The Tumbrel Passes

Execution of Robespierre

I had suggested this COVID-19 pandemic was sent by God to straighten us out, and discredit false ideologies. Now it looks like the opposite has happened: the craziness, in the US and perhaps also in Western Europe, is getting rapidly worse. And it looks as though the US is closer to collapse than Communist China.

Yet it may be that things are the opposite of what they seem. It may be that in the streets of the US now, we see a cornered animal. The instinct may be to take with it as much as it can on the way down.

The twin pillars of the postmodern left have been the education system and the media; the indoctrination system. Both seem to be under existential threat. The mainstream media has been dying for years; the coronavirus crisis has now caused surviving newspapers to shutter across the country. Suddenly there is no advertising revenue. Even leftist new media is failing.

The educational establishment probably faces a similar crisis now that everybody has learned how to study online. For universities, their main source of income has long been foreign students. COVID has arrested that flow, and if there is recession or worse in China and in Saudi Arabia, it may not revive for the foreseeable future. At the same time, the COVID crisis has not generally helped the reputation of “the experts.” They stand to lose much of their authority with the public as a result.

If Antifa is largely behind the rioting, the typical Antifa member seems to be an academic or a school teacher. These are the desperate ones about to lose their prestige, their power, and perhaps their livelihood. And they are being supported openly by the media.

Beyond these centres of power, the power of the left has been based on controlling information. They have of course tried to maintain their control by openly censoring and “deplatforming” any new sources of information for the general public. As and if they are losing control over information in spite of this, it seems obvious enough that they would now be resorting more dramatically to trying to scare everyone into submission.

It is obviously working with a lot of people. Prominent people are especially vulnerable, since they are easy to single out as examples, and they have the most to lose. Bill Cosby comes to mind.

Yet this form of control is extremely fragile: it depends on maintaining the impression of power. Lose that impression, and things can collapse very quickly. I think of the old Soviet Union. Or, for that matter, the British Empire.

For a time, leaders and the general public will take the cowardly path, try to keep their heads down, and hope the mob or the elite does not target them. Yet as everybody, especially in leadership, sees the odds increase that they too could be next, perhaps despite their best efforts, the safer bet will at some point be to stand and fight. Things may start happening even faster then, but in the opposite direction.