Thank you , its good to see others think this important.It is common to find politicians who left university and went straight into politics as a job , by the time they are in their late twenties or thirties they are Minister for a department for example education then a few months later in a shuffle they become Minister for health then the following year minister for defence or foreign affairs , its very likely that they will have no expertise in any of these , what a shambles , you get this in industry too and elsewhere , i was a civil servant for forty years and recall when i first came across this nonsense , a woman i already knew who worked in another department for years suddenly appeared as manager of a particular area of importance and i was surprised to see her there , i said hello what are you doing here , she replied im the new manager , i said to her , but you dont know anything about this type of work , she said i know but im here to manage the people not the work , i said to her but how can you do that if you dont know what they do , she didnt reply to that she just looked at me blankly as if i was being troublesome , as time went on it became apparent that she did not manage anything , the area of work and people she was to supposed to manage just managed itself whilst she looked on and signed whatever came her way , two years later she was non the wiser but people respected her oblivious to her lack of knowledge , i think that is what happens in politics too its all bluff , people with power who might ge inclined to suggest a direction they wish to go in which staff will then do their best to interpret and put into practice but which can go horribly wrong because nobody checks if the instructions are actually correct .
I think what we have just seen with the ICE shootings in USA and the stupid immediate responses through the media by Noem and Trump and Bovino is a good example of what can go wrong when you have people along the chain of command / authority who do not check the facts they are fed by assistants , you see how they try to either backtrack or double down both of which are the wrong moves to make but they are so used to getting away with it they just do not see that they are digging themselves a deeper hole.
Re ICE protests - where is the input from the Fusion Centers in all this? They were designed to target / track nefarious types across private/local/state/federal databases. Either that was 25 years of wasted money or they are totally compromised. Ideally they should be able to provide discerned insight to the corner office on the opposition's command and control.
This lack of capacity of civil servants to properly research and inform elected governments of the realities of current affairs, reminded me of a YT video I watched just yesterday on the channel of political observer Brian Berletic (The New Atlas). His diagnosis, which he explained the logic of in his latest video to my absolute satisfaction, is that all the disagreements between the Trump admin and Europe over Greenland, putting NATO at risk, Ukraine peace negotiations and the like, are all for show and that generally European leaders are doing exactly what he wants them to do.
This essentially, is to allow America to continue global hegemony - or at least try to for the foreseeable future - but divide the required labour between itself and Europe, with the latter taking on the responsibility and cost of continuing the war in Ukraine and harassing Russia from the West by whatever other means. If that means 5% of GDP spent on defence and the end of then-unaffordable social programmes, then that is fine and in fact the latter would suit their ideology. Indeed, if it even meant European nations being fed directly into the fires of war like Ukraine has been, then that is a price worth paying to make that American policy successful. Berletic demonstrates that with minimal interpretation, it is all there in writing in publicly available documents produced by the US administration in the last 12 months.
The connection with this article is that there seems to be no-one in the top tier of government advisors who can work this out and explain it to European heads of government, unless they actually have tried and those heads find it too inconvenient to believe. Instead of pausing to look at what is really happening, governments in Europe, the UK and the EU leadership itself, are leading Europe at least to economic destruction and possibly physical destruction as well. Meanwhile the public in those countries are being gaslit on possibly the greatest scale in modern history.
We see the absence of political expertise in the EU and UK government regarding energy policy.
Trump is elected.
The USA declares war , on the world , a trade war , particularly on Russia , China and the EU which it sees as trade competitors.
It goes after Russia first , by inviting ukraine to allow usa to put nuclear missiles on the ukraine russia border just 400 miles from moscow it threatens russia which would if this went ahead be virtually surrounded by usa nato forces so russia tells ukraine dont do it or we will move in and stop you , ukraine ignores russia theyre emboldened by trump , russia moves in and stops ukraine this ties up a lot of russian time money energy lives , its an economic burden.
USA then destroys the pipeline bringing cheap gas from russia to the eu causing russia to lose a huge income which it quickly replaces by exporting more gas to china but nevertheless its another huge economic burden on russia.
Then USA goes after the EU ,the destruction of the nord gas pipeline causes huge disruption in the EU which can no longer meet its domestic and industrial energy needs it now has to import gas from around the world in huge amounts by ship nearly all of it from the usa at great cost this imposes a huge financial burden on the EU and on the UK.
USA then imposes tariffs on the EU and UK primarily because USA wants EU and UK to agree that USA should own greenland and beyond , in response the EU says it will stop importing USA gas , where it will get gas from it does not say , if its not from Russia and not from USA they will struggle to get adequate stocks watch out for power cuts and industrial shortages leading to business closures and layoffs.The threat to the energy supply is a huge financial burden on the EU and on UK.
The USA then announces it is withdrawing NATO spending , this causes a huge financial burden on EU and UK which they say will require a 5% increase in military spending.
USA then persuades the EU and UK that they will have to fight russia alone without usa help , the EU says it has to protect ukraine this or russia will attack the eu even though there is no evidence of this , the EU and UK commit billions to ukraine military which is a further huge financial burden on the EU and UK .
China will be next .
Do you see the pattern ? I do , how come the EU leaders do not see thry are being played , the USA is tying up resources and money in Russia and in EU to weaken them as world trade competitors of the USA , next will be China , the USA already have China partly surrounded with usa military bases in japan australia phillipines korea and china owns most of the usa dollars held outside usa which trump woyld love to make worthless overnight , if he does that it means those dollars in china will have been purchased at great cost but will become worthless bits of paper.
How will he do this ? Bitcoin trumpcoin whatever he replaces the dollar with , he wants to privatise money he wants to replace the usa dollar with something he owns and issues , i dont think he can its too big a deal but if he did it would erase the trillions of usa government debt overnight because the usa would not honour the usa dollars devalued to zero they would simply say thats business , the american way , and if by then the usa have seen off their world trade rivals and gained control of most of the worlds remaining oil there will be nothing anyone can do about it.
"how come the EU leaders do not see thry are being played , the USA is tying up resources and money in Russia and in EU to weaken them as world trade competitors of the USA "
The europeans see it as getting the Americans to fight their wars for them.
‘The trend ever since the 1980s has been of moving away from career professional administrators who understand politics and what can be done, towards the widespread recruitment of amateurs who happen to share their Principal’s views, or at least claim to do so in return for money. ...... The effectiveness of a state apparatus ultimately requires both good leaders and good support: under some circumstances the latter can make up for the former, but the former can never make up for the latter. .... The essential point, though, is that any functioning system requires both a high degree of trust between political leaders and their advisers, and a high degree of competence on the part of the latter....... So the process began in Britain, and spread to other countries, of the de-skilling of public life, of a return to an earlier model of courtiers and sycophants. Under Mr Blair there was an uncontrollable flood of Special Advisers, Communications Directors and Chiefs of Staff, all interested for the most part in their own careers, and few, ironically, with any “practical” skills at all..... The current state of things in Britain under Mr Starmer is enough to make anyone whoever worked in the old system want to weep... You can have a powerful and effective professional government machine, or you can have out-of-control politicians making up policy and addressing the world on the hoof...’
Just so. One of the key failures was Blair’s introduction of selective Cabinet Government and its spread to local government. Officers had traditionally prepared reports that were then put to committees after informal discussion with a range of politicians depending on what the issue was. The aim was to achieve as much consensus as possible within an accepted strategic framework. Suddenly, elected members were responsible and lay members cut out. Dissident voices were circumvented. Attempts at consensus were abandoned. The system fell to bits and was finally demolished by expenditure cuts.
In the Foreign Office there have been 10 ministers in the last 10 years or so. None have served more than slightly more than a year – some far less. Most understood nothing and were just there to tread water. The result was that ‘the state’ just got on and did things – and, in the case of Ukraine, simply followed the Russophobic hatred of Philip Hammond that set the UK on the course of supporting the US drive to ‘extend Russia’ and ultimately to war.
Those opposed called it the ‘deep state’ – spreading the myth that somehow ‘it’ had usurped the role of politicians covertly. It wasn’t this – it was political negligence. Unless you control MI6 and give it a proper steer, it does what its genes determine it does: revert to type.
Aurelius, when scholars refer to the deep state, they're referring to the money that owns their government, the monied interests that bribe every official worth bribing. Deep state does NOT refer to a bureaucracy that tries to keep gov running. And actual scholars ("experts") HAVE investigated the deep state, many actually. Have you never heard of Peter Dale Scott??
I think you're skipping some major substance by falsely equating "deep state" with bureaucracy and mocking people who are fed up with their gov being fully owned and directed by anonymous people and interests. Just sayin.
"Yet the same people who complain about the persistence of Deep States affect to be puzzled by the catastrophic decline in the capability of western political systems to do anything much, and the clown-like antics of its national leaders, of whom Trump is simply the most egregious example."
"Trump (since I cannot avoid mentioning him) is less a problem in himself than the outward manifestation of a government machine that no longer functions properly."
These two sentences stood out to me, at least in so far as describing the broken political system in the US.
I don't vote as I don't want to lend legitimacy to our broken political system. But I saw Trumps victory coming, and I encouraged it. Not because I support him or believe in him or his ideas, but because I thought it would wake up my fellow citizens to actually how dysfunctional our system is.
The guy is the biggest clown to ever be elected in our country. It's the equivalent of P. T. Barnum getting elected.
If this clown doesn't convince my fellow citizens of just how broken our system is, then we are doomed. Capital "D" doomed. Please don't assume that I endorse the other side with this statement.
Our system of government is beyond repair and needs to be scrapped and we need to start over. I don't know exactly what would be the new form of government that would be necessary, but I can say that it would include elements of socialism, modifying our economic system (controlled capitalism), and the complete discrediting of the extremist on both ends of the spectrum. When polled in a proper way the vast majority of citizens (say 70-80%) are able to compromise on the vast majority of issues facing us. To hell with the remaining 20-30% that are on both extreme ends of any given topic.
Sadly, I question if that is possible, as we are inundated with so much bullshit, all day, every day, that most people aren't capable of thinking clearly on any given topic at any given time.
1. "But most politicians today are not like that, and many have never been. They are on a political career path, leading onward and upward, and with a good chance at the end of leaving politics to head an international organisation or to make a great deal of money in the private sector. This requires ambition, a good sense of timing, the willingness to change allies and betray friends, and the capacity to change opinions and beliefs as others change socks, and to lie when necessary. Among other things. But it also requires a dedication to a style of life in which politics and personal ambition dominate to the exclusion of almost everything else, and this is something that is often less well appreciated. "
Did not Sam Kriss teach us that, contrary to popular wisdom, Kamala Harris is in fact very good at politics. The problem is, that politics is the only thing she is good at.
Or, for that matter: "The one thing missing from this story, though, is the electorate. Kamala Harris isn’t good with electorates. She’s a machine politician. She wants power, but not for any particular reason. It’s just that life is a game, and the point is to reach the highest level. Sidle your way into a series of darker and smokier rooms."
Axtually, the entire linked essay is worth digesting.
2. "[Yes, Minister] originated the trope of the Machiavellian scheming officials manipulating gormless Ministers, which, even at the time was inaccurate, since the one thing officials do appreciate is a leadership that knows what it wants."
So how does one explain the efforts of the State Department and CIA to stymie Trump's first term foreign policy agenda? For that matter, the bureaucrats seemed pretty happy with Biden, who was a drooling imbecile, and Blinken & Co. went to great lengths to cover up their boss's increasingly obvious senility.
For that matter public choice theory is way older than "Yes, Minister".
"There are two factions in American politics, and they’re not evenly matched. As everyone knows, one of them contains all the smart people, the academics, the professionals, the people who’ve read the studies, learned the science, educated themselves, who eat well and own nice things made of wood, the good little boys and girls who know what’s best for everyone. It’s not polite to say this about the other side, but everyone is secretly aware that they are—let’s be honest here—morons. Actual imbeciles, breathing through the spittle in their mouths. Glassy-eyed religious maniacs. Frothing adult virgins with their heads full of Y-DNA charts and built-up cum. Uncomfortably globular men who have unknowingly outsourced their entire sense of reality to Kenyan scammers generating engagement-bait with ChatGPT. If you talk to these people for even a few minutes, it becomes clear there’s something very seriously wrong with them. Instead of articulate speech, they produce a constant stream of meaningless drivel, mashed-up waste syllables, usually referring to some podcaster, political nobody, or minor advertising campaign that no one whose life is worth living has ever heard of. A good chunk of them have reverted to a magical, Stone Age account of the universe, in which everything that happens, including ordinary weather events, is part of a Plan set in motion by Them, to distract you."
This is the opening statement at the link above. If you can get on board with this then you are likely one of the PMC that Aurelian writes about so often as the main source of governments problems.
THIS is why Trump won twice. You can't dismiss half the electorate as drooling morons who have no valid opinions and expect to win elections.
In my opinion anyone who admires statements such as the above from Mr. Kriss, is a moron and also one who bears a great deal of responsibility for our current situation.
Am I wrong to say that the manner in which the CPC vets people as they climb the political ladder is a shadow of the Confucian approach. It does not ensure wisdom but it does appear to have provided a far higher degree of competence than is evident among western governments and in the US in particular.
Reading your essay has become Wednesday mornings' pleasure. I appreciated particularly this essay for it provides a compelling insight into the workings of a key cog of the machine of governments past - and the non-working of current ones.
Granted, if there's a hope for restoring a semblance of functioning in our public institutions, that lies in studying history and the past. Yet (and you will excuse me if I borrow from one current politician who seems to have recently achieved the incredible feat of appearing actually serious), nostalgy is not a strategy, and we're left wondering what could be the actual path to bring back a set of barely working institutions or, in alternative, how to get rid of such childish desire altogether. As a famous London band asked at the time: should we stay or should we go?
This was the best piece from Aurelien in all the time I have been reading his articles. A perfect summation of the mess that government is in and how we got there. On the other hand, it's enough to make me weep.
I think you overlook the extent to which the catastrophic failure of reactionary conservative political programs — Empire, the Gold Standard, laissez faire, racist ideologies, free trade and then trade war protectionism — in the Great Depression and the two World Wars cleared the way for a liberal consensus that could organize and coordinate an effective technocracy. Neoliberalism followed and has now gone thoroughly rancid, the decaying corpse now being consumed from within by the parasitic secret, surveillance state.
With a thinning ideological centrist conviction about what is the public good and state interest, political leadership would now have to undertake extensive directive programs of training the bureaucratic organizations of state, to develop a new consensus, before previous levels of competence could be even approached. Militaries, when healthy, do this: an army has many staff colonels writing manuals of training in tactics, operations and logistics. In the civil administration, without strong direction from the top or some other pulse from academia, this is likely to deteriorate into ineffective make-work or worse.
That leadership is composed of small men and children is both a cause and a consequence of the failure to train up the bureaucratic organizations to confront changed reality.
Above a lot about the incompetence of the modern state but it's bureaucracies are in many ways formidable. Nel Bonilla, some may have seen her on Neutralty Studies, wrote a short essay today on that emerging administrative state:
The latter part seems awfully meandering and confused by your standards. Certainly the urge to implement 'common sense' authoritarian rule by the everyman inside the offices of state, with each berk having their own notion of everyman, has always been an undercurrent in every society, with the possible exception of some animist religious societies. Describing its ascension in the cold war as original sin is misleading the reader.
The sudden dominance it acquired came from somewhere, either from new power or the decline of opposing power. What did it? Film? Technology in general? A nihilist renaissance? Or was it merely the inevitable tradeoff of the restrictions on war agreed on in 1944?
Thank you , its good to see others think this important.It is common to find politicians who left university and went straight into politics as a job , by the time they are in their late twenties or thirties they are Minister for a department for example education then a few months later in a shuffle they become Minister for health then the following year minister for defence or foreign affairs , its very likely that they will have no expertise in any of these , what a shambles , you get this in industry too and elsewhere , i was a civil servant for forty years and recall when i first came across this nonsense , a woman i already knew who worked in another department for years suddenly appeared as manager of a particular area of importance and i was surprised to see her there , i said hello what are you doing here , she replied im the new manager , i said to her , but you dont know anything about this type of work , she said i know but im here to manage the people not the work , i said to her but how can you do that if you dont know what they do , she didnt reply to that she just looked at me blankly as if i was being troublesome , as time went on it became apparent that she did not manage anything , the area of work and people she was to supposed to manage just managed itself whilst she looked on and signed whatever came her way , two years later she was non the wiser but people respected her oblivious to her lack of knowledge , i think that is what happens in politics too its all bluff , people with power who might ge inclined to suggest a direction they wish to go in which staff will then do their best to interpret and put into practice but which can go horribly wrong because nobody checks if the instructions are actually correct .
I think what we have just seen with the ICE shootings in USA and the stupid immediate responses through the media by Noem and Trump and Bovino is a good example of what can go wrong when you have people along the chain of command / authority who do not check the facts they are fed by assistants , you see how they try to either backtrack or double down both of which are the wrong moves to make but they are so used to getting away with it they just do not see that they are digging themselves a deeper hole.
Re ICE protests - where is the input from the Fusion Centers in all this? They were designed to target / track nefarious types across private/local/state/federal databases. Either that was 25 years of wasted money or they are totally compromised. Ideally they should be able to provide discerned insight to the corner office on the opposition's command and control.
This lack of capacity of civil servants to properly research and inform elected governments of the realities of current affairs, reminded me of a YT video I watched just yesterday on the channel of political observer Brian Berletic (The New Atlas). His diagnosis, which he explained the logic of in his latest video to my absolute satisfaction, is that all the disagreements between the Trump admin and Europe over Greenland, putting NATO at risk, Ukraine peace negotiations and the like, are all for show and that generally European leaders are doing exactly what he wants them to do.
This essentially, is to allow America to continue global hegemony - or at least try to for the foreseeable future - but divide the required labour between itself and Europe, with the latter taking on the responsibility and cost of continuing the war in Ukraine and harassing Russia from the West by whatever other means. If that means 5% of GDP spent on defence and the end of then-unaffordable social programmes, then that is fine and in fact the latter would suit their ideology. Indeed, if it even meant European nations being fed directly into the fires of war like Ukraine has been, then that is a price worth paying to make that American policy successful. Berletic demonstrates that with minimal interpretation, it is all there in writing in publicly available documents produced by the US administration in the last 12 months.
The connection with this article is that there seems to be no-one in the top tier of government advisors who can work this out and explain it to European heads of government, unless they actually have tried and those heads find it too inconvenient to believe. Instead of pausing to look at what is really happening, governments in Europe, the UK and the EU leadership itself, are leading Europe at least to economic destruction and possibly physical destruction as well. Meanwhile the public in those countries are being gaslit on possibly the greatest scale in modern history.
We see the absence of political expertise in the EU and UK government regarding energy policy.
Trump is elected.
The USA declares war , on the world , a trade war , particularly on Russia , China and the EU which it sees as trade competitors.
It goes after Russia first , by inviting ukraine to allow usa to put nuclear missiles on the ukraine russia border just 400 miles from moscow it threatens russia which would if this went ahead be virtually surrounded by usa nato forces so russia tells ukraine dont do it or we will move in and stop you , ukraine ignores russia theyre emboldened by trump , russia moves in and stops ukraine this ties up a lot of russian time money energy lives , its an economic burden.
USA then destroys the pipeline bringing cheap gas from russia to the eu causing russia to lose a huge income which it quickly replaces by exporting more gas to china but nevertheless its another huge economic burden on russia.
Then USA goes after the EU ,the destruction of the nord gas pipeline causes huge disruption in the EU which can no longer meet its domestic and industrial energy needs it now has to import gas from around the world in huge amounts by ship nearly all of it from the usa at great cost this imposes a huge financial burden on the EU and on the UK.
USA then imposes tariffs on the EU and UK primarily because USA wants EU and UK to agree that USA should own greenland and beyond , in response the EU says it will stop importing USA gas , where it will get gas from it does not say , if its not from Russia and not from USA they will struggle to get adequate stocks watch out for power cuts and industrial shortages leading to business closures and layoffs.The threat to the energy supply is a huge financial burden on the EU and on UK.
The USA then announces it is withdrawing NATO spending , this causes a huge financial burden on EU and UK which they say will require a 5% increase in military spending.
USA then persuades the EU and UK that they will have to fight russia alone without usa help , the EU says it has to protect ukraine this or russia will attack the eu even though there is no evidence of this , the EU and UK commit billions to ukraine military which is a further huge financial burden on the EU and UK .
China will be next .
Do you see the pattern ? I do , how come the EU leaders do not see thry are being played , the USA is tying up resources and money in Russia and in EU to weaken them as world trade competitors of the USA , next will be China , the USA already have China partly surrounded with usa military bases in japan australia phillipines korea and china owns most of the usa dollars held outside usa which trump woyld love to make worthless overnight , if he does that it means those dollars in china will have been purchased at great cost but will become worthless bits of paper.
How will he do this ? Bitcoin trumpcoin whatever he replaces the dollar with , he wants to privatise money he wants to replace the usa dollar with something he owns and issues , i dont think he can its too big a deal but if he did it would erase the trillions of usa government debt overnight because the usa would not honour the usa dollars devalued to zero they would simply say thats business , the american way , and if by then the usa have seen off their world trade rivals and gained control of most of the worlds remaining oil there will be nothing anyone can do about it.
"how come the EU leaders do not see thry are being played , the USA is tying up resources and money in Russia and in EU to weaken them as world trade competitors of the USA "
The europeans see it as getting the Americans to fight their wars for them.
That’s one theory. Another is that they’re Quislings on the US payroll … 🤨
I have seen no evidence of such.
Rather, the europeans sure do squeal like little girls at the thought of the Americans abandoning them.
As you say...
‘The trend ever since the 1980s has been of moving away from career professional administrators who understand politics and what can be done, towards the widespread recruitment of amateurs who happen to share their Principal’s views, or at least claim to do so in return for money. ...... The effectiveness of a state apparatus ultimately requires both good leaders and good support: under some circumstances the latter can make up for the former, but the former can never make up for the latter. .... The essential point, though, is that any functioning system requires both a high degree of trust between political leaders and their advisers, and a high degree of competence on the part of the latter....... So the process began in Britain, and spread to other countries, of the de-skilling of public life, of a return to an earlier model of courtiers and sycophants. Under Mr Blair there was an uncontrollable flood of Special Advisers, Communications Directors and Chiefs of Staff, all interested for the most part in their own careers, and few, ironically, with any “practical” skills at all..... The current state of things in Britain under Mr Starmer is enough to make anyone whoever worked in the old system want to weep... You can have a powerful and effective professional government machine, or you can have out-of-control politicians making up policy and addressing the world on the hoof...’
Just so. One of the key failures was Blair’s introduction of selective Cabinet Government and its spread to local government. Officers had traditionally prepared reports that were then put to committees after informal discussion with a range of politicians depending on what the issue was. The aim was to achieve as much consensus as possible within an accepted strategic framework. Suddenly, elected members were responsible and lay members cut out. Dissident voices were circumvented. Attempts at consensus were abandoned. The system fell to bits and was finally demolished by expenditure cuts.
In the Foreign Office there have been 10 ministers in the last 10 years or so. None have served more than slightly more than a year – some far less. Most understood nothing and were just there to tread water. The result was that ‘the state’ just got on and did things – and, in the case of Ukraine, simply followed the Russophobic hatred of Philip Hammond that set the UK on the course of supporting the US drive to ‘extend Russia’ and ultimately to war.
Those opposed called it the ‘deep state’ – spreading the myth that somehow ‘it’ had usurped the role of politicians covertly. It wasn’t this – it was political negligence. Unless you control MI6 and give it a proper steer, it does what its genes determine it does: revert to type.
One minor point - "Yes, Minister" was early 80s, not late 70s. Mrs. Thatcher was already Prime Minister when it was first broadcast.
And Mrs Thatcher loved it...
Aurelius, when scholars refer to the deep state, they're referring to the money that owns their government, the monied interests that bribe every official worth bribing. Deep state does NOT refer to a bureaucracy that tries to keep gov running. And actual scholars ("experts") HAVE investigated the deep state, many actually. Have you never heard of Peter Dale Scott??
I think you're skipping some major substance by falsely equating "deep state" with bureaucracy and mocking people who are fed up with their gov being fully owned and directed by anonymous people and interests. Just sayin.
"Yet the same people who complain about the persistence of Deep States affect to be puzzled by the catastrophic decline in the capability of western political systems to do anything much, and the clown-like antics of its national leaders, of whom Trump is simply the most egregious example."
"Trump (since I cannot avoid mentioning him) is less a problem in himself than the outward manifestation of a government machine that no longer functions properly."
These two sentences stood out to me, at least in so far as describing the broken political system in the US.
I don't vote as I don't want to lend legitimacy to our broken political system. But I saw Trumps victory coming, and I encouraged it. Not because I support him or believe in him or his ideas, but because I thought it would wake up my fellow citizens to actually how dysfunctional our system is.
The guy is the biggest clown to ever be elected in our country. It's the equivalent of P. T. Barnum getting elected.
If this clown doesn't convince my fellow citizens of just how broken our system is, then we are doomed. Capital "D" doomed. Please don't assume that I endorse the other side with this statement.
Our system of government is beyond repair and needs to be scrapped and we need to start over. I don't know exactly what would be the new form of government that would be necessary, but I can say that it would include elements of socialism, modifying our economic system (controlled capitalism), and the complete discrediting of the extremist on both ends of the spectrum. When polled in a proper way the vast majority of citizens (say 70-80%) are able to compromise on the vast majority of issues facing us. To hell with the remaining 20-30% that are on both extreme ends of any given topic.
Sadly, I question if that is possible, as we are inundated with so much bullshit, all day, every day, that most people aren't capable of thinking clearly on any given topic at any given time.
Side note. How do you bold text here?
EU spending more on war , Russia spending more on war
USA spending less on NATO USA spending less on Ukraine
These things reduce Russia,s competetiveness
These things reduce the EU,s competetiveness
The USA can now concentrate on China
1. "But most politicians today are not like that, and many have never been. They are on a political career path, leading onward and upward, and with a good chance at the end of leaving politics to head an international organisation or to make a great deal of money in the private sector. This requires ambition, a good sense of timing, the willingness to change allies and betray friends, and the capacity to change opinions and beliefs as others change socks, and to lie when necessary. Among other things. But it also requires a dedication to a style of life in which politics and personal ambition dominate to the exclusion of almost everything else, and this is something that is often less well appreciated. "
Did not Sam Kriss teach us that, contrary to popular wisdom, Kamala Harris is in fact very good at politics. The problem is, that politics is the only thing she is good at.
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/i-told-you-so
Or, for that matter: "The one thing missing from this story, though, is the electorate. Kamala Harris isn’t good with electorates. She’s a machine politician. She wants power, but not for any particular reason. It’s just that life is a game, and the point is to reach the highest level. Sidle your way into a series of darker and smokier rooms."
Axtually, the entire linked essay is worth digesting.
2. "[Yes, Minister] originated the trope of the Machiavellian scheming officials manipulating gormless Ministers, which, even at the time was inaccurate, since the one thing officials do appreciate is a leadership that knows what it wants."
So how does one explain the efforts of the State Department and CIA to stymie Trump's first term foreign policy agenda? For that matter, the bureaucrats seemed pretty happy with Biden, who was a drooling imbecile, and Blinken & Co. went to great lengths to cover up their boss's increasingly obvious senility.
For that matter public choice theory is way older than "Yes, Minister".
That link is complete drivel. Thanks, I guess? Now I know that if someone brings up this mans name they are instantly to be disregarded as a moron.
Well, that settles something.
Nothing in the article to dislike very much, unless you're on the far side of Chinggis Khan.
"There are two factions in American politics, and they’re not evenly matched. As everyone knows, one of them contains all the smart people, the academics, the professionals, the people who’ve read the studies, learned the science, educated themselves, who eat well and own nice things made of wood, the good little boys and girls who know what’s best for everyone. It’s not polite to say this about the other side, but everyone is secretly aware that they are—let’s be honest here—morons. Actual imbeciles, breathing through the spittle in their mouths. Glassy-eyed religious maniacs. Frothing adult virgins with their heads full of Y-DNA charts and built-up cum. Uncomfortably globular men who have unknowingly outsourced their entire sense of reality to Kenyan scammers generating engagement-bait with ChatGPT. If you talk to these people for even a few minutes, it becomes clear there’s something very seriously wrong with them. Instead of articulate speech, they produce a constant stream of meaningless drivel, mashed-up waste syllables, usually referring to some podcaster, political nobody, or minor advertising campaign that no one whose life is worth living has ever heard of. A good chunk of them have reverted to a magical, Stone Age account of the universe, in which everything that happens, including ordinary weather events, is part of a Plan set in motion by Them, to distract you."
This is the opening statement at the link above. If you can get on board with this then you are likely one of the PMC that Aurelian writes about so often as the main source of governments problems.
THIS is why Trump won twice. You can't dismiss half the electorate as drooling morons who have no valid opinions and expect to win elections.
In my opinion anyone who admires statements such as the above from Mr. Kriss, is a moron and also one who bears a great deal of responsibility for our current situation.
The Confucian approach to selecting civil servants looks better every day.
Am I wrong to say that the manner in which the CPC vets people as they climb the political ladder is a shadow of the Confucian approach. It does not ensure wisdom but it does appear to have provided a far higher degree of competence than is evident among western governments and in the US in particular.
I would call the Confucian approach itself wisdom-centered and thus one that ensures outcomes less foolish than ours.
Reading your essay has become Wednesday mornings' pleasure. I appreciated particularly this essay for it provides a compelling insight into the workings of a key cog of the machine of governments past - and the non-working of current ones.
Granted, if there's a hope for restoring a semblance of functioning in our public institutions, that lies in studying history and the past. Yet (and you will excuse me if I borrow from one current politician who seems to have recently achieved the incredible feat of appearing actually serious), nostalgy is not a strategy, and we're left wondering what could be the actual path to bring back a set of barely working institutions or, in alternative, how to get rid of such childish desire altogether. As a famous London band asked at the time: should we stay or should we go?
This was the best piece from Aurelien in all the time I have been reading his articles. A perfect summation of the mess that government is in and how we got there. On the other hand, it's enough to make me weep.
I think you overlook the extent to which the catastrophic failure of reactionary conservative political programs — Empire, the Gold Standard, laissez faire, racist ideologies, free trade and then trade war protectionism — in the Great Depression and the two World Wars cleared the way for a liberal consensus that could organize and coordinate an effective technocracy. Neoliberalism followed and has now gone thoroughly rancid, the decaying corpse now being consumed from within by the parasitic secret, surveillance state.
With a thinning ideological centrist conviction about what is the public good and state interest, political leadership would now have to undertake extensive directive programs of training the bureaucratic organizations of state, to develop a new consensus, before previous levels of competence could be even approached. Militaries, when healthy, do this: an army has many staff colonels writing manuals of training in tactics, operations and logistics. In the civil administration, without strong direction from the top or some other pulse from academia, this is likely to deteriorate into ineffective make-work or worse.
That leadership is composed of small men and children is both a cause and a consequence of the failure to train up the bureaucratic organizations to confront changed reality.
Once the USSR fell, there no long was a need to offer the peons a better deal, lest they turn communist.
Instead, the liberal consensus got a taste of The Goodies and decided that they liked it.
Above a lot about the incompetence of the modern state but it's bureaucracies are in many ways formidable. Nel Bonilla, some may have seen her on Neutralty Studies, wrote a short essay today on that emerging administrative state:
Administrative Warfare & The End of the Political
https://landmarksmag.substack.com/p/administrative-warfare-and-the-end
The latter part seems awfully meandering and confused by your standards. Certainly the urge to implement 'common sense' authoritarian rule by the everyman inside the offices of state, with each berk having their own notion of everyman, has always been an undercurrent in every society, with the possible exception of some animist religious societies. Describing its ascension in the cold war as original sin is misleading the reader.
The sudden dominance it acquired came from somewhere, either from new power or the decline of opposing power. What did it? Film? Technology in general? A nihilist renaissance? Or was it merely the inevitable tradeoff of the restrictions on war agreed on in 1944?
As usual, here an italian translation:
"Gestire I Potenti.
Non è più facile come una volta."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2026/01/gestire-i-potenti-non-e-piu-facile-come.html