The End Of Minoritarianism

One of the side issues with regards to the USAID scandal is the fact that it was part of a system that has dominated the world since the Cold War. During the Cold War, this same system came to dominate the West, both as a whole, but also within the discrete parts of each member country. In fact, what happened at the end of the Cold War is this system sought to fill the void left by communism. The system was not liberalism, but rather a form of minoritarianism, minority rule.

Minoritarianism is a term coined by political scientists to describe a condition in which a minority has control of key decision-making processes. For example, the U.S. Senate requires a supermajority for certain things, which gives the minority party the power to veto these issues. This is the filibuster that the Democrats complain about whenever they need to placate their voters. In the case of the Senate, this system is to prevent the majority from abusing the minority.

Since the end of the Cold War, it has been official American policy to control the politics of the rest of the world. The endless yapping about “our democracy” is always about imposing Western systems on the rest of the world. After all, we have reached the end of history and there are no more debates about the morally correct way to organize a society, so everyone needs to fall in line. Even though the overwhelming majority of the world’s people disagree, the minority demands it.

This is where programs like USAID and NED are used. Their job, in many cases, is simply to sow chaos in targeted countries. Once it is determined that the majority is unlikely to get onboard with liberal democracy, Western aid programs go in to stir up trouble in the name of helping the poor or promoting rights. It is why they love sponsoring things like women’s rights in Muslim countries. The point is to undermine the unity of the majority in the country.

The same approach is applied to regime change. In Georgia, for example, the majority of the people wanted a patriotic government that would strike a balance between East and West, but that was bad for the people running American foreign policy, so USAID was dispatched to regime change the place. What followed was a year of protests and unrest, until the government kicked out the foreign aid workers. Once the USAID money dried up, the protests dried up.

The funny thing about the regime change operations is they rarely result in a stable government, but that is not seen as a bad result. If Slovakia falls into chaos after toppling the Fico government, that is fine. That is viewed as a better result than having a pro-Slovak government. The goal is always to prevent a majority from forming anywhere, whether it is inside a country or among a group of countries. The goal of minority rule is to keep the majority in chaos.

This makes a lot of sense from an American perspective. The United States is a small population compared to the rest of the world. If the rest of the world, or even a section of it, united against the empire, it would be big trouble. This is why both Israel and the United States work to keep the Arabs fighting each other inside their countries as well as among the countries of the Arab world. As much as Israeli and American politicians talk about peace in the region, they prefer the chaos.

We can probably date the birth of minoritarianism as an essential part of popular rule to the post-Civil War period in America. The ruling elite of Yankee New England became the ruling elite for the new country that was formed up after the war. That became even more explicit with the progressive revolution in the late 19th and early 20th century, culminating in the New Deal. Suddenly, the people making decisions would be educated experts from the best schools, all of which exist in the Northeast.

The story of 20th century domestic politics in the United States is one of discord and friction over race, region, and religion. Over and over one group is pitted against another preventing a majority forming up against the ruling class. Conservatism, for example, evolved so it could prevent a white majority forming up against the social policies preferred by the ruling elite. The many progressive causes were promoted to keep the coalition of fringes under control.

Everywhere there is turmoil there is the crisis of minoritarianism. Europe is in crisis because the big important countries have no role in decision making. Instead, you have girl bosses at the EU calling the shots. Estonia has more say in decision making than France, Italy, and Germany. Of course, the crisis was precipitated by the Ukraine war, which is the result of Ukraine being ruled by a non-Ukrainian with the support of the ultra-nationalist who make up ten percent of the population.

There is something to say in favor of minoritarianism. Most people are average to below average in their abilities. Collectively they are not magically above average. This has always been the fatal flaw in democracy. In fact, the majority tend to operate below the average of the whole. You need the smart fraction to run things, but the smart fraction needs to act in the interest of the majority. Otherwise, you get chaos, which is what we have seen over the last thirty years.

What we may be seeing now is the end of minoritarianism. The rest of the world is figuring out how to defend against it. This is why the American empire is beginning to withdraw from the frontiers. The American economic elite seems to be seeing the danger, which is why they have backed Trump and his plans to dismantle the managerial state. Even the minority, or at least enough of it, is figuring out that they must act in the interest of the majority.

The curse of the eighth decade is an observation that Israel becomes unstable in the eighth decade of its existence, in whatever form it takes. The first Jewish kingdom, led by King David, lasted for 80 years. The kingdom of the Second Temple lasted roughly eighty years before it was conquered by Rome. The modern state of Israel was formed in 1948, which means it is reaching its eighth decade. The current troubles in the Levant are rooted in the growing instability of Israel.

Perhaps something similar is happening to American minoritarianism. In his book, The Jewish Century, argues that the modern age is the Jewish age, by which he means the post-war world created by America. That is a good starting point for when minoritarianism became the defining feature of America. Eight decades of turmoil later and we are reaching the end of minoritarianism. The curse of the eight decade is now coming for the organizing principle of the American empire.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


The Blob War

The most surprising and most consequential event of the President Trump sequel has been the USAID scandal. No one thought that part of his revenge tour would be a direct assault on one of the main centers of the foreign policy hive. Until now, few people had any knowledge of this entity. Now it is in the center of the news because Trump has shut it down and put Musk and his whiz kids to the task of auditing the organization while the staff paces outside in the streets.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was sort of created by Congress in 1961 as a way to regulate foreign aid. Congress did not actually create an organization to do this. It directed the White House to create an organization, which is how the independent, not-for-profit entity called USAID came into existence and how it has operated ever since. It gets money through the State Department for its various programs, but it also raises money on its own.

To this point, there has been no oversight of USAID. It has been free, for example, to give money to George Soros organizations that do things like back candidates for state prosecutor in the United States. That seems like an odd use of foreign aid, but it really is the tip of the iceberg, which is why Trump is closing it down. That lack of oversight plus decades of existence created an organization that was operating like a government outside the government that financed it.

Of course, much of its activity was aimed at foreign governments. USAID backed the failed color revolution in Georgia last year. It was through the many local operations it supported that it was able to get people into the streets. The reason they did this is the Georgia parliament passed a law banning foreign money in politics. Georgia did not want to be the next Ukraine. The 2005 Orange revolution in Ukraine and the 2014 Maiden coup in 2014 were both underwritten by USAID.

It is why in the Biden years people started tracking the whereabouts of Samantha Power, the then head of USAID. Wherever she turned up, say Hungary before its elections, bad things happened for the local patriots. If you look up the career of Power, it reads like a road map to a position in permanent Washington, but also as a skeleton key for how the deep state operates. The people who actually run things jump from one node to another inside an informal network.

Powers was not running USAID in the Biden years because she brought an expertise in running a large enterprise. She got the gig because she was a trusted member of this informal group that runs foreign policy. She had been at the right stops at the right nodes and been vetted by the most trusted people in the system. She was plugged into the hive mind of this system. Its thoughts were her thoughts. Therefore, she would run this $50 billion dollar entity according to its wishes.

This is what the normies on Twitter fail to grasp. They think this about the money given to characters like Bill Kristol through one of his operations called Defending Democracy Together. Normie thinks in terms of money because he thinks in terms of the stuff he can buy with money. People like Bill Kristol think about the ways they can advance their people’s agenda with that money. As you would expect, the neocons are dug in like ticks in the network supported by USAID.

There is another aspect of the USAID scandal. One of the organizations it funds is called National Endowment for Democracy, which like USAID is an independent not-for-profit that was created by the National Security Decision Directive 77, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981. The alleged purpose is to spread democracy, but in reality, it is just another wealthy node in the informal network of formal and informal nodes that make up the shadow government.

Half of the budget of NED is allocated to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (AFL–CIO), the Center for International Private Enterprise (Chamber of Commerce), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (Democratic Party), and the International Republican Institute (Republican Party). If you are curious as to why Joni Ernst tried to block Pete Hegseth’s nomination, check out the board of the International Republican Institute.

There you see how this thicket of not-for-profits and quasi-government institutions not only control foreign policy, but domestic policy. Hundreds of billions flow out of the Treasury through the budgets of the government agencies into this massive ecosystem that uses that money to control domestic politics. If you want to know why voting has had no bearing on public policy for decades, there is the answer. What matters to the politicians is this massive ecosystem, not your vote.

This is why the elected officials in Washington have been relatively quiet about what is happening not far from their offices. The party sent out some extras and understudies to perform in front of the USAID building, but otherwise they have remained quiet because they imagine Musk digging through the files, seeing things that they would prefer remain out of the public eye. USAID is just one problem. The DOGE team is analyzing every penny going out the door at Treasury right now.

It is also why the activists are going crazy over this. Most of them had no idea that their paycheck was coming from the government. They got grants and jobs at not-for-profits with important sounding names and “independent media outlets” run by people “passionate for the cause.” It turns out that most of it was underwritten by operations like USAID, which used government grants and corporate donations to control this vast ecosystem of radical activism.

When Trump halted all funding payments from USAID, for example, ninety percent of “independent media” in Ukraine had to close. Most of the pro-Ukraine accounts on Twitter suddenly fell silent. This is just one example, but it points to the enormity of the corruption centered in these quasi-government organizations. Much of what has been presented to the public as “democratic politics” has been theater staged by this swarm of not-for-profits and non-government-organizations.

One of the least surprising aspects of this is the realization that the people endlessly yelping about “our democracy” have been part of a system that works to prevent the will of the people. Similarly, it is no surprise that the lunatics screaming about fascism in the streets were underwritten by a network of organizations funding by the government and corporate donors. USAID was big into “gender” politics, for example. It was all a show, but also a massive fraud on the people.

Time will tell if DOGE is able to dismember this network. It appears to be a top priority for Trump, owing to the fact that it was this system that derailed his first term and nearly got him killed. At the same time, a lot of mortgage payments and ideological projects rely on that system. There will be a counterattack. The glimmer of hope here is that the oligarchs are backing the war on the blob. The blob controls billions, but the oligarchs control trillions and now they control the blob’s billions.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


The Destroyer Of Worlds

Note: Behind the green door, there is a post about the practical impact of what is called AI, a post about how I encountered Old Scratch in West Virginia, a video from my back porch and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.


When Trump first appeared on the scene as a politician, a brilliant observer compared him to a character in the Asimov novels called The Mule. This was a character called the “destroyer of worlds” because he literally destroyed whole worlds, but he also destroyed the conception of the world. In fact, his very existence was a threat to accepted understanding of the universe, because the universally accepted conception of the universe precluded the existence of The Mule.

This has been the issue since Trump arrived on the scene. The people atop the post-Cold War world and the post-Cold War world itself, were all based on the assumption that a political character like Trump was impossible. The days of populist, nationalist and picaresque political actors was done. The present and future belonged to the Davos persons, the boys and girls who were produced by and benefitted the most from the managerial ideology that dominated the West.

What Trump’s success in 2016 represented was the nullification of the managerial order because according to the logic of managerialism, men like Trump had no place in the system, so they could never be a threat to the system. Instead, they were marginalized to the fringes of managerial life, the place where things are made, fixed, and created to keep the mechanics of the world going. They had no place in the world where decisions were made by the great and the good.

It is easy to forget that the best and the brightest smirked at the very idea of Trump running in the Republican primary. They were sure he was just another foolish businessman from the fringes, who thought he understood how things worked, but would quickly learn he was in over his head. Instead, the destroyer of worlds first destroyed the Republican primary. and the conservative ecosystem that controlled it, then he destroyed the system itself.

Like all monster movies, the story of this monster had that period where the good guys think they finally killed the beast, only to find out that it was still alive. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the regime was sure they were done with Trump. Then he reappeared, determined to run again in 2024. It turns out that the destroyer of worlds can never be destroyed because his mere existence depends entirely on his fulfilling his mission as the destroyer of worlds.

Thus, we have entered the final chapter of The Mule. The first two weeks of Trump’s return to Washington have been revolutionary. Things not thought possible are happening on a daily basis. The latest happening is the assault on the financial structure of the neocon war machine. Right now, members of Elon Musk’s team are combing through the records of USAID, the hive mind of the NGO collective that has controlled American foreign policy for decades.

Few appreciate the enormity of what is happening right now with the vast not-for-profit network held together by government entities like USAID. Suddenly, their very existence is threatened due to the suspension of funds from the American government, but also by the revelations to come about what they do with that money. There is a reason Elon Musk is posting about USDAID being a criminal organization. They were doing much more than keeping the Kagan family in donuts.

The vast informal network of formal and informal power centers that make up the real government, the shadow government, is now under assault. This is something that could never happen according to the logic of managerialism. With the owners of American society marginalized and the workers under control of the synopticon, who could possibly challenge this system? The answer is The Mule, the figure who should not exist in the managerial system.

It is hard to imagine it possible, but this is the calm before the storm. The tariff war with Canada and Mexico is just getting started. The system of free trade created forty years ago, which benefitted the ruling elites of all three countries, but was paid for by the people of all three countries, is now under direct assault. It turns out that the great sucking sound Ross Perot warned of thirty years ago was not a sucking sound after all, but an early warning of something terrible to come.

Team Trump is moving quickly to dismantle the post-Cold War world and the understanding of it. Marco Rubio is out giving speeches about how the unipolar world was an anomaly and we are returning to a multipolar world. On the domestic front Trump’s team is quickly working to dismantle and anathematize the bizarre social fads inflicted on the people by the managerial class. When the president blames diversity for a plane crash, the world has truly changed.

It is a bit ironic that the concept of The Mule was created by a man who was the creation of a world that emerged in the 20th century America. The post-national, post-liberal world that arose with the American empire was only possible with the evolution of the managerial ideology. Progressivism evolved to give managerialism moral agency, and together they made the American empire and for a while, came to defined the post-Cold War world, but now that is coming to a close.

What we are seeing is the long-anticipated end of the 20th century. Russia and China have moved into the 21st century, but America and the West have remained moored to the prior century, convulsively resisting any attempt to abandon it. That world, however, is gone and now, thanks to The Mule, it is being destroyed. For now, the destruction is the show, but soon, what comes next is what will matter. Everyone needs to remember that The Mule is the destroyer of worlds, not the creator of them.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


Radio Derb January 31 2025

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m37s The smack of firm government (cont.)
  • 05m13s Déjà vu all over again
  • 09m13s The ratchet effect?
  • 16m43s Diversity catastrophe?
  • 20m03s A science geek, not a law geek, for HHS
  • 28m57s Work for Trump, Bukele, and Milei
  • 30m34s Brexit + 5
  • 32m55s Be nice to the French!
  • 36m08s Signoff with the èrhú

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! That was a fragment of Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 and this is your intensely genial host John Derbyshire with news and views from a National Conservative point of view.

Well, we are now twelve days into a new Presidency — one that, Progressives warned us, would put an end to democracy in our country, led by a man who is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.

Yet so far there has been no declaration of martial law, no attempt to suspend the Constitution, and — so far as I can tell — no preparations to invade Poland.

Could it be that all those elite Progressives — academics, jurists, media talking heads — were mistaken? Hard to believe. Well, it’s still early days; we’ll see.

Continue reading

The Orangemailers

A bit of a weird show this week. The post on Wednesday got me thinking about how I would explain to someone what I think is happening in Washington. That post relied on people understanding a lot of things that would not be familiar to most, so they would need a quick background before getting to the meat of the topic. Thinking about how to do that led to the idea of doing a show on it.

One of the things that you see with people who arrive on this side of the great divide is they often go through a crash course learning all the stuff that was excluded from their education and political understanding. Condensing that down into easily digestible bits is probably a good project for someone, given that we are seeing millions turn up on the edge of the great divide, looking for a lift over to this side.

That really is something to savor. Trump gave a presser after the chopper collided with the passenger jet in Washington and he put the blame on diversity. It is not the first time he has said something like this since he was inaugurated, but it is still shocking to hear a public official say what had been prohibited a year ago. This administration is saying things that got you booted from Twitter before Musk.

This is why the corporate takeover model works. Every company has a culture, and that culture is reinforced by management. Inevitably when new owners come in it means changes to the culture. To outsiders it does not seem that important, but to the people inside it is shocking. Our political system is being overhauled in the equivalent of a hostile takeover, like greenmailing. Instead, it is orangemailing.


For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!


This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • Origins Of Managerialism
  • The Growth Of The Managerial Class
  • Nixon
  • Reinventing Government
  • The Shadow Government
  • The Greenmailers
  • The End Game

Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble


Full Show On Odysee

 

The Body Of Lies

The confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services were yesterday and they offered some interesting insights into how the world has changed over the last few years. In many respects, it was a blast from the past, with the more ridiculous performers dusting off their old routines. Elizabeth Warren, for example, did her angry chicken dance in the hallway after she did her raging old crone routine in the committee room.

Warren and the other senators who took the opportunity to make fools of themselves for the cameras during the hearing were a reminder not only that things have changed, but why they have changed. Warren’s act was just an act. It was clear at certain points that she did not understand the words she was reading from her script, but it was clear she practiced delivering them with the correct angry face. If her handlers had required it, she would have accused Kennedy of colluding with Bigfoot.

That is one reason why we are here. The public, at some point over the last few years, began to turn on this sort of performative politics. According to recent polling, the Democratic Party has its lowest approval rating ever. Meanwhile Trump is enjoying his highest approval ratings. The reason for that is Trump, whatever you may think of him, is a candid and sincere form of politics. People like Elizabeth Warren are just paid performers who will say anything for a buck.

Of course, the fact that Kennedy was there at all is remarkable. Not long ago, Kennedy was a fringe character trafficking in “conspiracy theories.” At least that was the accepted narrative around him. Most people no longer accept that narrative. For many, if not most people, he is now part of this general questioning of those narratives. No one benefitted more from Covid than RFK Jr., because all the trusted sources for public health abrogated that trust, thus validating Kennedy’s critique.

Once you start questioning the official narratives, you inevitably start questioning the people responsible for those narratives. In the case of Kennedy, that means the public health establishment, which plays an enormous role in life. In fact, it is one of the key pillars of the managerial system, right there with “first responders.” There have been libraries full of televisions shows and movies about the glories of the public health experts saving the day. People are now questioning those claims.

If you looked closely, you could see it in the hearing. One of the Senate performers mentioned the “conspiracy theory of Lyme disease.” Kennedy has been open to the possibility that it turned up fifty years ago as the result of a lab leak. Not far from where it first made its presence was a military laboratory that specialized in using insects to carry infectious diseases. That is the connection at the heart of the “conspiracy theory of Lyme disease”, which should sound familiar.

Up until a month ago, the “lab leak theory” regarding the Covid panic was a conspiracy theory, one that can still get you banned from YouTube. Now it is the official position of the United States government. Just a few years ago, being open minded about the causes of Lyme disease would have been disqualifying, but it was overlooked entirely in this hearing and Kennedy was even allowed to point out several so-called conspiracy theories that have turned out to be true.

This hearing was possible because the world has changed. Suddenly, as if someone flipped a switch, it is cool to question the narratives. A big reason for that is Donald Trump, who survived one conspiracy after another, including one involving a would-be assassin who just happened to be in a Blackrock commercial. One thing Trump proved is that there is a limit to how many coincidences people can tolerate before they start thinking about alternative theories.

That aside, what the Kennedy hearing reveals is that the moral authority of the people behind the official narratives is crumbling. Elizabeth Warren can carry on like a crazy old church lady all she likes, but no one believes her. In fact, no one believes any of these people because they have lied too much. It turns out Lincoln was right. You cannot fool all the people all the time and once you set off down that road, it leads to a place where you cannot fool anyone at all.

Perhaps one day when the AI historians are writing us stories about the American empire, one narrative will be about how the body of lies necessary to maintain the managerial system simply became unsustainable. It moved from condemning those questioning the more outlandish claims from the authorities to condemning anyone who questioned anything, even when their doubts were confirmed. In such a world, no one can trust anyone and the system collapses.

What probably comes next is asking what else about the past is a lie? Did the CIA sell drugs in the United States to fund covert operations? People like Maxine Waters were condemned for making the claim. It is most certainly true, by the way. They worked with the Mexican drug cartel in the 1980’s to fund the Contras. Here is an interview with a former high ranking DEA agent on that subject. Amazon also did a much longer treatment of this topic last year.

What all this points to is that we are heading into one of those clearings of history in which we exit one forest of lies and must evaluate that time, before we can enter a new forest of lies. The Russians went through this after the Cold War. There was a great reexamining of what had happened under communism. The United States did not have this period after the Cold War but is about to have it now. To close the door on the past, you must revisit the body of lies that is the past.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


The War On The Shadows

One of the early features of Trump 2.0 is that it is nothing like the first version of Trump and nothing like what his adversaries imagined. Despite the evidence that this version of Trump would be different, his antagonists inside and outside the regime were certain he was the guy they imagined. Therefore, his victory was a shock, but they were sure what worked the first time around would work again. The weird silence from regime outposts is due to having been wrong yet again.

This version of Trump is a very different thing from the original version. We are seeing this in the realm of foreign policy where Trump 2.0 has been executing a plan rather than doing battle with the hydra that is the foreign policy community. It turns out that his refusal to have any dealings with the foreign policy community as a candidate, and his decision not to use government resources for the transition, has provided him with the element of surprise upon taking office.

You see that with his initial appointments. Marco Rubio was an out of the blue pick for the State Department. It seems to have been a shock to Rubio as well. Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon is another bolt from the blue. In the case of Rubio, he is an easily controlled lieutenant running an agency in need of radical reform. Hegseth comes to the job with his own radical ideas about reforming the Pentagon. The semi-permanent staff at the top of both agencies are now in a crisis.

Then you have Trump’s peculiar moves regarding the Ukraine war. He appoints Keith Kellogg as his personal envoy on the issue, but Kellogg is in no big hurry to get the ball rolling on Project Ukraine. He initially set up a tour of Europe and meetings with Kiev but then cancelled all of it. Trump has answered some questions about the Ukraine war but has not had any discussions with Europe about it. In fact, no one in the Trump administration has talked to the Europeans about the war.

At the same time, there is a purge underway of certain parts of the foreign policy establishment with some novel tools. For starters, Trump is cleaning house of neocons by assigning them to new positions intended to encourage their departure. This is an old corporate trick. He has frozen spending on just about everything, pending a review of how the money is being spent. Since all of government exists to spend money, it has thrown the usual suspects into a panic.

What this move is aimed at is the shadow foreign policy community that exists outside of government but is funded by government. These are the think tanks and research shops that live off government grants. They are full of former government officials and future government officials. Their job is to prevent whoever is in the White House from changing the direction of foreign policy. It is in the offices of these places that his first impeachment was organized.

These covens of mischief that were prepared to do their old tricks now find themselves in a crisis as their income is frozen and under scrutiny, while at the same time their friends and collaborators are being forced out of government. It is hard to plot the next regime change operation against Trump when you are struggling to make payroll, which is the point of this funding freeze. It is also a clear signal that Trump 2.0 is prepared to deal with these people.

This extends to the thicket of NGO’s, charities and think tanks that operate internationally, in coordination with the shadow government. Trump had Rubio freeze all work at these operations by freezing their money. The people who make regime change possible through their color revolution schemes are now starved of cash. If they cannot pay “independent media” and “opposition leaders” then those entities cannot organize “spontaneous” rallies against the government.

What Trump 2.0 is doing is attacking the vast shadow government that has evolved to be resistant to electoral politics. The Kagan family, for example, have plied their trade regardless of who is in the White House. They were able to do this because so much of what ends up as a foreign policy item on the president’s agenda is created by entities operating outside of government. Victoria did not retire when she quit the State Department. She continues her work in the shadow government.

Foreign policy is just one example. The chaos of immigration is due in large part to the vast network of not-for-profit entities that make millions facilitating the wholesale abrogation of immigration laws. These entities survive on grants from the government, much in the same way we see with foreign policy. The freeze and review of these programs is part of bringing them to heel. When J.D. Vance mentioned Catholic Charities role in immigration, it was a deliberate warning.

This is why the media response to Trump 2.0 has been so weird. Much of what they produce is handed to them by this thicket of extra-government entities who shape the media narratives around public policy. That extra government ecosystem now finds itself under direct assault by a new administration that did its homework and is now executing a plan of attack on that ecosystem. Compounding it is the fact that the donor class seems to be backing the Trump plan.

What has happened over the last several decades is that the official government of the United States was enveloped by this vast collection of extra-government entities that produce good jobs at good wages for the managerial elite. Since the number of government posts is small, relative to the number of credentialed people who think they deserve them, this network of entities has grown to serve an ever-growing collection of people who cycle in and out of government.

Since these people not only think they deserve the plumb assignments, but they think they know better than the voters and their politicians, the result has been a slow shifting of policy outside of official government into this shadow government. Foreign policy is most obvious, but this process has happened everywhere. No one can say who banned normal light bulbs, for example, because the policy bubbled up from the network of extra-government entities of environmentalism.

It remains to be seen if the Trump effort to defang this shadow government will succeed, but it helps that he has support from economic elites. The shadow government does not live only on government handouts. It also thrives by selling indulgences to powerful people and business sectors. Having friends in the shadow government is better than having friends in politics, because politicians come and go, but the shadow government is permanent.

One reason for the swing to the side of Trump by the economic elites could be that they have grown frustrated with this arrangement. People who think they are smarter than the voters are going to think they are smarter than the donors. Like a business run into the ground by management, the large shareholders are now stepping in with the support of the small shareholders, to clear out old management. Trump is like the old greenmailers; except this time the target is Washington.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


The Great Economic Shakeup

Imagine a society made up of farmers who produce what they need to live but also trade extra to one another for things they do not produce. This is not the most efficient society, but as long as everyone is self-sufficient, it works. At the minimum, each farm produces enough food for the family, even in lean years. Perhaps like the Amish, they voluntarily come together on larger projects that are shared by everyone and individual projects that require a lot of hands.

One day, someone comes along with an offer to one of the farmers. Instead of that farmer trading with the other farmers, this stranger will buy the excess for what the farmer wants in trade. He makes this deal with other farmers and before long he makes his living as the middleman. He does the trades between the farmers, keeping a little extra for himself in the process. Before long there are others doing similar and they all live in what they call town.

Now, imagine all the farmers decide to quit farming altogether and move to town to be traders and merchants. Obviously, that cannot work as now there are no farmers to produce the things the traders are trading, and the merchants are selling. Some of the farmers can quit, but not all. Additionally, some can begin to specialize to the point where they are no longer self-sufficient. They now rely on the traders and merchants in town to get the things they need to live.

In other words, the original model works just fine, but it is not efficient. The farmers are all just above the sustenance line. The introduction of middlemen makes for more efficient use of farm labor, so everyone can do a little better. Specialization in farming and in trading increases productivity. Somewhere in this model there is a mix of farmers, traders, merchants, and specialization that attains the maximum amount of productivity for this society.

That productivity, however, must benefit everyone. Otherwise, we get the problem of the farmers looking at the townspeople and deciding they would prefer to be a trader, rather than a farmer. There also must be a balance with regards to specialization, as this could make the productive class overly dependent upon the middlemen, who can then maximize their profits from the productive class. A society with a small number of people controlling all the profit is inherently unstable.

Therein lies the problem Trump inherits in terms of the economy. Starting in the 1970’s with the microprocessor revolution, the American economy has been hellbent on maximizing efficiency. Wherever technology can increase the output from labor, it has been done, often overdone. In fact, the data shows that efficiency has gone up far faster than wages, so we tipped past the happy balance long ago. While the overall economy continues to grow, it grows only for a minority of citizens.

On top of that, we long ago blew past the balance between producers and middlemen described in that prior scenario. A couple of generations of Americans have been trained to work in the middleman economy, often doing busy work related to boutique beliefs like diversity of climate change. Meanwhile, the productive sector atrophied or was shipped off to other parts of the world. The American economy is more like a global counting house now, rather than a self-sufficient economy.

The global bank model has run its course. The rest of the world, for various reasons, is disconnecting from the American model. The rest of the world is unwilling to do like the farmers in that model and turn everything over to the middlemen. That town full of merchants and middlemen is noticing that the farmers are not coming to town to trade their goods as much they did in the past. Suddenly, the skim from the work of the farmers is getting too small to sustain the townsfolk.

It is not a perfect way to think about it, but it helps understand the economic problems Trump inherits as president. It is why he is convinced that shifting from a tax system focused on labor to one focused on trade is a winner. It will help shift labor from busy work in cubicles back to doing productive things because the cost of imports will rise relative to locally produced items. Foreign producers will adjust by investing in production inside America.

The practical problem Trump inherits is the American economic model evolved to favor the middleman over the producer. Over time it led to the imbalance we see between producers and facilitators. It also led to a narrowing of profit to a shrinking number of players in the economy. In some ways, the American economy has become a digital version of the Bronze Age palace economies in that everything flows through financial and information centers that operate as skimming houses.

Fixing the imbalances within the rules of the system is impossible. This post by an economist calling himself Jack Rasmus explains how the tools available to government no longer work to address the practical imbalances. The people controlling Joe Biden poured almost four trillion in extra money into the system, but it did nothing to mitigate the problem of shrinking middle-class budgets. Prices keep rising while wages remain static, which means most people are getting poorer.

The only way out of the current trap is through systemic changes. That is why Trump is fixated on tariffs as an economic and policy tool. On the one hand this brings costs back in line with prices, so the market regains some coherence. If the real cost of an item is in the price of the item, then people will reward the genuinely lower cost items. In the current model, the cost of cheap goods turns up in the loss of social capital, delayed family formation and, of course, high crime.

A simple example is prepared food. These are cheap for the consumer but are packed with hidden costs. The refrigeration units used to be made in America, but those plants were shipped abroad by the miracle or tariff free trades deals. Of course, the plants are often staffed with cheap foreign labor, the cost of which turns up in your property taxes, the crowded schools, and the healthcare system. That frozen pizza turns out to be vastly more expensive than the price on the box.

Multiply this out all over the economy and it is easy to see the problem. Fifty years ago, middle-class families could get by on one income. Today, it takes two-incomes which is why there are far fewer families. Ours is an economy that looks prosperous on the outside, but the internals are littered with hidden costs. The only way to remedy this is to bring the costs back to the front of that frozen pizza and that can only be done through systemic change.

There are three challenges. One is the small number of people profiting from the current model will fight reform. That is not insurmountable. Trump having some of the richest men on earth in his corner will help a great deal. The bigger problem is the transition cost, which will come in the form of recession. There is no escape from it. The early 1980’s were the cost of transitioning from the productive economy to the middleman economy, so expect similar as we transition back.

The biggest challenge in this project is a dysfunctional managerial class that sees any change as a challenge to their position. The middleman economy was very good for the sorts of people who have a long list of impressive sounding credentials but view tangible accomplishment as a disqualifier. The army of managers in the managerial state cannot survive a transition out of a middleman economy. Like the aristocracy in 18th century France, they will not go quietly.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


The Death Of Progressivism

Note: Behind the green door, there is a post about how the presentness of this age results in collective amnesia, a post how AI will destroy us, a video from the bed of my truck and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.


In certain circles the triumph of Donald Trump is being viewed as either a sign that liberalism is dying out or the sign that it is dying and the forces opposed to it are finally on the ascendant. Still others, stuck in the thinking of the last century, see the victory of Trump as a sign that the forces of darkness are ready to turn out the lights on the liberal order they are committed to defend. In both cases, there is that old problem of language in that no one seems to have the same definition of liberalism.

This confusion is not helped by the fact that for about a century the people at the retail end of politics have used the word “liberal” as a label. In the United States, people we call the left also use the term liberal. In fact, they often use the term left to mean super-liberal or radically liberal with liberal simply meaning pro-government. Liberals for example, want Medicare for all, while the left wants single payer. To confuse things even more, the right wants government regulated healthcare.

Putting aside the retail use of the word liberal, there is confusion as to what is meant by liberalism in modern discourse. The civic nationalists continue to insist it means the moral and political systems based on things like individual rights, equality before the law and the consent of the governed. Critics tend to view it as the collection of bourgeois cultural and social fads that have ripped through the West. One imagines liberalism as John Locke and the other as John Rawls.

The truth is the liberalism of the 18th century has been dead for a long time. In Europe, ideology replaced liberalism in the 19th century. The triumph of ideology resulted in two great industrial wars in the 20th century and then the rise of managerialism in response to the dominance of the American empire and the Cold War. In Europe, the dominant political order is managerialism. Rights, equality before the law and the consent of the governed exist only as rhetorical flourishes.

In the United States, the Lockean liberalism of the Framers quickly gave way first to a reformist Protestantism, culminating in the Civil War. This slowly gave way to what was called progressivism in the 20th century. progressivism is the reformist Protestantism of the past but stripped of its Christian overtones. The mental and moral structures remain but lacking the fixed points of Scripture and the Christian conception of God, the implementation has wandered all over the place.

Another way to think of it is that the European left travelled down a road that began with the decline in Christian faith. The first step was to use reason to arrive at the same ethical conclusions as Christianity, just without the Christianity. This then led to thinking about new ethical conclusions based on reason alone. Ideology is, after all, a set of moral claims backed by the authority of reason. The two great industrial wars in Europe were about how we ought to organize ourselves.

In the United States, reason has never played much of a role in what has often been called liberalism, because it never dropped the mental structures that it inherited from the Protestant reformers. The original progressives littered their language with references to Scripture. This stopped in the 20th century as Jews joined the elite and entered progressive politics. The moral structures stayed in place, but the authority for them simply disappeared, but has always been assumed.

It is why the people we currently call the left are so fond of claiming that they are on the right side of history. In part, this is a reference to the Hegelian historicism they experienced in college but is much closer to the Calvinist sense that the righteous act as they do because they are righteous. Instead of being on the right side of history, they could just as easily claim to be on the side of angels. They do what they do because they are trying to bring the rest of us along to the glorious future.

It is why modern progressivism is so thuggish. Without a Bible to hold up as his authority, the modern progressive has only her fist to shake at the crowd. Since she is on the right side of history, she is the white hat, so anyone in opposition must be the black hat and against the black hat, you must use any means necessary. What was called Woke was the fanaticism of the Puritan but untethered from Scripture and the reason to interpret and apply Scripture.

This explains the progressive takeover of Protestant churches. Instinctively, they seek moral authority for their claims, so they take over the old moral authority and decorate it with their symbols. Elite divinity schools are full of progressives who reject everything about Christianity, but they seek the framing of Christianity to animate their own progressive moral claims. Protestantism gave birth to progressivism and then was slowly devoured by it.

One of the oldest debates within Christianity is between faith and reason. This is the source of the phrase, Athens and Jerusalem. What we see with progressivism is the end result of that debate. The people called woke are briming with faith, but devoid of reason, so what they believe cannot be expressed in words. Woke was a visceral expression of progressive faith. The often-comical irrationality of it was the logical end of the abandonment of reason.

The growing sense that the fever has broken, which some see as a sign of the end of liberalism, is something much simpler. The fever has broken, and that fever was the secular religious fervor of late stage progressivism. It was the primal scream of faith without reason. What this signals is not the death of liberalism, which happened long ago, but the death of progressivism. Like a demon leaving the body of the possessed, the old Calvinist demon is leaving American politics.


If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack 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 through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!


Radio Derb January 24 2025

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m25s Pre-Inaugural Adventure
  • 08m38s Energy in the Executive
  • 15m00s The Bishop of Woke
  • 21m08s Britain grovels
  • 25m15s War against the normal
  • 30m00s Indophobia
  • 34m20s A line from Kipling
  • 35m25s Suggestion for a pardon
  • 38m29s Year 50
  • 40m55s If VDARE.com, why not the SPLC?
  • 42m16s Signoff with Victoria de Los Angeles

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     That was indeed quite a week. And for all you fellow 1960s survivors: Yes, that was the great Millicent Martin. She is still with us, I think still active after a career spanning at least seven decades, and looking forward to her 91st birthday this year. Happy birthday in advance, Millie, and many more.

This is of course Radio Derb, being introduced here by your exultantly genial host John Derbyshire. As I said, it’s been quite a week.

It began for me on Sunday the 19th; and although there is nothing very consequential to report about that beginning, I’m going to give it a segment of its own anyway. The name of the segment is: Pre-Inaugural Adventure.

Here we go. Continue reading