Since When Is Donald Trump the Little Guy?

 

There is an obvious oxymoron in Donald Trump appearing as the “people’s champion,” defender of the little guy against the establishment. He is a famously rich man, the son of a rich man, a TV celebrity. Surely if anyone is part of the establishment, it is Donald Trump?

The anomaly is yet more dramatic in the case of Elon Musk: the world’s richest man has supposedly become our saviour against the forces of government and corporate censorship.

Or RFK Jr. Kennedy is a maverick bucking the establishment? He is, after all, the American equivalent of royalty.

Surely we are being played? Surely this is all a sham, controlled opposition? How can we trust these guys to go against their class interest?

No; there is reason here. These are the only people who can stand against the machine.

Jefferson, the inventor of American democracy, argued that it relied on the bulk of Americans being freeholders, “yeoman farmers.” That meant they were not too dependent on the system; they were relatively able to resist authority without losing their livelihood. They could bar their front gate and still feed and shelter their family.

Especially if armed. It has been cogently argued that democracy emerged first in England because of the invention of the English longbow. It meant every English yeoman had a weapon that could pierce a suit of armour. The local nobleman could not run roughshod over his hearth. He needed to negotiate consent.

It has been observed that nations generally become functioning democracies at about the point when the GDP per capita reaches 10,000 USD. At that level, a bourgeoisie has usually developed with enough independent resources to go to the mattresses against an authoritarian government, and stand a better than even chance of winning.

In present days we have an elite, an essentially fascist coalition of government and big business, trying to hold power and extent their control through the new technologies. They can and will destroy the career and livelihood of anyone who breaks ranks and opposes them. They can and will “deplatform,” revoke licenses, refuse to graduate, prosecute capriciously or selectively, get you fired, attack your marriage, seize your children, take your house, send for “reeducation,” seize or freeze your assets, for dissent. 

As Jefferson foresaw, but with raised stakes, the only people who can stand up against this are those so wealthy, so popular, or, in the case of women, so beautiful, that they can’t be crushed: the Joe Rogans, the Scott Adamses, the J.K. Rowlings, the Tulsi Gabbards, the Kennedys, the Trumps, the Musks.

Even they are taking a great risk. They may miscalculate. The powers were able to take out Conrad Black. They took out John McAfee. They may have taken out Alex Jones. They are trying to assassinate Donald Trump.

This shows how high the stakes are.

And this is a reason we must reject governments and political parties determined to go after “the rich”; just as we must fear governments and political parties that go after religion and the church. Whatever their faults, we actually need the richest among us to protect our freedoms. 

Tucker Carlson Gets It

 

Eerily germane to my most recent post.

The Coventry Welcome

St. Michael's (Anglican) Cathedral, Coventry.

On the doors of England’s Coventry Cathedral, I am told, there is a sign or poster that reads:

“We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, widowed, straight, gay, confused, well-heeled, or down at heel. We especially welcome wailing babies and excited toddlers.

“We welcome you whether you can sing like Pavarotti or just growl quietly to yourself. You’re welcome here if you’re ‘just browsing,’ just woken up, or just got out of prison. We don’t care if you’re more Christian than the Archbishop of Canterbury, or haven’t been to church since Christmas ten years ago.

“We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome keep-fit mums, football dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegetarians, and junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems, are down in the dumps, or don’t like ‘organized religion.’

“We offer a welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or are here because granny is visiting and wanted to come to the Cathedral.

“We welcome those who are inked, pierced, both, or neither. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down their throat as kids, or got lost on the ring road and wound up here by mistake. We welcome pilgrims, tourists, seekers, doubters -- and you!”

This represents the common modern sentiment: that the Church is for everyone.

Yet this is actually not the Gospel message. It is not what Jesus said. He divided mankind into sheep and goats, or wheat and chaff, and welcomed only the sheep. The rest, he said, quite literally, could go to Hell. He defined his flock in the Beatitudes, as “the little people,” the burdened, the suffering, and followed this up with an equally clear definition of those he did not want: the scribes and Pharisees. When some of them came to see John baptize, arguably the first Christian service, John basically told them to get lost: “You bunch of snakes! Who warned you to run from the coming judgment?”

Who were the scribes and Pharisees? Most literally, the intelligentsia, the educated professional class: the lawyers, journalists, accountants, teachers, professors, ministers.

It is perhaps worth noting here that, contrary to Marxist theory, this professional class, this clerisy, has always been the ruling class.

And the priests? That’s not clear. Properly, the priests of that day were the Sadducees. While Jesus’s relations with them were also difficult, he did not single them out in the same way. The phrase was “Pharisees,” or “scribes and Pharisees.” He might have added Sadducees, and generally did not. Whether or not the Sadducees of Judea can be equated with the Christian priesthood, they were not so condemned.

Instead, it was the professional “clerisy.”

I think we can also assume Jesus’s condemnation did not apply to an entire class as class; that would be arbitrary. There are some good Pharisees in the Bible. Some think St. Paul was a Pharisee in this sense. What Jesus was condemning seems rather to have been the pervasive attitude among such ruling groups that they are better than the “little people,” the laity, the Trump voters and the rednecks, the ordinary folks, and had the moral authority to tell them what to do: the self-righteous. “Pharisee” means literally “set apart, separated.” More or less, “elite.” This attitude no doubt is concentrated in the professional classes, but narcissism of a similar sort can of course appear elsewhere.

My portside buddy Xerxes proposes his own list of undesirables who should not be allowed in the cathedral--not, at least, without changing their views: “racists, misogynists, white supremacists, anti-gays, anti-Muslims, anti-immigrants.”

All of these things are indeed no doubt sinful, gravely sinful if indulged in with full understanding, since they violate human equality, and so the Golden Rule. But they are not the sins Jesus considered deal-breakers. Sin per se is after all no reason to bar anyone from the church. As Jesus said, he came for sinners, not the righteous.

And from either a Christian or human rights perspective, Xerxes’s list is incomplete. It condemns misogynists, but not misandrists; white supremacists, but not black supremacists, brown supremacists, Amerindian supremacists, or Asian supremacists. Anti-gays, but not anti-heterosexuals. Anti-Muslims, but not Muslims who might be anti-Christian, anti-Hindu, or antisemitic. Anti-immigrants, but not “anti-natives” who condemn or scorn their host culture.

Instead of opposing discrimination, this list, and any similar list, is discriminating.

And looks very much like the sort of list the Pharisees might impose on the great unwashed. Hypocritically; or as we more commonly call it nowadays, as “virtue signaling.”

Lactose Intolerance

The New Republic has a bizarre article half-endorsing the new left-wing craze for “milkshaking” political candidates they disagree with. The author ends with:

“I personally oppose violence in all forms, so I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to throw a milkshake at the nearest racist I encounter. But I don’t need to believe in it to recognize how effective it is at shaming the far right.”

That is surely, praising with faint damn.

But more interesting than the moral depravity is the odd assertion that the act of throwing a milkshake at an opponent is “effective.”

We do not yet know the results of the British EU election. Voting is today. On what basis can the tactic already be declared “effective”?

This, I think, is a key to the mindset of the modern left. It does not even care what the general population thinks. “Effective” means that the tactic is popular among leftists.

They genuinely see themselves as a ruling elite, and only what they think matters.

They are perfectly clueless about other views: they do not know, because they do not want to know, because they do not care. A party that is leading the polls, or a policy choice that holds majority support, can nevertheless be branded, like Nigel Farage and Brexit, “far right.” By any measure other than obliviousness, this is a contradiction in terms.

It should be obvious we are dealing with a self-designated, self-aware, elite; roughly, the professional class. My friend Xerxes was once quite open about it with me. I pointed out the illogic of expecting American voters to obediently accept the proposition that others should decide things for them. His response was that of course we should be ruled by an elite. And it of course includes him.

Another leftist friend, a book publisher, warned me against going down the same road as Jordan Peterson with my book on psychology. Yes, sure, he’s now a bestselling author, rich, and perhaps the world’s most famous public intellectual. But, don’t you see, he’s lost the respect of his colleagues?

There is a conscious us-them divide here: the professionals are aware of themselves as a class apart, and are acting for class interests, not in the interests of the whole. They even openly dislike ordinary people. They are the enemy, the “deplorables,” the rednecks, with their guns and their religion, and must be kept in their place. Making common cause with them is class betrayal.

Which may explain by itself the hatred for Farage, Trump, Benjamin, Peterson, or Tommy Robinson. Damned uppity peons.

Marx, purposely or not, got the classes wrong. He saw the Industrial Revolution as a transfer of power from a ruling landowning class to the bourgeoisie, who would in turn be replaced by the proletariat .Yet the landowning class were never the ruling class. In France, for example, they were the Second, not the First, estate. The First Estate, the acknowledged ruling class, was the clergy. So too in India: the top of the caste system was never the Ksatriyas, the Rajas and the landowning nobles. It was the Brahmins, the priests. In China, there was not even a landowning class. Everything was simply run by the Confucian mandarins.

“Priest” or “clerical” or “mandarin” here does not imply only religious office. Our term “clerical” best this ground: this was and is the educated class, the knowledge workers. In Biblical terms, the scribes and Pharisees. Other classes may or may not have had more material comforts, but the clerical class has always held the power. They have always run things, made and enforced the laws, run the businesses, and the schools and universities.

They have run things based on a monopoly, or rather, cartel, on information. Knowledge was their commodity, what they had to sell. Ideally, when the system was not corrupt, this knowledge was in principle available to all comers, and members of this class were admitted purely on their academic merit. But there is at all times a natural and inevitable incentive, among members of this class, to abuse their power, set their own prices for their labour, and to withhold knowledge from others in order to preserve their position.

To the extent that this has been a cartel, to the extent that this ruling group has been corrupt, the new information technology more or less blows that cartel apart.

There is no more cartel on raw knowledge. The information that once was the special preserve of a few is now generally available with a quick Google search. The “long tail” of the Internet also plays a part, revealing that what the “experts” now say is commonly the opposite of what they were saying a few years ago. In many professions, a striking lack of any real knowledge or expertise is being uncovered.

The more corrupt elements of the professional elite are reacting to this by circling the wagons. Realizing that the common people are growing suspicious, they are increasingly understanding the common people as the enemy. And more definitely seeing their own interests as against those of the common people. Hence the radicalization we are seeing on the left.

Their resulting utter disdain for others outside their group makes them peculiarly vulnerable to misjudgments. The New Republic author writes:

“Nothing animates the far right or shapes its worldview quite so much as the desire to humiliate others—and the fear of being humiliated themselves. It’s why alt-right trolls, projecting their own sexual insecurities, enjoy calling their opponents “cucks.” It’s why they rally around blustery authoritarian figures like Donald Trump who cast themselves as beyond embarrassment, shame, or ridicule.”

This is a magnificent example of projection. It is the leftist elite who so values social prestige. The left, like my publisher friend, is all about status, prestige, and being accepted as part of the group. It is the professional elite who fear humiliation, as they are exposed as having no special knowledge.

One of the keys if not the one key of Trump’s popularity is exactly that he seems impervious to humiliation. Marco Rubio tried, and died. Trump visibly just does not care what the elite thinks. Milkshakes? He’ll serve milkshakes and hamburgers at the White House. Humiliating news reports? He’ll just call the press out for “fake news.” He’ll say what he likes, and damn the tut-tuts from the tidy drawing rooms.

The left, in sum, is growing increasingly blustery and authoritarian, and Trump defies it—making him, despite his own wealthy background, a folk hero.

The same is true of Nigel Farage. The present author has the source of his appeal completely inverted; it is because, instead of putting on airs, he is shockingly frank. Benjamin and Robertson campaign in jeans and T-shirts; hardly pretending to be posher than they are. They make it the basis of their appeal that they are outsiders, ordinary working-class guys, not part of the establishment. So the left thinks the way to defeat them is to make it clear to the common yobs that they are ordinary guys, and not part of the establishment?

And those on the right do not call opponents “cucks.” Whether you think it right or not, they call others on the right “cucks,” for being too timid or obsequious to the elites, not ideological opponents.

Note too the uncanny lack of insight in not realizing for an instant that anyone else might just as easily use this milkshake tactic: so long as a single, solitary figure disagrees with any candidate, he can fling a milkshake at them. It is not just that the left does not seem to be listening to anyone else: they cannot even mentally acknowledge, it seems, that they exist. Not even one of them.

So flinging a milkshake says absolutely nothing about the candidate; it could happen to any candidate. It tells us something about the assailant, or their opposition, if it generally approves, and it is not a noble thing. It suggests that they feel they and their views are more important than anyone else’s and must be obeyed without question. The public must conform to their solitary views, or next time, they will vote them all out and elect a new general public.

The left, which is to say by and large the current professional elite, is committing suicide before our eyes.

Has the Revolution Begun?

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We seem to be at an inflection point in world history, a moment of general change.

In Canada, the government is collapsing. I said after Jody Wilson-Raybould’s initial testimony to the Commons Justice Committee that this was likely to be the end of Justin Trudeau. It put him in the position of fighting his own constituency, who are going to believe Wilson-Raybould before they believe him. That seems now to be playing out.

Raymond Bourque reported Ottawa insider gossip at the time as envisioning two ways forward for the Liberals: either everyone but the PM resigns, or the PM resigns. They have tried option one now, and it is not working. It has not been enough. The scandal continues to build. That leaves option two: Trudeau resigns. Or, if they do nothing, simply sound defeat at the next election, coming soon. There is, at the same time, no guarantee that a new leader would satisfy the public mind. For what has been exposed seems to be a culture of corruption at the top. Unless, that is, they chose Wilson-Raybould or Jane Philpott as new leader—but then that might look cynical.

In Britain, the government is also collapsing. Brexit is itself a major inflection point. But now the government is apparently disintegrating over their incomprehension of how to go about it. Theresa May is resigning, but it cannot end there. Surely nobody really believes the problem is Theresa May. Her resignation will change nothing. The entire managing elite, commons and bureaucracy, is looking incompetent, panicked, and like a laughing stock.

In France, rioting in the streets continues every weekend. They are at least calling for Macron to resign. Merkel has forestalled similar protests in Germany by already announcing her resignation.

This must all be connected. There is too much happening all at once for it not to be connected.

But then there is the US, where the opposite thing seems to be happening. Elsewhere, the government is collapsing, and the leader is being pressured to resign. In the US, it is the opposition that is collapsing. The Russia collusion bust, the Jussie Smollett case, the Covington smear, the #Metoo hits on Hollywood, the Warren aboriginal fraud, all seem to expose the opposition rather than the government as venal, self-serving, and incompetent. The demands are instead for prominent members of the media to resign.

It seems to me that it is just this American exception that demonstrates that it is indeed all interconnected. It has nothing to do with any one particular leader, and it has nothing to do with leaders in general. The demands for leaders to resign are only because the leader is in each case the public face of the ruling elite. Except in the US. In each case, it is the ruling elite that is being exposed as venal, incompetent, and self-serving. Hence Trump is the significant exception, because he positions himself as in opposition to the ruling elite.

In Canada, many if not everyone probably realizes that Trudeau is a naif in way over his head, that he has always only been the regime’s mascot. It is his “handlers” who have engineered this fiasco, including the upper reaches of the bureaucracy, who have always been the backbone of the Liberal party. And surely it is evident that the confused mess of Brexit is not really Theresa May’s fault. Does anyone seriously believe that her resignation is going to change much and suddenly make it all work? The policies the French demonstrators are protesting are not Macron’s policies in particular, but the same policies they hated under Hollande, or Sarkozy. And so forth and on. It is the ruling elite in general that is in trouble here. We are, frankly, watching a revolution unfold.

This is perhaps caused by the convergence of two factors. First, the general collapse of morality in the upper classes of the developed world. It began in its present form with the “sexual revolution” of the Sixties, albeit building on amoral intellectual currents that go at least as far back as Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx. With noble but increasingly rare exceptions, the educated classes threw out any commitment to morality as a check on their actions. Hence they have indeed generally grown venal and self-serving.

The second factor is improved communications. The elite maintained their position on the basis of a supposed monopoly of expertise, on special access to protected bodies of knowledge. Thanks to social media and instant web search, they are being revealed in many cases to actually know little or nothing, and to be on average no brighter than average.

No more than a parasitical class.

These two waves have now met and merged, and the revolution is upon us.

As either fate or providence would have it, it looks as though the United States is best positioned to make this transition in relative peace. And even there, things look rocky.

In God We Trust. All Others Pay Cash.

Perceived levels of corruption by country, 2014, according to Transparency International. The reader will note how cloesly this corresponds with GDP. 

Here's a chilling statistic, from Robert Reich in the Christian Science Monitor: “In 1964, Americans agreed by 64% to 29% that government was run for the benefit of all the people. By 2012, the response had reversed, with voters saying by 79% to 19% that government was 'run by a few big interests looking after themselves.'”Looking at the trend lines here, the first hit seems to have been the Vietnam War, circa 1967-8. The biggest hit seems to have come with Watergate. Since then, the confidence has not returned, but has on the whole slowly continued to slide.

Nor is it just government. Trust in all other social institutions seems also to have fallen over the same period: in the press, the churches, the schools, the professions. What we are seeing here, in sum, is a sense of declining morality within the ruling class.

I fear this lack of confidence is probably justified: those on top have increasingly become immoral and self-seeking over this period. One might hypothesize that they were always this immoral, and the only difference is increased scrutiny. But I don't think the evidence supports this. In 1960, anyone of prominence in the US would at least have given lip service to the truth and importance of morality. Now, much conventional morality, and even at times the very idea of morality, is openly scorned among the gentry.

It is a very bad portent for the health of the US. The single greatest asset any society can have is a general confidence in the social contract; a basic trust, a gentlemen's code of conduct that need not be enforced by law. Losing it is the difference between America and, say, Paraguay.

If gentlemen cannot be counted upon to be gentlemen, no amount of law enforcement can make much difference. For who then can trust the police?

If the majority of people believe those in control are merely out for themselves, this justifies them in turn in ignoring any rules that do not seem to be for their own personal benefit.

Society collapses into the primordial war of all against all.

In the meantime, any rival society that can do better than this is certain to conquer.

Perhaps the only thing that preserves America in its preeminence now is the equal or greater decadence of all visible competition.