Note: The Taki post is up. This week it is a discourse on the modern partisan and the impact it has on our politics. The Sunday Thoughts podcast is up behind the green door for subscribers.
The term “New Right” is one of those phrases that has a long life but has never had much meaning in American politics. Bill Buckley was a member of the New Right when he got going in the middle of the last century. Later, various efforts were made to create a New Right as an alternative to the Buckley Right. As conservatism collapsed over the last decade the term has become a popular one with failed alternatives. Members of the alt-right even tried rebranding as the New Right.
The long life of the term in America, without much meaning, says more about the overall state of politics than the various efforts to create an alternative. In Europe, the term New Right has meaning, because it is a real school that has been trying to create a new politics that reflects the current age. In America, the popularity of New Right reflects the fact that there has never been a genuine Right. What passes for the Right is just a foil for the prevailing orthodoxy of the ruling class.
That reality is clearer now that at any time in the history of the empire, but there are those giving the term another shot. There are several groups competition to be the new Right to replace the rubble that is mainstream conservatism. There is a lot of interest in the mainstream in these projects as the prevailing orthodoxy works best when it has a foil to operate as a gatekeeper. Channeling popular frustration into a sterile alternative is the secret to maintaining order.
The least promising of the alternatives is whatever Curtis Yarvin, known as Moldbug, is calling himself these days. Yarvin got famous blogging as a neo-reactionary who criticized democracy in various ways. He would write awfully long essays criticizing liberal democratic system from the perspective of a royalist. His style was something like a stream of consciousness while playing an on-line role playing game. It was elite condescension for those who imagined themselves elite.
After a break from his Moldbug character, Yarvin is back, but playing himself, a retired software developer, who has a lot to say about the present order. Instead of demanding the creation of a monarchy, he advocates a rejection of politics entirely. According to his analysis, any participation in politics ends up supporting the system, so the only way to oppose the system is to drop out entirely. His approach is not much different from Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option, just without the religion.
The basic argument Yarvin makes is that participating within the rules of the system supports the system. If you organize a new party, for example, you are legitimizing the party system and the rules that govern it. On the other hand, if you protest against the system, your protest is either crushed or permitted by the system. Either way, this legitimizes the power of the system, because the system only acts in ways that add to its power and legitimizes its power.
While there are bits of his critique of liberal democracy that are accurate, his alternatives are best described as incoherent label shopping. He has tried out “clear pill”, “grey mirror” and now “deep right” as marketing phrases. None of which mean anything on their own. Instead, they work like insider language for his fans, a way for them to feel like they have special knowledge. Yarvin writes in riddles, so these secret phrases can mean whatever the fan needs them to mean.
A more robust option in the New Right talent contest is the pan-Zionism offered up by the Israeli political scientist Yoram Hazony. He is probably the most complete of the alternatives and has the best financial support. The oligarch Peter Theil has been backing him for a few years, primarily by financing his conferences on nationalism in America and Europe. These have become networking events for the people hoping to win the New Right lottery.
Hazony’s argument, put forth in his book The Virtue of Nationalism, is that the West needs to re-embrace nationalism and reject empire. His argument for nationalism is pretty much the argument for Zionism. In fact, his case seems to be more of a defense of Zionism than a genuine case for European nationalism. In his book, he goes to great lengths to argue that things like fascism and apartheid are not nationalism, which of course are claims made against Zionism.
The problem for all nationalist movements is the elephant in the room. Once you make the claim of exclusivity, that is a people has an exclusive right to determine their composition, it means certain people can be excluded. For European nationalists, this brings obvious comparisons to unfortunate incidents. For Zionists, this offends the donor base which lives primarily in the Global American Empire. The solution is a watered down and exception-riddled nationalism.
In both of these efforts, what plagues them is an unwillingness to address the core defects of liberal democracy directly. The crisis in the West stems directly from the anti-human notions of egalitarianism and the blank slate. This is what underpins multiculturalism, universalism and globalism. Without addressing the twin tap roots of liberal democracy, the critic is left to whack away at the leaves. It means these flavors of the New Right are doomed from the start.
Another entrant in the New Right derby is what is sometimes called common good conservatism and sometimes called integralism. This reflects the two camps that operate within the movement. One camp takes a secular view of politics, primarily focused on the law, while the other camp is explicitly religious. The former seeks to reform the law in order to achieve their ends. The latter is a revival of antidisestablishmentarianism from old Europe.
The secular camp is best represented by Josh Hammer, who is busy creating what he calls common good jurisprudence to replace originalism and textualism. His critique, like many on this subculture, starts with the dissident observation that conservatism has never conserved anything. He repeats the century old observation by Robert Lewis Dabney about conservatism being yesterday’s progressivism. He then proposes an alternative he calls common good jurisprudence.
On the integralism side, the face of that wing is a Harvard academic named Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule. He advocates for a robust state that will act in the best interests of the common good. The common good is largely defined by the teachings of the Catholic Church. He wants a return of throne and later rule, in which the state, however composed, is unconstrained by individual rights. In other words, he wants the current system to be guided by medieval Catholicism.
Like Yarvin and Hazony, the various figures flying the common good conservatism banner have no interest in taking on egalitarianism and the blank slate, even though their hierarchical worldview should demand it. A state that acts in the common good requires someone with the power to decide what is the common good. There is no room for a monarch or an enlightened despot in a world where all men are equal and their equality must be respected by the state.
The problem with all of these attempts to create a New Right is they are limited to a critique of the present order. They refuse to ponder the central questions of all political morality and that is “who decides?” and “by what authority?” The one who comes closest is Hazony and he stops at the water’s edge for obvious reasons. Otherwise, the New Right is pretty much a social club of people who are unhappy with the present order but cannot face the reality of it.
That may be what is preventing a New Right from forming up and taking the place of Buckley-style conservatism on the big stage. The specter haunting the West is demographics, which is animated by those two central questions. There is little need for a New Right unless it is willing speak to demographics and everything that flows from it. When the only question that matters is off the table, everything else is idle chatter that makes for a fun conference, but not much else.
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There is little need for a New Right unless it is willing speak to demographics and everything that flows from it.
They aren’t there yet, but I notice that every new iteration of right wing movements seems to creep a little closer to it. Maybe in 20-30 years one will come along that manages to sneak up on it.
4
Martin Armstrong’s Socrates program forecasts breakup around 2030-2032. Balkanization, sovereign collapse of the USSA.
2
You probably are right about this timeline. The Fabian socialists took about a century to get us to this point. I anticipate a century of effort to reverse it.
Although, it must be said, sometimes in chemistry can happen really quickly.
Sometimes in chemistry A PHSE CHANGE can happen quickly.
Phase change. Jeez.
the reason no one talks about demographics etc is that those topics are central pillars of the current regime’s political ideology. it is not safe to do so. but those pillars are also why the current regime is near collapse, as mud people corrupt and destroy anything they touch. once fedgov finishes dying, people will be free to speak of the obvious truths regarding the previously forbidden subjects.
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I just don’t see how we get past the demographic issue. Western society has been propagandized and polluted for so long now about the goodness of equality, diversity and inclusion that even a forced reset may not be able to wipe that s*** out of the minds of the White race. We’re simply not going to be allowed to go our own way without a hell of a fight, most likely.
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uNt-
The visual evidence I witness in my little corner of the world totally agrees with your points.
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“(Yarvin’s) style was something like a stream of consciousness while playing an on-line role playing game. It was elite condescension for those who imagined themselves elite.”
The elite condescension and LARPing are Yarvin signatures. When Tucker Carlson interviewed Yarvin, the main takeaway was an unrealistic view of the empty, pathetic lives people in D.C. lead, which Moldbug apparently thinks are spectacular and the pinnacle of Western existence. Anyone tangentially familiar with that town but not part of it laughed, except for Carlson, who seemed to accept the false premise. Maybe a mainstream interviewer couldn’t reply that D.C. is a shithole populated by parasites and geriatric retards, dunno. Carlson may even agree with Yarvin’s distorted perceptions because he also is a product of that company town.
Your point about the meaningless of any movement that does not directly address The Crisis, demographic replacement, is spot on. I’m not even certain at this point there is a valid Left/Right dichotomy since the overriding issues are the blank slate and demographics in general. Case in point was the 180-page manifesto the New York shooter penned. While the guy seemed to have mental problems, the lucid, well-written tract boils down to a race realist perspective from a leftist viewpoint and notes the inherent problem of the presence of the Tribe and racial minorities in European countries. The propaganda organs are torn about how to package the manifesto as a result. It is well worth a read.
Closing with Yarvin again, he certainly is right that participation in a rigged game is a certain way to lose. Putting aside his delusions and ethnic-based deceptions, that point is spot on. People need to concentrate on what comes next, not which puppet gets his or her turn.
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I’m not even certain at this point there is a valid Left/Right dichotomy…
There isn’t.
Todays conservative was yesterdays progressive.
Almost no one is willing to reject the enlightenment premises that liberalism is built upon. (Even I cannot fully do so).
The current political dichotomy is really an insider/outsider one, not a left-right one. It’s hard for people to see that through the strum and drang of daily political fighting and indoctrination.
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Agreed. As I wrote in response to you above, while it seems alien as a Heritage American, withdrawal from the system rather than working and seeing things through and from an ideological prism is the proper response and perhaps the only response. Take, give as little as possible, and conduct your life outside the system as much as possible.
4
One can argue for conserving ideas or conserving people. I think Zman has made this point in several prior essays. This thread goes all the way back to Hegel and Carl Schmitt. There’s no politics without the classic “friend/enemy” distinction.
I would prefer that these “new Right” guys talk about friends/enemies rather than engage in all the intellectual blather about political theory. I like theory as much as the next guy, perhaps even more, but it’s just obvious the US is way past the point of being saved by theory. As Zman wrote so cleverly the other day, Americans are only bound together by a series of economic transactions. Clearly this is not enough to sustain the people.
The practical issues that always get people killed come down to the “friend/enemy” thing. Tough-talking Poles and Ukrainians are possibly going to get us all killed. Since when are these people my friends? Who decided? I’m not interested in befriending unskilled, alien-culture immigrants either. Who decided for me?
Would I prefer a Catholic monarch ruling by divine right? Maybe, but who cares when the barbarians are at the freaking gate and some distant war in Scythia is possibly going to get us killed.
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> The practical issues that always get people killed come down to the “friend/enemy” thing
Once people on the right stop caring about norms and abstractions of government and embrace the philosophy of “whatever gets my guy in power”, things will radically shift, and we can hire one of these guys to write the philosophical justification after we win.
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Democracy is a totalizing civic religion. So Yarvin is ultimately correct. The only way forward, for now, is “dropping out”. Which does not mean moving to a rural area and living off the grid.
It means embracing a “Latino” mindset.
A key element of American culture (and western culture less so) is the conception of government as endogenous to the the people and society. It (government) is us, in every sense. Totalizing democracy requires that mental paradigm.
Latin cultures (and frankly most throughout history) view government as an exogenous force that is oppressing “the people” to a greater or lesser degree. Which leads to opposing and subverting it as the moral choice.
That works out in practice as ignoring the government and it’s edicts as much as possible. Bend to their overt force as required but curse them as soon as they’re out of your face. Take what you can from them with no compunction to follow their edicts or do their bidding etc. Totalizing democracy requires the explicit consent and cooperation of the culture to function. Deny it that at every opportunity.
That all a very blackmail for Americans to swallow. It’s basically an embrace of a foreign cultural paradigm. And yet, every dissident intuitively knows that our government is a diabolical exogenous entity using force to twist our culture.
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There is much truth in your comment. While it indeed initially will seem alien, taking what you can, giving as little as possible, and following Havel’s “live as if you are free” model are the keys to survival (if the fools don’t get us all nuked). I had not thought of it in the Latin context but that’s a very sharp take. Also, it does seem that refusing to be swallowed whole and totally immersed have become more accepted as responses.
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It isn’t an entirely foreign concept. From 1862-1876, various parts of the Confederacy lived under military occupation and “Reconstruction” and did exactly that, denying that Yankee imposed government imposed at bayonet point as having any legitimacy.
8
This ‘take’ on interaction with oppressive governments is indeed common throughout history; it is has given rise to parallel ‘black-market’ governments to protect citizens from their ‘official’ governments as well: e.g. La Cosa Nostra, and others. We best be getting our own “white hand” fellowship going.
1
I agree with Yarvin about political engagement. I’m glad that we’re finally getting people with a following, and financing, who are seriously critiquing conservatism and the GAE. I had hoped that a practical ideological energy would grow up behind the Trump wave, and it seems to be happening.
And by practical I mean a well-financed, well-connected cadre of people who question orthodoxy. Everyone loves a black joke, but if you want real change, you’re going to need more than just goofballs. And you may even need people whom you don’t agree with 15% of the time. If you believe Charles C. Johnson, who claims to be connected to powerful players in the new right, people are noticing the shit-show and are trying to remedy it. I wish the figure heads had a few more goyim, but maybe that’s to come.
1
As long as white Americans can sell their homes and move away from feral negroes and as long as the nice Hispanic guy trims the trees and cuts the grass with a smile nothing will change. I don’t see whites , except for us dissidents, seeing through the fog into the future.
But we gotta keep up the hope that it changes, it will change but perhaps not in some of our lifetimes.
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The problem is that there is a large number of feral white Americans as well, if you have never been to the poorer areas of, say, Missouri for example.
1
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Bull. White crime rates are extremely low. The poorest white neighborhoods are safer than the richest black neighborhoods.
Your attempts to muddy the waters won’t work around here. Try Breitbart.
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1
Down vote me all you want, but I lived in Missouri. The ferality of the whites here would make the worse negro look like a church boy. Barbarianism know no color or creed. Only the wignat and the fanatic refuse to see it as such.
1
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I have lived in MO all my life, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. St. Louis and KC have very liberal media, so please provide some examples or move on.
3
Before I left Springfield, MO. An argument happened behind my apartment on Cherry St. The argument involved several white people. Said argument was settled when the young man went into his apartment, got a gun, and went back out and shot at the car as it was leaving the driveway, killing a pregnant woman in the process.
My mother lived in the neighborhood north of Springfield, near the Habitat for Humanity housing, that experienced several murders every summer. including the famous Dee Dee Blanchard murder. Drug addicts and meth heads are plenty in the Queen City of the Ozarks, and all of them in my examples were white.
Classic misdirection. You guys need some new material.
Yes, by all means, whites should allow themselves to lose their homelands, be demonized and discriminated against, to have their neighborhoods destroyed, to have their children taught they and their ancestors are evil, to be erased from the earth . . . all because there are a few dirt bag whites.
You’re a joke. What’s next, “We’re all God’s children” or “There’s just one race, the human race.”
2
You remind me of Black Lives Matter and their insistence that black do nothing wrong, it is all the white people. They are wrong with their argument just as you and yours are wrong with yours.
1
dude, the crime rates by race are well known. take nigs out if aino and you have eu levels of crime. well, might have to take mexican crime out too, to get all the way to eu levels. but nigs get you most of the way there.
1
Those whites aren’t dancing on cars after they steal the catalytic converter, and looting for tennis shoes.
And they are our people.
Get lost.
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poor white would behave better if there weren’t so many nigs setting a bad example for them.
1
On the integralism side, the face of that wing is a Harvard academic named Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule.
This piece, like many others, is similar to an article in a magazine that could be called “Lepidoptery Today” that examines the biology and differences of various species of butterflies and moths. It might be very interesting to a butterfly collector but relatively unimportant and meaningless to anyone else.
4
I suspect that the reason why non of the “New Right” is willing to touch the issue about demographics is because the natural question then becomes, what do we do about it? There are various solutions proposed, everything from multiculturalism to ethnic genocide and everything in between, but no one worthwhile is is willing to offer any solution that will work. Course, you get the occasional wignat who froths at the mouth at the thought of forcing the ethnics out of his neighborhood at gunpoint, but none of them seem to offer a solution that doesn’t involve blowback that could start blood wars for generations.
3
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Nice try. Subtly trying to associate white identity politics with crazy people and massive violence. Your verbal tricks won’t work around here.
As to solutions, there are many, starting with freedom of association. Whites can start acting like every other group, first by identifying as white (or whatever regional or ethnic flavor they choose) and then by organizing politically, culturally and economically as a group.
No wignats. No violence. Just a community where whites can be proud of themselves, their people and their past – and where they have a future.
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That is a reasonable goal. The problem is the FBI/CIA/NSA will infiltrate any such community that gains notice, create violent false flags, label it a terrorist movement, and start arresting anyone associated with it. Somewhere in this line of strategy, individual states must push back against the feds, and protect their citizens with opposing force.
4
First off, I am not associating white identity politics with crazy people and massive violence. You already do plenty of that on your own. All I am asking is what is the solution out of this conundrum of demographics that Zman has identitfied? No one seems to have one, which is the problem.
Secondly, what is “white identity”? I know what is English identity, French identity, German identity. I know what ethnos I myself am part of, which is Greek. But I know no ethnos that is “white”. What language does white people speak? What cultural norms and traditions do white people pass down to their future generations? What religion do white people worship? What food do white people make? What is the traditional homeland of the white people? I’d say that the white identity is a made up fantasy, much like the nation of America where it originated from.
1
Our esteemed rulers would never allow that. Not only that, there is no unity among whites. The boomers “don’t see color” and the youth view whites as the root of all evil because they’ve been brainwashed since birth. Try belonging to a white community and being able to keep your job. To be white is to commit the world’s most awful sin.
1
I’d argue that whiteness is a negative identity just like blackness is. It is entirely defined who is against the identity, rather than what makes whiteness an ethnicity. I know that if someone snapped their fingers, and removed all but the Greeks from the face of the Earth, we Greeks would still be Greeks. We would still have our Hellenic world. But if there were none but whites on the face of the Earth, what would be left to perpetuate the identity?
the problem will solve itself, shortly. mud people can only survive in AINO because fedgov forces whites to subsidize them. once they are forced to fend for themselves in open competition, they will perish like a flea without a dog. or go back to mudsylvania…
I wonder if the Integrationalists avoid the obvious implications and roots of their proposed solution simply because it’s impossible to bring these matters up and hope to retain the funding for their project.
Like, I want throne and altar, but I can’t say why I really want throne and altar. But if I get throne and altar, the problem solves itself.
2
We should style ourselves The Third Right.
9
I myself prefer Keith Woods’ term “Turd Position”
Third Reight
kvhkvhkvhkvh
2
In a good reminder of who still, inexplicably has access to power and money on the right, Declan Leary at TAC has a write up of the National Review Institute Conference that must have been paid for by defense contractors. They got Sen. Tom Cotton to speak, where like a mainline pastor telling his congregation why Jesus would totally be on board with CRT, abortion and gay marriage today, he explains that George Washington would throw his warning against foreign entanglements out the window today because of how the world has changed since then. He wants to flat out tell China we will go to war to defend Taiwan.
As Leary closes with, “If the most sincere of all hawks, from Elliott Abrams to Tom Cotton, feel they must ape the rhetoric of realism in order to succeed post-Trump, there can be little question that the old consensus has been all but fully shattered on foreign policy. The only way realists and restrainers could squander the opportunity is to take such people at their word when they suggest they’re changing sides.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/nationally-reviewing-realism/
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You have to wonder who is underwriting NRO these days. Their readership is in its 70’s, so it small donor class is also 70-plus. Their last 990 says they raised $6.8 million in 2020. Presumably this is mostly corporate money now. The question is, why would big donors and corporate donors bother? It is not as if conservatives are fronting an underrepresented point of view in politics. NR is mostly about promoting foreign wars and opposing regulation of capital. Those are entrenched ideas in the political class now.
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I can see Elliot Abrams showing up as few people are calling asking for his opinion on anything, but what good does it do Tom Cotton to show up there? He can access those donors without National Review’s help. The only explanation I have is that he is a true believer and wants to reward National Review for their loyalty to the invade the world cause.
1
plus they have to be (only) preaching to the chorus, now?
1
Yarvin and Dreher aren’t the only ones advocating abstention from politics. Before either of them bruited this option, a certain Paul Weyrich was doing the same. He created something of a stir by arguing that so hopelessly thoroughgoing was the Left’s corruption and debasement of politics and culture that the only sensible thing for traditionalists to do was to withdraw in every way possible. In his schema, we would be like the Irish monks who kept the flame of Western civilization alive after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Some centuries later, when times were more propitious, the monks sallied forth like so many Johnny Appleseeds, and sowed civilization again. This would be the job of our descendants, too.
Weyrich made his arguments and limned this analogy in the second half of the 90s. Like David Horowitz, who was banging on about anti-white racism at the same time, Weyrich was a prophet.
3
Meet the New Right, same as the Old Right.
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“That may be what is preventing a New Right from forming up and taking the place of Buckley-style conservatism on the big stage.”
Oh, there is always a New Right. It is necessary for the successful scam known as dialectic materialism. The problem is not what is preventing a New Right from forming up. The problem is the man behind the curtain who is promoting today’s flavor of New Right. The “man” is TPTB. The fact that you know the names of your examples just means they are already on the payroll. Your statement, “Channeling popular frustration into a sterile alternative is the secret to maintaining order” is accurate, although I would say “a secret” instead of “the secret”.
3
“For European nationalists, this brings obvious comparisons to unfortunate incidents.”
Cute turn of phrase. You often twist in the wind shy of frankly saying, “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer.” But in the American context, what does “volk” mean actually mean? Ukes and Ruskies or their American counterparts clawing at each other’s throats? Are Saxons and Pollacks truly blood brothers?
If demographics is destiny as it appears to be, who but today’s English were yesterday’s polydemographicals? Smogasbord America looks to be the future, conservative fussing nothwithstanding.
Rod Dreher proposed the Ben Op as something sensible, forseeing the cultural and economic collapse that’s coming. Then he backed off his assessment, refusing to follow through, maybe in the hope of remaining employed. At least he anticipated the coming of horse and buggy days even if he didn’t stay the course.
(1)
I’m pretty sure Yarvin have given more thought to the metaphysical side of these questions than Zman gives him credit for.
(2) One these I don’t see New Right theories taking into account is technology with its path dependence and pandora’s box aspects. It’s nice to say you should drop out of society and not participate in politics, but that gives free reign to the enemy to establish infrastructures that may become more permanent than any specific regime. Similarly, it’s all well to have a medieval Catholic autocracy when the government having a say in your bedroom activities is constrained by the opaqueness of our lives, but not so much when the government really can monitor your bedroom activities.
(2) To borrow C.S. Lewis’ idea of the Tao, we make the path by walking it, we make the Tao by living it. To adopt a “Latin” perspective on democracy literally means giving up on the Anglo-Saxon way of politics. Withdrawing doesn’t create an alternative parallel participatory politics, it kills participatory politics.
2
> According to his analysis, any participation in politics ends up supporting the system, so the only way to oppose the system is to drop out entirely
Ernst Junger wrote in “The Forest Passage” how a small group of dissidents is used as a legitimizing force to the regime. The argument was that if 100% of people voted ‘yea’ to the government, it could easily be stated that the numbers are all fake and coercion is involved. If say, 98% give a yea and 2% nay, they can point to the naysayer and say “See? This is a legitimate government, since we allow this dissent.”
The solution isn’t so much to drop out of the political game entirely, but quit playing a patsy to rigged rules that are designed to ensure you lose.
This is the point in the decline of nations where a patriotic general marches a battalion of marines into Washington, frees the Jan 6 prisoners and replaces them with politicians and FBI executives. Except by strange coincidence, Obama purged all the patriotic generals. Biden continues the purge with Marine Lt. Col. Scheller who remains under confinement awaiting trial for the audacious crime of criticizing the Afghan withdrawal.
Din C. Nuttin: With all due respect to those who served honorably in combat, I am not as enamored as some appear to be by a system founded on the presumed “duty, honor, country” of military service. And particularly today – when regardless of ‘patriot generals’ – the rank and file is increasingly non-White and non-male. The military, like every other institution, is a reflection of the people. Demographics first and always.
A cacophony of words, ideas, presumed persuasion, converts; and then what? We engineer a ground swell of sanity and elect the next messiah to govern us and then all is well? Another Obama, Trump, or TBD? Why not just create an all-encompassing video game and plug everyone into it as in The Matrix? Can you really live a life well lived solely within the mental state? Who’s going to grow the crops and build things?
At some point, we have to become tangible human beings again and place actions before words. Bongino preaches that Rs are bad but Ds are worse, so vote harder because the alternative is worse than either. IOW, pot is less worse than meth, but cold turkey is Armageddon so don’t go there.
And the beat goes on. Yakking, more yakking, new yakking; but no one shall pick up an axe handle. Here’s a new political idea. Make Congress into Fight Club. The legislation can’t get any worse and it will at least keep out the riff-raff and faggy wimps and crazies that always seem to get elected.
1
I’m all for Fight Club entrance exams into politics. WWF was fake but we knew it was. Pretending any “leader” in government is real is tiresome. Seeing the House floor populated with face-bandaged people would be amazing.