After the Canadian Truckers

I imagine that the Canadian government will manage to dislodge and humiliate the Canadian truckers and use their media narrative power to marginalize the ordinary middle-class populists that have arisen to support them.

Pretty well what has happened here with the January 6 mostly peaceful protesters.

The fact is that political change is almost never peaceful. That's because the ruling class has too much going with the present correlation of forces to act sensibly when the rules change.

Prime Minister Trudeau exactly tells us the problem with his tweet:

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.

As I blogged last week, this tweet (and most of the other tweets from Trudeau) are trumpeting the political formula of today's ruling class, that I have called today the "pejorative ruling class," meaning the ruling class that Makes Things Worse.

I say that we are living in the Autumn of the Pejorative Ruling Class, meaning that the political formula that has worked so well over the last century, of the educated/credentialed/academic ruling class allied with the lower class to beat up on the stuck-up bourgeoisie, is in its last stages.

It is failing for a number of reasons.

1. It does not really help the "oppressed classes," primarily because it does not do anything for the lower classes except feed them with free money.
   
   
2. It has tripled the size of government over the last century. This means that, in the US, at least 40 percent of GDP is seized by the government and handed out as loot and plunder. If you think that this benefits society as a whole, I gotta bridge...
   
   
3. It has created a huge credentialed elite that has been educated for bureaucratic and administrative supervision -- in numbers rather in excess of the actual demand for such workers.

As I wrote last week, the over-under political formula made a kind of ugly political sense a century ago, because the working class was big and the bourgeoisie was small; so the numbers favored the rule of the educated class.

But now the middle class is easily the biggest class, so it doesn't really make political sense to marginalize it as "bitter clingers," "deplorables," and racist-sexist-homophobes.

But, flipping through Prime Minister Trudeau Twitter feed, it is clear that pandering to the oppressed classes, of whatever color and gender, is what he does.

And that is what President Biden does.

On the right, we tend to call all this "far-left" and wokey and the rest of it. But I think that it is more accurate to say that these people are just ordinary educated people doing what they have been taught. They don't know any better.

And if you have been taught a political formula where you, the ruling class, are called by Gaia and Justice to fight the horrid evil white oppressors to stop the endless marginalization of the eternal oppressed peoples, then what Trudeau and Biden do makes complete sense. It creates meaningful lives for the Laptop class and it provides loot and plunder for their lower class supporters.

But it is incredibly annoying to ordinary middle class people that just want to live their lives by the rules, own a nice house in the suburbs and raise a family.

It is also incredibly confusing to the middle class to be regaled endlessly about racism and sexism and privilege. Because ordinary middle class people just get on with life, playing the cards that life has dealt them, and not feeling that they have been particularly privileged or advantaged by their lives or their parents' lives.

And, by the way, the ordinary white middle class is taught every day that any day now, the rules may change and they won't get the promotion or job they wanted because the DEI administrators are going to hire or promote someone not on experience or merit or results, but on race and gender.

I wonder what the ordinary middle class thinks about that. We really don't know because the ordinary middle class knows that the way to get into trouble in a New York minute is to complain about quotas / affirmative action / diversity / equity. So they button their lips. Unless they happen to be on the street in the middle of a Canadian trucker peaceful protest.

OK. Our present ruling class is clueless. At one point the mayor of Ottawa criticized the truckers and their supporters for turning the whole thing into a backyard barbecue.

I mean. Peaceful protest is deadly serious. Because justice. Because centuries of oppression. How Dare the truckers and their supporters have fun!

I think the important thing to know is that our rulers really don't know what to do. They know they are in trouble, but none of the usual Five Point Plans are going to make a blind bit of difference.

And in back of that is that there is really nothing for politics to do any more.

Because politics requires an enemy that we can go and fight and destroy, to make us safe. But really there is no enemy. Not any more. So that means there is nothing for politics to do.

So the ruling class makes it up. Oppressed classes and climate disaster. Unless we act now.

Women's Tears and the Public Square

As you know I believe with sociologist George Simmel that the public square was invented by men for men, and that, with women coming into the public square they are changing it to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

Now comes Richard Hanania with a piece "Women's Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas." He is saying that when men argue in the public square they can stand there are argue away forever -- although argument tends to end up as fisticuffs.

But if a man is arguing with a woman and she dissolves in tears, then she wins.

A man can’t just yell in another man’s face for 5 or 10 minutes about how he’s hurting his feelings. If a man does behave this way, bystanders are more likely to feel disgusted than join in or play the role of white knight. The man at the receiving end of the abuse is at some point going to have to escalate towards violence, or back down and say something about how this is beneath him. Depending on the situation, observers may assume violence is a distinct possibility, and get between the two sides.

None of these options are available when getting yelled at by a woman. You certainly can’t make an implicit threat of violence. Raising your voice will turn everyone against you, and even walking away can look heartless.

Hanania proposes three available rules for male vs. female argument:

1. Expect everyone who participates in the marketplace of ideas to abide by male standards, meaning you accept some level of abrasiveness and hurt feelings as the price of entry.
   
   
2. Expect everyone to abide by female standards, meaning we care less about truth and prioritize the emotional and mental well-being of participants in debates.
   
   
3. We accept gender double standards, and tolerate more aggression towards men than we do towards women. We also tolerate more hyper-emotionalism from women than men.

But, of course, this means that women have the upper hand, because they can always switch to hyper-emotionalism when they are losing an argument.

Actually, I think that any capitulation to female rules is unworkable: you cannot have an effective public square on that basis.

Moreover, I don't know if you've noticed, but the option to be "exhausted" or to use hyper-emotionalism is only OK for lefty women. If you are a regime-approved activist, go ahead. But don't try that if you are a conservative, or a female supporter of a Canadian trucker. I don't think that Sarah Palin was ever allowed to be "exhausted." And I doubt if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) gets to be all emotional with Chuck Schumer.

Actually women's rules cannot work in the public square, and the reason is obvious from my notion that men have a Culture of Insult -- which is the male one-on-one confrontation minus the actual resort to violence -- and women have a Culture of Complaint.

I have said that the way the women's Culture of Complaint works is for two women to be have coffee together and complaining about a third person.

But I realize that is incomplete. There is another instantiation of the women's Culture of Complaint. A woman may directly complain to her husband or to a man. And she does this because she knows that the man cannot win in that situation. If she gets angry, he cannot resort to violence, as he might with another man. If she gets emotional, he cannot resort to disdain.

The reason that the Culture of Complaint works for woman on woman is that the woman has the option that "she will never talk to that woman again." Whether it's the neighbor across the street or another officer on the US Navy ship. Remember the case of the US Navy destroyer colliding with a container ship back in 2017? The "officer of the deck" (OOD) and the "Tactical Action Officer" in charge of "monitoring the combat radar" were both women.

The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!!

Obviously a Navy cannot function when the women aren't talking to each other. But a neighborhood can.

The way that public institutions work -- have to work -- is that every day the people working there have to suck it in and work with the other people. Even if the other people suck. Especially if they suck.

For men, they have to stop short of violence. For women they have to stop short of "exhaustion" and "never talking to that person again."

Otherwise you don't have a public institution. You have a barroom brawl and you have Navy destroyers crashing into container ships. And that is not good.

 

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.