I actually agree with most of your argument with respect to the United States, Great Britain and Western Europe. But I want to call attention to the contrast between the discourse of Western elites and those who speak on behalf of Russia and China. One thing I'm continually struck by is how Russian and Chinese leaders and diplomats convey information and opinion as if speaking to educated and informed adults. They refer to history, economics, policy, culture in ways that present the world as a complex place, and with the sense that much thought has been given to formulating their views. Western leaders speak in slogans and soundbites as if they are talking to children, and paint a oversimplified, cartoonish vision of the world that is essentially binary - i.e., black/white, good/evil, for us / against us. And I think this is largely because the Western elites are largely hollow men and women, the products of an education system geared to producing obedient widgets that can be slotted into the great machine that supports Western hegemony. Anyone who has heard Lavrov and Blinken speak will immediately know what I'm talking about here. The former is a man of substance and principles; the latter is a man devoid of substance and principles. There's so much more that could be said here, but I think we would do well to learn some lessons from Russia and China as we watch Western hegemony in its death throes.
"Instead of that, these classes communicate with their electorates from a position of unreflective superiority, like parents to children or teachers to students"
...parents or masters that behave this way will also see the continuance of their lineage quickly die. It is not appropriate to be "superior" in this way to children and apprentices either.
This is reflective of the death of culture too, at least from an Eastern point of view. Premodern "spiritual authority" was never as institutionally based in the East as it was in the West. It was something that was expected to be palpable and personally investigable.
Rejection of the cultural void is, I think, the key to future development. That's best accomplished through the construction of alternative communities that are capable of tacitly operating within The System while rejecting its principles and presuppositions.
Yes! And can show local and embodied superior outcomes (eg. physical health, lack of anxiety, contented family life, wise but uncompromised courage) to all that come into extended contact. Proselytism of any form absent this kind of proof of Principle only deepens narrative/ideology. Real politics can return this way.
"Western leaders speak in slogans and soundbites as if they are talking to children, and paint a oversimplified, cartoonish vision of the world that is essentially binary - i.e., black/white, good/evil, for us / against us."
What do you expect from the "leaders" of polities for which Marvel movies are the highest grossing entertainment properties?
I believe you make a truly insightful comment when you say: "...today’s political class and its parasites often have a very narrow and selective education, limited capacity and almost no practical experience of doing anything useful." This "suits" versus open collar dichotomy goes straight to the heart of comments like we hear so many of the Inner Party make - the "deplorable" comments. Such language actually resonates with other Inner Party and to some extent Outer Party members, as they simply cannot imagine someone with dirt on their hands having any coherence with the ever changing informal "Party Line" (which, let us note, is almost in and of itself a culture in the true sense of the word). This disdain for not just the working class, but almost anyone involved in doing anything physical (as contrasted to "developing content" or writing "apps" - digital production) seems to be made up in part by a desire to minimize labor costs (from the power behind the throne mega corp side of the Inner Party, which has championed offshoring of most North American businesses based on international labor arbitrage over the last 40 some years) while also dismissing even formerly white collar college grads in engineering (coming, as they most frequently do, not from elite Ivy League schools, but those land grant universities in 'fly over country'). The fact that a family corn and soy bean farmer in the Midwest is probably more aware of current and future foreign exchange rates, (because he hedges against FX rate changes, since his primary market is abroad in Asia but his production costs are mostly domestic), the realities of those futures markets, LNG production trends (i.e.: fracking) impacts on the wholesale costs of nitrogen based fertilizers, the international political realities of declining potash production globally, GPS accuracy issues (as they affect the automated fertilizer programming on the equipment preparing his fields each season), and John Deere corporation's "no individual repair" embedded digital kill switch policies. anyway, that whole basket of 'deplorable' topics, than most members of Congress is irrelevant to the Inner Party. That family farmer is a "producer" and as such, is to be treated as a tax cow, to be milked as much as possible, denigrated publicly, and otherwise dismissed and ignored. Part of that is long term Inner Party political bias, but the biggest part of that is simply the lack of any "practical experience of doing anything useful" as you so brilliantly put it. After substantial political donations actually result in a face to face opportunity to meet with Senator Foghorn, the discussion goes something like this: "You grow corn and beans? Fascinating. Family farming, hunh? Heart of American, my man. 100% with you. But look, I'm a bit busy right now, Mr. McDonald. Talk to my staffers. I think young Janet (with the purple hair, ear plugs and nose ring) over there can take down your concerns..." Janet has never gotten mud on 'their' shoes. Ever. Janet rides public transportation and is saving up for 'their' first Tesla. Janet has never held a wrench, would not know what a grease gun was if you laid one on 'their' desk. But 'they/them' are pretty good at influencing "influencers", which is how 'they/them' got that staffer job. That discussion goes nowhere, and never will, because Janet understands absolutely nothing that Farmer McDonald is talking about. McDonald might as well be speaking Chinese (which he can. a little, because his biggest customers are in China, so he studied it a bit in college, and at least has social graces in the language). And (we can only but hope) Farmer McDonald will never again donate to an Inner Party campaign. Hopefully, he enjoys his visit to the Smithsonian Museum's exhibits before he departs D.C. to head back to the farm, because that is about as much benefit as he'll get out of that visit to the Capital. And the Inner Party and Outer Party drones wonder why a former moderate Democrat farmer and donor is now voting for the other side. Well, yeah. (Note that Janet and Senator Foghorn may be American in this example, but the European farming community feels just about the exact same way when the Eurocrats get to working their disconnected from reality policy magic across the pond. The lack of understanding on the part of the Globish Party commissars is basically the same - just different languages is all.)
The best move is for Farmer McDonald to build a strong community capable of rejecting The Party's overreach. It's amazing what you can get away with when the county commissioners, sheriff, and city council are on your side. We need to work towards building smaller communities with new identities because there's no central national identity any more. Exiting the system isn't possible, but insulating yourselves from it is.
1. Romanticist fantasies and Les Miz aside, revolutions do not happen when the populace seizes power from the elites. As long as the elites remain internally united, they will retain power and ruthlessly squelch any attempt to take it from them. Not only do they have control over pressure points, they will do *whatever* *it* *takes* to retain power, otherwise they would not have gotten to where they are, nor would they keep their perches for long.
Rather, revolutions happen when the elites are divided amongst themselves, whether as a result of foreign threats or an inability to agree on how to divvy up the goodies. Elite factions then start casting about for allies.
2. The elites of old saw themselves as patrons of arts, culture, all that. Today's elites consider themselves to be morally superior, smarter, and just all around Better People.
Tis true that "revolutions happen when the elites are divided amongst themselves". One need only to look at the familial & education credentials of many revolutionary leaders, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Lenin, Robespierre, Oliver Cromwell Fidel Castro & Che Guevara, to prove it. I think, only Stalin came from poverty. Also, Hitler was backed by some wealthy German elites who though they could use and control him - whoops. Elites will use any person or group to further their aims. Currently in the US left leaning elites use Woke DEI BS and Trump is using the religious, same as Reagan did (he reneged on every promise he made to them).
They are all parasitic scum. I would love to see the guillotines dusted off, but I agree that people are too divided. Neo liberal strategy has been a success. Church may be the only place where like minded people gather and their numbers have been nose diving for decades. We are all "Bowling Alone". Divided and ruled. The internet is a big cyber zoo enclosure where tribal monkeys spend all day throwing digital poo at each other.
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""Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civic engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens."
That's true, but most of the others you mentioned were pretty middle-class (for whatever that meant for their society). They were hardly elite. I think that the lesson here is that whenever the sort of petit gentry decides that even the modest that it derives from the system can't compensate for its ineptitude, a revolution is possible. It's not that the 1% needs to be fractured, it's a 1% that can't command the loyalty of the next top 20% that's in trouble.
Entirely accurate. It is competing factions among the elites that lead to revolutions and civil wars. Fortunately the new Tech-Libertarian elite is effectively at war with the traditional Neoliberal elite. Figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk represent a new elite that care not for the pandering of the traditional neoliberals. Even the Zucc (don't get me started) has seen which way the wind is blowing and is hoping to get outside of the blast radius. We're definitely well positioned for war among the elites and the aspiring-tech-elites... we'll see who wins.
Very thought provoking. Starmer sums up the comments you make. He was asked recently how releasing (potentially violent) prisoners early would work. After getting over his usual anger that someone dared to ask him a question he then went on to say that it was a risk he was fully aware of and was managing. He sounded like some junior graduate trainee being queried on the risk log who can then only spew out set scripts. Of course, he did not elaborate on how the risks were being managed and what he was specifically doing. Every public performance shows that he is totally out of his depth.
I also just reread 1984 and your references to it make a lot of sense. It seriously needs doublethink to be able to espouse LBGT / Pride as an ideology whilst at the same time introducing laws to prevent criticism of specific, traditional religions. The Party in 1984 was only competent at one thing though: repressing the population, and it only bothered to control the thinking of Party members. The Proles simply did not matter other than culling any who were a bit ambitious. Western government likewise increasingly seems to be competent at repression and thought management but not at anything else. The recently coined term Anarcho-Tyranny seems a helpful one.
I also recently read “A Brave New World”. Am in two minds as to whether it is a better analogy for where the West is headed than “1984”. It might be an overly theoretical topic but it could potentially be a topic you address in one of these essays. “1984” might even be the outcome if the hedonistic model of “A Brave New World’ fails.
Are the two necessarily incompatible? One might argue that in today's world a person might inhabit one or the other depending on their social status and class. The average PMC hung up on Game of Thrones or Bridgerton and pats themselves on the back for having bought the latest iPhone/Malano Blahik etc lives in one; the lower middle class parent working two jobs and one surprise bill away from being homeless lives in another.
Yet another excellent post, thank you! I especially like your point about how currently laws are written in the fond hopes that things that are law will come to pass. This kind of hopeful thinking messes up the whole idea if justice.
The postwar modernism that has torn down as much of the "old" culture as it can, has gone too far by a wide margin, now. I vaguely remember that the modernism wanted to tear down the things that were perceived to lead to war, like nationalism and cultural elitism. And there was a lot of rotten stuff in the old ways. It is just that if there is no understanding about what the fabric of society is, and how it keeps togeter, the whole thing can unravel.
The majority (80%) will always want to align with the others. Right now the media is expertly used in manufacturing the "majority opinion". That majority opinion is now steered further and further apart from the facts on the ground. If, as some commenter says, you get a map that says one thing and the terrain is quite something else, this is disorienting. Similarly in the Finnish epic Kullervo - his stepfamily put a stone in his lunchbag, leading to an extremely nasty sequence of events both for Kullervo and others. Madness and feud. Mental illness is rising - if you cannot do anything and cannot even express your distress, you can get sick just to disconnect.
The ostracising/canceling (feminine?) style of waging war has definitely added a new twist of viciousness to the stew of societal (and even individual) things. When that strategy becomes as widely used as it is now, it drives a fragmentation that makes everyone scared of their neighbour, both individuals and states.
This "Party" is more than a straw man. It is how I was raised and credentialled. But I lost my stomach for it, and fell away. So, kudos to Aurelien for spotting the phenomenon and putting it to words. I'd suggest the term "careerist" if you need another. Reference to the Iron Law of Institutions could be useful too.
Consider this hypothesis: the resources of the US are so overcommitted that any significant change would cause great pain to some important someones, or even to everyone. From the top of the mountain, any step is a step downhill.
So the political system is designed not to take a step, and the Outer Party - with all of their limitations described above - is what the Inner Party gets if ineffectiveness is what they seek. At the start of this process, the political and media leaders of the old sort just hold their noses, but after a generation or so a new leadership class arrives that actually believes the empty BS. In Silicon Valley we'd call it "Smoking your own exhaust."
General rejection by the people of the nation is what's causing weakness. Firearm laws are a good example, so are EPA requirements for vehicles and others. There are now entire subcultures that, as a part of their ethos, reject the managerial central control. While violent bullies (Woke progressives) will continue to try and force every one into line, the disintegration of the central culture has created an environment where microcultures hold rebellion against The Machine as a part of their core identities. I've written a few articles on this topic, but the ultimate point is that collecting thousands of micro-cultures who hate you into a single functional body-politic is near impossible. Universal surveillance and coercion can stop people from doing a lot of things... ...but it can't stop people from doing nothing.
"The skills needed to succeed in politics today are the skills of climbing the hierarchy of the Party, not of appealing to the electorate."
This seems to echo the observation by Yves Smith about the problem of Western "diplomacy," that they spend most of the time negotiating amongst themselves and expect to impose whatever they agreed to (amongst themselves) on the other side, by force, intimidation, or skullduggery. One might say that the "insiders" likewise spend most of the time negotiating amongst themselves, using language and points of reference particular to themselves, and expect to impose their consensus on everyone else by whatever dirty tricks that they can call upon. Yet, they consider themselves "democratic" because they treat all insiders equally, or so they think, and treat all outsiders with equal contempt (Orwell's INGSOC, he was careful to point out, has no obvious racism etc--all races are represented among its top hierarchy. So it wasn't overt "racism" or any such that that characterized its tyranny.).
......... [On] the inability of western political classes to communicate ideas competently, to discuss and debate, and to convince electorates of the wisdom of their policies. Instead of that, these classes communicate with their electorates from a position of unreflective superiority, like parents to children or teachers to students. Rather than seeking to persuade, they seek to intimidate and bully, to insult the electorate ..........
My thought: Sad is the world where how parents treat children and how teachers treat students are used as similes for malpractice.
Some may respond : "There is nothing inherently wrong implied about parenting and teaching. They are just inappropriate basis for relations between adults."
My response is that in China, and generally in the (rather successful) societies of East Asia, the whole society is conceived as an extended family, and the political leader _should_ emulate a parental figure. That is a profoundly reasonable take, one that builds from lived immediate and nearly universal experience. If there is something wrong with it, what is it?
"The administration of government lies in getting men of strong moral character, who can be attracted only by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is cultivated by practicing compassion.. Let people see that you only want their good and the people will be good. The relationship between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it. If good men were to govern a country continually for a hundred years they would transform the violently bad and dispense with capital punishment altogether". Analects.
China aims to dispense with capital punishment by 2049, appropriately enough. The PRC, among other things, is the most purely Confucian/Mencian government in history, save for Mao's introduction of democratic oversight–which would not have occurred to the Sages.
What a wonderful entertaining savàgery! But hasn't it occurred to you that the atomisation of culture was an operation? A social engineering project aimed at heading off questions of rich and poor, ownership and work, all the issues that lead to the guillotine and the October revolution? That what we are in now did not occur by chance? Con the children so they worry about what gender they are rather than why they are poor.
There is hope in the local which, as you implied in your "nation-states don't actually make sense" article, was the reason empires, tribes and various other forms of polity and control over space worked out fine much of the time.
As the narrative of the Western Enlightenment universalism loses it's aura, and AI makes anything represented from a distance impossible to distinguish between the true, untrue and all in between, I don't see how the local can't make a significant return as the locus of culture, solidarity and meaningful loyalty.
The (AI/algorithm controlled) digital space can still be a valuable space for entertainment of ideas and imagination. You use it to exercise the mind, but via embodied localism tether to remembrance of how unreal it is to train the mind. Like a live action Buddhist meditation.
"Today’s Party has none of these claims to legitimacy nor, so far as I can see, any other."
Besides the roots of liberalism ideology and the endogamy or isolation that blind them, I can not avoid to see a religious view: their legitimacy is that they are right and the others (the heretic pagans) wrong. That they are in the bright and luminous side and have the duty to face the dark and tenebrous evil, that, they don't seem to note, is the main portion of the cake called world. About this, I always doubt (when I am in a reductionism and more "narrative" mood) if this is mainly a cause or mainly and effect; but right now I see a huge feedback and a mutual effect. And this same doubt applies to what you say:
"From this in turn follows the Liberal belief in norms, and the concurrent faith that just writing something down as a law or a rule makes it come true."
This turn from concrete and material (in a mundane sense, not philosophical) to the "ideal" world reveals also a profund idealism (now yes in a philosophical sense). I assume that the needs of democracy for "seduce" the electorate through the media is one of the causes of this, because you don't need to create successful results, just show that you will do it or convince through words the people is enough. In a sense, is also a fail of burocracy, because instead of a result, you have to achieve a result to present to your supervisor, that used to be a Powerpoint, or some statistics or data that, at the same time, his supervisor demands from him. Is like a blind machine, a snow ball or any other comparation.
This combination of manichean ideology and idealism explains the huge absurd behaves and politics. They refuse the "experts" that don't tell them something that they ears don't want to hear (as a naughty child bad raised fot their parents ¿who are the parents here? ¿us?). That's why they have a distorted view of things. Of course, this is combined with the "sociopathic" character that some of you have commented in other coments of the Aurelien essays. Ukraine is a good exemple, but also the problem of migration: they denied the reality and shape it in order to fit it in their way of conceive it (that is the "idealism in action", we can say).
We should adapt our thoughts to things, and not try to adapt the things to our thoughts; we must try to explain the behave of things by the things itself, and not try to explain with "nominal and supposed objects or causes", that are more like "narrative" explanations (that is why this reflection is a kind of "narrative" approach that does not reveal the concrete processes that determine our sad political situation; I don't want to reject the need of theory and the value of narrative explanations, because they used to comprehend this concrete processes). This is one of the roots that distinguish realism and idealism and I can observe it in the plural classes that constitute this Interior and Exterior Party.
Great essays those that you talk about the psycological, theoretical and sociological aspects of the politics and society.
And what are the structures at play and their ultimate goal, at limit?
I find the discussion about inner/outer party and PMC, and "elite" a bit boring by now, when in fact the actual structures at play are never revieled.
For instance, this very working class originated UK trader manages to put the things to the limit and comes to the conclusion that mostly is the impetus to bring the Gini coefficient as close to one as possible ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o2REr4bs8A ), and in the process have a society that will allow that to happen: an acultured and intelectually stunted elite, a militarized police force, an atomized society suffering of permanent amnesia, and with many and small groups at each other's throats. And this is a template that would be imposed on the whole world. Those who resist are evil.
I guess likely wars and famines and deprivations (including of many freedoms, and not only material) of the future will shake the apple cart hard enough to cut this hydra to pieces. But we have not yet reached bottom.
What, if anything, can we do about this? One possibility is to try and espouse some sort of values ourselves, and fill the political void in our local communities. Another is to form alternative political parties that actually stand for something. I'm not sure how possible this is, considering that the voting public and the political system (at least in the US) is not set up to consider anything outside of the R/D divide. Such action may still be useful however, in forming alternative power structures that can function after the inevitable collapse of the current system.
From another angle, I think education and some degree of "elitism" is important. Make your friends feel bad about consuming pol slop. Buy people great books for birthdays and Christmas. Live your life according to actual values. Easier said then done, but done it must be.
I don't think that there is anything to do. At least, in big level. Of course, you can try to open minds in your local sphere (this is important, because you will improve lives and transfer knowledge), but far from this, in a big social level, I think that we must wait. Wait until the crash will be really hard, and then, when we have the teeth in the throat, learn through the pain from the danger that we assumed before unnecessarily. Until then, a few spaces of dialogue, your talks with your local sphere and, I think is important, we need a a strong discontent with the style of politic life between the population. Maybe, all of this could produce a rebirth of a serious political culture.
I actually agree with most of your argument with respect to the United States, Great Britain and Western Europe. But I want to call attention to the contrast between the discourse of Western elites and those who speak on behalf of Russia and China. One thing I'm continually struck by is how Russian and Chinese leaders and diplomats convey information and opinion as if speaking to educated and informed adults. They refer to history, economics, policy, culture in ways that present the world as a complex place, and with the sense that much thought has been given to formulating their views. Western leaders speak in slogans and soundbites as if they are talking to children, and paint a oversimplified, cartoonish vision of the world that is essentially binary - i.e., black/white, good/evil, for us / against us. And I think this is largely because the Western elites are largely hollow men and women, the products of an education system geared to producing obedient widgets that can be slotted into the great machine that supports Western hegemony. Anyone who has heard Lavrov and Blinken speak will immediately know what I'm talking about here. The former is a man of substance and principles; the latter is a man devoid of substance and principles. There's so much more that could be said here, but I think we would do well to learn some lessons from Russia and China as we watch Western hegemony in its death throes.
Relatedly...
Aurelian wrote:
"Instead of that, these classes communicate with their electorates from a position of unreflective superiority, like parents to children or teachers to students"
...parents or masters that behave this way will also see the continuance of their lineage quickly die. It is not appropriate to be "superior" in this way to children and apprentices either.
This is reflective of the death of culture too, at least from an Eastern point of view. Premodern "spiritual authority" was never as institutionally based in the East as it was in the West. It was something that was expected to be palpable and personally investigable.
Rejection of the cultural void is, I think, the key to future development. That's best accomplished through the construction of alternative communities that are capable of tacitly operating within The System while rejecting its principles and presuppositions.
Yes! And can show local and embodied superior outcomes (eg. physical health, lack of anxiety, contented family life, wise but uncompromised courage) to all that come into extended contact. Proselytism of any form absent this kind of proof of Principle only deepens narrative/ideology. Real politics can return this way.
Lavrov and Blinken is one thing.
Can you even imagine trying to compare VV Putin and Kamala Harris ?
Not to mention Xi Jinping.
"Western leaders speak in slogans and soundbites as if they are talking to children, and paint a oversimplified, cartoonish vision of the world that is essentially binary - i.e., black/white, good/evil, for us / against us."
What do you expect from the "leaders" of polities for which Marvel movies are the highest grossing entertainment properties?
Western elites act the way they do because they can.
No. Western elites act the way they do because they are unable to act any other way. Did you not read the article?
re: Blinken and predecessors, it's worth looking at Alastair Crookes recent article on Leo Strauss:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/20082024-revisionist-zionists-dare-us-to-pull-plug-on-their-nakba-agenda-oped/
I believe you make a truly insightful comment when you say: "...today’s political class and its parasites often have a very narrow and selective education, limited capacity and almost no practical experience of doing anything useful." This "suits" versus open collar dichotomy goes straight to the heart of comments like we hear so many of the Inner Party make - the "deplorable" comments. Such language actually resonates with other Inner Party and to some extent Outer Party members, as they simply cannot imagine someone with dirt on their hands having any coherence with the ever changing informal "Party Line" (which, let us note, is almost in and of itself a culture in the true sense of the word). This disdain for not just the working class, but almost anyone involved in doing anything physical (as contrasted to "developing content" or writing "apps" - digital production) seems to be made up in part by a desire to minimize labor costs (from the power behind the throne mega corp side of the Inner Party, which has championed offshoring of most North American businesses based on international labor arbitrage over the last 40 some years) while also dismissing even formerly white collar college grads in engineering (coming, as they most frequently do, not from elite Ivy League schools, but those land grant universities in 'fly over country'). The fact that a family corn and soy bean farmer in the Midwest is probably more aware of current and future foreign exchange rates, (because he hedges against FX rate changes, since his primary market is abroad in Asia but his production costs are mostly domestic), the realities of those futures markets, LNG production trends (i.e.: fracking) impacts on the wholesale costs of nitrogen based fertilizers, the international political realities of declining potash production globally, GPS accuracy issues (as they affect the automated fertilizer programming on the equipment preparing his fields each season), and John Deere corporation's "no individual repair" embedded digital kill switch policies. anyway, that whole basket of 'deplorable' topics, than most members of Congress is irrelevant to the Inner Party. That family farmer is a "producer" and as such, is to be treated as a tax cow, to be milked as much as possible, denigrated publicly, and otherwise dismissed and ignored. Part of that is long term Inner Party political bias, but the biggest part of that is simply the lack of any "practical experience of doing anything useful" as you so brilliantly put it. After substantial political donations actually result in a face to face opportunity to meet with Senator Foghorn, the discussion goes something like this: "You grow corn and beans? Fascinating. Family farming, hunh? Heart of American, my man. 100% with you. But look, I'm a bit busy right now, Mr. McDonald. Talk to my staffers. I think young Janet (with the purple hair, ear plugs and nose ring) over there can take down your concerns..." Janet has never gotten mud on 'their' shoes. Ever. Janet rides public transportation and is saving up for 'their' first Tesla. Janet has never held a wrench, would not know what a grease gun was if you laid one on 'their' desk. But 'they/them' are pretty good at influencing "influencers", which is how 'they/them' got that staffer job. That discussion goes nowhere, and never will, because Janet understands absolutely nothing that Farmer McDonald is talking about. McDonald might as well be speaking Chinese (which he can. a little, because his biggest customers are in China, so he studied it a bit in college, and at least has social graces in the language). And (we can only but hope) Farmer McDonald will never again donate to an Inner Party campaign. Hopefully, he enjoys his visit to the Smithsonian Museum's exhibits before he departs D.C. to head back to the farm, because that is about as much benefit as he'll get out of that visit to the Capital. And the Inner Party and Outer Party drones wonder why a former moderate Democrat farmer and donor is now voting for the other side. Well, yeah. (Note that Janet and Senator Foghorn may be American in this example, but the European farming community feels just about the exact same way when the Eurocrats get to working their disconnected from reality policy magic across the pond. The lack of understanding on the part of the Globish Party commissars is basically the same - just different languages is all.)
The best move is for Farmer McDonald to build a strong community capable of rejecting The Party's overreach. It's amazing what you can get away with when the county commissioners, sheriff, and city council are on your side. We need to work towards building smaller communities with new identities because there's no central national identity any more. Exiting the system isn't possible, but insulating yourselves from it is.
I hope that Mr MacDonald is aware that "voting for the other side' will not make the slightest real difference.
True and funny.
1. Romanticist fantasies and Les Miz aside, revolutions do not happen when the populace seizes power from the elites. As long as the elites remain internally united, they will retain power and ruthlessly squelch any attempt to take it from them. Not only do they have control over pressure points, they will do *whatever* *it* *takes* to retain power, otherwise they would not have gotten to where they are, nor would they keep their perches for long.
Rather, revolutions happen when the elites are divided amongst themselves, whether as a result of foreign threats or an inability to agree on how to divvy up the goodies. Elite factions then start casting about for allies.
2. The elites of old saw themselves as patrons of arts, culture, all that. Today's elites consider themselves to be morally superior, smarter, and just all around Better People.
Tis true that "revolutions happen when the elites are divided amongst themselves". One need only to look at the familial & education credentials of many revolutionary leaders, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Lenin, Robespierre, Oliver Cromwell Fidel Castro & Che Guevara, to prove it. I think, only Stalin came from poverty. Also, Hitler was backed by some wealthy German elites who though they could use and control him - whoops. Elites will use any person or group to further their aims. Currently in the US left leaning elites use Woke DEI BS and Trump is using the religious, same as Reagan did (he reneged on every promise he made to them).
They are all parasitic scum. I would love to see the guillotines dusted off, but I agree that people are too divided. Neo liberal strategy has been a success. Church may be the only place where like minded people gather and their numbers have been nose diving for decades. We are all "Bowling Alone". Divided and ruled. The internet is a big cyber zoo enclosure where tribal monkeys spend all day throwing digital poo at each other.
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""Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civic engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens."
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
"Only Stalin came from poverty."
That's true, but most of the others you mentioned were pretty middle-class (for whatever that meant for their society). They were hardly elite. I think that the lesson here is that whenever the sort of petit gentry decides that even the modest that it derives from the system can't compensate for its ineptitude, a revolution is possible. It's not that the 1% needs to be fractured, it's a 1% that can't command the loyalty of the next top 20% that's in trouble.
Entirely accurate. It is competing factions among the elites that lead to revolutions and civil wars. Fortunately the new Tech-Libertarian elite is effectively at war with the traditional Neoliberal elite. Figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk represent a new elite that care not for the pandering of the traditional neoliberals. Even the Zucc (don't get me started) has seen which way the wind is blowing and is hoping to get outside of the blast radius. We're definitely well positioned for war among the elites and the aspiring-tech-elites... we'll see who wins.
Another outstanding post by Aurelien.
Very thought provoking. Starmer sums up the comments you make. He was asked recently how releasing (potentially violent) prisoners early would work. After getting over his usual anger that someone dared to ask him a question he then went on to say that it was a risk he was fully aware of and was managing. He sounded like some junior graduate trainee being queried on the risk log who can then only spew out set scripts. Of course, he did not elaborate on how the risks were being managed and what he was specifically doing. Every public performance shows that he is totally out of his depth.
I also just reread 1984 and your references to it make a lot of sense. It seriously needs doublethink to be able to espouse LBGT / Pride as an ideology whilst at the same time introducing laws to prevent criticism of specific, traditional religions. The Party in 1984 was only competent at one thing though: repressing the population, and it only bothered to control the thinking of Party members. The Proles simply did not matter other than culling any who were a bit ambitious. Western government likewise increasingly seems to be competent at repression and thought management but not at anything else. The recently coined term Anarcho-Tyranny seems a helpful one.
I also recently read “A Brave New World”. Am in two minds as to whether it is a better analogy for where the West is headed than “1984”. It might be an overly theoretical topic but it could potentially be a topic you address in one of these essays. “1984” might even be the outcome if the hedonistic model of “A Brave New World’ fails.
Are the two necessarily incompatible? One might argue that in today's world a person might inhabit one or the other depending on their social status and class. The average PMC hung up on Game of Thrones or Bridgerton and pats themselves on the back for having bought the latest iPhone/Malano Blahik etc lives in one; the lower middle class parent working two jobs and one surprise bill away from being homeless lives in another.
We already are living 1984.
I’d make it a trilogy by including Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy.
Yet another excellent post, thank you! I especially like your point about how currently laws are written in the fond hopes that things that are law will come to pass. This kind of hopeful thinking messes up the whole idea if justice.
The postwar modernism that has torn down as much of the "old" culture as it can, has gone too far by a wide margin, now. I vaguely remember that the modernism wanted to tear down the things that were perceived to lead to war, like nationalism and cultural elitism. And there was a lot of rotten stuff in the old ways. It is just that if there is no understanding about what the fabric of society is, and how it keeps togeter, the whole thing can unravel.
The majority (80%) will always want to align with the others. Right now the media is expertly used in manufacturing the "majority opinion". That majority opinion is now steered further and further apart from the facts on the ground. If, as some commenter says, you get a map that says one thing and the terrain is quite something else, this is disorienting. Similarly in the Finnish epic Kullervo - his stepfamily put a stone in his lunchbag, leading to an extremely nasty sequence of events both for Kullervo and others. Madness and feud. Mental illness is rising - if you cannot do anything and cannot even express your distress, you can get sick just to disconnect.
The ostracising/canceling (feminine?) style of waging war has definitely added a new twist of viciousness to the stew of societal (and even individual) things. When that strategy becomes as widely used as it is now, it drives a fragmentation that makes everyone scared of their neighbour, both individuals and states.
This "Party" is more than a straw man. It is how I was raised and credentialled. But I lost my stomach for it, and fell away. So, kudos to Aurelien for spotting the phenomenon and putting it to words. I'd suggest the term "careerist" if you need another. Reference to the Iron Law of Institutions could be useful too.
Consider this hypothesis: the resources of the US are so overcommitted that any significant change would cause great pain to some important someones, or even to everyone. From the top of the mountain, any step is a step downhill.
So the political system is designed not to take a step, and the Outer Party - with all of their limitations described above - is what the Inner Party gets if ineffectiveness is what they seek. At the start of this process, the political and media leaders of the old sort just hold their noses, but after a generation or so a new leadership class arrives that actually believes the empty BS. In Silicon Valley we'd call it "Smoking your own exhaust."
General rejection by the people of the nation is what's causing weakness. Firearm laws are a good example, so are EPA requirements for vehicles and others. There are now entire subcultures that, as a part of their ethos, reject the managerial central control. While violent bullies (Woke progressives) will continue to try and force every one into line, the disintegration of the central culture has created an environment where microcultures hold rebellion against The Machine as a part of their core identities. I've written a few articles on this topic, but the ultimate point is that collecting thousands of micro-cultures who hate you into a single functional body-politic is near impossible. Universal surveillance and coercion can stop people from doing a lot of things... ...but it can't stop people from doing nothing.
"The skills needed to succeed in politics today are the skills of climbing the hierarchy of the Party, not of appealing to the electorate."
This seems to echo the observation by Yves Smith about the problem of Western "diplomacy," that they spend most of the time negotiating amongst themselves and expect to impose whatever they agreed to (amongst themselves) on the other side, by force, intimidation, or skullduggery. One might say that the "insiders" likewise spend most of the time negotiating amongst themselves, using language and points of reference particular to themselves, and expect to impose their consensus on everyone else by whatever dirty tricks that they can call upon. Yet, they consider themselves "democratic" because they treat all insiders equally, or so they think, and treat all outsiders with equal contempt (Orwell's INGSOC, he was careful to point out, has no obvious racism etc--all races are represented among its top hierarchy. So it wasn't overt "racism" or any such that that characterized its tyranny.).
......... [On] the inability of western political classes to communicate ideas competently, to discuss and debate, and to convince electorates of the wisdom of their policies. Instead of that, these classes communicate with their electorates from a position of unreflective superiority, like parents to children or teachers to students. Rather than seeking to persuade, they seek to intimidate and bully, to insult the electorate ..........
My thought: Sad is the world where how parents treat children and how teachers treat students are used as similes for malpractice.
Some may respond : "There is nothing inherently wrong implied about parenting and teaching. They are just inappropriate basis for relations between adults."
My response is that in China, and generally in the (rather successful) societies of East Asia, the whole society is conceived as an extended family, and the political leader _should_ emulate a parental figure. That is a profoundly reasonable take, one that builds from lived immediate and nearly universal experience. If there is something wrong with it, what is it?
"The administration of government lies in getting men of strong moral character, who can be attracted only by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is cultivated by practicing compassion.. Let people see that you only want their good and the people will be good. The relationship between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it. If good men were to govern a country continually for a hundred years they would transform the violently bad and dispense with capital punishment altogether". Analects.
China aims to dispense with capital punishment by 2049, appropriately enough. The PRC, among other things, is the most purely Confucian/Mencian government in history, save for Mao's introduction of democratic oversight–which would not have occurred to the Sages.
What a wonderful entertaining savàgery! But hasn't it occurred to you that the atomisation of culture was an operation? A social engineering project aimed at heading off questions of rich and poor, ownership and work, all the issues that lead to the guillotine and the October revolution? That what we are in now did not occur by chance? Con the children so they worry about what gender they are rather than why they are poor.
There is hope in the local which, as you implied in your "nation-states don't actually make sense" article, was the reason empires, tribes and various other forms of polity and control over space worked out fine much of the time.
As the narrative of the Western Enlightenment universalism loses it's aura, and AI makes anything represented from a distance impossible to distinguish between the true, untrue and all in between, I don't see how the local can't make a significant return as the locus of culture, solidarity and meaningful loyalty.
The (AI/algorithm controlled) digital space can still be a valuable space for entertainment of ideas and imagination. You use it to exercise the mind, but via embodied localism tether to remembrance of how unreal it is to train the mind. Like a live action Buddhist meditation.
Very good essay. Much appreciated.
All of this reminds me strongly of the "Men without chests" from "Abolition of Man" by C.S.Lewis.
Except it seems he heavily overestimated the competency of "The inner party".
"Today’s Party has none of these claims to legitimacy nor, so far as I can see, any other."
Besides the roots of liberalism ideology and the endogamy or isolation that blind them, I can not avoid to see a religious view: their legitimacy is that they are right and the others (the heretic pagans) wrong. That they are in the bright and luminous side and have the duty to face the dark and tenebrous evil, that, they don't seem to note, is the main portion of the cake called world. About this, I always doubt (when I am in a reductionism and more "narrative" mood) if this is mainly a cause or mainly and effect; but right now I see a huge feedback and a mutual effect. And this same doubt applies to what you say:
"From this in turn follows the Liberal belief in norms, and the concurrent faith that just writing something down as a law or a rule makes it come true."
This turn from concrete and material (in a mundane sense, not philosophical) to the "ideal" world reveals also a profund idealism (now yes in a philosophical sense). I assume that the needs of democracy for "seduce" the electorate through the media is one of the causes of this, because you don't need to create successful results, just show that you will do it or convince through words the people is enough. In a sense, is also a fail of burocracy, because instead of a result, you have to achieve a result to present to your supervisor, that used to be a Powerpoint, or some statistics or data that, at the same time, his supervisor demands from him. Is like a blind machine, a snow ball or any other comparation.
This combination of manichean ideology and idealism explains the huge absurd behaves and politics. They refuse the "experts" that don't tell them something that they ears don't want to hear (as a naughty child bad raised fot their parents ¿who are the parents here? ¿us?). That's why they have a distorted view of things. Of course, this is combined with the "sociopathic" character that some of you have commented in other coments of the Aurelien essays. Ukraine is a good exemple, but also the problem of migration: they denied the reality and shape it in order to fit it in their way of conceive it (that is the "idealism in action", we can say).
We should adapt our thoughts to things, and not try to adapt the things to our thoughts; we must try to explain the behave of things by the things itself, and not try to explain with "nominal and supposed objects or causes", that are more like "narrative" explanations (that is why this reflection is a kind of "narrative" approach that does not reveal the concrete processes that determine our sad political situation; I don't want to reject the need of theory and the value of narrative explanations, because they used to comprehend this concrete processes). This is one of the roots that distinguish realism and idealism and I can observe it in the plural classes that constitute this Interior and Exterior Party.
Great essays those that you talk about the psycological, theoretical and sociological aspects of the politics and society.
And what are the structures at play and their ultimate goal, at limit?
I find the discussion about inner/outer party and PMC, and "elite" a bit boring by now, when in fact the actual structures at play are never revieled.
For instance, this very working class originated UK trader manages to put the things to the limit and comes to the conclusion that mostly is the impetus to bring the Gini coefficient as close to one as possible ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o2REr4bs8A ), and in the process have a society that will allow that to happen: an acultured and intelectually stunted elite, a militarized police force, an atomized society suffering of permanent amnesia, and with many and small groups at each other's throats. And this is a template that would be imposed on the whole world. Those who resist are evil.
I guess likely wars and famines and deprivations (including of many freedoms, and not only material) of the future will shake the apple cart hard enough to cut this hydra to pieces. But we have not yet reached bottom.
What, if anything, can we do about this? One possibility is to try and espouse some sort of values ourselves, and fill the political void in our local communities. Another is to form alternative political parties that actually stand for something. I'm not sure how possible this is, considering that the voting public and the political system (at least in the US) is not set up to consider anything outside of the R/D divide. Such action may still be useful however, in forming alternative power structures that can function after the inevitable collapse of the current system.
From another angle, I think education and some degree of "elitism" is important. Make your friends feel bad about consuming pol slop. Buy people great books for birthdays and Christmas. Live your life according to actual values. Easier said then done, but done it must be.
I don't think that there is anything to do. At least, in big level. Of course, you can try to open minds in your local sphere (this is important, because you will improve lives and transfer knowledge), but far from this, in a big social level, I think that we must wait. Wait until the crash will be really hard, and then, when we have the teeth in the throat, learn through the pain from the danger that we assumed before unnecessarily. Until then, a few spaces of dialogue, your talks with your local sphere and, I think is important, we need a a strong discontent with the style of politic life between the population. Maybe, all of this could produce a rebirth of a serious political culture.
Sorry for my english, I hope it is clear.