What if Wokism is Implied in the Civil Rights Laws?

Over the weekend, thanks to John Derbyshire, I got to read Richard Hanania's "Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law." I'll have my American Thinker piece up soon.

Let's say the piece cured me of my faith that the Civil Rights laws were a Good Thing, even if the quotas and diversity and wokism are a Bad Thing.

But politics is downstream from culture is downstream from religion is downstream from the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything." So now what?

Thank you, senator, I'm glad you asked me that. Let's start at the upstream source.

My "Vision of the Good Life Better Than the Left" is all about the question of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" in a world that, according to my reductive Three Peoples theory, has at least three different kinds of people in it. That means that society's ruling class needs to accept that creative people have needs and wants different from responsible people different from subordinate people. I develop an idea of how a society with three different sorts of people could work in An American Manifesto.

I say that creative people -- and I have the conceit to imagine that I am one such -- should accept the path of the Sacrificial Hero, in which life is a journey to the underworld of the unconscious followed by a creative attempt at the border between Order and Chaos, which will probably fail. This means, e.g., that if you want to get creative about sex as a transgender, you should understand that the whole thing is likely to end up as a total disaster for you and yours. That is the meaning of creativity: you will probably fail. But creative people need to understand that most people do not want this kind of life and do not understand why anyone would.

I say that responsible people should have the right to live boring responsible lives within the guardrails, living according to a fixed agenda set forth in one of the Axial Age religions or later modifications, such as the Code of the Bourgeois as developed in my Road to the Middle Class. But responsible people should understand that subordinates, the new migrants to the city, are scared and properly live in ethnic enclaves run by virtual ganglords until they learn the Code of the Bourgeois. But do not expect responsible people to understand creative people.

I say that subordinate people since time began have looked to a family patriarch or tribal chief or urban ethnic leader to provide a safe haven from a brutal world. But, in our modern world this is a mean and cramped life, for subordinate people since time began have been cruelly used as political cannon fodder by their leaders. If subordinate people want to live in their ethnic ghettos, so be it. But if they yearn for something higher and better, we noble creatives and responsibles should extend a hand and help them learn the Code of the Bourgeois as per my Road to the Middle Class. But do not expect subordinate people to understand responsible people or creative people.

Then there is the question of the religions that come downstream from the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything." We already have religions for responsibles and subordinates. The problem is the religion of the creatives, that right now is the false religion of Wokism. I say that the problem with the creatives' religion is that it has as its human ideal the Ego Hero rather than the Sacrificial Hero. The Ego Hero is the revolutionary that kills millions on his millennial quest, the activist that leads a community of subordinates to social hell, the nice liberal lady with virtue-signalling yardsigns in front of her house. Obviously our wokey friends will not change their religion until their current one fails them utterly: we can hope.

Then there is the question of the culture of the future. Well, obviously it would not be the current culture that only allows cultural expression by the creatives that endorse the current religious cult of wokism and cancels everything else. In other words, the culture of the future would feature cultural expression and experience not just for wokey college graduates that celebrate revolution, activism, peaceful protest, anti-racism, and gender bending. It would also have cultural space for ordinary responsible people that want to celebrate marriage, family, children within the context of a religion issuing from the Axial Age. It would also have cultural space for subordinate people and their cultural preferences -- I am ignorant enough not to know what that might be.

Now we get to politics. Politics is the art of uniting "us," the people, against "them," the enemy. It is pure tribalism, and, I say, all tribalism is "fake tribalism. Why? Because once humans get beyond the community of the kindred we invent a fake kindred, that might be a clan or a tribe or a class or a race or an order of nobles. Our wokey lords and masters have a politics of race, in which they are "allies" fighting for the "oppressed peoples" against the "white oppressors." My politics would be a politics of class, in which "we" ordinary Americans unite against "them," the wokey upper class of educated snobs and cancel cultists, while looking after the lower class of subordinates with a modest program of paternalistic support and understanding. It is totally fake, but every politics is fake.

Funny, isn't it? This politics has already been invented. That is what Trumpism is all about. It is nationalist, in the semse of America First -- or ordinary Americans first. It issues mean tweets to various ruling-class swells and functionaries and toadies and Democratic operatives with bylines, and it is avuncular towards the traditionally marginalized, with a below-the-radar offer to join the great American mainstream, any time you are ready, friend.

The Biden Agenda: It Still Comes Down to Loot and Plunder

One of my maxims is that politics and government reduce, in the end, to nothing more than the good old Viking model of predatory warfare followed by the distribution of loot and plunder.

So when the Biden administration announced its agenda of boosting the economy, fighting climate change, and fighting systemic racism, the only question that remained was who would get the loot and plunder.

All you need to do is look at my "Where the Biden Budget Bites" from a couple days ago.

Health Care gets a $300 billion a year boost.

Education: Our teachers get a permanent boost in education spending, doubling federal education spending.

Welfare: After the $1.7 trillion budget buster this year, welfare will settle down to about double the pre-Biden outlays.

Transportation spending will double by FY26 from the current $100 billion a year to $200 billion.

What is interesting is what is left out. Where does all the heroic green energy come in? Obviously it's not really in the budget, except for a few trains in the transportation budget. So that will have to come in subsidies and tax manipulations. I wonder what that will do to the economy.

Whatabout systemic racism? We can see this emerging in reports about grants for black farmers and reparations for blacks who have been left behind in the real-estate boom of the last generation.

But I can't help thinking of the larger issue. If you look at the long term record on government spending in the US, you see that over the last century, starting in the early years of the 20th century -- and especially after wars -- government spending has cinched up. But, if you look at the chart it seems that it has gone about as far as it can go -- once the COVID orgy is over.

What does it mean? It means that loot and plunder has gone about as far as it can go. Now, looking at the Biden budget, I'd say that the rulers are trying another post-war spending lurch. Will it work?

Honestly, we don't know.

The point is that, if you unpack the Biden agenda, climate change means loot and plunder for the educated elite and politically connected corporations. Systemic racism means loot and plunder for blacks.

OK, I get that. The Democratic Party is an over-under coalition of the educated / evolved and the helpless victims.

But what the Bidenoids are telling us is that they can't think beyond the age-old formula of war followed by the shareout of loot and plunder.

And the great middle of ordinary Americans are left out in the cold. Of course, we already have ours, in Social Security and Medicare and "free" K-12 education.

But you know what we want, we middlers? We want economic growth and tax cuts. I'd say that if Biden doesn't deliver that he will lose lots of middling sorts of votes.

See, my big picture notion is that war plus loot and plunder has passed it sell-by date.

The Soviet Union looted eastern Germany to the bare walls after 1945. So? How did that work out for the Russian people?

The Democrats shoveled out subsidies for housing and higher education. So? How's that working out for young families and students burdened with a lifetime of debt? How's that working out for minorities left way behind as the educated elite has feasted on the subsidies and the grants?

I think that the wave of the future is for humans to get beyond the Viking culture of raiding and looting and plundering. 

But, who will be the one to lead the people into a new economic paradigm, into a new politics, and a new culture that is not based on war and plunder.

And I don't just mean military war. I mean the fake war of climate change. I mean the fake war of fighting systemic racism. Because the whole point of these fake wars is the aftermath, the feasting on booty.

And I think that the age of loot and plunder is over. Because loot and plunder does not pay.

Hate is Exploding in North Seattle

Dear Councilman Strauss:

I am writing to you about a disturbing eruption of hate in North Seattle.

I well remember my phone conversation with you a couple of months ago. You mentioned your concern with police brutality, in particular the use of tear gas on mostly peaceful protesters during the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle. Since you were 23 at the time I can well understand what a brutal experience it was for you. And you demonstrated your opposition to "hate" in the way you pronounced that word with remarkable affect.

So here is a "tag" under the bridge on Aurora Av. N. at N 63rd Street just a few blocks from my home.

Pretty special isn't it. Perhaps your eyesight isn't quite up to snuff this morning. I will translate:

The "tag" reads: FUCK / THE UNCLE / TOM ASS / KAREN / NOSEY / ASS RICH / ASS PEOPLE.

I think you will agree that this sort of racist sexist homophobic hate has no place in "our community" in Seattle. I wonder if the tagger was incensed that the nice liberal ladies that live west of Green Lake are beginning to demand that the City "Do Something" about the homeless that live about 20 feet away from the "tag."

I think we can all agree that anyone that slanders nice liberal ladies has no place in "our community."

However, I am bound to notice that the "tagger" seems to be confused. He talks of "Uncle Tom," no doubt from his extensive reading of anti-slavery literature. Uncle Toms are black. Yet he is also incensed at "Karen." We all know that "Karen" is a pejorative for "bossy white woman." The word "Nosey" is clearly anti-semitic. The use of the word "Ass" I interpret to be simple and outrageous homophobia.

Really, how bad can it get? In North Seattle? Racist hate. Sexist hate. Anti-Semitic hate. Homophobic hate. What are you doing about this abomination, Councilman Strauss?

By the way, I observed a "tag" on the path around Green Lake the other day. It read "ABOLISH COPS BILLIONAIRES." And I thought of you when I read it, because of your earnest concern about police brutality.

But, for me, as a racist-sexist-homophobe from way back, the ABOLISH COPS BILLIONAIRES was merely comical. If you abolish cops then what you get is vigilante groups and gangs. As a wise politician, I am sure you are deeply conscious of this. If you abolish billionaires then you abolish the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years. As a wise reader of history I am sure you are deeply conscious of this.

By the way, I read that noble lefty Antifa types on May 28, 2020 pursued and beat up an Asian man they thought was the notorious white supremacist Any Ngo. Oh wait! Andy is Asian and gay. So those Antifa mostly peaceful protesters were racist homophobes. Who knew? Of course, since the mostly peaceful protesters were masked it could be that they were really Proud Boys haters impersonating mostly peaceful progressive protesters in order to blacken the noble name of Antifa.

One of my maxims is an answer to Oscar Wilde's famous question: "What Do Women Want?" As a racist-sexist-homophobe I declare that Wilde got it wrong. It is not what women want, it is what women expect. And what women expect is:

Women expect to be protected.

At some point in the near future, I predict, the nice liberal ladies in your uberliberal district in North Seattle will demand that you act to protect them as they expect. They will throw away their #WeBelieve signs and plant #SaveOurCity signs in their front yards. I don't know what will set them off, but I expect it will be an intersection of the homeless -- that are building magnificent tented residences west of Green Lake that will soon rank with the finest tents and yurts of Central Asian warriors -- and crime. You see, women expect to be protected, from vagrants and criminals. I wonder why.

Did you know that the home invasion we suffered here on April 24, 2021 was not the only disturbance of the peace in "our community." Just across the street last week a neighbor who is a single woman found that someone had been trying to break the lock on her door.

Yep. A couple of criminal incidents our our street in a couple of months. And the Seattle Police Department is down how many peace officers right now? I'm sure you know the exact number. And I am sure that you are Doing Something about it.

When women realize that the protectors -- the politicians and the police -- are not going to protect them then they can turn overnight from nice liberal ladies into veritable Maenads.

I imagine that nothing is more important to you than doing your job. When it comes down to it, you have one job, Councilman Strauss. And that is to protect the women of North Seattle as they expect to be protected.

And that means, finally, that you, Councilman Strauss, declare war on hate: hate on our very doorstep here in North Seattle.

How could you have let this happen? That is my question.

Perhaps you could reply with a thoughtful answer that does not include your favorite phrase: "I have a meeting in five minutes."

Sincerely,

Christopher Chantrill

Where the Biden Budget Bites

I'm getting the Biden Budget online on usgovernmentspending.com. You can tell what is going on by comparing the Trump FY21 budget with the FY22 Biden Budget.

For instance, health care. Here is how it used to look in the FY21 budget.

And here is how it looks now in the FY22 budget.

See? There's a permanent uptick in health care spending.

Then there is education, in the FY21 budget:

And now in the FY22 budget:

Hey, those heroic teachers deserve their loot and plunder, and don't you forget it.

How about welfare? Here's the FY21 budget:

And here's the FY22 budget:

See what's going down? After the COVID unemployment checks have ended, welfare will be twice what it was before COVID. You think that is a good idea? I gotta bridge to sell you.

Then there is transportation, in the FY21 budget:

And in the FY22 budget:

I am sure that all that additional transportation spending will really make a difference in saving the Earth from climate change.

Yep. Government does not change. You can call it fighting climate change, or fighting systemic racism. But it all comes down to loot and plunder for your supporters. Right teachers?

But I suspect that the American people will not like the result of the Biden Budget.

But then, I am biased.

The Worse the Better

When Vladimir Lenin said: "the worse the better," he meant what Nikolay Chernyshevsky meant when he used the phrase in the middle of the 19th century

to indicate that the worse the social conditions became for the poor, the more inclined they would be to launch a revolution[.]

But Chernyshevsky got it from John Adams.

Let us borrow the phrase and use it in our own time. If you are a racist-sexist-homophobe like me that wants the American people to rise up against the unjust rule of the educated gentry class in a Great Rebellion then you understand that rebellion is impossible if the left is gently pursuing its march through the institutions.

What we need is something like the sudden lurch to teach critical race theory and LGBT in elementary schools. Because that is what it takes to get ordinary suburban moms angry enough to push back.

So when I read the American Spectator piece on "The Radical Reshaping of K-12 Education: Gender Redefinition and Self-Selection," I was actually encouraged. You cannot beat an ideology with no ideology. You need an citizenry aroused to action by a sudden realization that the kids are not all right.

Extreme ideologies are quickly taking root in U.S. K-12 public schools through new school policies, practices, and curriculums — with devastating effects on students. Unfortunately, Americans are mainly turning a blind eye instead of speaking up against political and social indoctrination that threatens our children’s education and the very fabric of our nation.

Actually, of course, the extreme ideologies have been working their way through the woodwork for decades. But now -- probably provoked by the Trump effect -- the ideologues are going for broke.

So this gives us racist-sexist-homophobes a chance to "take our schools back" from the education blob. 

The point is that all government institutions and programs naturally tend to go with the trends in ruling class culture. And right now the ruling class is captured by the radical racists of critical race theory and the radical LBGTs of transgender activism. Nothing remarkable, you understand. This is the sort of thing that happens to human communities. Call it the "herd effect." Ideologically committed leaders in the ruling class get a movement going, their followers in the ruling class go along, and all-of-a-sudden, "our kids" are being taught to hate their whiteness and adjust their personal pronouns.

This is all perfectly well understood by my reductive Three Peoples theory. The People of the Creative Self are always trying to reinvent themselves and come up with new things and try them out on the rest of society. If they do a business startup and see whether the consumers want their cool new product, or if they form a religious cult that organically grows in society, no harm done. But if they decide to force their idea on the rest of us by commandeering the government to force their ideas down our throats, then we have a problem right here in River City.

We racist-sexist-homophobes have been concerned for ages about the left's "long march through the institutions." La Wik credits Sixties activist Rudi Dutschke with the notion and a bunch of other lefties include Antonio Gramsci. The strategic brilliance of the notion is its slow and steady progress. If it doesn't provoke serious opposition then it just grows, year to year, until it takes over the world.

And there is the truth that the only people that get to work in the ideology business are the ruling class and the educated class. Nobody else has the authority and the reach to promote ideas throughout society.

So the only way that we racist-sexist-homophobes get a chance to push back again ruling-class ideologues is when the ideologues violate the Mr. Brooke maxim and go a "little too far." That is when ordinary people get angry and push back.

I got to see how that works yesterday watching the 2020 Russian movie Dear Comrades! It's about a strike in 1962 at the electric locomotive factory in Novocherkassk, near Rostov, a few miles northeast of the Black Sea. 

What was the problem? Why were the workers striking? It was simple. The Soviet government was increasing food prices and reducing worker wages, and people were frightened and angry. 

The movie is mainly focused on the minor Communist Party officials, in the city government and the KGB, and how they are basically powerless idiots in the monstrous Party hierarchy that descends upon the town to put down the worker rebellion.

The question for us is whether our Inner Party hierarchy here in the good old USA has the chops and the ruthlessness to put down the current populist rebellion just like the Soviets when they put down the Novocherkassk strike. Can they ram through their CRT and their LGBT ideology or will they provoke a rebellion that gets too hot to handle?

Obviously, We Don't Know. We don't know how much power our ruling class has; we don't know how ruthless they are prepared to be; we don't know what kind of pushback is possible.

Over at Taki's David Cole thinks that the MAGA movement is useless. Because, organic though it might be, it has no answer except "Trump!" It needs money and backing and a coherent ideology, he proposes.

Indeed. And just like the workers of Novocherkassk, no doubt our rulers will suppress any rebellious movement. Until the day that it doesn't, like 1989 in the Soviet Union. 

It's interesting that in Dear Comrades! the Soviet government chooses to put down the rebellion not with the army but with KGB sharpshooters firing on the mob from concealed locations high up in buildings that panics the mob into running for cover. And then hides the number of deaths. And makes everyone sign Sergeant Schultz statements that they know nothing. And then stages a dance festival in the town square where the rioters were killed.

In other words, the ruling class is usually afraid to display its ruthlessness in living color. It seems to need to preserve the fiction that it rules for the benefit of the people in the name of the people.

Just like our ruling class needs to assert that the stolen election is a Big Lie and the MAGA crowd of January 6 was an "armed insurrection," and that COVID did not originate in a Chinese lab. 

Oh, wait. Now, all of a sudden it is OK -- and not racist at all -- to say that COVID originated in a Chinese lab. And Twitter and Facebook and the mainstream media fact checkers will allow what was banned in early 2020. 

So that's all right. Boy, thank goodness we live in a free society.

But at least we know that our rulers are running scared.

Advice to Progressives on Memorial Day

Vice President Harris has been properly cautioned for a tweet just prior to Memorial Day that said "enjoy the long weekend.

What, you may ask, is wrong with that? Thank you for asking.

The simple answer is this. Memorial Day is not a long weekend. It is the holiday -- as in "holy" day -- on which we make a pathetic effort to make amends for all the young lives uselessly thrown away in the nation's stupid wars.

But we never admit this truth. We cannot; we must not. For, it cannot be that the men and women that gave their lives in America's wars died in vain.

Now, of course, if you are a progressive you think that they all died in vain and it is an offense against social justice. And you feel "silenced, broken, and limited" by the systemic racists that insist that every American should honor the fallen.

Quite so. But here is my practical advice to you moral exemplars in your next mostly peaceful protest against America's wars.

It is that it cannot be that the sons of average American women, the mothers of which you've heard tell, lost their sons in vain.

Yes, I know. They did lose their sons in vain in stupid wars for America's imperialist agenda. And slavery. And colonial domination. And racism. And so on. But do not ever suggest to ordinary American women that their sons are or were mere cannon fodder. They are heroes; they were heroes. Period. Full stop. End of story.

That is the point of Memorial Day, first called Decoration Day for decorating the graves of the fallen in the Civil War, as opposed to Veterans Day. Veterans Day is about celebrating all who served in the nation's wars. Memorial Day is about honoring the fallen.

See, the thing about all women, except wokey upper-class feminists, is that the children that they conceived, bore, and raised are the most important achievement of their lives: really the only achievement of their lives; really the definition of their lives.

So, to suggest that the sons died in vain is the same as to say that the mothers lived in vain, that they were fools ever to get married, ever to conceive children, ever to bear them, ever to raise them. Don't do it, lefties.

By all means blame the racist sexist homophobic politicians. By all means blame the fascist military leaders. By all means blame the capitalist war profiteers. By all means blame the monstrosity of systemic racism. But do not blame the young men that joined the colors and died.

Do not be misled by the upper-class women who have accepted the leftist narrative. Do not be misled by women of "oppressed peoples" that have been carefully taught to hate their homeland. Remember that for the vast majority of ordinary women their children are the light of their lives and cannot have lived in vain.

So, go to a Memorial Day parade and listen to the VFW worthies and the service at the graveyard and the invocations and the prize speeches by student essay-contest-winners. And look around at all the ordinary people in attendance and think about their lives and the meaning of their lives

And think about how those ordinary people are way less privileged than an educated, evolved person like you.

Then remember always to honor the fallen on Memorial Day. Because.

"Progressive Fatalism?" How to Miss the Point

The culture war, writes Samuel Kronin at Quillette, is characterized by "a deepening progressive fatalism about race in America." That's where BLM and the current cultural hysteria comes from.

I Don't Think So. But here's what progressives think.

Before 2008, many believed the country was simply too racist to elect a black president. And then, just like that, it happened and Americans forgot what it felt like before it happened. For progressives, the optimism that came with a two-term black presidency in a white majority country with a recent history of overt racism was thwarted by the realization that racism hasn’t gone away and black disadvantage abides.

Hey, I know. Maybe the problem is that the left's whole religion on race is a false religion, that for decades liberals have gone to church on the notion that America is irredeemably racist and that only liberals have the moral chops to redeem America.

And then when we elect a black president and the "black disadvantage" -- liberalspeak for black dysfunction -- doesn't go away, why, as the primitive mind has it, according to Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return,

The primitive... cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering; it arises from a personal fault... or from his neighbor's malevolence... but there is always a fault at the bottom of it[.]

America's blacks cannot be dysfunctional fools, ruined by half a century of liberal post-civil-rights-era politics. Oh no. Systemic white racist-sexist-homophobes must be to blame. Let's recast Eliade's notion.

The liberal... cannot conceive of flat-out black dysfunction issuing from unjust liberal policy. It arises from the systemic immoral malevolence of gap-tooth white bitter-clinger deplorable white oppressors in their insurrectionary far-right terrorist cells. There has to be a right-wing fault at the bottom of it -- at the bottom of everything -- otherwise maybe the whole liberal project is a wrong turn, a moral horror, and an unjust monstrosity.

Liberals have to believe that "racism hasn’t gone away," because if it has the world doesn't need liberals any more.

Earth to liberals: ordinary American Commoners all wish that liberal race politics would just go away so they could get on with working and wiving and thriving without looking over their shoulder to make sure that some liberal isn't about to cancel them for a wrong word 20 years ago. And without ever thinking about race again.

The current left-wing ideological terror is not just "the sharp cultural turn toward identity issues in the 2010s." It's been there all along. Here's what Paul Kengor wrote in The American Spectator about liberals circa 1990

I recently happened upon a folder of my columns for my college newspaper in the late 1980s. I was the editorial page editor for our daily newspaper (published Monday through Thursday), The Pitt News. My goodbye column in May 1990 lamented the liberals who reflexively called conservatives names like “Nazi,” “fascist,” “racist,” “homophobe,” “hater.” Yes, way back then. This was when the political correctness movement really launched. We were already referring to liberals as the Thought Police.

I mean. When you are calling the opposition names, using pedal-to-the-metal pejoratives like "RACIST," we are not talking "progressive fatalism." We are talking people that think that the "other" has no place in polite society, and that the "other" needs to be purged from the public square.

Did I mention that pejorative comes from the Latin pejorare meaning "to make things worse?"

We are talking about the human need for a moral narrative, the need for a meaning of "life, the universe, and everything." And that every moral universe needs a Satan, an Old Scratch, a scapegoat upon which to blame all the evils of the world.

And if your need for a moral narrative comes from a need to justify your status as a ruling class, then, in the modern era, that requires you to pose as the educated enlightened lightbringers, the allies of the oppressed peoples fighting the white oppressors for justice.

So, if you have passed your civil rights acts, if you have elected your First Black President, if you have midwifed a second rate race narrative called the "1619 Project," if you have railroaded a poor dumb cop to jail for not preserving the life of a drugged out black habitual criminal resisting arrest, why, the last thing you are ever going to do is declare victory and give up the game to a new, improved ruling class.

You tell me: when has any religion declared that Satan or the Evil One has been decisively defeated, so now we can wind up the old religion and hang out in cafés drinking lattes until the next religion comes along?

Like old soldiers: religion never dies. It only fades away as the believers, one by one, fail to turn up at regular Sunday services.

If you want to call that "fatalism," be my guest.