In an apocryphal exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald said, “The rich are different from you and me.” To this Hemingway replied, “Yes, they have more money.” This gets repeated a lot, because it tickles the egalitarian sensibilities of most Americans. A big part of what has kept America together since the Civil War is the myth that ours is a classless society. Some people have more money and power than others, but that’s entirely due to merit, not class and connections.
Like the exchange itself, this belief is completely false. Every society has an elite and that elite uses its influence and connections to perpetuate itself. The daughters of rich guys marry the sons of influential guys. Their children are groomed to take up positions in the elite, mostly due to their family connections in the elite. Just as important, a floor is placed under members of the elite, protecting them from reversion to the mean. It’s how the Kennedy family has been in politics for four generations, despite their deficiencies.
What used to be unique about the American elite is they had a strong connection to the rest of America. This is a big, continent sized country, composed of man nations. That regional diversity, which is driven by biological diversity, made for a national elite that was really just a collection of local elites. This greatly reduced the distance between the elites and those over whom they ruled. Therefore, the American elite tended to be less elite, relative the Europe, and much more connected to the people.
In this interview on C-Span, Tucker Carlson explains some of the themes in his book and how he had this epiphany about what is happening in America. It’s an amazingly frank interview about how he and his fellow elites know pretty much nothing about the country over which they rule. At around the seven minute mark, he makes the point that he and his neighbors don’t know things like how much gasoline costs. The reason is, they have lots of money and the price of staples is simply unimportant.
Carlson is in many respects, a throwback. He’s what the WASP elite used to be like in previous generations. That is, he grew up in privilege, but had plenty of exposure to the common people and developed some common habits. In that same interview, he mentions that Claiborne Pell drove a beat up old car, despite being from old money. It was partially an affectation, but it was also a sensibility. American elites not only did not want to look like elites, they wanted to make sure they were a responsible elite.
That’s the interesting thing about Carlson’s book. It’s being bought and read by the hoi polloi, but it is aimed at his neighbors in Georgetown. It is a warning to them that they better start paying attention to what’s happening on the other side of the great cultural wall that separates us and them. What’s even more interesting is the people who should be reading it, are not reading his book. Instead they are attacking Carlson for it. They want his severed hands to be put on display in the Capitol rotunda.
The fact is, the Trump phenomenon is showing that the time for reform has passed and whatever comes next is unavoidable. That’s a truth about all reform efforts. Once a reform effort gets going, it is almost always too late for reform to work. The entrenched interests are too strong to overcome. Democracy moves quickly from a point where corruption is too minor to be of any concern to a place where corruption is too rampant for the system to confront it. Systemic failure is the core code of democracy.
You see this in late empire America. The ruling elite is composed of many parts, none of which has a reason to care about public welfare. The so-called deep-state is thoroughly beholden to global interests, many of whom are foreign. The semi-permanent administrative state is composed of people who hold the rest of us in contempt and people happy to not be subjected to the vagaries of the dreaded private sector. The mass media is a collection of propagandists and court jesters, mostly stupid rich kids.
The political class is always the main focus of reform, which is why many Americans are flirting with the sort of radicalism circulating in dissident politics. These well trained actors run for office on well-designed appeals to bourgeois sensibilities, then immediately begin speaking in tongues when they get to Washington. To follow modern politics, as a normal person, is to see the movie They Live over and over, thinking there can be a different ending, that the aliens will come around to our side.
The reason for this is the political class is just a collection of hired men. The plutocrats, who control both parties and the administrative state, have found that it is a lot easier to hire actors to stand in for them in office. That means every election, the choice is between two actors hired by the same people, playing different carefully scripted roles. When they get to Washington, they are given a different script. It is why so many of them are quite dumb. Stupid people don’t ask too many tough questions.
The defining feature of our modern elites is that a big part of who they are, their sense of identity, comes from not being us. The cultivated contempt from FBI functionaries like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page is part of the dress code of these people. In the same way a rich guy will sport an understated, but expensive watch or article of clothing, the people who rule over us wear a contempt for Americans, especially white Americans. The dying white middle-class is especially despised by the administrative state.
This is why reform is impossible. We see this with Trump and we would have seen it if Bernie Sanders had scored the upset. It’s not about the old ideological framework. It is about the new cultural framework. The people who rule over us see themselves as different from us, at war with us. They are defined by that sense. While it is amusing to see Carlson play the jocular Cicero role, it is important to remember the fate of Cicero as Rome succumbed to authoritarianism. No one should buy him gloves for Christmas.
People of Poland choose shipyard electrician for their leader. Because they considered all educated people rotten beyond repair.
Btw, Maus in Nazi language means mouse and when mouses grow too big, then people will call them rats. Squeak. Or considering our political viewpoints, DAS squeak. Had anybody listened U 96 soundtrack ?
I suppose that based on my net worth and excessive post-secondary education, I would be one of these “regional” elites. But I drive a ’95 Chevy pickup with 200K+ miles; and I bought my suits off the rack, when I wore them daily as a professional necessity. Unlike Trump, however, I like my ribeye steak rare; and I wash it down with Coors Banquet or cheap bourbon. My point is that instead of demonizing elites versus deplorables, it seems wiser to judge people by their character and their actions rather than by their consumer choices or their potentially disingenuous words. As the Scriptures puts it, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Judge accordingly.
You aren’t part of the elite, and you probably don’t even qualify as Nouveau riche. You sound like an egalitarian boomer-con who had a nice job, but is now retired.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. I am certainly not a 1%er (though my brother is); but my great grandfather owned the largest grocery store in Council Bluffs and my father was a bank president. I never had to work because of the trust fund, but I enjoyed the chess game that is trial litigation. Old school wealth prefers to fly under the radar and hates to make money an issue in human relations. I imagine Tucker and I would get along swimmingly. And I certainly don’t consider Zman or any other Dissident Right thinker anything less than astute gentlemen simply because they had a different economic background.
Maybe you are Maus, but your defensive rxn is exceedingly boomerish and misses the point. This isn’t about vilifying elites. It’s about how America’s elites have gone astray – they’ve lost the sense of purpose and mission which defined them, or at least defined their class ethos, in prior epochs. Assuming you specifically are the subject in question, and pointing out your steak preferences and your choice of transport to show you’re not one of “thoe bad elites” is the epitome of boomer “me” culture.
My take is boomerish because I’m a late Boomer. I mention the steak and the truck because I (mistakenly) rely on humor rather than rancor to make my points. You are correct that many elites have lost the communitarian sense of noblesse oblige, perhaps from the narcissism and greed that our current culture celebrates. I am fortunate to live in a place that has not completely abandoned the communitarian ethos and to have been raised in a family that inculcated the virtue of charity. If you choose to attack all Boomers for their supposed failings; I am not offended but I neither can I be arsed to defend, or condemn, an entire generation in the abstract as opposed to the particular behavior of a specific individual.
Welp, I’m sure you’re a lovely person Maus. I believe there was something about coming of age in the 60s/70s that turned ppl into certain behavioral routes; if you’d been born 5 yrs later you might not have these particular idiosyncrasies. Not really your fault you’re a boomer, but these idiosyncrasies rub a lot of us the wrong way.
In the end the most important is that we all show up when the bugle sounds. For our homes, our wives and our children, our people and our God.
I suppose that based on your net worth (unknown) and your excessive post-secondary education (also unknown, like Obama’s), that you are a special person indeed, imbued with that ancient humility we admire in the traditional ruling class.
As a dirt person, I prefer my steak ‘au point’ and my bourbon top-shelf. Can’t afford such things much, lacking that net worth and post-secondary education that allows one to choose, like Samantha Stevens choosing to wash the dishes by hand rather than twitching her nose and being done with it.
No one is here to judge you. We’re talking the rulers here – not you.
“Carlson is in many respects, a throwback. He’s what the WASP elite used to be like in previous generations.”
-thezman
This quote ties in nicely with your last essay, and how you got it completely wrong. You don’t seem to understand the nature of collapse and the purpose it serves. You imagine it serves no purpose and is something to be avoided if at all possible, or at least that is the take away I got from “The Coming Crisis”.
Crises serve an important function. They are fitness tests for the ruling class, and if the ruling class fails then the crisis will see that the incompetent are removed and replaced by the competent. If the crisis of 2009 had been allowed to take it’s course as it should have then most of our ruling class would have been overthrown and we would not be where we currently are, on the brink of an even greater social crisis.
Very well stated, I approve and like.
Part of the problem is that most people do not understand, or else refuse to admit, a fundamental fact: the United States has been successfully invaded, occupied and colonized by a foreign invading force. The weird thing is, a substantial part of the invading army consists of former Americans who simply switched sides. The left could with complete accuracy be called Vichy America.
One of the ways the invasion succeeded was by hypnotizing people into believing the ludicrous idea that anyone on Earth could be an American just by filling out some forms. Saying “we are a nation of immigrants” is about as informative as saying we are a nation of tool-using mammals. Another way it succeeded was by not overtly stating that an invasion was under way. Remember back in 1939 when a bunch of heavily armed Germans just sort of wandered into Poland, just looking for a better life? And who could blame them? They were fleeing the Nazis!
The reason our overlords despise Americans is precisely that they are /literally/ our overlords. Americans are a conquered, defeated, occupied people. Naturally the overlords are going to loot and rape and spit upon the defeated. “Vae victis” is not just a slogan on a cereal box. The Americans literally elected a President, or thought they had done so, and the overlords simply acted like it never happened. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Hillary Clinton actually is the President. Or maybe Obama simply never left. It hardly makes a difference.
Shack.
Think about what the government has acted and sounded like for the past 20 years…
BUSH 2000: Hey everybody! I know you just voted for an evil White racist Republican, so here’s an idea, let’s invite all of Mexico to come stay with us!
AMERICANS: NO!! We don’t want that!
BUSH: Fine, I’ll do it anyway when you’re not looking. How are we all going to get rich unless we keep selling houses to foreigners? It’s not like we have any real jobs left any more.
BUSH 2001: Hey, you see how our biggest city just got blown up by foreigners? You know what would fix that? Even MORE foreigners!
AMERICANS: NO!! No more fucking foreigners!
BUSH: I think I just heard you say “more foreigners, please!”
BUSH 2003: You know what would be so much better than fixing up the country? Going into trillions of dollars of debt to fight a pointless war against a bunch of innocent foreigners, and then, after we blow up their houses, we’ll give them all houses here!
AMERICANS: You’re an insane retard!
BUSH: Yeah but I’m it anyway, the UN said I could.
BUSH 2007: Hey everybody, you know how we’ve been replacing you with legal foreigners? How about an amnesty too, for all the illegal foreigners as well? You know, so they can invite their whole families.
AMERICANS: NO!!! No amnesty!
BUSH: Fine, we’ll just bring it up again next year.
OBAMA: Hey everybody, I know you said no amnesty, but how about just a teensy amnesty just for 35-year-old children, plus as many relatives as they can stuff in the trunk of a car?
AMERICANS: NO!! No more amnesty!
OBAMA: Fine, I’ll do it anyway.
TRUMP 2016: Let’s deport Mexicans and build a wall!
AMERICANS: Finally, someone’s listening!
TRUMP 2017: Oh, sorry did you think I said “wall?” I actually said, “ball” — as in, I’m having a BALL with the North Koreans.
KAMALA HARRIS 2020: I don’t care what you want, Americans. You’re outvoted by all the foreigners. Sike!
Zman describes our overlords as the Rolex class and that pretty much nails it from my side of the aisle. What would it take for the other side to understand the me? The price of ground beef and a gallon of 87 octane is actually a pretty big deal to me…. For all the virtue signaling of my betters, they’ll never understand that.
This has been a sequence of really great articles. Thank you Z. As an aside from someone on the other side of the Atlantic, there does seem to be a certain insanity to this present time which does seem to be the end of an era. Maybe it’s the last hysterical headrush of the Boomer left as it’s universalist fantasies crash against the craggy cliff face of reality. You can’t help but notice the lesser calibre of our current elite. They tend to remind us of the nitpicking school Marm. In Europe it does seem as that Macron/Merkel are in decline with Salvini Kurz Orban on the ascendent. With no disrespect to the owner of this blog, and as someone who has an affinity for America, well, what it used to be, a collapse of the U.S Empire could be a great gift for the long term future of Western Civilization. The infrastructure and its ruling apparatus has been root and branch infected with a bizarre virus (pozzed?). The Anglophone World is legitimatly on a mind boggling insanity tangent, but without a U.S hegemonic position in financing the poz has far fewer options. Russia or China aren’t remotely interested in being on the right side of history, particularly with their plans to intrigued an alternative for SWIFT. Nor any of the other potential powers. I do think we are in for a very nauseating 10 to 20 years though.
This post reminds me of a trip I took back in the late ’00s. I was working in retail banking managing a small branch and one day we were giving loans to anyone with a pulse and the next day we weren’t approving anything as the “Great Recession” hit. My branch closed and we were forced to relocate from a great house in the wilds of northern Michigan to a suburb of Detroit. People that were able to were fleeing Michigan in droves.
Anyway, at the worst of the crisis I took a trip to D.C. to see my sister who lives in Northern Virginia. It was like in the Wizard of Oz when the film changes from black and white to color. After the devastation of Michigan, I suddenly was in a world where the malls were full of people, there were new cars in every driveway and houses were flying off the market at asking price in a matter of days. That is when I realized that the people in D.C. live in a different world from us and they live in luxury thanks to the money they steal from the states. The rest of the country thought the end-times were upon us and these people were living the high life. The only thing missing was Mel Brooks dressed as King Louis shooting skeet with live peasants.
Trump will never get anything done because with few exceptions everyone in D.C. of either party is rich and getting richer, and who is going to derail that gravy train? People like Bill Kristol hate Trump and Tucker not because of specific policy positions but because they dared threaten the gravy train. Trump took office and filled his administration with people that despise him and wanted him to fail and only by sheer force of will is he getting what modest accomplishments he has achieved.
There is no political solution to this. Trump came along 20 years too late and the die is cast.
I was creeped out by a family trip to DC in 2007. The place was oozing with wealth, with no visible means of support, intellectual or practical. Other than the tourists, the people didn’t seem human.
I always felt that way about the suburbs. Aside from there being no tourists.
Have spent a lot of time in Bethesda in social visits and had clients in DC at one point so was there frequently. It is other worldly. Period.
When my rodent counterpart and I take over the world, nation capitals will be eliminated. I’ve considered this a major problem for decades.
A family member was with the US Dept of State for a 40 yr+ career, so I had visited their modest home in D. C. suburb several times in 1960s. Sort of like military housing compared to the good NY suburbs I had grown up in. Then a college friend and her husband who was an early computer geek ended up in DC in the 1970s. Dual incomes, even with kids, were essential to maintain the lifestyle. Scary home prices — $300,000 for a house with no driveway/garage. My little starter home in a far-out Boston suburb was $35,000 during the same period;-) Private school for the kids was out for these new Washingtonians, even though they both had attended the best schools in their areas (MA and KY) when they were growing up, far from DC.
These “new” Washingtonians, drawn there, especially the WOMEN, by John F Kennedy’s call to do “For Your Country” etc. overthrew the old order that had existed for close to 100 years in the places like Cleveland OH, Pittsburgh PA, Chicago, Richmond and so forth. The young people of elite or “old” families used to be sent to boarding schools, mostly in New England, where they would mix it up with similarly brought up youngsters whose parents had probably gone to school with each other, or could at least discover a few people they knew in common. Diversity meant there was a Catholic in your class. Then on to an Ivy League school or a Little Ivy, maybe Northwestern or UNC. Law/med school, a little ROTC led to a couple of years in the service and then WHAM BAM — back home in (fill in the blank) town. Marry local girl/guy or someone you met at a Smith mixer.
These lesser-sized cities all had strong alumni associations for these schools and were interested in keeping the pipeline flowing with their offspring, but also seeking new talent and offering club scholarships to worthy but underprivileged applicants. This was all relatively harmless and lots of the kids getting into the schools like Princeton who were not necessarily geniuses but were pleasant enough and intelligent enough to fit in to those undergrad institutions and carry on the family name — or at least start it in a minor way.
Getting into Harvard or Dartmouth has became a HUGE deal in the past 30-40 years by installing affirmative action programs and other tweaks to what was a reasonably functioning system of running society in this country. But since then, the critters graduating from said schools no longer want to go “home” to serve as pillars of their communities but rather choose to descend en masse to experience the delights of our nation’s capital! Even NYC has declined in popularity for a large segment of recent college grads. Only a few can make the grade in the hedge fund world or as cutthroat attorneys for the 1%. Woe is all of our future when serving as an intern in Bill Clinton’s White House takes on more significance than starting a family of your own in Darien CT or in West DesMoines IA!
“thanks to the money they steal from the states.”
Hold it right there. You get the money back and then some with all kinds of grants and transfers. The money in DC comes from debt. DC’s the pusher and your the junky.
They despise you. They’re laughing at you. They cherish every opportunity to rub your face in their contempt for you and your powerlessness to do anything about it. And then they smirk about it.
From Comey’s testimony 12/7/2018 (p. 227):
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX):
All right. So, I guess as I try and summarize what I’ve heard today, Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information more than a hundred times. She made false statement about it. FBI was aware that at least one of her aides also mishandled classified information. And one of the folks employed on behalf of Secretary Clinton intentionally destroyed evidence known to be subject to a congressional subpoena and preservation order and lied to the FBI about it. And on July 5, 2016, you stood before the American people and said that neither you nor any reasonable prosecutor would bring any charges in this fact pattern. Is that accurate?
Comey:
Yep. I believed it then, I believe it now. And anybody that thinks we were on team Clinton, trying to cut her a break, is smoking something.
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Comey-interview-transcript-12-7-18_Redacted-1.pdf
Many of these elites are not only beholden to foreign interests, they are foreign themselves. And we all know what eventually happens when you have a ruling class made up of foreigners.
In line with the old “regional elite” thing, the elites used to have differing opinions on a lot of things because they were very different people. New England elites had Ivy League educations, but Southern elites went to Southern schools , either their state university or a local private school like William & Mary, etc. Midwestern elites went to Midwestern schools, etc.
Now, all the elites go to the same dozen or so schools, and usually more than one. Harvard BA/Yale JD, etc. Thus, there is now a uniformity of thought that previously did not exist.
The family fortunes also had different sources: rail and industry in the East, agriculture in the Midwest and South, shipping in the coastal areas, etc. Now, it’s all just “finance” or “media”. Where there used to be competing interests, now, they all share the same interests.
I’ve always felt that this era, deep down, has an “end of an age” feel. A sort of madness in the air. Whatever the world looks like in even five or 10 years will be much different. I think the next five years will be having to live through something awful without becoming a victim of circumstance.
Middle class insecurity is what fuels the anti-white working class ire of the New Class of non-elites. By using the term “elite,” a word used in this context only in late-stage sociology, you’re making things worse. Elite means the best or top-shelf, period. Our problem is that we do not have an elite but a class of mediocre usurpers who have their positions precisely because they are NOT elite. No, they are insecure, aspirational Americans who are petrified of their won class status. That is the opposite of an elite.
I remember hanging with the kids of doctors and lawyers and you would have never known it. They lived in these post WW 2 bungalows, we were all white, and know one went on spring vacation. You just didn’t flaunt what you had.
One of the best and most important Z posts and comment threads of all. I have nothing to add, it is all being articulated better than I could do.
Agreed, the only thing I’ll add- “I’m here to take names, kick ass and chew bubblegum….. and I’m all out of bubblegum”. I rarely post here ‘cause you, TP Doc & Dave Wright usually do it better than I ever could.
So…..what you seem to be saying is since it’s too late for reform if we want to end the willful push to globalism and the end of a free America sought by the left we are going to have to act…..with “prejudice”. We are going to have to round up and hang not just hundreds (or thousands) of politicians, bureaucrats and media talking heads we are going to have to ferret out all the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts etc who holds the strings to this ongoing sedition and hang them also.
Things are Much worse than you say!
Yes, there are bits of reality here; but the analysis is so wrong-focused and misleading as to be *essentially* untrue. It is just a modified Marxist materialism – tracing all major ills to economics/ class and power.
If this analysis captured the essence of what’s happening; things would look very different from what they do.
Why would the elites have (long since) stopped reproducing themselves, almost stopped reproducing altogether – and doing their best to destroy normal procreative sex and promote… anything else, *in themselves* as well as the masses? Why would they be deliberately destroying their culture and prosperity (ASAP) by mass immigration and anti-growth economics? Why would the small and shrinking productive part of the population be under constant and escalating attack? Why would the elites be weakening the US position all over the world – sustaining ememies, alientating allies, provoking dangerous foes – meanwhile systematically destroying the capability of the US military from the top to the bottom?
Past elites have been selfish, or they would not have survived long – but in a long-termist way – looking ahead two or more generations. The modern elite don’t even look ahead a decade – their selfishness will destroy themselves, and pretty fast. But still they continue – why?
As you know, my understanding is that the elites are servants of supernatural evil (demons etc) – they have sold their souls and are are merely possessed shells (the snake-eyed ones, the ultra-elite minority) or shambling zombies (the dead-eyed ones, the puppet prime ministers and fake CEOs – especially the women).
The elite are not working in their own long-term – or even medium-term – interest, but in the long-term interest of purposive supernatural evil.
I suspect that many of the elites are autistic or aspergerish, overlaid with sociopathy and psychopathy.
Powerful mix of self-centeredness and uncaring for others.
Not really diggin’ the demonic-possession angle here. A poisonous ideology combined with breathtaking incompetence and cultural isolation is really all it takes to cook up this level of failure and contempt.
If you really want a spiritual explanation: the retreat from Christianity to pure secularism has created a vacuum into which pre-monotheistic paganism is flowing. Diversity and Inclusion, the “Climate”, Globalism, magic dirt, LGBT-worship… these are all various forms of idolatry. Paganistic tribalism is man’s natural state of being, absent any other ruling order.
Even more simple than that, the elites are transactional in their human relationships, and the language of their peer group is all of that crapola. They simply want to fit in, and have no fixed morals or ethos to live by. They are the wanna-fit-in rich kids of junior high, all grown up and living in a wealthy bubble.
Pre monastic paganism would be superior to the progressive religion that animates our elites. Instead, they’ve got some bizarre perversion of Christianity that retains the crazy bits – original sin, self abegnation, a millinerian view of history and apocalyptic fantasies; while rejecting the redeeming elements – social stability, grace, redemption and heaven.
As I said above, elite fertility is and has been above replacement and isnt dropping. Its the useful idiot upper middle striver class that has no children and a cat. They are soulless materialists, no doubt. The elite are simply self-interested. The flare for comicbook evil comes from their unending desire to spite middle class christian sensibility (or what they imagine it to be).
“The elite are not working in their own long-term – or even medium-term – interest, but in the long-term interest of purposive supernatural evil.”
True. They believe in nothing but their own egos and careers. They do it because they can. Emptiness and irony. Certainly not a return to paganism.
My hypothesis is that the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that they’re already here and running things, i.e. “They Live” is a documentary. That hypothesis being most commonly dismissed as coded antisemitism, which then leads one to re-examine why every theory of how the world works is somehow antisemitic.
What I can agree with @brucecharlton on is that science isn’t going to give us an answer whatever.
Bruce:
The elites are NOT servants of supernatural evil.
They are simply self-centered sociopaths (some are psychopaths) who willingly –with their free will given to them by our Creator– chose to do these types of things, i.e. be more and more detached from the concerns of the “dirt people.”
Just like Nunnya Bidnez pointed out.
Who’s going to be Titus Pullo? (I know, he wasn’t a real guy, and he didn’t really kill Cicero, but….)
For a few centuries now we’ve been replacing a naturally evolved elite with a sense of duty to its inheritance (peoples, nation…whatever you want to call it) with an elite that is basically jumped up white trash: the worst of all classes driven by avarice. Civilizations evolve with ‘Estates’ that are more or less symbiotic. They are complex and far from perfect, but it is these estates that set the foundations and over millennia build a high civilization. The military and church were the typical path that allowed some bright boy to rise above his station.
Once these ‘Estates’ where rotted out, our slow but assured decline was inevitable.
I grew up in Massachusetts – our elites (the Kennedys) were just jumped up Irish trash mobsters. While constantly raising our taxes, they were busily hiding their own ill-gotten fortune in Fiji.
If you think political functionaries are your elite, you have misunderstood the way an oligarchy masqurading as republic works. Kennedies (politicos in general) are like lawyers for the elite, political retainers who can be relied upon to go deal with an acute issue of prole unrest or sell the proles on a new elite venture.
This is exactly what Christopher Lasch wrote about in his 1996 book, “The Revolt of the Elites.” Lasch was one of a few who saw all of this coming.
I’ve thought about doing a podcast on his book. I’ll have to re-read it, as it has been years. My recollection is I agreed with his analysis of the very top, the global elite, but he did not notice what was happen in the administrative state or really even the managerial class. It’s been more than twenty years so I could be misremembering. I’d also note that his thesis is built on Sam Francis, who built on James Burnham, so there is an intellectual tradition there, which could make for a good podcast next year.
Yes, great material for a podcast. Speaking of Sam Francis, this Friday (12/21) on Luke Ford’s youtube channel, Kevin Michael Grace is going to review Francis’ book “Leviathan and its Enemies.” I’m not going to miss that one.
I just got that book from our library, it sounds like a pretty prophetic work.
I remember being impressed and influenced by it at the time. I should probably re-read it.
I enjoy watching Mr. Carlson, but part of me wonders if he is just positioning himself to make a political run. I would like to think that his ideas and opinions are pure. But in the back of my mind I have my doubts.
I hope he primaries Trump.
Do you think he would run to the right of Mr. Trump on Immigration? If he did then I would certainly vote for Mr. Carlson.
Probably, but what would be amusing is Carlson actually knows how Washington operates. He could talk in specifics, while Trump just says “yeah, we’re going to take care of that.” The thing is, Carlson believes stuff that 70% of the country accepted as normal a few decades ago. I think Trump believes all the same stuff. He just has a poor grasp of how Washington works and he has not brought on people who do know how it works. He is surprisingly bad at using the bully pulpit, for example. Right now, Trump should be on every chat show and talk radio show asking people to call Washington demanding his ten billion for the wall and some other stuff. Instead he is on twitter moaning about CNN.
” he has not brought on people who do know how [Washington] works.”
The people who really know how it works would never dare work for him.
“should be on every chat show and talk radio show..”
Who?? Colbert? Kimmel? CBS This Morning?? Ha ha ha. He’ll never get invited on any mainstream talk shows; and he can’t demand to be invited, because they’ll turn that around on him and say he’s being a Dictator.
He needed to go on Laura Ingraham, Rush, Levin, Hannity and even Savage.
That would cover his base and then some.
He didn’t, as usual he took his base for granted and is paying for it. He needs to lay off the tweets and talk to us directl
“He needed to go on Laura Ingraham, Rush, Levin, Hannity and even Savage”
So much good advice I see from smart people on the interwebs. Trump seems immune to it. Maybe he’s just the eternal boomer and had no idea what goes on outside his perfidious circle.
Or he could just do what he promised during the campaign. He has the power to command the Corps of Engineers to build the wall. And to command the Pentagon to find the money for it. And behead those who move slowly in carrying out his commands. But he doesn’t.
To be honest, I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump. I thought he was being to bombastic and couldn’t accomplish what he stated he could do. Now I know that my intuition was accurate.
However, Mr. Carlson certainly appears to know his way around D.C. a bit better than Mr. Trump, so I would definitely be curious to see what he could do.
Either way, I think the United States is too far gone to be rescued. Only time will tell, but leftism is like Ebola. Good luck getting rid of that.
“The ruling elite is composed of many parts, none of which has a reason to care about public welfare. The so-called deep-state is thoroughly beholden to global interests, many of whom are foreign. The semi-permanent administrative state is composed of people who hold the rest of us in contempt and people happy to not be subjected to the vagaries of the dreaded private sector. The mass media is a collection of propagandists and court jesters, mostly stupid rich kids.”
Exactly. And it does no good to fire every bureaucrat and media hack in DC. There are endless supplies of these “elite” NPCs coming out of our universities. Until Progressivism-as-a-religion subsides, the “elites” can’t be objective and will be anything but elite.
This is why “liberty” focused reforms would fail. They require a moral freedom hungry population to work.
However a state that we use say en loco parentis to treat pozzing under 21’s as a felony and one that didn’t bother with trials or courts for an emergency period could succeed.
If we as a society doesn’t want our sons and daughters pimped out whether on the street or to Jizz Bang 2020 or whatever than we have lock people who produce this crap
If we want some semblance of a functional economy we have to regulate and make sure that when people break the law the lesson learned isn’t “Change the law.” c.f the savings and loan crisis but “Don’t break the law, it hurts too much.”
I could go on but y’all get the point. The cure for misuse of authority isn’t liberty but proper application of authority.
Over under on Carlson being unpersoned? November 4, 2020 seems like a good starting point.
Sooner than that, I expect. The very successful gas lighting and de-platforming campaign before the midterm will encourage a full on assault next year.
I agree. With Sargon of Akkad and Lauren Southern being deplatformed, most of the alt lite has been purged from the internet. Now they’re working their way towards the uncucked right wing mainstream, primarily Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson. Would be surprised if they still have their gigs by the end of 2019. So much is being done behind the scenes to prevent another 2016 happening again, no i is going to be left undotted and no t is going to be left uncrossed.
“Chekhov,” he sighed, “is a /very/ perceptive artist.”
— William Gerhardie, “Futility”
I am a reasonable man… but there’s limits.
— Brendan Behan
Ancient history: in the 1980s as a young man, I recall reading “The Cherry Orchard” and “Three Sisters,” and thinking to myself, “Ya know, if we don’t start paying more attention, this exact same shit is going to happen to us.” And now here we are at the bus stop.
“Back when there were bicycles, I begged you for one. You told me to go to hell. Now there are no more bicycles.”
— Samuel Beckett, “Endgame”
— at a garden party, among the hyacinth and tangerines
I heard silky nothings talking incessantly
of soggy pastries and bright machines…
-Thad Borealis
“In the same way a rich guy will sport an understated, but expensive watch or article of clothing, the people who rule over us wear a contempt for Americans, especially white Americans.”
This raises the issue of unearned status in politics. Just as a regular guy can throw a Rolex on his credit card to look more successful than he really is, some people start spouting left-wing political cliches so that they can look down on “those awful racists.”
I’ve got a female cousin, 40-something, no kids, slovenly, still renting, who is one of these people. When she posts stuff on Facebook against Trump or for the hashtag degeneracy of the moment, you can tell that she sees herself up on a high, windswept moral mountain. It’s sad. It’s also bringing down our democracy.
A century ago, the elite still served in the military during wars, still did manly things in their youths. I’ve learned to despise his politics, but Teddy Roosevelt personal life was an exaggerated version of many elite men – in their youth they were tutored in life by rough men. They understood and formed ties to the rest of us.
The above comments about the upper middle class are true. Most seem pampered and soft while looking down on actual work with incredible arrogance. (Although I met a few who rejected that mindset and enlisted in the Marines)
In the Netflix series “The Crown” – the way Philip is portrayed he comes across as an “elite” that genuinely gets along with the “subjects” . They make a point of illustrating that Philip’s royal family was hounded out of their position when the people under them grew tired of the escapades of royals and hunted them all down.
I don’t recall if they did this thruout history – but during my lifetime the males of the British royal family were expected to have military experience (of a sort).
In this country we don’t even expect our clouds to be citizens.
One thing I’ve noticed in traveling a little around the country – is that up here in MA/New England – you’ll see far more Marine Corp decals on people’s cars – than you will see for Army.
Going down to the Carolinas – I see plenty of pickup trucks with large decals for different Army units. Up here – it’s more subtle, but you will quite often see a vehicle with one of those small round Marine Corp decals on the rear window.
MA is listed as #49 in enlistments per capita. So it’s almost at the bottom of the list. Maybe anybody here who figures they’re going into the military figures it might as well be the Marines?
I think that in the South, young men enlist more often for a career – and the Army has more career opportunities and faster advancement than the Marines.
In New England, the young crazies (like me) join up to test themselves and – whether they know it or not – reject the weakness all around them. A neighbor’s son here in NJ dropped out of college a couple of years ago to enlist in the Marines. He’s a really bright kid, but much happier as a demolitions specialist in the Infantry than he was as an English Major at some liberal loony bin of a school.
So yes – lots of Marines from MA. I went to the first Gulf War with a Reserve Battalion out of MA. We painted fighting Irishmen on our vehicles.
Both the current UK princes are combat vets,
Prince Harry in particular is a born killer with a pretty good gunnery record or so its said. He is still married to an aging half black actress of middling worth.
As far as I can tell these men still hold the customary views of their wealth and station
What makes the elite so insulated is wealth. They (the 10% or so) have kept up with inflation GDP growth and the like and while are in their own way precarious , have a buffer.
To break that buffer you need economic measures trade control. immigration control and very possibly brutally high taxes on the rich ala the 1950’s
They are never going to cooperate with that as the massive way waged personally against Trump and his tiny reforms has shown. It will probably require a full rotation of the elites and their institutions to be gone for good to fix the mess.
Right now it might be possible to shift the government enough to do this above board and reform the institutions rather then end them which is what I’m advocating but its not good odds.
100% estate taxes for everything over $1 million per blood born child. That’ll fix ‘em up. And I don’t want to hear about family farms, that canard has been used forever.
I second this with tweaks though income taxes that make it so people don’t accumulate toxic levels of wealth and laws that prevent foreigners, investors and banks from turning people into serfs are an essential part of such things.
Guess who’s the Financial Times “Man of the Year”? George Soros.
https://www.ft.com/content/2bd12012-01e4-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3
“The philanthropist has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy, an idea under siege from populists”
You have to give the other side credit. They make the choice very clear.
The Soros Foundation can put an immense number of people on its checkbook, so much that non even Soros himself knows where all the money is going to. They also have the benefit of Soros and his family are retired from work and devoted to subversion full-time. By contrast, the Koch Brothers are still running and growing the size of Koch Industries.
The Koch Brothers are allies of Soros more than us. And ye sure they are more capitalist than he might be, its moot
The Right is obsessed with economic systems when in reality so long as its not outright Communism any system is fine. Its our spirit and our ethnos that make up the West. Capitalism a newcomers had jack to do with it
And if you doubt that, tell me with a straight face that the Middle Ages with a tightly controlled economic system and little social mobility was somehow not “Of the West”
Eh, it was more a comparison about efficiency. The Kochs don’t get as much bang for their buck when it comes to politics. Politics is something they are into in order to lower their tax burden, and increase profitability. The Kochs hated Ron Paul, and never even found covert ways of backing him. Soros probably funded Svoboda.
They’re master semanticists as well.
I’ve said here several times before that I’m more temperamentally inclined to reform than revolution.
But I find this argument very persuasive.
Either our traitors masquerading as leaders succeed in replacing heritage Americans, or we succeed in replacing them with real leaders.
And Trump may end up like the Gracchi. This article is a very good example of what is meant by the term, “culture war.” Your average voter doesn’t understand this term, thinking it vaguely involved with high-brow stuff he is not interested in. This article would enlighten John Doe. If he bothered to read it. There again, people may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in them.
One of the best parts of the GOP tax law was the tax on university endowments. But being the typical GOP, they didn’t put the revenue in an escrow fund for student loan relief. And the GOP did nothing to tax the similarly large “foundations” that are slush funds for leftist causes.
It may be too late for the average conservative voter to realize that it isn’t 1978 anymore, and “tax cuts” are no longer a winning message. To say nothing of the elite who have a New Zealand bunker or a Tel Aviv condominium waiting for them if things go south.
A friend of mine, a retired hedge fund manager, said that foundations should be abolished because they were tax dodges for the rich.
I’ve read that most foundations could be “spent down” by mandating expenditure of 10% per annum, rather than the current 5%. Another silly part of the tax law revived the “Enterprise Zone”, it would be beneficial to mandate that foundations have to spend the vast majority of their donations in these Zones in order to maintain their tax-exempt status. Sackler art museums should not receive a tax benefit unless located in a ghetto. Of course all Sackler wealth should be given the Ramaphosa treatment.
Interesting older piece about the Enterprise Zone scam, apparently the original variant was about repealing labor and environmental laws to create “maquiladoras in the ‘hood”. Not a surprise that it went nowhere as a concept.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/why-enterprise-zones-will-not-work-12612.html
The selloff has been going on for a little over a year now. The plebs remain asleep. They never wake up until it’s too late anyway. Interest rates are too low to use as a tool. InstaHos who’s husbands are in jail for drug trafficking command more attention than teachers. NGOs continue their ability to rip off tax payers. Cops and teachers aren’t allowed to enforce standards of decency anymore. Standards of decency aren’t allowed in public anymore.
The public sector no longer functions in the interests of the silent majority. ConsumerCorpUSA only uses and then disposes of; Nice jerks who will tell you everything you want to hear while milking you dry with a smile on their face. It’s not news anymore. We’re in a banana republic. The middle has no self respect and they’re passive.
Time to move to Montana and let the shit work itself out. See you in the hills boys. It will be hard work, but it will be fun and healthy.
Two things:
1. Biohistory: https://www.biohistory.org/
2. The current Grand Solar Minimum (the Eddy GSM) and the concomitant global cooling (droughts, catastrophic crop failures, increased volcanic and earthquake activity, population collapses, and population migrations–southward).
Trump is a Boomer. He believes he can “heal” the country and “end racism.” If he only knew the best thing he could do is burn down the Capitol, Wall Street, the Fed, the FBI, etc. and commence with 24/7 public executions.
All true, but the elites are not immune to the wasting disease that is killing us all in slow motion. They have derivative power through mechanism of wealth, but would not long survive in a jungle environment. Their sense of security is founded on the LEOs they own and the mercenaries they can purchase, but are oblivious to how technology has rendered both obsolete. The billionaires club is very small in number, and need not fear an uprising of pitchforks. Rather, the comeuppance may well arrive from the ether.
It’s been discussed on this blog that the elite depends on the police, security guards and the walls of their gated communities to feel safe. How many of the male members have ever been in a brawl much less are adept in the use of firearms?
Brett Kavanaugh once threw ice at someone in a bar while in college. I was disappointed to read that – I expected that someone named Kavanaugh (hint, hint, Irish) would throw a punch. That was considered shocking to The New York Times. Sheesh.
“Rather, the comeuppance may well arrive from the ether.” Do you mean “other?”
It aggravates me to no end the soft, smug ruling class that has so much power over us yet wouldn’t last 10 minutes in MadMax world. Look at Rod Rosenstein for example. If he misses the last flight to Tel Aviv on the DOTR how would he fare? The easy life of the modern world has bred a class of parasites. It would not be so bad if they were limited to the ‘hood, but they infest all the pressure points of the system.
“Do you mean other”
The dictionary defines “ether” as the upper reaches of the atmosphere beyond the clouds, but the colloquial meaning is out-of-the-blue (meaning unexpected or unanticipated). You’re not going to beat the Deep State with citizen militias, firearms are for self-defense. WWII was won by the GI squad sergeant who brought nimble innovation to the front lines. That is how tyranny will be defeated.
That’s tactics which win fights.
Ideology gives the will to fight and the Right doesn’t have one. When blog folk can tell me in detail what they are willing to risk their family being tortured to death fin reprisal raids for and there are enough of them, they can win.
As it is we react, we don’t create something new and better.
To paraphrase The Big Lebowski “Say what you want about cultural Marxism, it least it an ethos”
Many years ago while researching my mothers family came across a recount of how her gggg-grandfather and his brothers all walked onto the village green in their NY town and openly signed the oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress in 1775. Took real balls. All served as militia officers in the war with many of their sons serving in the Continental Line. Do we have the same stuff?
The contempt for deplorables amongst the Baizuo comes from an identity crisis. These people have no real sense of who they are and where they came from. The Strzoks grew up in a white refugee camp (ie a suburb). They lived lives where everything was transitory. They gained their cultural knowledge from TV. They left for university in some distant place, shattering the few bonds they had, and were dutifully programmed. They then left university and found work in an office where nothing tangible is produced. They have few attachments to anything lasting.
Since they have no sense of identity beyond consumption and career, their status becomes their identity. And to signal their status, they support the right causes, click the right things, use the right words, buy the right products. Thier identity is wrapped up in corporate america, in institutions and consumerism. Perfect NPCs
But there is a problem..deplorables. Deplorables look like Baizuo. Deplorables are often low status. Therefore Baizuo can be mistaken for deplorables. This threatens the one thing that they still have..their status. And thus their very identity. So to ensure they are never mistaken for deplorables, they countersignal them very very hard.
The deplorables can be pitied, or viewed with condescension, but they can never be empathised with nor can their causes be defended..to do so would threaten the very identity of the white eloi.
I like the use of the word Baizuo. It’s succinct, and does the job.
It’s looking like Trump will turn out to be the American Gorbachev – a reformer who tried to save a doomed system, but found that his well-intentioned efforts were simply too little, too late.
The real blackpill out there isn’t “OMGTRUMPBETRAYEDUS!!11!!!!” or even that Trump can’t get anything done because of “The Swamp”, but that our late imperial government is so rusty, sclerotic, and dominated by inertia and entrenched interests that basically nobody can get anything done. Obama got nearly nothing done during eight years in office, either, and his voters didn’t really get any more of what they wanted out of him than we’re getting out of Trump. More than anything, it’s a sign of a creaky system living on borrowed time.
As an aside, this is why I always thought the personal hatred that the tricorner hat crowd had for Barack Obama was just kind of silly. He was just another Vorta that the Dominion out in the Gamma Quadrant in Washington sent to rule us as a figurehead. If you snapped his neck, they’d simply grow another one just like him in a vat, and you’d be back to the same old thing in no time at all. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Pres. Trump isn’t a Pinochet, as we hoped, but, a Gorbachev, as you said.
I realized that Obama was just a puppet. Blacks in particular love to be “fronts,” while some white guys do the work. See a lot of that in business. Michelle Obama made some 300K a year “working” at a do-nothing job with the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Michelle was Vice President for Community Affairs at UC Medical Center, a post which was abolished once she was elevated to First Lady.
One wonders which Soros puppet donated the annual 300K to fund Michelle’s “job”, while little Barrack was being groomed for “leadership”.
Obama got nearly nothing done during eight years in office, either
The harm of the Obama administration wasn’t so much what happened in law, it was what happened to the culture.
Democrats are the party of government. When one is elected President, it is literally his job to do nothing and let the actual government do its thing.
Republicans, of course, get this funny idea in their heads that they’re actually steering the ship, and are soon disabused of that notion. It just took Trump longer than most presidents to figure it out.
¿Por qué no los dos?
That means every election, the choice is between two actors hired by the same people, playing different carefully scripted roles. When they get to Washington, they are given a different script.
Power is like a violin. You hold it with your left hand, and play it with your right.
A friend compared the two parties to a two-headed snake.
Nice work, Z. Sure helps me rationalize why Trump essentially ended any chance of being re-elected yesterday with his whiny abandonment on building the wall. In fact, Trump is doing just the opposite of building walls. He’s tearing down existing walls of justice to let felons go free. Not what I voted for In the least. We’re fucked.
Conservatives have to get used to seeing themselves as what they are: a despised ethno-cultural minority, rather than the “Silent Majority” of the latter half of the 20th century. Non-whites the world over believe they are delivering “cosmic justice” for 500 years of imperialism. An attitude of humility on our part is unavoidable, we are not going to win a war even if the people were willing to fight.
Most people are conformist sheep by nature, which is not a bad thing as a society of nonconformists (as we are) would be unstable. This works against the ability of (white) conservatives to transmit their values, as the vast majority of upper-middle class people are marinated in a university and corporate culture that induces guilt and publicly shames anyone reckless enough to challenge it. What we need is our own “Hillel House”, long before we can dream of an Israel.
I’ve been arguing for that strategy for years. We need a home base. However, we have to start extremely small, or it’ll get killed in the crib. Or we could co-opt existing white ethnic clubs such as Irish or German-American societies. Right now, those places are just a meeting place for older guys who put on cultural festivals every once in a while. Maybe they could be used for organizing some defense of whites.
Either way, whites have to find a way to organize. It’s the only way forward.
If you think I am exaggerating, just read this:
https://twitter.com/rubyhamad/status/1074911037307011072
You should save that first sentence and plaster it far and wide. That and the iron law of oligarchy are crucial to understanding any politicial issue and how you must organize to affect change or evade the worst consequences therein.
Stop being a faggot, JZ.
What Trump fails to realize is that the Wall is more than a useful barrier, it is the prime symbol to half of America that the ship of state can be slowly turned toward reform away from disaster. No wall and the people will quit on electoral politics and simply wait for Caesar to come.. If there’s no wall, why bother trying to fix anything since the country has already and clearly been lost?
Top shelf column, by the way. You’re on a roll.
The defining feature of our modern elites is that a big part of who they are, their sense of identity, comes from not being us. The cultivated contempt from FBI functionaries like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page is part of the dress code of these people.
You can see this when some actor washes out: the humiliating lengths they’re ready to crawl to, in order to regain just a tiny morsel of Cloud life.
At a barbecue, a man told me that growing up in Tewksbury, NJ, his family was comfortable, but not wealthy. The kids at school from newly rich families taunted, “We’re rich, you’re not, what’s the matter with you?” He went on to say that the old money people were different: they wore old clothes, drove old trucks and would talk to him while standing in line at the supermarket checkout.
Compare corporate execs from the “Greatest Generation” who frequently had a sense of responsibility towards their employees and communities versus the Boomers who replaced them beginning in the 1980s.
I remember when Human Resources was called Personnel – we’re just resources to our supposed betters, to be used and discarded when no longer needed. It’s a mutual feeling now – employees no longer care about the company they work for. The job is just a paycheck, benefits and information on a resume.
One of the hardest thing for me to adjust to as an adult is I could get along better and be more comfortable around old money people than around the upper middle class. Coming from the underclass, I don’t do pretentiousness very well. Old money people seem to appreciate that and respect it. Upper middle class people tend to recoil in horror from people like me.
Interesting remark that upper middle class tend to recoil in horror from people to you. Among our parents’ generation, people bragged about rising from poverty. They were poor during the Depression, dad served in WWII and went to college afterwards thanks to the GI Bill, etc.
It’s popular to denigrate monarchy, but Prince Harry served in Afghanistan and Andrew in the Falklands. The old aristocratic elite started wars but fought in them as well. The last war where our upper class served in any number was WWII. My now-retired Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen, scion of an old colonial family, served in Vietnam.
Because for them, you were a painful reminder. The older class you mention understood that etiquette is for those who have no breeding, and fashion for those who have no taste. So they understood that making somebody else feel uncomfortable was a real breech, so they don’t do it. But those people have been shoved aside now, and this new “technocratic” and “managerial” class has replaced them. Combining that with universal suffrage produces the country we have today.
Very rarely do you see a business where employer and employee share goals. I doubt it could exist in a business of any moderate size, much less the large ones. And small businesses, where it does happen occasionally, are disappearing (except, perhaps, in the professions).
The law firm I work for has this going for it. As an example, our health insurance package changed a couple years ago to a higher deductable. So firmwide email comes out from our general partner saying “sorry the deductable went up by $1,000, in response we’re giving everyone a $1,000 raise.” Hierarchy is the natural state of human society, and upward loyalty coupled to downward loyalty is the definition of good.
really – I always felt it was more different. The new rich with there mcmansions and SUVs are only a generation removed from proledom – while the “old money” of places like Scarsdale or Darien are more insular in there tastes.
Worked for a firm that in the early days of my career was still run by a family fairly well known around your parts. The then patriarch still drove to work in a beat up station wagon from their “farm”. He and his wife were simply delightful people. Would talk to anyone at company event. After he retired but still kept an office down the hall from mine he’d invite you in to sit down and talk about “how the company was doing”.
America is still very meritocratic though. A boy from a lower to middle middle class family can claw his way to wealth or elite status by dint of hard work and some modicum of ability, as most of us here have, I assume. (White privilege is imaginary; other forms are not.) it’s a hard road, and nobody is standing there to bail us out if our aspirations crash and burn. This is also sadly true of minorities promoted beyond their abilities because of aa.
The elites by birth and connection are definitely real, like those described hilariously in the first part of tucker Carlson’s book, but they are small by percentage relative to the rest of us. Their power is out of size though.
Merit advancement is ending. Hence the first signs of trouble. There are vanishingly fee opportunities for white men of intelligence to align the stars they need to make it. Admissions for whites to good universities is down. Competition for career making first posts is obscene due to diversity hiring and global rackets for labor. The economy of thr US is also increasingly centralized. Small business is dying while the fortune 100 grow due to the latter’s ability to lobby.
The traditional ways a prole with wit cut his teeth snd made it are by in large closed or closing. Within a decade or two I suspect whites will not be eligible for class advancement outside of the odd savant or toady.
One of the main problems that we face now–and maybe the most important problem of all–is that there is no law. Not merely that the law is unequally applied, because when law is unequally applied, then in effect there is no law. And you’re right that we still have something of a meritocracy, but how long can that survive when there is no law?
It’s harder and harder for sure. STEM is not the land of milk and honey that people have been promoting. Part of it is that the H1Bs and other various programs are taking over but a lot of it is that the glut of STEM majors will bring an impetus to start cutting wages, slashing benefits, and making it easier for fresh out of school STEM grads to be interchangeable.
The new STEM grad class thinks that the answer lies in more certifications and more educations. Their first instinct is to get an MBA but every one of their peers is getting one. Same goes for a PMP. Just mass credentialism all in the hopes of getting the job/career that they thought still existed.
Also the AA you mentioned doesn’t make things easy. We got a mandate a couple years ago that every department had to make concrete moves towards having at least 30% of their staff be a woman or minority. Unsurprisingly, they are less competent than their white male counterparts. Most departments eventually just give them busy work to do while an overworked 70% has to pick up the slack.
Tucker is an interesting man and I have watched him from his early bow tie days. He seems genuine and seems to not like a lot of the fellow privileged. Maybe that is why he has taken to hunting and fishing, chewing tobacco and the like.
Even if the book was written by a snob, Charles Murray’s Coming Apart does describe well the classes of white society from decades ago and how they are severely stratified, never to know the other.
BTW Tucker does recommend Murray’s “Comming Apart” as essential reading.
The bow tie was extremely off-putting for me. Started warming to tucker when he dropped that pretension. BTW-Charles Murray’s bubble test: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2
is topical to zmans post.
Murray is an interesting character. Hard to call him a coward after all of the arrows that he’s taken over his career, but he sure does seem unwilling to follow the logic of his own research.
Every time his research would lead any thinking person to at least consider that multi-racial states might not be a good idea or that Western culture needs, you know, white people to survive or that immigration might not be such a great thing, he retreats into the safety of libertarianism.
Then there’s his bizarre hatred of Trump, though that may be as much because Murray’s Iowa-bred temperament than anything else.
Murray is useful because his research methods are meticulous. No one I’ve seen has done a refutation of “The Bell Curve” that was anything other than a polemic. Bell Curve and “Coming Apart” were useful intros for two of my kids (so far). And yes, he’s had the balls to keep going despite being hurled to the void. More than I can say for myself.
OT. I tend to lurk on the edges at Z Man. Today I browsed Unz, and in the comments, a person was positing comments that had to be purposefully whacky. When I looked at the poster, it was none other than “Tiny Duck”, a person who is referenced occasionally here.
Is that guy for real? Or a simple attention grabbing troll?
His comments where, to say the least, mind boggling.
I would assume it is satire.
You assume wrong.
Some people are just stupid.
And crazy.
It’s a bad combination
Especially if they can type.
Tiny Duck is a troll. Occasionally he will forget what race he is, the size of his penis, etc. He’s made the rounds on a number of various comment sections on various sites. I begrudgingly give respect to someone who has kept the troll going for so long.
As Z notes, there will always be an elite. The fundamental problem of politics is how to ensure that the elite care about the majority of the non-elite. Ethnonationalism is the best solution to this problem, although no solution is perfect.
Every society has an elite, it’s just a question of what kind of elite rules – warriors, wealthy landowners, merchants, etc. In a homogenous society, the elite will be of the same bloodstock as the great mass of ordinary people. Easier to develop a sense of obligation towards their fellow citizens and the country as a whole. Zman has aptly compared our elite to a foreign colonial masters. I would add that some of the British had a sense of noblesse oblige towards their colonial subjects and tried to improve their lives.
Every organization has an elite, even social clubs. I belong to a gun club and 5% of the club does 95% of the work: Sit on the Exective Committee, run shooting groups within the club, host special events, volunteer to help and simply attend club meetings. I’m one of the 5% We also hire people to do work that at one time was done by volunteers. The under-50 crowd doesn’t volunteer.
Yeah, I’ve felt for awhile now that a mid-sized nation-state is your best chance at reasonable government. Your elites need to see the people as members of their family. I mean, love them or hate them, family is family and you put their interests above others.
It also makes the immigration debate quite easy. “Is this person who wants to come into our country related by blood and culture?” No, well, they can’t come here.
That said, Europe was full of nation-states 75 years ago and look at them now. As you said, no solution is perfect.
“Yeah, I’ve felt for awhile now that a mid-sized nation-state is your best chance at reasonable government. […]”
Here’s what Montesquieu said about that:
” […] Republican form of government is possible only in a state of small size; monarchy suited the moderate-sized state while a big country or an empire must have despotic government. Real democracy is possible only ion small city-state. France of Montesquieu’s time was too large for a republic form of government, Monarchy would suit her best. Montesquieu declared monarchy, a worst form of government and he unlike Machiavelli discarded the doctrine of aggrandizement and expansion. […]”
https://www.scholarshipsads.com/montesquieus-views-on-forms-of-government/
Actually, people don’t like Tucker Carlson because he is a racist. The “deep state” agents you bemoan are committed to fighting against racism and white supremacy. The fact that you think that is a negative says a lot about you.
On a more humorous note: It seems that support for Trump and Trumpism correlates with with white dudes with small penises
Obvious troll is obvious. “Racism” and “white supremacy” do not have objective meanings. Why the hell should any of the rest of us accept your definitions of those terms?
There’s nothing wrong with being a racist, and ‘fighting racism’ is a code word for white genocide.
Feel free to shout those very same words as the .45 round from my 1911 flies towards your pretty face. It’s exactly what you’re asking for by mouthing such mindless drivel.
Apparently, the Left is fighting fire with fire…
they’re fighting Racism with even more Racism of their own.
The Left are some of the most Racist and
Classist people I’ve ever met.
It’s okay to be white. By the way, we hate your guts.
I want to think Zman is the next big thing, but if this is the quality of the trolling coming at him I fear he’s destined for mediocrity.
Please don’t let this get you down Z, me and your triple digit number of acolytes will still happily drink the Kool-Aid whenever you say the spaceship is in orbit.
^Jonah Goldberg or Bill Kristol? What’s your guess?
I’m thinkin’ Ben Shapiro. They’re giving him Savage’s radio broadcast come January 7.
Can you prove he’s a racist or a white supremacist? Or are we just saying words?
Racist, Schmacist. Who cares.
Racism is by an large a reflection of loyalty to your people.
To a multi-ethnic empire this is the ultimate sin as that kind of state devours all under it and demands loyalty only to itself
I just noticed this in an article I read this morning.
https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/diversity-and-demonization/
Almost no White Gentiles are referenced in the article. It’s all Jews, Blacks and Asians arguing over the fate of a university built by White men.
Members of the Coalition of the Fringes fighting among themselves.
Nope, your concept of who constitutes “the Coalition of the Fringes” is broken if you think it includes, say, Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas.
Are there any White Gentiles in particular that you are butthurt that Minowitz ignored?
Damn, Mister Z, that was a very well written and thought provoking post.
Do you think I could get college credit if I read your posts (and the links) on a daily basis?
Ha Ha, it is to laugh.
Rome may have succumbed to authoritarianism, but it also collapsed and the elite were sold into slavery.
I know you don’t, but I still feel tech will be the great equalizer. I’m not talking about Facebook or Google, I’m talking about the bump stock ban. Who do they think they’re kidding? A bump stock can be made without any trouble in 90% of the one garage door shops in dirt land. The equipment is cheap and getting cheaper. I designed a part for and oil rig recently, sent it to them electronically, and it popped out of their equipment on the rig (I’m simplifying, but it’s not too far off the truth). At some point they can make all the laws and regulations they want, they just won’t be able to enforce them.
The parts and modifications to turn any AR or AK into a select-fire weapon aren’t technically difficult to produce, either. The risk vs. reward just isn’t there. If that calculus ever changed….
The concentration on whether civilians can own machine guns is a bit retarded. Anybody who is in the know about infantry tactics and especially guerilla tactics – knows that access to full-auto is a “who gives a shit” .
The left has a paranoid woody for machine guns – and guns just because they’e black. The reality is that your civilian AR or AK is likely a better quality weapon than what the military issues to it’s troops – and many civilians are actually better shooters than their military counterparts. The thing that civilians lack is training in tactics and discipline.
This is why I have constantly told dumbass “conservatives” who are worried about losing the country they should concentrate on reinstituting some semblance of the old militia.
Unfortunately, while it’s both de facto and de jure legal to own firearms, it is definitely NOT de facto legal to organize a militia.
You can practice and train all you want by yourself or with a couple of friends, but the second that state or federal authorities catch any whiff of an actual, organized civil militia, you’ll be labeled a “hate group” and they’ll come down harder on you than Hillary Clinton on a singing witness.
The point here is that if you bring up the subject of how the military is organized in this country – and you mention that we USED TO have a militia – then something like 98 out of 100 so-called conservatives are going to start screaming about how the National Guard IS the militia.
Which is patently not true. Along with a whole host of other corruptions of the original forms of the Republic – the militia was morphed into the National Guard – and tweaked to serve the interests of the power structure.
The old militia was most definitively NOT useful for overseas adventures – and it was home grown. Which if you’re talking about social dynamics is a GOOD thing. I’ve read criticisms of the old militia structure – and they typically mention that they had devolved into “social clubs”.
Which sounds like a GOOD idea to me. Get all the local men into a club and talking to each other – rather than sitting in their basements playing video games and subjected to the whining of the womenfolk.
If you want to see a physical manifestation of how things used to be – take a trip up to Maine. There are a number of old regimental clubhouses – that are now museums. Here’s one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Maine_Regiment_Community_Center
This is where MEN would gather for comraderie. Comraderie amongst men is something that used to exist. A militia structure helped provide it. Now we can’t even have Boy Scouts without letting in gays and women.
Seriously – if people are completely unwilling to examine the structures of the past and how they worked – then all that’s going on here is a bunch of bitching and whining.
NOTHING is going to get solved. We can all keep singing white nationalist anthems – as we crawl towards the grave.
What we used to have is completely irrelevant. America is what it is: a former superpower in steep decline, filled with third-world “citizens” and transitioning to a third-world system of economics and law enforcement.
I don’t care how things used to be. What matters is what’s possible today.
Bullshit.
The past is relevant because it gives you an example of what worked. If what used to be worked because it was not filled with third world “citizens” – well then that is also a relevant piece of data from the past.
And if the past is totally irrelevant – then what the hell are we doing here in the first place? Shouldn’t we all just be giving up on this whole white privilege thing and embrace the semi-brown globohomo future – and accept our female overlords?
“Completely forget the lessons of the past” – is not something I’ve ever heard any sane TRUE conservative person say – EVER.
It is however something I CONSTANTLY hear out of the mouths of leftist types as they try to bury any and all objections to whatever fantasy land future they think they have in store for us.
My old granddad taught me that when you got lost you re-traced your footsteps back to the last place you were before you became lost. Was he wrong?
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin16.htm
@Lance_E & Calsdad:
Gentlemen —
Actually, there are two (2) levels of American militia — organized and unorganized. Check out Title 10 USC Sect 246. The militia is all males between 17 and 45 yrs etc, and all female National Guard members. National Guard and the few state Naval Militia are the organized militia. Those males not members of the National Guard are members of the unorganized militia. So we are already militia. It is out there, whether people know it or not.
Spent some decades in the organized militia. Found that few even high ranking officers or NCOs understood the history, tradition, regulatory and statutory underpinings. Nor did they understand their import. Certainly, the active duty Army I dealt with was entirely clueless about this.
It’s not even on the radar of most Americans, but there it is, nonetheless.
I understand the difference.
I believe many are missing the point here: the way the militia was organized prior to the institution of the National Guard – prevented it’s usage as a tool of the globalists to project power beyond the shores of the United States. The original militias also were comprised of members who kept their firearms WITH THEM – not down at the local National Guard armory.
Like a lot of the other pieces of the Republic that have been twisted and manipulated by the left to suit their own ends – most Americans still believe that the National Guard is the “same thing” as the now gone active militia.
It is not:
From Wiki:
————
Although originally state entities, the Constitutional “Militia of the Several States” were not entirely independent because they could be federalized. According to Article I, Section 8; Clause 15, the United States Congress is given the power to pass laws for “calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” Congress is also empowered to come up with the guidelines “for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress” (clause 16). The President of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the state militias “when called into the actual Service of the United States.” (Article II, Section 2).
The traditional state militias were redefined and recreated as the “organized militia”—the National Guard, via the Militia Act of 1903. They were now subject to an increasing amount of federal control, including having arms and accoutrements supplied by the central government, federal funding, and numerous closer ties to the Regular Army.
————–
The comments section here is chock full of people whining about the current way of things on the one hand – and utterly refusing to understand how we got here on the other.
They’re completely ignorant of the history of their own country – as evidenced by the fact they still think the National Guard is the same as the militia – and they still think that the problems began in 1965 with Johnson.
I used to shoot with a guy who had a bicycle shop. He built a homemade 9mm Sten in his repair shop. It was easy.
Years ago there were dozens steps between pencil on paper to an actual part or, more accurately, the tooling. Now, there is one step between the drawing and the part. You don’t even need a machinist with 30 years experience on the back end. What would once require a large well financed company now requires one guy with a decent machine. Expand this decentralization to medicine or education and you have a loss of central control.
Bump stocks are ridiculous gadgets made for people who’ve never held or used a fully automatic weapon. Fully automatic rate of fire is really only useful for massed fire to suppress targets from moving positions or raising their head for aimed fire. For most folks, fully automatic fire is useful for burning through mags of ammo and having fun doing it, but that is it.
That being said its a dangerous precedent to begin banning parts of weapons or firearm technologies. As Zman has pointed out before, the NRA has resisted Conservatism Inc because of their unwillingness to give in on anything and I applaud them for it.
LOL.
To the hard core gun rights crowd – the NRA gives in all the time.
The NRA has already caved on bump stocks but Gun Owners of America (GOA) is fighting it. GOA >NRA
The day of the rope approaches …
Pretty grim analysis. But systemic failure isn’t just limited to democracy, right?
Seems like it’s part of the human condition.
Probably. Systems decay. It’s probably because order requires input energy to maintain. In time, the return on that input either declines in real terms or in perceived terms. That’s a topic for another day.
There is much to be said about the ruling elite and their flaws, Z. But that is, sadly, only half of it. Let’s look at ourselves as middle class dirt people:
– our women are bipolar whores now, and roughly 50% of them are unfit mothers or wives if the divorce stats are to be believed.
– we soak our young boys in despair and ritalin and let feminists deride them and dress them up in girls clothing – we have 71 genders now
– like it or not, it’s true. We borrow money we havent got, to buy stuff we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like. Most of us can’t balance a cheque book or even want to
– we stand around as the over class exports our children’s future and go along – just as long as we are getting our cut.
– we are not disciplining or educating our children.
– we are importing masses of people that don’t want democratic gov’ts or freedom and despise us for ours
– if ritalin and antideprssants aren’t enough drugs to push at our kids – we are enabling and even encouraging them to dabble in recreational drugs
I look around and the ruling class is not doing anything to us that we aren’t doing to ourselves.
If by “we” you mean Boomers, than yes, your generation has done quite a bit to bring your particular flavor of degeneracy on the white nation.
However the reckoning is coming. I don’t know if it will be my generation or a few generations down the line, but the cleansing fire will come and it will be intense and righteous.
I read a book about 35 years ago whose subject matter was precisely this. Can’t remember the book’s exact title. Anyway, the two primary reasons for civilizational failure were growing complexity and falling IQ levels. The idea was that there was a winnowing phase when a civilization was being built which ended with the best and brightest in control. But after a while, the great civilization they build throws off such abundance that people of much lesser ability and mental power are allowed to procreate much faster than the elites, who actually begin to shrink in number. Once the stupid population reaches critical mass vs. the elite, the wheels begin to come off. I’m simplifying, but that sort of makes sense.
OWWW, MY BALLS!!!
That’s the basic plot of the movie “Idiocracy”.
Walmart-R-Us.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Elite birth rates arent as low as you imagine. Most families of the upper class have four or more children. To have less is to be seen as petty and not well rounded. Some of the sons of wealth go on to sqander and ruin, but on average they do not. The wealthy family at my synagogue has been large and wealthy on both sides of the Atlantic for four generations or more.
The real decline was a conscious decison to stem the birth rates of the middle class via encouraging two children. That in conjunction with welfare subsidized underclass births was enough to break the back of the healthy western nations.
The ruinous welfare policies of the sixties have all but destroyed us. Higher IQ people don’t see any advantage to having big families. Low IQ people see welfare as a preferred lifestyle…with fatherless children as an afterthought.
It’s more part of life – everything is finely balanced; change even one or two variables and what worked yesterday collapses tomorrow.
Democracy undergoes systemic failure faster than any other system, because it positively incentivizes factionalism and internal conflict.
Democracy in a multi-ethnic/multi-racial empire decays even faster, because all voting eventually occurs along tribal lines.
If history is any guide, multi-ethnic dictatorships survive longer than homogeneous democracies. Regardless, America is the worst of both worlds.
Explain Switzerland then.
The point here being that the problem is more complex than just saying “Derp! Dumbocracy!!”
Switzerland – does not invade other countries (removes a plaything from the elites)
Switzerland – has a military more akin to the structure that the American Republic had at it’s inception (armed citizens keep the politicians honest)
Switzerland – didn’t give women the vote until 1971. (kept the poz at bay for a number of decades farther along than most other “western” countries)
Switzerland is a decentralized state. Also, it’s ethnically homogenous.
Switzerland isn’t homogeneous—they have four official languages, different European ethnic groups in different areas. Being decentralized keeps the peace between the different peoples. We Amerikwans just see Huwyte since we’re Euromutts for the most part.
@Nathan,
Switzerland is homogeneous in more important ways than national groups (ethnicities) or language. I haven’t been there for several years but most Swiss are Caucasian and most Swiss, even if they are now post-Christian non-theists come from generations of Christians. They have those “worth of the individual” and “Protestant Ethic” values going for them.
Exactly my point.
Decentralized state. Run by MEN (at least until 1971) – and has survived for HUNDREDS of years in a relatively stable form.
They’ve also famously rejected refugees and immigrants over and over and over again.
Back in the Clintoon years they took a huge amount of shite for keeping the borders closed to WW2 refugees (Jews in particular). I remember reading some accounts of that where the Swiss defended the practice by explanation of having to protect their own citizens FIRST – and not become a refugee camp for a world gone mad.
My sense is that the Swiss have an ability to tell people to piss off with their crazy ideas – when they sense things are not in their own self interest. Which is something that is apparently conspicuously lacking among white males in much of the rest of the Western world.
Look – if this white nationalist thing is going to have any legs at all – then some examination MUST be made of where things have worked – and where they have not, and the details are important.
Just resorting to dumbed down arguments against democracy aren’t going to solve a goddam thing. They’re no better than the arguments that we should all become Muslims (to solve the female problem) – or find our own Adolph Hitler ( to solve the diversity problem) – that seem to be offered up by more than a few commenters here.
All you’re doing is making desperation arguments. That’s not a solution.
Getting really tired of hearing “Switzerland!” over and over again. They have a population of under 9 million and a land area of under 40,000 km². That’s two full orders of magnitude smaller than the United States, virtually no defense spending, and they *still* have collapsing fertility and IQ and now more than 25% foreign-born population.
Stop romanticizing the Swiss. They’ve just never been militarily powerful enough to project force, and are at a slightly earlier stage of cultural decline.
We’re not “militarily powerful enough” to prevent an ongoing invasion – or even protect our own borders.
Your point is what exactly?
Who could Switzerland successfully invade? Liechtenstein?
Umm – so , the ability to invade other countries is still something you guys are using as a dick measurement yardstick – even though THIS country is now being invaded – by all the diversity – which is largely coming from countries WE have invaded in the past?
Congratulations on completely missing the point.