Lefties Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Well. President Biden goes to New York City and says the whole problem with violent crime is gun shops in other states.

The Justice Department is sending additional prosecutorial resources to help shut down what’s referred to, as you all know, the iron pipeline that funnels guns from shops in states like Georgia, crime scenes in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and so many other places[.]

'Cos you cain't buy a gun in New York City. No Sir. And people wouldn't be getting shot if only the "ghost guns" weren't sneaking into NYC by the back door.

Or, here's a lefty book that says that Ronald Reagan was a racist. No, no, no, writes Paul Kengor, a Reagan biographer: one of Reagan's best friends was black. No doubt, but Reagan was still a racist dog-whistler, don'tcha know.

Actually, the lefty has a point. The whole point of lefty race politics since the Civil Rights era is that ordinary middle-class whites have to pay. And if they object, they are racists. And if a politician arises that rallies the middle-class/working-class whites, he's a racist dog-whistler. That goes for Nixon, Reagan, Trump. And my liberal neighbors already hate Ron DeSantis.

On the other hand, here's the FBIs raiding an operation, Feeding Our Future, that appears to have been scamming the federal school lunch program in Minnesota to the tune of $244 million. Apparently, the head of Feeding our Future regards the whole thing as an attack on the Somali community.

Look. The way to understand all this is that the whole lefty program is on fire. It doesn't work. It never worked. That's because top-down government is good for only one thing: military conquest. And the point of the top-down thing in the military is to force the young men to sacrifice their lives without rebelling against the generals and nobles and kings that issue the orders.

If you are not conquering something and driving the men before you and listening to the lamentation of the women, then politics ain't working for you.

Because politics come down to fighting an enemy -- it could be Commies, Fascists, greedy bankers, far-right racists, dog-whistlers -- and then handing out loot to the supporters. And that is all. Everything else is window dressing.

Thus, people in receipt of loot and plunder are just sitting there, cashing checks and buying luxury items. Like the folks at Feeding Our Future. What they are not doing is contributing to the economy.

If they are not quite in the top tier, they are getting gubmint checks and doing some king of illegal grift on the side. I remember a comment in the Wall Street Journal after the welfare reform in the 1990s. Oh, said this black lady. We always worked, but under the old welfare rules we got the checks and worked off the books. Then there was the guy with a construction business that hired people off the books. When he went broke the state got involved, because it wanted its back taxes.

One of the off-the-books employees was claiming unemployment as he worked of the books, and another was claiming disability as he worked off the books.

No kidding. Why, that's racism straight up!

OK. Let's review all this.

President Biden and guns. Hey, Mr. President. If everyone is getting a check on the one hand, and doing some sort of a scam on the other, then the general illegality is going to mean that they aren't going to want the cops around too much. And that means that they will be doing their own law enforcement, gang to gang, gun to gun. And if the guns aren't avaiable at the gun shop on the corner then any aspiring rapper that won't stand for any dissing is going to get a gun from somewhere else.

Guess what. If the black community has developed a culture of gubmint checks and off-the-books side hustles, then they ain't gonna be getting ahead in the ordinary economy where you get a job and pay taxes and expect law enforcement to take care of the crooks. 

And all this is a consequence of liberal policy. Because when you enroll the lower class in all kinds of free money programs, then you create people whose whole lives are organized around how to qualify for the free money and how to scam the free-money programs with side hustles.

I'm here to say that I don't think it is a very good idea. Is that racist of me, dear liberal friends? Too bad. It's still your fault.

And when, after 70 years, Social Security is running out of money, that's liberals' fault.

When after 50 years, 70 percent of black kids are born out of wedlock, because, among other things, you can't get welfare if you are married, that's liberals' fault.

When the black-on-black murder rate is ten times the white murder rate, that's not because of guns from out of town. It is because lower-class gangs live by violence, and they always have. In Britland, which has strict gun control, there are still plenty of Muslim gangbangers that get access to guns. Supply and demand, don'tcha know.

But liberals will never admit they were wrong. People in politics never admit they were wrong. The only thing you do with people in politics is you show them the door. Time for a Change. Old chap.

Great Rebellion Reaches Canada

 So now the Great Rebellion has hit Canada, with the truckers staging a peaceful protest in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, on Parliament Hill.

Naturally, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has accused the peaceful protesters of being the worst people in the world:

Today in the House, Members of Parliament unanimously condemned the antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days. Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.

Really, Mr Prime Minister? Really?

Translation: We, the allies -- educated, the evolved, the elite -- are fighting for the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors. 

By the way, the Allies narrative has three lies. 

First of all, who gets to say they are Allies? The educated ruling class, like any ruling class, is in politics for the power. The allies, if they are allies, are the lower class whose support the rulers buy with programs and entitlements. 

Second, the oppressed peoples are not really oppressed. They are the Little Darlings of the ruling class and, far from being oppressed, enjoy perquisites and privileges, as the mistresses of powerful men have enjoyed down the ages. 

Third,  the white oppressors are ordinary middle-class whites, with no particular skills, no particular privileges, and no particular interest in politics.

But you can see the point of the Allies narrative, particularly as expressed by Prime Minister Trudeau in his tweet. It communicates the political formula of today's ruling class. We enlightened rulers are the only thing between survival and utter annihilation for Jews, Muslims, blacks, and LGBTs. Hey, whatabout women, Justin, old pal? Ain't there no sexism in the world any more?

Put it this way: without the lie that the present educated ruling class does it all for the benefit of the oppressed, what would be the point of them? Other than the ruling class looks after its own? But hey, every ruling class does that.

In my view, the reason for the Canadian Trucker Rebellion -- and the Tea Party, and the Trump Train,  the Brexit Brits, and the French gilets jaunes -- is that the current ruling class of educated professionals rules without thinking about the impact its programs and policies will have upon ordinary middle-class people.

So, we have seen the notion during the current COVID experience that, for the Laptop class who can work anywhere as long as they have access to the internet, the maskings and lockdowns are a minor annoyance. But for people who have to attend to work at a workplace or in a public place, or interact with the administrative state, things are a lot different. As in really painful.

There is another point, and that is that the ruling class rules on the assumption that it knows what is best for the lower class, because Allies. Not that the rulers ever asked the lower classes, except to ask them if they wanted loot. And I say that the politics and programs instituted over the last century and more by the ruling class for the benefit of the lower class has Made Things Worse for the lower class.

Yes, of course the ruling class knows what is best for the ruling class and takes care to fluff its pillows of an evening.

And the ruling class can ignore the needs and the aspirations of the ordinary middle class, if that is its fancy. And it can demonize the middle class as the enemy. There is no politics without an enemy.

And the ruling class can indulge its fancy that it knows what is best for the lower class.

But what if the middle class just can't take being ignored and demonized any more?

And what if the old white working class is dying of despair?

And what if the lower class lives in unendurable chaos because of the conceited programs and entitlements designed and administered by the educated ruling class that in real life actually Make Things Worse for the lower class?

What if the ruling class runs the national debt up to 150 percent of GDP and there is no longer enough money to run all the entitlement programs and also to pay the high interest rates needed to fight inflation?

I'd say that the result of all that is what they used to call Trouble in the Balkans.

Enough of Enemies; Enough of Loot and Plunder!

The fact is that one of the instinctive roles of male humans is to defend the territory. Because the territory has food on it. Defending the territory and its food is a matter of life and death.

But, since the Industrial Revolution food is something humans buy with money. Therefore, access to or control of food-bearing territory is not a matter of life and death.

If we apply Nazi Carl Schmitt's dictum that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy, we can see that it used to make complete sense. Friend is someone that shares the food-bearing territory and fights to defend it; enemy is someone threatening to take away our food-bearing territory.

So when, e.g., Frederick the Great of Brandenburg invaded Silesia in 1740 it was not about defending Brandenburg's food-growing territory but it was about increasing the area of food-growing territory over which Fred could rule and tax. It worked out well for Our Fred, and he was a decent flute player that liked to play music of an evening. Of course, it could be that he sent the wrong message to the future rulers of Germany.

Then came the Industrial Revolution.

Then came Stalin. He starved the peasants of the Ukraine so he could buy industrial equipment from the West. Way to go, Joe.

Then came Adolf Hitler. He believed that Germany needed Lebensraum to grow food for its people. In the East. But Germany was an industrial nation that could buy its food as long as it wasn't in a world war.

Not a good idea, Adolf.

Now, of course, ever since World War II, our global elite has decided that nations and national leaders are literally Hitler, and it is their sacred duty to stop Literally Hitlers anywhere they rear their mustachioed heads.

But, our global leaders are still acting like male humans defending their territory. All across the world leaders during the late COVID emergency have been acting like male humans defending territory, issuing orders to the troops -- er, ordinary citizens -- to keep in line, to wear their uniform masks, get their vaccinations. Or else go to the brig. Just like the GIs in World War II.

And after the War on COVID our leaders are proposing to bravely lead us to Build Back Better with a whole raft of programs to dish benefits out to the people. And mobilize for the Next World War, the Green New Deal that will decarbonize the world before it's too late.

Needless to say, those that get on board with the new World War Green will be handsomely rewarded. Others will pay for their armed insurrection.

The thing that keeps bothering me is that, whether we are talking about hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon rain forest or the cult followers of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, proprietor, we are talking about the same thing.

First there is the enemy to be defeated before it's too late. And then there are the glorious perks to all the faithful friends and followers.

In other words, whenever politics is involved it is always about the enemy, and then always about rewarding the followers. Just like in the Amazon rain forest. Just like with feudal lords and their retainers. Just like the Soviet leaders and their nomenklatura. Just like western leaders and their loyal deep state.

But, you only need to mobilize against the enemy when your life depends on the continued possession of food-growing territory. If you are growing food to sell, if you are making stuff to sell, if you are doing anything in the modern economy, you don't need to defend your food-growing territory. What is more, it doesn't make any sense to invade a country and plunder its resources and sell its inhabitants into slavery. They will benefit you much more doing what they are already doing and selling it to you. That's because 80 percent of wealth in the modern economy is "intangible capital" which is a fancy way of saying the knowledge and skills of humans.

Do you understand what I am saying? I am saying that the modern state with its compulsions, its endless partisan squabbling, its gigantic loot and plunder operation -- that in the developed world means something from one third to one half of gross domestic product -- is an echo from the past, the past of primitive humans that lived and died on food-growing territory that they defended with their lives. That's why I call it the Great Reaction.

Loot and plunder? The last major loot and plunder operation that I know of was the looting and plundering of eastern Germany by the Soviet Union after World War II. How did that work out, Joe Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev?

See my point? If you are in the enemy plus loot and plunder game you ain't doing yourself a favor. Although of course, you do get to drive your enemies before you and hear the lamentation of their women. If that's how you get your jollies.

The next Big Thing for humans is to get beyond the primitive culture of enemies and loot and plunder for the friends.

But I don't know how we get there.

ABC of Politics in Brief

Enemy

The political was defined once for all by Nazi Carl Schmitt: 

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

And the point about an enemy is that conflict is possible, and conflict can lead to killing.

Schmitt's notion has been simplified by Curtis Yarvin, who has written: "there is no politics without an enemy."

Tribes

Ancient humans weren't really tribal; they lived in a world of kindred: every person known to them was related to them by blood.

But when humans began to live in communities large enough that they didn't know everyone they have become tribal. They invented a bond between them that replaced the old bonds of blood relationship.

Thus, I maintain, all tribes are "fake tribes." They constitute an imagined relationship, a kinship of being the same kind of people, rather than the people of one blood.

Tribes are typically formed by the brothers-in-arms who have fought a successful war. Their leader is the new lord, and the brothers-in-arms are the members of the new tribe. The ubiquitous tribe of our time is the nation state. The nation is the tribe of the middle class.

Layers

Every human society is hierarchical, and we know why. It is because hierarchy is nature's way of minimizing conflict. Over the years, humans have come to think of society as a Three Layered hierarchy. Viking society was composed of Earls, Peasants and Thralls (slaves). Roman society? Patricians, Plebeians, and Slaves. Today's society, according to Curtis Yarvin, is composed of Gentry, Commoners, and Clients. The alternative is just to think of "us" and "them." But that means conflict.

Honor

Among men, according to James Bowman in Honor: A History, honor is the reputation for courage. Among women, honor is the reputation for chastity. Obviously, in politics, the reputation for courage is paramount, for the political leader is nothing if he is not leading his friends against the enemy.

Female honor, chastity, or always doing the right thing, is problematic in politics, and that is probably why women are problematic in politics. Women expect to be protected, but the point of the political leader is to lead his tribe into danger.

Activism

Every young educated person wants to be an "activist," fighting for the oppressed against the oppressors. But this is a fantasy, similar to the medieval romance of the late medieval age, that celebrated knights riding their chargers to rescue damsels in distress and search for the Holy Grail. Knightly orders were invented during the Crusades to go to the Holy Land and protect the pilgrims from maurauders. In our day the "activist" is acting the rule of revolutionary of the good old days of the Enlightenement when educated intellectuals were inveighing against the monstrosities of the absolute monarchs.

Blame

No politician ever takes the blame. He cannot, for he is the brave leader of his people leading them to victory against the enemy. And to fail in that is to be defeated in a humiliating battle against the enemy and condemning his people to oblivion.

ABC of Politics: Enemy

What do we mean by politics and the political? What do activists mean when they determine to Struggle for Justice? Or revolutionaries when they plot an armed insurrection to overturn the old regime? Or Black Lives Matter when they declare that equality never hurt anyone? Or Trumpists when they resolve to Make America Great Again?

A few months ago I read Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. I was hesitant, at first, because Carl Schmitt is famous as a "prominent member of the Nazi Party" and there is a reluctance in polite and educated circles to risk any pollution with Nazi associations. 

But the day came when I overcame my inhibitions and ordered Nazi Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. I have to say that the book changed my life, because it changed forever my understanding of politics and government. 

After starting The Concept of the Political noting that nobody seems to have seriously defined the political before him, Schmitt comes out and says, in Chapter II:

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

The point about an enemy as compared to other humans, Schmitt points out, is that "conflict" is possible with an enemy. And not just conflict, as he writes in Chapter III:

The terms friend, enemy, and conflict… refer specifically to the real possibility of physical killing.

The guy that pointed me towards Schmitt is Curtis Yarvin, who states that 

[P]olitics is human collective action—against humans. There is no politics without an enemy.

This puts the notion of "limited government" in a new light. For it suggests that politics and government should be limited to questions where the friend and enemy distinction is inescapable. It suggests that government should only be involved in issues where the "other" really is an enemy, a existential threat to our way of life, where we accept that conflict, killing, or a fight to the death, is likely to be needed. 

Schmitt's definition of the political raises an awkward question, that the problem with any politics is that it is liable to descend from a frank and open discussion of the issues into a partisan food-fight where the parties come to experience each other as enemies. Perhaps we need a "no first use" approach to politics similar to the enlightened approach to nuclear warfare: politics is only appropriate if "we" have been attacked by an enemy.

Or, to put it another way, in connection with an "issue" involving politics or government over which the members of a society are divided, is it possible to avoid coming to consider people who vote against our program or vote against our candidate as enemies, and treat them as such?

When do we ever consider, in respect of some political issue or government program, whether we really want to treat opponents of our magnificent ideas as enemies?

For instance, if the education of children is decided by politics, then immediately the question arises about what to do with people that resist the government's policy on education. Recently we have seen, in the United States, exactly what happens. Government leaders in the federal government have decided that parents opposed to its policy may be subject to police surveillance and accused of "violent extremism." 

In other words, the leaders of the United States federal government experience parents opposed to their policy as enemies. This is not remarkable, for it is a short step for anyone in politics to go from considering political opponents as mere nuisances and to experiencing them as enemies.

That's because once a topic becomes political, it enters the friend vs. enemy distinction and starts down the road to conflict and the "real possibility of physical killing."

So what does the political, and the distinction between friend and enemy, come from?

Absent any better ideas it starts, I would argue, with the territorial culture of the chimpanzee. According to Nicholas Wade in Before the Dawn, the main job of chimpanzee males is to patrol the border to defend the food-yielding territory in which the females bear and raise young chimps. More territory equals more food equals more baby chimps; less territory equals less food equals less baby chimps. Every male chimp beyond the border is an enemy.

The same is clearly true with humans in the hunter-gatherer and agricultural eras. Anyone that threatens our land is a threat to our life, and an enemy.

But that has all changed with the industrial era. Food is not something you grow any more, it is something you buy. It does not matter where the food is grown or who grows it. Who is the enemy now? Is there really an enemy any more?

Let us rehearse the history of the enemy. In the hunter-gatherer era all men were warriors and defended their territory from the enemy. But in the agricultural era most men became farmers, and only a few men defended the border from the enemy; we call them "marcher lords." Marcher lords had a grand old time fighting each other down to the Hundred Years War and finally in the Wars of the Roses so that Shakespeare could make them into colorful characters to strut and fret upon the Elizabethan stage: other marcher lords as enemies.

In the 17th century began the age of religious wars: Roundheads versus Cavaliers, The Thirty Years War. And the Protestant Dutch invaded England in 1688 to create a counter-force against Catholic France. Rival religions as enemies.

In the 18th century we had class wars with the rising bourgeoisie feeling its oats in the American and French Revolutions. The enemy is not a rival lord but the class of lords in general.

In the 20th century humans graduated to world wars, which were about what? Defending food-growing territory? Teaching emperors with gold-braid uniforms and knightly stars a lesson? Creating Lebensraum? Teaching Nazi racists a lesson? Teaching communists a lesson? Enemies have become ideological, people with a different idea of the good and the just.

I would argue that, ever since the dawn of agriculture, the enemy-at-the-border concept has been less and less relevant. It was certainly irrelevant when Rousseau wrote in A Discourse on Inequality that

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying "This is mine" and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.

Do you see all the "tells" in this sentence? First of all, it uses the code-word "enclosed," as in enclosures of common land that was a political issue right up until agricultural land ownership didn't matter any more. Then, Rousseau assumes that the people in society can resolve questions of ownership without resort to conflict. So, we are way beyond chimps and hunter-gatherers. The idea of property and property issues settled by legal procedure is already in place and taken for granted. This "first man" is not a founder at all, he already lives in a "civil society." The other people are not "simple enough to believe him," but already live in a society where ownership is a matter of common sense and routine. What's your problem with ownership, Jean-Jacques, a bourgeois born and raised in the city of Geneva?

But politics demands an enemy. Do we need an enemy?

Let us follow the enemy experience down the ages.

Let us propose that the chimp or hunter-gatherer band threatening our food-yielding land is a genuine enemy.

Let us concede that Danes longshipping up the rivers of Saxon England and raping and pillaging English villages are genuine enemies.

Let us say that all feudal feuding up until the dawn of the industrial era is understandable; the other noble and his feudal host is an enemy.

But are rival religions really enemies?

And was the German industrial state a genuine enemy of the French industrial state in 1914? What exactly would be the point?

But there is no politics without an enemy.

What about internal politics?

Is the capitalist the enemy of the worker he employed in the two centuries that real per-capita income has increased by 30 times?

Is the male patriarch really the enemy of all women?

Is the white oppressor really the enemy of the oppressed peoples migrating across the world to partake of white oppressor culture and jobs?

And is the white supremacist really the enemy of the black aspiring rapper?

But there is no politics without an enemy.

I think we humans need to face up to the fact that politics, the cult of the enemy, is vieux jeu, because in the world-wide market economy there are no enemies, because we are no longer chimpanzees competing for food, or marcher lords competing for fiefs, or religions and ideologies competing for state power, and land is not life any more. Life today is not growing and defending the food supply; it is doing and making things that other people will buy.

But there is no politics without an enemy.

ABC of Politics: Tribes

We moderns like to think that we have grown out of tribalism, the way of primitive society. But according to CR Hallpike tribalism is new, dating from the time when humans started to live in towns where they no longer knew everyone.

And the idea that anyone has "grown out of" tribalism is absurd.

Back in the day, humans identified with their kindred, the people they knew that were related to them by blood. But as society has grown in scale humans have started to fake it; we imagine that we are related and are kin to the people around us, by virtue of our common membership in a clan or tribe or nation.

I say that all such identities are fake, an imagined kindred of "people like me." I call this "fake tribalism," an imagined community of kindred that is practiced in all societies larger than one of actual kinship where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows one's blood relationship to everyone.

But why do people create these imagined tribes? I say that every tribe is the expression of the eternal brotherhood of the men who fought to create the tribe and won.

This is most blazingly obvious in the dominant fake tribe of our time, the "nation," which is the tribe of the middle class.

Almost every nation in our time is the product of a victorious war that melded the men of the victorious army into a new fake tribe of a nation.

What made the United States into a nation was its revolutionary war against Britain. What made Britain into a nation was its Second Hundred Years War against France that ended on the battlefield of Waterloo. What made Germany into a nation was Bismarck's three cunning wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France, that conned the various independent states of the Holy Roman Empire into sending soldiers to fight for Bismarck, and thus for the subsequent united German nation.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent the young men of the Great Depression to fight Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. After the glorious victory, the United States was united for a generation, until the youngsters born to the wives of the returning heroes grew up and rebelled against their fathers.

And what of the tribe of progressives the world over that are soldiers of activism, devoted to bending the arc of history towards justice?

The problem with the current crop of multinational organizations is that they are not brotherhoods of warriors bonding with each other in a fight to defend the homeland from aggressors. They are just privileged earls and barons watching their sons set lances against each other in knightly tournaments of activism. The only way to create a global tribe would be to fight an Earthly war of survival against an alien invasion from outer space, in which the surviving space warriors would form a new fake tribe of the heroes that saved the world.

ABC of Politics: Layers

We should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, as Albert Einstein didn't quite say. But what about human society? Can this unimaginably complex emergent phenomenon be simplified?

Maybe, maybe not. But we humans do it anyway; it is our way of trying to understand and deal with the world of other people.

The simplest thing is to divide the world into "us" and "them," friends and enemies, and this is what politics does. But if we want to get beyond simple binaries and the war of all against all, or at least the binary of my people against your people, or the Hunger Games binary of Capitol against the Districts, we must make the world a little less simple.

Most students of human society have divided it, like Gaul, into three parts. For George Orwell it was Inner Party, Outer Party, and Proles. For Marx it was Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. For Tolkien it was Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves. For the Vikings it was Earls, Peasants, and Thralls  (or slaves). For Curtis Yarvin it is Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.

I have joined this three-layer parade with my reductive Three Peoples theory. I submit it as an honest attempt to simplify human society as much as possible, but no further.

I propose that there are three kinds of people in the world:

People of the Subordinate Self Call them slaves, serfs, workers, clients, marginalized, oppressed: these are people that do not experience "agency." They are go-along-to-get-along people, villagers under the thumb of the big man, the serfs of the feudal lord, the factory workers of the corporate behemoth, the ward heelers of the precinct captain, aspiring rappers dealing drugs for the urban gang.  They attach themselves to a powerful patron in return for scraps from the lordly table.

People of the Responsible Self Call them commoners, citizens, middling sorts, "deplorables," these are people that believe they can understand the world according to already established rules and have a responsibility to do something about it. These are people that follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law.

People of the Creative Self These are people that want to live a creative life, maybe as a writer, an artist, a videographer, an activist, a revolutionary. They don't want to follow the rules, they want to discover new rules. They don't want just to go to work, they want to reinvent work. They don't just obey the laws; they want to make new ones. 

I got the idea of the Responsible Self from Robert Bellah in his "Evolution of Religion." I got the idea of the Creative Self from Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class.

In medieval times, England's King Alfred divided the world into "those who pray, those who fight, those who work." This is similar to the three French Estates, with the First Estate the clergy, the Second Estate the nobles, and the Third Estate the peasants and burghers. There is, in addition, the three-layer theory of Allyship currently popular among our lefty friends. In this world the evolved and activist Allies are fighting for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors. It is clearly an update of Marx's three layers of Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. But notice that both the Allyship narrative and Marx collapse the three layers into two.Allies and Oppressed Peoples are united as one against the White Oppressors. Communists and Proletarians are united as one against the Bourgeoisie. I maintain that this collapse is reactionary, a step back to the primitive.

But things don't have to be that serious. I have proposed a three layer system of Snobs, Schmucks, and Scum. A less insulting version is to think of society as composed of Somebodies, Anybodies, and Nobodies. You may think of today's America as composed of Anti-Americans, Americans, and Emerging Americans; I couldn't possibly comment.

Let us not insult Richard Wagner by omitting his three-layer theory. He divided the world of The Ring into gods, humans, and Nibelungs.

Of course, the world is much more complicated than a mere three layers. Yet most of the time most people have difficulty imagining anyone different from themselves as anything but an enemy, in a crude "us" and "them" approach to life, religion, and politics. So a Three Peoples theory is one step up from crudity, from the war of "us" against "them." And there is another thing, suggested by Ken Wilber in his analysis of developmental psychology as applied to human consciousness. He proposes that anyone in a particular "level" will regard people in a lower "level" as delta-minus morons, and people in a higher "level" as madmen.

The most obvious use of this Three Layer concept is as a way to understand our modern politics, which always seems to be based upon an over/under coalition between the highest Layer and the lowest Layer against the Middle Layer. In the current Allyship narrative, the Allies of the ruling class fight for the Oppressed Peoples of the lower class against the White Oppressors of the middle class. Or, using Yarvin's three layers, the educated-class Gentry combine with their underclass Clients against the middle-class Commoners.

I have come to believe that the modern over/under politics is a recipe for conflict. The three-layer world of noble, commoner, and serf of the olden time sets up a world of established hierarchy, and hierarchy, according to Jordan B. Peterson and his lobster notion, is Nature's way of reducing violence. Thus it is not surprising that the leftist politics inspired by Marx -- to replace peaceful hierarchy with a fight for equality by collapsing the Three Layers of educated, middling, and underling into an us-against-them binary of allies and oppressed against white oppressors -- is a recipe for killing fields.

The Three Layers notion also allows us to understand the emerging populist nationalisms in the United States and in Europe. The populist movements are all associations of ordinary middle-class people fighting back against the over/under coalition that dominated politics during the last century when the working class had the votes to empower the educated class to use the political system to reward the workers with programs and benefits and reward itself with power, with sinecures, and with pensions. The ordinary middle class is emerging as a political force because it is now the largest sector of society, if it chooses to use its numbers in the political arena.

The populist nationalisms of the present day are thus an inner-outer politics, of "us," the middle class against the enemy, the "them," of uppers and downers. Because "there is no politics without an enemy."

Maybe after it is all over we can return to a peaceful hierarchy, like the lobsters.