Alternatives to Politics and the Enemy

 If politics is the friend/enemy distinction, that "there is no politics without an enemy," then the interesting question is: "whatabout the alternatives."

And obviously the alternatives to the war against the enemy is something a bit less bloody. Such us religion and the good / evil distinction, and law and the legal / illegal distinction. And economic exchange and the trusting / cheating distinction.

But then an email acquaintance proposed the following:

Politicians need an enemy.
Corollary:  The enemy must be more feared than government.

That's a good point. Because clearly government likes to swing its weight around. I'd say it is pretty clear that since the January 6 riot our ruling class has -- deliberately or instinctively -- come down like a ton of bricks on the "armed insurrectionists" and also anyone in the Republican political sphere that might feel like lending them a hand, right Speaker Pelosi? Because, what with the resources of the government you can sure make life unbearable for any government critic or Outer Party partisan. As in bankrupting them.

Actually, there must be a further corollary to "politicians need an enemy." Clearly, practical politicians in the ruling class's Inner Party would really like it if members of the Outer Party had a healthy fear of the Inner Party.

And that is obviously what Our Nance and the Cancel Culture are all about. They are not interested in persuasion any more. Just intimidation.

Which tells us that they have given up on persuading us of the glory of their arc of history bending towards justice. Just shut up and fall into line, peasants.

But my point is that, really, we humans should attempt to spend as much time as possible outside the political world and its friend  enemy distinction. Because treating other people as the enemy implies physical conflict and ultimately the possibility of killing.

And the point about conflict and killing is that it is very expensive. Particularly for men. That is why, I have read, primitive tribes do not go in for pitched battles and the risk that the entire male warrior group could be killed off. When the males are all eliminated it means the end of the tribe, and the women are absorbed into the neighboring tribe.

You know, just like German women after World War II becoming GI war brides.

Primitive tribes prefer a nice surgical dawn raid to a pitched battle. More civilized, old chap.

And so also religion, which deals with malefactors by naming, shaming and shunning, rather than by conflict and killing. More civilized, old chap.

And law, which short-circuits the revenge and reparations culture with a legal trial, rules of evidence, and a final disposition of an argument over land, inheritance, wimmin, and a deal gone sour. More civilied, old chap.

And the market economy, which, as indicated by the Science™ of trust and the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, rewards acts of trust and penalizes acts of deceit. Notice that the market economy is gentler than the religious game of naming, shaming and shunning, and the expensive law game of trials and lawyer bills.

Amazing, innit, that the most civilized version of the friend-enemy distinction should be the one thing anathametized by our lefty friends. I wonder why? Is it because, at heart, they are primitives, or at least reactionaries, as in my Great Reaction.

Hey, you gotta say, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat are most keenly experienced in the political sphere, where all is won and lost in the decisive battle. So I understanding my lefty friends having a certain hankering, a certain nostalgia, for the good old days.

But I say that the destiny of mankind is to civilize conflict and disagreement. Because that is the whole point of social animals.

If you want excitement, then build a spaceship and go to Mars. Hey, Elon Musk may have a job for you.

Schumer, Pelosi, and the Nature of Politics

If you needed reminding that there is no politics without an enemy, just take a look at the reaction of Sen. Schumer (D-NY) to Sen. Manchin's decision that he's not supporting the Build Back Better bill in the Senate.

We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act – and we will keep voting on it until we get something done.

In other words, "once more unto the breach, dear friends."

Then there is Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

"We will continue to fight to pass the legislation," Pelosi said. "It must happen and we will do it as soon as we can."

See what I mean? Both Pelosi and Scbumer are talking as though there's a war on.

And in fact that is exactly what the BBB bill is all about: forcing Americans to pay for more social spending for Democratic lower-income constituencies and forcing Americans to pay for more green energy programs.

Because?

Because we must smash systemic racism once and for all.

Because we must transform the energy economy before the planet fries from runaway climate change.

Now, over at National Review they are talking about one-the-one-hand on-the-other-hand politics.

A close election and a narrow majority call for a modest agenda and for some bipartisan policy-making...

But the political psychology of a bitterly partisan time firmly resists modest agendas and bipartisan policy-making.

Trump won a narrow election but pushed the limits on his political agenda; Democrats won a narrow election and are pushing the limits. Both sides think the they was robbed, etc. 

I guess I live on a different planet from the NR guys.

Because I don't experience the present era as two sides fighting over the spoils. I see the current era as the ordinary middle class rebelling against a century of the educated class increasing government spending from 10 percent of GDP to the present 35-40 percent of GDP.

That is to say, the educated class has moved the United States from a society in which about 10 percent of its economy was decided by force to a society in which about 35-40 percent of its economy is decided by force.

Now I would say that, at some point, the ordinary people of a country are going to rebel when their rulers decide 35-40 percent of who gets the moulah. Because, human nature being what it is, the chances are that the rulers will prefer their friends and supporters when it comes to handing out the loot.

I interpret the current Democratic regime as racing to enact as much of their agenda as possible -- damn the torpedoes -- before they are out of power for a generation.

And what I dream of is a ruling class that does not think that a society that decides 35-40 percent of its economy by force is a good thing.

What I dream about is a ruling class that thinks: hmm, I wonder if there is a way to reduce the amount of government force in our lives without, of course, compromising the gloriousness of the most glorious ruling class in world history.

Because, you see, in my view, the problem with big government programs is that you can never change and adapt them. So they go on, plowing along, full speed ahead, until they hit an iceberg.

And it doesn't matter if Captain Biden on the bridge is the smartest guy in a generation, or if the Chief Engineer Pelosi in the engine room really knows steam propulsion like nobody else in the world. If you a blindly steering full speed ahead into a field of icebergs, you are going to have trouble right here in River City.

And then, of course, it's a question of whether there is enough time for everyone to get in the lifeboats before it's too late.

See, I have this weird notion that whenever you do something by force, you are probably Making Things Worse.

I wonder why.

Disinformation, Misinformation, Where Does It End?

The problem with censorship is not the harm it does to conspiracy theorists, regime enemies, racists, sexist, homophobes, and armed insurrectionists, although their sufferings are not to be marginalized.

No, the big problem is that when the regime gets to censor its opponents it gets to do stupid stuff that ends up hurting the ruling class and its power.

Yep, every ruling class wants to control the narrative, and it usually does, because almost all the voices in society want to suck up to power.

For instance, my nickel says that, at the end of the COVID experience, wise heads will nod at the idea that the censoring of critics of the lockdown, vaccination, testing regime will turn out to be a strategic mistake for the ruling class, that ends up damaging it and its reputation.

It seems pretty clear that regime spokesmen like Anthony Fauci have used their power to censor perfectly valid scientific and research opinion. For what, St. Anthony?

Social media like to flag regime-critical posts as "disinformation" and "misinformation." Facebook recently flagged a British Medical Journal article article on a "host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia" a "contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial." Facebook flagged the article as "missing context.. could mislead people." Really, Facebook? Apparently the article was flagged by a Facebook contractor called "Lead Stories." And I am supposed to believe that an outfit I have never heard of is more reliable that the BMJ?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Look it is getting pretty obvious that the censorship on COVID-related reporting is coming around to haunt all the governments of the world. They have turned to massive lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations and suppression of alternative narratives because that is what governments do.

And if they can get away with censoring alternative viewpoints they will do that, because having to answer critics makes their job harder, in the sense that they have to get their messaging to align with the overall message from science, not just the ones that support their messaging and their policy.

This all got into high gear during the ruling class's five year campaign to get rid of Trump, and it clearly extended from the usual Democrat-aligned media to manipulation of search-engine results and social media posts.

In my own case, I found that my government spending site suddenly experienced a cut in traffic by 50 percent on April 2, 2019. I think that on that day Google implemented a search engine policy that promoted known institutions over mere websites. Which is fine, but what if the known institutions are lying? Or just stupid and ignorant? How would you know? By trusting the government? By trusting fact-check sites? By responding to pressure from the White House?

Really, there is no substitute for letting the various political sides, from right-wing conspiracy sites to left-wing activist sites, fight it out in the public square.

Because, you know what? In politics, in culture, in religion, everyone is creating a narrative based on their own particular understanding of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

And if you give people half a chance, they will start to lie, and cover up their mistakes, and silence the opposition, especially when their sacred narrative, their prophecy, starts to fail to provide an accurate and useful picture of the world. Because that's when they get desperate.

And in the end, they will damage their own interest, because they will use their power to censor the opposition in order to cover up their follies and their mistakes.

My own feeling is that censorship of any kind should be illegal except in the case of world war.

And I'm not sure that censorship is a good idea in a world war either.

Why, Dems, Why?

So, the Democrats have decided to put off their gigantic Big Government plan, Build Back Better, until next year. Meanwhile they are going to push their nationwide vote-by-mail election reform bill. Because Democracy.

And we have Our Nance's January 6 committee that is making gigantic demands of cellphone records on Trump aides and staffers, because armed insurrection. Now the aides and staffers are suing.

I must say that all this rush and bustle, to take the fight to the enemy, is a bit puzzling to me.

I refer to the late great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who opined that you don't want to pass a big bill unless it has 70-30 support in the Senate. But you know, I can't find a reference to this in Google Search. Wait, here is a CNN transcript, with David Frum saying:

When President Clinton tried health care reform, Daniel Patrick Moynihan advised him, anything big passes the Senate 70-30, or it doesn't pass at all. The president is turning this into a political war. The Republicans are to blame, too. This is a problem America needs help with. But the parties have to deal in good faith. I am not sure the president is doing that.

Hmmm. Moynihan's point is that you don't want legislation rammed down the throat of the opposition. You want all reasonable people to agree that this is a Good Thing and so have it become part of the All American consensus.

This accords with the basic point in Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. Only they go a bit further. They say that the only just voting system is unanimous consent, because it forces the supporters of a piece of legislation to compensate the opposition for the costs that the legislation imposes upon them.

So, you see, for me, there is a basic practical reason for not ramming things down the throat of the opposition. It is that politics is civil war by other means. In other words, partisans can wrangle and speechify and manipulate in Congress without resorting to "speak, hands for me" as Casca says moments before the assassins plunge the daggers into Julius Caesar.

The point is: if you can't get a supermajority for your proposed legislation then all you are doing is stirring up conflict.

Now, I realize that our liberal friends don't see it that way. They see politics as a fight for justice, and their ideas are the just ideas, and the opposition is nothing but a bunch of racist-sexist-homophobic bigots and haters.

Yes, yes. And do you know, dear liberals, that every war is a just war -- to its warriors. And every religion is a true religion -- to its believers. And every cause is a just cause -- to its activists.

But whatabout the other guys? The chaps on the receiving end of the just war? The chaps on the receiving end of the true religion? The chaps on the receiving end of the just activists? Whatabout them?

Now, it is my belief, after Nazi Carl Schmitt, that politics is the friend enemy distinction. Or, as Curtis Yarvin writes, "there is no politics without an enemy."

You know, dear liberal friends, I don't think that "enemies" is a good idea. Because, as Carl Schmitt writes, when you are talking about enemies you are talking about the possibility of conflict -- and actual killing. Are we really talking about "conflict" with our fellow Americans? Even getting to killing?

Hello liberals?

Is that what you stand for, dear liberal friends, with your faith in politics and justice?

You see, I don't think of my liberal friends, or even BLM/AntiFa activists as "enemies." I think of them as fools and knaves, and I believe they Literally Know Nothing, and that they are unknowingly Making Things Worse.

But actually, I think we are experiencing another proof of God's existence, right now.

Because the Democrats are falling into a hole not because of their stupid Build Back Better or their nationalizing of vote-by-mail, but because of the sudden surge in inflation.

Golly, Democrats, I thought we had that inflation thing beat, what with MMT and all! You don't think that all the racist-sexist-homophobe conservative economists were right after all, that if you print money you get inflation?

Golly Gee Willikins! Ya think?

I mean, to me, the number one thing is Don't Do Stupid Stuff. If you are heaven's anointed, on a holy quest to bend the arc of history towards justice, then surely Job One is: Don't Do Stupid Stuff, like crank inflation up into the stratosphere.

My History of the Last Half Century is:

First, the ordinary American people reacted against LBJ's Great Society and elected Richard Nixon. But the Dems taught him a lesson. Hoo Boy!

Then the ordinary American People reacted against Jimmy Carter's "stagflation" and elected Ronald Reagan president. The Dems tried to teach him a lesson with Iran Contra but didn't quite succeed.

Then the ordinary American People reacted against Barack Obama's big government lurch and elected a GOP Congress and then elected Donald Trump. The Dems taught him a lesson and managed to defeat him in 2020. And impeached him twice in the House and went after his supporters with the January 6 committee.

I wonder what happens next?

Shocked, Shocked by Inflation Explosion

You gotta love our lefty friends, blaming Big Oil and Big Meat for the current inflation explosion.

It would be funny if it weren't so predictable. We get big time inflation in the wake of the Federal Reserve Board printing trillions in the wake of the COVID crisis. And Democrats blame big business.

One of the biggest voices going after Big Meat is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Hey Liz, you were there in 1979 at the height of the previous inflation. You were 30 years old. Do you really mean to tell me that you can pretend that it is all about greedy big business when you actually lived through the 1970s as an adult?

You don't seriously think that solving inflation is a question of complaining to the manager, Sen. Karen?

I must say that, as a man who lived through the 1970s as an adult, I shake my head at the present inflation explosion.

I mean, where are the "experts™ agree" being rammed down our throat by social media? Where are the social media censors on the "disinformation" of the blame-business liars? Where are the wise heads in prominent media telling the politicians that they need to ease up on the loot and plunder for a while until the economy recovers after the COVID meltdown?

Where are the "schientists™ shay" from our noble media? The economists? I mean, this is not rocket science, although it wouldn't hurt to listen to Elon Musk, now would it, Sen. Karen? You print money; you get inflation. Full stop, end of story.

OK. But I get it. There is no politics without an enemy. And when you defeat the enemy you kill his men and you rape his women and you loot and plunder his lands to the bare walls and give the loot to your supporters. Or you pass a Build Back Better Act which puts lipstick on the pig of old-fashioned loot and plunder.

But here's the point. We know better than that. We have knowledge about how the economy works. We know that loot and plunder ravages the economy. We know that FDR's New Deal and its handouts was an economic disaster that extended the Great Depression until World War II made the New Deal lefties use Big Business to supply the tanks and trucks and airplanes for their Crusade to save the world from Nazis and Japs. We know that LBJ's Great Society was a neutron bomb that has irradiated the lower orders in America, in particular blacks.

We know that it was the "amiable dunce" Ronald Reagan that had the courage to back the Federal Reserve to kill inflation and send interest rates up to 18 percent in 1981. Yep, sometimes it takes an "amiable dunce" to do the right thing when the wise heads duck their heads because they don't have the backbone to do the right thing according to the science™.

Well, my fearless forecast is that the Dems are going to be blown out of the water in the next two elections. And it serves them right.

Because you really don't want to eject all non-lefties from the education system. You really don't want to make establishment media a conservative-free zone. You really don't want to stage a cancel culture to shame people that don't adhere to ruling-class political and cultural norms. You really don't want to increase and extend the welfare state. You really don't want to come up with a joke of a theory like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that tells the spenders to go for broke.

Etcetera.

It's a funny thing, but in my version of history, the 1968 Nixon election was the first rejection of lefty big government. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it.

Then Reagan, the "amiable dunce" was elected in 1980. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it.

Then Bush Two was elected in 2000. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it. Bush must have stole it.

Then Trump was elected in 2016. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it. Trump must have colluded with the Russians.

Do you see a common theme running through all this? 

Hmm. I wonder what it is.

Well, I expect that the Democrats will learn their lesson in about ten years, and purge the crazies and tell us that they are New Democrats. And so we will get a moderate like Bill Clinton.

And then a new generation will arise that knew not the stupidities of the 2020s, like we now have a generation like AOC that knows not the stupidities of the Sixties and Seventies.

And "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." Shakespeare, dontcha know.

Religious, Legal: How Different from the Political?

Ever since reading Nazi Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political, that reduces to Curtis Yarvin's maxim that "there is no politics without an enemy," I have been thinking about the other social distinctions. But first, Schmitt on politics:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

But whatabout the others? Schmitt mentions various others, "moral, aesthetic, and economic." The distinction in the moral is between "good and evil" and in the aesthetic between "beautiful and ugly," and in the economic between "useful and harmful, or, for example, profitable and unprofitable." I think we need a table.

Social Category	Positive	Negative
Political	Friend	Enemy
Moral	Good	Evil
[Religious]	[God]	[Satan]
[Law]	Legal	Illegal
Aesthetic	Beautiful	Ugly
Economic	Useful	Harmful
Economic	Profitable	Unprofitable
Economic	[Collaborator]	Competitor

Note that I have inserted some ideas of my own -- with square brackets -- in respect of the religious. And in respect of an economic collaborator. Schmitt makes it clear that "enemy" in the political sense is a public, or collective, enemy.

In Section VIII of The Concept of the Political Schmitt criticizes "liberal thought" for trying to imagine that the political is not really about friend vs. enemy. "The enemy is no longer called the enemy but in return he is set up as a threat to peace[.]" In other words, "liberal thought" confuses the issue of the political and the enemy. Schmitt thinks that

Liberalism does not radically deny the state, but on the other hand it has not found a positive theory of state or its own state reform, but only sought to sequester the political on the basis of ethics, and to subject the political to the economic; it has created a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e., a system of checks and balances of the state that cannot be called a state theory or a constructive political principle.

 So what does all this mean when it's at home?

I think it means that the political is the biggie. If there is a political issue then nothing else matters. There is an enemy, and everything is secondary to the question of the enemy.

But then we get to the problem that, on the one hand the "liberal thought" of the Enlightenment wanted to bury the political in its doctrine that there really is no issue that makes us think of the "other" as the enemy. And there is the left that reduces all questions to the political, and thus to the friend / enemy distinction, and thus reduces everything to a fight with the enemy.

And there is the critique of Buckley conservatism, that it amounted to a rhetorical standing aside history shouting Stop, when it should have considered the Left as an actual enemy, against whom conflict was possible, as with the Soviet Union.

So, I would say that all the lines in the table above, other than the political, are questions of social distinctions for man-the-social-animal once the question of the enemy has been dealt with, and the enemy has been defeated; they are all disagreements about values, and good-vs-bad behavior.

But is the left really all about the political and the definition of the "other" as the enemy? It is interesting that the left always plays at conflict, as with its "activism" as a stand-in for revolution. As I say, the left's activism is really play-acting at revolution, as the medieval romances were play-acting at rough-tough feudal lords when the lords had become soft courtiers and needed the nostalgic recollection of the bad old days when men were men, and would just as soon cut off a chap's head before breakfast as eat a haunch of venison.

And when the left is in power, whether in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, or today when the woke left is in power in the US, it treats the populace not quite as enemies, but definitely as subhumans -- slaves really -- who need regular applications of the cowhide whip.

I wonder: should we call the left's bluff, and suggest that if they are really serious about revolution and the elimination of white supremacists and armed insurrectionists they should put their money where their mouth is.

Now, I like to say that the Age of the Political is over, in that I don't believe that the "other" is ever really an enemy since life on this Earth is no longer about securing food-growing land against other claimants for said food-growing land.

But I understand that there are bound to be reactionaries that still hanker for the good old days of enemies and revenge, and want to drive their enemies before them and hear the lamentation of their women.

It still comes down to the question, of how to deal with lefties that think of us as the enemy while we think of them as spoiled brats.

The Unbearable Whiteness of "The Nutcracker"

I was to a live performance of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker on Sunday and, of course, the lead child actors were black. And there were a couple of blacks in the corps de ballet.

But, sensitized as I am to all matters racial and cultural, I gotta say: The Nutcracker is as white as white can be. The first act takes place at a Christmas party in a very haute bourgeois household. And the girls get nice dollies as presents and the boys get to act like boys, playing at soldiers, and ambushing the girls as they play with their dollies.

Then, in the second act, we get a prime example of Edward Said's Orientalism, or non-European as exotic. Strictly speaking, we are talking about various sweets in the Land of the Sweets. So there is Spanish Chocolate, Arabian Coffee, Chinese Tea, Russian Candy Cane. Then Mother Ginger and Marzipan.

Yes, but whatabout South Asian Spice, and African fruits? How come they don't get a dance? Raciss!

The other takeaway for me, now I am so sensitized to everything, is that ballet, at its high noon with the classic Tchaikovsky ballets, is nothing but a display of the female form. The pas de deux seems to be designed to show off the prima ballerina's legs. The corps de ballet is a throng of pubescent girls fluttering around. The tutu is, again, displaying the legs of the female dancer.

And so on.

So I went and looked up ballet at La Wik. It started in the courts of the Italian Renaissance, featuring noble amateur dancers, and then spread to France with Catherine de Medici. It reached its peak under Louis XIV with a formal court ballet with a court ballet master and the five positions. Then it declined after 1830 in France until revived by the Russians. I seem to remember reading that in Paris, the ballet dancers of the Paris Opera were "available" to the various rich patrons.

I was reading about how San Francisco's Great Dickens Christmas Fair has descended into racial madness. It seems that some nice black ladies got involved and then brought their race politics with them. They want racial quotas for everything except that BIPOC characters can only be represented by BIPOC people.

I dare say that the same thing will soon apply to ballet and the Xmas Nutcrackers that are featured every Christmas in all our major cities.

It's amusing, really. Because ballet is such a whitey-white thing (as is Dickens). Everyone wants in on the white things, and then they want to bring their anti-white racism with them.

If I may be permitted to extend the dance metaphor just one step more...

Don't you realize you wokies and BIPOCs and all the ships at sea? You are not dancing to your own authentic dance tradition. You are dancing like marionettes, and ruling-class educated white liberals are pulling the strings.

And as I say with my Little Darlings notion, One Fine Day you will wake up and find the bed empty, because your ruling class Sugar Daddy has found a new Little Darling to pamper and exploit.