Remember, Politicians Know Nothing

As we continue stumble-bumming through the Wu Flu crisis and your liberal neighbor tells you she prefers "shelter in place" to the reckless Trump policy of opening the economy irregardless, it is not enough to tell her as I did, that

As a profound sexist I am bound to say that men and women have a completely different response to crisis. Women respond by sheltering in place; men respond by marching toward the sound of the guns.

But the other thing to understand is the line I got from Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Chapter XXIII The Inference. Let me get the original quote.

[D]emocracy does not mean and cannot mean that the people rule in any obvious sense of the terms "people" and "rule." Democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them... [D]emocracy is the rule of the politician.

 In other words, "democracy" is some sort of a fiddle where "the people" get some input into who will rule over them. But then comes the clincher, that the politician is a professional: his profession is politics, getting elected.

"What businessmen do not understand is that exactly as they are dealing in oil so I am dealing in votes."

Schumpeter attributes this to "the most successful politician that ever lived." But if the politician is a dealer in votes, this means that when he succeeds to the command of government, necessarily

the democratic method produces legislation and administration as by-products for the struggle for political office.

But this means that, when a politician is faced with a crisis, such as the current Wu Flu epidemic, he is pretty well clueless as to what to do. His skill set is the skill of a political leader that is good at pulling together an election team and getting voters to believe that he cares about people like them.

(Hmm. President Trump's campaign for reelection probably depends on getting the economy restarted so he can say that he cares about people like you and me.)

But there is another factor in the makeup of the politician. As the leader of his tribe or nation he is the man to protect them from marauders and pirates and plunderers. He is the leader of the young men who, as soldiers, sailors, and airmen, are called upon to march towards the sound of the guns and protect the women and children and old people.

But all this has nothing to do with the basic fact of modern society, that we get our bread and meat from participation in the social interaction we call the "market economy."

And politicians know nothing about the market economy. Victor Davis Hanson has a reminder about this, reminding us about World War II.

Neo-socialist President Franklin D. Roosevelt unleashed American business under the aegis of successful entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company, William Knudsen of General Motors, Henry Kaiser of Kaiser Shipyards and Charles Wilson of General Electric.

They were all given relatively free rein from New Deal strictures to work and profit without burdensome government regulations. The result was a military juggernaut that overwhelmed America's enemies. 

Really. So once FDR had a war to wage he was willing to leave the economy under the "aegis" of entrepreneurs and businessmen, because he didn't have time for meddling in that any more. But, the miracle was that the US economy turned on a dime.

From 1929 to 1938, the U.S. economy was in ruins. FDR's New Deal could not restore economic growth or consumer confidence. As late as 1938, economic growth had sunk to negative 3.3 percent. Unemployment soared to an unsustainable 19 percent. 

Then, in 1941, the US recording 17 percent growth.

Do you see the point here? It is that for ten years, politicians and experts had proclaimed themselves the chaps that would correct the mistakes of businessmen and financiers and set the economy back on its feet after the Crash of 1929. And they completely failed, utterly failed. An utter wipeout.

But why be surprised? The politician knows nothing about business and the economy. Because he or she is a political professional. He or she knows politics: how to fret and strut his hour upon the stage and get attention and political support for the next election. And that is all.

What does President Obama know about the economy? In eight years as president did he vouchsafe anything that indicated some understanding about economic matters?

Whatabout AOC? Here's a woman that actually has a political science degree. But listening to her you get the impression that she has learned nothing except left-wing Activism 101. I would say that nobody that ever took an economics class could take the Green New Deal seriously. For instance, there are so many "unknown unknowns" involved in the Green New Deal transition from "fossil fuel" energy to "renewable" energy that anyone with half a brain would flinch away from it, knowing, as a man or woman of affairs, that almost certainly such a project would result in the most unmitigated disaster extending, perhaps, to widespread famine and death. So how could a woman like AOC come to believe what she believes? How could she possibly believe that the ideas she has embraced are anything but wild religious prophecy?

Whatabout all the state governors? Gov. Karen Cuomo (D-NY)? Gov. Karen Newsom (D-CA)? Gov. Karen Whitmer (D-MI)? They seem to think that governing is a process of issuing directives and regulations and arresting barbers that dare to restart business in opposition to their top-down directives.

But in the event these politicians are all advised by a coterie of experts who know nothing except their specialty. These experts know nothing about how to blend their health epidemic knowledge into the question of how much sheltering in place is possible with the need to preserve enough economic activity to keep people clothed and fed.

Based of the WWII example we might suggest that the thing for the political leaders to do is concentrate on bending the infection and the death curve and letting the economy get on with it. But politicians the the people of the educated Gentry have the conceit that the way for the world to work is for people like them to be at the head of affairs and issue directives to underlings.

Sorry, Charlie. Things are much more complicated than that. Because what matters is not the orders from on high but the interactions between all the players, including you and me, in the incredibly complex social interaction we call the economy.

Perhaps it does not matter that our politicians are fools and knaves and Karens. Perhaps the American people will march towards the sound of the guns and go to work and tell the politicians and experts to put it where the sun don't shine. And get back to the wiving and thriving that is the closest we will ever get to understanding "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything."

Elon Musk Schools the Karens

Well, well, well. After Gov. Karen Newsom (D-CA) told Elon Musk not to open his Tesla electric car factory in Fremont, CA, and after Alameda Country Interim Health Officer Karen Pan disallowed his plan to reopen, Elon Musk upped the challenge.

Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2020

And went ahead and reopened his car plant. Hey, why not! He is saving the planet with his electric cars!

But I think that we should understand the bigger picture here. Musk is using the method of the great American philosopher, Jackie Gleason. He is saying "To the moon, Karen!"

Or maybe, in the case of Elon Musk, we are talking about "To Mars, Karen!"

The thing to understand, I think, is the fundamental difference in the way that men and women handle conflict and danger.

Women say: "Shelter in place." Men say: "March toward the sound of the guns."

Women run conflict in a static to and fro of each one takes a turn, as in:

Woman #1: [Yells at neighbor]

Woman #2: shares with her friends: "I can't believe she said that," then retaliates.

Etc., move by move. 

Men are different. Men run conflict as a war of movement, where you are always trying to stay one move ahead of the enemy.

This is confirmed by chaps like Sun Tzu, and lately by John Boyd's OODA loop.  The whole idea of Observe, Orient, Decide, Act is to understand the process that an actor in a conflict goes through, and to train yourself in the process so it is second nature. Then, the idea is that when you are in a conflict you "get inside the opponent's OODA loop" by responding to events and acting faster that he can react and act. It´s a guy thing.

It is not a Karen thing. Because Karen is a girl.

But there is a bigger issue here. And it points up the difference between the educated Gentry and the Commoners.

The educated Gentry is the most highly educated part of the population, meaning that its members are more likely to have excelled at formal education in schools and universities. There is a tendency in such social structures to develop One True Way on everything: "settled science" as we know it. Also there is a tendency for such institutions to come under the influence of the ruling class and to convert them from education institutions into ruling-class seminaries.

The Democrats, as the party of the educated Gentry, are big-time into formal structures and settled science promulgated from on high, and you peasants better follow along.

The Republicans, as the party of Commoners, are much more into informal education, learning by doing: a million consumers and producers responding to the price signals of the market and learning as they go and correcting mistakes on the way.

The Helpless Victims, of course, just sit there waiting for someone to tell them what to do. But as I say in my Little Darlings concept, the problem with being a Little Darling is that you are completely at the mercy of the ruling class, who may or may not really care about people like you.

The current Wu Flu epidemic is showing us the problems in the One True Way approach of the educated Gentry. Their epidemic models don't work; their assumptions about social distancing don't work. Their from the top edicts, such as Gov. Karen Cuomo's order forcing nursing homes to accept Wu Flu patients from hospital or else, don't often work.

Of course they don't. That's because all human activity on this Earth is a cluster-f*ck.

Meanwhile ten thousand producers are adapting their operations to make masks and social distancing markers and restaurants are switching from eat-in to takeout.

The interesting point is that the top-down model beloved by the educated Gentry class with its hunger for "ambition, honor, and vanity" is anti-social. I mean that it is a command from on high, a pure hierarchy. It does not allow for flexibility and feedback and interaction.

The market, on the other hand is a truly social thing, with humans interacting and responding to each other in no particular hierarchy and doing things that benefit other people just because that is the way you get on.

Did I mention my Four Laws? That

Socialism doesn't work because it can't compute prices. 

Administration doesn't work because it doesn't have the bandwidth. 

Regulation doesn't work because "regulatory capture." 

Government programs don't work because you can never reform them.

If you want the economy to produce masks and gloves, let the price system go to work. If you want to restart the economy then let the business owners go to work. If you want to come up with a vaccine, then stop the FDA and let the drug companies go to work. If you want everyone to get back to work then don't pass a Karen Pelosi (D-CA) $3 trillion lefty make-work bill that will make things worse.

Know what? None of this is rocket science. It really isn't.

But there is a cultural problem. If you are in the educated Gentry, your self-image depends on your superior wisdom to order the lesser breeds without the law around. You cannot believe that the Commoners should be allowed to live without proper supervision from their betters.

But #WeBelieve that "kindness is everything." Just like it says on the yard-sign out in front.

Pardon Barack Obama Now!

Now that it is pretty clear that former President Obama was in on the surveillance of the Trump campaign and the entrapment of LTG Flynn, I say:

PARDON BARACK OBAMA NOW!

And I suggest that President Trump pardon Joe Biden too!

Why on Earth, you ask?

Well, because I think the big opportunity here is to teach the Deep State underlings that from now on they are going to be thrown to the wolves whenever there is illegal shenanigans in government.

The problem right now in the Deep State is that the underlings think that the way to get ahead is to do the dirty work for their political bosses, on the assumption that they will get preferment. They obviously don't think about the downside. Hey, up to now there has been no downside, as long as you toe the Democratic party line.

The swamp creatures need to be carefully taught that there is a big risk for them. That if things go wrong and the skulduggery gets discovered then the boss gets to skate and they get to go to jail.

No fair, you say! Exactly my point. Not just no fair, but howling injustice!

But hey, what's the problem? Don't I have in my list of Maxims, that "politics is division?"

Up to now, the only division has been orchestrated by the ruling class and their willing accomplices in the Gentry: rich from poor, black from white, men from women.

But nobody has tried dividing the swamp creatures from their bosses. Until now.

These swamp creatures, who are not exactly the Best and the Brightest -- if they ever were back in the day, David Halberstam -- need to be seething with resentment against the beautiful people they suck up to. They need to be reminded, every hour on the hour, that they will be the suckers when the stuff hits the fan.

There is another reason, it seems to me. It will demoralize the liberal Gentry. Because when Trump pardons dear Barack, what are they to say? How dare you, President Trump? Really? I would say that President Trump would say that he is trying to heal the divisions in America and Make It Great Again. Hey nice liberal ladies! Why bother to go out and vote?

What could be wrong with pardoning Barack Obama, especially since he is a special person who is so special that to criticize him for anything, starting with the crease in his pants, brands you as a racist. I mean, if a guy is beyond criticism, what can you do with him? You can give him a backhanded compliment. And pardon him, just like we pardoned Richard Nixon back in Watergate.

What! Equating St. Barack with the Devil Nixon. How racist!

And how crude! How Trumpian! Eeeuw, I could never vote for a guy that pardoned Obama!

Yeah. That's the only question. Trump would need to persuade his supporters that this is the most cunning political play since whenever. I suggest that he takes the high road, saying that Barack Obama is a great American, and leave his attack dogs to go the low road and say that forever after, Barack Obama will have an asterisk after his name.

But I think that Trump is up to the challenge. He can go around the country saying that he pardoned Joe Biden. No, not for sexual harassment, but just in case he had his hand in the cookie jar on Collusion. Because he is sure that Joe Biden is not really up to the challenge of going mano-a-mano with his boss, and you have to be understanding.

Obamagate: Putting the Racist Bugbear to Rest

What do we do about the Obamagate scandal? It is becoming clear that the Obama administration orchestrated surveillance of the Trump campaign, maybe directed from the very top, i.e., from President Obama himself.

There are all kinds of flags indicating this, including the fact that President Obama seems to have had a personal animus against LTG Michael Flynn. Because Flynn was a danger to shipping in the "intelligence community," because he wanted to reform the Defense Intelligence Agency. Apparently Obama personally recommended to Trump more than once that he not bring Flynn into the Trump administration.

But what to do? Because you and I know that we are only days away from the accusation that the people accusing President Obama of orchestrating the whole Trump Russia Collusion caper are racists.

Anyone accusing President Obama of anything is accused of being a racist.

It's getting to the point that I am going to refuse to vote for any African American ever. Because you are not allowed to criticize African Americans. Because racism.

Oh wait. No problem voting for black Republicans! Because there is no special privilege for them.

Now we have the tragic killing of a black "jogger" in Brunswick, Georgia, with the media going full Trayvon Martin. Again.

Did you notice that the Trayvon Martin incident occurred in February 2012, a presidential election year. And did you know that the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, occurred in August 2014 at election time?

Hmm. Do you think perhaps that Democrats need to get their African American supporters wound up into a frenzy of fear every election year, in order to get them out to vote?

Look, I get it. The African America community is a vital part of the Democratic coalition, and the most pro-Democrat, with 90 percent voting Democrat. Any falloff in black voting means curtains for Democratic politicians.

I also know that the way you keep small minorities unified is by the external enemy and the cult of innocence. That's how the Jews do it. I do not say this out of animus; it just occurred to me one day. If you are a small minority you are always at risk from the larger community if it needs a scapegoat. So you have to maintain your unity at all costs. And the way you do it is with a culture of innocence.

And scapegoating, from René Girard and others, is just the way that a human community restores unity after a divisive rupture. Nothing personal, you understand!

Indeed, Hitler's use of anti-semitism to unite the Germans is merely a textbook case of how to unite a people divided and demoralized after defeat in war.

But the flip side of the scapegoat game is the culture of innocence, the idea that "we" are the helpless innocents harassed and harried by all kinds of vicious enemies. It is just as natural and physical as the culture of scapegoating.

That is the point of stuff like Jung's collective unconscious and archetypes. It is to call attention to the fact that there is a whole lot going on in the human unconscious that is not necessarily apparent at the conscious level.

Of course there is. "Consciousness" is clearly a recent development in humans. Yet, clearly, mammals of all kinds, including our simian friends, are social animals that do things that promote pro-social behavior. And we are just jumped-up apes. How do they do it? With behaviors progammed into their brains. Archetypes.

Obviously politicians and leaders of all kinds need to activate various unconscious archetypes in their followers and constituents. Of course they do. For one thing, it is very difficult to get a consensus in human affairs by logical and rational discussion. In fact, I would say it is almost impossible. Instead, the politician and the leader, whether corporate or military, finds that the only way to lead is by activating unconscious drives like loyalty, courage, innocence, hate. Again, nothing personal; that's just the way things are.

But obviously when the activation of archetypes develops to the point that, e.g., the racial killing of a black in election year gets boosted up into the stratosphere, then we have a problem. Did you know that that there were about 500 black-on-white killings a year in 2015 and about 230 white-on-black killings? These represent about 12 percent of the 6,000 homicides for which "police had information about the race of both victim and killer."

Now I don't know what that means. Because to have an opinion on such a matter would be racist.

But I would say, to both liberal journalists and the black community, that maybe it is time to turn off the race argument. Because I'd say that we are getting close to the point where you chaps will do yourself an injury when you play the race card.

But I don't expect that you will stop it. Not until it hits you in the face.

Meanwhile, it looks like Obamagate is the worst political scandal in US history. And why? Because Obama and his underlings reckoned that Obama got a pass not just because he was a Democrat but because race. So they could afford to do illegal things without penalty.

But don't accuse President Obama. That would be racist.

Worse Than Watergate. But You Knew That

Well, I called my congerscritter, the Hon. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), this morning to tell her that I strongly disapproved of Nancy Pelosi's charming reaction to the Justice Department's decision not to pursue their case against LTG Flynn. "Barr's politicization of justice knows no bounds," Pelosi said.

Er, what did you drink for breakfast, Nance?

What I think is that if Hollywood were going to produce a "Worse than Watergate" movie, they would want:

1. A smarmy FBI director like James Comey.
2. A rather low-rent attempt to entrap their victim who would be an all-American hero.
3. A couple of the key FBI players conducting an extra-marital affair.
4. The president apparently knowing the details of the Flynn-Kislyak conversation.
5. A special prosecutor that turned out to be a stumblebum zero.
6. Peacocking journalists.

You need that kind of fake dramatics is order to get the punters to the movie theater. The only thing missing is for a direct quote from President Obama in the presence of his underlings and courtiers along the line of "who will rid me of this meddlesome general?"

But that would be racist. And anyway, it is absurd to suggest that President Obama would be so small-minded as to try to punish an appointee that answered back. That would be racist

And anyway, Hollywood ain't gonna do a movie on the Trump Russia Collusion. It cuts too close to the bone. And where are the A-list Robert Redfords and Dustin Hoffmans that would do it?

I suspect that our liberal friends still have no clue what a mess they are in. And how President Trump is going to wipe the floor with them this Fall. And how plenty of moderate Democrats that won seats in 2018 are going to be shown the door.

It is now becoming pretty clear that Rep. Schiff (D-CA) was lying when he talked up evidence of collusion. And Nancy Pelosi going ahead with an impeachment on the Ukraine phone call. On a phone call, Nancy?

Look, I get the whole partisan politics thing. You want to keep your supporters all riled up. But surely this is not the way to do it.

What you do is, first, you don't use the police and spying assets of the government to spy and beat up the opposition. Just not cricket, old chap.

What you do, second, is you concede the election, fair and square. Especially if your guys won the last two presidential elections. You say: "we are all Americans, and wait until next time." You don't do this because you are a nice guy. You do it because all peaceful government starts with conceding the election to the hated opposing party. And if you don't know this, you don't belong in politics.

What you do, third, is you don't set up a fishing expedition with a special prosecutor staffed with a bunch of partisan lawyers.

What you do, fourth, is you don't gussy up an impeachment on a phone call.

What you do, fifth, is you don't encourage the media to announce weekly "bombshells" and "walls closing in." See that sets up expectations among your partisan supporters. Nothing wrong with that unless the expectations are dashed. After all, you want your supporters all riled up for the next election, and it is really hard to keep people all riled up for four years straight. Especially after the special prosecutor ends up with bupkis. Especially after the impeachment ends up with bupkis. Especially after they let the eevil Pentagon general off the hook.

Here's my problem. I have to assume that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and all their staffers and supporters are pretty smart folk. They know politics.

So, I wonder what is it that I am missing? Is it that Nance and Chuck are old geezers hanging onto their jobs, desperate to stop a new radical generation from taking over that would be too far left for the average American voter? Do they feel they have to throw red meat to the "far left" to keep them from burning the place down? Do they need to keep the pace hot in order to satisfy the big-money contributors? Do they have to keep left in order to avoid too much primarying of good old boys from the left?

There is something I am missing, and as usual in such a situation, I have my antennae up. Maybe somehow, someday, some news item or inside gossip will make the whole thing will become clear to me.

Dying of Despair: What Should We Do About Cultural Decline?

Our elite betters have being doing a little worrying lately about the decline of the white working class. Whether it is Charles Murray in Coming Apart: the State of White America 1960-2010, or J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy, or now Deaths of Despair by Anne Case and Angus Deaton.

According to Steve Sailer, Case and Deaton compare the "declining lifespans of working-class white Americans since the turn of the century" -- featuring suicides and drug usage -- with the much more optimistic culture among African Americans.

What's the difference? Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that poor and working-class whites are universally devalued as racists and deplorables while blacks are "a triumphant race, celebrated all over the world for their soul."

In fact, cases of groups and tribes and nations "giving up" are not at all uncommon. Whatabout native Americans? Whatabout Russian men in the aftermath of the Soviet Union? And whatabout Germans that were universally convicted of war and race and anti-Semitic crimes after World War II?

My point is that groups and nations are giving up all the time. Just don't let it happen to me and mine!

But I also have a theory about this. I call it Little Darlings, and get seriously into it with "The Cruel Fate of the Ruling Class's "Little Darlings." My argument is simple. If the ruling class is saying how wonderful you are, and is shoveling free stuff at you, and bidding for your votes, be wary. They are not doing it because they like you, or because they care about people like you. They are using you as foot-soldiers in their power project.

And the day will come when they don't have a use for you.

I like to use the example for Napoleon's march on Moscow in 1812. He marched the flower of France to Moscow and spent the summer there. But when it was time to retreat then it was every man for himself and many starved and died. Napoleon himself, of course, returned to France in a carriage protected by an armed guard.

When you've been praised and flattered and patted on the knee for years, it is a shock to the system when suddenly Sugar Daddy don't have that twinkle in his eye no more.

That is what has happened to the white working class, and for understandable reasons. In the 1960s our liberal friends stopped obsessing over the exploitation of the working class. They moved on to the exploitation of blacks and women. So the ruling class narrative changed.

From the 1960s onward, it became increasingly unfashionable to criticize blacks, but trendy to criticize whites. Not surprisingly, blacks reacted to this new dispensation with increasing exuberance, while whites became more depressed and withdrawn. As black egos expanded after their civil rights victories, they increasingly shot each other in knuckleheaded beefs. Meanwhile, as White Privilege became a preoccupation of the press, whites increasingly shot themselves, or drank themselves to death, or overdosed on synthetic or natural opioids.

In other words, people really do care what you say about them.

Of course, people are now worrying about the white working class. What do "we" do about their "deaths of despair?"

Well, my advice would be the same as the advice of Frederick Douglass.

Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!

And this is true of all groups that well-intentioned elitists decide to help. But then there are the ill-intentioned elitists, that are spewing pejoratives at the groups they wish to marginalize, calling them racists, white supremacists, and Nazis.

The evil of all this talking-up and talking-down, I think, is well illustrated by the situation of the Jews. Jews have tended to be a small minority within a larger community, and this has exposed them to the risk of being a convenient scapegoat for the larger community. The whole purpose of the scapegoat phenomenon, according to Rene Girard in Violence and the Sacred, is to get a divided community to unite. But the only way you can do that is to battle against a common enemy.

How do the Jews do it, and keep their morale up through Pogroms and Holocausts? They do it by creating and maintaining a culture of innocence. Jews can never be wrong, because anti-semitism and centuries of oppression. Sure, it works, but it also keeps Jews as outsiders, eternally vulnerable to a society that needs a scapegoat, as the Russian Czar needed in 1905 and as Hitler needed after World War I. See, I don't think that developing a culture of innocence is a good idea, any more than I think that scapegoating a small minority is a good idea.

And that is why I urge blacks and women to return to the cry of Frederick Douglass. "Do nothing with us!" Why? Because while it is great to be the Little Darling of the ruling class, there will come a day when you need to stand on your own two feet and when you will not have the ruling-class cheering section and the ruling-class pom-pom girls on your side. And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

Well, unless you have developed the requisite intestinal fortitude in advance you will perhaps lose heart, and become like the culturally marginalized all down the ages. Except the Jews.

Anyway, someone has been "doing something" about the white working class. His name is Donald Trump. He is telling the white working class -- and all Americans together -- to cheer up because he is going to make America Great Again.

So I say, take heart! And then fortify yourself with a stiff course in intestinal fortitude so that when the Trump Era ends you have the courage and the strength to push back against ruling-class Mean Girls.

Creatives That Aren't Creative: Stuck-up Commoners

In my reductive Three Peoples theory the big problem is People of the Creative Self that experience themselves as creative but just don't have the chops.

The problem is made very obvious in Curtis Yarvin's three layer theory in "The Clear Pill," because he calls his creatives "Gentry." And the educated Gentry are manipulated by the ruling class using "anthems" that cater to the Gentry appetite for "ambition, honor, and vanity."

See, if the Gentry were really creative they wouldn't care about "ambition, honor, and vanity." The true path of creativity has nothing to do with ambition, honor, and vanity because the true path of creativity is the Hero's journey into the unconscious and the terrifying border between Order and Chaos.

So my analysis of the People of the Creative Self finds itself asking the question: what happens to your creative life if you don't have the chops for the Hero's journey?

Isn't it obvious? The Hero's journey turns into the Ego's journey, and what the Ego likes is ambition, honor and vanity: hey kids, look at me! I'm a creative!

So, here we have the obvious set-up. There are tons of educated people out there, all educated to believe that they must have some great creative destiny ahead of them: writing the great novel; becoming a famous architect; changing the world as an activiste. That is what the education at the university today is meant to do: give the educated youth the sense that they are part of a great creative enterprise, just by going along to get along.

Only it is all a lie. But why?

In my analysis of our current situation it all dove-tails. See, the point is that, as Nietzsche pointed out, for the modern educated class, God is Dead. He means, I argue, that for the educated Gentry, starting at about 1800, the God of the Axial Age no longer answered the age old question of the "meaning of life, the universe, and everything." Or, as Nicholas Wade writes, the only way a god dies is when people stop believing in him.

So the educated Gentry from Nietzsche's time to ours has been involved in the process of decadence, nihilism, and eternal recurrence, in a whirlpool of religious transvaluation of all values. That is what happens when a god dies, according to Nietzsche.

But. The vast majority of us really have no stomach for this. We are like Falstaff that wishes "t'were bedtime, Hal, and all well."

But it isn't. Never was, and never will be.

See, my analysis of the world is that the primary thing going on is that our educated Gentry, that experiences itself as educated and evolved and born to rule over the deplorables and victims, is not up to the job.

The last thing it will do is throw up its hands and give up. So it lives a lie, pretending that its present self-serving hegemony of religion, culture, and politics over the rest of us is in fact the most enlightened era in history.

What happens when you can't measure up to the present? Chaps like Ken Wilber explain that you regress to a previous ideological phase that doesn't challenge you. In other words, in the Yarvin three-layer theory, the educated Gentry, while pretending to be creative and evolved, actually regresses into a rigid ideological framework such as is usually provided by an Axial Age religion where God sets up the world and issues his divine law to live by.

That's the point of my People of the Responsible Self. They don't have the conceit to believe that they are creating the world. They accept that a God created it all and that the way to live life is to live it according to God's divine law.

And that is how the progressives experience the world. They are the demi-gods that are born to rule, because they are special and because they care about the victims and want to bend the arc of history towards justice.

But if our progressive friends are not in fact creatively inventing the future but all signing on to a rigid fixed system, what are they?

Exactly. They are reactionaries, going back the the past, to the day before God had Died. But they can't do that; you can never run history backwards. So they conjure up fanciful narratives to persuade themselves that they really are the wave of the future.

Wait! Who was that guy that came up with the notion that the progressives are in fact the functionaries organizing a Great Reaction back to the past?

Thus, when I say that socialism is a return to slavery, I do not say that the socialists are cynically saying to themselves, hey let's go back to the past and institute a rigid hierarchical system like back in the old days. I am just saying that when you cannot deal with the true process of the Hero's journey and regress instead to the Ego's journey, you do all kinds of reactionary things while fervently believing you are inventing the future.

While thinking you are the most creative folk since time began you are in fact inventing a system of the most appalling rigidity and subordination.

I would say that if you are doing that you are not a Creative. Not at all. You are just a stuck-up Commoner, a very ordinary person that thinks they are really special.