, they are not very good at pretending.

In our time we may say that the more that the ruling class finds more ways to distribute loot and plunder to its supporters the more it visits injustice upon the broad middle class. And the more it provokes the middle class into forming a head of rebellion. Thus Trump.

And so, in its very program of helping the oppressed it creates a new class of people oppressed by its loot-and-plunder operations. Thus Trump.

And thus, repeating the words of Hamlet, our ruling class blows up its own regime with its own brand of injustice that it fervently believes is the royal road to justice.

But here's another idea. I would say that the one big thing that ends a ruling class is defeat in war. See, the whole point of a ruling class is to protect the people from foreign enemies.

You know, like our noble ruling class protects oppressed peoples from systemic racists.

But if you lose a war, Joey Boy, who needs you?

Oh, I know. Our ruling class doesn't really think of the Afghan business as a war. Our rulers are way above such sordid stuff. Instead they are Building Back Better, and working for Equity. Stuff like that.

Only, deep down below all the modern frooh-frah there is still the basic Freudian unconscious, and the Jungian archetypes and collective unconscious.

Today, we read, twelve US Marines were killed at Kabul airport. I wonder how that affects the unconscious of the average American voter, and in particular the average American woman voter.

You may think that the average American voter will not be happy with all this. I couldn't possibly comment.

The Political Necessity of White Supremacy

 The basic tactics of the progressive over/under political strategy is to convince the "under" voters that they have no place else to go.

In the days when the left was the protector of the workers, they taught the workers that unless they voted for the left they would lose their jobs, their lives, their dignity to the malefactors of great wealth.

But, when you think about it, it has always been a lie. Ever since the vote started expanding in the mid 19th century, governments across the west have extended benefits to the workers, from wage and hour laws, child labor laws, public schools, and then the entitlement programs of the 20th century.

Crabbed old guys like me say that it would have been much better for the workers to build out their own organizations, from labor unions to mutual-aid societies, rather than take the hand of government, but that is beside the point. The politicians offered goodies, the workers voted for politicians that offered goodies, and here we are.

In other words, it is a lie to say that only the politicians can save the workers. But, by golly, the narrative worked, for about a century.

Since the 1960s the progressives have altered their over/under political strategy. Now they are the protector of minorities, and particularly the blacks. Ever since the Civil Rights Acts, the left in the US has told blacks that unless they voted for Democrats they would soon be back in chains. Because Jim Crow, because the KKK, because white supremacy. Obviously it works, because blacks vote 90 percent for Democrats, and you cannot get humans to vote 90 percent for anything unless you scare the pants off them.

You might say that it is a lie to say that only politicians can save the blacks from the white supremacists.s But by golly, the narrative has worked, for over half a century.

Meanwhile, as Charlie Eastman writes in The American Spectator, 

Democrats’ social justice policies (defunding the police, ending cash bail, refusing to prosecute crimes, eliminating standards in academics, “disrupting” traditional family structures, etc.) have created a deadly reality for blacks living in Democrat-run cities — there is no place more dangerous for a black person to live in America today.

And, what is the biggest danger for a black person in a Democrat-run city? Not white supremacists, but other blacks.

Eastman writes that Victor Davis Hanson tags "the entire woke movement is a cover-up of sorts, a means of deflecting attention away from the Democrats’ policy failures", but I think that misses the point.

The point is that every political movement unites its supporters by terrifying them about some malevolent "other." Let's advance the argument by checking Donald Trump's agenda. We were going to Make America Great Again. But first we had to deal with the Deep State, the Chinese, and illegal immigrants. This is not rocket science. Trump supporters are the middle middle class whose jobs are likely to be affected by cheap Chinese imports, low-wage immigrants, and the scorn of the Deep State and its power to wreck the lives of ordinary Americans.

Now, are these "others" real threats to the ordinary American, or are they Trump-invented devils? I'd say that, by and large, they are genuine threats to ordinary Americans. They are certainly not existential threats, but real enough.

Now, whatabout the Democrats? They advanced the notion last year, using the death of George Floyd in police custody, that the police and white supremacists were an existential threat to blacks. Really? I'd say that the real existential threat to blacks is two-bit crooks like George Floyd passing fake $20 bills in convenience stores. I'd say that the real existential threat to blacks is that their murder rate, mostly black-on-black, is about 8 times the white murder rate.

But let us give the Democrats a break. When you have a voter block that votes 90 percent for you, then the only political tactic that keeps them at home is to scare the pants off them.

Notice that Democrats use the same tactics on their other "oppressed peoples" voters.

I've noticed that gay acquaintances are more aggressive around me. Could that possibly be that if the Supreme Court reverses the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage that they feel that it will be all over for gays?

Women are taught to believe that if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade, that it will be all over for women: back to the back-alley abortion.

Environmentalists are taught to believe that the oil and coal companies are catapulting us towards the catastrophe of climate change and the end of human life on this planet.

Do you see how the fact that the overclass established gay marriage and abortion by judicial decision and environmental regulations by executive decisions means that there is really no established cultural consensus on these issues. They were imposed by the ruling class.

Therefore gays and feminists and environmentalists and blacks have to vote Democrat otherwise it's the end of the world.

Interesting isn't it. We are conditioned to accept that to have Democrats running around yelling that the end of the world is coming -- because white supremacy, abortion, climate change -- is perfectly normal and acceptable.

And I get it. The only warrant for government power is existential peril, and if you want political power, for whatever reason, you will pretty soon figure out that you'd better find an existential peril, or get out of the political power business.

But what we need is a politician with the native instinct and cunning to blow up the Democrats' race narrative, preferably right in their faces. What is needed is something like Marx's "nursery tale" comment in the Communist Manifesto. Something like this:

It is high time that the middle classes should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of White Supremacy with the boring truth, that the middle class just wants to wive and thrive and survive.

And that everything that the left puts out is a lie, including "and" and "the."

Poor Bloody Germans -- and US

Everybody knows that the Germans are guilty forever for electing and then knuckling under to Hitler and his totalitarian fascist regime.

How could Heidegger collaborate with the Nazis? La Wik: "There is controversy as to the relationship between his philosophy and his Nazism." And how could you read Nietzsche, the "Nazis' favorite intellectual?" How could ordinary people go along with Hitler and put on those swastikas, and serve in his Wehrmacht?

But I have begun to think, now that our ruling class and government are getting more, er, authoritarian, that maybe it is time to give the Germans some slack.

After all, who among us really has the courage to risk job, bank account, and freedom from the bottomless malevolence of the Deep State? Or stand up in class and take your college instructor to task for his lefty lies? Or dare ever again to protest in front of the US Capitol while Nancy Pelosi is the boss of the Capitol Police?

I'd say you have to be almost crazy to have the courage to stand without flinching against the power of the state. Especially when the state feels threatened, as right now.

Let's rehearse how the Germans got to Literally Hitler.

First, they lost the Great War, mainly thanks to US President Wilson, a former college president, who sent the dough-boys into France to show the world who was boss.

Second, their brilliant Reichsbankpresident Havenstein blew up the currency with money printer go brrrrrrrr.

Third, President Wilson & Co. imposed a humiliating peace on the Germans at the Treaty of Versailles, including reparations and breaking off East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

Fourth, Germany got really screwed by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the failure of the US Federal Reserve to perform its job as "lender of last resort."

So, by 1933, Germans were looking for a "strong leader" to get them out of a mess. Generally, the logic of being a strong leader is that you identify some enemy and lead the nation to defeat it. Hitler chose the Jews.

Imagine what is in store for Americans in the next few years.

First, President Biden has lost a war in Afghanistan and has humiliated the United States.

Second, our brilliant Federal Reserve is printing money go brrrrrr.

Third, the Europeans are probably going to humiliate President Biden and the US. Hey, maybe the Germans will tell us to get out troops out of Germany while they go dance with the Russians.

Fourth, there's likely to be riots in the streets when Biden lifts the moratoriums on rent, mortgage, and student debt.

One of the things about the German experience in the 1920s was that the middle class got royally screwed by the hyperinflation and then royally screwed by the Great Depression.

One thing about the American experience in the 2020s is that the middle class is getting royally screwed by inflation, by lockdowns, by systemic racism, by CRT in schools, by outrageous college costs. Oh, and energy costs.

So, by 2024, Americans will be looking for a "strong leader" to get us out of a mess. Generally the logic of being a strong leader is that you identify some enemy and lead the nation to defeat it. I wonder who our Literally Hitler will choose as the enemy. Probably not the Jews. Probably not the Blacks. That's been tried before. Hey, I know! How about the Wokey Deep State!

Yep. It looks like 2024 will be a replay of 2016. Only the players will know their lines a lot better than in 2016.

I wonder who will be blamed forever after as Literally Nazis.

The Democrats' Sticky Wicket

Because I am a serious and compassionate person, I feel the pain of the Democrats right now. Victor Davis Hanson has five possibilities for why the Biden administration is a total trainwreck, but Reason #5 is the one that resonates with me.

5) Biden is a hostage of both the Left and Hunter Biden. His task is to ram down a hard Left agenda, in the fashion of a torpedo that itself blows up when it hits the target.

My take is that when the Democrats decided to take out the surging Bernie Sanders in the North Carolina primary in 2020 with a huge surge in the black vote, he or his supporters demanded an IOU that went something like this: "you can have your moderate candidate, but here's the bill of particulars if you want our support in November."

In other words, the Democratic Party has become a far-left party, but it knows it needs to look moderate in order to win. So, the lefties could accept Biden as the front man. At a price.

Unfortunately, President Biden is not up to the job of telling his lefty supporters the facts of life, that if he implements their full agenda he will wreck the economy and wreck the Democratic Party.

For Biden is a pure politician, in the sense of Joseph Schumpeter in  Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Schumpter writes that, given that the trade of the politician is winning elections, it is astonishing that any governing gets done at all. The corollary is that sometimes you get a president that has absolutely no governing skills. He is all talk and sound bites.

In that case, of course, it stands to reason that Biden is being overwhelmed by his supporters, all of whom in one way or another demand more loot and plunder from the government. Some supporters, of course, just want a check. But, with the rise of the gigantic educated elite, there are a ton of people that want government money and power to back their project to fundamentally transform an unjust society into a just society.

Now, you and I think that this is a project doomed to disaster. We think that the less that the lower class just lives on checks and the more it works, the better for the lower class and the better for the rest of us.

But we also think that the various power projects of the educated elite, from climate change to corporate regulation to its whole race agenda, are all bound to end in tears, partly because 57 percent of them are lefty fantasy, and partly because there really is not much that government money and government force can accomplish, despite what the prophets say.

But what can President Biden do about all this? Really nothing. He's been a United States Senator all his life, and never really run anything in his life, until right now, when he is really too old to direct traffic, let alone get the various power players into a room together and knock their heads together.

This is where I insert my little joke about Biden being a proof of God's existence.

Why? Because I think that we need the current ruling class to be utterly discredited and removed from power.

But you can never send a ruling class to the exit unless it has royally screwed up. If we had a Chuck Schumer or an Andrew Cuomo as president he would find some way to keep all the balls in the air, and keep our ruling class in sinecures. Till next time.

Or, to use the Chinese approach to this: the failures of Joe Biden are likely to indicate to the American people that the Democratic Party has lost the Mandate of Heaven, whereas Chucky or Andy would have been able to create enough confusion to mask the utter failure of the Democratic Party, its policies and its world view.

So, if God still "has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." as Bismarck observed over a century ago, then God would find a way to signal to us that it is time to throw the rascally Democrats out.

And declare a new Morning in America.

Atheism: The Religion of Not Believing in God

In a routine expedition to HalfPrice Books I picked up John Gray's Seven Types of Atheism. His basic line is that modern atheism is just Christianity without the God. Thus, he begins,

Contemporary atheism is a flight from a godless world. Life without any power that can secure order or some kind of ultimate justice is a frightening and for many an intolerable prospect. In the absence of such a power, human events could be finally chaotic, and no story could be told that satisfied the need for meaning.

So "atheists have looked for surrogates of the God they have cast aside." Instead of "belief in divine providence" they believe in the "progress of humanity." Thus most modern atheisms are really a re-imagining of the Christian narrative with different names on the beliefs. 

But first Gray wants to instruct us about the uniqueness of Christianity.

The notion that religions are creeds -- lists of propositions or doctrines that everyone must accept or reject -- emerged only with Christianity.

In most religions -- and that was originally true of Judaism -- what mattered was not belief but "observance," the observance of sacred rituals. Many religions have creator-gods, but the "divine mind" is not experienced universally as good, nor as intimately engaged with the world, nor that humans have a "soul" or a "self," nor a death involving a judgement by a Supreme Being.

So when Marxists and their brethren want to force march us towards a better world, they are just repurposing Christianity, but without God and with Marx instead of Christ.

The New Atheism of the 19th Century. Chaps like Comte believed that "magic, metaphysics and theology belong in the infancy of the species." But now we adults "accept science as the only authority in knowledge and ethics." But science, to Gray, is just a tool for the human animal to deal with the world. Suppose religion really is an "illusion." Who is to say that the creation of illusions not is an important part of survival? And there is the embarrassing fact that atheism tends to ally itself with pseudo-science. Comte thought that bumps on the head were significant; Dawkins believes in "memes."

Secular Humanism. In Christianity, humanity is a "species in need of redemption" with an apocalyptic myth that Jesus would return and found the kingdom of God. But the Reformation replaced the apocalypse with a "conviction that evil could be slowly diminished in history." Thus, with God removed, we get to the idea of modern meliorism, of gradual improvement. Then there was Gnosticism that believed that "salvation was achieved by acquiring a special kind of knowledge."

The modern myth of progress came into being as a fusion of Christian faith with Gnostic thinking. 

But, of course, science has nothing to say about improvement in history.

Faith in Science. Following Darwin's theory of evolution, a lot of thinkers harnessed evolution to "theories of innate racial inequality" and eugenics to improve the race. "Herbert Spencer used evolutionary ideas to vindicate untrammeled capitalism... Beatrice Webb... suggested that Stalin's Russia embodied the next stage of social evolution." Francis Fukuyama "had no doubt that an evolutionary process was at work, leading to the advance of "democratic capitalism" throughout most of the world."

Modern Political Religions. Gnosticism "is the belief that humans can be delivered from a dark world by the saving light of knowledge." Plato and Socrates may have believed that goodness and truth were one, but not that they could be realized in history. But Christianity plus Gnosticism combined to form the "explosive force" of political religions in the modern west.

[Forget] the idea that secular and religious movements are opposites... Jacobinism and Bolshevism were secularizing forces; but both were channels for the millennarian myths of apocalyptic Christianity... [W]hen the Nazis tried to create a "science of man" based in physiology, they continued an Enlightenment project. Liberalism emerged in the seventeenth century as the application of a universal morality inherited from monotheism.

We do not live in a secular age, for "secular thought is mostly composed of repressed religion."

God-haters. Think Marquis de Sade, Dostoevsky, and William Empson. Says Gray about de Sade:

Hating the Christian God, he also hated Nature, cursing it even as he obeyed what he believed were its laws... For Sade's libertines... nothing but a world-destroying act could sate their passions... the satisfaction that comes from doing evil.

For writer Lev Shestov, Dostoevsky is "the greatest artist in human misery." He "was chronically unhappy and spread unhappiness around him.

And said William Empson of the Christian God: "the God of Tertullian, Augustine and Aquinas, is the wickedest thing yet invented by the black heart of man."

Atheism Without Progress. This is the kind of atheist that John Gray prefers. He starts with George Santayana, born in Madrid in 1863 who became a Harvard professor and then quit in 1912 when he received a small legacy. He ended his life in a nunnery. For Santayana, religion is natural to humans. He wrote:

Why should we be angry with dreams, with myth, with allegory, with madness? We must not kill the mind, as some rationalists do, in trying to cure it... Values presuppose living beings having a direction of development... so that good and evil may exist in reference to them.

Says Gray: "Without valuing organisms there are no values."

Next, Gray considers Joseph Conrad, who spent years working in sailing ships in the late 19th century. He was an atheist and rejected the idea of progress. Says Gray:

The seaman's struggle with the ocean is a cipher for the human situation in a godless universe.... None of the visions of improvement conjured by modern thinkers could stand up against his "deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world."

The Atheism of Silence. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer just stepped away from monotheism without regret. But his life was a contradiction.

Himself extremely wilful, Schopenhauer was convinced that all human troubles came from the will... Anyone who grasped this truth would turn away from life and mortify their appetites, he believed.

But did he follow that advice? Not a bit of it. With financial independence he did exactly as he pleased, "playing the flute and attending the opera." He never married, but "pursued erotic pleasure." He "denounced the world as illusion" but lived a life of "disciplined intellectual labour... was careful with money." He believed that human life is "purposeless striving" and "the world was in need of redemption." So what!

John Gray concludes his disquisition on atheism with the following thought.

Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means... But there is no need for panic or despair. Belief and unbelief are poses the mind adopts in the face of an unimaginable reality. A godless world is as mysterious as as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think.