One of the main battles within Western liberal democracies over the last seventy years has been the war between partisanship and objectivity. Those on the side of partisanship see politics as a war between interests, like labor versus capital or minorities versus the majority. Objectivists see politics as a battle about finding the best solution for the problems of society. For them, even their own narrow interests must take a back seat to the truth. Being right counts for everything.

The partisans have always had the advantage, because they correctly understand that the “right answer” or even the “best answer” is a matter of perspective. Your class or identity interests shape your ideology and you will always see as the correct answer that which fits your ideology. Put another way, it is human nature to root for your own team, whether you do so consciously or unconsciously. Those who think they are being objective are just flattering themselves.

Once free of the restraint of objectivity, partisans are free to press their interests through whatever means are available. They are not constrained by the rules, because like all things in politics, the rules are a means to an end. Forcing an opponent to abide by their rules, while you violate them, for example, is perfectly acceptable, as long as it advances your group interests. The most recent election is a great example of partisanship triumphing over objectivity.

A good example of how this clash of world views has been going on for a long time is this post from American Renaissance. A long lost interview of the great IQ researcher Arthur Jensen was discovered on YouTube or maybe re-posted to YouTube. It is from the old daytime chat show called The Phil Donahue Show. Long forgotten at this point, Donahue was the godfather of the modern daytime chat show. He was the first to involve the audience in a town hall style format.

If you watch just a few minutes of the interview, you see Jensen was trying to answer the questions about the facts in his work. Donahue, on the other hand, is not interested in the facts, but how he can use them to further the cause. Donahue was one of the smarmier television liberals at the time. He was the Bill Maher of the 80’s, infamous for tricking guests into coming on his show, only to put them in terrible positions, in which they inevitably looked foolish or disreputable.

Early in the interview, Donahue knows he cannot use the old liberal gag of dismissing an enemy as stupid, so he keeps shifting the focus from the facts in the book to the alleged motivations for writing about them. He wants the audience to come away thinking that Jensen is an immoral person for having an interest in the topic, so good people should therefore dismiss him out of hand. To the partisan mind, all disconfirmation is personalized and the person is then anathematized.

In that American Renaissance post, Jared Taylor adds some commentary about his personal interactions with Arthur Jensen. This comment is illustrative of that gap between partisans and objectivists. “I was struck by his mild and profoundly scientific reaction to his attackers. He wasn’t angry at them; he was baffled. Why couldn’t they just look at the data?” The partisan knows exactly why he is in the fight, while the objectivist is perpetually baffled as to why there is a fight.

The objectivist will counter that facts matter and eventually, factual reality must triumph over wishful thinking. In the case of IQ, for example, the diversity of intelligence and what it means for modern society is immutable. Gather up a bunch of 65-IQ Somalis and dump them into Minneapolis and before long the city is struggling with the sorts of social problems that come with a 65-IQ population. Intelligence is driven by genetics, not environment, so these experiments must fail.

The thing is though, while the results of the current experiments with diversity are certain to fail in the long run, there is no guarantee that the critics will be around to see their predictions proven correct. Another immutable truth is the future belongs to the winners of today, for better or worse. Being right, but losing the fight over who will shape the future simply guarantees you will be proven correct. That makes being right hardly worth the effort, unless you are a masochist.

This has been the story of all opposition to Progressive racialism in America since the middle of the last century. The opponents go on about facts and reason, while the radicals scheme to get around those objections. Maybe it is anathematizing an opponent by calling him a racist, as with IQ researchers. Maybe it is violating the rules, while forcing the other side to obey the rules. At every turn over the last three generations, the partisans have beaten the truth-speakers.

Interestingly, this is the one bit of objective reality that the objectivists always find a way to look past in their analysis. When it is pointed out to conservatives that they have managed to conserve nothing, they have no answer. The best they can muster is the weak claim that playing to win makes you no better than the Left, which is suggests they are not committed to the causes they claim to champion. Instead, it is about their personal honor. They want to lose with dignity.

Taylor finishes his commentary on Jensen with the following sentence. “He was a model of dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness for all dissidents.” On a personal level, this is a fine sentiment, but lousy advise. In this long twilight struggle to save the West, those concerned with dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness must be relegated to the drawing room to comfort the women, while those willing to do whatever is necessary go out and subvert the enemy on the field of partisan politics.

This should not be read to mean that the answer to Progressive radicalism is to ape their tactics. In fact, that is usually the wrong course. The Left deployed their street terrorist this year hoping to draw a response, which they were prepared to use in their election efforts. They can do this because they control the courts and the police, so the tactic is low cost for them. For dissidents, however, such a tactic is high cost and promises a small or even negative return.

Instead, the dissident must learn to view “dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness” as tools in his political toolkit. When they advance the cause, they can be deployed, but when they weaken the effort, use other tools. Like the craftsman, the partisan dissident uses his tools in furtherance of the project. No one cares if the master craftsman is dignified or fair-minded. He is judged on his work. The dissident right will be judged by its deeds, not by its adherence to abstract personal qualities.

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

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

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte.

Note: I have a post up behind the green door on the Mary sue that was allowed to play sportsball with the boys last week.

In the industrial age, the power centers in Western societies were capital, the government and the workers in that order. Because money is power, the capitalists could exert influence over governments, so they were at the top of the power structure, but that had its limits. Government has the monopoly of force and must be responsive to the people, even in private government. Labor, of course, had numbers and even in the most repressive regimes, numbers count for a lot.

Of course, there was natural conflict between labor and capital. Then as now, capitalists wanted to exploit their workers as much as possible. One solution to this was tripartism, which is economic corporatism. Labor, government and employers work together to form economic policy. Labor would be organized into unions, whose leaders would sit at the table with representatives from the state and industry to fashion polices that maintained social stability and economic prosperity.

For most of Europe, this has been the explicit arrangement. In Scandinavia, what is often called socialism is actually corporatism. Workers get generous benefits, but the state protects business from competition. In other parts of Europe it is not as explicit, but the social contract is based on the cooperation of the government, business and labor unions. The irony is that this was the approach favored by fascist movements, but no one dares mention that bit of history.

In America, this arrangement was never formalized. Industrial unions flourished in the north, but never got traction in the rest of the country. Into the 20th century, the central government was too weak to bring labor and capital to the table. Instead we got an informal version of tripartism, with activist groups inside the political system negotiating on behalf of labor. The political class used regulation, rather than force, to bring business owners to the table.

For the most part, this system worked well enough through the 20th century. It was not perfect, nothing is, but all the measures of society improved. Even as the West moved into post-industrial economies, the system held up. That’s increasingly not the case, especially in America, as we move fully into the technological age. That old informal arrangement is falling apart and being replaced with a bipolar social order, centered on money and information.

You see this with the Democratic Party. A generation ago, Democratic politicians would court industrial labor unions and salt their platforms with promises to the middle and working class. They were the party of labor. Today, Democrat politicians would not be caught dead with a union boss. Instead they hang out at Davos with bankers and global titans of the information age. They salt their platforms with weird aspirational messages that resonate with bourgeoise bohemians.

The new system is an informal arrangement between Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the political class in Washington. Left out of this is not only labor, but the bulk of business, which does not operate globally. You see this with Covid. Exceptions were made for the giant corporations, but not the small and midsized business forced to knuckle under to draconian measures. A great transfer of power and money is underway from the middle-class to the elites.

Just as capital was able to exert influence over the state in the old industrial tripartite system, money and information is now able to push around the political class. You see this with the tech monopolies. Many in Washington know this is a serious problem, but they are powerless to stop it. Not only can the tech giants buy the votes they need, they get to read everyone’s e-mail and text messages. In the information age, control of information is as important as controlling the money.

What America is racing into is bipartism, an informal alliance between Silicon Valley and Wall Street, with Washington as junior partner. Silicon Valley controls the flow of information, while Wall Street controls the flow of money. When necessary, Washington supplies the force. There is no role for labor or even for the public at-large. In a world where elections are ceremonial, there is no need for Washington to appeal to the voters or even pretend to do so.

The problem with this emerging social arrangement is that it is not rooted in anything other than short-term greed. Corporatism of the industrial age was rooted in Catholic social teaching, where the parties had reciprocal duties. Human dignity and the common good were overriding concerns. The three parts of the system were bound by reciprocal duties to the other, but also bound by a duty to society. There was a clear moral component, rooted in 2000 years of history.

The system that is emerging is explicitly free of any moral duty to society, as it rejects the very notion of society. After all, society is about boundaries and the open society is about no boundaries, which is a contradiction in terms. The rhetoric is to disguise the fact that the whole point of this new order is to consume social capital, converting it into money and power for the two stake holders. Human dignity and the common good have been monetized to benefit the new ruling order.

The main flaw in this is that a world without social capital is a world without trust. This is why personal liberty is quickly shrinking. Prisons are low trust societies and they are controlled by limiting the choices available to inmates. The emerging social credit system and “freedom passes” are what the new ruling class thinks will replace the social capital they have devoured. Instead of a sense of community and an obligation to society, people will be motivated by their smartphone.

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

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

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte.

The Panic of 1873 is one of those events that was important at the time, but gets little discussion today. One reason is it does not fit modern narratives, as the villains and victims are not familiar today. It is one of those events that just seemed to happen and all of these years later it is not clear why it happened. There are lots of possible causes, but not one obvious cause. The resulting decades long depression, however, setup the 20th century and the two great industrial wars.

Another important event that gets little attention these days is the Great Fear that preceded the French Revolution. This was a period of panic, fear and conspiracy theories that swept rural France. Rumors circulated about various plots by the King and the aristocratic classes. For reasons no one has been able to explain, the peasants became increasingly sure the First Estate was about to overthrow the Third Estate, which eventually led to the revolution.

One of the many interesting things about the Bolshevik Resolution is the parallels between it and the French Revolution. Lenin was supposedly a student of the latter, so the lessons of it informed his decisions. Whether this is true or not is like so much else about our history. No one can say for sure now. One clear parallel, however, was the fear and panic preceding the February revolution. Suddenly, no one could trust anyone, so everyone was willing to believe the most outlandish tales.

The one thread that runs through economic panics, periods of civil unrest and great social upheavals like revolutions is the collapse in trust. It is not just the trust in individuals like a king or rich people. Human societies have been dealing with dishonest rulers for a long time. Monarchs come and go and people quickly adjust. When everyone knows the problem is a man or group of men, the solution to the problem is always at hand. No man, no more problems.

Panics are different. The fear is driven by the sense that nothing can be trusted, even one’s own assessment of events. In the case of economic panics, when a big powerful bank fails, impoverishing its clients, how can one trust anything about the financial system at that point? If all of a sudden the currency loses a big chunk of its value, how can anyone trust the economic system itself? In times when the foundations of the system lose credibility, no one can trust anything in the system.

A simple example makes this clear. If in your place of work, the software system used by the company suddenly produces errors, everyone raises an alarm. Work stops until the people in charge of the software either explain why the unexpected result is, in fact, correct or they find the cause and repair it. The software system holds the business rules of the company, so when those rules appear to be to failing, the logic of the business is called into question. The users begin to panic.

The reason people panic is that trust is built on predictability and predictability relies on rules and the orderly enforcement of those rules. When the rules stop making sense or their enforcement becomes arbitrary, it becomes impossible to predict the outcome of one’s actions. When you cannot trust the rules, you cannot trust the results of your own decisions, which means you cannot trust even yourself. When people can trust nothing they are willing to believe anything.

America appears to be in one of those moments when the people are suddenly thrust into a world in which they can no longer trust anything. The extraordinary events of the last election have caused tens of millions to question the system itself. Even those who voted for Biden are coming around to the idea that it was not on the level. Now we are seeing wild claims rocketing around the internet about what is happening to various people and what is happening behind the scenes.

The new rumors and claims are a bit nutty, but the fact is this has been building for a while, going back to before the prior election. Think back and there were all sorts of rumors about Hillary Clinton. People were willing to believe them because she is a terribly corrupt person and a notorious liar. You cannot trust anything that is said by her, her associates or anyone aligned with her. Today, everyone views the system the same way we have viewed Hillary Clinton for decades.

Another interesting aspect to this time of rumor and panic is the fact that the political class has not learned from the economic class. The lesson the bankers learned from the depression of 1929 is that one tool in their arsenal had to be a form of shock and awe as they addressed the crisis. The display of power by the central bank would fill the void of trust and quell the panic. This has proven to be highly effective, as we saw with the mortgage crisis in 2008. Everyone trusted the Fed.

Looking back at the French and Russian revolutions, there were points when the ruling class could have restored some trust in themselves and the system. They had opportunities to change the dynamic and bring people back into a political process they could trust. They failed to do so, often choosing a path that further eroded what little trust the people had in them. We’re seeing similar failures today, as the ruling class carries on as if nothing is happening outside their mansions.

This is how suspicious minds become radical minds. When people get suspicious over something like the election anomalies, they are looking for an explanation from a source they want to trust. When that natural authority mocks or dismisses their suspicion, that becomes part of a new narrative to explain both the anomalies and the unexpected reaction to it. That why the rumors are flying. Suddenly, tens of millions are in the market for a new narrative to explain what they are seeing.

Just as important, tens of millions of American are moving from a mode where they think the government has bad elements to a mode where the suspect the government itself is the bad element. When public trust in the system sharply declined a generation ago, the system had a solution. Reagan channeled that distrust into a reform effort that restored trust in the system. Today, the Pretender Biden and his coterie of flunkies and door holders is channeling that distrust into conspiracies.

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

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

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte.

Note: There is a new post up on Taki about the emerging gyno-fascism and I have a new post behind the green door about what escapism is like in Wokanda.

One consequence of the Trump victory in 2016 was that many people were reassured that reform was still possible. Trump was an imperfect vessel for a reform movement, but he was just the guy to shake things up. He would be both a warning to the establishment and a catalyst for reform. The last four years proved that to be a false dawn, but people had hope for the 2020 election. The rigged election has probably put that idea to bed for most white people.

The question now is where do we go from here? If the Republican Party is a waste of energy and the Democrats are now the anti-white party, conventional politics looks like a pointless exercise. One way out of that is to either create a new party that transcends the GOP as the opposition or infiltrate the Republican party. The former solution is the dreaded third-party route and the latter is the “reform within” approach. Chris Roberts at American Renaissance points out that neither is a new idea.

Taking over the GOP has proven to be impossible for the same reason reforming Washington has proven to be impossible. If you have a leadership that is so corrupt it needs reform forced upon them, you have a leadership that is so corrupt they will find a way to thwart reform. It’s like forcing a lion to be vegan. It is so against its nature that it will just eat the keeper, rather than accept fake food. This has been the case for the Republican Party going back to Pat Buchanan.

The third-party route has the same problem. The system has been designed to prevent outside challenges. Both establishment parties take turns playing the loyal opposition, so that discontent with official policy is funneled into one side or the other. That way the discontent is recycled as fuel for the establishment. Generations of conditioning have made white people hostile to third parties. Even if a third party were to succeed, they would face what Trump faced as a reformer in Washington.

Roberts suggests a third option in which people focus on narrow interests and press those interests within the system. He points to various pressure groups that have had varying degrees of success. The NRA has probably been the most successful of the groups named, because it has influence within both parties. In this model, whites can press issues like immigration or economic reform in a bipartisan way, rather than hoping to make these platforms in one political party.

This approach could be described as the Kulak option. The Kulaks were peasants at the end of the Russian Empire who owned their own land. As the revolution rolled on, the term came to mean property holder, especially those who were hesitant to support the Bolsheviks, but were also unwilling to side with the peasants. The kulaks would chastise the peasants for not supporting the revolution, but they were never completely onboard with giving up their land in service of the revolution.

In this age, the Kulaks are those who view politics merely as a way to protect their diminishing economic and social status. These are people in the upper middle-class, economically and culturally. That last bit is vital to understanding the most bourgeois class in modern America. Flattery is the mother’s milk of this group. No people need to be told they are a good boy, a very good boy more than the white professional class. It is why they recoiled at Trump’s lower-class aesthetics.

These people are willing to embrace half measures in the same way the Kulaks were willing to meet the Bolsheviks halfway. It’s not that they hate white people or the cause of white people. It’s that they think it is icky to be seen on the same stage as people who shop at Walmart. This is the group that first fell for using grimy canvas sacks to tote their groceries and now wear their mask while driving their foreign sedan. For them, moderation in politics is a moral signifier.

This is where single issue politics comes into play. Some of these people can get behind immigration reform, not for racial reasons but for fairness reasons. It is unfair to current immigrants to leave the spigot open. They can back tough trade policy, because globalism is bad for minorities. Many of these people supported Trump as a social statement, but abandoned him in 2020 as a social statement. Like the Kulaks, they could not fully support the forces of change.

What this means is the people with the money to fund a reform movement will always want a firm hand on the leash. This is why the Republican Party is never willing to press their advantage or follow through with their promises. The people who they rely upon for funding resist anything that puts their interests at risk, but mostly they resist anything that offends their elevated sense of self. As a result, their politics are ceremonial. It is about where you stand on the stage, rather than what you do on it.

Of course, the dissident project is about bringing people over the great divide and part of that journey is the realization that dissidents are the radicals now. The people calling themselves radicals are just deluded tools of the establishment. Antifa and BLM should have corporate sponsors on their outfits like sports teams. The real radicals are those standing outside the prevailing moral and civic orthodoxy, questioning the very basics of the liberal democratic project.

Like those old Bolsheviks, who courted support from the Kulaks, and their urban analogs the intellects, dissidents need to appeal to upper middle-class whites in order to advance the cause. Because this group responds primarily to symbolism and moral signifiers, the appeal can and must be superficial. It is a means to an end. They want to be part of something that promises change, but never threatens their position. In time, they will be forced to choose or the choice will be made for them.

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

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

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte.

Back in the Cold War, one of the unanswered questions that came up from time to time was why did the people in the Soviet Union put up with it? American propaganda said that the living conditions were terrible. They had to stand in line for essentials like toilet paper and meat. The secret police regularly hauled people away, sending them into exile in Siberia or worse. Despite it all, the people, including those in the captive nations never revolted against the state or the communist party.

It is a useful question to ponder now as America and the West slip into the abyss of soft totalitarianism. We don’t have cops busting down doors and hauling away dissidents, at least not yet. We do have ideologues armed with the power of the state pushing people around because they can. The Covid hassles are the result of petty pipsqueaks in government offices dreaming up new ways to torment us. Curfews and bans on alcohol are punitive measures, not palliative ones.

It brings up that old question. Why are people tolerating this? There were some flickers of resistance during the early stages of the lock downs, but governments sent out the cops to harass dissenters and the media revved up the fear campaign. Here we are in a second wave of pointless lock downs, more petty and stupid than the first, but no one is raising hell about it. Back in the Cold War, stories like this elicited oaths about how the tree of liberty needed to be fertilized with the blood of tyrants.

A popular answer, for why people willingly allow themselves to be stripped of their liberty and dignity, is our material prosperity. The Boomers care more about their stock portfolios and their kids care more about the game consoles. The reason everyone goes along with this stuff, according to popular thinking, is everyone feels like they have too much to lose. That material prosperity has made everyone lazy and cautious, so they are easily pushed around by the petty tyrants.

While there is some truth to it, that can’t be the answer for why the people living under communism never revolted. The stories about people waiting in line for bread were no doubt exaggerated by Western media, but there is no doubting that the people in the Soviet Union lived well below Western standards. The Soviets may have had great military gear, but their consumer goods were terrible. Only party members had access to the small luxuries taken for granted in the West at the time.

In retrospect, we now know that life for most people in the Soviet Empire was not the dystopian nightmare portrayed in the West. Once Stalin died, there was a brief period of reform and then communism fell into a long period of conservatism. That is, it was more about maintaining a set of rules and enforcing them. Ideological experimentation came to an end and the focus was on the basics of life. For most people this meant a predictable life, where they had the necessities.

There’s no doubt that material standards of living for people in communism were far below that of the West, but this was not something they saw everyday. They just knew that life was better under communism than in the past. They were also free of crime, disorder and the great uncertainty of the first half of the 20th century. In other words, lacking a plausible alternative that was clearly better, most people were willing to knuckle under to the ideologues in order to get on with life.

We see that in America now. An under appreciated subplot to the Trump phenomenon is that Trump represented disorder and uncertainty, while his establishment opponents became stability and order. They selected the Pretender Biden because no one could possibly see him as a revolutionary. To use the old movie concept, the election was about the blue bill of Biden or the red pill of Trump. Note that the old alt-right greedily gobbled down the blue pill of Biden.

Another historical parallel is important. The captive people of the Soviet Empire were not all willing to go along to get along. The Hungarians revolted in October of 1956 against the party and the Soviet occupation. In November the Soviets sent in the Red Army to crush the revolt. The Politburo was initially open to dealing with the leaders of the rebellion, but changed their mind and crushed the revolt. The reason was they did not want to encourage more rebellions.

In January 1968, the reformer, Alexander Dubček, was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. This set off what is known as the Prague Spring, which was an effort to liberalize Czech politics and economics. This reform effort did not go over well with the Soviets who sent in half a million Warsaw Pact troops to suppress the reform movement and restore the old order. The scenes from Freedom Plaza last Saturday had a Prague Spring vibe to them.

What the Hungarian Revolt and the Prague Spring showed is that raw power has an appeal that can never be underestimated. There is no question that the people of the captive nations were in support of their independence, but the raw power of the Soviet Empire was more than enough to counter popular support. When the rebels had no answer for the Soviet tanks, the people did what Osama bin Laden observed many years ago. They chose the strong horse.

This is a lesson the Poles learned and put to good use in the 1980’s. The Solidarity Movement was as much about making the Polish communist party look weak as it was about organizing the people. Instead of hoping the party would yield to popular will, they played a game of chess with the party, putting them in positions where they looked weak and indecisive. This allowed the people to trust that the cure for communism was not worse than the disease of communism.

This brings us back to the current time. One obvious failing of the populist movement that put Trump in the White House is it was never able to create a plausible alternative in the mind of the people. Was the goal a return to the past or was the goal the present with specific modifications? Was it some undefined future? Trump was not skilled enough to grasp this and lacked the imagination to articulate a plausible alternative, even if he recognized the historical moment.

This is something that the reformers and rebels in the late Soviet Empire did not fail to grasp when their time came. When the party tried to oust Yeltsin, for example, the public rallied to his side because he represented a clear alternative. The Solidarity movement in Poland had a clear set of goals, rather than a list of complaints. When the party tried to muscle them, they were opposing more than just a rebellious rabble, but a set of specific reforms popular with the people.

Getting back to the central question as to why people throughout the ages have been wiling to submit to the most terrible crimes against their liberty and dignity, the answer is that life is about trade-offs. Instinctively, people make their choices based on the options put before them. They do not rebel against the present arrangements because they fall short of some ideal. They rebel, either because the alternative is misery and death or they see some better option on the table.

This has been the magic of the two-party democracy, which is explicit in America and implicit in Europe. The options before the people are always the two faces of the establishment, Republican and Democrat, Liberal and Conservative. Unless and until that dynamic is broken, either with a third option or the discrediting of the two option system, the status quo remains the strong horse. Nothing will change until the trade-offs presented to the people change.

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

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

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