Democracy Has Come

 

Leonard Cohen died November 7, 2016, the day before Donald Trump was first elected. Cohen’s son Adam says his father predicted Trump would win. Everyone thought Clinton would. Why did he think so?

Like any great poet, Cohen was a prophet. He saw deeply into the zeitgeist; he could see which way things were heading. In 1992, he put out an explicitly prophetic album, “The Future.” In in he traced two possible paths: a dark one: “I’ve seen the future, baby. It is murder”; and a hopeful one: “Democracy is coming—to the USA.” It was, clearly, a warning.

It does seem America and the world has been going down the dark path traced in “The Future”:

Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order
Give me crack and anal sex…

This sounds like the obsession with power relationships and self-indulgence that underlies woke culture.

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder

That hardly needs comment, does it?

On the other hand, surely Trump’s election was and is the second path, the path of light. Cohen saw that the US was, as of 1992, not truly democratic. That new truer democracy is the “populism” Trump and Elon Musk’s X represents.

It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet

This predicts a return from multicultural idolatries to traditional American culture. Make America great again!

It's coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin'
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat.

The holy places—sounds like a predicted religious revival. The more so since he also says it comes “From the staggering account/In the Sermon on the Mount.” In “The Future,” he laments, “Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima!” 

And this stanza also sounds like a rejection of feminism and sexual politics, the great example of the woke power dynamics.

He also says true democracy is coming from “the ashes of the gay.” This might mean gay martyrdom. Or it might mean gay politics become a spent force.

Democracy is, Cohen says, coming to America first partly because of America’s cultural dominance, partly because the US system is flexible. It has “the machinery for change.” And partly because “It’s here the family’s broken.” This sounds like a need to return to “family values.”

I wonder if Cohen died in peace, seeing clearly that the US and the world was going to choose the better path after all.

Latest Dispatch from the Western Front

 

Jill Stein has just announced for the US presidency. This adds to a now-crowded field including Cornell West and RFK Jr. There are rumours of Larry Horan, or Joe Manchin, also coming in. And the Libertarians are always out there too. Stein’s campaign in 2016 was alone significant enough that some say it threw the election to Trump.

Why are we getting so many independent runs in this particular cycle?

It is the latest battle in an ongoing war between the common people and the powerful, the “experts,” those in control of the levers in society. A conflict kicked off in turn by rapidly improving information and communications technology, making the expert class intrinsically less useful and exposing their relative incompetence and venality.

We saw this popular revolt, for example, in the initial election of Trump; in Brexit; in the improbable rise of Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party; in the Arab Spring. The general public has for some time now, and increasingly, been in the mood to overthrow whomever was in charge. 

In reaction, the powerful have turned against democracy, and become increasingly authoritarian.

The American system traditionally relied on the primary system to allow all voices and concerns to be aired and voted on. The Democratic Party in the US, has now deliberately abandoned this system. This forces the left, at least, into a European model, in which the variety of viewpoints are represented by different candidates and parties in the general election.

On the Republican side, the common people took control three cycles ago. Without popular support, the old party establishment cannot now get traction by going to the people. Does anybody remember Evan McMullin? So long as Trump looks like an outlaw, support for him is solid.

The Democratic Party came close to being similarly taken over by the left-populists under Bernie Sanders. However, they fell short, and the forces of reaction have seized absolute power in response. Left-populism in intrinsically less compelling than right-populism, because the modern left is already allied with the expert class and the bureaucracy. “Vanguard of the proletariat” and all that. They can never appear as plausibly insurgent. 

In Canada, the Conservative Party, the official and perpetual opposition, at first tried to shut the gate against the rabble, fixing leadership races for Andrew Scheer and then Erin O’Toole as controlled opposition. But then, after repeated failure in the general elections, they wisely fixed the next race for Pierre Poilievre, who at least sounds like a populist. The floodgates have opened.

Meantime, the Liberals, the natural governing party, closely allied with the bureaucracy and the professions, has grown openly authoritarian and paranoid about the people.

In the UK, the Labour Party was actually taken over by left-populists under Jeremy Corbin. However, as left-populism has less steam with the general pubic than populism on the right, that wave receded. On the right, the Conservatives, under intense pressure from third parties, were taken over by populists, kicking and screaming though they were, when Johnson got in on a Brexit platform. 

But the brass were not yet done. Despite an overwhelming election win, they soon forced Johnson out, then forced out his popularly elected successor, not to their liking, and parachuted in they guy, Rishi Sunak.

But of course they greatly fear Nigel Farage and Reform, the third party option; so much so that they are trying to drive him out of the country.

I believe the win by the people is inevitable in the longer run. It is driven by the technology, and the technology cannot be turned back. Not to mention the Divine Will. But there may be much more nastiness between now and then.

A similar struggle is going on in the Catholic Church: a war of the Vatican against the common faithful. This is masked, it is true, by Pope Francis as a war against “clericalism,” on behalf of the laity. But this is the typical dodge: Francis is pope, “vanguard of the proletariat,” not laity. This is the old Marxist trick. He himself gets to select the voices he presents as “the laity”; like the old system of soviets. It is actually a concentration of power in the hands of the Vatican bureaucracy. 

The real wishes of the laity are illustrated by the growing popularity of masses in Latin, of traditionalist YouTube channels, of traditionalist seminaries, and growing voices against corrupt priests, bishops, and cardinals.

Francis seems to have been elected to circle the wagons against these unruly Apaches, the people in the pews. The synodal demands to normalize homosexuality come, surely, from within the hierarchy—there are far more practicing homosexuals, proportionately, within their ranks, than among the general public. There is reputedly, a “gay Mafia” at the Vatican. Those calling out financial corruption in the Vatican, like Pell and Vigano, have been cast into the outer darkness. 

It is harder to see how the conflict within the Catholic Church will end.

Populism

 

What is the big deal about populism? We commonly hear the expression these days, and usually not as a compliment.

Populism means “a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people” (Merriam-Webster); “A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite” (American Heritage); “political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favourable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment.” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Definitions seem pretty consistent: the interests of the people over those of the elite.

Donald Trump is a populist, in promising to “drain the swamp.” So is Pierre Poilievre, with his appeal to “the common sense of the common people.” So was Mike Pence, at the recent Republican candidates’ debate, in repeating the slogan “What we need is a government as good as the American people.” John Diefenbaker was a populist: “Everyone is against me except the people.” RFK Jr. is a populist. Jefferson was a populist. The NDP too used to at least claim to be populist, fighting for the “working man” against the “special interests.”

So what is wrong with that? This is simply democracy: the idea that there must be some check on the power of the elite. The opposite of populism would be autocracy, or aristocracy. I think we all rejected that in the American and French revolutions.

To be fair, however, Adolf Hitler was also a populist, appealing to the “volk” against the cosmopolitan elite, which he then identified with the Jews. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Robespierre were all nominally populists.

My conclusion: like any obvious good, populism will inevitably be hijacked to conceal evil. Just as the smartest way to hide if you are a thoroughly bad sort is under a cassock.

Buyer beware: consider such movements case by case. And be alert too that slanders will be spread about them by any elite.

Gervais at the Golden Globes

It seems to me Ricky Gervais’s monologue at the Golden Globe Awards marks an important new stage in the ongoing popular revolution against entrenched “elites.”

The protest has now moved from the streets into the halls of the palace.

We saw perhaps the same thing too when JK Rowlings recently fell afoul of the far left. And then did not apologize. We have seen it in the recent politically incorrect grumblings of ex-Pythons John Cleese and Terry Gilliam.

And all have been, perhaps, emboldened by the prior example of Jordan Peterson, an academic who bucked the academic speech codes, and prospered instead of being ruined.

It is a critical point; as when, during the French Revolution, members of the First and Second Estate began defecting to the National Assembly. For these are members of the elite defecting.

Gervais is himself a card-carrying member of the glitterati. Nor is he any right-winger. He aggressively advocated for the Corbyn Labour Party as recently as the 2017 UK election; this year, he was neutral.

It is important that Gervais was mocking them. That is extreme: he is saying they do not deserve to be taken seriously. This means that, very suddenly, it may be UNCOOL to be leftist. The peer pressure to conform to leftist ideology may be flipped.

His criticisms through humour were not political, either. They were on moral grounds.

That is the crucial point. The current elite no longer holds the moral high ground, as they must to justify their status and their privilege. They are beginning, belatedly, to see this themselves, just as the nobles and clergy did in the French Revolution.

Gervais almost said this in so many words: “You have no standing to preach to anyone. Just take your award, thank your agent and your God, and --.”

Tellingly, I see news sources transcribing that would “God” as “guard.” Which makes no sense, but to acknowledge a God might be, to them, too traumatic. They fear judgement now too much.

This is not the point at which the house of cards, or the Bastille, comes down; that is when the order is given to fire on the crowd, and the ordinary soldiers will not muster, or will not obey. But this is the point at which the collapse is inevitable.

The mandate of heaven, as the Chinese would put it, has moved on.

Bad Advice for Scheer and the Tories

The spectre of populism.

In the wake of the Canadian federal election, the general consensus among the punditry has become that Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives lost.

This is in itself debatable. By several measures, Scheer did unusually well.

Moreover, the consensus is hardening that the reason they lost was that Scheer’s “social conservatism” was not marketable in the East. The Tories, if they ever want to win again, we are warned, need to get rid of any trace or hint or vestige of distaste for abortion or for gay marriage.

And that is what it amounts to, too; because the Tories already publicly support both abortion and gay marriage.

The proof everyone turns to is apparently Scheer’s fumbling of a question about abortion in the first French language debate.

I think this advice to the Tories is exactly wrong, and demonstrably wrong, given that this is what they are already doing.

They ought to go the other way. I don’t think they can do anything on gay marriage, and I don’t think anyone cares. Other than legislation to protect the conscience rights of individuals and religious groups who dissent from the practice. But they should come out for some modest restriction on abortion.

Steve Paiken’s preferred pollster on TVO, Advanced Symbolics, using newer technology and rolling polls, was extremely accurate on the final result of the election. And their polling suggested that the reason Scheer’s vote fell near the end of the campaign was simply that the media, he, and Trudeau were all saying that the Conservatives were poised to win. That scared a bunch of NDP votes over to the Liberals.

If Scheer’s awkward answer on abortion hurt him, I suspect it hurt him because of its timidity rather than because it revealed his support of unregulated abortion was not heartfelt. Not speaking plainly about such issues promotes a sense of a Tory "hidden agenda,” and an aura of dishonesty. That is what may be killing them.

Consider this comparison: for generations, in North America, socialists have not dared call themselves socialists, considering the term electoral death. So we had the Canadian socialists declaring themselves first “the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation,” then “the New Democratic Party.” No, not socialism: a “cooperative commonwealth.” A “new democracy”…

Then, in the last election cycle, Bernie Sanders came out and ran using the term openly. And suddenly among the Democrats, and among young people, everyone seems to want to be a socialist. It is as though a dam broke. All it took was honesty, and socialism went from something bad to something good, in the eyes of that society.

I expect it would work the same way for social conservatism in Canada. Everyone is afraid of being the first, and perhaps committing some social faux pas. But it is easy for a real leader to move that “Overton window.” In Canada, I suspect there is now a huge pent-up demand for it.

According to polls, only 32% of Canadians support unrestricted abortion, the present situation. And that number is declining. Yet currently all federal parties adamantly support unrestricted abortion. Let Scheer come out for some limited restriction on it, let this become a major issue, and the Tories get 68% of the vote. More than any government in Canadian history. The other three or four parties must fight over shards of the remaining third.

By normal political calculations, this ought to be a no-brainer.

Why hasn’t Scheer done this? Why haven’t the Tories? I think the bottom line has to be class consciousness. As a publisher friend of mine warned me, against any straying from the officially endorsed positions on life, the universe, and everything, “Sure, Jordan Peterson sold a lot of books. But nobody respects him anymore.”

Nobody? That is, members of his own class, the educated and ensconsed in academics, journalism, publishing, government, law, education—and politics. Nobody else really exists, to this elite. They think only of the people they socialize with, the members of their own class, and their status within this group.