"Death March Through the Institutions"

Back in the day lefty icon Antonio Gramsci developed the idea of "the march through the institutions." The left would win by seeding and reseeding all politically related institutions with its supporters.

And then Justice!

The problem with this tactic is: suppose you are wrong? Suppose your brilliant plans to create justice on Earth are flawed? Suppose that, instead of creating Justice your ideas create Injustice?

How would you know? What would you do about it, given that everyone in The Institutions is now a card-carrying leftist?

Of course, we know what happens. You kill the institutions, as in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. And then what?

Then, as Scott McKay says at American Spectator, you have a "Death March through the Institutions."

The fact is that human society, like everything else in nature, is a work in progress, and the one thing it needs to do is correct mistakes, because life, the universe, and everything is one mistake, one disaster, after another.

But leftism, and government in general is a one-way bet. What is government designed for? It is designed to mobilize all resources to fight the enemy. And if it is defeated, it's the end of the government. Another regime takes its place.

Government is like debt. If you borrow money, say on a house, you are making the bet that you will keep your job and that house prices will not go down. If you are right, then life continues as usual. If you are wrong, then you lose everything. Governments, like debtors, put all their eggs in one basket. And that is not a good idea unless you are facing an existential peril and you are facing a choice of life or death, fight or be annihilated.

We have seen how the government applied this tactic to the COVID epidemic. Wear masks or we die. Lockdown or we die. Get vaccinated or we die. No wait! Today the CEO of Pfizer says, oh wow, maybe two jabs and a booster ain't enough. What? I thought you experts said that...

Well, so do-or-die isn't quite the right response in a complicated evolving situation like COVID..

Now, the miracle of the market economy is that it is an emergent, self-correcting phenomenon. The various actors make one mistake after another, but the prices tell you when you made a mistake, and you'd better fix it or you are out of business. The point is that even prices are always wrong. Today's stock prices? Tomorrow they are history, and the market will go up or it will go down, because the market is looking at the future through a glass, darkly, and every day is a new day.

Funny thing, isn't it. With religions and political systems and government the last thing you ever do is admit a mistake.

But the way to survive life is to be adaptable. Except when you are under attack from the Mongols or the Nazis.

But that's not what our lefty friends know. They live a life where they know they are under attack from systemic racism. They know that if they march through the institutions and purge the eevil racist-sexist-homophobes from power and then, then they can bend the arc of history towards justice.

OK. And then what, lefties?

It's Not Just a Political Malaise

Yes, everyone knows that politics in the US is broken. And the other guys are to blame.

But I believe in Downstreamism, from the famous Breitbart dictum that politics is downstream from culture.

I believe more than that. I believe that politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion is downstream from the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

I go further than that. I agree with Kant that we cannot know "things-in-themselves," but only appearances. We spend our lives trying to figure out what the "things-in-themselves" are. Today the question is: are they atoms, aub-atomic particles, waves, probabilities, multiverses?

The fact is that all our fabuloso math and science and philosophy and religion don't tell us. So we make it up.

Thus every theory about the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" -- the "things-in-themselves" -- is really a hot mess. It gets some things right and a bunch of other things wrong.

And every institutionalization of some theory of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" is also a hot mess. As in churches, sects, political parties, ruling classes, corporations, families, marriages.

The eternal problem is this: when something is going wrong, how do you fix it?

When your marriage is going wrong, when your kid is going wrong, when your career is going wrong, when your business is going wrong, what do you do about it?

And when you get to governments, political parties, religions, the problem is even bigger because big-time institutions are designed to resist change. In fact, change to governments, political parties and religions usually involves war and the associated butcher's bill.

I would say that the current political crisis in the US -- and elsewhere in the western world -- is about the fact that the political ideology of the last 200  years has reached its sell-by date. I would say that problem is that there is a profound disconnect with the faith of the educated ruling class, that its knowledge and wisdom and power are the right combination to rule modern human society, and the reality that all government is a war against some enemy and the distribution of spoils among the supporters. And that war and spoils is always a net negative.

I would say that the current social crisis in the United States -- that involves among other things the white working class "dying of despair" and heightened deaths by drug overdose -- is a consequence of the culture of our ruling class. Charles Murray in his Coming Apart shows how, for white America, things are pretty good for the intellectual elite, but not so good for the middle middle. And at the bottom the men don't work much and the women don't marry much. Ron Unz has a sprawling article about all this at his web site, starting with the fact that the death rate for US whites age 45-54 has gone up in the last 20 years while the death rate for US Hispanics aged 45-54 has gone down. Maybe the sharply increased death rate from "poisonings" has something to do with this.

The fact is that our educated ruling class has imposed its religion and culture on the rest of America and it is Making Things Worse. I think that the welfare state is a reason for this; the size of government and government regulation as well; the culture of women's liberation -- women entering careers and politics and sexual license just like men -- that assumes that women want to live in the public square is a wrong turn; the attack on middle-class religion is a brutal Reign of Terror.

And I believe that the ruling class's religious quest to transform the energy economy and the fight "systemic racism" are galloping disasters that will rapidly Make Things Worse.

I also believe that the educated ruling class believes in a false religion, that educated people are called by history to bend the arc of history towards justice, and everybody else should do what they are told. Problem is, I believe, that when you use government to bend the arc of history towards justice what you get is injustice. Always and everywhere, don't you think Stalin and Mao?

Yes, but what do we do about it?

Well, it starts with a new understanding of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" for our educated gentry, the present ruling class.

The idea is quite simple. The educated gentry must stop thinking of themselves as cultural and political metropolitans called to rule and correct the world for its sins. Instead they must think of themselves as humble sacrificial heroes, that sacrifice their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor on the border between Order and Chaos. Do you see the difference? It means that the magnificent Names that strut across the political and cultural stage will be thought of as second-rate poseurs. The true heroes will be people that struggle all their lives trying the make the world around them a bit better, knowing that most of the time their efforts may well be mistaken, probably won't make any difference, and nobody will ever know about them.

We can't have mega governments creating a loot and plunder operation out of 30 to 40 percent of the economy. We can't have lifer unionized women teachers teaching our children. We can't have health care cramped into government-directed corporate-driven systems like the present. We can't have government welfare administrators doling out loot to the poor and smashing the family to smithereens.

But it starts with the devaluing of politics down to a dull roar. Because there is no politics without an enemy; and there is no peace unless politics and its war on enemies is downgraded into a low-status activity that no well-born person would dream of descending to. And that no well-born person would truckle to any politician.

Somehow, we have to turn politics into a form of sports. But I don't know how to do it, because I'm not a genius.

The Strategic Error of Canceling Donald Trump

As I understand it, from reports on comments by regime operatives like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the whole point of the January 6 worse-than-Pearl-Harbor effort is to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president in 2024.

To which I say, be my guest. Throw me in the briar patch.

Because I think that disqualifying Donald Trump as per the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 is a stupid idea:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress...  or hold any office... who.., shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. 

See why they are bellowing about "armed insurrection?" 

Wanna know why I think that the Dems are making a big mistake?

Because the big problem for racist-sexist-homophobes like me right now is: what happens when Trump and DeSantis both go for the presidency in 2024?

Gosh. If you were leaning to DeSantis, like me, it sure would help matters if Trump were disqualified and DeSantis could rage up and down the country declaiming against the monstrous injustice of disqualifying a candidate for president just because one of his supporters dressed up in a funny hat.

So if I were Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and all the Democratic ships at sea, I would love to have a Trump - DeSantis fight to the death! Maybe they could divide the Republican Party for the next ten years!

But if DeSantis were running unopposed and bellowing about the monstrous injustice to Donald Trump to the reverberate hills, what's not to like?

See, I think the horse has left the barn on populist-nationalist politics. Donald Trump discovered the vein of political gold: how to appeal to the broad middle class who live a sensible life of work and family. This was the problem of Republican candidates ever since the Democrats abandoned the white working class in the 1960s.

But now the problem is solved! Trump solved it, and all Republican candidates have to do is follow his lead while not triggering educated suburban moms that don't like loud boastful men. And my grandfather would say, "it's all over bar shouting."

Still, I appreciate what our Democratic friends are trying to do. By trying to make January 6 a December 7 or 9/11 moment -- or Gulf of Tonkin moment -- they are trying to call America to arms. That's what politicians to: define the enemy, and rally the nation to fight the foe.

Only, I don't think things are gong to work out for them in the way they think. For one thing, think of the optics. Pearl Harbor: billowing smoke, capsized battleships. Twin Towers: billowing smoke, people throwing themselves out of windows. Capitol Riot: chappie with a crazy hat.

Also, I don't suppose they have really thought this through. In his Pearl Harbor speech, President Roosevelt was calling the whole nation to arms. But the Democrats are calling their partisans to arms.

Do they really want to be rallying their supporters to a civil war?

I just don't think they have thought this through.

January 6 and Regime Narrative

If you are an  unrepentant wrecker and saboteur like me -- but not an armed insurrectionist, oh no! -- you marvel at the ability of our beloved ruling class to run the Narrative.

If only, you think.

For over two hundred years, our intellectual and educated friends have glorified revolution and rebellion against the eevil ruling class, whether powdered French aristocrats or greedy bourgeois merchants and capitalists and white racists.

And in 2020, of course, we had a glorious ruling-class approval of riot and looting in the aftermath of the publicized death of petty thief and drugged-out George Floyd.

But now, we are to believe, the riot and penetration of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was the worst thing ever. Right up there with Pearl Harbor and 9/11, according to Vice President Harris.

Yep. when you are the ruling class you get to set the Narrative. And all the regime apologists fall into line, repeating the meme of  day. And great fun it is, as the sainted Rush Limbaugh would illustrate with a tape of half-a-dozen media celebrities parroting the Party Line of the day.

Truth is, you can't beat the Ruling Class Narrative. If the Narrative says that climate change and systemic racism are the two worst things ever, then that's the way it is. There is not a lot you can do about it until the Narrative collides with reality, Big Time.

For instance, I don't think that climate change goes the way of the dodo until we have major electric system blackouts from wind and solar failure, and ordinary people rise up in helpless rage at their sky-rocketing energy bills.

And systemic racism? Maybe it takes a combination of East Asian Tiger Moms that want university places for their children and Latinos that just want jobs, homes, and health care. Oh, and blacks that, at some point 50 year too late, realize that They Was Robbed by ruling-class anti-racism.

But in the short term, I suspect the January 6 Narrative is going to be left in the dust by barreling inflation reflected in crazy supermarket prices and sky-rocketing gas bills and electricity bills.

As a wise Democratic operative once said: "It's the Economy, Stupid."

See, I think that if we had a wise ruling class it would operate according to Rule One: The Economy. Rule Two: Cool Your Jets.

Thus it would keep all the activist rubbish down to a dull roar. Yes, there would be teensy subsidies so college professors and liberal ladies could buy electric cars. But the average guy could still fill up his pickup truck for less than an arm and a leg. Yes, liberal activists would peacefully protest and DEI administrators would make a good living from systemic racism. But the average person wouldn't find out to their horror that their kid was being taught "equity" in grade school. In other words, the sensible thing is an America where nice liberal ladies can pat themselves on the back as they shop at Whole Foods and buy fair-trade coffee, while average people shop at Kroger and buy Dunkin' Donuts coffee. For a whole lot less.

But a ruling class can never do this. That's because of the basic truth of politics, that politics needs an enemy. So ruling classes instinctively identify and lead their followers to war against some enemy. It's in the genes.

And wars tend to bleed the country dry, of young men and of prosperity.

If you go to war, you'd better win. If you come up with anything less than glorious victory, dear ruling class, you will probably get replaced. And a lot of victories can look like something less than glorious to the ordinary person. For instance, the whole COVID thing is starting to stink, and if you are an ordinary person and your ordinary job or ordinary business got hammered by the Laptop Class, you may be just a little bit angry.

So go ahead, ruling class, have a big party to mourn the horror of January 6.

But don't forget to keep your powder dry, and don't forget Rule One: The Economy.

The Old Regime Doesn't End Until It's Screwed Up Big Time

We armed insurrectionists complain away about Republican leaders as wimps and toadies, without backbones and cojones. They really don't represent us, we complain; they are as wedded to the system as the Democrats.

But I think we peasants protest too much. I don't think the current regime and its administrative state goes away until it screws up big time. The Zman recognizes this when he says.

[C]an the administrative state survive its own failures. A bad king in a monarchy can be replaced by the next in line. The bad office holder in a republic can voted out of office in favor of someone new. What happens when vast swaths of the administrative state have become gangrenous? How is that addressed. How are the rotten bits removed and who is given the authority to remove them?

That, of course, is the question addressed by Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. The whole point of the administrative state is that "we, the educated" get to rule and you peasants just do what you are told.

Yes, yes. But what happens when the administrative state changes its orders every other month and doesn't seem to know what it is doing? As seems to happen with the COVID crisis?

It is only then, to use a concept from our liberal friends, is when you get the opportunity for Real Change. 

Or, over at American Greatness Benjamin Braddock calls out the right "to stop being rank amateurs when it comes to politics and governance."

Yes but. I don't think the right has a chance to interfere with the current regime until the regime's politics and governance is shown to be a pathetic failure. As in a couple of years of 10 percent inflation. As in a couple of years of twerpy cock-ups on the COVID front.

And this is where, as Bismarck apparently did not say: "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America."

Really, if God wanted a spot of regime change in the United States what would He do? I think He would arrange for a senile lightweight to become president during a time when the US really needed a chap with a bit of grey stuff in his noddle. And He would arrange for a 50-50 Senate and a Majority Leader like Chuck Schumer that doesn't seem to be that good at convincing his Republican opposition to get with the program but prefers instead to threaten everyone. And He would have Nancy Pelosi -- who started out adult life doing jobs for Daddy in the D'Alesandro political machine. and has never had a real job -- as Speaker of the House and using her power to prey on the opposition.

But you don't get Real Change until the old regime runs out of money and really starts to screw over ordinary people. In normal times the ruling class does stupid things -- like green energy, for example -- but it doesn't really hit ordinary people in the pocket book good and hard. So, even though ordinary people don't see the point of giving up their pickup trucks for electric cars and bikes, nothing happens to stop the ruling class in its silliness.

But then it all hits at once. Gas prices go through the ceiling as the regulatory monster shuts off oil exploration and transportation. Green energy checks out for a couple days because no wind and/or no sun and natural gas prices go through the ceiling. And refineries stop producing urea, because natural gas prices. Urea? Yep, urea is a "feedstock" for all kinds of things from fertilizer to plastics. 

I was there in the 1970s, and I remember how ordinary people were really riled up by spiking electricity prices and gas lines.

But things have to go wrong before we can set them right. Like Education. Education has been going downhill for decades, captured by teacher unions and by all kinds of special-interest pandering and general ruling-class conceit about "we know best." Hey, but when teachers say, oh dear, I'm too stressed to go to work because COVID, and parents suddenly find out about critical race theory in the schools, then maybe there is an opportunity to go to some kind of school-choice. And even liberal gay Colorado Gov. Polis reminds us he's all for school choice.

But you can't change things until they break. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But I wish it weren't like that.

Senator: Don't Do It!

Here is the long form of an email I am sending to my Washington State Senators Murray and Cantwell.

Dear Senator:

I am writing to urge you to get your Democratic caucus not to go ahead on the Build Back Better bill or the proposed voting rights legislation -- the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Look, I get that, if these bills come up for a vote, you will vote for it. You know which side your bread is buttered. But in the Senate cloakroom, or wherever it is that Senators get together these days...

I think that passing these items would in fact blow back on Democrats and energize Republican voters in the 2022 and 2024 elections. "Backlash" they called it back in the day.

I urge you not to pass the Build Back Better bill because the nation is right now headed into a hell scape of inflation brought on by the remarkable money creation done by the Federal Reserve System during the COVID emergency. Hey, last time we had big-time inflation and big-time interest rates in the 1970s the gross federal debt was 31 percent of GDP. You could look it up on usgovernmentspending.com. Today, the debt is over 100 percent of GDP. Imagine what would happen to federal debt payments if interest rates on the debt went to 7 percent or more from the present 0.5 percent to 2.01 percent. What would happen to Social Security payments? What would happen to Medicare? What would happen to Democratic elected officials?

The sooner that the political system -- that means you, Senator -- starts to fight the unfolding inflation the better for the American people and for Democrats. The inflation and consequent increase in interest rates are going to make the Crash of 2008 look like a walk in the park. And the longer you guys put it off, the worse it is going to get.

And the worse it is going to get for Democrats, because all this is happening on your watch.

So: you need to have stopped COVID-related stimulus six months ago. Good luck, Senator.

I urge you not to pass the two voting-rights bills, and certainly not by suspending or eliminating the Senate filibuster.

Yes, I know, all good people know that the Senate filibuster is associated with Jim Crow Southern Democrats blocking needed civil-rights legislation.

But then there is Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He argued, according to David Frum writing in 1999, that you don't want to pass significant legislation by one vote.

When Ira Magaziner dreamed up his intricate health-care reform, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned him that bold new policy departures pass the U.S. Senate by a 70-30 margin or they don't pass at all. In the Reagan era, Social Security tinkerers like David Stockman met with disaster for the same reason: They tried to alter the system suddenly and surreptitiously.

Sen. Moynihan wasn't saying that you can't pass stuff by one vote. He was saying that you will live to regret it, that "bold new policy departures" need broad support all across the political landscape, or they produce a blowback. He said that "alter[ing] the system suddenly and surreptitiously" doesn't work.

Sen. Moynihan would advise the Democrats of this time that when you propose to transform the economy with green energy, you'd better get a national consensus on it. When you want to transform the voting system, you'd better get almost universal buy-in. Or you'll regret it.

Then there is the "science." If you have ever read The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock you will know that, after a book full of discussion and analysis, they argue that the only just process for passing legislation is to pass it by unanimous consent.

Why would that be? Because unanimous consent forces the proponents of legislation to pay for the costs to be experienced by the opponents. In other words, every piece of legislation is typically experienced by its opponents as straight-up injustice, and the only way to get around that is to pay the opponents, to compensate them for the taxes or fees they will have to pay without getting any benefit. Reparations, you might call it.

I remember the day that HillaryCare died in 1994. I was driving home from work on the Ship Canal Bridge in Seattle listening to NPR and the host opined, sadly, as how the average American didn't like HillaryCare because she already had health insurance. That, of course, is why President Obama assured us in 2009 that his ObamaCare would reduce our health care costs. Fortunately, that was in the good old days before Donald Trump started lying to us, so no harm no foul.

Look, I'm a racist-sexist-homophobe, one of the worst sort on the planet. But at least I have the decency to plead with you before you do something really stupid.

Forget the Build Back Better bill; forget the voting-rights legislation. Take your lumps in the 2022 and 2024 elections. And I promise you, Senator, that by 2026 or 2030 the American people will decide it is Time for a Change.

Sincerely, 

Christopher Chantrill

Jan 6: They Don't Like It Up Them

On January 1, 2022, The New York Times published a mournful editorial about the January 6 riots from last year: "Every Day is Jan. 6 Now." Interestingly, the article URL contains the text "january-6-attack-committee."

It's worth reading because it rehearses every regime talking point you can imagine, and a few you hadn't thought of.

But really, as a racist-sexist-homophobe of the worst kind, I have to ask: where were you lordly lords at The New York Times for the last 50 years, where our rulers Newspeaked the language of riots and killing to speak of street violence by groups favored by the regime as "demonstrations", "protests", "peaceful protests." While calling an ordinary riot by regime opponents an "armed insurrection."

And it's a "tell" to speak of the January 6 Committee as a "bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives" and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) as "one of the vanishingly few Republicans in Congress who remain committed to empirical reality and representative democracy" tells us hicks a heck of a lot more about the regime's sanity than it tells your loyal liberal readers about the mournful state of the world, NYT.

"Empirical reality"? What? Why that's the most racist-sexist-homophobic white supremacist thing I've read in a while. Don't you know it's "lived experience" now, NYT? Go ask Nikole Hannah-Jones if you are confused.

Like I say. the editorial is a "tell." It tells us that the knightly knights of our regime are scared. They are looking at America and don't feel confident, don't feel in charge, as in the olden time. There are strange and frightful stirrings that just don't make sense to the good Americans that read The New York Times.

Or, as Corporal Jones is wont to say in Dad's Army, "they don't like it up them."

Yep. It's one thing to have The Kidz protesting the Vietnam War in the Sixties, and Negroes burning down Detroit. And it's OK for AntiFa to ruin Portland, Oregon. But oh dear, the very idea of ordinary Americans flooding through the Capitol, that until yesterday we all thought was safely protected with tilt-up vehicle barriers as far as the eye could see...

In a way, the NYT's quivering concern is comical. Whaddya think politics is all about, NYT? Maybe you should do a bit of reading. Politics is always on the edge of violence. The whole point of political rallies and demonstrations and "peaceful protests" is to do a show of force, as in, "this is how many people we can put into the streets today. Next time it may not be so peaceful."

If you do not understand that, NYT, then you need to get another job.

See, NYT, if you guys and gals had half a brain you might wonder why it is that the Republican Party has gone off the rails of nice NYT respectability. It could be that the party has been taken over by a cult of mad racist-sexist-homophobes. Or it could be that Republican elected officials have been responding to an organic movement of Americans that feel the current regime is unjust and illegitimate.

But which is it? If it is the first, then you can lock 'em all up and let them rot in jail. But if the currents in the GOP represent a genuine organic response to an experience of injustice among a large section of society, then maybe a wise ruling class should pay attention.

If you have read a chap like Gaetano Mosca and his book The Ruling Class you will have noted that he doesn't think that the ruled should just be pushed around by the rulers. He is conscious that the ruled need to be managed, and that the rulers need to understand what ordinary people are thinking and feeling. Indeed, he writes that a good ruling class should promote people from below to refresh itself.

I don't see any of the notions from Mosca in NYT rhetoric. I wonder why.

Of course, NYT, if you read my stuff you would understand what is going on. You would nod at my maxim "there is no such thing as justice, only injustice." You would understand the import of "Government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters." You would flinch a little at the truth of "Government is force plus loot and plunder."

And, having read Carl Schmitt and The Concept of the Political you would be haunted by his notion that the political is the friend-enemy distinction, that Curtis Yarvin reduces to "there is no politics without an enemy."

See, NYT, the more government, the more that the rulers are taxing people to give money to other people. You think that maybe a few people would think that is unjust? How would you know?

And, for you chaps to sit there in your skyscraper and be shocked, shocked that there are people that disagree with you and are organizing politically to Do Something about it betrays a tragic -- or comical -- lack of awareness.

You chaps really should get out more. I'm available for coffee most days.