Note: Behind the green door is a post about the 70’s classic Taxi Driver, a post about the legendary film and book, A Clockwork Orange and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Over the last several years, a group of academics and intellectuals have formed what is now called post-liberalism. The members of this group do not agree on many things, but they agree on one important thing and that is what they call liberalism has run its course and it is time for something new. Patrick Deneen, one of the key members of the post-liberals, has a new book out called Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, in which he sets out to describe what should replace liberalism.

This is the third book from Deneen on the subject. In 2016, Deneen published Conserving America?, which was a collection of essays on the current social and moral troubles of this age. After that he published Why Liberalism Failed, which was a book length analysis of what he calls liberalism. This latest book is supposed to build on that second book and lay out a vision for how to put an end to the liberal order and provide a sketch for what should replace it.

Regime Change has been met with mostly negative reviews. A good example is from Charles Haywood at Worthy House, who was enthusiastically positive about Deneen’s prior book on the subject. It is also fair to say that Haywood is positively disposed to the broad concept of post-liberalism. He makes the point that despite the title, Deneen is not actually suggesting we change the regime. Instead, he offers up the usual list of reforms that have no chance of being considered.

The main problem with the book, as Haywood notes, is that it is organized in such a way as to avoid the main topic of the book. The first three quarters are a summary of the arguments Deneen made in his liberalism book. Instead of leading to a demand for a bloody revolution to overthrow the regime, replacing it with a dictatorship of recent Catholic converts, Deneen delivers a poorly conceived list of reforms and some bromides about racism and colonialism.

This gets to one of the main problems with the post-liberal project. It is not really post-liberal and the members are not opposed to liberalism. Instead, they oppose some of the consequences of the current ruling order. They appropriate words and concepts from dissidents, without fully understanding the meaning of them. The phrase “regime change” is a good example. One gets the sense that Deneen liked the sound of it and wrote a book so he could use it for a title.

More troubling, the post-liberals have not thought about why the arc of the liberal project has led to the present. If they wished to limit the scope, they could start with the American constitution and examine what happened along the way. It should be quite clear that the current ruling order is nothing like what the Framers created and nothing they imagined was possible. Chronicling how we got to this point, skipping past the speculation as to why it happened, would be a good start.

There is none of that in this book or in Deneen’s prior work. In fact, it is not particularly clear that he understands where to place the starting point of liberalism. He gives us far too many references to Aristotle, which is always a sign that the author is struggling with his choice of topics. He also likes to quote Aquinas. That is getting warmer, but when he talks about Locke, you wonder if he is talking about the same John Locke that the rest of us had to read in college.

Probably the most puzzling thing about the Deneen project is that he never mentions Alasdair MacIntyre, who was a long serving scholar at Notre Dame. He wrote the book, After Virtue, which was a highly successful critique of liberalism. If you search the name in Deneen’s last two books you get zero mentions. This is strange, since MacIntyre tackles the causes of liberalism’s failure and also takes on John Rawls, the most important liberal political thinker of the last century.

This gets to the main problem of the post-liberal project. They do a respectable job describing the present and the dangers it presents. Where they struggle is in understanding that maybe the current order is not actually a liberal order, but a post-liberal order. Further, they do not understand that the American project evolved outside of European liberalism. The Enlightenment is a good starting point, but the Reformation is a much better place to start.

All that said, none of this should be taken as a dismissal of the post-liberal project or the academics and intellectuals attracted to it. What Deneen and others are doing is drawing attention to the inherent flaws of the current order and in the process legitimizing the questioning of it. Slowly, questioning the assumptions of liberalism is becoming acceptable. When a bigfoot college academic calls for regime change, it is now acceptable to discuss the topic in polite company.

As far as the Deneen book, while it fails to deliver on the promise of the title, it is a useful look inside the mind of the post-liberal. The dissident will see the same struggle they experienced as they crossed the great divide. What comes through in this book is a man struggling to wake up from the myth of the 20th century. If members of the modern monastery are experiencing this, then it suggests the regime is far closer to a moral crisis than many would like to admit.

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

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the difficulty in making quality science fiction movies and two posts about the American Renaissance conference. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Every new generation gets the usual treatment from the usual suspects, always in an effort to prepare the way for their integration into the culture. The naming of generations is like the naming of weather events. It is part of shaping a narrative. Of course, it is also a way to sell the new generation cultural products by flattering them with claims that they are special unicorns here to make everything right. Generational politics is a way to condition the young to conform to the cultural norms.

The Zoomers may be an exception to this rule. They are getting the usual treatment from the usual suspects, but unlike prior generations they have been raised as consumerist bugmen from birth. Consumerism is a part of their identity, not an activity to be encourage. Popular culture and consumer goods define them on an individual basis, but also signal their participation in subcultures within the generation. They do not require a “buy signal” as that is coded into their DNA.

This is also a generation raised by women for a female dominated culture. Gen-X is arguably the first feminized generation. The explosion of divorce in the 1970’s meant that many of this cohort were raised by mothers in female led homes. The surrounding world, however, was still a male oriented world. This started to change with Millennials who came along as society rapidly feminized. The Zoomers were not just raised in the longhouse, but for the longhouse.

Then you have the totally novel socialization of Zoomers. For as long as man as lived in settled societies, children were socialized in unsupervised play, with some guidance from parents and other adults. Helicopter parenting with the Millennials changed this, but the internet revolutionized it for the Zoomers. Mom was content to let the kids play video games in their room. They were safe. Meanwhile, the kids were learning to deal with other humans through the internet.

One result is that there are two distinct groups within the Zoomer generation that have nothing to do with class or education. One group played sports or grew up doing outside activities, while the other group grew up online. The former group is better socialized and far less engaged in popular culture. The latter, a much larger portion, is socially awkward, defined by consumerism and most important, wildly unrealistic about themselves, the world, and their place in the world.

The difference between online socialization and real-world socialization is easiest to see with the males. Males learning the male role on the playground got in fights and had to navigate physical space using the limitations of their mind and body. Getting beat in a physical game by someone who is not only better but will always be better is a humbling experience that is an important lesson in life. Getting in a fight on the playground, regardless of the result, shapes your behavior.

Zoomer males socialized online never experience this. Their character in the game can be whatever they imagine. This is why male video game characters are cartoonish caricatures of the idealized male form. Unlike on the ball field or the playground, the worst thing to happen to you online is your character dies. Maybe you get blocked from a chat room. You just respawn as a new character. There are no real consequences, so perceptions and expectations are never tempered.

One result of this is the Zoomer males sound like middle-aged single women when they engage with the public. Scan their online spaces and it is the sorts of complaints you expect from women. That is, they make everything about their feelings about an issue, rather than the issue itself. Nick Fuentes does a show that is mostly him complaining about the world being mean to him. The Groyper livestreaming space is a low production value version of daytime talk shows.

This jumps out when it comes to sex. Close to 20% of this generation claim to be something other than sexually normal. Some of it is fashion, particularly with the females, but much of it is simply a result of socialization. Both males and females have been raised in such a way that the normal interaction between the sexes has been short-circuited. Identifying as trans or pansexual is much easier when the normal interaction between the sexes has been made weirdly difficult.

Female Zoomers have been raised on a steady diet of Nth wave feminism for a world run by women. They think they can do all the you-go-girl stuff they get in the classroom and the popular culture. The trouble is, none of that you-go-girl stuff prepares them to land a boyfriend, much less a husband. Yet, that age old desire to be a woman and find a man remains. The result is a generation of females frustrated by the sexual marketplace, with nowhere to turn for advice.

Male Zoomers, raised to believe that females are the dominant force in the sexual marketplace, have not developed the social skills to interact with females. They assume the female should pursue them. Compounding it is the deluge of porn that has washed over them growing up online. Their sexual attitudes have been perverted to the point where many of them are incapable of interacting with a human female. Instead, they date anime characters and simp for female livestreamers.

Another novel feature of the Zoomer generation is that their social capital is virtual, rather than practical. Status is about online clout. This can be in the form of followers on social media or traffic on a livestream. In the analog age, expensive display items indicated money, which provided status. In the digital age, the digital man wants internet clout, which signals his status. Nick Fuentes lives in his parents’ basement and has never touched a woman, but he has clout, so he is important.

This explains the endless boasting. Zoomers in the real world are quiet wallflowers, but online they are obnoxious braggarts. It is why they worship Donald Trump. So many of them have embraced his boasting style because boasting is an important part of getting clout online, so why not emulate the greatest shit-poster of all time? This is why Nick Fuentes says he is the most censored man on the internet. The absurdity of the claim is the point because it gets attention and therefore it gets clout.

This also explains the unearned confidence. The generation least prepared for the world as it is and wholly unprepared for what is coming, is convinced they will take over the world and impose their will. Again, this gets back to being raised by video games and livestreams. You can always beat the game, so they assume they will beat the game of life. They find it ridiculous to think otherwise. Those who came before them are just losers who sucked at video games.

Something that ties it all together is the lack of seriousness. Again, Zoomers engage with the world for the sole reason of gaining online clout. To gain clout first requires getting attention. Getting attention means finding a novel way to present yourself online, so anything goes. It also helps if you can get the attention of other clout merchants, so the result is ridiculous clout chasers aping the antics of clout merchants. The clout market is a freakshow as a result.

Gen-X came into a world that was never going to cater to them, so they were prepared to be ignored by the massive boomer population before them. Millennials came into the world lacking many basic skills, but the world they entered was stable and prepared to assimilate them. Zoomers have been prepared for a world that only exists online and they are entering a world that is in crisis. The result is the real world is not ready to reprogram the Zoomers for success in reality.

More important, this cohort is going to live their prime years in a society that is in both steep cultural decline, but also economic decline. Reality has a way of fixing the mistakes of society, but reality is not ready for the Zoomers any more than the Zoomers are ready for reality. In the fullness of time, this generation may be the inflection point of Western society. They are both the end product of the long unfolding social crisis in the West, but also the last hope for arresting it.

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

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Every human civilization has some mechanism to find talented people who can be of service to the ruling class of the society. The system can be formal, like the Chinese exam system or graduate school in modern America. It can also be informal, as it was in the Middle Ages when a talented young man could be noticed by his lord and given a chance to raise his own status. The Hundred Years War created fortunes for many common men who fought on behalf of their king.

This search for talent is not only internal. Jews in Europe found that there was always a noble in need of smart and literate men. The Hoffaktor in Germany was almost always a Jewish banker who not only kept the finances of the house he served, but he also maintained connections with other court factors. In return for these services, these Jewish men were often awarded lands and titles. The endless search for talent by the ruling elites is why we have Ashkenazi Jews.

This is important to keep in mind when members of the chattering class talk about the meritocracy and the role it plays in the current crisis. This column by David Brooks titled, “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?” is a good example. Brooks speaks as a member of the meritocracy, which he defines as the highly educated and highly connected urban class that runs the institutions. His column is mostly a self-congratulatory call to action to address the growing unrest.

The place to start is the assumption on behalf of Brooks and no doubt his intended readership that he is a member of the meritocracy. He ticks many of the boxes he repeatedly insists are requirements of the meritocracy. He is the child of wealthy foreigners, and he went to the right schools. He has avoided anything that looks like productive labor. He has no loyalty to his host country. He sent his son off to serve in the army of a foreign country.

By the standards of the people who throw around the term “meritocracy” as a compliment, David Brooks is a good example. The question is what service is he rendering to the ruling class? He has no useful skills, and he has never tried to do anything that requires sacrifice on behalf of the ruling class. His career looks like the life of a self-indulgent fop from the British literature. What has David Brooks ever done to merit consideration of the ruling class?

The first clue is a quote from Thomas Edsall he uses in his post to explain why he and his fellow meritocrats aligned against Trump. “Republicans see a world changing around them uncomfortably fast, and they want it to slow down, maybe even take a step backward. But if you are a person of color, a woman who values gender equality or an L.G.B.T. person, would you want to go back to 1963? I doubt it.” That right there captures the Cloud People – Dirt People divide.

Opposing Trump was never about practical things like the priorities of government or the general welfare of the people. It was class struggle. The meritocratic class view their membership in that class as a sign of their moral goodness. Their ability to worm their way through the labyrinth of credentialling mechanisms in order to fill up their resume with the best associations is proof of their virtue. A perch at the New York Times is no different from an assigned seat in the front pews.

Hatred of Trump, and it was real hate, was a defense of the optimates versus the populares on purely class grounds. The problem is the optimates are a polite fiction, a fig leaf for the tiny ruling elite at the top of the system. The role of thoroughly impractical men like David Brooks is to maintain both a moral code that benefits the ruling elite and to provide a barrier between the optimates and the populares. Trump crossing that barrier was viewed as a violation of this system’s integrity.

That is the heart of the Brooks post. The headline is misleading as at no point does he genuinely suggest the meritocrats are the bad guys. Instead, he explains how people could possibly make this mistake, because their highly exclusionary systems do seem to violate their alleged moral code. Note he quickly moves along to the part his readers expect from a Brooks column. That is the part where he says the Dirt People are undereducated rubes who need to be put in their place.

In fairness, he probably sensed this and finished with “We can condemn the Trumpian populists until the cows come home, but the real question is: When will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable?” Fools grabbed onto this thinking it revealed some genuine self-reflection and perhaps a sign that the managerial elite is coming around to the criticisms leveled at them. In reality, it was another blow on the shofar to rally the people of the meritocracy.

That is how the Cloud People view things. Like the children of Israel camping in the wilderness of Sinai, they await the final instructions. They have seen the destruction of the Dirt People and they can see the ultimate end of their leader. What comes soon is the Promised Land where the meritocrats will build a kingdom of priests and a holy nation that serves the gods of the new religion. The Dirt People will be gone and what will remain is the righteous led by the meritocrats.

That is the purpose of these men of the meritocracy. Their role is to keep the dream alive and encourage the elites to push forward and faster. Whether any of this is possible is never considered. Those debates are left to the Dirt People and once they are gone, all doubt will be gone. In the end, the meritocracy is nothing more than a cheering section for a system that serves elite interests at the expense of the people and nations on which they feed.

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

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the classic Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a review of the classic film Jaws, and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Imagine a scenario in which there are two people talking. Person A says, “I am very thirsty” and Person B responds, “There is a store around the corner.” Now imagine a member of the secret police reading these lines in a transcript without any other information about the people. Stripped of all context, these sentences do not mean anything, and they are not obviously connected to one another. They could easily be viewed as random sentences or perhaps coded messages.

Of course, both Person A and Person B would understand the exchange because the receiver of the first message had a lot of other information. Maybe he knew that Person A had been exercising or that it was a hot day. That is why he mentioned that there was a store around the corner. Of course, Person A understood the response because he knew that Person B understood what he meant. These sentences made sense to both parties because of shared knowledge.

As an aside, secret messages work the same way. The messages are designed to make sense only within a specific context. The sender assumes the receiver will have the key that provides the context. Often, the key is the context that makes the messages intelligible. To someone without the key, the message is meaningless gibberish. In more sophisticated codes, the receiver needs the key as well as the larger context of the message.

Getting back to the example, that exchange is something called the cooperative principle, a concept from linguistics. The parties in a casual conversation rely upon a commonly held set of assumptions. In most situations, the listeners and speakers act cooperatively to facilitate communication. They mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. There is an assumed base of shared information upon which their exchange rests.

This describes the cooperate principle of communication. The four maxims of this principle are quantity, quality, relation, and manner. Quantity is the amount of information communicated to the other parties. The quality of that information is the truthfulness of what is being communicated. Relevance is the relationship of the information to the topic or situation. Manner is the clarity of communication. Grice’s maxims explain how people efficiently communicate to one another.

This structure for how people communicate is vitally important in a society in which the people are expected to participate in the governing of society. In a monarchy, horizontal relationships are subordinate to the vertical social structures. One does not have to understand the king in order to understand the relationship. The customs and social structures provide most of what the king would ever need to communicate to the people and what the people need to communicate to one another.

In other words, in an aristocratic system, the context so dominates the daily life of the people that verbal communication is reduced to the pragmatic. There is no need to discuss, much less debate abstract concepts that require lots of additional information in order to make sense to the participants. In a democracy, those clear social structures are gone and what must replace them is a large common understanding. Everyone has to operate from the same set of truths and assumptions.

This gets to why America is in such an agitated state, despite the relative peace and prosperity of the age. The people in charge seem like they are not just speaking a different language but doing so from a different reality. That is because for the most part, they are using a different language and they do operate in a different world from the bulk of the people. The managerial class is defined by the managerial elite and therefore operates by a different cooperative principle.

Take the word “democracy” which is used all the time by the regime. To normal people, this means majority rule. In a democracy, the government does what the majority of the people want, with some exceptions. Normal people accept that some things like slavery are not up for debate. Even if the majority wants to bring back slavery, it is an immoral practice, so it is not permitted. Otherwise, normal people assume democracy is the will of the people expressed in the laws.

To the managerial elite, democracy means the process by which the majority or an assumed majority is convinced to support elite opinion. This is why they are inspired to redouble their efforts whenever they lose at the ballot box. Democracy requires them to work harder to get their desired result. Expediency may require them to go around this process using the courts or administrative fiat. The assumption is that enough people already agree so it is close enough to justify action.

This one word shows how the elite and the commoners do not share the same basis of understanding when it comes to politics. The elites see democracy as the process of working toward their desired end. The people assume it is the process by which elites discover the common will. These are two entirely different and incompatible views of the democratic process. Inevitably this leads to a large number of words and concepts lacking a shared understanding.

More critically, the managerial elite deliberately flouts the principle of commonality to trick the people into supporting the opposite of what they desire. Normal people are used to flouting the principle of commonality, as it is a central part of comedy, as in sarcasm or satire. The managerial elite, however, violates the principle in order to trick the common people, but also to signal intent to the rest of the elite. It is why every new social fad comes with new insider jargon.

The regularized flouting of the principle of commonality in political discourse is not entirely due to deceit, even though it is often a happy accident. The managerial elite in particular, but the managerial class in general, lives in a different shared reality than the people over whom they rule. More important, the managerial class is increasingly aware of the class difference. Much of what defines the ruling class is the shared knowledge of the difference between them and the rest.

This is why political discourse is increasingly frustrating, but also pointless. The gap between how the media, for example, talks about the Trump indictments and how normal people talk about it is too large to cross. The shared reality of the media imagines Trump leading an armed rebellion against the system. The shared reality of the normal people is of a man being tormented by the ruling elite. There is no commonality here, so the communication is cognitively meaningless.

What this suggests is that the clash between the rulers and the ruled is much more than a clash of interests. It is not simply about one side wanting different ends than the other side or wanting more from the result than the other side. Those sorts of conflicts rest on a set of commonly accepted principles. This clash is due to the managerial class living in a different contextual reality from the people. The current conflict is not a clash of interests, but a clash of incompatible realities.

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

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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