After the New Hampshire primary results came in, I flipped on the news sites to see what they were saying. Fox News had a panel discussing the results in the same design you see ex-jocks discussing ball games. They were talking about the exit polling and all were shocked at the numbers. I got the feeling they really believed that some miracle was going to bring down Trump. Instead, it was a blowout in favor of him.

It reminded me of the ’94 election when the Republicans swept the House for the first time in fifty years. I was sitting with some friends and we were flipping from channel to channel, laughing at the shock and horror of the news readers. I forget who it was, I think he is dead now, but one of them appeared to be close to tears. Everything they believed in was suddenly proven false.

The concept of a “media bubble” is nothing new and many in the media fully admit to living in such a bubble. For the men and women of the prestige press, America is a foreign country in the same way India was foreign to British colonial officers. Watching the Fox show, I would not have been surprised if one of them blurted out, “What’s wrong with these morons?” It was what they were thinking.

The great transformation of the American mass media into a sealed off class is a relatively new thing. Originally, the news business was for the lower classes. If you were a working class guy possessing a decent IQ, being a newsman was a great way to avoid the factory life. You got to work inside, keep odd hours and have a lot of fun covering the events of the day. It was the sort of gig for the literate man, who liked adventure.

That changed in the 70’s as news reporter became a profession. Today, a paper like the Washington Post hires only from elite colleges. Northwestern and Columbia specialize in journalism, even having grad schools for it. Syracuse, another very good college, has long dominated the minting of TV and radio graduates. The prestige press is littered with Ivy League grads these days.

Of course, you don’t end up at the Columbia School of Journalism if your dad is a plumber and mom is the payroll manager at the local Chevy dealership. The elite colleges draw from the elite high schools, mostly private high schools. Many of the boys and girls milling around the Yale campus made it to adulthood never having met a plumber or ever collecting a paycheck, so they enter the bubble unfamiliar with the world they intend to cover as journalists.

While it is not a conspiracy or even a coordinated effort, the media tends to move as one organism. That’s why both sides are horrified by what they see from the Dirt People recently. They fashion themselves as savvy cultural observers and they never saw this coming. Even when it is explained to them in detail, they look blankly out at the mobs, not understanding what’s happening

On my trip around the dial, I did not hear the “I” word until finally one of the Fox color commentators mentioned it briefly. The reason for this is they experience immigration differently from the Dirt People. For them, it’s just another charm on the piety bracelet. They are for open borders because only racists and xenophobes are against it.

The rest of America interfaces with the subject in a much different way. The Dirt People go to the ER to get some stitches and see it looks like a Tijuana bus station. Their kid’s school now has Bantus for some reason. Their insurance goes up because the illegal that rear ended them had no license or insurance. They lost their job because their employer brought in a bunch of H1B indentured servants.

When 75% of the tech jobs in Silicon Valley are held by foreigners, the Dirt People are, unsurprisingly, a little cynical about the elite’s immigration romanticism. More important, they are horrified when their healthy skepticism is called bigoted or un-American by the people who rule over them. It is this contempt for the Dirt People that is so noxious. As I’m fond of saying, it makes you want to spit on your hands, hoist the black flag and slit some throats.

That’s what the Cloud People don’t understand. Most of the Dirt People are fine with sensible immigration. They just expect it to be debated in the context of what is best for Americans. Instead, it’s treated like child pornography. There’s only one acceptable opinion and any deviations means you’re a vulgar bigot. As is so often the case, the response from the Cloud People is “suck to be you!”

I remember when Reagan was accused of going around the media to talk directly to the people. Then it was talk radio becoming the alternative to the liberal press. Then cable news, then the Internet and then Fox and now here we are, right back where we started. If you want anything resembling reality based commentary you end up reading hate thinkers like me. The point being that the brewing revolt will have to be more than just a batch of new pols and some sore feelings in the press. It has to leave a mark.

This cannot end well.

One of the many annoying distractions to percolate from the right side of the managerial class is their fetish over speech. Read the popular conservative rags and they are always droning on about free speech. Anytime the left side calls for new speech laws, the right side starts howling about how important free speech is to a free society. They sound like a bunch of hippies from the later sixties.

Usually, they throw in some version of “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” The fact that this was uttered by a degenerate comic never seems to give them pause. It’s all about waving around their banners and initiating a fundraiser about defending free speech. The latter bit is the most important part. Got to make the cash register ring.

What you will never hear them defend is freedom of association. They would sooner cut out their own tongues before uttering the phrase, much less voice a vigorous defense of freedom of association. I won’t say the name, but I once had an exchange with a National Review writer about speech. I raised the freedom of association issue and he stopped, blinked, and then walked away, not uttering a sound.

The reason for this is they fear nothing more than being called a racist. They know the other side the managerial treehouse will roll out the racists taunts as soon the issue of association comes up and they have no answer for it. Having long ago conceded that the worst possible thing a person can do is be a racist, there simply is no way to defend freedom of association. Rather than admit it, they ignore it.

The trouble with that is you cannot have free speech without free association. As soon as you lock people in a room, regardless of how they feel about one another, you better police what they say. Otherwise, you end up with blood on the walls. You see that in this story from Germany.

BERLIN (AP) — The German government on Wednesday banned a far-right Internet platform that it accused of spreading “racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-Islamic content,” and federal prosecutors said two people were arrested.

The ban on the Altermedia Deutschland platform is “a clear sign that the rule of law doesn’t allow hate crime,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.

The prosecutors’ office said that two Germans, identified only as Jutta V. and Ralph Thomas K. in line with German privacy rules, were arrested on suspicion of founding a criminal organization and incitement. Three other suspects weren’t arrested.

Raids were conducted in homes in four German states and the northeastern Spanish town of Lloret de Mar.

The two arrested people were the administrators of the Altermedia website and therefore responsible for its content, which included banned Nazi slogans and the denial of the Holocaust as well as incitement of violence against foreigners, the prosecutors’ office said.

The German government has decided to flood the country with people a lot of Germans really don’t like. The only way to keep this from turning into a blood bath is to make sure no one says anything that can offend anyone else. This is practically and theoretically impossible, so they go for these sorts of stunts. As the Chinese say, sometimes you need to kill the chickens to scare the monkeys.

The fascinating bit here is the German government will move heaven and earth to nab a couple of weirdos who spend too much time on-line, but they can’t be bothered to attack the wave of rapes and assaults being carried out by Muslim invaders. It’s an example of the bully tactics of the managerial state. They always go after the weak, hoping the strong will go for the bluff.

The same nonsense is going on elsewhere in Europe. Hilariously, the Dutch police are going door-to-door telling twitter users to tone it down.

In rare instances, Dutch police are knocking on social media users’ doors and asking them to be careful writing posts about refugees that could lead to real-life violence and, ultimately, to charges of online incitement.

One example is Mark Jongeneel, a small business owner in the small city of Sliedrecht who tweeted his reaction to asylum plans in his city:

“The college of Sliedrecht has a proposal to receive 250 refugees in the coming 2 years. What a bad plan! #letusresist”

Hours later, his mother (with whom he lives) contacted him to say local police had visited her house and were now on their way to his office.

“I asked them what the problem was. And they said, ‘Your tweets,'” Jongeneel told DW. “And they asked me to be careful about my Twitter behavior, because if there are riots, then I’m responsible.”

The logic of this is obvious. As soon as you force people to be around people they don’t like, you better be prepared to chaperon them 24×7. Otherwise, words will be exchanged, tempers will flare and before long you have a riot or worse. The logic of the solution, is to bully the weaker side hoping they will roll over and take it.  Given the degraded state of European culture, that’s not a bad bet – for now.

What’s happening on a large scale is the managerial class is turning the police into the modern version of the Praetorian Guard. The “security forces” will be refereeing the tribes over whom the managerial class rules. In the short term, they will make sure the natives don’t object too much to the importation of barbarian populations from over the horizon.

But, diversity is our strength. With just the right amount of vibrancy, how could things possible go wrong?

It’s often suggested that America, and maybe the entire West, is undergoing a great realignment culturally and politically. The managerial class has matured to the point where it controls the high ground in Western societies and most important, it has become class aware. What we used to think of “leftist” ideology has evolved into an elaborate defense of the prerogatives and interests of the managerial elite.

The rise of the managerial elite dates back to the 19^th century with the full flowering of the Industrial Revolution and the credit economy. It’s often forgotten that Herbert Hoover, the guy “responsible for the Great Depression” because of his “laissez-faire” economic policies, was president of the Efficiency Society. Hoover, like many educated men of his age, believed modern engineering techniques could be applied to the organization of human society.

The story of the 20^th century in America was the retreat of the traditional middle class in the face of a technological revolution that extended far beyond the material goods of life. This managerial revolution allowed the new ruling elite to consolidate economic, cultural and political power through corporate and governmental bureaucratic power. By the end of the 20^th century, the loop had been closed. Politics, finance and the culture would be controlled by the managerial elite.

What we are seeing today is the public waking up to the reality in which they find themselves. Both political parties in America are now immune to the will of the voters. Across Europe, the main parties work together to thwart challenges from populist parties. At every turn the public is faced with a unified ruling class, from proselytizing by the cultural organs to financial chicanery greenlighted by the political class. Of course, no one in power is ever held accountable.

This last part is a good example. Forty years ago, Richard Nixon was run out of town because Liberals hated him. The America of the 1970’s was a country in which members of the elite fought one another for power and influence. There were competing interests in politics. Today, Barak Obama has done all of the things critics suspected Nixon wanted to do. The result is a shrug from both political parties. Hillary Clinton most likely sold national security information for cash to her slush fund and no one in power dares mention it. The shield wall remains intact.

The thing to understand is that the managerial class is not a self-conscious conspiracy or “deep state.” It’s a cohort that shares educational, class and cultural perspectives. They are bound together by an egalitarian ethic and a preference for technocratic solutions. Those solutions are to be carried out by the bureaucratic institutions in which they swim like microbes in a Petri dish. The shared interests and shared worldview results in a natural, unconscious cooperation, like ants whose queen is the bureaucracy. The interests of one are the interest of all.

It’s why there’s no mechanism to self-police. Holding Obama to account for his crimes means expulsion from the managerial class. To these people, such a thing is up there with crucifixion or stoning. Ultimately, the only punishments that can plausibly be handed out within the elite are those that lower one’s status within the elite. Anything that threatens one’s membership in the elite is therefore off limits. Hillary Clinton can auction off state secrets and not fear prosecution. The worst that she can expect is losing to Bernie Sanders.

This natural cooperation looks like coordination because it is so natural. The decision by the Supreme Court to take up Obama’s amnesty action is a good example. The court has decided to expedite the review this case and decide whether Obama, or any future President, can issue citizenship to random people at his discretion. Lower courts have put the brakes on the program for various administrative reasons and now the high court will decide the matter.

Of course, expediting this case is unusual. The reason for the rush is Obama is leaving office in a year. There we see one element of the managerial class helping the other without thinking too much about it. This would not have happened, of course, if Paul Ryan and the Republicans had not gone along with the scheme by funding it in the last budget. So, we have one side of the class pushing open borders, another element signing off on it, despite claiming to be mortal enemies of the former. Then another side comes in to help expedite it.

Again, that looks a lot like coordination and one would be forgiven for thinking it is a conspiracy. But wait, there’s more! The court now has the opportunity to remove this issue from public consideration. They will most likely rule that the executive can issue citizenship to whoever he likes whenever he likes. This removes the issue from Congress. From there, it just takes one president to issue green cards to South America for the circle to be complete. Citizenship, as a practical matter, ceases to exist.

Across the managerial class, the concept of citizenship is seen as antiquated. They all believe that the world is headed to a world without borders and countries. A vast administrative apparatus working through local bureaucracies will handle the issues of governance formerly done by nation states. While not always articulated in this level of detail, anything that moves us toward the general vision of a borderless world is supported by the elites, be they on the court, at the banks or in the legislatures.

The court did not take up the case because they intend to block the administration. They took up the case for fear it could languish until after Obama was gone and the public had become fully aware of what’s happening. Once the court rules in Obama’s favor in a few months, the game is lost. It’s just a matter of time before the ruling elite is completely decoupled from the people over whom they rule. They will have their managerial state, if they can keep it.

One of the more remarkable things about the last couple of decades has been the evolution of multiculturalism into a suicide cult. Back in the 1980’s when “tolerance” was becoming a thing with Progressives, the argument was that whites in white countries should be tolerant of their dusky brethren.

It was not just the decent thing to do, it would make for a more peaceful society. If whites in America, for example, put aside their prejudices about blacks, then blacks would have a fair shot to join the mainstream culture. If the West was more respectful of the third world, then maybe those people would embrace civilization.

I recall being lectured about tolerance by a French girl back in the mid-80’s and my thought at the time was that this was just another silly way for Progressives to preen in public. When I pointed out to the French girl that “tolerance” implied “dislike” as in she was tolerant of blacks even though she privately despised them, she nearly had a stroke. It was clear she had not thought much about it, but she liked being smug around white trash like me.

Over the last three decades, this fetish has evolved from tolerance through celebration to outright worship. Hilariously, there’s zero tolerance for anyone that does not fully embrace the self-loathing, suicidal impulses of the multicultural faith. On every college campus in America, you will find a club for every conceivable “minority” group, but the opening of a few “white student” clubs was cause for National Day of Mourning.

Eric Hoffer wrote that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” A corollary to that might be “every great cultural pathology begins as a petty public piety, becomes a political weapon and degenerates into insanity.” It does not trip off the tongue, but the point is what’s important. What started out as a pose became a weapon for the political Left and has now devolved into madness.

This example from the City of Brotherly Love would be funny if it were not so sad.

A 33-year-old Philadelphia policeman, Jesse Hartnett, was ambushed late Thursday when Edward Archer, a Muslim man, reportedly tried to execute him while he was sitting in his police vehicle. Images from the incident show a man dressed in Muslim attire firing off a reported 13 rounds at officer Hartnett. The police officer was hit three times but did not suffer life threatening injuries and is expected to recover fully, reports said.

According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, the suspect said he had committed the attempted execution in the name of the Islamic State, the jihadi terrorist insurgent group that controls territory in the Middle East.

“According to him [the shooter], police bend laws that are contrary to the teachings of the Quran,” said Commissioner Ross.

Mayor Kenney, who was inaugurated last week, took a strikingly different tone when coming to the podium.

He began by expressing his well-wishes for the officer who the Muslim man attempted to execute, but then spent the latter part of his statement distancing Islam from the shooter, who claimed he was carrying out the shooting for Islam.

“In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam has anything to do with what you’ve seen on the screen,” said Mayor Kenney.

“That is abhorrent. It’s just terrible and it does not represent this religion [Islam] in any way shape or form or any of its teachings,” he added. “This is a criminal with a stolen gun who tried to kill one of our officers. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”

I’m old enough to remember when mayors, even from big cities, were content to take bribes, ignore police corruption and let the city unions raid the treasury. Now they want to be the local imam, defining the will of Allah and passing judgement on the conduct of the faithful. How long before the mayor begins issuing fatwahs, calling the local youth to wage jihad against the infidels?

The mayor is not thinking any of this through, of course. He’s just a back pew moonbat that is willing to grin like a chimp on TV and do what his handlers tell him. In modern America, municipal government is a dead end politically, so it attracts low-watt sociopaths and grifters unable to do productive work. Mayor Kenney is too stupid to comprehend any of this. He is just trying to ape what he sees and hears from his idols, people like Obama and Angela Merkel.

That does not change the fact that multiculturalism has become a public madness. Angela Merkel is throwing her country into turmoil for no reason other than the psychological terror she feels when contemplating the alternatives. Like an agoraphobic fleeing a public place in terror, Merkel is in a panic over the mere hint of nationalism and is instead inviting a billion Muslims to relocate to the Fatherland.  She would rather let the rapefugees rampage through the streets than see her countrymen waving the flag.

Unlike private madness, public madness eventually recedes. We’re seeing that now all over the West, but public madness comes with a price. The bill for Merkel’s Madness will be paid. Whether that is through a return of the worst instincts of the German people or a diminished of their best instincts is the question. The same is true all over the West. The madmen have conjured spirits most assumed were dead. It will not end well.