A basic requirement of every human society is that it must have a set of rules that define the society and the people in it. It is this shared understanding of what defines the society that keeps the thing together. “Who we are” is defined by “what we do” and it is the commonsense of the people. People living in a monarchy take the king and the nobility for granted. To question the legitimacy of the king is to question the very nature of society and the rules that define it.

In modern America, the experts who run the country have become one of these fixed things that everyone accepts. For example, the head of the Federal Reserve runs the banking system and controls the money supply. Since Alan Greenspan made the job famous, Americans have just accepted that the person in this job is responsible for keeping the economy from danger. He does not set taxes or control spending, but he makes sure the economy avoids catastrophe.

This general assumption is not without merit. It was the Federal Reserve that pulled the country out of stagflation in the 1980’s. They kept the Savings & Loan crisis from creating a bank run. In the 1990’s, they organized the bailout of Long Term Capital Management and then navigated the Dot-Com bust. They came to the rescue of the global economy in the mortgage crisis. So far, they have managed to prevent the Covid panic from cratering the economy.

There is a lot one can quibble with in that list and many will say that those crises were the fault of the bankers, including the Fed. To most people though, the mysterious group of people who run the economy are one thing you can trust. Even though trust in government at all levels has declined sharply over the last few decades, the Federal Reserve remains the most trusted institution. Most years, the Fed chairman has better approval than the president.

In a world where people assume there is an answer to every problem and an expert able to find the answer, there is an assumption that whatever problems crop up, the people in charge will find the solution. This is what makes managerialism both possible and tolerable. If the experts keep getting things wrong, what is the point of having a society run by experts? People put up with the metastasizing set of rules because there is a general trust that there is logic behind them.

This trust in experts is not new. It has been a defining characteristic of American society since at least the 19th century. Taylorism was the attempt to use science to improve management of companies in the 1880’s. That gave birth to the Efficiency Movement, which sought to apply engineering principles to social policy. What we think of as the Left in America grew out of this belief that social reform could be achieved by experts changing the rules of society to achieve the desired outcome.

The fact is the strength of the American system over the last century has been this faith in the experts to find the right answer. When things go wrong, the current experts are fired and new experts are brought in to solve the problem. Elections have been an indirect review of the experts class. If the people are not happy, they vote for the other party who come in with new experts. If things go well, then the party is rewarded with a good election the next time.

That is what makes the current crisis so serious. Most people think the experts badly bungled the Covid problem. The experts said we had two weeks to bend the curve and two years into it the curve is not bent. The vaccine was supposed to be the great triumph of science and technology and it is looking like it is not only not working but possibly a billion dollar boondoggle. The last two years have been a massive blow to the credibility of science in modern America.

Then you have the economic troubles. Most people assumed there would be some trouble from the Covid panic. You cannot close down the economy for months and not have consequences. Unlike those prior economic crises, the Fed is not skillfully navigating this one. Empty shelves and spirally prices are not what people expect from the expert class. Things that could be acquired in days now take months because the supply chain is a chaotic mess.

The deeper problem is the old habit of just voting for the out-party when things are not doing well has not been working either. People voted for Obama to close the books on the history of race. Instead, race relations got sharply worse. Obama was supposed to end the forever wars and he expanded them. Trump was the shot across the bow by the people and the system responded with a four year tantrum. Biden was supposed to be the return to normal and we have chaos instead.

This is why 70% of Americans think the country is in a serious crisis. They are not puzzling it out like this, but they just sense that the system has broken and there is no one around with an understanding of how to fix it. One of the paradoxes of the current age is the people in charge say we are in the middle of a crisis, but then wage jihad against anyone proposing a way out of the crisis. Their solution to “save democracy” is to eliminate any trace of it from society.

The core of the current crisis is that no one can honestly answer the question that is the basis of all human organization, who are we? It is no longer easy to say what it means to be an American. The commonsense that are the rules of society are no longer making sense, which calls into question the basics of society. We used to be a people who assumed the experts would eventually get it right. Now we are a people wondering if there is such a thing as experts at all.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Revolutions come when people suddenly realize that everyone else is privately thinking the same things about the current arrangements. Most people tend to keep their grievances private. Complaining is boring and considered bad form even in the worst of times, so people tend to keep their grievances to themselves. It is when they begin to notice that everyone else has similar complaints that the cascading effect turns complaints into demands and then into rebellion.

It is why the corporate communists who dominate the official social media platforms like Twitter are more deluded than they seem. Their entire public life is nothing but a litany of complaints, shared with other miserable wrecks on-line. They literally know everyone who shares their grievances, as they are all in the same groups. The only awakening that will happen from their endless griping is that the rest of society will realize that these people are nuts and need to be pushed back to the fringe.

A version of that took place a couple of weeks ago when Douglas Murray was assigned the task of purging Pedro Gonzalez. Murray took issue with Gonzalez making sport of various internationalist types on Twitter. Gonzalez was doing the “physiognomy is real” thing where he posted pics of the people he was mocking. Murray responded with, “Mr. Gonzalez spent his holiday weekend bringing what many have worked hard to relegate to the gutter into respectable conservative circles.”

This is an old stand-by for the neocons. Starting in the 1980’s they have slandered anyone who opposed their sociopathic agenda as anti-Semites or racists. The fact that the favorite tool of neoconservatism has always been the favorite tool of the far-left is not an accident. Despite their claims, the neocons were never conservative. Theirs is an ideology of the Left. They imagine a new world order where they sit atop as the moral arbiters, using extreme force to impose their will.

That incident was not all that interesting, but what is interesting is that few people bother to notice and those who did mocked Douglas Murray. His own comment section reads like satire cooked up by the anti-Semites. Many had to be trolls having a laugh at the expense of the geezers. On Twitter, Murray was mocked as a relic from an age in which people were still fooled by neoconservatives. Gonzalez just laughed the whole thing off as the rantings of an old man.

While a tempest in a teapot, there was a time when a bigfoot chattering skull like Murray could have someone thrown into the void this way. Bill Buckley was used this way back in the 1990’s when Bill Kristol forced him to denounce Buchanan. This trick worked thirty years ago but today it gets little more than a shrug. What people did notice is that it did not work. The ad hominem and guilt by association stuff is no longer the super weapon it was thirty years ago. The world has changed.

It is not just that these tactics do not work it is that they increasingly sound like the rantings of old people complaining about the world changing. This column from George Will before Christmas is a good example. His quill pen act was effective into the Bush years, but now it seems anachronistic and a bit ridiculous, like a man wearing a denim jacket with “disco forever” spelled out in rhinestones on the back. It reads like something that should have been written 40 years ago.

The tattered look of these old tactics also reveals the general shabbiness of the arguments behind the name calling. Will’s claims about individualism are pure nonsense and his claim that nationalism is collectivism is ridiculous. How did this man get through high school with such nonsense in his head? In other words, the datedness makes it easier to see that these people were never smart. Neoconservatism, like so-called conservatism, was a tactic, not a set of ideas.

It is not just among the chattering skulls that we are seeing a change. All of sudden, without anyone noticing, Gab is no longer the bogeyman. Hundreds of right-wing pols have joined and legitimate political players like Rasmussen have joined because they see that is where the crowd is going, the crowd they need to survive. People have noticed that the biggest players on the planet tried to destroy Torba and his company, but he simply refused to buckle to them.

Of course, this change in attitudes reflects the growing divide in society. Half of the people who voted for Joe Biden support internment camps for dissidents and house arrest for the non-complaint. Behind every double mask is someone who would volunteer to be a camp guard. One of the causes of revolution is that there is always some portion of society willing to support the regime. Disordered minds seek the order of the bloody fist imposing its will on society.

Those people, the fringe crazies who have been allowed to run free in the public square, are a fixture in human society. A central part of every human society is maintaining the rules that define the society. This means keeping the crazies under control and away from the levers of power. That is, perhaps, what we are beginning to see with these recent events. People are rejecting the moral claims of these people and living their lives in spite of them.

There is a great scene in the movie Braveheart in which the main character captures the leader of the kings guard. He looks down at first, as was required when addressing a superior man, but then he looks up into the man’s eyes as an equal. It is a great scene, because it reflects how control is exercised and broken. It seems that many are now willing to look moral scoundrels like Murray in the eyes and give them the treatment they so richly deserve.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Note: The Monday Taki post is up. Not related to the topic of the day, but a topic that is becoming more important every day. The Sunday podcast is up behind the green door and it is mostly about the struggles of Mumbly Joe and his crew.

Marilyn Mosby has been the State’s Attorney for Baltimore since 2015, despite the fact she has been under federal investigation for years. A federal grand jury indicted her last week on two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements on loan applications for two Florida vacation homes. Mosby applied for loans against her retirement account, exploiting a CARES Act provision for those hurt financially by the Covid-19 panic, despite never having been affected.

These may seem like petty charges, but as is often the case with public corruption investigations, this is the opening gambit in a broader investigation. Mosby’s husband has also been living under a dark cloud for years.  He is the current President of the Baltimore City Council.  The two of them owe the IRS over $45,000 in back taxes, despite making close to half a million a year from the city. Their lifestyle does not comport with what their financials indicate.

For her part, Mosby is promising to fight. She claims the charges are a plot by her political opponents and, of course, the invisible army of white supremacists that secretly control this racist society. The fact that Baltimore is 70% black and the political establishment in the city is 100% black does not matter. Mosby has been doing the rounds, claiming she is innocent and playing the race card. It is the usual theater of the absurd that has come to define city politics.

Public corruption is part of politics and it seems to be much more common in democratic politics. The salary for elected officials is low relative to the people who underwrite their political careers. Unlike all the other entertainment businesses, the stars of politics do not make the majority of the box office. It is the wealthy donors and lobbyists who benefit the most, so there is a natural resentment and a temptation to take a little more than what is allowed.

Compounding this arrangement is the fact that corruption is often permitted, if you are in the right part of the business. The Congressman who represents Mosby in Washington is allowed to trade on insider information, for example. He can take information known only to members of Congress, use it to front run the stock market. From the perspective of local politicians, this must seem terribly unfair, which only adds to the culture of corruption and the temptation to steal.

All that aside, Mosby is a good example of how the concept of a meritocracy does not hold up in a multicultural society. She is not in the job because of her sterling legal career or because she has done important things for the community. She was placed in the job because it looked good for her benefactors. In fact, this is the story of her life from grammar school to now. Mosby has been pushed along by the desire for salivation by members of the managerial elite.

Mosby was born and raised in Boston. Both of her parents were police officers and her grandfather was a policeman. He was one of the first black cops in the city, part of a program to boost the fortunes of black people in the city. She was sent to nice public schools as part of a program to boost the fortunes of black students. The METCO program is designed to get black students into college by placing them in predominantly white high schools outside the city.

Even though Boston has many colleges that love METCO students and New England is full of well-regarded liberal arts colleges, Mosby wound up at Tuskegee, a private historically black college in Alabama. Then by some miracle she wound up at Boston College Law. Despite graduating from one of the better law schools in the country, she could not find a paid position. Then by another miracle, she hooked on as Assistant State’s Attorney for Baltimore, a city with which she has no connections.

Mosby’s tenure as State’s Attorney for Baltimore, a position she has held since 2015, is charitably described as amusingly inept. During the Freddy Gray crisis, she often appeared disoriented at press conferences. She then declared jihad against the police department and over-charged the cops involved. The police department stopped arresting bad guys, crime shot up and the case against the cops collapsed. In time it may be seen as the peak of her political career.

The fact is Mosby should never have been put in this position. She is not qualified for the job and has no connection to the city. She was placed here because her sponsors thought she ticked certain boxes and she did not ask too many questions. Like Mortimer and Randolph from Trading Places, they thought they could make her a national political figure for reasons that had nothing to do with the public good. Merit had nothing to do with her getting placed in this position.

Defenders of this system will say that lots of white males benefit from connections and favors in their career. Private colleges, for example, give special consideration to legacy applicants, which is often affirmative for rich white people. Politics has always been a game of connections. You make the right friends who then help you along the way on the promise you will help them when the time comes. Mosby, some would argue, is just what is to be expected in a diverse democracy.

While true, it is not a defense of meritocracy or even diversity. In fact, it acknowledges that objective merit has no role in a liberal democracy. Instead, it is about the spring of democracy, which is morality. Those who champion the prevailing orthodoxy are rewarded while those who do not are excluded from the halls of power. Mosby was good for the new religion of diversity and inclusion, so she was handed the winning lottery ticket in the game of life.

In fairness, the ruling class of America does concede this. They are always going on about how success is the result of privilege. If you are born with the right characteristics, you get opportunities denied to others. The problem, of course, is this puts the lie to the foundation of managerialism. Rule by expert does not make any sense if the experts are just the product of random chance. If Mosby is the legal expert for the city, then what is the point of having rule by expert?

Mosby is just a minor figure in the provinces, but the entire political structure is built on this feeder system. Managerialism is supposed to select for and promote the very best, but instead it selects and promotes the most fashionable at the moment. Such a system cannot survive contact with reality for very long. When rule by expert becomes rule by bourgeoise social fashion, disaster is waiting to happen. It is why the future of managerialism is a city like Baltimore.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.